Psalm 73

and go to my absolute favorite Psalm, Psalm 73

this morning and pray that I'll be able

to do it justice, Psalm 73. God's word says a

Psalm of Asaph. Surely God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart, but as for me,

my feet came close to stumbling, my steps

had almost slipped, for I was envious of the

arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked

.

For there are no pains in their death and

their body is fat. They are not in trouble

as other men, nor are they plagued like

mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace,

the garment

of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from

fatness. The imaginations of their heart

run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of

oppression. They speak from on high. They

have set their mouth against the heavens and

their tongue parades through the earth.

Therefore

his people return to this place and waters of

abundance are drunk by them. They say how

does God know and is their knowledge with the

most high. Behold, these are the wicked

and always at ease. They have increased in

wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart

pure and washed my hands in innocence. For I

have been stricken all day long and chastened

every morning. If I had said I will speak thus

, behold, I would have betrayed the generation

of your children. When I pondered to

understand this, it was troublesome in my

sight. Until

I came into the sanctuary of God, then I

perceived their end. Surely you set them in

slippery

places. You cast them down to destruction. How

they are destroyed in a moment. They are

utterly swept away by sudden terrors. Like a

dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused,

you will despise their form. When my heart was

embittered and I was pierced within, then

I was senseless and ignorant. I was like a

beast before you. Nevertheless, I am

continually

with you. You have taken hold of my right hand

. With your counsel, you will guide me

and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I

in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire

nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may

fail, but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever. For behold, those who

are far from you will perish. You have

destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you.

But as for me, the nearness of God is

my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge

that I may tell of all your works. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we love you this morning and

thank you for the opportunity to come out

and worship. There are so many things

happening in our time. There are so many

things happening

with our church family here that we ask you to

bless those. But I pray for everyone that's

here that you would bless our ears, our minds,

and our hearts for your truth and that you'd

bless your message in spite of the messenger

in Christ's name. Amen.

Our what we usually call Big Eva or the

general American popular Christianity is full

of voices

that tell us that once we become Christians

and once we follow this thing called

Christianity,

that our life becomes easier, that our life

becomes better, that things work out. You

look at the bookstores and the section on

Christianity and you have all these

psychiatric

psychological manuals on making your life

better just by following these steps. You

go to big churches and the messages are sent

around five things to make your marriage

better,

five things to be successful at work, that

everything that happens to us now that we're

Christians is supposed to be easier and more

prosperous. We have the poor prosperity gospel

that tells us to give all your money, your

seed money, and then God will give you wealth

and cars and stuff in response. And then you

have the middle class prosperity gospel that

you already have all those things anyway so

you give, you serve, you give your time and

then God will just make you happy and

successful and prosperous. But if you've been

a believer

for any time, if you look at it at believers

through history as we've discussed this

morning,

we know that that's not always the case.

Sometimes in his sovereignty and providence he

does bless

us with prosperity like pretty much everyone

here are extremely prosperous when especially

when you compare us to the rest of the world.

But sometimes he doesn't do that. Sometimes

he doesn't give you great health. Sometimes he

doesn't give you great wealth and everything

that your heart wants and great pleasure.

Sometimes he brings problems into our lives

with family and jobs and friends and all those

things. So when the Holy Spirit changes your

heart from stone and into a heart of flesh

that beats for him like Ezekiel says, your

soul is reborn and that regeneration happens

and there's a difference on the inside. But

the reality is that we're still stuck in this

flesh. We're still stuck in this fallen world

with pain and trouble and sin all around us.

So all of us, even as Christians, if we're

believers, we still face internal temptations

and external trials and tribulations that

we have to face every day of our lives. But

the thing that's designed to break the non-

Christian

and to get them to bend the knee to the truth,

to make them look up to Christ in his gospel

is designed differently for us now that we're

Christians. It's designed to prepare us for

glory, for the ultimate success and prosperity

of being before the face of God as we

described

in Sunday school this morning. Those trials

and tribulations that we face, the not always

prosperous times that we have are designed to

chip away at the ugly exterior of our previous

life of a fallen flesh that we still have to

deal with and to conform us more into the

image of Christ, our Savior. So understanding

this is a valuable lesson for us to learn

as believers and that there is wisdom as you

pursue the truth of true success in God's

world and God's eyes and for his glory. And

our text today shows Asaph, the Psalm writer,

the Psalmist that we have here, coming to that

understanding himself, building up from

a false understanding of success into the

truth, realizing the truth about his situation

.

Now, there's 150 Psalms in our Bible and these

are songs written mostly by David, King David.

He wrote a little bit over half of the Psalms,

but there's other authors of Psalms in our

Bibles and Asaph is one of them. Now, either

Asaph or someone in his group wrote about

12 Psalms that we have here and then including

the one that we read today. Now, Asaph was

one of three men, one of three priests, Levite

priests, that were given the job of being

in charge of the music of the temple by David

and he served David as King and he served

Solomon

as well with the building of the actual temple

there in Jerusalem and the dedication to that

temple that Solomon built, that he was

commissioned to be in charge of the music for

that first

service there. And in 2 Chronicles 5, 11, 14,

it says, "When the priests came forth from

the holy place, for all the priests who were

present had sanctified themselves without

regard to divisions, and all the Levitical

singers, Asaph, Haman, Jadathon, and their

sons and kinsmen clothed in final linen with

symbols, harps, and liars, standing east of

the altar, and with them 120 priests blowing

trumpet." It was quite the music happening

there and unison with the trumpeters and the

singers were to make themselves heard with

one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord.

And when they lifted up their voice

accompanied

by the trumpets and symbols and instruments of

music, and when they praised the Lord saying,

"He indeed is good for his loving kindness is

everlasting," then the house, the house

of the Lord was filled with a cloud so that

the priests could not stand to minister

because

of the cloud for the glory of the Lord filled

the house of God. He was one of those

commissioned

for that initial service and so he, he's got

to see all that. He got to see God's glory

fill the temple for the first time and he was

involved in that whole process. But at being

in the head of the music, in the head of a

certain section of the priests, he was

familiar

with the public life and the private life of

many of those around him that were supposed

to be leaders in Israel. And so he most

certainly witnessed the thing that happens in

the public

and private life, of those who are in charge

of things that are still in sin and that are

still in the flesh and still enamored by power

and corruption that comes with a lot of those

positions. And so he saw all this and he wrote

this psalm as a lament against that corruption

.

Now, so many of our songs we like to sing are

all generally happy. We have the blues

and stuff like that, but we generally prefer

songs that are happy and lovey. But there's

many different types of songs in the book of p

salms that there are the happy, there's

a royal songs, there's imprecatory psalms that

that sing against their enemies and want

bad things to happen to the enemies of God.

And there's songs of lament, of pain, of

suffering,

of crying out to God. All of the emotions that

we have as humans can be expressed to

the psalm that really is an amazing thing to

read and to study. So we can see in this

lament psalm, we can see Asaph grow and use

these experiences and the learning that he

has to grow in his understanding and his faith

in the God who loved him and called him to

that ministry. And his growing can teach us

how to react when we see corruption, when

we see people prosper that hate God. And just

like Asaph learned, we all must learn to keep

the true spiritual, eternal perspective about

what true success really is in our lives.

And the first way that I think he shows us how

we can do that is by not becoming frustrated

with the success of the foolish, the success

of the wicked, and the success of the corrupt.

Sometimes many times life can be very

frustrating and confusing. And this is exactly

where we

find Asaph at. He studies the lives of those

corrupt that he sees around and the wicked

and the foolish people. And he's confused and

envious of them, because even though they

are wicked and don't love God, they seem to be

prospering. And it almost causes him to

lose his path. He began to doubt. He began to

be tripped up by what he sees. He has this

little taste of self-righteousness in him. You

know, I'm doing all these things. I'm

a leader in the temple. I'm giving my life to

worshiping God. And I'm going through these

hard times, but all these wicked who could

care less, they're prospering in their lives.

And there's almost this kind of idea of karma,

this kind of idea of a holy reckoning where

if you do good, good things happen. And if you

do bad, bad things happen. He looked at

how happy the wicked were. He looked at how

much stuff they had. He looked at the health

that they seemed to have. And then he looked

at how hard he had it. Now, I don't know if

he had health problems, but they seemed to him

to be healthier than him. I don't know

if he lacked any physical needs, but they

seemed to have an overabundance of wealth.

So he focused on the temporary things in their

lives. And he said, "Well, they seem to be

doing okay." So when he focused on that, when

he looked at the wicked people, he focused

on these couple of things that they had

temporarily. Starting in verses four and five,

he focused

on their health. He said, "For there are no

pains in their death and their body is fat.

They are not in trouble as other men, nor are

they plagued like mankind." So this was

way before universal health care. And I don't

mean universal health insurance given by the

government. I mean the ability to go to the

doctor anytime you want to, to have technology

where you can go on your computer and the

doctor can give you poison ivy medicine like

happened to me without having to go even

anywhere. We just called them on the computer.

They

didn't have all that. Your health wasn't

something that you just took for granted at

the time.

Your health became an indicator of wealth

because if you were wealthy, you had enough

food to eat so you could stay healthy. You

didn't have to work as hard as the poor people

.

You were fed better and then you had overall

less stress in your everyday life. Now that

doesn't mean that we would like to be like a

wealthy person in that time. If you, in

the medieval times, if you are wealthy like

the kings of England, that we have way better

than they did, I promise you, just sanitary

what they had to eat and go through, we have

way better than them. But at that time, you

would look at the health of a wealthy person

and see that they had it better than you. So

the psalmist claimed that when he looked

at these people, they had no pains even in

death. They just went and even when they died,

they died in peace and they just died

naturally in their sleep is what his mind

looked for.

He said that they were fat and we in our

modern times look at fat as a bad thing, but

back

then being a fat meant that you actually had

food to eat. We have to pay people to have

subscriptions to go work at a gym because we

don't even have to work to keep our bodies

fit. We have to not eat as much as we could

eat when they had the complete opposite

problem

back then. So most people during his time

suffer from scarcity and starvation. And so

when

you looked at somebody who wasn't skinny, who

wasn't showing bones around them, it was

because that they were well off if they were

prosperous. He observed that their lives

seemed

easier than others. And remember, these are

the wicked people, the corrupt people, and

they seemed to have it better than he did.

Everything they touched went well for them.

They weren't touched with disease like the

righteous seem to be. So he focused on their

health and then he focused on their lifestyle

versus six through nine. Therefore, pride is

their necklace. The garment of violence covers

them. Their eye bulges from fatness. The imag

inations

of their heart run riot. They mock and wicked

ly speak of oppression. They speak from on high

.

They have set their mouth against the heavens

and their tongue parades through the earth.

And this is a poem. This is a song so you can

hear some of that poetic language in there.

But to him, the lifestyle of the unbeliever

seemed to be carefree. They lived however

they wanted to live. They were easy going.

They went from one pursuit of pleasure to

the next. That is all that they were living

for. They didn't live their lives in view

of eternity. They didn't even believe in

eternity. They didn't have to consider the

eternal cost

of their actions. And this to the Psalmist who

lives every aspect of his life as a priest

in light of the holiness of God, all of his

actions, everything he did and said was

regulated

by the word of God for the holiness and honor

to God. It seemed to him that the path they

were living, living for whatever they wanted,

saying whatever they wanted, was easier. And

not just easier, but it seemed to be working

out better for them. The unbeliever, he says,

flaunts his unbelief like wearing a necklace,

like it's jewelry for him. But he parades

around like, like his unbelief was a, as

wickedness was a fashion trend that they held

what was

good and holy and true and contempt by these

people. In verses eight and nine, they are

so comfortable in their lifestyle of wicked

ness that they continually flap their jaws

without

feeling any shame for what they are saying.

Right now in our society or our culture, it

is the center who is seen to be the moral one.

We talked about it this morning in Sunday

school, how, how morality is inverted in, in

our culture. What's, what's good is bad.

And what's bad is good is looked at as good.

And maybe you've heard this kind of catchphr

ase

that's kind of happened to be on the, the

right side of, of history. So when they speak

about homosexual marriage, when they speak

about transgenderism or about the climate

cult that they look at us as being on the

wrong side of history, eventually we're going

to find out that they were right all along.

But this is due to the, the darkening of their

minds and their hearts have become so wicked

that what's right has become wrong and what's

wrong has become right. It's a result of them

looking at the creator and saying, I will

not have you God rule over me. I will do what

I want, no matter what you've made me for,

or no matter how you've made me to live, I

choose to live in the way that I see fit.

I am the ruler of my own destiny. But this is

the folly that is in wicked people. Asaf

says that they're set their mouths against

heaven, that their tongues strut through the

earth. There's no opposition for them. There's

no nobody speaking out against their wicked

ness.

It's an abomination in our culture today to

speak out against wickedness, to speak the

truth and to go against what has been accepted

as the norm of, of wicked people. We can find

many quotes of thought leaders in our culture

and our society that, that are disgusting

and shameful and blasphemous against our God.

And I found one here, a British comedian,

an actor named Stephen Fry. I'm not sure if

you've heard of Stephen Fry. He was

interviewed

and the interviewer asked him, he is an outsp

oken atheist and the interviewer asked him, you

know, what if you're wrong? What if, if you

die and you find out that there is a God that

you're going to have to answer to him? What

would you say to that God? And Stephen Fry

answered in, in such a wicked and, and blas

phemous way, I'm not going to repeat everything

or

much of what he said, but he wagged his finger

in God's face and called God unjust. And then

he finished by saying this, it's perfectly

apparent that he talking about God is monstr

ous,

utterly monstrous and deserves no respect

whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life

becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth

living in my opinion. So what a falsely proud

thing to say. And, and ASAF started to kind of

go down this path and, and, and, and think

in the same way. But there was no end of it

for Stephen Fry, at least not yet. Stephen

Fry doesn't want for almost anything. He is

relatively wealthy even to us. But, but

ASAF starts to understand this and get that in

his mind and start to agree with what Stephen

Fry kind of said. Life is simpler when you don

't have to worry about living for God

or under his word. He focused on others

responses to the prosperity of the wicked in

verses 10

through 11 on their health, on their wicked

ness, and then on their prosperity. Verse 10

says,

"Therefore his people return to this place,

and waters of abundance are drunk by them."

They say, "How does God know? And is there

knowledge with the most high?" Even as the,

the leader of music in the temple, he had

people under his care and under his management

and they were probably instances when the

people that would come to him that were under

his care would be confused, would be turned

away from the truth by what they saw when

the wicked prospered. There were requirements,

like we said, to be kept to the lifestyle

of those who were priests and who worshiped in

God's temple. And all these people would

ask questions and they would, would bring

tension to ASAF. He knew what he saw. He

knew what he was supposed to say as the leader

and, and he would have to come up with this

response. He said in verse 12, he said, "Be

hold, these are the wicked and always at ease.

They have increased in wealth. Surely in vain

I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands

in innocence, for I have been stricken all day

long and chastened every morning. If I

had said, I will speak thus, behold, I would

have betrayed the generation of your children

."

In other words, he had, he was thinking this,

but he couldn't say it as a leader because

then he would have betrayed those under him.

And so he was conflicted and he had this

ultimate

sense of, of despair as you can clearly feel

as he writes these verses. He feels that,

that his reward for all of his hard work and

all of his pain and all of his labor is rebuke

,

is poverty, is sickness. He doubts, he starts

to doubt that if his, his life of holiness

was worth it to begin with. And he felt he had

nowhere to go and no one to tell. And

finally he comes to the end of his ropes. He

is at the end of his wits. And so he goes

to the temple to seek answers to his questions

. And this is where he found them, verses 16

and 17. "When I pondered to understand this,

it was troublesome in my sight. Until I came

into the sanctuary of God, then I perceived

therein." He had a temporary perspective

on prosperity, on success, on what really

matters. And then he goes to the temple and

he gets a more eternal perspective on what's

really important. And we keep that same

spiritual

perspective by not forgetting what your end

would be without Christ. Verse 18, "So surely

you set them in slippery places. You cast them

down to destruction. How they are destroyed

in a moment. They are utterly swept away by

sudden terrors. Like a dream and one awakes,

O Lord, when aroused you will despise their

form. When my heart was embittered and I was

pierced within, then I was senseless and

ignorant. I was like a beast before you." This

riddle

that he was looking to solve became answered

when he went before God in the temple. As

he was worshiping, as he came before God, as

he heard the scriptures read and sang songs

to God, he was placed in front of eternal

things, things that really matter and that

matter for much longer than our short lives.

And then he understood that the wicked truly

do not prosper, even though it may seem so.

But they're worse off than the poorest man

or woman with Christ in God's care. That the

speed at which this life is lived and that

the relative briefness of this life is against

the backdrop of eternity when you consider

how short this life is compared to the

timeframe of eternity. It makes for a giant

gap in the

thinking of sinful man. We tend to want to

live for the pleasures of this short life

while

ignoring the true pleasure of living forever

in the sight of a holy God in the life to

come. And that is truly the most foolish thing

you can do with your life. The end of the

one who lives this life without Christ, he

found out, past is past suddenly. It ends

shortly and quickly, verses 18 and 19. Surely

you set them in slippery places. You cast

them down to destruction. How they are

destroyed in a moment. They are utterly swept

away by

sudden terrors. We are reminded several times

in this life that our lives are extremely

short. How many of us have lost friends, even

younger friends or younger family members

and that weren't expected to pass? How many

times we come in our Wednesday night prayer

meetings and here request for the loved ones

of those that we love and our friends, our

families that are facing sudden illness out of

nowhere or even sudden death. We live our

lives forgetting how fast our lives can end.

How many of us travel to and from work every

day. There's so much risk involved in driving

vehicles, especially on the interstates and

living in parish. It's crazy. We just take it

for granted and don't even think about

it, but it just takes one accident like the

Williamson family that we've been praying

for and your whole life can change. The Purit

ans realized this and they wanted everyone to

know how short life was. When they had their

funerals, they would have it in the person's

house right there in the living room and they

would lay out the body right there for

everyone

to see, no casket or anything. They would

encourage their children to go and feel the

dead person's flesh. I know it sounds gross

because Kathy's making interesting faces back

there, but when you feel the difference

between the temperature of your skin and the

dead

person's skin, you realize that one day that

is going to be you and that changes your

perspective

on how you live. I'm not saying that's how we

should do it now. I'm saying that's what

they did and why they did that. They wanted

the reality of the shortness of this life

to be understood by everyone. Now, that is

completely the opposite of what we do today.

We act like death doesn't exist. We have

memorial services instead of funerals and we

have these

things called celebrations of life. We don't

even want to think that that person is not

with us. We want to celebrate their lives and

we should celebrate lives that live well

for God. But the reason we do that is not just

because we want to celebrate their life.

It's because we don't want to think that we're

going to die too. We've become numb to the

fact and make no mistake. Death is bad and we

should grieve and mourn those that we love

that pass on, even Christians, although we

mourn differently than those without hope.

But we should understand that all of us one

day will be facing that same end. We will

all die and the unbeliever dies suddenly. The

unbeliever tries to forget this fact and

he tries to dole the sting of death. But that

truth remains that the Bible says it is

appointed

under man once to die and after this the

judgment. And Asaph realized this as he was

placed before

eternal things. He saw that life without

Christ is passed suddenly and it's also

forgotten

quickly. Verse number 20, "Like a dream when

one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, you will

despise their form." All their prosperity in

this temporary life, all the fame and fortune

the power they may have had, all the ide

ologies that they were fighting for all gone in

a

few short years after their deaths. With very

few exceptions, people that have died in the

past are not remembered. We remember a couple

of heroes, a couple of bad guys from just

50 years ago. And then farther you go back,

the more and more people we have no clue how

many, the names of millions and billions of

people that have gone into eternity in the

past. I know my grandfather, my dad's dad,

Pete Peters. And I know some of his story,

although I'm always surprised to hear more at

family events that had no idea. And he's

just my grandfather. I never met my great

grandfather. I don't even know his name on

that side. And you know what? One day it's

going to be me. One day Josh is going to

remember

things, but his kids, my son Josh, they're not

going to remember things about me until

they hear stories. They're not going to know

they're great or great, great grandparents,

most likely. It's happened so quickly. And all

the things that we're living for now,

all those that are in power, the Elon Musk, we

may remember certain things about him.

But farther you get away, the more like a

dream his life becomes. What is he living for?

What am I living for? To be remembered? To

have a legacy? No. Living for God's glory.

And the psalmist sees that. All those that he

thought were the important, the move makers

in Jewish society at the time soon would be

forgotten. And all that they live for would

be forgotten and not remembered, taken up by

someone else. The blasphemer Stephen Fry

in another 20 years. How many people are going

to remember who he is? And if you don't watch

British TV, you might not know who he is now.

You know, he's known by a very few people

and will be forgotten very, very soon. But God

will remember every word he said, and

he will have to give account for that when he

meets his maker. Asaph goes to the temple

and considers these eternal things. In light

of that, he repents of the way he thought.

He repents of looking at this temporary life

and putting so much stock in it. He calls

himself a beast. I was a beast for thinking

this. And that's a perfect illustration of

what he wasn't considering all of it. He

remembered where he would be without the truth

. And he

recalled how good God is to give him the truth

. God took him out of his sinful life. He also

understood that God keeps him. God is the one

who keeps you versus 23 through 28.

Nevertheless,

I am continually with you. You have taken hold

of my right hand. With your counsel,

you will guide me and afterward receive me to

glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And

besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My

flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the

strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you will

perish. You have destroyed all those who are

unfaithful to you. But as for me, the nearness

of God is my good. I have made the Lord God my

refuge that I may tell of all your works.

How many times in just one day are we tempted

to take our eyes off of God and all that He's

done for us and put them on something

temporary and in the long run meaningless? How

many times

do we do that when we're disappointed with how

our life is going with the lot that we

seem to be in? How many times do we do that

when things don't turn out the way that we

think they should? We get so short-sided in

our sinful flesh that we, just like Asaph,

the holy priest of God, a leader among priests

in the first temple, got short-sided and in

his sinful flesh until he came to that temple.

We fall into the same trap that he did. But

the biggest blessing that God gives us is his

grace and his gift of mercy to us that

don't deserve it. He gives us the gracious

capacity to widen our gaze when we are prone

to fall short and look to this life instead of

the eternal life that our Savior has given

us. It's so easy for us to do. God has

equipped us with several gifts to get us

through these

times of doubt and sin. The first one is he

holds on to us. Verse 23, "Nevertheless,

I am continually with you. You have taken hold

of my right hand." Don't we praise God?

Because there will be times of doubt. Many of

us have doubted in major ways in our past

when we're going through pain, we're going

through struggling, but he is continually

holding our right hand. He's holding us from

turning away finally, and he understands the

weakness of our minds. He's considered our

frame as fleshly humans, and he holds on

to us. His shoulders are big enough to carry

us through those times of doubt. In fact,

he uses those to chisel away at that ugly,

sinful exterior. One of my favorite passages

in Romans chapter five, verses one through

five, it says, "Therefore, having been

justified

by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have

obtained our introduction by faith into this

grace in which we stand." So all of our

salvation,

all of our justification is sure in Christ.

Nothing can turn us away from that, but it

doesn't just leave us there just to live this

life and just have that hope. We go on

for that. It says, "We exalt in hope of the

glory of God." We praise God for that

salvation

that he's given us in Christ. But not only do

we praise him for that great gift, it says,

not only this, but we also exalt or praise God

in our tribulations, in our trials, in

our troubles, in all these things, knowing

that tribulation brings about perseverance

and perseverance-proven character and proven

character hope, and hope does not disappoint.

So those tribulations we go through are

practiced for the next one. And we go through

that tribulation

and we persevere through that tribulation, and

we look back and say, "Well, God, help

me through that." And so then we go on in our

lives and we face another tribulation and

we say, "Well, I remember the last time God

helped me through that. He gave me His Holy

Spirit. He's holding my hand continually." And

so that gives us hope to go through the

next one and the next one, and we continue to

grow in sanctification and the Holy Spirit.

It's such a very big blessing that He never

lets us go. He can even use our doubts and

our faithlessness to help us to grow. He

continually holds us. And then He guides us

with His counsel. First part of verse 24, "

With Your counsel, You will guide me." What

a glorious promise. Remember, He was doubting

and then He came into the temple. He came

in and heard the Word of God, the counsel of

God, from His revelation. And His doubts

and insecurities went away when He heard the

truth. And we all need wisdom to go through

life. And God has given us His Word to give us

that wisdom. James 1, 5 says, "But if

any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God

who gives to all generously and without repro

ach

and it will be given to him." He gives us His

counsel and there is no better counsel

in the world. And then finally, He gives us

the hope of glory. Verse, the last part of

24, "And afterward receive me to glory." This

is why, if one reason from this whole passage

why we shouldn't envy the Christless is

because that our end as Christians, no matter

what

our status is here, is going to be eternal

glory with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We are His bride. We are His people. We are

His beloved. And we will see Him face to face

and be like He is. And they will have no idea

about that. There's no greater wealth to be

achieved. There's no greater goal for us to

have as Christians, no fame or fortune or

power, no political end, no wealth, none of

that stuff, no peace in this time, temporary

time is worth having over Christ in you the

hope of glory. Matthew Henry says this, "Upon

this consideration, let us never envy sinners,

but rather bless ourselves in our own blessed

ness.

If God directs us in the way of our duty and

prevent our turning aside out of it, He will

afterwards, when our state of trial and

preparation is over, receive us to His kingdom

and glory,

the believing hopes and prospects of which

will reconcile us to all of the dark prov

idences

that now puzzle and perplex us and ease us of

the pain we have been put into by some

threatening temptations." This is the great

gift of salvation and there's nothing else

in this world that we should want over it. Oh,

that our flesh wants to trust in our own

abilities over the grace of Christ, wants to

trust in wealth over his mercy, wants to

trust in man over God and his word himself, to

trust in health over eternity, to trust

in our own work over the providence of God, to

trust in our own selves over God's truth.

What in the world can we have greater than

Christ ourselves? So when we go through these,

the hardest times of our lives, the times of

doubt and despair, when everything else

fails us, we can rest in Him and Him alone.

And I tried to find another quote that kind

of explains this better than I could, but

better really couldn't find anything better

than verses 25 and 26, when Asaph realizes

this truth for himself and writes it so

beautifully,

"Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides

you, I desire nothing on earth. Take

everything,

Lord, I've got you. My flesh and my heart may

fail. My very health may fail, but God

is the strength of my heart and my portion

forever, forever. If you trust in me, me,

I'm going to fail you, even if I don't want to

fail you, even if I'm very sincere in saying

that I'm going to do something for you or I'll

do this or do that. No matter how much

I want to succeed, there are things that may

prevent me from keeping my word to you, but

there's nothing in all the universe that can

keep God, nothing external to Him, that can

keep God from keeping His promises." I've

already had to apologize to many of you for

things I've done in the past, or I have a

great tendency to say the wrong thing at the

wrong

time, and you've been very gracious, but God

will never fail you. God will never let

you down. Make Him the strength of your heart

and your portion, and He will never, ever

disappoint you. How close are you to God? ASAP

uses this idea of closeness and farness

to differentiate between those that perish

with nothing in eternity and those whom God

protects, who God holds and who God says.

Verse 27, "For behold, those who are far from

you will perish. You have destroyed all those

who are unfaithful to you, but as for me,

the nearness of God is my good. I have made

the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of

all your works. Those who are far perish, but

those who are near, get God Himself as

their refuge." And, beloved, you will no doubt

find yourself, maybe even today, doubting

God, doubting His Word, finding yourself

looking at this temporary life in

disappointment

and pain and maybe even poverty or lack of

health. But always remember, if you are near

to God, if you have God, He holds your hand

and never, ever lets you go. You run to Christ

.

You run to Christ like ASAP did and get that

greater understanding of the eternal

perspective

that only comes from knowing Christ. And if

you don't know Christ, if you haven't come

to Him in biblical repentance and saving faith

, then please, I implore you, don't let

go of Him until you know Him for real. Let's

pray. Heavenly Father, we, like ASAP, often

fall short of perfection. And we often look

down instead of looking up. I pray that you

would keep us and bless us from that. I thank

you for what you've done in Christ to make

knowing you possible. Thank you for your mercy

and your grace on us. In Christ's name, amen.