Let's pray. Father, now Your saints hunger to hear from You and from Your Word, and so we pray that You would use this time around Your Word to do that very thing, to still our souls, to give us a vision, a renewed vision of our God and our Savior in the work of Christ, in what He has done for us. Work among us to bring repentance and faith and the joy again of our salvation. We ask all of these things in the name of Christ. Amen. As you're being seated, if you will, turn to Psalm 73. We're going to work through Psalm 73 this morning. And last week, we looked at Psalm 72. Solomon and David, this prayer for a future kingdom that was promised in all of its glory, splendor, weightiness, reality. It was a picture that we kind of focused on and said, when we're praying, our Father in heaven, your kingdom come, it fills out that vision of what we're asking for. And then we turn the page and get punched in the gut by Psalm 73. All the promises to David of a king who will reign forever, casting aside wickedness, saving the needy, all of that grinds to a halt when you flip from 72 to 73. Because, as you might see there, right above 73, whatever you're looking at, it says book three. So this altar, you have books one and two which recount most of the historical evidences of David's life, things that happened, and all of a sudden in book three, from Psalm 73 all the way through 89, you have all of these distressing prayers to God about what happened with David and Solomon, what happened to their kingship, what happened to the glory in Israel, because everything I'm looking at is scorched earth, where are the promises of God? That's what you're seeing suddenly vacant when you turn over to Psalm 73. If Solomon isn't the answer, if Israel's falling to pieces, if the wicked seem to be the only ones thriving, then is God really, is he really worth trusting? And Asaph, as a man appointed by David to play songs in the temple, He walks us through what it means to pray, your kingdom come, even when it actually seems like it's really, really far off. And in that way, it's actually preparation for you and for me to learn how to walk through frustrations and anger that arise when we know what the kingdom should be, but it's actually not our current circumstances. So let me, let me read Psalm 73 for us. A psalm of Asaph, truly God is good to Israel to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My feet, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death, their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore, pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens and their tongues struts through the earth. Therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, how can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked. Always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain 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 tears, 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 toward 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. So Psalm 73 is Asaph's testimony. This is what he walked through. He's reflecting back on it, trying to now describe the experience of kind of what he saw, where he saw his heart going, trying to describe it. So what he does is first he lays out a portrait of the wicked man. That's the first 12 verses. And then he actually helps give us some sort of understanding as to what makes him turn. The epiphany that he has that he suddenly comes to realization in verses 13 through 16, and then he begins to give us a portrait of God. What is this renewed vision that he has? So first, let's just take a quick glimpse of what this portrait of the wicked that he displays for us is. So verses 1 through 3, they set the scene of the testimony. Verse 1 is this confession of what should be true. This is how things should work. Truly God is good to Israel to those who are pure in heart. That's his understanding of how the universe should function. If you are the one who is pure in heart, God's blessing is on you, God's goodness is on you. That's what should happen in Israel. He'll repeat it again at the end that God is good. God was good to me. But, verse two, I almost slipped. I almost turned my back on him. I almost walked away from everything else that I had confessed previously in my life. That is when he looks back on what he thought and understood and how it was coming out in his life, he sees that his anger, it says in verse 21 that he was embittered, that his anger and his envy, they actually showed that he doubted God. that he doubted that God would come through, that he doubted that this was actually true. That the rich and the powerful have peace and prosperity that should belong to those who live for God. The ESV says that, I read from it, has prosperity in verse three, but it's just the same word shalom, the same word for peace, that in Psalm 72, that was the descriptor for how the whole kingdom operates, for how the whole kingdom functions. The king reigns in peace in prosperity. And now, in verse 3, it's given to those who are wicked. They have what's supposed to belong to the king and his people, and they boast about it. And what I want you to see is that Asaph's devotion to God, that's not the thing that took care of the problem. In fact, his devotion to God, it actually makes him more bewildered that this whole scene is even unfolding. His righteousness, the way he acts, actually makes him all the more distressed when he sees this kind of flipped upside down world that he's living in. And you can see that, it feels like it's all in vain in verse 13. And that's the same issue and concern that all sorts of us have had when we walk into this room. That your anger can be directed towards some injustice that you see, But at the same time, it might also be some kind of distrust that you have at what God is doing in your life. And it's expressed as anger and doubt. We'll think more on that in just a second. Okay, so what do these people seem to have? What's the portrait of they themselves? That's what verses 4 through 12 detail. They have long lives. of happiness and health. No pangs until death, bodies are fat and slake, like they are the picture of some sort of gym membership, right? And even though they enjoy taking advantage of and using their powers over other, they aren't disciplined and stricken by God for doing it. He'll say later in his own testimony, seems like every day I'm the one who's getting disciplined. These people don't experience at all. And on top of that, they seem to be getting the blessing of heaven while they talk in such arrogance as if they have it in their pocket. You see that in verse 9? They set their mouths against heaven. Their tongue struts. They're actually calling for themselves as if, can't you see everyone? Regardless of whatever I'm doing, obviously I have God in my pocket. Obviously I have heaven's blessing. And then in verse 10, they've used their words even to win over our people to join them in turning away. I think that's what that means. Therefore, his people turn back to them and they find no fault in them. Somehow watching and seeing these people and nothing happening to them and their wickedness just kind of going on and on and on. They can then start and say, look, you see God's blessing is upon us. And the people of God begin to be pulled toward that. and want that. They see, if I can go without being distressed, if I can go without being worn out, if I can go without suffering, I will choose that. And they're beginning to be pulled away. All in all, their wickedness so blatantly displayed, and then combined with what looks like God's blessing, it just breaks Asaph. And it brought him right up to the point where he was done. He was just about to say, Everything else I've confessed, everything I've said about being a Christian just isn't worth it. So it's just a great time to stop for a second and pause and for all of us just to ask, what is it in the moments that you've been angry or are angry, depressed, despairing, Do you look around and do you say, okay, these are all caused for a reason? Are there grievances around you? Absolutely. I have no doubt that we're seeing them. But are you harboring anger at God as well? There are many ways in which we can voice our confessions about our truth, like we say, and yet somehow, regardless of that our mouths actually verbalize something about those confession, yet our hearts can be refusing them at all the same time. Rather, we're angry and we distrust the God who has given those truths to us. Sometimes persistent doubt is just an honest struggle that every believer has like Asaph. But sometimes, sometimes it's a vicious cover that's actually leading you farther away from God. And you'll only come out of it if you're willing to listen to Asaph's path of how he came out of it. put into practice the way that Asaph actually came back from that despair and began to see God rightly. So what is it? What's the epiphany that he has that begins to turn him back? Look at verse 13 and following. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and I washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. You see, Asaph is practicing repentance, he's keeping his heart pure, he's going through his Christian devotions, prayers, he's serving others, he's worshiping, he's giving away of himself generously, and he's just about to call it all garbage because he thinks, I mean, just before he hits this verse 15, look at this. If I had said I will speak thus, that is, that it's all in vain. I would have betrayed the generation of your children. He was just about to say it when he stops and he thinks about his kids and the rest of the people that he loves. He means that the first step to stopping the slide was just to stop talking so that he protects the next generation, right? That's the insight. He doesn't give his venting any volume because he cares that other people might actually hear him and walk away. There are many people who in their despair will actually disciple other people to despair. That's not the same thing as weeping with those who weep, as we're commanded to do. One of the first things you can do in your doubt and your anger and your frustration is just to pause before expressing it so that it won't be a source of stumbling to others that are weaker or younger in the faith. Instead, determine in your mind to protect those you love and you have commitments to, even if that's all you can manage at the moment in your despair. Even if that's all you have strength for, See the people that you have an obligation to protect and love them enough not to take them down into despair with you. That's what Asaph sees, and it puts a pause for a moment on where he's going. There's plenty of appropriate times and words to cry out one's frustration to God about life and injustice, but Asaph says that he kept from speaking for the sake of others, and it began his path out. What is the next thing he does? He devotes himself to thinking through the issue and the things that he's seeing both with God as well as under God. So look at verses 16 and 17. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end. So I don't know if Asaph's been neglecting going to the temple and joining in worship there, it kind of sounds like he has, but it's there where he finally begins to see things differently. So why is the sanctuary the place where that happens? Right? Remember, the sanctuary is the place where God's special presence gets manifested to Israel. So by going back into the sanctuary, Asaph's determined he's going to work out the problem of what he sees in the presence of God. He's not just going to go off on his own. He's going back into the presence of God to make his complaint. He's going to take it straight to God. He's not going to avoid the place or slack on his devotions or stop gathering with the saints for worship. No, he's going to work it out in God's presence. Right, this is the principle that works best, doesn't it? If you're frustrated with spouse, friend, family member, the thing to do is to get the question out before the two of you in their presence. If you're just unsure, you might start with questions about something you saw or you heard. If you're more sure that you've seen or done something that's distressing, then you might call them to quit whatever it is you're doing, but you're doing it there in their presence. Now this is especially true, right, when it comes to our dealings with God. If you're struggling with faith and you're angry, it becomes all the more important, all the more vital, that if you're going to get past it, you're with God. And because Christ has told us that He has put His Spirit in each one of us, yes, But then also for the purpose of when we're gathering together in the church, that's where he displays his presence. That's what he says in Ephesians 2, right? This is the assembly, the building that he's making, where he puts his spirit. And we're told this is the outcropping of heaven. We are already, thanks to Christ, gathered before the throne, Hebrews 12. We are already in the sanctuary where he is forever. This is the outcropping of where it is here. So if you're struggling with faith and you're angry, then this gathering becomes all the more vital. Here in the gathering is where you're called, this is where we started our service, right? Are called to lift up your voices in worship. That's what happens in the call to worship. And to sing and make praise to God who made you and fashioned you with his fingers, right? This is the place where the saints fill the room with singing to God, but also to one another, right? Just a few moments ago, you were singing, Poor though I am, despised, forgot, yet God my God forgets me not, and he is safe and must succeed for whom the Lord should plead." And you were singing it directly to God, but every one of you had somebody behind you, beside you, who also was singing the exact same words. What's happening is that you're seeing other people claim the exact same truth, the same need, and being built up by it. And then what do we do? We pray for one another, asking God to intervene, come to our aid, and then you open your eyes and you repeat along with everyone else that we're in bondage to sins, and you receive the assurance of pardon that Christ has done enough to pay for those sins, and then we open the word. Today we read about this Lion of Judah who's going to take up the scepter, and he's eventually going to be the king to bring a kingdom. We read that together and then we confess together what do we believe, what is true. And then we come together under the word and we listen to what God said. We don't call this building a sanctuary because you are the sanctuary. This is the place where you go to pour out your heart and complaint to God and you wrestle it out here with him, with God's saints. You wrestle it out here with God. But in addition to being with God, what does Asaph want to do in the sanctuary? It's to understand. It's to think it out. It's to discern, is what he says in verses 16 and 17. That is, Asaph is willing to open himself again to listening to what God says. He wants to get out from his doubts and despair by being under God and his revelation. How is the Bible written to us? It's written as a word of exhortation. Just think about this with me. What do we have when we open up the scriptures? It's a call to embrace certain truths. It's a call to a warning to run from sin, to flee away from it. Think about the different letters written by Peter, John, Paul, Jude, James. What are they trying to do? They're trying to get you to think about an issue from the perspective of them as emissaries of Christ, to get you to question yourself if you've got wrong assumptions or you're missing part of the picture. And what about the Gospels? I mean, are the Gospels just kind of pieced together stories about Jesus so you kind of have an understanding of, okay, this is the Jesus I follow, these are stories about him? Well, they are that, but they're woven together to try and get you to see that Jesus is making claims of this kingdom that he's establishing and what it looks like to have the same values and the same priorities and the same character that is going to be established in this kingdom forever. The Sermon on the Mount has to be thought out. You have to come in, you have to seek to understand, then you have to think it out. It's not going out into the peaceful quiet of nature that suddenly makes these things dawn on you. It's not the thrill of just 10,000 people singing together at a conference or a concert that suddenly makes these things come truth, your means of grace is coming before the word and being able to hear again just what it is, how these things fit together, what God is exhorting you to do. It's bringing yourself under God. Don Carson, sometimes D.A. Carson is how some of his books are from British initials, is a Bible teacher. And I just remember recalling this story once about being at a Bible conference and he's teaching through it, and this conference is just for missionaries. So he's in some land where they've kind of gathered together. And he's teaching through these passages, and he keeps pointing out that the Bible seems to, just over and over again, put the cross of Christ, Jesus' work, as the primary display of God's love for us. And afterward, he's talking with this missionary who's, he's just become a little upset at this, what seems like over-insistence on this point. The missionary has had a terrible childhood with abuse, all sorts of difficult circumstances, and he's really struggled with accepting that God has loved him. And then recently, this missionary recalls how another preacher has come in, and after preaching to them, giving them some word of encouragement, this preacher begins to ask some great questions finds out more about this missionary's hard life, and then helps him by helping him rethink through just what it is to feel loved by God. And he has this missionary kind of reimagine what it means to be born again. And he gives him this image of, you know, imagine yourself just actually born from your mother and the first person who picks you up and warms you and carries you and snuggles you are the very arms of Christ. And just gets immensely experiences for the first time just how warm and loving Christ is, and it just makes this missionary weep and weep and weep. For the first time, he actually feels genuinely loved by Jesus, and his life is just put together. Now, I want you to hear, how does Carson respond to that? Carson says, was I going to criticize that? He asked me, basically, I criticized something like that in some of the sermons I was talking about, and he said, it's helped me. I feel more mature, more stable, more loved by Christ. What's wrong with any of that? Well, what would you have answered? Oh, I'd rather you not feel the love of Christ, thanks. No, what I said to him was, look, if in consequence to that experience, you're better able to feel the love of God in Christ, I'm happy. I'm not going to throw stones, but frankly, you've chosen second best. The missionary responded, I beg your pardon. And he kept going, where in scripture is the love of Christ most greatly manifested? It's manifested in the incarnation, it's manifested in the sufferings, and supremely the cross work of Christ. Isn't that what the New Testament writers come back to again and again and again? Isn't that what's going on in Revelation 1-5, when it says, to him who loved us and freed us from our sins in his own blood? Isn't that what Paul says when he's describing justification in Galatians 2, 20 and 21, and he throws out that in Christ Jesus who loved me and gave himself for me, What I said to him was, look, you could have had the same experience. You could have had the same feeling of emotional reintegration in the context of a gospel application of the basic gospel truths. Where does the Bible speak of discovering the love of Jesus? By projecting in your imagination Jesus standing there as you're being born again and he holds you. Now the truth of the matter is, in your own mind, I said, Carson said, you do not now think of the power of the gospel to reintegrate your life, but the power of imagination. If you're reintegrated and beginning to be able to feel again, I'm not going to throw stones, but you've still chosen second best. You've got it aligned and associated in your mind, not with what God discloses you should have associated with, but with something in which, in time, if not checked, could eventually just take you into all kinds of psychological solutions. imaginings of this and that, meditations on this or something else, instead of that which is the finest, historical, God-centered, space-time history, real demonstration of the love of Christ, namely the cross. Now, I tell you frankly that you could have had all the emotional experience of all the sense of reintegration with all the brokenness, all the tears by meditating on a passage like Ephesians 3, that you might be able to grasp with all the saints. the height, the length, the depth, the breadth of the love of God in Christ, and know this love that surpasses knowledge. What you need is to integrate your experiences with a grasp of the love that comes in the gospel. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time till you drift off into just pursuing an experience divorced from God's self-disclosure in the gospel. is doing that. He's doing just what Carson was exhorting that missionary to do, to take one's despair and frustrations and put them under God's truth. But it's what Asaph discovered when he went back into the sanctuary that now kind of propels him upward. The final and the biggest step to see is a renewed portrait of God, and Asaph begins to see the fuller picture and get a better understanding of what God is doing. Now, Asaph doesn't tell us why the sanctuary opens his eyes to this better vision. Whether it's all of those images of the garden that are carved into the tapestries and the pillars reminding him of creation and what God has done in creation, or whether it's the morning and the evening sacrifices that he gets to be witness to that are reminding him of the payment for sin, or whether it's a glimpse of the outside of the holies of holies and the ark dwelling in there, any one of those things, he doesn't tell us Why? But whatever stirred him, it gets him to asking the right question. Whom have I in heaven but you? That is, everything begins to be re-evaluated in contrast to whether or not they're on heaven's side or on this world side. Look again at verse 18. Truly you set them in slippery places or 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. It's the speed at which they vanish that he begins to confess. Haven't we seen how the Lord Jesus makes that point again and again and again in the Sermon on the Mount? He speaks to men and women and lays down for them who will truly enter his kingdom and who will just be swept away. Who will build their house on rock and who will have a house that is simply washed away by a storm. Those that do not take him seriously at that point just simply refuse to come to grips with the fact that he has risen from the grave as a warning shot. Jesus coming out of the grave on the third day is a warning shot that the end has begun. The announcement of good news that we can change sides and embrace him or that we will not take his warning and we'll find ourselves as short-lived as a nightmare. Asaph can finally see it, and when he recognizes that, that he has wavered on that point, that he wasn't seeing it correctly. But the question, the question, whom have I in heaven but you? It's the right question, because it takes all the other things, all the other things that God has either given or that we think he has failed to given, and it asks us, are we okay if the only thing that we get is God himself? Will we actually be okay if the only thing that we get is God? Yeah, the wicked get better everything, but I get God. That's what Asaph is really able to say. And he can finally see it and he recognized that he wavered on that point. Asaph knows the truth that Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." So, brothers and sisters, you have the great privilege presented before you, even in the darkest of your sufferings, or in your doubts about what God is doing and why He's worth it. First, for the sake of the world around you, including any adult or other child in this room who doesn't know Christ, for you to be able to confirm to the other people around you, through your testimony, that even if you get nothing else, if you get to be with God, that will be the prize. They need to hear it because they watch you and they observe you and they know whether or not that you value God because it's either something he gives you what you want or whether he gives you more of himself. Testify to them that it's true and that it should be true for them. Testify to them that you have set your mind to say, my heart, my flesh might fail, but God's my strength. That he will never, just like Christ says, that Christ will make up for anything we miss in this life and he will be better for anyone when he receives them. He has promised to make a home for his people. That he will never leave nor forsake them. That everyone who cast themselves upon him will be with him through the end of the age and into countless ages upon that. But second, The other great privilege for you, when you say that, that nothing else matters besides getting God, when you ask that question, you can answer it rightly, is that the days between when we're born and when we're dying, they're all full of trouble. Even though we pray, your kingdom come, it's going to feel like a long ways off every time something distressing happens. But if you can answer that question rightly, you'll be able to wait until it comes with patience, with joy, with love, with the kind of deep belly laughter that's only reserved for those that have actually already had a taste of the age to come, have tasted what it means to already have heard all your sins are forgiven, have tasted of the Spirit's peace, have tasted of all the things that Christ has already begun. because you already have and know God. That's what he says at the end, right? Verse 28, but it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. And if you're here, and whether you're just thinking through these things, you haven't heard the gospel and understood it before, The question you should be asking yourself is, whom do I have in heaven? If you don't know God, then you have to settle that question. Because if you don't, then God has promised you will not be with him in the ages to come. You will not be with him when he restores and he makes a new heavens and a new earth and he brings all of his people in. Go to Christ. He has clearly made all of his intentions of how he will save a people, and he will renew a new world for them to live in, and he will make a home for them to dwell in. He has made all of those promises clear in his word. Go to him, and you will find that regardless of what other things might be in this world that would tempt you to envy, would tempt you to despair, would tempt you to embitter you, you will find Christ to be more. more than all of those things combined. You will find treasure that moth and rust cannot destroy and is good forever. Let's pray. Father, it's good to have your word set before us again. It is good to see another saint have to walk through and be stretched and be pulled and have gone to the edge of darkness and yet come back. And so we ask that you would do the same for us here, that you would take all of those hearts that are despairing, that are embittered, that are angry, especially at what their life seems like, and you would allow their eyes to be lifted to a new horizon, to be able to ask again, who else would I have in heaven but you? Who else do I have that is on the Lord's side? And then as they come together with all of the saints, they would be refreshed and strengthened again to long and to desire and to seek for a kingdom that will someday be all the more real, that someday will be made clear when all of the saints are resurrected from the grave and they are put into a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells forever. Our hope goes so far beyond this, Father, and I pray you would strengthen your saints and prepare them for that day. We pray all of this in Christ's name, amen.