Psalms 73:16-17

Psalm 73, I’m going to read the first 17 verses. Our focus is on verses 16 and 17. Truly, God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps have well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. for there are no bands in their deaths, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men. Neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain. Violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness. They have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt. and speak wickedly concerning oppression. They speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. Therefore his people return hither, and waters of a full cup are run out to them. And they say, how does God know, and is their knowledge in the most time? Behold, these are the ungodly who prosper in the world. They increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning. If I say I will speak thus, Behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, It was too painful for me. Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end. May God bless to us the reading of His sacred and holy word this evening. During World War II, great bombs fell on the city of London, during the Blitz of London. Buildings were level. left the city very much devastated many parts of the city. It was relentless as they continued the bomb London continuously night after night after night. When the debris was cleared away, they found that flowers started springing up from the bomb craters. botanets had thought that the particular flowers that were growing had long since died out and become extinct. But lo and behold, they were still in seed form underneath the buildings. And when the craters were made, when it rained, the water got into the seeds and sprang up, and here they had these flowers that were thought to be extinct. all along. Sometimes the explosions of life that we have, Ray Me remove some of the top soils, so to speak, and provide some new revelations for us about things, a new spiritual experience. So don’t be discouraged by some of the bombs that come into your life. Asaph here has been going through a very discouraging period of time. But in the end, the experience is going to give him a firmer grasp of the truth. And therefore, in the end, we find that something good comes out of this bad experience that he has. Now, in Psalm 73, Asaph makes an honest confession. He freely admits that his feet had well by his slipped. We might say that he had reached the point where he was ready to give up the faith. He thought that things were not fairly done by the Lord. It didn’t pay to be a Christian. And therefore, it was a waste of time to pursue the Lord. And he struggled with this whole matter. He was living a godly life. He’s trying to, and yet he was suffering, as he tells us in verses 13 and 14. He doesn’t understand why he’s suffering. He wasn’t a profane man. He wasn’t a Sabbath breaker. He wasn’t a blasphemer. He was not a covetous man. He didn’t cheat on his wife. He wasn’t a Sabbath breaker. a crooked businessman or anything of this nature. He was a man of prayer, a student of the Word of God, a worshiper of God, a man who pursued holiness of life as we saw in an earlier study, both with regard to heart and hand, outwardly and inwardly. And yet he’s having all these difficulties. And he begins to look around him, and he sees people who were very wicked, and yet they’re prospering. This troubles him. Because these people ridicule God. They mock the people of God. They’re proud and arrogant. And they seem to be living a good life. They’re healthy. They’re wealthy. So this troubled Asaph. What he needs is some divine insight. Now we have discovered and we’ve been looking at this. How is it that ASAP reaches the point of verse one, which is the conclusion that God is good to Israel even as such as are of a clean heart? Surely this is the case, he says. But at first, that wasn’t where he started out. He started out thinking it was a waste of time. How did he get there? Well, we saw last week, and we saw that one of the first things he did was he prevented himself from speaking impulsively because he was ready to just blurt out loud or he had to curb himself and say, it is not worth it to follow the Christian life, because look what happens. I’m not the one that God is favoring. I don’t have God’s favor resting upon me. I seem to have his curse resting on me. And so he had to prevent him. if I say this, if I should speak thus, he says, if I do this, how’s it going to affect my brothers and sisters in Christ? The generation of God’s children. It’s not going to do them any good. And so he curbs himself here. He prevents himself from speaking because he don’t want to offend his brothers and sisters. And that’s a good thing. And he’s content at first here to say, well, I don’t have the answer, but I can wait until God gives me the answer to this. And I won’t say anything that’s offensive. And now we see the next step and how Asaph progresses, and how he looks at things, and he’s led to do so from a spiritual perspective, which should. many often fail to do. How did he reach that point? Did he begin to look at things from a spiritual perspective? Let’s look at that tonight. It’s absolutely necessary for you to think spiritually in your Christian life. Notice verse 16, when I thought to know this, it was too painful for me. I’m curbing my tongue, but I still. don’t understand the situation and it’s painful for me. Thinking on a humanistic level leads to anguish of heart. He says here it’s too painful for me. Asaph is not slipping and falling as he once was, or at least he thought, you know, he’s just about gone. He’s steadied himself by curbing his tongue. He didn’t want to speak against. He didn’t want to speak the Lord, but his thoughts are still going around in a circle. He hasn’t figured it out yet. He’s confused. He’s puzzled. What solves his problem? It’s too painful for him to think about. But verse 17, it says, until I went into the sanctuary of God. Hmm. Here, he begins to take a positive step in the right direction. he’s unhappy, he’s perplexed, but the sanctuary of God here refers to the house of God, the temple of God. He goes to the temple of God, the place where spiritual insight can be found. Up until now, he’s only approached his problem from a humanistic level, on a humanistic level, solely in terms of his own thoughts, his own understanding of things. Two factors bothered him, the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous. What is he going to do? He’s thinking something’s wrong. The situation is just the opposite of what it should be. The righteous should be blessed by God and the wicked should be cursed by God. He knows something about the promises of God’s word. He knows something about God’s providence, and yet he’s finding it difficult that things are reversed from what they should be in his mind. He can’t figure that out. It’s baffling to him, but he knows what God’s word says, like in Psalm chapter 1, when we read, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel, the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor siteth in the seat of the scornful. but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. God’s blessing rest upon those who avoid the way of the wicked, who meditate, who meditate in the things of God’s word. And he knows this also. he knows this about God’s curse. Proverbs 333. The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked. Have you ever felt like him? Have you ever reached that point that you were like Asaph in saying, you know, God’s word says this, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. And you struggle with this. Maybe you plunge yourself into work or in the family obligations, but in the bed at night, in the bed at night. you still toss and turn about it. It just troubles you. The problem is, you’re only thinking on a humanistic level, there’s a difference between human thinking and spiritual thinking. God’s mind is on a much higher plane, a heavenly plane, and to think his thoughts after him requires us to go to that level. In the frigid waters of Greenland, you have all kinds of icebergs. You’ve got small ones and you got huge icebergs. And if you pay careful attention, if you watch closely, you’ll find that the small icebergs are floating in one direction, and the huge icebergs are going in a different direction. How is that possible? Well, it doesn’t make sense, but the explanation is simple. The small icebergs are blown along by the surface winds, whereas the huge icebergs are moved by the current under the water. And so one is going one direction, and one is going the other direction. Now, when it comes to humanistic thinking, they’re like the small icebergs. They’re, you know, human mind is going in one direction. God’s thinking, however, is much deeper, and it’s moving in a different direction. And if you understand that aspect, things begin to help, and you’re not looking at things in a shallow way. There’s a deeper thing to consider. when it comes to these matters. So thinking on humanistic level leads to anguish of heart. It’s too painful for me to think on this. Notice also, you will always have to struggle against going back to humanistic level. Without realizing at all, you can just automatically be thinking on a worldly or earthly level because what happens is you’re so used to living on the human plane, the earthly plane, that sometimes you just get caught up with the thinking of the world. And you don’t realize it. Asaph is a devout man, but he’s foolish when he’s thinking purely on a humanistic level. A Christian must look at things with spiritual eyes. We read it tonight in our scripture reading. Trust in the Lord with all your whole. heart and lean not to thine own understanding. Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 5. There you have the two different things. Regardless of your situation in life, as a believer, you are to place your faith in God’s promises and his providence. Your entire trust, all your heart, he says. and your exclusive trust. Lean not to your own understanding. Not even a little bit. Now, we as human beings want to lean on something. And it’s most natural for us to lean on ourselves and our own humanistic reasoning. So we can be guilty of bringing God’s truth to our courtroom, so to speak, before the world. our bar of justice and judging what God says and saying, God must be wrong. We can be guilty of that. But you know what the scripture says in Jeremiah 175? Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm and his heart departeth from the Lord. That’s not a good thing. Self-dependence is folly. And it shows a rebellious spirit. because God tells us to trust in him. But you’re not trusting in him if you’re not obeying that command. Dr. John Owen in his treatise on temptation writes this, The great folly of man in trials is leaning to or upon his own understanding and counsels. Whenever in our trials we consult our own understand our own understandings, harken to self-reasonings, though they seem to be good and tending to our preservation, yet the principle of living by faith is stifled. And we shall, in the issue, be cast down by our own counsels. I think he’s right. Remember David was anointed by God to be king, to replace the wicked king Saul, in first same. Samuel chapter 16, Samuel annoys him. He’s going to be the next king. Of course, jealous King Saul, seeing the favor that David receives by the people, thinks, well, what is he going to have next? I’ll have the kingship next. And so he begins to persecute David in attempts to kill him. And David has to run for his life. And in a state of panic and fear, he leans on his own understanding. And guess what he says in Psalm 1st Samuel 27, 1st, 1st, 1st, I shall now perish one day at the hand of Saul. Not going to survive. Not going to make it. There is nothing better for me to do than that I should escape speedily into the land of the Philistians. He wasn’t relying on God’s promise that he would be the next king. He was looking at it from a human perspective. He’s going to get me one of these days. You know, I have to have some pretty close escapes. I’m on one side of the mountain. his men are on the other. It was close. If the Philistines hadn’t invaded the land, maybe, you know, he would have caught up with me. Maybe he would have gotten me. The Ziphytes are turning me in all the time. One of these days, he’s going to get me. But here he is. He’s not consulting God for divine guidance about what he should do in this situation. I think it’s better if I just go to the land of the Philistings. He’s not relying on God’s promise that he’s going to be the next king. A backslider and heart shall be filled with his own ways. Proverbs 14, 14. This is a common problem among God’s people. When something happens, you don’t understand. Be careful you don’t hold a grudge against God. Say, you know, this isn’t fair, God. Why are you doing this to me? When you complain that what’s happening in you isn’t fair, you’re bringing God down to your own level and to your own understanding, and you’re doing exactly what ASAP did. Everything that happens to us, we have to look at it from a spiritual perspective, because ultimately, everything that happens to your life, all the problems you have, have really a spiritual connection to them. God is in control of everything that happens in your life, and therefore to understand what’s happening in your life, you have to think on his life. level. Well, the way he’s thinking. His thoughts are not like man’s thoughts. They’re much higher than man’s thoughts. So the first thing we have to do is ask ourselves, am I thinking spiritually about this problem? How does this relate to my relationship to God? Spurgeon once told his students, as he had a pastor’s training, that little seminary course for young men who were going to the ministry, he told, them one times, he said, you’re going to find people in prayer meetings who act like real saints and who pray like real saints. He says, but if you take those same people and put them in a business meeting, he says, suddenly they become devils. And the history of the church, I think has sadly proved Spurgeon to be correct. Why? Because people think I’m too different. Like, when they’re in a prayer meeting, they’re thinking spiritually. When they get into business meeting, all of a sudden they’re thinking earthly thoughts. It’s absolutely necessary to you think spiritually in your Christian life. Now, secondly, how you can promote and encourage spiritual thinking is laid out for us in verse 17, where he says this, when I thought to know this, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood either end. You need to gather with God’s people in his house. The worst thing you could do is isolate yourself. Asaph was on the cusp of saying here that it’s not worth it. But then he thought of his brothers in Christ. And then he thought, well, where do I meet with my brothers in Christ? and he thought of church here, the house of God. He goes there. Maybe for a period of time he’d been absent from the house of God. Because if he had gone to the house of God, maybe he would come to the conclusion earlier. So staying away from the sanctuary, all his thoughts are going in this vicious circle until he goes to the house of God. When we have a problem, sometimes we have a tendency to avoid people. We feel bad about ourselves. we are commiserating with regard to our circumstances, and we don’t want to be around people. You become preoccupied with your troubles. You think about how hard your life is and how difficult it is. While you’re doing this, of course, you’re violating God’s command, not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is. You stay away from church, you only get worse. You’re not going to get better. people who neglect the house of God are foolish because those who are least regular in their church attendance are the very ones who have the most trouble getting correction, getting things straightened out, handling their problems. If you’re having a problem, understanding God’s dealings with you, get yourself to God’s house. Don’t isolate yourself. Years ago, there was a Sunday school teacher. that went to visit one of his pupils that hadn’t been coming to Sunday school for quite a while. So he went to his house. He visited the home and when he got there he found the man, a young man, a sitting before the fireplace. The startled student was surprised by the teacher led him in expecting he was going to get a pretty good tongue lashing, a rebuke for missing. church and the Sunday school. It never came. The teacher came in, walked up to the fireplace, reached out and took the tongs, then went into the fireplace, and took a lump of coal that was blowing red hot, and he set it on the hearth all by itself. and then he sat down in silence and they watched as that ember got cooler and cooler and lost its bright glow and became dark. The student looked at the teacher and he says, I think I got your meaning. I’ll be there next week. Isolation for the people of God is a dangerous thing. It is not something that’s going to stir your spiritual progress. It’s not going to be something that’s going to help you spiritually. It’s going to hurt you. There’s a danger of isolating yourself. Your spiritual thinking will be stirred in God’s house. You know, sometimes just going to the house of God, sitting among God’s people, can help but start to stir up your spiritual thinking. Asaph here was ready to give up on his religion, but he found people in the sanctuary who were dedicated here to worshiping the Lord God. He’s thinking to himself, maybe I was wrong. All these people are worshiping God and they think it’s essential. That’s important. They’re not discouraged by the circumstances in their life. You look around at the individuals in the congregation and you begin to realize, well, they have problems too. There’s a poor woman who’s lost her husband. Maybe there’s another poor woman who lost a child, but she’s still worshiping God. There’s no crisis in her faith. You see, a poor man, and maybe he is an incurable disease. Maybe he’s suffering greatly because of his health issues. And yet, he’s joyfully worshiping God. You recall Paul teaching, there is no temptation or trial. that has taken you, but such is as common. I begin to realize that you know what? Other people have problems too, and they’re not ready to give up the faith. And you say to yourself, all God’s people know something about what I’m going through. They have their burdens, they have their trials, and yet, here they are. Why am I not like them? Let’s get things put on the right perspective, begins to turn things around. But the key thing is this. You need to hear God’s word preached. And if you’re in a church that’s singing the Psalms, it’s also beneficial to hear the word sun as well as preached. Now in Asaph days, think about this. Not everyone had a personal Bible. It would be a rare thing to even have a portion probably of the Word of God in those days. So the only place you’re really going to hear the word of God expounded or have access to it without your memory would be with the people of God. Back in the day, they used to have a church Bible that would be chained to the pulpit. You know, maybe they have one copy, but there it is, and no one can walk off with it. And that’s where it is. so he goes and he hears the scriptures now he’s heading on the right track years ago there was a little girl in london england that got lost on the streets somehow or other she got sidetracked and got lost and got lost and she didn’t know where she was going and she found one of the policemen on the corner and said i’m lost i don’t know how to get home and the policeman plight her with a number of questions trying to figure out where she lived and he couldn’t get the right answers. He couldn’t figure out how to get her home. And suddenly the little girl’s eyes lit up and she said, Mr., if you just take me to my church, I can find my way home from my church. And that’s how she got home. My friends, it’s a church that God begins to direct us in the right manner, and we find our way. Today you have God’s word in your hand. You can open the scriptures yourself, but indeed, sometimes you need to be in the house of God. There are many times when I’ve prayed because I was down about something or there was some discouragement and I went to the church and I’m praying that I would get something that would help me. And sure enough, somewhere along the line, the preacher would speak on a top. topic. It may not have anything to do with my situation, but something he said within that passage of scripture that he was exogeneing helped me. And I also applied to my circumstance. This is what we have to realize. Yet you listen to the minister. Open up the message of God’s word. God is speaking to you. Listen to him. You know, one of the message. One of God’s word, you, you know, One of the reasons why God has given us His Word is in order to help us with the problems and the trials that we have in this life. It gives us everything that we need for life and Godliness. And so we should understand God’s ways in his thinking as we hear His Word. Do you think about this a minute? The mere history of the Bible is invaluable. Why? Well, did Abraham have problems? Did Isaac have problems? Did Jacob have problems? did David have problems? Did Joseph have problems? Did Moses have problems? Did Daniel have problems? They all have problems. And yet we see how God worked in their life, how God brought them through it, how he guided them, and how they recovered even when they took the wrong step. When you read a Psalm like this, this one. Psalm 73, it solves problems for you. Why do you think God placed it in the scriptures? It’s not just for Asaph’s benefit. It’s, it is for singing for the whole congregation of the people of God, that we may benefit from it as well. What he brought Asaph through was for the benefit of helping us too. We begin to realize that in the long haul, God has his purposes for what he does, we may not see them right away. We’ve talked about many times, Joseph, being hated by his brothers, being sold into slavery, he ends up in jail, and you’re thinking, can anything go right for the poor guy who’s trying to serve the Lord? And yet it was for this means as we read the whole story. Now, if you stop before you get to the end of Genesis, you may realize, you may not realize the truth. You may say, boy, that guy, he had all kinds of trouble, and here he is, the, the, the one that God gave the vision to, the dreams to, and so forth. But when you get to the end, you realize that, as he did, God brought me down here to Egypt so that I could spare my whole family. And God raises him up to the second can command, and he provides for his family during the great famine, and the whole family’s spared. You remind it as much through much tribulation you get to go through this life and enter into the kingdom of God. Suffering has a beneficial side to it. You are thinking on a spiritual level now. You begin to look at things from God’s perspective. And as you hear the word of God being preached, you realize the true end of the wicked, and we’ll get to this in a further study, they’re going to hell. They’re going to be thrown into hellfire. God’s judgment will eventually fall upon them even though at first it seems like it won’t you must believe and you must cling to the precious truths of God’s word the third thing I suggest to use this you need to pray you need to meditate another thing that the going to the house of God helps us with there’s it’s a special place in a sense in where we meet with God. Remember what Jesus told his disciples. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. What is God’s house called? The house of prayer. The house of prayer. We should seek his face and his help. This is where we can come face to face with gone in a special way. You know, when you meet with God’s people and you hear their exhortations, when you hear the word of God preached, all this is preparatory to you pray. And praying now with a right spirit and attitude, not as Asaph perhaps did earlier on. This is in fair God. His true prayer, you find verses 8. 18 and on, we begin to see him confessing his wrong thinking and so forth and how God is going to judge the wicket and so forth. He gets it right, but he has to go to the house of God first. The great prayer warrior George Mueller once lectured ministers on the subject of prayer. And he says, when you get up in the morning, the first thing you should do is not pray. He says, the first thing you ought to do is read the scriptures. Meditate. Maybe read some devotional material. He said, and then pray. Because your heart’s prepared to pray that. And you’re ready to pray. We see the change that comes over ASAP here once he hears the word of God. And that’s what you and I must do. If we’re only thinking on a humanistic level, it’s hard to pray properly, because sometimes we’re bitter, we’re angry with God. How can we pray properly? with that spirit. So we need a renewing of our mind. So here are some steps to bring us back into the right communion with God here. First, we don’t speak against God’s people, you know, where we’re going to lead them astray or say something that’s going to offend them. We keep our thoughts about, harsh thoughts about God to ourselves and realize it’s wrong to have that thinking. We go to the house of God because that’s where God’s word is. That’s where our prayer can be stirred. Our thinking can be stirred. We can be encouraged by other believers in Christ and so forth. We don’t neglect that. So you need to think spiritually. When we need to follow ASAF’s example here, the positive things he was doing to really get corrected. God is leading him to the right solution. God has a good purpose, even in the trials you face, just like those flowers coming up in the bomb craters. God has a good purpose in what we’re undergoing, but we need to learn to think his thoughts after him. Let us close. God’s the word of prayer tonight. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and how it directs us. We pray that we may be benefited by the guidance that is provided for us. that we may not continue taking the wrong steps. It’s so easy to get in the wrong, go in the wrong direction. And I pray, Father, that you may curtail that and turn us around. Help us to begin to meditate upon what you have to say and the principles of your word to turn us around. Open our hearts to these things, Father. And I pray tonight, bless your people. As difficult, as life is, as hard as it is at times, how unfair we may think it may be. May we continue to be in your house, to ponder your word, to benefit from it, and may it be of such help to us that you change our thinking and renew us in our, in the ways of the Lord. May we not neglect your house. And may we think, positive thoughts, Father, when we’re in your house, about how we may be benefited as we hear the Word of God taught. In Jesus’ name, we ask these things with Thanksgiving. Amen. Let’s stand for the benediction tonight.