Even When Life is Upside Down (Psalm 73) Myles Holmes | July 20, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Morning, church family.

So good to be together this morning.

This morning we're beginning a new series.

You'll see it up here on the screen.

It's called Even When.

And over the next several weeks, to finish out the summer, we'll be working through a number of Psalms.

Maybe one of my favorite books, certainly the one that I turn to the most frequently in Scripture, because the Psalms meet us with sort of a raw honesty about faith.

Apart from the Psalms, you can sort of believe that, you know, a really faithful servant of God kind of always has a smile on their face.

But as soon as you start to read through the Psalms, reality hits you.

That maybe following God is easy when life is going well, when everything seems to be going upward.

But if we can be honest about anything, it's that life certainly isn't often like that, is it?

And the Psalms show us this picture of real faith that doesn't just thrive in the good times of life, but that holds on to God even when we're scared or we're anxious or we are spiritually dull.

And so this morning we are starting in Psalm 73.

And if you have a copy of God's word, that's going to really help you this morning to make sense of what the Lord is saying.

And so I'd encourage you to open it.

If you don't have a Bible, the ushers are making their way down the aisle.

You can flag one of them down.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands, which you can keep as our gift to you.

You'll find Psalm 73 on page 538 of those Bibles that they are handing to you.

I want to begin by naming a reality for us this morning that I don't think I need to work very hard to convince you of, and that is that life in this world often feels upside down, doesn't it?

You likely know what I mean by that.

You look around our world, and doesn't it seem like we've put the wrong people in positions of power?

Maybe you look around your neighborhood and it seems like the wrong people get rich.

And you open up your phone and you know you're scratching your head because it seems like the people who have influence on social media should not have influence.

And yet they do.

This is a reality of our world, so that you know we we kind of have accumulated these cultural sayings that express universally this reality.

We know them, the rich get richer.

Nice guys finish last.

No good deed goes unpunished.

There is this reality that life is not fair, and maybe we can see it out there, but certainly we've experienced it personally.

You've done the right thing and it's backfired.

You've been the honest employee at your work.

You know, you've worked hard, you haven't cut corners, but the other person who has has gotten the promotion.

You've forgiven in your life.

You have been hurt before, but you've forgiven only to be hurt again.

You give to the Lord, and yet money remains tight.

You pray unceasingly, but the prayers go unanswered, and eventually you live long enough in this world and you kind of feel like, man, life feels upside down.

I give myself to God and have no answers, and yet out here there are people who don't care about God at all, and they seem to float through life without a worry.

And it seems like this world we live in is upside down with this reality that it that life just doesn't seem to reward righteousness like it should.

And maybe even worse, it seems to reward the opposite.

We live with sort of this expectation that there should there really should be some sort of like, you know, credit card style heavenly reward program.

That if you have read through Leviticus, you've unlocked some rewards for yourself that you should get to experience, and yet you do that, you experience that pain, but your shops, your car is in the shop again.

And you open Instagram, and the people who've never read through Leviticus are on the beach.

Lavish vacation.

Now, this reality is right where Psalm 73 hits us.

In this Psalm, a faithful Israelite whose name is Asaph isn't just venting with us about what we're talking about, this reality that life often seems upside down.

He's actually not only coming beside us in this, as we struggle to grasp this reality, but really sounding an alarm.

He wants us to wants to show us that as we live in this tension, in this upside-down world, that there is real danger if we allow that tension we live in to go unchecked.

Because if you don't do the right thing with this sort of disillusionment we get with this upside-down world, it will eat away at your joy.

It will tear away at your faith.

It will pull from beneath you the foundation of your convictions until eventually it eats away at your soul.

Now that sounds dramatic, but as you think about your life, I'm sure that you can think about people who you once knew loved God until they met suffering and they couldn't make sense of how a good God could allow such suffering to come into their lives.

The upside-down reality of world, the world ended up tearing away their faith completely.

You've likely known people like I have who have connected deeply in the church until relational hurt made them guarded and skeptical so that they just could not connect that deeply and vulnerably again.

You've likely known people who have walked in obedience until they've done so for long enough that they look back on the track record of what their obedience has earned them and they just make this proclamation, it's just not worth it.

ASAF wants us to know that living in this upside-down world and wrestling through these questions, that they're not just passing thoughts, that they're actually a crack in the foundation, that if it goes unchecked, it will spread until it weakens your trust, until the whole foundation of your faith begins to crumble.

In other words, there's great danger here.

Live long enough in an upside-down world, and you'll stop believing that following God is actually worth it.

And that's exactly where Asaph is.

Look at Psalm 73, verse 2 with me.

Psalms 73:2

Notice the danger here.

He says, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

It's dangerous, loved one.

It's dangerous living in an upside-down world.

We need the proper perspective, or our faith will be ruined.

And the beauty of Psalm 73 is that Asaf is not just here to complain with us.

Asaf is here as someone who made it through.

As someone who understood that sometimes it looks like the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.

But at the end of the day, he came full circle to find a new perspective.

And what he gives us this morning is more than just a reflection.

It really is a map for survival, for faith, even when the world feels upside down.

A map that helps you and I this morning, if our attention is on God, if our eyes are on the pages of Scripture here, a map that helps us to meet God like Asaph did.

That's what I want this morning, and I pray that that's what you want this morning as well.

So as we read the scriptures together, would you stand with me?

This is the word of God, and we stand as a way to reverence the reality of the gift which God has given us in his word.

Psalm 73.

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're not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Therefore, pride is their necklace, violence covers them as a garment, their eyes swell 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 any knowledge in the Most High?

Behold, these are the wicked.

Always at 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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can take a seat.

ASAF has written us really a survival guide for when life doesn't make sense.

And he's showing us this morning how to live with clarity when everything feels upside down.

And really what he's doing for us is giving us four warnings to help us stand firm in an upside-down world without losing our footing.

Here's the first thing I want you to see from Psalm 73, and that is this that if you want to live in an upside-down world, don't lose your faith just because you lost your perspective.

Don't lose your faith just because you lost your perspective.

ASAP begins here in Psalm 73 really with exposing one of the hardest realities of the Christian life, and that is that knowing about God is easy.

But believing it when life falls apart is something else entirely.

That is, the basics of the Christian truths are not hard to learn.

Amber, my wife and I teach our kids theology by memorizing together through song catechisms.

We use something called the New City Catechism, an incredible resource for parents, but I am constantly amazed how quickly our young children can grasp on to deep theological truth.

And it really shows us that our problem is rarely a knowledge problem.

Our problem is often really a perspective problem.

In fact, over my years in ministry, I've sat with countless people in counseling rooms where their life has completely fallen apart, and almost never, very rarely, have I had to teach them anything.

Anytime I've sort of given any sort of theological instruction, often I'm met with, well, I know that.

We know the truth.

The difficulty is in a perspective.

That's exactly where Asaph is at the beginning of this psalm.

Do you see it there in verse 1?

Look at this bold theological statement.

Truly, God is good.

To which we can affirm with a hearty Amen.

Yes, God is good.

But what we find as we go through the Psalm is that life has left Asaph spinning, so that in verse 2, look at what he says.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

Asaf, he's not at this point of abandoning his faith.

You notice there he says, nearly slipped, but he's certainly losing a grip.

He recognizes truth hasn't changed, but but right now his world is so clouded by pain and confusion, everywhere he looks around, his perspective is challenged, so that he is barely holding on to this theological truth.

And he wants you and I to see this morning that no matter how mature you are, when what you see doesn't match what you know, you are on the same slippery ground.

Notice how he steps out onto this slippery ground.

He does it by trying to make sense of the world through the lens of his perspective.

You see that in verse 3?

Look at verse 3 with me.

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

When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

The problem here, he admits it, the problem is his perspective.

And here's what I want you to understand this morning: that your perspective has this immense power to shake what you believe if it's not anchored in what you cannot see.

Your perspective, the way that you view things, with all the limitations of knowledge that you have, has power to really shake your faith if your faith isn't rooted in what you cannot see.

Let me illustrate that for you.

I was recently up in the Muskokas, and Amber and I were visiting the camp that we first met at.

Very romantic time.

Our kids were there, it was a kids' camp, so it was the furthest thing from that.

But I was reminded of something that darkness in the Muskokas is something entirely different than darkness in Newmarket.

I'm sure you've experienced that before.

And I was reminded that when I was working at this kids' camp, if you were ever given a night off, which didn't come often enough, but if you were given it, there was only one way to get off of the grounds of the camp, and you had to walk down a winding dark road.

It was about a kilometer and a half long.

And so if you wanted to get away from the camp, you sort of had to, you know, you had to muster up some confidence and walk down this road.

And it was so dark that you really could not make out the road for the forest, for someone's driveway that you were walking down, and because it's Muskoka, they're wearing plaid, they've got a beard and a shotgun standing on the front of their deck.

Now I learned something.

It was by necessity, because I kind of thought that if you, you know, if you could man up and face the road, that was a real win with the ladies.

And that was kind of why I was at camp.

That didn't work out for me.

It required divine miraculous grace for that to work out, which did work for me in the end.

But I discovered something, and that's when you walk, if you walk down this road, if you look down, you're hopeless.

But if you look up at the split in the trees, you can kind of find footing if you just follow the split in the trees.

You could see an opening in the sky and make your way through the road.

Now that is what faith does.

Faith gives you a new anchor for perspective when you've lost it in the world.

Faith is the sight that is the break in the trees.

Faith is what guides you when everything else is dark.

And that's really why faith exists.

You remember Paul makes this argument in Romans 4 that when Abraham was promised many children, because he had faith, even though he was so old that that made absolutely no sense from a human perspective, it was faith that allowed him to make sense of that promise.

Now faith exists for you as a gift for you when clarity doesn't exist in your life.

Isn't that true?

Isn't faith easy?

Faith is easy when everything's going right.

Isn't it, loved one?

Faith is easy when your prayers are being answered.

Faith is required when nothing makes sense.

And ASAP is telling us here, you don't always have perspective.

But by God's grace, you always have faith.

So don't lose your faith just because you've lost perspective.

Now the second warning that ASAP gives us is this don't measure God's goodness by someone else's gain.

If you want to live in an upside-down world, don't measure God's goodness by someone else's gain.

Notice again that Asaph's problem is a perspective problem.

He is a faithful Israelite.

And the whole book of Psalms, this is really helpful as you seek to interpret what's happening in the book of Psalms.

It really is the unfolding of Psalm 1.

It's the testing of Psalm 1.

And what happens throughout the Psalms is you have this foundation in Psalm 1 that's set that the righteous will be blessed and that the wicked will suffer.

And the rest of Psalms is really fleshing out what life under that reality looks like.

Now, Asaph has been a faithful Israelite, which means he's pursued blessing in God.

But as he looks around, the problem is that the principle he's been given in Psalm 1 doesn't seem to be working.

The people who should be suffering are thriving, but the arrogant, the godless, the proud, they're living the life that Asaph thought righteousness would bring.

It's incredibly confusing to be told one thing and to feel like you're experiencing another, and we've been there before.

I mean, I'm sure if you have worked in the workplace, you have experienced this before, where you have worked with integrity.

You have always tried to do what is right, you have come early, you've stayed late, and yet the person who lies, the person whose character is so far from what it should be, they're the ones who get promoted.

Well, often you get passed over.

We feel it in parenting, don't you?

You know, you're raising your kids to love the Lord, you pray daily for them, you show up to church, you bring them to the kids' ministry, but then uh, you know, on the way home, they're in the backseat, they're arguing about goldfish, they're losing their mind about a broken crayon.

And I know I'm preaching very practically to something that's if it didn't happen on the way here, it's gonna happen to you on the way home.

And you watch these other families, and it just seems like even though they want nothing to do with God, their kids are always perfectly dressed, perfectly behaved, they've got the perfectly behaved labradoodle.

I'm not talking about anyone specific here, you know, it might sound like it, but you look around life and you start wondering if this is really how it's supposed to work.

And this is the tension that ASAP's inviting us into in Psalm 73.

He knows God is good.

Listen, we know God is good.

It's easy to say.

We know righteousness is supposed to lead to blessing, but he looks around and he's gonna invite us on this journey, this sort of drive-by tour of his life, of all the wickedness he sees.

It seems that wicked, the wicked are winning.

It's driven by sight.

When I saw the end when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Now notice in verses 4 through 12, he then he then brings us along with him as he looks around and sees the wicked prospering.

It's sort of like this weird, you know, tour bus that we're on with Asaph, where he Showing you of his obsession, and he really is obsessed.

Envy does this, it makes you obsessed with other people.

Over 15 times in these seven verses, eight verses, I'm showing you my Bible school math there.

My eight these eight verses, Asaph it says, they or their or them.

He's obsessed with them.

He can't stop looking at them.

And so notice that verse 4.

They have no struggles.

They're strong.

They're pain-free.

They're carefree.

Asaf even says their bodies are fat and sleek.

Which in ancient Israel just meant like rich and well fed.

For us, you know, the practical carryover to the 21st century is they just returned from vacation, they've got vacation bloat.

In verse 5, they're not in trouble like others.

They live above the chaos of life.

They don't have hardship.

Nothing's difficult for them.

In verses 6 to 7, pride is their necklace.

They even boast about the wickedness that they do.

They're loud, they're proud, they mock heaven, they run over people with no care.

Somehow it's all working for them.

In verses 10 to 11, their life is not only working for them, it's also influential.

People are looking at them and they begin to question God.

Like here's Asaph, he's got nothing for them going for him.

Here's the wicked person who's prospering, who's rich, who's fat, who's carefree.

Why would I follow God?

In verse 12, Asaph paints the picture.

Behold, these are the wicked.

Always at ease.

They increase in riches.

Now listen, that sounds like a pretty great banner for a good life, doesn't it?

I mean, we could probably grow the church pretty well if we made our slogan, you know, everything's gonna be easy at Redemption Church, and you're gonna get really rich.

I don't know how we're gonna do that, but you know, if that was the slogan, that sounds like a good life.

And ASAP is watching this unfold in real time and thinking, I'm doing this God's way, and it feels like I am losing.

You feel the tension of the text this morning?

And what God is doing in us this morning is exposing the heart of envy.

This is what envy does.

Envy measures the goodness of God by the gain that someone else experiences that you don't.

Do you understand that?

JD Greer puts it this way: Envy begins when you stop rejoicing in what God has given you and start resenting what he's given someone else.

Now the Puritans called envy a rottenness of the bones and a torment of the soul.

And I love that picture because that's exactly what it does in ASAF's life.

The only person being affected here is him.

The wicked, they have I don't even think they have any clue that ASAF exists.

It's almost the picture we get, is that like he's in the bushes watching them prosper and like they're unaffected, they're happy, they're fat, they're sleek.

The wicked aren't losing sleep.

He's the one whose peace is unraveling.

So that in verses 13 and 14, he opens a window into his heart into his heart and he lets us see what envy has done to him and what it does to us.

Look what he says.

Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure.

I have been stricken all day long.

Now in verses 21 and 22, if you just fast forward there quickly, he will look back on this time in his life and notice, notice what he says of it.

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

Envy is a poison of the soul.

And Azap has experienced this.

Seeing led to feeling, and feeling led to believing in a warped theology that God was actually holding out.

Even though he knew God was good, he felt like God was holding out on him.

And I want you to see this morning the danger of envy in your life.

See, envy does not just make you a miserable person.

Envy poisons your relationship with God.

It causes you to be suspicious of God because ultimately God is the one who is giving those people what you deem to be good things.

And he's the one who's withholding from you the things that you think that you deserve.

The ultimate danger of envy is that it trains you to resent the God you once trusted.

It causes you to be bitter toward the one who made you.

It causes you to treat your creator like he's a cruel master.

And so I want to ask you this morning, where is envy in your life quietly forming your theology about God?

So that whatever is said this morning will never have as a shaping of a voice as your envy does.

Because it's whispering in your ear these lies about God that are so deeply connected to your experience.

Let me ask you some questions.

Let's try to expose this envy together.

Who in your life would you secretly love to surpass?

Do you have those types of people?

You know, maybe they're on your Instagram feed, like, man, if I someday I'm gonna post this thing that's really gonna show them, and they don't even know you're in a competition with them, but you're in like this all-out feud.

You have that?

Who would you be frustrated with if God gave them the thing that you've been praying for?

That's envy.

Right there.

Who are you competing with?

Who's that person?

Maybe even in the church, who's that person who's like, there's they're your age, they're about the same.

Or maybe they're older and you're like, I'm gonna do it better than them, you know, I'm I'm gonna prove them.

But that's envy.

And this is the danger-level one.

Envy, it doesn't just poison your heart, it warps your theology.

Look what look what ASAP says in verse 13.

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

It's the dark place.

This is what envy does.

You start measuring God's goodness, not by his promise, but by someone else's life, and that is a dangerous road.

It's a road that Asaf wants to lead us away from, which leads to our third warning this morning, and that is this don't draw conclusions without entering God's presence.

In an upside-down world, don't draw conclusions without entering God's presence.

Now, clarity in this upside-down world for Asaph really begins in verse 17, but the shift begins in verse 15.

Notice what happens in verse 15.

Asaph says this if I had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed your children.

Did you catch that?

Asaf was on the verge of slipping.

He was drowning in this emotion everywhere he looked around.

He was disillusioned by what he saw.

But what was it that held him in that slippery place?

Notice it was the people of God pointing his eyes to God himself.

Verses 3 to 14 are filled with emotions.

He's not just thinking things.

What he's invited us into is what he is feeling, and feelings have this powerful effect on us that they can overpower the conclusions that we make in our mind so that often what we feel is stronger than what we actually know.

You experience that, loved one?

Feelings often have too powerful of an effect on us, and here ASAP shows where those feelings and emotions that he's feeling in verses 3 to 14 lose their grip on him.

It happens when ASAF stops isolating his emotions and brings them into the context of community.

Now, loved one, keeping your emotions in isolation is sort of like having a greenhouse, closing the door, locking it up, and hoping that good plants will grow in there.

When you open that door after a season of growth, all you will find are weeds.

It's not that nothing has grown, it's that everything will be overtaken by weeds.

There will be no space for anything good to grow.

But when you bring those feelings into the presence of God, what happens with his people is clarity often begins to form.

And all of a sudden, in your heart, it's like a freshly tilled field in which good plants of godly sanctification have room to grow.

You've experienced this before.

Have you ever had this thought in your head?

Maybe this feeling, where it's like, you know, you maybe you've spent weeks sometimes fuming about this thing that has happened in your life, and then you go to talk about something, about it, and all of a sudden, as the words are coming out of your mouth, your brain is like, yeah, this is deep, this is amazing, and your mouth is like, this is the dumbest thing I have ever said.

You ever had that before?

There's this clarity that comes just from like talking to someone about the things that are inside, just about from just from unbottling the emotions that you've experienced.

And what ASAF is pointing us to is that there is this grace that can only be found in community.

This grace that when we voice our feelings, especially around wise, faithful people, it exposes them for what they are.

And ASAF is saying this: we need that.

We need that.

He doesn't let his emotions isolate them, isolate himself, like we so often do.

He stays tethered.

When life is upside down, he stays tethered to community until truth breaks through.

And where does it break through?

Look at verse 16.

But when I thought how to understand this, all that was happening in verses 3 to 15, it seemed to me a wearisome task until, until there is a breakthrough moment.

But before we get there, don't rush past this until.

We know this, right?

Husbands.

Do you know what your wife is feeling even 10% of the time?

Do you?

Can we be honest?

Like, 10 seems pretty.

If you have if you've got 10% understanding of what your wife's feeling, you are leading our next min's ministry, okay?

It's hard to understand.

Do you know what your boss is thinking?

You know, you fret and turmoil.

Like, what are they what are they?

Is it a promotion?

Am I getting fired?

What's going on here?

Do you have any perspective of what your kids will say tomorrow?

I mean, just because God often gives us illustrations, you know, just last night I was over listening over a conversation that was happening in my kids' bedroom, and they they have, you know, those um long grabber things that people who are immobile use to pick stuff up.

That's a friendly way to say old people, I'm sorry, but they used to pick it up.

They have one of those in their room, and I overheard in the next room, don't take off my underwear with that grabber.

And I thought, I don't know what's going on in there.

I don't want to know what's going on in there.

I had to admit, I don't know what's even going on in my own house sometimes.

And so so listen, if we know so little, why do we think that we can interpret the plan of God?

And yet, one of the greatest causes of anxiety in our lives is that we're trying to make sense of the world from our human vantage point.

We're trying to do God's job with a human brain, and it just doesn't compute.

But this morning, ASAP is here to relieve us of that burden.

Stop trying to figure everything out, stop rehearsing every detail, stop exhausting yourself, just go to sleep.

God is still awake.

You know, C.S.

Lewis once said that trying to understand what God is doing in the world is like being one of the chest pieces on the board and trying to make sense of the game.

Now, I don't play chess.

I don't know about you, I enjoy happiness.

So I stay away from chess.

But C.S.

Lewis did, and he makes a great point here.

He says this, you can see the square that you're standing on if you're a chess piece.

You can see the move that just happened to you.

You can even know the threat of what's immediately in front of you.

But you don't see the strategy.

If you're just a chess piece, you don't see ten moves ahead.

You don't see how your movement opens up space for something else.

You don't see how your the pain of your piece being taken might lead to ultimate victory.

Only the grandmaster, only the chess player sees that.

And Lewis said this that unless the grandmaster tells you what's happening, it's almost impossible to understand what's happening from that limited perspective.

And so listen, here's the practical reality for us.

If you spend your life trying to figure out everything, it will be exhausting.

What does ASAF say?

It was it was a wearisome task.

I mean, some of you are sleepy this morning because you were doing the wearisome task last night instead of sleeping, of trying to figure out what's going on in your life.

And ASAP says, of course it's wearisome.

If you are obsessing over what they have and what you don't, if you're awake replaying that conversation, thinking about, oh, how might it have been different if I had really said this, you know, and stuck it to them, it'd be exhausted.

But breakthrough comes, loved one.

Look, breakthrough comes when we enter God's presence.

You see what Asaf says there, until I entered the sanctuary of God.

That is the turning point.

Not when Asaf figured it out himself, it's when he came into the presence of the one who already had.

And honestly, most of Christian life boils down to this.

Do you allow God's perspective to shape your perspective?

It's been the battle since the beginning.

Whose perspective do you move according to?

Adam and Eve failed because they lost God's perspective in the garden.

God had clearly labeled that tree, the fruit of that tree, the consequence was death.

It was so clear, but they looked at it through their own perspective, and what did they say?

Looks good to me.

On the other side, David shocked Israel when he embraced God's perspective, where the entire army thought that Goliath was too big to fight.

Now David comes, and though he's little, he has God's perspective, and he realizes Goliath is really just too big to miss.

God's perspective changed everything.

And if there's one thing we learn from Psalm 73, it's this we need constant perspective.

We need the windshield wiper of God's word to make clear what life constantly makes cloudy.

And that happens when you not only just come to church, but you come humbly to meet with God.

You not only listen to sermons, but you assume the truth that the Holy Spirit is present and has something life-changing for you in it.

You not only sing songs, but you let them reorient your soul and remind you of who you are.

This brings us to our fourth warning.

Asaf says this.

Once Asaf finds clarity in God's presence, he's able to look at the same people again and reverse the tour bus back through the people that once caused him envy and finally see the situation for what it actually is.

And it truly is horrifying because what Asaph sees as he looks at this, these same people through God's perspective, is that though they are happy in their wickedness, they are standing on a cliff.

You see that in verse 18?

It's fascinating.

Look what he says in verse 18.

Truly, you set them in slippery places.

You make them fall to ruin.

Those people who seem so secure, who seem so success successful, are actually being carried by the current of their desires, but little do they know they are five feet away from a waterfall that will destroy them for all of eternity.

And there's this beautiful turn here.

Remember in verse 2, it was Asa.

Asaph was saying, I'm gonna slip here.

I'm gonna fall.

What does he realize now?

He was never slipping.

That's what I'll say in verse 23.

You were holding my hand the whole time.

Can you see the contrast?

The wicked feel stable, but they are standing on thin ice.

The righteous feel like they're falling.

Do you ever feel that little being held by God?

God lets go of the wicked.

But he holds tightly to his children.

If you're here this morning and your faith is not in Jesus, it would be unloving for me not to ask you just to stop and to look at your life for a moment from an eternal and heavenly perspective.

Right now, you may feel free to choose your desires.

You may feel like everything is working for you, but let me ask you this gently: what eternal treasure are your pursuits winning you right now?

Because God has this sobering word for you this morning.

This is his word, not mine.

Look at what he says, not to shame you in verse 19, but to wake you up in this reality, how they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors, verse 19.

God is saying this: judgment comes quickly.

The ease and success of this world will vanish like that.

Then in verse 20, look, like a dream when one awakes, oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

It is this terrifying image.

Listen, dreams are fun, aren't they?

I mean, I've had dreams where I have wings and I get to fly.

Isn't that sweet?

I've had dreams where I, you know, sang on the stage with you two.

I had dreams where I've hit the game-winning buzzer in the basketball game, you know, and every the stadium's going nuts.

I don't even play basketball.

But in that, I had that dream and it was great.

You know what the problem with dreams are?

The problem with dreams is that you wake up.

And what felt so vivid, so secure in a matter of seconds vanishes to nothing.

All the success, God's saying, all the admiration, all the pleasure that you are experiencing in this world, it will be like mist that when the Son of God's judgment comes up, the mist vanishes entirely.

The warning is so clear: don't stake your life on what won't last.

Instead, come to God who will not let you slip.

Come to the one who sent his son, not to sweep you away, but to carry you home.

What happened on the cross was entirely radical.

Jesus took the end that the wicked deserve.

You read what the wicked will face there.

You see it in verse 21.

Sorry, um, in verse 18.

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.

Loved one, who is the one who was destroyed in a moment?

Who is the one who was swept away utterly by terrors?

It was Jesus.

And he did not find himself on that slippery place.

He willingly fell to ruin.

Why?

So that you wouldn't have to.

He took the fall so that you could be held.

He was cast out so that you could be brought in.

He was crushed so that you could be carried, so that this morning, if you feel like you are slipping, you can be secure.

Asaf had found something that made him better off than all those he envied combined.

He found God.

He found what the human soul really longs for.

He discovered that he who has God and nothing else has everything.

But if you don't have God, even if you have everything else, you've got nothing.

That's why in verses 23 to 26, he names what the true gift is.

It is God's presence.

You see that in verse 23?

Nevertheless, I am with you continu I am continually with you.

You hold my right hand.

It is God's guidance that is the true gift, verse 24.

You guide guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

It is God's supremacy in verse 25.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

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

And it is God's sufficiency in verse 26.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

ASAP finally admits what we all know.

His flesh and his heart are failing.

We know that, right, loved one?

I mean, it was God's grace.

This morning you woke up with a pain that you just didn't have yesterday.

And you look in the mirror, and there's gray hairs that are they just weren't there yesterday, and you are reminded of this reality.

Not making eye contact with anyone here.

My flesh and my heart is failing.

We get tired.

We get weak.

We don't often have what it takes, but but he found this clarity.

God does.

And when you come to the end of yourself, and you come to God with this humility, you say, I have nothing.

What you receive in that moment is everything.

And God will not remove the tension of living in an upside-down world.

He will not make everything easy for your life.

But he promises you his presence.

So that he will be with there, with you to the end, holding you forever.

When life feels upside down, God's presence puts everything in place.

Nothing makes sense in this world until you view it from God's perspective.

And then what you thought was upside down is made right.

And so Asaph gives us these warnings.

Don't lose your faith when perspective fails you.

Don't measure God's goodness by someone else's gain.

Don't draw conclusions without entering God's presence.

Don't miss the gift of God holding you in the struggle.

And if you heed those warnings, look at verse 28, look where you end up.

But for me it is good to be near God.

I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all of your works.

It has come full circle.

It started here in verse 1.

God is good.

But verse 28, for me, for me it is good to be near God.

Asaf knew God was good.

Now he has tasted it.

Now he believes it.

And there is a world of difference between merely believing that God is good and tasting it.

God's invite to us is still open, and He is still enough.

And as we come to the communion this morning, we are invited to respond to what we've just heard.

This is a moment that we find clarity, that we get to practically come into the sanctuary that Asaph came into.

That's what the table is.

It is a place that allows us to see what we could never clearly see on our own.

That when we hold the communion cup, which I hope that you received on your way in, if you didn't receive it, the ushers are coming down, you can flag them down, they'll get one into your hand.

You hold this bread, you hold this juice, and you're reminded that God has not withheld from you the most important thing.

That out there the world may be prospering in worldly ways, but hear what you hold in your hand as an eternal treasure, a reminder that God has made a way for you to be near Him.

That Jesus took the end of the wicked in our place.

He set himself in a slippery place, he was swept away by judgment so that this morning you could receive his grace.

If your faith is in Jesus this morning, this cup is for you.

And if your faith isn't, I would just ask that you let this pass.

If there's any area in your life where you have unrepentant sin, not that you battle with sin, but there's sin you just don't care about, I would ask that you let this pass as well.

This is a chance for us to repent, to rejoice in what the Lord has done, and to remember it is good.

It is good to be near God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

You take your cup, the top layer will get you to the bread.

It was the Apostle Paul who reminded us in 1 Corinthians, said, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus took, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Let's take the cup together.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for the cup.

Thank you for the clarity that comes when we meet you at when we meet you in communion.

And we are reminded that despite our guilt, despite our shame, that we are right with you through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And Lord, having responded to you in the taking of communion, we want to respond to you now in song.

To lift your name high and to declare, Lord, that it is well with our souls.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Would you stand and sing with me?