And turn with me in God's Word to Psalm 73. Again, next week I'll be starting a series, a topical series on the Ten Commandments. A couple of weeks of introduction to that and then looking at each of the commandments successfully, hopefully successfully, successively. But today we're looking at our Psalm of the Month for January. So Psalm 73, a psalm of Asaph. I'll read this whole psalm, hear God's holy infallible word. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling. My steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant, as I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death. Their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore, pride is their necklace. The garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness. The imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression. They speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue parades through the earth. Therefore, as people return to this place and waters of abundance are drunk by them, They say, how does God know? And is there knowledge with the most high? Behold, these are the wicked, and always at ease. They have increased in wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence, for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning. If I had said I will speak thus, behold, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight. until I came into the sanctuary of God. Then I perceived their end. Surely you have set them in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment. They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors, like a dream when one awakes. Oh Lord, when aroused, you will despise their form. When my heart was embittered and I was pierced within and I was senseless and ignorant, I was like a beast before you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You have taken hold of my right hand. With your counsel, you will guide me and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. 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 will perish. You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good. I've made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. One of the biggest things that's talked about on New Year's Day or around New Year's Day is resolutions, New Year's resolutions. Top resolutions according to surveys every year include losing weight or saving more money or drinking less or exercising more. We know also from surveys that 90% of resolutions will fail, and a majority of those will fail within weeks of January 1st. Some resolutions, in some sense, can be a very good thing. Some are motivated by healthy discipline or something like that, but many, I think, are driven by jealousy or ambition for more successful, prosperous life, things that you see other people have that you want, as if lots of people are scouring the landscape of our culture and society and just thinking, what do I want? What do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? What can benefit my life more this new year? Well, the psalmist here is telling us about scouring his society and seeing all the things people were pursuing and how he kind of got caught up in that. And he'll tell us his story. We'll see in a moment. But he concluded in the end, the end of the psalm, but as for me, it is good to be near God. That's the NIV. version that's in the title of your sermon this morning. As for me, it is good to be near God. So I want to encourage you this morning that that would be your best possible New Year's resolution, to say people are pursuing all kinds of things for meaning and contentment and betterment, but as for me, it is good to be near God or good to draw near to God, as other translations have it. So look first at number one in your outline and the struggle that the psalmist had here. In verse one, he begins outside of his struggle by saying, surely God is good to Israel. God is good, especially to his people. That's not his attitude in the first part of the psalm, as we'll see. And it's almost as if he inserted that here to assure us that he's not an apostate, as we come to verse two and much of the rest of the psalm. This is the conclusion he's gonna come back to. So we'll leave that off for now, even though it's sort of a summary of his conclusion. But verse two, he says, but as for me, so God is good, but as for me, let me take you back, tell you a story. about what happened to me, how I came to doubt that, that God is good. He goes on, my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped. He almost slipped, what does he mean by that? Well later he speaks of, later in the psalm he uses that word to speak of the wicked in slippery places, they're sliding down to destruction. He's saying that's what almost happened to him. He almost rejected God, he almost left the church, gave up on it all. Verse 15, he almost betrayed or harmed God's children. Verse 21, he became bitter and senseless. So what brought him to this point? What took him away from verse 1, from God is good? What gave rise to his bitterness? Look at letter A on your outline there. He goes on to tell us in verse 3, for I was envious. I was envious of the arrogant, and I saw the prosperity of the wicked." So he sees all these people around him who are living arrogant, ungodly lives, rejecting the Lord and any kind of life for the Lord, and they're prospering. That's his basic struggle. Life is good, even though they're ignoring God. He says that the word translated prosper here in the NAS is actually the Hebrew word shalom, which most are probably familiar with. which we most often associate with peace in English, but it's a much bigger concept than peace. It's welfare, completeness, wholeness, peace, health, everything in life as it should be. He's looking at these people and saying life is good for them. It's complete. Verse four goes on, there are no pains in their death. There's some slightly different translations of that. In the ESV, it's they have no pains until death. Either way, whatever is intended there, he's observing. Even death seems to come more easily to these people I'm seeing who are rejecting the Lord. The rest of verse 4, their body is fat. NIV translates that idiom for us. Their bodies are healthy and strong is the meaning of that. Again, they're prospering in peace and health. Verse 5 continues that theme. They're not in trouble as other men or plagued like others. They don't seem to have trouble like other people do. Verse 6, not only that, pride is their necklace. The garment of violence covers them. They're prideful, they're so prideful they're violent towards other people. Verse 7, their eye bulges from fatness, that's a figure either of their pride or their wealth or both. They're just bursting with prosperity. Verse 7 goes on, their imaginations, their heart run riot. Probably the sense is they have whatever they want, whatever they can think of. They end up getting their hands on. Verses 8 and 9, they mock and wickedly speak of oppression. They speak from on high, more about their pride. They have set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue parades through the earth. arrogantly scoffing at God and oppressing other people. Proverbs 16 says pride goes before a fall and the psalmist struggle is where is the fall? Their lives just keep going up and up and ascending. They have seemingly no restraints, no justice is coming from God, no justice from men. Verse 11 picks up this theme. They say, how does God know? scoffing at God? Is their knowledge with the most high? Does God even know? Maybe is God even there? We're doing whatever we want and nothing happens. God doesn't do anything. Verse 12, behold, these are the wicked, or these are the ungodly, is really the word there. They're living without any care for God, not mindful of Him, not serving Him. And yet, verse 12, and always at ease. They have increased in wealth. Life is good and it keeps getting better. Seeing all this, the psalmist continues then, and as we look at letter B on your outline, to tell us more about his struggle with this and difficult questions he wrestled with then. He explains the conclusion he almost came to in verse 13. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence. In other words, I've been living for God. I've been trying to do what's right, but what's it all for? What's the use? I've been not acting arrogantly or violently. What's it gotten me? Well, only verse 14. I've been stricken all day long. I'm suffering. I'm doing what's right, I'm trying to serve the Lord, and my life is not prosperous and easy, like all these ungodly people around me, he says. It's not fair, God. That's his struggle. He's discontent in his own circumstances, he's envious of other people's circumstances, and it leads to doubts, it seems, about God. Is God fair? Is God just? Is God good? Maybe he's adopting the attitude of those around him. Verse 11, is God even there? The world seems upside down. Is God even there? And it led, verse 21, again, to bitterness. Bitterness probably towards God, maybe towards others. I trust all of us can identify in some ways with this psalmist. Maybe most directly, maybe we'd admit to feelings toward the wealthy or powerful, at least some of them in our world. Don't they seem to have it easy? They have whatever they want. They go wherever they want. They get preferential treatment. They get away with things. They can afford powerful lawyers or the best doctors. They're well-connected. They make piles of money with their piles of money. Where is the blessing for God's people? If God is who he says he is, why do good people suffer so much? Why are his children not the ones who are prospering in the world? These are legitimately hard questions, things that we all maybe wrestle with in different ways, hard to understand. Verse 16, the psalmist agreed, when I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight, or the ESV has, it was a worrisome task. The NIV, it was oppressive to me. It's just too hard, too painful. To look at the world and how upside down it is. Good people suffering and wicked people prospering. And of course these are generalizations, right? A psalmist knows that not all ungodly people are healthy and wealthy and everything. But these are generalizations as he struggled to look at this. It was too hard to figure it out. How can these things be? Maybe in more general ways we can identify with the psalmist as well. Ironically, I think the psalmist's complaint, his struggle, reveals his own pride. He's saying, look at how prideful these people are and they're prospering. But his own pride is showing in his discontent, his bitterness. Maybe it does in us, our bitterness towards others who have what we want or maybe don't treat us like the way we think we deserve to be treated. We're envious of all sorts of things or people and for us, like the psalmist, those attitudes are an expression really of doubt in the goodness and the justice of God, the love and the wisdom of God for us. There are others in scripture who ask these questions to Job in Job chapter 21. Listen to questions that Job asks. This is my favorite line. Their bull breeds without fail. Their cow calves and does not miscarry. They send out their little boys like a flock. Their children dance. They spend their days in prosperity and peace. They go down to death. They say to God, go away from us. We don't desire to know you. What is the almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him? Job struggled with seeing people who would say such things prospering. Jeremiah in Jeremiah 12 asked, Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? Well, let's look then secondly on your outline to the beginning of his change of heart in this psalm. The first step in his change of heart, his change of thinking, is in verse 17. He just said in verse 16, I was trying to work this out and it was just too big a burden. It was too worrisome. It was too troubling until, verse 17, until I came into the sanctuary of God. Until I came into the presence of God. Until I consciously took on the perspective of God. Essentially what he's saying, I think, is I submitted to the word of God. I really listened to the word of God. Until I was reminded who God is to his people. What God has done for his people. Until I was reminded how God has shown justice in the past, how he has been faithful to his promises. It hasn't meant that things were easy or peaceful at particular times, but God has always been faithful, always shown his justice in certain ways. And note the contrast with verse 16. He says, when I pondered to understand, when I tried in my own limited and blinded perspective, in my own mind, my own short-sightedness, when I tried to figure this out, I couldn't. It was too burdensome. Until I came to the presence of God. Until I listened to God. Then, he says, then I perceived, or it's the word for seeing, then I saw. Then he sees reality correctly. What did he see? Then I perceived their end, he said. He's still talking about the ungodly, the arrogant, wicked in the world. Then I saw, I understood the trajectory of their life, the end, where it was leading, ultimately. It reminds us of Jesus' teaching about a narrow, difficult road, a road that's unattractive unless you know the end of it. Then it's the most blessed and obvious road that there could be. And the contrast is a wide, attractive road, unless you know the end of it, that it leads to destruction. Psalmist goes on to tell us what he came to understand. Verse 18, surely you set them in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction. How they're destroyed in a moment. They're utterly swept away by sudden terrors like a dream. He says, you, God, you set them in slippery places. Things are actually the opposite of appearance. The sinful fallen world is upside down in one sense, but from the perspective of God, it's being set upright. These wealthy oppressors that he's lamenting are not actually ascending in life. They're not actually in a stable place. They're sliding down. And the higher they are, the farther they'll fall, in a sense. It's like they've built their house in the sand, to use Jesus' metaphor. It looks like a beautiful, fun mansion right now, but it'll be destroyed as soon as the test comes. It's temporary. So the psalmist realizes God is active in their lives. He's not simply allowing people temporary prosperity, which he is, but they've been set on a path to destruction. They're running headlong into eternal judgment if they don't repent, if they don't live their lives for God. The psalm says nothing of wealth being evil or anything like that. It's that they're not living their lives for God. Their lives are not stable. They're not secure. They're not as good as they seem. Maybe sometimes in our envy or our discontentment with our circumstances, we can get caught up in the same kind of thinking. about the wealthy or prideful in our world, often I think you don't have to scratch very far, very deep to find the same kind of truths. I mean, you think of celebrities, we might be tempted to have that kind of envy of many celebrities or movie stars, thinking that their lives are so easy and so wonderful and so beautiful, and you scratch just a little bit and find that they're Family lives, their personal lives are, it seems usually, trash heaps of misery and addiction and anxieties. It's not universal, but again, they're in slippery places if they're not serving the Lord. As Solomon says, Asaph says, their lives are as a dream. Their pleasures and freedoms and destructive behaviors in this life will pass away as quickly and meaninglessly as a dream. Most of us, if not all of us, probably had some dreams just a few hours ago while we were sleeping. Most of us probably don't remember any of those dreams. Dreams can be vivid when you're in the middle of it. It can be scary or exciting or fun or sad. It seems like reality, but then it's gone in an instant when you wake up. Usually it's not just over, it's forgotten. You don't remember it. That verse goes on Verse 20, the end, you will despise their form or their image that the NIV has, you will despise them as fantasies. I think that's simply continuing that image of a dream. This imagined life that those apart from the Lord think they have, God's going to in one day erase it like a dream, like just like a fantasy in a moment. John Calvin comments, we are dreaming when we regard as real and substantial those things which are merely phantoms created out of nothing by our imaginations. And a prosperous, meaningful life apart from the Lord is a phantom. It's imagination. The psalmist comes back to this in verse 27, this assurance, for behold, those who are far from you will perish. He came to the conviction that everything will be turned right side up according to God's plan and his promise and his justice one day and that all those who trust in the Lord will be vindicated by his grace. All those who rejected his grace and his truth will be judged apart from his grace one day. Look at letter B on your outline here, his coming to full repentance. He comes to the point of admitting his sin and the character of his thinking before God. Look at verse 21, my heart was embittered. I was pierced within and I was, he confesses, I was senseless and ignorant. I was like a beast before you. He confesses he was He lacked the knowledge and the wisdom to work this out, but he's not excusing himself. He was senseless, he was foolish, even like a beast before you or with you. It's the same phrase as the next verse, with you. I was like a beast with you. He sees just how low and horribly he was behaving toward his father, his God, and his truth. He wasn't relating to him like one of his children, like one of his covenant children. He was acting more like a dumb animal with God. And you and I, when we're tempted to doubt or envy or discontentment, to forget the truth and the reality God has shown us and given to us, we need to come to God and repent. It doesn't mean that we can't bring serious questions to God or serious doubts to God. It doesn't mean we'll have everything figured out or all our questions answered immediately. There are hard questions. There are very hard circumstances that we live through and struggle to understand or reconcile with who we know God is. But the first step is to admit our helplessness, our ignorance, maybe the foolishness of questioning the goodness and the justice and the wisdom of God. Envy, like it did with Asaph here, blinds us. Envy makes us ignore Past history, what God has done, it makes us ignore the tiny blip that we are compared to our future. It makes us like you've seen racehorses with the blinders on. It makes us like with blinders just seeing what's right in front of us, the ground right in front of us. We do that to ourselves and we get sucked into jealousy and discontentment. We refuse to see what God sees. We refuse to hear what he tells us. We see what we want to see. John Calvin has these good and powerful comments on this psalm. If by faith we would look from a distance at the judgments of God, daily approaching nearer and nearer, nothing would happen which we would regard as strange or difficult to believe. For the surprise that we feel proceeds from the slowness and carelessness with which we proceed in acquiring knowledge of the divine truth. The psalmist goes on to describe what he came to understand, looking at number three on your outline. And I'm summarizing what he came to understand basically is the nearness of God, the nearness of God to him, the grace of God to be near him. And this is, we're gonna look at verses 23 through the end of the psalm. This is selection C in our Psalter that will be our memory psalm for this month. And I've turned what the psalmist came to understand to confess here into three imperatives, three applications for us to think about this morning. So the first is know that God is with you always. Know that God is with you always. Verse 23 is probably one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament. It's the good news of God's grace. He says, nevertheless, I am continually with you. You have taken hold of my right hand. And I want you to note particularly the two with you's that are here. It's the same phrase, the NAS uses different words here, but in verse 22 he says, I was a beast with you. I was asking like a stupid animal with you, Lord. Nevertheless, despite that, I'm continually with you, he says. He's clear that it's not because of his own effort. It's not been because of his faithfulness. He had forgotten. He'd been blinded. He thought God was unfair. He nearly abandoned God and his truth. But he realized God had, Lord, you had taken my hand. You had taken hold of my hand already. You were already holding my hand. I was acting like an animal. God was with him all the time. Some of you would be familiar, pretty familiar with the psalm selection, maybe particularly in the old psalter, in the red psalter, that the psalm began, yet evermore I am with you, which is not less than what the psalmist is saying here, but our newer psalter has a better translation. It begins yet constantly. I am with you. Evermore is pointing us, our minds to the future. God, you will be with me forever. Constantly is what the psalmist is saying right now. You've been with me all along, constantly. As I've acted like a dumb animal, as I've been unfaithful, I've gone through these struggles of doubt about whether you even existed or whether you were even good. You have constantly been with me. A Hebrew dictionary defines the word, the Hebrew word there is without interruption. The gospel assures us that despite our interruptions of attention to God and his fellowship with us and so on, his being with us, his caring for us, his loving us is never interrupted. It's without interruption because you're united to Christ, you're washed of your sins, you are beloved sons and daughters with God always. The psalmist has that realization in the past, you have taken hold of my right hand, you are already holding my hand through all of this. And verse 24, with your counsel you will guide me, that's a present tense verb, you are guiding me. And he has this realization for the future. Verse 24 again, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Secondly, a second imperative here is, know God as your portion. Know God as your portion. Verse 25, he asks, whom have I in heaven but you? Besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, they will fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. We don't use the word portion in English this way anymore. We usually only use it in connection with food, how many plates of food we get. But it means my allotment, my share. It's even a synonym for inheritance. It's what you get in the end, your portion. This is what you get. And part of the point of the psalm is the wicked have chosen their portion. They've chosen the things of this world, things that look attractive and fun and so on now, but will not last. They'll disappear like a dream. The psalmist portion is what? It's not a different set of things. The psalmist portion is God himself. God himself is the psalmist's possession and inheritance. It's the only thing he has, he says, his only desire. Verse 26, literally, you are the rock of my heart and my portion. He's the only sure and eternal hope. No one, nothing else can satisfy, can lead him continually. can give him a future in glory, verse 24. And for the psalmist, God is not just his only portion, as he says, he's the greatest possible portion. God is the greatest possible possession for any human to have. And you, as the people of God, have the greatest share, the greatest portion, the greatest inheritance with Christ, imaginable, and you have it with Christ forever. So how could we turn aside to other things as we wait for this world to be set right, even as we struggle with those things? And thirdly, finally, draw near to God. Draw near to God. The psalmist concludes, verse 28, but as for me, the nearness of God is my good. I've made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works. The nearness of God is my good. Or again, as other translations have, it is good to draw near to God. I think that's the idea of this. And we have that language in the Old Testament, particularly of drawing near to God. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. What does that mean? What does it mean to draw near to God? We can't do that physically, spatially, literally. What does it mean to draw near to God? The phrase often relates particularly to listening to God. Listening to him. If my voice was soft and the microphone was not on, If you couldn't hear very well in the back, you might have to draw near, right? Sit closer and stick your neck out and listen. That's drawing near to God, listening to Him, knowing Him, looking for what His character and His law and His promises and His comforts have to say to the things that you're struggling with. Listen to Him, know Him. Do you know that to be your good, your greatest good? Envy and discontentment and so on come out of feeling that others are blessed and we're not blessed, at least on the same level, wishing we had something different. Forgetting that this is our inheritance, this is our possession. Again, I challenged us several weeks ago to think about what does it mean to be blessed and how do we use that word? What do you mean when you say I'm so blessed? Much of what we call blessings are that for sure, Do they not also function, can they function as dangerous enticements away from the realization that God is our greatest possession? When I say I'm so blessed or God blessed me with this or that, I think often we're speaking of things that are the kinds of things that almost destroyed Asaph's faith, right? I want this. And I got it, so now I understand that I'm blessed. No, you are blessed because you have God, whether you get X or Y or Z or not. We need to be careful with how we think about that. It should be our confession every day that my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the portion, the strength of my heart and my portion forever. And to draw near to God is my good. God uses hard things in this life, struggles and doubts and hard questions to teach us to depend on Him alone, to carry His work on to completion and to learn that He Himself is our good. I want to close just by reading briefly from another psalm that has basically the same theme. This is Psalm 73. If you flip the digits around, Psalm 37 has the same theme as Psalm 73. 37 and 73 both struggle with why wicked are prospering, why God's people suffer. But if anything, Psalm 37 says even more powerfully, more strongly, the conclusion and the lessons of Psalm 73. So I'm just going to skip through and read a few verses from Psalm 37. If you're trying to follow along, you might get a little lost because I'm just reading some select verses. But it begins, Do not fear because of evildoers. Do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. Be still before the Lord. Wait patiently for him. Don't fear over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil desires. Refrain from anger. and forsake wrath, don't fear, it tends only to evil. In just a little while, the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he won't be there. So better is the little that the righteous has than an abundance of many wicked. The steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way. For the Lord loves justice. He will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever. but the children of the wicked shall be cut off. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would bless us in this new year to be content to know you as our greatest good, to reject the relentless pursuit of stuff and happiness and to find joy and contentment as your sons and daughters, as heirs with our king. We pray that we would have joy in that this year. We pray all this in his name, in the name of Christ and for his sake. Amen.