Heart Health

Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,

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sermon. God bless. Let's pray together. Oh Lord

God, we thank you for your goodness to us. You

are good and your mercy endures forever. We pray

Lord that you would be with Peter our pastor

and his family as they vacation. We pray that

you would be with all of our loved ones who are

not here today and we pray for those of us who

are here. Speak to us today in your word and

by your sacrament. Lord, help us to know you

and love you better. Now may the words of my

mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts

be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, our rock

and our Redeemer. Amen. All right. Hello all.

Psalm 73 is a poem in which the speaker expresses

indignation against the bad guys who appear to

just get away with everything. There appears

to be no justice in the world for the speaker

of the poem and I resonate strongly with this

because I am a football fan and for years and

years the New England Patriots kept getting into

scandal after scandal and kept getting away with

it and winning Super Bowls. There was no justice

in the world. The NFL fan looked up And behold,

in place of righteousness and truth, there was

Tom Brady deflating footballs. Let me read you

some of Psalm 73 as I would have read it not

long ago in my own spiritual life. Please follow

along with the ESV in your pew for reference.

So this is starting with verse three. For I was

envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity

of the patriots. For they have no trouble from

the league office. Their owner's pockets are

thick and deep. They are not flagged as others

are. They are not officiated as the rest of mankind.

I could go on. I was really pretty intent about

this. I would not be able to sleep at night because

I'd be so angry after the Patriots won again

on Sunday night football with the help of the

refs. This is actually all true. But this is

all also kind of a false start, isn't it, as

regards the actual text in front of us? Because,

why, even though this poem expresses rage against

the wicked, I don't really think the poem is

about the wicked, finally. It's rather about

the speaker and his relationship with God, right?

After all, what's the danger in this text? We've

seen other Psalms pretty recently where there

seems to be actual physical violence being threatened

against the speaker and he's saying, oh Lord

make haste to help me, right? That doesn't seem

to be the case here. In this one, the bad guys

aren't actually threatening, they're just bad

and they're comfortable being bad and that in

itself makes the speaker uncomfortable. The danger

here is spiritual. The danger is having a heart

that is out of alignment with God. As Jewish

philosopher, Martin Buber says about this Psalm,

quote, the state of the heart determines whether

a man lives in the truth in which God's goodness

is experienced or in the semblance of truth where

the fact that it goes ill with him is confused

with the illusion that God is not good to him.

So God is good to us, but we can see the world

out there and become convinced that God is not

in fact good to us. Another commentator says

that the theme of this poem is quote, the occupation

of the heart with others and subsequent distraction.

We can get distracted when we look at others,

right? So the speaker is upfront about this.

He knows that even though he's upset at the wicked,

the real problem is his own heart. We have this

long complaint about the wicked that lasts from

verse four, all the way to verse 15, but it's

all headed by verse three. And if you look there,

what does it say? I was envious of the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. So we're

hearing from the poet himself that everything

that follows about the wicked is not going to

be an impartial, dispassionate kind of an account,

right? I considered within myself, calmly, and

I beheld the wicked were being wicked, right?

It's not that kind of thing. This is colored

all the way through by envy, just like my own

long standing hatred for the New England football

team. So I'm calling this sermon Heart Health.

because the word heart occurs six times in the

text. And it's pretty obvious that the speaker

is in spiritual discomfort in the first half

of the poem. He's in a condition that I'm thinking

as a kind of heartache or heart sickness, but

then he's reminded of the trustworthiness of

God and he gets to a state of ease or heart health

by the end of it. So the question for us in reading

this poem can be, How do we go about getting

to a restful state for our hearts? How do we

achieve heart health in this world that can absolutely

cause us heartbreak? Here's what I think the

Psalm teaches us. If we want to avoid spiritual

heart sickness, we will put our trust in the

true God, and we can deepen our trust in the

true God in church. That's my thesis. If we want

to avoid spiritual heart sickness, we put our

trust in the true God and we can deepen our trust

in the true God in church. And because I'm training

to be a Presbyterian minister, I'm going to break

that into three points. And because I was talking

to Dale a few weeks ago, I'm going to try to

break each of those points into two sub points.

You can grade me on this afterwards. All right.

So here are my three points for biblical heart

health. They are reality, routine, and relationship.

Okay? Reality. So in thinking about the first

half of this poem, we can be reminded of what

Peter has said here in the previous weeks, which

is that God is interested in how you really feel.

We don't have to fake things before God. We should

pour out the reality of our feelings to him.

We shouldn't need the to self -censor. to the

Lord. But then, having expressed ourselves honestly

to God, we should then examine what the causes

of our feeling actually were, actually are. So

in this case, am I angry at the wicked because

their behavior is harming others? Am I angry

at the wicked because their behavior is dishonoring

to God? Or am I angry because I'm secretly jealous

of the wicked? Take a look. This poem is not

just about bad people in general. It's about

the wicked rich people. The prosperity of the

wicked is what causes the speaker's anger. We're

talking about the big guys, the fat cats, sort

of literally. Verse four, their bodies are thick.

They're fat and sleek. Verse four, they are not

in trouble as others are. They are always at

ease. Verse 12. So why would we envy people we

think are bad? Well, if we only think about worldly

success, we can do it pretty easily. If our goal

is riches and power, we will envy the rich and

the powerful, whether or not we like them personally.

If we start thinking only about them and their

earthly success, we can stop thinking about God.

God is pretty absent from the first half of this

whole poem after the first verse, right? When

we do remember God, it's only to wonder why he's

not doing what we would like him to do. Look

at verse 11. They say, how can God know? Is there

knowledge in the most high? That is, I don't

have to worry about God, right? He's not gonna

do anything about me. And follow this, if the

speaker is envious of them, This is the way he's

picturing the bad guys speaking. And if the speaker

is envious of them, that means that's secretly

sort of the way he wants to regard God too. He'd

rather not think about him, right? He doesn't

want to have to worry about pleasing God or following

his laws. That's not going to make him rich.

So I think the first step to heart health is

actually to ask, what is it that's causing us

heart distress? Is there a part of our heart

that just wants to be bad ourselves and get away

with it? The text sees this. Later on, it calls

this type of thinking bitter. That's verse 21

or brutal in verse 22. The thoughts of the speaker

have diagnosed themselves and discovered that

even though it was angry at bad things, it was

angry in bad ways or for bad reasons. And I think

we should be willing to look critically at our

own big feelings and pronounce judgment on them.

And isn't that the same thing as a confession

of sin? I wanna come back to that. But worldly

envy is a root cause of discomfort that we should

be aware of. It is a reality that we can try

to hide even from ourselves and we should discover

it, right? Because we don't like to think of

ourselves as envious, we like to think of ourselves

as righteous. So let's look at a flip side of

that thought, wanting to be righteous, right?

The flip side of that desire to be righteous

and not seeing it, not feeling comfortable in

the world is a distrust of God. What do I mean?

Well, you can see distrust of God in the way

the speaker expresses his outrage. The wicked

have it easy. They're fat and they're happy,

but I'm doing all this good stuff for you and

where's my gold sticker, God? You're not doing

your job right. You're supposed to be rewarding

me and punishing them. Let's back up to the beginning

of the text here. So we get the language of stumbling.

My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly

slipped. That's verse two. And then after this

mention of slipperiness and stumbling, then we

have this 13 or so verse rant against the wicked.

It's a poetically worded rant, but it is a rant

nevertheless. The text seems to regard that long

section as a kind of swamp of bitterness that

envy has led us into or that we sort of slipped

into because of envy, right? So even if the speaker

is right and the bad guys are bad, the swamp

is not a good place to be. There's a big hint

here that we can know this is not the right way

to think. Look at verse 13. It says all in vain.

I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands

in innocence. That's a bitter cry of frustration

against God because he's not rewarding people

the way that we think he should. But it's a really

interestingly worded one or it's an interesting

picture, right? There's only one other guy that

I'm familiar with in the Bible who washes his

hands and he says, I'm innocent. And that is

the deeply not innocent pilot. So if our anger

is a swamp, Why does this almost stay in it for

half of the poem? Well, I think if we're honest

with ourselves, we can realize that there's something

really satisfying about telling ourselves over

and over again how right we are and how wrong

and bad the bad guys are. That's the temptation.

It's concluding that since God is not providing

visible justice in the world the way that we

want, we'll just have to do his job for him.

We're gonna prove to ourselves how right we are

and how we have been wronged and we can get stuck

in that Our own Bruce Weatherly in his soon -to

-be published book calls that cyclical thinking

a Cycle and I think he's absolutely right in

saying that this is a trap that can ruin the

peace of our hearts So how do we get out of the

cycle? Brings me to my second point here routine.

We need a good routine to keep us in heart health

This poem centers, pretty literally, in a pivot

point in verses 16 and 17, if you look there.

Verse 16, but when I thought how to understand

this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. The speaker

is weary, he's tired, he's exhausted of all this

kind of thinking, right? Until I went to the

sanctuary of God. That is the change. point,

that's the emotional center of the poem. That's

the answer to the problem that's posed by the

first half of the poem and the rest of the poem

parallels the first half but now it's on an upward

trajectory. The routine of going and worshipping

the Lord, go to the sanctuary, in the ordained

place of worship, reorders the speaker's thoughts

so that he can deal correctly with the world

now. There's another point here that argues for

church going being the main point of this text

and that is the Psalms place in the Psalter,

in the Bible itself. We saw last week that Psalm

72 was the end of book two of the Psalms and

of course then 73 begins book three. Well, many

commentators say that book three, this section

of the Psalter is primarily about the sanctuary

or the temple. That is where God meets with his

people. It's where the material world in which

we live and God's spiritual reality, those two

things kind of touch, right? So if this is the

first poem in the book of poems dedicated to

the sanctuary, it's pretty obvious that the verse

about the sanctuary in the center of this poem

is important. Okay. So friend, what's the cure

for heart sickness? What's the cure for feeling

like the world is broken? and leaking acid all

over the place. The cure for this feeling says

this poem is go to church. How about that? Welcome,

everyone. We're glad you're here. We're happy

to provide this spiritual service for you. Does

this sound self -serving from a guy in front

of the church? Man, I didn't write this text.

I found it in this book. Christian, hear this.

Church is important and somehow many of us don't

think that it is. So I listen to Christian music

on Pandora, the like radio song thing on my phone

while I'm washing dishes and on my Christian

music channel, every once in a while they have

this smarmy ad that comes up and it says, you

go to church to worship. Why not bring church

to you with our great worship song compilation.

And look, all I mean to say here is Pandora is

a bad theologian. I don't need to like dunk on

a fine product, but the insufficiency of that

view of church is drastic. Church is not something

you can bring to you whenever you turn on your

phone. Church is the body which is ordained by

God for the sanctification of his people to the

end of the age. So. in the context of this poem,

what is it that going to the place of worship

does for us in terms of heart health? First,

it gives us an eternal viewpoint. Verse 17 again,

I went to the sanctuary of God, then I discerned

their end. So it can seem like bad guys do win

all the time in this world, yeah, but this world

isn't all there is. And church helps reminds

of reminds us of that. The bad guys aren't going

to get away with it, right? Verse 18 says, truly

you set them in slippery places. Now, if you'll

remember back in verse two, but as for me, my

feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly

slipped. I was slippery when I was envious, but

when I remember that God is for the good and

against the wicked, I see that they're truly

the slippery ones and my feet get firm, right?

That's a parallelism that I think also reinforces

this idea of the two halves of the poem. These

guys look like they have it so nice, but that's

false in the long term. It's an aberration against

reality, right? They're gonna fall to ruin. That's

verse 18. Verse 19, how they are destroyed in

a moment. They're swept away utterly by terrors.

Verse 20, they're like a bad dream, gone in the

night. So right now, it often looks like crime

does pay, but from the standpoint of eternity,

that's just illusion, as Buber pointed out. Goodness

is going to have the last word. God is good to

those who are pure in heart, verse one. And the

other texts that we read this morning, Isaiah

and the gospels, show that we really do want

to be on the side of the weak. and the powerless

over against the powerful who use their power

wrongly, right? When God makes his final judgment,

those guys are not in a good situation. Church

reminds us to widen our scope and not just look

at the present. What else does going to church

do for us? It humbles us. It helps us see that

our judgments aren't always correct. Where do

we see this? Look at verse 23. So after going

to the sanctuary and being rescued from his bitterness,

the speaker says this, nevertheless, I am continually

with you. You hold my right hand. The you here,

by the way, is God. You may note that you doesn't

show up until verse 20. The whole verse half

of the poem is just kind of spitting out angry

things. But in verse 20, again, after the turn,

this becomes quiet, calm, and it becomes a prayer.

Okay, let's keep reading. So you hold my right

hand, you guide me with your counsel. So this

poem has turned from anger to peace, and it gets

there by means of a really interesting metaphor,

right? God is holding us by the hand. Well, that

puts us in a position of childlikeness, right?

In the first part of the poem, the speaker is

taking the point, the stance of a sort of ferocious

attorney. He's arguing with God, but now he's

in the position of a child being led by God.

It's a radical change of heart, right? So if

we need to be held by the hand, we're not in

a position to judge anybody because we're in

danger of falling down ourselves. We must remember

what Jesus says, right? We must become like little

children. Go to church. Remember that God is

big and you are small and your judgments err.

Here's an example that illustrates this on a

small scale. Recently, one of my daughters was

very angry at another daughter because daughter

number two threw a book. and the book's cover

had exploded off of the pages when it landed.

Daughter number one was shouting, she was furious,

she was ready to throw the book at daughter number

two, as they say. She wanted justice for the

sin against the stalker family library. Well,

unbeknownst to daughter number one, but known

to daddy, was that a third daughter had actually

been the one to knock the cover off of the book.

She actually sort of pried it off. And the cover

had just been put back over the pages, but not

glued back on. So while daughter number two certainly

should not have thrown the book, she was not

guilty to the extent that daughter number one

thought she was. Or you could perhaps say daughter

number one could not view daughter number two

as wholly wicked, like perhaps she wanted to,

without thereby including daughter number three

in the same category, which she didn't want to

do. Justice is tough, and we don't often have

the info we need. We need the Lord to hold our

hand, and when he does, we will remember that

we're all guilty. We're all sinners and have

fallen short of the glory. We need to remember

to judge not, that we be not judged. In short,

we will allow ourselves to take a position of

childlikeness before God, who is our father,

and admit that his judgments are the ones that

matter. We can't trust our angry judgments to

reflect the state of the world angrily. Look,

how about this? Is the first half of this poem

even correct? How about that? Look, they are

always at ease. Has anybody in the history of

the world ever experienced his or her own life

in this way? Anybody thinking about themselves?

Oh, yeah, I'm always at ease, right? I'm so glad

I started being wicked. I'm just always at ease

now, right? This is a bitter judgment from the

outside. The judgment isn't fair, right? It's

colored by envy. Leave the judgments up to God.

Let's take a brief moment and rehabilitate daughter

number one right now. So she's not the littlest.

So I don't need to hold her hands when we're

crossing streets and things like that. But often,

though she is a big girl, she will voluntarily

take daddy's hand, right? So she chooses to become

like a little child, which is what Jesus says.

You must become like a little child. She chooses

to take that position, right, of humility because

it's relational, because she knows that she can

trust, okay? So let's get to our last point.

That's relationship. Look at verse 25. This is

a beautiful line in the poem. Whom have I in

heaven but you, and there's nothing on earth

that I desire besides you. What's the cure for

envy? It's satisfaction, isn't it? I'm not gonna

envy somebody else's house if I really love my

house. I'm not gonna envy somebody else's football

team when my football team happens to be the

best in the world. and I'm certainly not gonna

envy the wicked fat cats when I'm satisfied with

God. Why? Because their money is irrelevant to

my true desires. Thoreau says, money is not required

to buy one necessary of the soul. He's not exactly

quoting the psalm, but I think the psalmist agrees

with him on this point. Money is not required

to buy one necessary of the soul. Let's go on,

verse 26. My flesh and my heart may fail. You'll

die one day. It's a public service announcement.

My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the

strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Portion, it means inheritance. It's what you

get. It's what's coming to you. Friend, what's

coming to you? After you die, if you have trusted

in Christ, you get God. He is your portion. He

is your inheritance forever. He is your great

reward. And guess what? It gets even better than

that, sort of. How? Well, it's not just that

you get God. It's that you get God and God happens

to be very good company. Let's keep looking at

this. God is relational. We can know him. A relationship

with him will calm our hearts and give us peace.

This is a cool point. Throughout this text, we

have some mentions of God, but the word used

for God in Hebrew is either El or Elohim. And

both of these are sort of generic terms for God.

It's like a class name or something like that.

Those are the gods, El, right? Those terms can

be used of false spirits, for instance. But when

we get to the end of the text and it makes its

firmest affirmation of stability, look what it

says down here in verse 28. It says, but for

me, it is good to be near God. That's L. The

church reminds us it's good to be near God. I

have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell

of all your works. So here, if you're looking

at your text, That second mention of God in the

verse, Lord God, it's written in little capitals.

Well, that's the way the English version designates

the covenant name of God that the Hebrew uses,

Yahweh, right? So we've thought about God in

a sort of philosophical sense. He's the one who

judges things, but doesn't do it the way that

we want. But then when we remember that it's

good to be near God, we remember our relationship

with Him. And then we speak of Him in a relational

way, right? God, Adonai Yahweh, I've made him

my refuge. God is not some distant scoring machine.

He's not some distant judge. He is our refuge.

He's our savior. And where do we see God precisely

in his saving relationship with us? Well, it's

the person that the New Testament consistently

refers to as Lord. Adonai, right? Jesus Christ

is God in relationship to his people, Emmanuel,

God with us, and it is good to be near him. It

is good to make him your refuge. I'll give you

the gospel in miniature, right? One, it is good

to be near God, and two, God has come near to

us in Jesus. And Jesus is also the definitive

example for the righteous person not being well

rewarded in this life externally. He was born

poor. He lived poor. He died horribly. And yet,

we know that he was the beloved of the father.

In him, the father was well pleased. If you look

around the world and you say to yourself, man,

I'm not as rich as those wicked guys are. You're

in good company. The son of God is right there

with you. All right. There's a lot more here

in this poem, but I think I'm going to be done.

I just have some application points to leave

you with. First. When you're reading this poem,

where do you find yourself in your normal state,

in your habitual state? Where do you feel most

comfortable? Do you recognize yourself most in

the first half of this poem where we're complaining

about the wicked? Or do you recognize yourself

at the end where you're saying, I have made the

Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all his

works? Friend, if you are happier complaining

about bad guys rather than telling about God's

goodness, chances are your heart is sick. and

it needs rest. Come to the Lord. Second, I think

a real application of this text is to come to

the Lord, even when you're not feeling well put

together, right? The guy's angry, angry, angry,

comes to the Lord and changes, right? Come to

the Lord in your anger, come to the Lord in your

sin. If you find yourself in a slippery place,

listen for the loving guidance of the Lord, and

no matter how bitter or how brutal you have been,

you will be led to safety, and church is a very

good place to come and hear the Lord's voice.

Finally, let's take the long view. To get back

to my opening illustration about football, I

could have saved myself years of anguish if I

had just said to myself, you know, things may

look bad now, but Tom Brady can't continue winning

Super Bowls forever. One day, he'll have to retire,

and probably he'll be a commentator, and almost

certainly he'll be in the broadcast booth when

my favorite team wins the Super Bowl, convincingly.

That would have eased my heart. And we can do

far better than that, can't we? We can say, you

know, things do look bad now. Bad guys can seem

to be in control in really hurtful ways, but

God is the strength of my heart and my portion

forever, and afterwards he will receive us to

glory. Amen. Let's pray. Oh Lord God, whom have

we in heaven but you? There is none to desire

besides you. Help us to reorient our lives, that

knowing you, seeking you, serving you, these

are the only important things for us. We ask,

oh Lord, that you would prove yourself again

and again. faithful to us and help us to seek

you out in your sanctuary. Give us this grace,

we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you for

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