Psalm 73 – Psalms In The Summer

Our reading this morning is from Psalm seventy-three, a Psalm of Asaph.

Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

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 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 there knowledge in the Most High?

Behold, these are the wicked.

Always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.

For all the day long I've 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 to the sanctuary of God.

Then I discerned their end.

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, O 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 towards 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's nothing on earth that I desire beside you.

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 shall perish.

You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

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.

So reads God's word.

Welcome uh to you.

Um my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at City.

You're very welcome uh with us to our Arctic Blast Cinema Screen.

At least you'll not fall asleep.

Um and we are uh in Psalm 73 that Ben read for us.

If you want to pull that up on your phone, or if you've got a paper bible with you, or if you need one, uh there's one just down here on the um by the by the door.

Uh we do psalms in the in the summer.

That's been our practice for some years now.

We started at Sam 1 about six years ago, and now we're at Psalm uh 73.

Uh so please track that along uh with us.

Um one of the uh one of the the little secrets about uh about sin is uh that it's quite fun.

Uh lots of our everyday sins are uh are quite fun to do, that's why they're hard to give up.

Uh because if they uh if they sucked, uh then they would be easy to to ditch.

Think of the big seven, uh the seven deadly sins, uh gluttony.

Oh it's quite fun, isn't it?

Uh you get to eat lots.

Um uh lust, quite fun uh in uh lots of ways.

Even pride, uh thinking yourself better than others, or even you can turn pride upside down.

Even kind of wallowing in self-pity has a kind of um comfort to it.

Sin can be quite fun.

Uh, what about uh sloth?

Uh as it's called in the in the big seven, laziness.

Uh it's not called sloth anymore, it's called Netflix and Chill.

Um and uh it's quite good, isn't it?

It's you know, it's warm and it's cozy, and uh you get to binge, it kind of intersects with with gluttony now.

Sin's quite fun.

There you go.

Uh, if you want to quote the pastor today, what did the pastor talk about in church?

He's talking about how fun sin was.

There's one sin in the big seven uh that's no fun at all, and it's envy.

Envy's not fun.

Envy feels like a rot in your bones.

To find yourself looking at somebody else's life and resenting them for everything that they have and craving what they've got.

Envy sucks.

To hear someone's success and to have no joy for them.

Listen to a quote about envy.

Malice cannot speak its name, cold-blooded and secret hostility, hidden rancor and spite all cluster at the center of envy.

Envy clouds our thoughts, it clobbers our generosity, it precludes any hope of serenity, and it ends in the shriveling of the heart.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

Envy is the murderous bedfellow of resentment.

Just as Cain looked at Abel and resented him because he envied his worthy sacrifice.

So we ourselves find that we become bitter towards those who have more than us or have it better than us, who have more power than us.

So much of our politics feeds off this resentment of convincing you that you're a have not, and the haves have stolen from you, and the haves are keeping you down, and you should resent them for it.

They should pay their fair share envy, resentment, bitterness.

Envy is a rot in our bones, and Psalm 73 is medicine for the heart that is sick with envy.

Because the thing that envy does, and this is our first point, is envy shrinks your world, it shrinks your perspective and it shakes your faith.

Envy shrinks your perspective and it shakes your faith.

Verses one to three.

Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart, but as for me, my feet almost stumbled.

My steps had nearly slipped.

Why?

For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Let me tell you something.

I am glad that Psalm 73 is here, because I am glad that there is a portion in the Bible that speaks the way I sometimes feel.

That I feel envious and resentful of those who I perceive to have it better than me.

Well, I think that I've been hard done by.

I am glad that Psalm 73 is here because I am glad that somebody who calls upon the name of the Lord also feels the same sort of feelings that I do.

And you should be glad too, because what that says is that the Bible is not a sanitary book of everybody who just gets it right all the time and lives happy, quiet lives, all you know, playing harps on clouds and all of that nonsense.

That actually there's somebody in the Bible who feels the way you feel.

I feel like I want to cry out, verse one, that God is good to those who are pure in heart.

And yet when I look at the world, it so often doesn't look that way.

It looks as though those who don't give a monkeys about God are the ones who have it best.

That they are the ones who succeed and are blessed.

So you gotta you take verse one, you go, well, where is that true?

Where is the where is your goodness to those who are pure in heart?

Kind of feel like I'm kind of, you know, like I'm doing all right, like I'm better than most, and yet there's these people, and they're corrupt, and they're venal, and they're uh they're kind of self-serving, and yet they have all this stuff, and life seems to be going really well for them.

And this is the thing, the psalmist doesn't look at these powerful people, these arrogant people, with a kind of righteous anger of, oh my goodness, I cannot believe that they have forgotten God.

No, he's not righteously angry at them, he's like, Where's mine?

Why do I not have that?

There's an emotional rawness and a realness to Psalm 73.

The psalmist is doubting the goodness of God.

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

But you know what?

Sometimes it doesn't look like it.

He's doubting the goodness of God, he's struggling to see it.

I think in lots of ways it's a really helpful thing to recognize.

Because maybe you grew up in the church, or with this idea that Christians should never, can never express feelings of struggle, wrestling with what the Bible teaches, uh, or that you should just pretend like everything is okay and not ask any questions.

None of that is right.

None of that is spiritually healthy.

We've all wrestled with the goodness of God.

Let's be honest about that.

The psalmist here is wrestling with whether or not God is good.

Because it doesn't look that way.

But as we shall see, we also need to be honest about the fact that these things, these feelings of envy, they actually cloud our judgment.

They shrink our perspective so that we cannot see his goodness.

So oftentimes, it's actually not that God's goodness is hidden from us, it's that we're not looking in the right place.

Or we're not looking through the right lens with the right frame.

We need a change of perspective.

That's what envy does.

Envy shrinks our perspective and it shakes our faith.

It shakes our faith.

He expresses this in the in the sense of verse two of he he nearly slipped, he nearly, he nearly fell.

Why?

Because those who hate God seem to have it really good.

And he describes just how uh just how good and how unjust this goodness seems to be.

So verses four and five, they don't have a care in the world.

They have no pangs, that is, they have no suffering, no trouble until death.

Their bodies are fat and sleek.

Let's move on.

Uh there is no, I could I could do with being more sleek, probably.

Um they are not in trouble as others are, they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Everything they touch turns to gold, and they don't have a care in the world.

Or verse 7, all they do is feast and play all day.

Their eyes swell out through fatness, their heart overgrows with follies.

That's all they do.

All they can think about is it's the next parting, the next frivolous thing, the next visit to the to the jewelers to buy some ostentatious jewelry.

Or verses 8 to 11, that their power and what they have, it leads them to being arrogant and forgetful about any consequences.

So they live this life of, well, there is no God in heaven.

How can God possibly know?

Verse 8.

They scoff and speak with malice.

Loftily, they threaten oppression, they set their minds against the heavens, that is, against God, and their tongue struts through the earth.

Therefore, people turn back to them and find no fault in them.

And they say, How can God know?

Is there knowledge in the most high?

So unbelievably blasé and arrogant.

I think lots of media that we consume preys on raising this emotional uh spectrum in your life and shrinking your perspective.

Just think of the Instagram reels that you scroll through of beautiful people in their annoyingly perfect lives.

Thinking, oh, well, why can't I look like him?

Or why can't I have what she has?

Or why can't I live in that house?

Or you see Daniel Mack going after these beautiful Lamborghinis.

Hey, what do you do for a living?

Yes, shut up, right?

Or like the real housewives of New York or Aglanta.

Apparently, uh that might be something that might give rise to envy.

Beautiful people in their beautiful lives, and how easy that feeling of admiration can bleed into envy, and from envy into resentment and bitterness.

Or am I the only one?

Am I the only sinner here in the room uh this morning?

And what's the result of envy and resentment?

Well, it leaves the psalmist thinking, why do I even bother?

Why do I even f bother following God?

What's the point?

Verse 13 and 14.

Uh, all in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.

For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

This is how envy shrinks down our world and shakes our faith.

It leaves us thinking that it is empty-headed and foolish to even bother following God at all.

And we begin to interpret his actions towards us as him smiting us, being bad to us, punishing us.

That's what verse 14 is about.

This is the card that the devil played back in the garden.

You need to recognize that.

The card that the devil played in the garden with Eve was to doubt God's goodness and to convince Eve that actually God was keeping things from her.

Did God really say that you cannot eat of the tree?

Of any tree that is in the garden?

Is God really that much of a tyrant?

And when our world shrinks, and when we see how good other people have it, and we're trying to obey God and follow God and come to church and come to community, go, and what seems to happen is that wave after wave after wave of suffering keeps on coming over our life, you think, well, maybe God isn't good actually.

Maybe he isn't good to those who keep their hands pure.

Maybe actually he is capricious and vindictive and spiteful, and he punishes those who love him.

Why do I even bother following him?

And so we we end up in this place, and this is where the Sanat is by verse 13 and 14.

I was just saying, poor me.

But God would deny me, even though I have been so good at following him.

And the resentment builds, and we wonder what's the point.

Now, notice actually, there is, and maybe you've picked up on it, there's a little hint, little implication of arrogance in the psalmist here.

I've washed my hands in innocence, I've kept my heart pure.

Wow, he's done really well.

Or maybe he's fooling himself.

But again, this is part of the perspective shrinking.

So we compare ourselves to others and say, Well, I'm better than them, I'm morally superior to them, and they're doing well.

Becomes a little bit like the uh the story that Jesus tells about the the two sons.

Or you might have learned it as the uh the story of the prodigal son.

So two sons come to uh one comes to the father and says, Give me all of uh my inheritance now.

And so uh the dad cashes them out and he goes and he squanders all of his wealth and he loses it all, and he's he's laid low uh working in a in a pig farm and is utterly destitute and starving.

He thinks, well, you know what, I'll go back to my father, and maybe maybe my dad will hire me as a servant.

But the dad comes and he runs to him and he takes him back as his son, he puts the the uh the ring on his finger and the best robe on his back and and throws a big party that this son who squandered all of his wealth has come back.

And then the camera in the story pans out from the party over to where the other brother is, and the other brother's out in the field, and the dad comes out to him and says, Why haven't you come into the party?

Remember what the older brother says?

He says, All these long years I have served you, and you haven't even given me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.

Not once have you ever been good to me.

And look at all the things that I've done for you, and this son of yours, he's wicked and has gone his own way, and you throw a party for him.

What kind of dad are you?

So often.

I am not the younger brother, and the older brother.

Look at all the things that I've done for you.

Haven't I served?

You haven't even given me this thing that I wanted?

And we forget.

We forget the mercy and the goodness and the grace of God.

And we think, poor me.

And we can let ourselves go down that road, can't we?

And give ourselves over completely to bitterness.

But mercifully there comes a change.

So we've described the problem, and maybe like me, you're feeling the problem in your own heart, how envy shrinks your perspective and shakes your faith.

Now the rest of the psalm moves.

And it gives us some remedies for an envy sick heart.

That's the second point.

There'll be some points because it's me, right?

Remedies for an for an envy sick heart.

First, remember that you're not alone.

Remember that you're not alone.

Verse 15.

If I had said I will speak thus, I would betray the generation of your children.

When I say remember that you're not alone, it's not the kind of, oh remember that there's other people with you, and that they can shoulder your burden and tell you it's okay and stroke your hair.

No, no, it's remember that you've got responsibilities to other people.

That's what begins to bring the change here in the psalm.

The psalmist is throwing a pity party for himself in verses 13 and 14.

But it begins to come to an end in verse 15 when he realizes that actually he's connected to other people.

When he realizes uh that he has responsibility to others, especially those who are younger, to Other generations, to those who are younger in the faith or weaker in their faith than him.

And so he realizes that it would be wrong to go around shaking the faith of others, even though his is feeling shaken.

Isn't that interesting?

Because normally what we do is we're, well, let me tell you, let me tell you about my life, and you just kind of run your mouth and you don't think about who you're talking to.

I want to note two things here.

The first is it is okay to doubt the goodness of God and to voice that you're struggling with that in this regard.

It is not okay to voice that without any wisdom or regard or care for the spiritual well-being of others.

You should tell somebody if you're struggling.

You should tell somebody if you're doubting the goodness of God.

But the kind of person that you should tell is me, is an elder, is a trusted confidant who you know.

Rather than just going off on a rant in the middle of a community group because you don't know what the other people are struggling with.

There's a maturity here that's beginning to come through in verse 15.

The Psalmist is moving from self-pity to regard for others.

And it's already begun just to stretch ever so slightly the frame of his world.

Do you see?

It's not simply about learning more things about God, but it's about turning ourselves from self-interest and self-pity and giving concern to the goodness and flourishing of others.

Seeing our connectedness within a community and our responsibilities to that community.

If you're struggling with the goodness of God, remember that you are connected.

Speak to the people that you need to speak to.

But the psalmist realizes that it would have been treasonous.

It would have been a betrayal to his brothers and sisters if he'd just gone off on a rant about what God is like.

Sorry, about how he is perceiving God to be like.

Second remedy for a heart sick with envy is let worship stretch your perspective.

Let worship stretch your perspective.

Verse 17 of Psalm 73 is really the it's the crux, it's the center, it's the hinge around which the whole psalm swings.

Begins to move in some ways in verse 15, but really the fortunes turn 180 in verse 17.

He says, Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end.

The psalmist enters the sanctuary, it's the temple, the temple courts where we talk about coming to corporate worship here on a Sunday morning, and he begins to see reality differently.

Now, the psalmist here in verse 17 doesn't go on to spell out what it was about the sanctuary or about the worship that happened there that brings about this change.

You know, maybe maybe it was that he had a vision of God, like Isaiah in chapter 6, where Isaiah goes into the temple and he says, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

And there was angels flying around, and I said, Woe is me, for I am ruined, for I live among a people of unclean lips.

Maybe it was that there was a prophet in the temple courts proclaiming the word of the Lord, reading out the book of the law, and so he was convicted again in heart.

Maybe it was the ritual.

Maybe it was the sacrifice and the aroma of the smoke lifting up to the heavens, lifted his eyes, and he remembered God's goodness and past faithfulness.

We're not told what changed.

But whatever it was, he was no longer blinkered, no longer focused on other people and their circumstances, on those who have and those who have not.

Couple of things to note here.

The psama says in verse 2 that he was on the brink of losing his faith.

And in Psalm 17, where does he go?

He goes to the sanctuary.

When we are on the brink of losing our faith, when we are struggling and doubting the goodness of God, our tendency is to run away from the sanctuary, from the community of God's people.

We have a tendency to isolate ourselves further and think, I'll work on this on my own.

But that's not what the psalmist does.

He's struggling, he's about to slip, and he goes to the sanctuary.

When you're struggling and you're about to slip, don't run.

Come.

Come into the sanctuary.

When you're struggling, when you feel like you're about to slip, when you're doubting the goodness of God, that is when you need to be around the people of God.

I'm not actually doing very well.

Could I talk to somebody?

I don't want to just kind of air all the things that I'm feeling in this context.

I don't want to, I don't want to shake the faith of other people.

But I feel like mine's shaking.

Is there somebody that that I could talk to?

Is there somebody who could pray with me?

Don't run.

Come.

Second thing to note here is what God does.

God stretches the psama's perspective all the way to the end.

Do you notice that in verse 17?

Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end.

Suffering, envy, bitterness.

They all close down and shrink our world so that we can only see the moment and how well these people are doing today.

In coming to the sanctuary, the psalmist gains a new perspective that is that is stretched right the way to the end.

He runs the game through.

He says, I discerned their end.

What he means by that is he realizes there is a judge in heaven.

God is not an absentee landlord.

He's not the kind of God who will just let the proud and the arrogant and the wicked go unpunished.

Justice will be done.

Even in the, or perhaps particularly in the Old Testament sanctuary, where you have the daily sacrifice going on over and over and over again.

It is a perpetual reminder of the sacrifice that is necessary to approach a holy God.

It is a reminder that sin leads to death.

It is a reminder that God is a holy judge.

And he realizes that.

That is, they are just a wisp of the air.

All the glitz and all the glory of success and wealth.

Conversely, similarly, for us, the sufferings of this life are the closest that a believer in Jesus will ever get to hell.

You gotta run the game through to the end.

The third thing from this perspective change that the sanctuary brings, and I think this is important for us all to grapple with, is that there are things in this life that are more real than the things you can see.

You need to come to terms with that in your mind and in your heart, that there are things that are more real than the things that you can see and taste and touch, than the digits on your bank account.

There are things that are more real than that which can be seen.

That means, therefore, that there are realities that cannot simply be reasoned to.

The psalmist needed to go into the sanctuary because worship reveals things that our material world cannot.

He was trapped in thinking that if you have the most stuff, then you're the most blessed.

That what matters most is wealth and success.

But that's reasoning in a material, earthbound sort of way.

He realizes that actually there's something more to this.

And we do too.

Nobody lies on their deathbed and says, Do you know what I really, I really wish I'd gotten that promotion.

No one lies on their deathbed and says, if only I'd gotten a better degree classification.

Nobody lies on their deathbed and said, says, I wish I'd earned just a little more money.

No, we say things like, I wish I had more time with those I love.

I wish I'd started a family sooner.

A pastor in New York, uh, a guy called Tim Keller, uh, went uh to be with Jesus uh just a couple of months ago.

Do you know what his last words were?

His last words were there is no downside in me leaving.

Not in the slightest.

That's a perspective change.

There's no downside in me leaving.

Not in the slightest.

There are things more real than you can see or reason to.

And they can only be found when you come into the sanctuary.

Wisdom is found in knowing those things and living in light of them.

The third remedy for a heart sick with envy is a much shorter one than the previous one, you'll be glad to know.

Is simply this confess your ignorance.

Confess your ignorance.

Verse 21 and 22.

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant, like a beast towards you.

The psalmist goes from poor me to how foolish I was.

How foolish I was to envy the wicked.

To envy the wicked is ignorance.

It is foolishness.

Brutish, like a like a beast, that's the the image.

Like a hyena, envious of the lion's kill.

There is no reasoning, only yearning, only craving, only hunger, only desire.

You want to wean your heart off envy.

You want the word of God to be medicine to your heart that's sick with envy.

Realize and confess how brutish and ignorant it is.

Realize that actually there is something wrong and acknowledge that to God.

And come into the sanctuary and learn those things that are more real than which that which can be seen.

Confess your ignorance.

You gotta move from per me to how ignorant I was.

And here he realizes that it wasn't in his own strength that he kept his footing.

God was mercifully and graciously holding his hand.

My feet nearly slipped.

Oh, you hold me by my right hand.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

He looks back and goes, Do you know I I really felt like I nearly lost my faith.

You kept me.

Do you know that the only way that a small child is able to slap their father in the face is if the father is holding them in his arms.

The only way that the child is able to slap the father in the face is because the father is holding him in his arms.

How often we rail against God and then come to realize that actually he was there the whole time.

And he was holding us.

And after our lives are spent, those lives being held and guided by God, it gets even better.

Folks, we need God to stretch our perspective right to the end, right to the end of our lives and on into eternity.

Only then will we be free of envy.

Because we will know that we have it really good now if you have the Lord Jesus in your life.

And that it only gets better.

The psalmist realizes that through every season of life it is God who has held him, God who has guided him, and God who in the end will receive him into that everlasting glory.

And so that he looks at then at everything that he has in life in the light of that and concludes that God is the greatest thing that he could possibly have.

He doesn't need anything else.

You're the desire of my heart, my strength, and my portion forever.

What an idiot I was to think that actually I wanted a bigger house when I have you.

That's so much for thinking.

I mean, like the arrogant and the wicked, all of the, all of the desperate housewives, they can have their jewels.

They can have their swimming pools and their and their private jets and their yachts because I have you.

How sad that they don't.

How sad that they're going through life in ignorance and in folly.

I've seen their end.

What a joy that you hold me and you will receive me into glory.

Who have I in heaven but you?

There is none that I desire above you.

And that's the heart change.

That's when you know the remedy's worked.

When the remedy has come to fix your heart, you know that it's working.

You say, actually, there's none that I just like.

All of this, all this stuff, it can go.

Like the the nine-inch nails song, that's how trendy I am.

Uh, that was covered by uh by Johnny Cash.

It says, You can have it all, my empire of dirt.

He says, You can have it all.

Because I have you.

How do you know that your heart has been weaned off envy?

When God is the desire of your heart.

All the way through the Psalm, note it this afternoon.

Pick up Psalm 73 again, and note how many times the psalmist refers to his heart.

It's all about the things that you desire.

And by the end, his heart has been healed by God, and he realizes that actually there is nothing on earth that he desires beside the God who is there.

Flesh and strength and wealth and power and prestige will all fail.

They'll all be swept away like dust, like the flower of the field.

God is his strength and his portion.

The most precious thing that he has.

The most glorious thing about being a Christian is not that we get forgiveness.

It's not that we get adoption into God's great family, though that's a great song.

It's not that we get eternal life.

It's not that we uh get declared innocent, it's not that we are connected to one another in the church.

Now, the greatest thing about being a Christian is that we get God.

He is our strength and our portion forever.

So where the Sabbath began with a problem, envying the wicked, he concludes not with a problem, but with privilege, that it is good to be near God.

Verse 27 and 28 for behold, those who are far from you shall Perish.

You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

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

I have made the Lord my Lord God my refuge, and I will tell of your works.

Verse 1, by the time you get to the end, is you've you realize that verse 1 is basically it's like a thesis statement.

God is good to those who are pure in heart.

And then he runs through the world, he runs through looking at all of these things, and in the end, he concludes actually, verse 1 is absolutely right.

Verse 1 is spot on.

It might look like the wicked and the powerful are having it good, but you've got to run the game through the end.

You've got to discern their end.

And the only way you can do that is in the sanctuary.

You cannot reason to that end from a material worldview.

You've got to do it from here.

The way of those who reject God is clear from the Psalm.

No matter the success, it is not to be envied.

It is good to be near God and to have Him to be our refuge.

Envy will shrink our world and shake our faith.

But there are realities beyond that which can be seen.

Realities made plain by the Lord Jesus when he says in the Sermon on the Mount, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit its soul?

There are things that are more worth than all the golden riches of this present age.

Or when he says, Do not build your house on the sand?

Or why would you store up treasure here on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal?

No, rather store up treasure in heaven.

Or when he says, Seek the pearl of great price, the kingdom of heaven, and your joy sell all you have in order to possess it, in order to be held and guided and received into the glory of the Son, that Son who gave himself and died for every envy, sick heart.

That while we might be freed from that rot in your bones, envy is no fun at all.

And you can be free from it because Jesus died for every envious heart.

We can be flooded with the joy of knowing that God is ours now and will be forevermore.

That we are rich because of his poverty.

Because we are his eternally.