Our scripture this morning is Psalm 73. I invite you to read or follow along with me. Psalm 73, a Psalm of Asaph. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore, pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness. Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice. Loftily, they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them. And they say, how can God know? Is their knowledge in the most high? Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I 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, and it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. Truly you have 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 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 all your works." The word of the Lord. Well, good morning. It's great to be with you all again. A lot sooner than the last time, but it was just a few weeks ago that I was able to be here on a Sunday evening. So, thankful for the chance to be with you all on a Sunday morning and to worship with you. I invite you to open up your Bibles to the passage Psalm 73 that we just read. And as you're turning there, I'd love to just provide a few words of context to help us orient ourselves to this particular psalm. You might notice that there's a couple inscriptions above this psalm that are just helpful for us. The first is that it's the first psalm of the third book of the psalms. So this large book of 150 songs for God's people has been divided into a couple smaller books to just help us find our way in them. But this third book is interesting as it kind of concludes the larger collection of the psalms that are authored and inspired by the Spirit to David. And so this is really the first psalm that is separate. David will have a few more psalms attributed to him later on in the book, but this is really the first of the psalms that are more for God's people or general psalms, you might say, that are for or from the worship of God's people and not just from particular instances in David's life. You might also notice that the psalm begins with that attribution, a Psalm of Asaph. Asaph was a Levite, you see him mentioned in a couple different passages in 1st and 2nd Chronicles particularly, as a songwriter and worship leader for the people of God. And his descendants, his sons, would actually go on to lead worship in the temple itself after its construction under Solomon. So the first 10 Psalms of this third book of the Psalms are attributed to this man Asaph the Lord as a spirit inspires him to write these songs for God's people. And so you might just say, what does that have to do with anything this morning? And what I think it helps us see is that the psalm that we've just heard read and we'll look at in detail this morning is a psalm written by somebody that we might say is a spiritual leader. Somebody who has a position of authority or knowledge in the the worship of God's people. This isn't just, not to insult, but this isn't just a psalm written by anybody. Although the truths contained in it would still be just as applicable for us, but this is a psalm of somebody who has leading worship or who is writing many psalms for the people of God. And so the questions and the longing and the The despair, even, that are found in this psalm, I think, should give us hope that this is coming from somebody who is intimately acquainted with the Lord, who worships Him regularly, who is trusting Him, and even in that trust and relationship, still feels the freedom and the place to cry out with questions and even despair and longing. So, as we look at this psalm, I just want to begin with a quick thought and some questions for us. This early couple months of this year I had the chance to finish a novel I never read before written by John Steinbeck a couple years ago called East of Eden. And you might know John Steinbeck wrote a lot of books in the middle part of the last century. But this book East of Eden is kind of his magnum opus and it is one of his great books. And in this story spanning several generations of American families, he kind of uses the Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve motif to tell this story about these families. And what he really gets to the crux of is how sin and people's choices have affected the generations that follow after them. And the story is really about how these subsequent generations deal with their parents' and grandparents' sin and decisions and how they have a choice to make about whether or not they're going to break those cycles in their own lives and families. And so this mirror of the biblical story, the sins of previous generations and its effects, this journey towards redemption. And that title, East of Eden, is actually taken from, you'll remember, as Adam and Eve sin and are cast out of the garden, that East of Eden is a place of judgment for them. It's a place of not where they should be. A place of where everything that was is lost, everything that was good has been broken because of their sin, and they're living in need of redemption and restoration back to the place of relationship and joy. And so you and I, we might say, find ourselves living east of Eden, even here in Norfolk in 2025, in a place that is so far removed from that Edenic place of fellowship and worship with God, free from sin, where we were meant to be. We're far from there. And as we live in that world, in this world that is so broken by sin, that's so affected by sinful choices down through history and even in the generations of our own families, we find ourselves in places where we really just look around the world, at the world around us and see a lot of brokenness, a lot of confusion, a lot of sin and all of the things that it brings. And so the question for us this morning is what are we seeing in the world around us? What are we observing about the lives of those who are east of Eden, those who live apart from relationship with God? And as we think about what we see and observe in the world around us, I think we can ask ourselves, what are we longing for? As we find ourselves in similar places, the Psalm that we're reading this morning is the crying out of somebody who's looking at people who have no relationship with God, yet everything seems to be good for them. And I think that we would be honest with ourselves, would say that that's often true of us as well. As we look around the world and we see the wicked, we see the people who are living outside of God's plan for them, we see that life seems to be pretty good for them, fairly often. Successful, stable, a lot of financial security. And we, like Asaph in this psalm, can find ourselves longing for even what they have, what is apparently security and prosperity in this world. And so this morning, I hope that Psalm 73 will show all of us that we are not alone and are not alone even in the history of God's people in sharing these sorts of fears, wondering thoughts, is this really worth it? And even jealousies and envy of the wicked and their apparent prosperity. Psalm 73 will help us see that God's people are welcome to cry out to God with these questions. And since this is a song meant to be sung, to cry out to one another, is this how it's supposed to be? But I hope that the psalm will also be our guide to see that even in a world where the wicked seem to prosper without consequence, God is good to his people and a near refuge to those who trust in him. So let's look at this psalm together. The psalm is broken up into three different sections, each introduced with this word, truly. The second section we'll talk about, the ESV translation omits that particular word, but it's there in the original text. But each of these truly sections begins the psalmist's thoughts. And so we'll look at these in turn. The first is the confession of the psalmist. Second, the conclusion of the psalmist. And finally, the correction of the psalmist. First, verse one, Asaph says, truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. And so the confession of Asaph, of the psalmist, is a true confession to start. It's a good place for him to begin this journey of questioning and the doubt, where he acknowledges the reality of God's goodness, the tov of God, his good, his pleasant, agreeable, beautiful posture, You'll remember that as God created the world, he called it good. That's the same word that's used here. Truly God is pleasant and agreeable towards Israel, his covenant people, those he has called out, those he is redeeming and rescuing from the place outside of Eden, as it were, back to himself. Asaph confesses that this goodness exists. God's goodness towards his people is a reality in which he finds himself. But it continues, to those who are pure in heart, literally those who are clean or those who are wholly committed to the God that has saved them, the God of their covenant. And you might say that maybe Asaph here even is wondering that maybe God's goodness is only to the good people. Or at least that's the way that it seems to him, that God's goodness is only demonstrated towards those who can claim to be pure in heart. to those who can claim to be wholly committed to him. And Asaph's confession in verses two and three. begins to reveal rightfully in his own admission that he's probably not the most pure in heart, that he's not the most committed wholly to his God because as he says, verse two, as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped because I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. He was envious or jealous of the boastful and the guilty I love the image there that he gives in verse 2. You might imagine somebody on the precarious edge of a mountain top as they're trying to find their way and any wrong movement could send them tumbling in the wrong direction. Maybe more familiar to some of us is if you've ever gone up into your attic and you're trying to walk carefully on the beams not to step off lest your foot go through somebody's bedroom ceiling. Here Asaph says, I'm on this razor's edge of feeling like one wrong thought or inclination and I am headed for disaster. And he says, the reason for this is simply because I was jealous and jealous of the shalom, the peace and the prosperity that seems evident even in the life of the wicked. One author gives a definition of jealousy as a fear of loss of something you have. And I think here in Asaph's confession of his envy, he's helping us see that he's wondering is God's goodness that he's confessed lost to him? Is it really there for him? And I think for us is we even see the apparent shalom and peace and prosperity of the wicked in our day. Do we fear that God has abandoned us, that his goodness is no longer for us in our lives, present with us? Do we fear that we have lost the shalom that he brings? Let's look at the observation of the wicked that Asaph goes on in verses four through 12. He describes, the prosperity that has led to this envy. I think it's categorized in three different ways. First is their prosperity in life, second is their mistreatment of others, and finally their arrogance towards God. In verse four he says, 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. I think if we were to look for the most evidence of sin and its brokenness in our lives, I think it would be in the physical suffering that we experience or see our loved ones experience in illness, in death, where we see bodies begin to break down and wear down, where we see just people getting old and people getting sick and people passing away before it should be their time to go. We just see that this is not how life was meant to be. This is not what God has meant for his creation. And Asaph observes that for the wicked it seems like their lives are free from this sort of pain. That their lives seem to be free from this sort of degrading effect in their lives. They have no pangs, no pain until death. And indeed, their bodies are fat and sleek. And the ancient Near East, fatness was a sign of prosperity. You had enough food to eat. You had enough wealth to buy food. And so, a person who was described as fat was not necessarily an insult, but a description of them as being able to be blessed in bountiful ways. And for them, their lives seemed to just have ceaseless bounty and goodness. Verse five, they're not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. Everything seems to be good for them. The effects of sin's brokenness don't seem to make their way into their lives. And this leads them, in verses six through eight, to a very arrogant way of living, a way of using and abusing those around them. Pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment. I'm better than everybody else because of my bounty, because of my stability. I can get away with whatever I need to. They scoff and speak with malice, loftily they threaten oppression. Everybody else is at their service. Everybody else can be used up in their lives. And it seems to be that their prosperity equals power. leads to mistreatment of others, to oppression and abuse. How often do we see this pattern play out in our own lives as we observe people on social media or even our own leaders and politicians who just seem so far above everything. because of the way that there are the numbers in their bank account or the power that they wield. And we see just the devastating effects that it has in their treatment of others, in the way that they speak about others. And we just see that these sorts of oppressive maligners get away with it. And nobody seems to push back or bring consequences. So Asaph is envy of this prosperity, of this freedom to use and abuse others, and finally, even an arrogance towards God, verses nine through 12. They set their mouths against the heavens, their tongue struts through the earth. What an image of these people who just feel like they can say whatever, blaspheme all they want and nothing happens. Verse 11, they say, how can God know? Is their knowledge in the most high? We've probably all heard somebody utter some sort of similar declaration, you know, as they sin or go about their lives, you know, if God wanted to stop this and is all powerful, why doesn't he do it? You know, if God's real, let him strike me down, that sort of thing. Basically, they're saying that God's apparent silence is almost a sign of approval. That because God hasn't stepped down to stop them or to punish them, they must not even exist, or at least have no knowledge of what they're doing. So these wicked are not even feeling any sort of conscience accountability towards God. They're not afraid. Their lives are just full of mocking, full of scorn. In Asaph's conclusion in verse 12, he says, These are the wicked. And this is how he describes them. Always at ease, they increase in riches. Can you see how this is appealing for you and for me today? I mean, if you were to offer me anything in life, you could say, Andrew, how would you like to be always at ease and increasing in riches? I'd say, that sounds pretty good. Sounds like a good deal. And for us, I think we see and are envious, as Asaph was, of this sort of, if I could just guarantee some sort of physical prosperity and security for me, for my family, if the pangs of death could just be put away from me, if I didn't feel sickness, if I didn't have to worry about my child's doctor's appointment or blood test, if I didn't have to worry about aging parents, there's no telling what I might do to make that happen. Or maybe if we're, you know, if we own a company or a business person, we just really are struggling and want that company to do well, we might be tempted to say, you know, I'm putting in 60, 70 hours. Everybody else who's working for me needs to be doing that too. And in our effort to seek power and stability, we're content or tempted to use up others. And lastly, I think we all would see that the temptation and the opportunity for us to sin secretly, because how does God know? Is there knowledge with the Most High? As I click on this, as I go here, as I type out this rant, does God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Or is His apparent silence an approval of my sinfulness? We can see how all of us, I think, find our place in this list, both in activity, but also in the envy and jealousy of it. In the second section of the Psalm, in verse 13, Asaph says, truly, surely, all in vain, I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. And you can just kind of sense this sort of give up in Asaph's heart. This frustration. And he says, all in vain, I have kept my heart clean. The purity in heart that I thought would guarantee me the love of God, that would bring his faithfulness into my life, where is it? This has all been for nothing. I've washed my hands in innocence, this call back to the sort of ceremonial cleanliness prior to worship. This has been for nothing. He says in verse 14, the evidence is that all day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. I think you and I probably find ourselves here in verse 13 and 14 more often than we would care to admit. And there's good news for us here. But let's sit there for a moment and just think about that sense of emptiness and vanity Literally, the vanity that he talks about is the sort of emptying out of a vessel or the withdrawing of a weapon from a sheath. There's nothing left. And he says, in all of this effort to keep my heart clean, there's nothing, nothing here that I can see. The life I was promised is no life at all. My righteous efforts have been futile. My experience is just this stricken. Every day, all day, heaviness and brokenness seems to be here for me. But for Asaph and for us this morning, the Psalm doesn't end there in verse 14, but continues on. In verse 15, Asaph, says, if I had said I will speak thus, literally he's kind of course correcting in his own mind. And he's saying if I parked here in verses 13 and 14 and concluded there, he goes back to that sense of community, back to the covenant family. He says I would have betrayed the generation of your children. What a lesson for us as we think about and maybe even are tempted to despair in our own lives. Maybe the thing that breaks that cycle in our minds is not just thinking about God's goodness in our own lives, but looking at our community of faith, looking at the covenant family that we are a part of and seeing God's goodness for us. that we are not alone in this life, that we are not alone in this despair, that we are not alone in this sense of brokenness and longing, but that we can look out at other people's lives and see down through history God's faithfulness to them. And for us to say all of this is in vain is really to betray the long history of family faithfulness that God has showed to all of us. So correction is first found in community and then it's found in worship. He says, when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, verse 17, until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I discerned their end. He says, recognition that there's a better understanding can only come in the presence of God. Seeing things as God reveals them to us, not using our own impression of the world around us as our guide, but seeing how is God acting and seeing and moving in the world. And that leads us to the third and final section of the psalm, the correction of the psalmist in verses 18 through 28. It says, truly, verse 18, you set them in slippery places. See that call back, back to verse two? You make them fall to ruin, how they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors. The first thing that Asaph's move towards worship and towards the sanctuary of God, towards understanding God's way of seeing and moving in the world is that God will judge the wicked. He first sees that God's judgment of the wicked will be swift, just like somebody misstepping on a mountainside and falling, that's how it will be to the wicked. That God will judge them swiftly, that they are the ones who are precariously balanced on the life's edge of life, in danger of what a holy God might bring upon them. Asaph sees that their judgment is sure, they'll be destroyed in a moment, there's no, of uncertainty, there's no calculation. God says, you're done. This image in verse 20, like a dream when one awakes, oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. I'm sure we've all had dreams where we've woken up and the dream at first seems so vivid, right? Like we've just watched a movie in our sleep. And then by the time we pour our first cup of coffee, that dream is gone. Like we can't even remember any details of it. And Asaph here says that it will be the same for the wicked, that their memory, as it were, will fade almost instantly. And here I think he helps us see that the judgment of God towards the wicked will be severe, cast away, forgotten like a dream. As Jesus warns in the Gospels that those to whom he says, depart from me, I never knew you. That's the fate of these who seem at this time in this present world so prosperous, so free, that apart from Jesus, they are cast away and forgotten. And here for us, the invitation is to see that apart from Jesus, you this morning have no hope. that you, if you are here this morning without Jesus and are on this razor's edge of wickedness, you are headed towards a swift, sure, and severe judgment. But the invitation is that Jesus gave himself for you, that your wickedness need not prevent you from relationship with him, but that he can, as he did, come to seek and save the lost. In verse 21, Asaph says, he acknowledges this ignorance, verses 21 through 24, as he begins to understand that God is not silent, God is not helpless, God is not going to just let the wicked get their way, but that they are headed towards swift, sure, severe judgment. He says, when my soul was embittered, when I was living in that verse 13 place of all is vanity, all of this has been for naught, He says, when I was pricked in heart, I was like a beast. I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you. And here he's not saying that I am a beast or I'm some low life. He's saying that's what it was like compared to the truth that I see now in the presence of God. And the grace that never wavers for Asaph and for us is in verse 23 and verse 24. The presence of God, even in our verse 13 state of mind. He says, I am continually with you. God did not abandon Asaph in his despair, in his wondering, in his envy even. He was still with him continually, just as he is for us. And now for us in this day, with the Spirit of God in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory, we are nearer to God than we can even imagine, that he is continually with us. We don't need to move into the sanctuary of God in the tabernacle or the temple. We ourselves are. And so as we need clarity and conviction and change, the Spirit can bring it in an instant. As we think and reflect on Christ, we are continually with our Savior. He says, you hold my right hand. I love that image of guidance and instruction of help Guide me with your counsel. We are not alone in knowing how we should live. We don't have to look to those who seem to be free from pain and suffering. We don't have to look to the wicked and be envious of the way that their lives are playing out, because God is our guide. The words of that old hymn, he leadeth me, O blessed thought, whate'er I do, where'er I be, still tis God's hand that leadeth me. That is a gift for all of us this morning. God has not left us to ourselves to figure it out, to make sense of this world. And he's leading us, the end of verse 24, to glory. This life is not all that there is. We will not be east of Eden for long. But Jesus who came and gave himself, died on the cross, was buried and rose again, is coming again. to make all things new, to bring far more than just a health and wealth prosperity to us, but to bring true redemption, true restoration of all that was lost. And all of this that the wicked seem to have in our day and age will be like chaff in the wind, gone as we experience and live in glory with God. And finally, the correction of Asaph in verses 25 through 24. We see that it's a renewal of the confession of verse one. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. This broad category of true goodness that God has demonstrated towards his people, towards those who are pure in heart and wholly committed to him. But now Asaph says, it's for me. experiencing it in my own heart. He says, whom have I in heaven but you? There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. Friends, verse 25 is the counter to verse 13. But we can be free to admit that this is not always easy for us to claim, to believe, to hold on to. Whom have I in heaven but you? God is all we have. But we need one another to remind ourselves of that. When our envy of the wicked seems so powerful and their prosperity seems so evident, this verse can seem so distant to us. Nothing else on earth that I desire but you. And that's where we cry out, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Help this to be true in me. Help the reality of your sufficiency that you are all we have and all we need to be true in my life. Verse 26, my flesh and my heart may fail. All of us will struggle. All of us will fall short. All of us need to be reminded of this. But God can be relied upon for our strength. God is the strength of our heart, our portion forever. He's all we need, all we have. And Asaph reminds himself, verse 27, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. Verse 28, but for me it is good, Tov, to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. Here we see the reversal of verse two. where Asaph moves from a place of slipping and stumbling to a place of stronghold, a place of refuge, a place of security, not because he's figured it out, not because he's put up all sorts of safety lines of self-righteousness, but because he is finding his refuge in God alone. And this nearness to God is ours in Jesus, ours in Christ, Notice the parallels in the words that Asaph uses and the words of something like Isaiah chapter 53, where Jesus was the one emptied for us. Jesus was the one stricken for us. Jesus was the one who kept his heart clean and washed his hands in innocence, true cleanliness and true innocence for us. and yet was stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. So that you and I would not have to hold it all together for ourselves. You and I would not have to endeavor day after day after day to keep our heart clean, wash ourselves time and time again, but to look to Jesus who did all of that for us. Not in vain. No part of what Jesus did was in vain. All was sufficient and all for us. And that's why the author of Hebrews is able to say that he is the one who is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him. So friends, in our doubt, in our fear of this world, the stability, prosperity of the wicked, let us look to Jesus. Let us cry out for the Lord to help our unbelief, to help us to see that this is not the end, that God will judge the wicked, and let us look and see how we might tell each other, even ourselves, of all of his mighty works. Let's pray together. So Father, we pray. Hold us fast. Hold us, Father. Fill us spirit, give us Jesus. Help us to look on him, to see him whose flesh and heart cried out to you, even in his death, but yet who endured the cross, despised the shame. who was bruised for our iniquities. Help us to see that he is our hope. He is our salvation. When all this world seems broken and gone mad, help us to see that Jesus is the strength of our heart, our portion forever, that he is with us every step of the way. Father, we pray in his name, amen.