Finding your Refuge

It is so good to be here. And if I

would have.

Fought six years ago that I would be living in Texas,

married to that amazing woman and being in such an awesome,

intentional church, I would have slapped myself and said stop dreaming.

And as I said, I am from California. I don't

apologize for that. I say it's a very good place

to be from. Okay, it's a very good place to

be from, and it was a great place to grow up, right,

awesome place to grow up.

But times change and.

I have fled to Texas for freedom. As I said,

it's just a privilege to be here this morning. And

I want to bring Psalm seventy three to life for

you guys and explain that a little bit and share

with you how it's had an impact in my life.

And I thought of no better way than to ask

Sherry to come and read Psalm seventy three.

We have.

We do everything together pretty much, and it's an awesome

life that God has given us, and we have determined

to finish well and this is part of our journey.

And Sherry, would you read seventy.

Three seventy three a psalm of asap Truly God is

good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

It is for me. My feet had almost tumbled, my

steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the

arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. But

they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat

and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are.

They are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore,

pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment.

Their eyes swell out through fatness, their hearts overflow with follies.

They scoff and speak with malice, loftily. They threaten oppression.

They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue

struts through the earth. Therefore, His people turn back to

them and find no fault in them, And they say,

how can God know? Is their knowledge in the most high? Behold,

these are the wicked. Always it ease, they increase in riches,

all in vain. Have I kept my heart clean and

washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long,

I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

If I had said.

I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation

of your children. But when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task. Until I went

into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned therein truly

you set them in slippery places, You make them fall

to ruin, how they are destroyed in a moment, swept

away utterly by terrors, like a dream when one awakes,

Oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,

I was brutish and ignorant.

I was like a beast toward you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand,

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will

receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you,

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.

My flesh and my heart may fail. That God is

the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold,

those who are far from you shall perish. You put

an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. That

for me it is good to be your God. I

have made the Lord God my refuge that I may

tell of all your works says the word of the Lord.

Thank you, Sherry Tim is that you hello, brother, Wow,

such an encouragement. Saw.

I'm seventy three's before this morning, and I've titled this

message finding your Refuge, Finding your Refuge.

It seems fitting in this.

Day and age, as we all juggle the complexities of life,

that we try and find that resting place, a place.

We can call a refuge.

We all look forward in different places, some in relationships,

some in their children, some in work, some in just

find a vacation home. Then they realize that refuge is

nothing but a weekend work project.

Right, But we're all looking for a refuge.

As you look on your bulletin, there's going to be

three points there that we're going to cover today. The

first one is be careful not to stumble, the second

dealing with regret, and the third remembering the truth.

We'll go over these again.

It's just a little overview for you, guys. We have

the opportunity to look back thousands of years and see

that life back in David's day was not much different

than it is in our own. Asaff the author of

Psalm seventy three, was a Levite. He was appointed by

King David to lead the people of Israel in song

and praise. He was not only a great musician, but

he was also a prophet of God. And he has

twelve psalms that are attributed to him, Psalm fifty and

then Psalms seventy three through eighty three. And if you

ever get the chance, read through those psalms, and it

gives you a real feeling of the character of this

man and what he desired to do as a leader.

He really lives up in shows the sovereignty of God

and the working of God in the life of Israel.

This psalm is very special to me, and it has

been for the last.

Forty six years.

I kind of backed into it. January nineteen seventy nine,

I was sitting in a funeral chapel by myself at

the age of twenty two, and I was reading my

Bible as my fifty two year old father lay in

a casket. You see, his heart and his flesh had failed.

And this Psalm God just set before me. And there

I am reading that verse. My flesh and my heart

may fail, but God has strength of my heart forever.

And that frailty of life hit me and the psalm

comforted me greatly. Asaf is about to share a struggle

that was true in his day, and it's also true

in our day. It deals with the heart, the very

essence of our being. John Calvin coined a phrase that

the heart is the idol factory. It's an idol factory.

What's an idol, glad you asked Ken Sandy In his

book The Peacemaker, he describes an idol as this anything

apart from God that we depend on to.

Be happy, fulfilled, or secure.

It is something other than God that we set our

heart on, something that motivates us, that masters us and

rules us, or that we trust fear or sir.

That's a lot to write down.

I know it's a mouthful and it's pretty convicting. So

in short, it is something we love and pursue more

than God. We're constantly attacked with opportunities to put something

before God. And it's no different with Asaf here, and

he's sharing his struggle. And it's interesting that the struggle

that he's sharing is something that he's thinking through. Right,

it's a process, and we get to go into his

mind and look and see what is happening.

He starts the.

Psalm with what really could be a conclusion. He says,

truly God is good to Israel, to those who are

pure in heart. Well, we're just saying God is good,

so good, Aaron, I really like that.

Wow, God is good. He's good right here, look at that.

But when he says to those that are pure in heart,

we kind of look at our hearts and we say,

are we pure?

This morning?

Even as I was preparing this morning, I like, Lord,

is there any sin I need to confess?

Am I pure? Lord? Take that?

Help me to get out of the way this morning,

so that you so that your word can go forth.

That idea of having a pure heart would have rung

in the minds of the Israelites at that time.

So I'm one nineteen nine says, how can a young

man keep his way pure.

By keeping it according to your word? Asaf is sharing

this psalm by reminding us of God's goodness and our

need to value the washing and purifying aspect of his word,

He's already given us an answer, a way to deal

with this, this temptation that he's facing in that very

first line. So point one, be careful not to stumble,

be careful not to stumble. Verse two says, but as

for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had

almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when

I saw the prosperity of the wicked. It was envy

that captured Asaph's heart and mind and caused him to

almost almost stumble the word for prosperity in the versus shalom.

That's a familiar word, I think to all of us.

And he was envious of their shalom. He saw them

as having a completeness, or a perfect peace. There was

something there that was attractive to him. Verse four says,

for they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are

fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are.

They are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore,

pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment.

Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their eyes their hearts

overflow with follies.

They scoff and.

Speak with malice loftily.

They threaten oppression.

They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue

struts through the earth. Therefore, his people turn back to

them and find no fault in them. And they say,

how could God know? Is there knowledge in the most high? Behold,

these are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches.

These guys are working the system. They're profiting in any

way that they can.

They eat well, they live.

Frivolous lifestyles, probably dress real nice, but they're secular and

they're godless. They have no concern for the fear of God. People,

we need to be aware that envy can take our

thoughts and passions down a very destructive path. Asaft is

being tempted right now and having this battle in his

mind of what to do. This so reminds me of

James Chapter one, where it says that each person is

ten when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin,

and sin, when it's fully fully grown, brings forth death.

It is so vital for us to speak truth to

ourselves even as we see we are desiring.

The wrong thing.

You catch that speaking truth to ourselves even when we're

desiring the wrong thing. A lot of times we don't

even wait that long, right, I mean, sometimes we have

a temptation and bam, that sin is there right. I mean,

we just jump in and then we go, oh, no,

what did I do? Other times, by the grace of God,

we have the chance to work through it. I've heard

it said that sin starts in the mind long before

it's acted out.

And I believe that's true.

All these things that Asaf is envious are things of

the world. Arrogance, prosperity, gluttony, power, self reliance, riches.

One John two point fifteen says, do not love the

world or the things of the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father

is not in him. For all that is in the world,

the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes,

and the pride of life, is not from the Father,

but from the world. And he goes on to say

that those things are passing away.

Right.

The New American Standard kind of encapsulates it like this.

It says, the lust of the flesh, the lust of

the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. We must

all be alert regarding these three areas. The deceptiveness of

sin causes us to look at that which is momentary,

and all of those things are the lust of the flesh,

the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.

How often do we look to the creation.

And the things of earth to give us what only

the creator can give us. As Asaf continues to think

through this struggle, he starts asking himself questions of regret.

Point two there on, your outline is dealing with regret?

Dealing with regret? Verse thirteen starts, all in vain? Have

I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence?

For all day long?

I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I

had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed

the generation of your children.

But when I thought how.

To understand this, it seemed a weirisome task. Aceaf starts

to asked the question of whether the choice of his

lifestyle was worth it.

Why are evil prospering?

Aren't the godly ones who deny the pleasures of the

world supposed to be the ones who are blessed? Have

I made a wrong choice? Is momentary pleasure what I

should be seeking? I mean, we even hear Paul having

to address this when he said, should I sin so

that grace may abound?

No? May it never be.

I even hear people who committed the life to Christ

at an early age, say I missed out on all

the fun and I say, no, you missed out on

their regret that you would have been feeling.

As you pondered all that you.

All the ways that you disobeyed and were disobedient to

the Lord. The world bates us into following a system

that will not bring us contentment, gratitude, or satisfaction. And

Asaf admits the difficulty of trying to figure it out.

It's a labor for him, it's a task, and I

believe it's because he's trying to use secular wisdom. He's

trying to understand this on a human plane.

But the light is about ready to dawn.

Verse seventeen says, until I went into the sanctuary of God,

then I discerned their end. What was it that made

it different at this point? What was it that gave

Asaf this aha moment? All of a sudden, He's like, wait,

something that I can see their end. I can see

things through God's eyes. He's in the sanctuary of God.

Sanctuary just literally means meeting place. It was a meeting

place where people came together to read the Word of God,

to seek God and to understand the scriptures. This is

his moment of realization. The light comes on and he

sees God's sovereignty in control of things. He enters the

Sanctuary of God and he realizes he's been.

Looking at things all wrong.

His gaze has been horizontal, it's been secular, and it's

been momentary. And all of a sudden, he looks toward

the things of God and says, Wow, God has something

to say about it.

Now.

I don't know exactly what it was that gave him

that aha moment, But as I pondered that, I wondered

if maybe he walked in there and scripture was being

read like Deuteronomy eleven twenty six. See I am setting

before you today a blessing and a curse, the blessing

if you obey the command of the Lord your God,

which I command you today, and the curse if you

do not obey the commandment of the Lord your God.

Or maybe it was a promise, a promise that was

being read from Deuteronomy seven to six.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.

The Lord has chosen you to be a people for

his own possession. Out of all the people who are

in the face of the earth. I even let my

mind wander a little bit. And I don't think I've

taken this out of scripture, but I want you to

just kind of contemplate this scenario. They're in the sanctuary

King David is his is right there at the same time.

Right Could it be that David might have been talking

with Asaf about this very thing? If you look at

Psalm thirty seven, which David wrote, and you look at

Psalm seventy three that Asaf wrote, you'll see some incredible similarities.

And David even starts his Psalm Psalm thirty seven he says,

fret not yourselves because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers,

for they will fade like grass.

And wither like the green herb.

However happened, it revolved around the Word of God, and

it was in God's sanctuary.

You can be sure of that.

So the question I ask, does our thinking revolve around

the word of God? Or is the word of God

put on a shelf in your house just in case

of emergencies. There's a young man in our small group,

and he has been in the small group much longer

than I have. As I when I first entered into

that small group.

He was quiet, he was reserved and rarely said much.

He's been a believer for a long time.

And has been a faithful churchgoer, but lately he's kind

of been all in. And I asked him, I said,

what happened?

You know, you went from.

A person that I'm wondering what is going on too?

Now you're sharing incredible insight and encouraging me. In fact,

he responds to my text in small group and small

group leaders know you're laughing at that, but sometimes we

send out a text and it's.

Quiet.

So when somebody actually says I like that, or actually

responds with words, it's great encouragement. And so you know

that God is working in this young man's life.

I asked him, I said, what's different? What has changed?

And he said, well, I decided that when I get

up in the morning, I'm just going to read God's

word first.

Simple. Huh.

Well, it seems like a simple concept, But in that

time God has also revealed to him that deep down

in his heart, he was desiring to be wealthy, to

make a name for himself, the very things that first

John twoin fifteen warns us about, and as I'm listening

to him and being so excited for what God is

doing in his life. All of a sudden, I realized, Ooh,

what do I do?

First thing?

When I get up in the morning. I go to

a screen. Sometimes it's my emails, sometimes it's my text,

sometimes it's social media. Lately it's been the Dodgers, you know,

and all the good things that are happening there. Sorry, Richard,

but the reality is that I am going to a

screen before I'm going to the Lord. And that convicted me.

You know, do I spend time with the Creator or

do I spend time with the creation. I've determined to

not let my first thoughts in the morning be toward

an idol. I don't want to put anything in front

of that. And it's so easy just to be entertained

through the day, and it's a shame when I have

the word of God that can enrich me and strengthen me.

We had a pastor out in California named Chris Ritter

who always used to say word before screen, word before screen.

It's a good thing to say and think as Asaf

starts to view the wicked through the lens of God's word.

Therein becomes more evident, and their shalom doesn't look so good.

Verse eighteen says, truly, you put them in slippery places,

you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed

in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors like a

dream when one awakes. So Lord, when you rouse yourself,

you despise them as phantoms. And my soul is embittered,

or when my soul was embittered. When I was pricked

in my heart, I was brutish and ignorant.

I was like a beast before you.

God has convicted him of his thinking and the process

of what was going on. Brutish basically translated stupid without knowledge, ignorant, beast.

What's a beast?

Paul Tripp describes being a beast as being secular and

being faithless. Thinking on the horizontal plane. A beast thinks

nothing of nothing but its own preservation. A beast certainly

does not have an eternal perspective, but lives in the moment.

And as Asay sees the end of the arrogant and

the wicked, his regret turns to remembrance point three there

point three remembrance remembering the truth Verse twenty three Nevertheless,

I'm continually with you. You hold my right hand, You

guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive

me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You,

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is

the strength of my heart and my portion forever. This

is where we see Asaf really start talking truth to himself.

In the midst of his struggle.

He realizes that God has not abandoned him, that God

is right there holding his right hand. He goes to

the counsel of God's word and reminds himself that he's

heaven bound.

He starts looking up.

He knows right then that God is his refuge. He's saying, hey,

I'm all in, And he answers the question, or he

asked the question, who else do I have? Who do

I have in heaven? Who do I have on earth?

No one? No one?

Do you see how Verse twenty six so accurately describes

the frailty of man. It reminds me of Isaiah forty

that we talked about just a few weeks ago. And

one's Peter, where it says, all flesh is like grass.

And it's glory, like the flower of the grass.

The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word

of the Lord laughs forever.

I'm still trying to wrap.

My mind about around this aging thing I'm experiencing firsthand,

the grass withering and the flower falling. If you're young

and healthy, you're probably thinking, oh, no, there goes another

old person talking about how time flies. But I actually

heard a young a young lady the other day that

has children saying time is going by so fast, and

I was like, Okay, it happens at that age too.

But if you have a few years under your belt,

you're going to say amen. And the reality is that

our life in Earth on Earth is just a spec.

In the line of eternity.

We're just a spec. We're just a spec. So as

I stand in earlier, my dad passed away January eighteenth,

nineteen seventy nine.

And I'm not a guy that remembers dates very well.

The port ones. Obviously, I scratch into my arm right.

Like September twelfth, like this, hm, five years I remember that.

But that was the day that was my mom's birthday,

that my dad passed away, and I lived close enough,

and I was still in college. I had the ability

to just kind of break away from things, get up

there quickly, and I helped my mom do things that

no one should have to do in a time of grieving.

We picked out a burial plot, we got a casket

for Dad, We made arrangements.

For what was going to happen.

And as people started to come up and the house

started to fill. So my mom was the oldest of

seven and I was the middle of seven. So you

can see right there you're talking about exponentially, how there's

going to be some people that are coming up. And

as people started to fill the house, I felt the

need for some quiet time. So I slipped away with

my Bible to the mortuary and Dad's body was prepared

there and it's in a casket, it's open, and they're

viewing was going to be that night. Why didn't I

sat there crying reading my Bible and God Putsalm seventy

three in front of me. I was trying to figure

things out.

Why did I have so little time with my dad?

You see, I was the black sheep.

I was the black sheep of the family.

As I said, in the middle of seven and determined

to indulge myself in the lust of the flesh and

the us through the eyes and the boastful pride of life.

I was trying to find my satisfaction there, trying to

find my refuge there. In fact, Dad even tried to

help me to see my sin. I remember one Saturday

night I was out with some friends, and as I

came home Sunday morning, the sun was rising, and Dad,

walking out the door at seven o'clock, grabbed my arm

and said, if you can stay all night out all

night with your friends, you can stay awake for another

hour at church. And I went, oh, no, but I'm

so thankful that you have to kneel down, stand up, sit.

Kneel down, stand up, sit, Otherwise I would have fallen asleep.

You see, I'd been raised in a family.

God, the Father was no stranger, Jesus was no stranger,

the Holy Spirit was no stranger.

But I had never heard the gospel.

I had never heard that salvation was through faith, and

that not of my own. It was a gift of God,

not as a result of works that no man could boast.

It wasn't until I was twenty that I understand the

gospel clearly by the grace of God, and he graciously

gave me a new heart and radically changed my life.

I mean, I was walking this way and all of

a sudden.

Boom, I'm going that way. It was a one eight.

And I did everything I could to get to know

my dad, to spend time with him. You see, I

wanted to have a gospel conversation with my dad, and

I never did get that chance to have a gospel

conversation with my dad.

My dad was a religious man.

He was a good father, a faithful husband, He lived

a life devoted to God. But I never had the

chance to have a gospel conversation with him, and I

didn't want to take anything for granted when it comes

to eternity. Verse twenty seven says, for behold, those who

are far from you shall perish. You put an end

to everyone who is unfaithful to you. You know, we

have the opportunity now to have that gospel conversation. I

think if I were to talk with Dad and go

something like this, I say, in the beginning, God created

man to have a relationship and fellowship with him. But

Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. They fell to

the lives of Satan as he tempted them in the garden.

Do you ever think about what.

He tempted them with the lust of the flesh, the

lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.

And they fell, and as a result of their sin,

God cast them out of the garden.

And now there's a chasm between God and man.

We inherited that sin nature from Adam and are unable

to be in God's holy presence.

In our sinful state, entered.

Jesus Christ, God's own son, who came to the earth,

was tempted as a man, and yet didn't sin. In fact,

you ever think about the temptation that Satan threw at

Jesus when he's in the wilderness, less of the flesh,

less of the eyes, boastful pride of life. He's not

very creative, but he is persistent. He comes after us

with those three things constantly. So Christ lived that perfect life.

He died for us on the cross, the perfect lamb

of God to pay the price for our sin. God

placed the sin of all mankind on that lamb, and

he rose on the third day.

Well, love it, that's the gospel truth, right.

But we have a response. It's one thing to know

it in our head. It's another thing to respond to it.

And how are we going to respond? Well, I'll say

this that all we need to do is thank the

Lord and put our faith in the work that he

did on the cross. And if you've done that, you

can say along with verse twenty eight.

But for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Lord God my refuge that I

may tell of all your works. If the music team

wants to start coming forward, we can I encourage that.

You know, we can't draw near to Jesus.

Excuse me, we can't draw nearer to God unless Jesus

bridges that gap, that chasm that's there, and he's done that.

I want to read Hebrews ten nineteen through twenty two

because it speaks of this. It says, therefore, brothers, since

we have confidence to enter the holy places by the

blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that

he opened for us through the curtain, that is through

his flesh, And since we have a great priest over

the House of God, let us draw near with full

with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with

our heart sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies.

Washed with pure water. You know we all search.

For that shalom that we want, that perfect peace, that refuge.

I mean.

We want joy, we want satisfaction, we want inner peace,

we want happiness. But our shalom will never be found

in external situations, in locations, even in relationships. Won't be

found in power, and it won't be found in our wealth.

We need to cling to God's word and we need

to be careful not to stumble.

We need to live without regret, and we need to

remember the truth. We need to remember his word.

Our true shalom can only be found in the one

who made us, and being in a right relationship with him,

He is our refuge. We pray with me, Father, God,

thank you for giving us this picture into Asaph's life

and his struggle, his envy, seeing what looks.

Like a perfect shalom here on earth.

But yet you have put in him an eternal perspective

that he might see what happens to those who live

apart from you, Father, instilling us a desire to seek

you more through your word. Father, thank you for looking

into your truth this morning. Thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you Lord,