Psalms 73:21-22

Looking at Psalm 73, I’m going to read verses 11 through 22, but our focus tonight is going to be on verses 21 and 22. But let me begin reading with verse 12. 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. 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. Surely thou did set them in slippery places. Thou castest them down into destruction. How are you? they brought into destruction as in a moment. They are utterly consumed with tears. As a dream, when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou wakest, thou shalt despise their image. Thus my heart was grieved. I was pricked in my reins. So foolish was I and ignorant. I was as a beast before thee. God blessed to us, his sacred and holy word. This evening. President Adams once took a trip to France, and he reported that he saw there a special room that was called the pouting room. The room was octagonal in shape, and all the sides, and all the sides, and even the ceiling, were covered with mirrors. A person sitting or standing in the center of the room will see himself from every possible angle. Multiply that by many cells as you’re going to see as far as the eye can look. Into such a room of reflections, we’re told that gallant gentlemen of the most noble portion of the land placed any ill-tempered lady. The woman whose temper has escaped her control is doomed to an endless reflection on her own countenance. It’s very often helpful. Take a good look at yourself. To examine yourself closely and to see yourself as you really are. Scripture tells us that the Word of God is like a mirror, and it gives us that the Word of God is like a mirror, and it gives a reflection of ourselves in the eyes of God. And therefore, it’s useful, beneficial for us in self-examination. Asaph in this Psalm is going to provide an example here of self-examination in verses 21 and 22. He’s been placed in the pouting room. He’s going to have to look at himself carefully. And that’s what this text. I think reflects. In Psalm 73, you remember that ASAF records the trouble he is experiencing as a believer. He’s trying to live a godly life. He is suffering. He looks around him. He sees those who were living wickedly, but they are prospering. This doesn’t seem right. This perplexes ASAF. So he begins to ponder all this, and we already know what is His conclusion is from verse 1 of this chapter. But what is important is the way he got to this conclusion, how God brought him around to this point. And we saw that when he went to the house of God, when he went to the sanctuary, as he says in verse 17, that his spiritual thinking was stimulating. He’s thinking on a humanistic level, and he needed to be thinking on a godly, in a spiritual level. And when we went to the house of God, all of a sudden things were considered from a different angle. And you got a different perspective on matters. The house of God is where we should get an understanding. Then I understood their end. He came to a right understanding about the wicked. Their end, as he tells us in verse 17. God’s God’s providence has set the stage for a terrible downfall. He’s placed him in slippery places, and they are doomed to be cast into hell. Secondly, Asaph came to right understanding about God. He came to think about God’s providence and character that God is always a just and holy in all his ways. and God is in control the entire situation and that he has the power to destroy the wicked. Anytime he chooses he waits for the right time until the wicked are ripe for judgment. And now Asaph has one more area of thinking. He has to weigh carefully. That’s about himself. It’s about himself. Now let me begin tonight by saying this. You need to make an honest self-examination. when you sin. Thus, my heart was grieved and I was pricked in my reign. So foolish was I and ignorant I was as a beast before thee. We have to truly repent for our sinful thoughts and actions. That’s what Asaph here is brought to think about. Do you notice there’s a very striking contrast here between verses 13 and 14 versus 21 and 22. First Asaph thought very sorry about himself and he was thinking it’s a very sorrowful situation. He felt sorry for himself. Here he is a godly man and it doesn’t seem like he can get a break. All he does is suffer. He felt as if God was treating him unfairly. Now he’s gone inside the sanctuary. Now all this has changed. It’s a great transformation. It’s taken place in his thinking. And this is important. He has a different view of himself here. He says, my heart was grieved. It was embittered. It was in ferment like yeast. As the text, the word it indicated. to us. And the idea here is sorrow over his sin. A repentant spirit. He tells us also here that he was pricked in his reins. Now the word reins means your inner self. Literally it means your kidneys. But he’s not talking about the kidneys, per se. It’s talking about the mind and the conscience. the seed of emulsions and so forth. And he’s pained about the inner thoughts that he’s had, but he didn’t articulate out loud. He had some hard thoughts about God. Lamentation says he hath caused the arrows of his quivered enter my reins. Well, that’s what happened. God’s smote him in his conscience. He pricked him in his inner being. We have to be frank and honest, and we have to admit that you and I often stop short of reaching the position here of ASAF. We don’t always re-examine our foolish thinking. Maybe we’re happy and relieved to hear about the ungodly being set in slippery places by God. Perhaps, we rejoice in the teaching that the Lord reigneth over his universe, and eventually he will judge the wicked. We say, boy, that’s good. That’s true. I accept that. The danger is that we just stop at that point. Asaph here goes on to make this honest self-assessment. He’s not happy with that. himself because he behaved poorly in an ungodly manner. He looks at himself in the mirror of God’s word. He examines himself. He doesn’t say, oh, well, I guess it was wrong about God and the wicked. Go on. He realizes this was foolish. This was evil. What I did. You could be exceedingly sinful in your thoughts as well as your actions. And he is saying, you know, I shouldn’t have had these hard thoughts about God. This was wrong for me. Sinus never considered a small thing. It’s an evil which we must loathe and we must hate. It’s difficult for us to look at ourselves. It’s difficult to put ourselves under the microscope, so to speak, and take a good, hard look at what we’ve done. It’s not a pleasant experience. Now, there are two dangers we have to avoid, and I think one danger is a morbid self-introspection. I must say that this is not something that’s common in our day. This is something that in the past history of the church, there were those who were so morbid in their introspection that that’s basically all they did. You can be brought up in a religious. atmosphere, we spend all your time analyzing and condemning yourself, and you don’t really do anything for the kingdom of God. You could huddle in the corner. You could worry exclusively about yourself and not make an impact in the world for Christ. Could always be feeling your spiritual pulse, taking your spiritual temperature, being absorbed totally in his activity. Martin, Lord. Jones tells a story about this. He says, I was at the deathbed of one of the saintliest and most godly man I have ever been privileged to me. In the room were his two daughters, both of them well on into middle age. The old man, the father, knew he was dying. And the one thing he was unhappy about was the fact that neither of his daughters was a church-man or had ever taken communion. It was truly astounding fact because two women more godly and more active in connection with the life of the church which they attended would be hard to find. Why had they never taken communion? The answer was that they felt unworthy of it. They felt they were not fit to come to the table. So conscious were they were they never taken communion. they of their failures and of their sins and shortcomings. Here were two most excellent Christian women, but because of a morbid self-introspection, they felt they had no right to partake of the inner life of the church. Now that kind of thinking was once very common. People would recognize themselves as great sinners and realize they had failed so much that it seemed like it just dragged them down. They had hopes they might arrive in heaven, but perhaps they were not so sure such worthless creatures of themselves that would ever make it. The emphasis of finding all that you need in Christ and being covered by his blood and righteousness, despite your failures, seem to be lacking. You know, I always talk about when we have the Lord’s supper. Who’s worthy to come? Well, no one’s worried to come. But what the Lord’s supper is all about is Christ’s death. On behalf of it. fire of his people that we might be accepted in his sight. But let me say Christianity today probably could use a good dose of this spirit in the church. We’re not like this at all. This is totally absent. We’re just the opposite. There’s not enough introspection. The second danger is the danger of a glive attitude about your sin, where you treat it lightly. The prophet Jeremiah warned, his people about this problem. They healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. There can be a total absence of true godly sorrow over your sin. A tendency to spare yourself condemnation. To view your shortcomings very lightly to treat them as no big deal among evangelical people today. There are many who misuse some of the scriptures that we have with regard to eternal security. And they give people the assurance of salvation. As soon as they pray some simple prayer that perhaps has been read to them and say, well, never doubt it. But there’s a failure on their part to deal with the whole issue of repentance. And no one is repentance necessary with regard to faith in Christ. You repent and believe on Christ is the scriptural teaching. But repentance is a, I may say, daily responsibility of the people of God. We have to constantly be repenting. We have failure in many ways. There are those who never mourn over any sin. they never see it as a Christian duty that they have. They teach you, well, look to Jesus, put your sin under the blood. Yes, but is there no sorrow over sin? It’s completely painless and shameless in their case. And often when you look at their life, you find it really does not reflect glory on Jesus Christ. There’s no depth to their faith. there is a sense in which Christian people view themselves sometimes as far too healthy spiritually than they really are. There is the danger of having the spirit of the Laudeasians that we have needed nothing. You know, we’re fine. We have no need of anything. When they needed to repent. So I suggest that Christian people need to consider ASAF here, how he deals with himself, how he sort of puts on the sackcloth and ashes, how there’s godly sorrow over what he said to himself and what, you know, he’s thinking and his envying of the wicked and all this has come to light here. And he’s saying, this boy, this is wrong. This is evil. Now, there are scriptural passages that we should consider in this regard. Look with me at the prodigal son. if you would in Luke chapter 15 verses 17 to 21 Luke chapter 15 17 through 21. Here’s the prodigal. The Bible says here at verse 17 when he came to himself, you know, after eating the pig slop, after wasting all his father’s inheritance, he was thinking over the situation in which he found himself in and where his sin has laid him. And he said, how many hired servants of my fathers have bred enough and despair and I perish with hunger? I’d be better off being a servant in my father’s house. At least I’d have something to eat. I will rise and I will go to my father and I will say unto my father, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before the and am no more worthy to be called thy son make me as one of thy hard servants and he arose and came to his father but when it was a great yet a great way off his father saw him and had compassion and ran fell on his neck and the son said on him father I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight him no more worthy to be called thy son I’ve sinned against God and I’ve sinned against you. And he admits it and confesses it here. Then look with me at 2 Corinthians and see their repentance here. Second Corinthians chapter 7 verses 9 to 11. Paul had written them a pretty stern letter, 1 Corinthians, about some of the sinful things that were going on in the church. And he says here, I’m saddened that I’m sad and did I know. made you sorrowful, but it led to godly repentance. Let’s look at this and that he rejoices him. So now I rejoice not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrow to repentance. For ye were made sorry after a godly measure that you might receive damage by us and nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation, not to be repented. But the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this self-same thing that you sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea what vehementent desire, yea, what zeal, yea what revenge, and all these things you have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter. When he talks about the indignation here, he said, you were mad at yourselves. You were angry with yourselves. He said, this sorrow did you good. That he would clear yourself. You would, you know, straighten these things out. Make things right. So you need to make an honest self-examination when you sin. Secondly, tonight, you should follow the steps of the psalmist in your self-examination. You must honestly confess what you’ve done. We read here in this text of scripture, him saying in Psalm 73 here, verse 22, so foolish was I in ignorant, I was as a beast before the… Now, you may not like doing this. You may not like saying, boy, was I foolish. And remember many times in scripture, foolish just doesn’t mean silly. It carries the idea of without spiritual wisdom. I was thinking like an ungodly person. Humanistic thoughts, as we’ve talked about. I was ignorant. I was ignorant of God’s word. It’s truth. I should have known better than this. I can get to that house of God. I hear what God has to say. I should. should have known this truth. I was like a beast. I was sort of like a dumb animal, he says here. Without the ability to ponder spiritual matters, when you become aware of what you’ve done and you turn to Christ for forgiveness of sin, that’s a good thing. But in turning to Christ, do you confess your sins? Do you say with David in Psalm 51, verse 3, for I acknowledge my transgress and my sin is ever before me. I acknowledge what I did wrong, but it’s before my, how can I do such a thing? This is his sin with Bashiba and the killing of Uriah. This man Asaph here spent a lot of time commiserating with himself. In looking at other people, envying the wicked, he spent a lot of time with unworthy thoughts about God and his ways. how that God is unfair and unjust, that he favors the wicked, that he hates the righteous. But after he gets this recovery, it’s the illumination that he gets at the sanctuary, he says to himself, I must spend some amount of time looking at myself here and what I’ve done. I think it’s important that we do this so that we don’t always repeat what we’ve done. In other words, take a good look, look at it carefully so that you weigh it. So you don’t go down to that path again. We shouldn’t spare ourselves. We honestly should excess the evil that we’ve done, confess the awfulness of our sin before God. Don’t shield yourself. Don’t make excuses for your sin. Don’t attempt to cover it up and barely mention it as though it’s no big deal, as I mentioned. Say, this is what I did, this is what I thought, this is what I said, it was evil. There was a municipal judge in E.W. Thompson of Sulfur, Louisiana, who apologized for arriving at his courtroom 10 minutes late. He explained that a policeman had pulled him over, driving 43 miles an hour and a 35 mile an hour zone, had given him a ticket, and ordered him. him to go to court. When his own case came up for the docket, he stepped down from the judge’s seat, went around to the front, and looked up and confessed he, he was guilty, Your Honor. Then he got back up into the judge’s seat, sat down and said, okay, this is your fine. Find himself. My friends, that’s sort of what we have to do. You know, you have to sort of, you know, plead guilty, but get in the judge’s seat. Look at yourself and say, yes. I have to condemn myself for this, for what I’ve done. Honestly, confess what you’ve done. You should consider the foolishness of your actions here. You know, we speak about stupid oxen or stupid oxen or something of this nature. He had these hard thoughts about God. He’s on the verge of openly condemning. of the Lord, cursing God and dying, giving up the faith. And he saw the hideousness of his sin, and he held it there before his eyes, said, boy, I had to be just like some stupid beast. Now, friends, we never really reached the point that we abhor ourselves until we can get to that point. It’s easier to say, God, I’ve sin, please forgive me, and leave out the details. But it’s painful to say, boy, I have sin. said something that I shouldn’t have said. I’ve harbored unclean thoughts, or I’ve had been angry with you. The essence of the matter here is to get down to the details, to confess exactly what you did wrong. Maybe you lost your temper, maybe you yelled at your husband or wife or whatever the case may be, and you hurt them. And you didn’t show an ounce of Christian love towards your mate, and you resisted the the Holy Spirit’s promptings and convictions of you about it. You look back on it all and you say, boy, this was not the right thing that I’ve done. Woe is me. How could I be so unkind and loving? How could I be like a beast? You should view your sin and condemn yourself. Psalm, David in Psalm 51, when he weighs about the whole matter over how he could possibly. As a Christian man, commit this adultery, end up killing a man. He can only attribute the one thing. He was born to pray. I was born sinful. I have a nature that’s corrupt. Still, some aspect of that nature is within me. Paul was speaking about the repenting Christians, Corinthians said, yea, what indignation you should. They were mad at themselves, as I said earlier. A-S.S. I was foolish. I was ignorant. I must have lost my mind. I have no understanding at all. Too many Christians aren’t too good at terms with themselves. We have to learn to humble ourselves, be angry with ourselves, and condemn ourselves. Job said, and I read it tonight, you know, that he abhorred himself. in Job 426, he says, I or, that he says a very similar thing, that he hoard himself, and he has to repent. When God begins to question him about some of the things he said during the book, if you go through the book and you see all the things he said about God, when God examines him, that’s what he’s doing there, he has no answer. I shouldn’t have said that. I wish I had been quiet. I’m not going to say anymore. David says, as I suggested, behold, I was shaping iniquity and sin did my mother conceive me. It’s the only thing I can think of. Remember how Paul speaks about himself as a wretched man, how he confesses that he’s the chief of sinners. That’s an honest man. You must see the cause of your trouble with self. Part of our problem being involved. involved in Adam’s sin as self-centeredness, we’re sensitive about ourselves, we’re always protecting ourselves. You’re always ready to say that you’ve been treated unfairly, you’ve been wronged, you’ve been mistreated. Wasn’t this ASAF’s basic problem? That’s what he was saying. God mistreated me. He was wrong in his thinking about the ungod. He was wrong in thinking about God’s dealings with him. But self is really at the center of all. So you and I are not thinking, clearly and facing honestly the facts if we’re only thinking about our own selves. Sometimes we let our emotions get a hold of us and they control us. We’re not thinking clearly when our emotions are driving. And this is what makes us act foolishly. And sometimes we have to be confronted with God’s word and sort of jolted back to reality. friends most of the troubles and the disputes between people and husbands and wives really end up somewhere along the line boiling down to self either yourself or them or both the trouble is we’re being governed by self we’re living on feelings alone we have to watch this carefully to watch this carefully now it’s not surprising that the scripture talks about my son give me nine heart the heart the inner main is what causes us to go astray. Our mind, a will, are directing us in the wrong direction. Sometimes the emotions get involved and they should be under the control of the will and doing the right thing, but they’re not. The heart is deceitful above all things who can know it. We get deceived. We can be misguided. You think you’re thinking. thinking clearly but you’re not. You’re only thinking about yourself. So the scripture says in Proverbs 423, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Watch yourself closely. Attempt to view things from a biblical perspective and not just gut instinct. Self has to be condemned. We have to be willing to admit we did wrong and confess the evil that we have done. be on guard against self-controlling your thinking entirely. So we see the psalmist here tonight, and this is his repentance. This is his saying, you know, I was really wrong, and it was evil. We have to get to that point. And I think. We must not neglect this aspect when we seek forgiveness from the Lord. Let us weigh carefully what we’ve done, that our forgiveness and our repentance here may be beneficial ultimately to us, and we wouldn’t treat the matter lightly. Let’s close with the word.