Father, as we come to your word now, we ask your blessing upon us, that you would take the truths of scripture and make them live powerfully, that we would see them clearly, that you would transform our minds and our thinking, make us more and more conformed to the image of Christ and enable us to see the deceptions of the enemy more clearly, to be able to recognize your truth more clearly, to know and discern your will for us, And Father, we pray if there be anyone here today that is dead in their sins and has never been born again, does not know Christ, we pray, Father, that you might do a mighty work in them by your word and spirit and bring them to salvation. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. Last week we considered the two ways in Matthew 7. Enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few. So you've got the vast majority of the human race going down Broadway, having a good time, and headed for hell. Then you've got the narrow way, which is a hard way, the way of following Christ, traveled by just a few, and it ends in life. And we consider those two ways, and we were challenged by these words of Christ, that we dare not fall for the trap of the enemy to be conformed to the world, to take that easy way along and perish in condemnation and hell in the end, but rather than to follow Christ. I hope that some of you this week, maybe everybody, when you went to work or school, wherever you went, you kind of, You look at people and you wish that they would come to know Christ, and you look for an opportunity to tell them about Christ, but remember, as we talked about last time, they are the living dead. They are spiritual zombies, and they want you to become one of them. They want you to come and join them, and that we must never do. All of this subject is related to the temptation of Christ in the wilderness that we looked at in Matthew chapter four. But he answered, he answers Satan, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And so we live not like animals. Animals just need certain things, right? Stuff. But if we are, as human beings, if we're going to truly live, we live by hearing the Word of God, believing the Word of God, and obeying the Word of God. And our true life is sustained by Him, even if we don't have any of that bread, any of that stuff that the world offers. Well, this morning, I'd like to continue on this theme. have us seriously think about, well, to think about our life some more in a further way. Because I want to show you still another trap that Satan uses against us. And it's really the very same snare that he was trying to use on Christ in the wilderness. And it develops from what we were cautioned about last week. Let me state it this way. Satan wants us to think and live as if our present existence in this present life and world is our real and only life. Remember, we considered that. He wants us to live and think and breathe and walk and conduct ourselves. And in our thinking, the enemy wants us to function with a worldview that's really limited to this world, and that our life is the here and now. And that's all there is. And therefore, he leads us to a second trap, which is in ways even worse. He leads us to think that because what we see now is what we get, if we do not find joy and fulfillment in the circumstances of this present life, we have missed out on life we haven't truly lived. You see this. If I get, and every one of us has to fight this, if I get up every day and I am immersed in my existence in this present world, Then, and I think, this is my life. Well, I'm gonna be in serious trouble if those circumstances that I find myself in are not what I planned, or they are not very pleasant, you see. This is the same philosophy that Jesus warned us about in the parable of the rich fool, right? He's looking at his present life. Let us eat, drink, and be merry. This is what it's all about, life, right now, you see. This is why the world thinks Christians are fools, because we're looking somewhere else, and they think, well, how can you be happy in these particular circumstances here, you see? You're just a fool. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Philippians chapter three. He challenges us, he says, Their end, he's speaking of the wicked, their end is destruction. Their God is their belly. And they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things. See, that's the trap. Their God is their belly. I mean, their life is consumed in seeking bread, the stuff of this world. That's their life. Their mind is set on earthly things. But of the Christian, he says, our citizenship is in heaven. Our citizenship. If you're a Christian, he's telling you that this is a fact. Your citizenship is in heaven. And from it, from heaven, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So if your citizenship is somewhere, that means you are a member of a kingdom. And in this case, it's somewhere else. It's not here in this present world. Our citizenship is in heaven. And again, we see it in Colossians 3. If then you've been raised with Christ, and if you're a Christian, you have been, if then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. And here it is, kind of the punchline. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. That is worthy of a lot of thought. I say to you, so hey, how's your life going? And you might say, well, I'm pretty good today. Or somebody else might say, oh, not too good, not good. See, instantly we run to the circumstances of this life. What scripture's telling us here is, that's not your life. That's not your life. Your life is hidden with Christ above. Your life, your citizenship is in heaven. Just think of all the disappointments that you meet in this present earthly term that's called your earthly life. Talk to people, so how's it going? Maybe talk to somebody that's elderly, all right, whatever that might be, and you say, so how'd it go? How'd your life go? And some people would say, Pretty good, pretty good, I had a good life. Many people would say, I don't think it exactly went the way that I wanted it to, you see. And all of us can say that to one degree or another. I had a different script written for myself. And these are some of the reasons, some of the chief reasons that people will spiral down into a depressing, midlife, or even end of life, old age, anxiety, because they suddenly realize, I mean, you're gonna battle with this, all of us will battle with this at one point or another, but suddenly you realize, you know, my life is half over. I mean, I've spent my life, to this point, I've spent my years thinking, you know, up until I was, 30, 40 years old, I didn't think much about my life running out because I had plenty left, you know. But at some point, you know, the midlife crisis, I realized I probably pretty well reached the halfway point. Of course, for all we know, we might be 99% done at that time. You don't know when the Lord's gonna call us out of this life. But on an average, my life is half over, or if you're older than that, maybe my life is three quarters or nine tenths over. And I don't really necessarily like everything that You know, I didn't become a Bill Gates. I didn't ever win $540 million in the lottery. And then go around the world and talk to people. And it's like, man, you, I thought I had it bad. Look at what you've got. But people, even in this country, get scared and oftentimes go out and do Crazy thing, and often sinful things, right? There goes the guy down the road in his convertible and his toupee, and you say he's having a midlife crisis, right? Maybe he has a younger blonde gal sitting next to him, you know, and that guy, he's losing it, and he's sinning, he's in a panic because his years are going by. Some people retire, they look all their life toward retirement, they retire, and in a year they're dead. because it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, they lose purpose. And all the while, there's this temptation, as we face these kinds of things, of growing angry with God, especially when our circumstances seem to be falling apart. This is the trap that we must never yield to. Our enemy wants us to believe that our life must be joyful and happy and good in this temporal time on earth, or we've missed it. Our whole life has been a waste. And the truth of the matter is, what God tells the Christian is, stop setting your mind on earthly things. Stop getting up in the morning and giving 99% of your thought to earthly temporal things. Don't do that. Always constantly remind yourself your real life hasn't begun yet. Well, it's kind of begun if you're a Christian because we've been born again. But we haven't come into its fullness at all yet. It's still, as Paul says, it's hidden. with Christ. You haven't even seen, you haven't even hardly got a glimpse of the life that God has prepared for you as a Christian. You haven't even seen it, it's hidden within. Someday you're going to see it, but you haven't seen it yet. Your real world, your home, your actual life is not here, it's there and it's with Christ. And so we are to set our desires on these things. We have a new life as we have it in Christ, but we haven't really begun to live. When Christ comes again, he's going to raise up, that's what Paul said, he raises up our mortal bodies. And then we really, really then begin to live. And I wanna look at Psalm 73 this morning. Been thinking about this psalm quite a bit the last couple months at least. And this is a classic section of scripture that warns us about this trap of thinking, coming to all kinds of conclusions about ourselves, about our lives, about God, based upon what we observe in this world. Listen to what the psalmist, this is Asaph, the psalmist says as he begins in Psalm 73, verse one. Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. That's his topical sentence, but it's gonna take him the whole psalm virtually to get there, all right? So here's his declaration. Truly God is good to Israel, to his people, to those who are pure in heart, but as for me, My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. Why? How come? For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. If you can't identify with that, you're You're dead. I mean, there it is. I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. I've talked to Christians that are disillusioned this way, and I'm sure maybe you have too. I remember one lady many years ago told me, ever since I can remember, even as a little girl, I would play with dolls in my dollhouse and so forth. I had a dream of my family, the family. I was going to have my marriage, my children, what it was going to be like, the nice house that we were going to live in, and happy times we would have together. And she was waylaid now, years later, down in the dumps because, fact of the matter is, her family was a mess. Wrong thinking and wrong teaching in the church often promotes this kind of a crash in Christians. If we're not careful, I've talked to many, many victims of domestic abuse, for example, who have told me that my upbringing in the Christian church made me a sitting duck. for this stuff. And if we're not wise and we're not truly teaching God's word and equipping people, we can be guilty of the same thing. But here's an example of how, like this lady, her life is a mess and her marriage is a mess and nothing's turned out the way that she thought, but she was raised in the church and she was taught, now look, here's the deal about marriage. Here's what God says about marriage. Here's what he says about husbands. Here's what he says about wives. You marry a Christian. Don't marry a non-Christian. Marry a Christian, follow this design, and God will bless you. Boom, that's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work, right? This is how you raise the children. This is how God says you raise the children. So you do this and this and that, and they're gonna grow up and love the Lord. and these are the rules for your finances. It's what you do, you follow them, and God will bless you. Now, it is true, isn't it, that the Bible does address every one of those issues, marriage and childbearing and finances and so forth. But what can often be presented in the church is a false theology of Job's friends. Do this, And this happens automatically. Do this and you can just know that your experience of your existence in this temporal life, in this present world, it's gonna go great. And if you buy into that, that you just do the program, you're gonna be in serious trouble. Here's a email I had this week. from a Christian lady. I'm on food stamps, currently homeless, and crashing at a friend's place. I'm still floundering in the aftermath and wake of destruction created by my ex-husband, who professed to be a Christian she met in church. He has a new job with a $50,000 a year pay raise and a $40,000 sign on bonus. He just bought a lovely 3,200 square foot custom built home with a pool. This is gross injustice. And no matter how much I plead for someone to get on board and be invested in my plight, having been, she was seriously abused by him, they all just shy away from me. Most of them just look the other way. I went very quickly from being blessed with dual incomes over six figures and being able to regularly bless those in need to becoming needy myself and feeling no one was around when the bottom fell out. I have become embittered and angry. I don't even recognize the person that I used to be. I always had a heart for others. My demeanor went from one of optimism and gratefulness to cynicism and hurt. I've been in church since my mom carried me through the door at two weeks old and eagerly and passionately served the Lord there. I was a praise and worship leader for the last five years before being de-churched because she left her abusive husband. And so, and then she ends, I just don't know where to turn anymore. So what do you tell somebody like that, right? What they're often told is you didn't follow the program. If you'd have followed the program, none of this stuff would have happened to you. And that is the false theology of Job's friends. Listen to, who is this, Eliphaz? Well, it begins here, Job begins to speak, Job chapter three. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said, let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said, a man is conceived. And then here comes his friend, Eliphaz, with his false and evil philosophy. Is not your fear of God your confidence and the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, here's the way it is, Job, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. So fess up, Job, quit playing innocent here. All this stuff that's happened to you, it's clearly because you sin. You plowed iniquity, you sowed trouble, quit denying it. If you're evil, you'll reap evil. If you're good, you'll reap what is good. Innocent people don't perish. Only the wicked people perish. That was Eliphaz's worldview. And it is the very theology that is so often taught in evangelical churches today. That's what we assume. If you buy into it, in this present life and world, you're going to be in big trouble. big trouble, because guess what? And that's why we read from Ecclesiastes this morning. Innocent people do perish in this world. The upright are cut off from the land of the living. And those who plow evil and sow wickedness reap a huge harvest of wealth and fun all the time. Every day, look around. And Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes to tell us, look, if you look at this world under the sun, this present life, this present existence, you won't be able to make any sense of it. You're gonna have a hard time finding justice. There's gonna be all kinds of injustice. Listen to it again. I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool. See, I'm gonna work diligently my whole life and build up my estate, but then, because everybody's gonna die, everybody, the wise and foolish, where's it gonna end up? You see, who's gonna have it? And how many times do we see that, that a fool inherit something that someone else worked very hard for and then just wastes it away. Yet he was the fool will be the master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is a vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair. over all the toil of my labors under the sun? Because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. And so you work, and you work, and you work for something, and for what? You lose it all, or a fool inherits it? It's all meaningless, and that's Ecclesiastes' point. It is meaningless. And if you then look at your present life in this present world as your life, as the end of all things, and it's your life, you're gonna be in trouble. you're gonna be in trouble. I think that's sometimes, that's why people go out and blow their heads off, right? You see. You've experienced this stuff, I bet. If you've lived very long, I bet you've seen these injustices, and how do you deal with it? It's not right. And you don't get vindicated. And then you watch the wicked prosper. How many wicked people have we had to deal with over the years in this church? And they're out there prospering. They are. You've heard this example, me give this example before, but I'll give it again so that people that listen on Sermon Audio will hear it as well. But one of these experiences that I had in Verla too, when we were in Montana in our first church, we started a Bible study 30 miles away in another nearby small town. And so at our own expense, we would get in the car, and we didn't have much money at all then, and we'd drive in the middle of winter, sometimes in a snowstorm, we'd drive those 30 miles down to the other town and hold a Bible study. And we did that for quite a number of years. And that Bible study developed eventually into a second church. For a while then, I pastored both churches. And the new one had an evening service and so on. And over time, the thing grew and rented a building and formed into a church. gave it a name, and I named the church. And so then there we were. Well then, after about the first year or so in that new rented facility, another family came in and joined the church. And I won't give you all the details, but the man was a very wicked man, an evil man, a diatrophes who loved to be first. and very crafty and sneaky. And before it was all said and done, he was there and we weren't. And about that time is when the Lord called us up to Alaska and we went to the church up in Alaska. That was about almost 30 years ago. He's still there. He's still there. And that church, for outward appearances, it looks like it's prospering. They would have this place full. And there's all this stuff happening, and I look at that, and if I insist that the Lord render justice for me during my lifetime, I'm making a mistake. If I'm thinking that, well, this is it, this is it. I can't even go back there. I wouldn't even be welcomed there. And so you look at those kind of situations, and the wicked prosper. And that's what Asaph is talking about here. And he says, my foot almost slipped. And as we'll see, what he's talking about is his faith. because what the enemy wants us to do is renounce it all, chuck it all, and walk away from Christ and walk away from his church. This world in which we live is a mess. There's good things that the Lord gives us, benefits that we have, but things have gone wrong in this world. It is not what it was supposed to be. And we get into trouble if we look for justice consistently in our behalf in this present life. Listen to, this is Winston Churchill here. Listen to him describe just one aspect of how the world, how the modern world is walking on this slippery slope that the Bible talks about. Churchill, he probably would have professed to be a Christian. He wasn't. He wasn't. He was a great leader. He would have been, in fact, I suppose if I had to name one of my heroes, Winston Churchill would be that. He would have been a much greater man if he'd have known Christ. Absolutely. Nevertheless, he was a great man. And you can learn a lot studying him. I think almost everybody ought to read about him. It's been encouraging to me to read his biography because, you know, for 10 years, he was an outcast. He was an outcast in Parliament and the government. Why? Because he told them the truth. He was telling them, the Nazis are rearming. Here's the facts and figures. And none of them would listen to him, and they rejected him. at any rate. But after the First World War, in about 1929, just before the stock market crash, he was looking back on World War I, which he fought in, and it was a terrible slaughter. I mean, it was something else. And he began to sense that a second world cataclysm was in the making, this time one that would very well might destroy all civilization. And this is what he wrote. So he wrote this before World War II broke out 10 years later. It is probable, nay certain, that among the means which will, he means the weapons, which will next time be at their disposal, the nation's disposal, will be agencies and processes of destruction, wholesale, unlimited, and perhaps once launched, uncontrollable. Mankind has never been in this position before. And what he means by that is, historically, if there was a war, the armies went out, you know, the kings and their armies, they went out and fought the other army on the battlefield. But now in modern warfare, The citizens get slaughtered. Everybody, everybody is in the middle of it. Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, mankind has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination. That is the point in human destinies to which all the glories and toils of men have at last led them. They, mankind, would do well to pause and ponder upon their new responsibilities. Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples in mass, ready if called on to pulverize, without hope of repair what is left of civilization. He, death, awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, man, long his victim, and now, for one occasion only, his master." That's the world we live in now. World War II did break out. Sixty million people perished. You can't even fathom that. You can't even get your head wrapped around it. 60 million people. The world did almost perish, and we've been on the brink of it ever since. Someone asked, FDR asked Winston Churchill one time, after World War II was over, he said, What would be a good title for this war, for World War II? What should we call it? And Winston Churchill immediately said, the most preventable war. You see, it never needed to happen then. at all, but that's another story. That concerns us with being wise about evil and so forth. But these are the things, this is the world that we live in, the wrongs that this world is characterized by, and the psalmist is seeing it, and he addresses the injustices and the luxuries of the wicked and the sufferings of the righteous, listen to him again in these first three verses. Truly God is good to Israel, but 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. What he means when he says he almost stumbled is his faith almost crashed. This is the danger of the thing. If you look at your theology, your understanding of God, and your understanding of life and all things, if you look at this present world and your experience in this present world as your ultimate life, which if you miss this and it's not good, then you've missed life, you're gonna be in trouble, you're gonna be in a pickle, just like Asaph was. My faith almost, I almost lost it. Listen as he continues. Verse four, for they, the wicked, have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleep. They're not starving to death. They're not in trouble as others are. They're 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 strut 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. So we've had, this is my experience. You can play it out in your own life, in your own story. Mine is that, so there we worked and established that church in Montana. Here's this guy, Mr. Popular, wicked, evil man. craving power, still there having a great time, enjoying popularity, right, and grew wealthy, built a new parsonage, a new building, and all these kinds of things. And we're over here and we're all struggling, you know, and we've had difficult times and it's like, Lauren, There is the wicked. He is at ease. And this is not right. And my life is running out. The years of my life are running out. And it doesn't look very good to me. See, that's the trap. That's the trap. And you'll be able to fill in the same storyline with experiences in your own life. You look at the wicked. They're healthy, their lives are trouble-free. They're making all kinds of money, but they mock and defy God. Those that claim to be Christian, they're in churches, and they're not faithful to the gospel, they're not faithful to the word of God. They compromise God's truth, but they just keep being happy, you see. And so we're like, Lord, where is the lightning bolt? I'm waiting for the lightning bolt. There's some people, there's a lot of people here that need to be zapped. Why are good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people? That's not how it's supposed to work. The psalmist goes on and he gets closer to trouble. All in vain have I kept my heart clean. and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long, I've been stricken and rebuked every morning. My whole Christian life is vanity." That's what he's saying. Well, more correctly, it's what he almost said, because he said, I almost slipped. But this is what he's starting to think. It's all been in vain. I kept my heart clean. I obeyed you, Lord. I washed my hands in innocence. And what's the payoff for it? I've been stricken and rebuked every morning, treated like scum, and these guys are living it up, you see. And that's what he almost said, but he didn't say it. What was it that stopped him? And here it is. This is the punch of the whole thing. Don't miss it. If I had said, first of all, if I had said, I will speak thus, now what he means there, if I had said, I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence all the day long, I've been stricken and rebuked every morning, it's all for nothing, I'm out of here, which translate that in today, I'm done with this church thing. I've come across men that were pastors, I've certainly come across people that were professing Christians and so on, but I've come across men that were pastors and they yielded to this. They never went back. One guy loaded up. One day, one Monday morning, he brought his truck to the church building. He loaded up all of his library, theological library, loaded it on the back of the truck. He went to the dump. threw it all onto the dump, went home, and never went back to church again. That's what Asaph's talking about here. If I had said, I will speak thus, well, what would be the result of that? I would have betrayed the generation of your children. I would be betraying the body of Christ. I would be betraying Christ. I would be betraying God's genuine people. So instead, he stops, he catches himself, and he says, when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. I just, how am I ever gonna sort this out, Lord? This doesn't make any sense to me. And then he says, until I went into the sanctuary of God, And did he literally go into the temple? Was he talking about prayer? One way or another, he got serious with the Lord and began to pray. And then it hit him. Then I discerned their end. He hadn't been looking at the right place. Truly, here's the truth of the situation. regarding the wicked, you 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. And so he caught himself and he realized, I discerned their end. And this is where we have to focus. You don't look at so much at, oh, my life is dependent on the here and now. No. Consider the end. Consider the end toward which you're moving. Consider the way that you're on. Yeah, you're on the narrow, hard way. Yeah, it's tough. These guys are living it up over here on the Broadway. But look at the end of the road. This one's destruction, and this one's life. You see, that's when it's all going to come together. But if you look at everything now, and this is the point that as you start to put this stuff together, if you're thinking about it, you can go ahead and whack yourself in the head or kick yourself because we get so stupid, don't we? We get so stupid. I'm all anxious about this, and I'm anxious about that, and I'm worried about that, and life isn't even worth anything at all, see? That's my friend Henry. Kills himself. He said, my dream job, he always wanted to be a mailman, my dream job has become a nightmare. Wait a minute, Henry, you're looking at, this is it, because your life in this world has become troublesome, a nightmare. Your life is over, that's it, done. You gotta look at the end of things, the end of things. Where is the wicked going to end? And where is the person who follows Christ faithfully going to end? You can't look at the here and now. You've got to look, you've got to look ahead. So they're in a slippery place. This is kind of, this is kind of neat. It's more the Bible talks, you know, a Jonathan Edwards sermon centers in the hands of an angry God. He emphasized this text that the sinner, his feet are in a slippery place. So imagine, Let's say there's a guy walking on a tightrope. I think you can go on YouTube and see one. There was some guy that they ran a cable from one, I don't know, one skyscraper to another in New York, I think it was. And he walked across it. And so you imagine this guy skipping along on that tightrope doing handstands and sitting down to eat a meal. And you're watching that. And if you're like most people, your gut kind of feels, yeah, some funny like, man, this guy's heights, you know, it's gonna go down. And then on top of that, as Asaph says, the tightrope is greased. And if you make this guy out to be the wicked, and the tightrope that he's on, and what you got here is, here's the wicked. This is the truth about the wicked right now. They look like they're prospering, but they are walking on the edge of a precipice, the bottom of which, well, it's bottomless, but it's hell, and it's like coated with freezing rain ice, and they're oblivious to it, and they're living it up, and every step they take, you know, All it's going to take is a slight little thing or that guy, the guy that's on, they're like the tightrope walkers walking across. And God's the one that's greasing the rope. And all he's got to do is just... And they're in hell. And isn't that how it goes? How many people pass out of this world every single day? The Lord has a bajillion ways to take them out, and then they're in hell, and that's it. Their feet are on a slippery, don't envy them. In contrast, you, as a Christian, your feet are firmly planted on the solid rock. Can't move. You'll never fall, no matter how tough it gets. And that's how the psalmist ends this up. Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. And listen, look it, this is where he's kicking himself here. When my soul was embittered, Lord, I confess that as a sin, I was embittered about this. When I was pricked in my heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you, and you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? See, he's looking, his mind's set there now. And there's 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 here's kind of the humbling warning that the Lord gives us here in his word. Look, if you're envying the wicked, and you're kind of embittered toward the Lord because your life's just not going the way that you thought that it should, and this is happening, this is happening, then you're not using the faith that God has given to you, and therefore, actually, you're kind of acting like your dog. You know, dogs and cats, You know, some kind of emotion and so forth in some ways, but they don't think about God. They don't think about eternity. They just think about this present life, when they're gonna get fed and all this, you know, that's it. That's all they think about. They live for the here and now. They have no concept then. of God, and Asaph says that's how I was acting. When I was moaning and complaining about that evil guy in that church, you know, stole our church, did all this, and he's living it up, I'm acting like an animal because I'm only thinking of the here and now. That's the here and now. His feet are on slippery places. The day of justice is coming. That's what we're to look to consider, consider their end, not what their experience is in this present messed up life. Because in this present messed up life, the wicked prosper often. God enacts justice here and there, but the wicked often prosper. Not a single wicked person is gonna prosper when Christ comes again. Listen to this, I'll read this in closing. This is Deuteronomy 32. This is Moses reminding the Israelites of these very same lessons. Here's the truth that we run to. Vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip. For the day of the wicked's calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly. For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining bond or free. Then he will say, where are their gods, their idols, the rock in which they took refuge, who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you. Let them be your protection in the day of judgment. See now that I, even I am he, and there's no God beside me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal, and there's none that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, as I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and the captives from the long-haired heads of the enemy. Rejoice with him, O heavens! Bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him. and cleanses his people's land. That's the stuff that people that really don't like the Lord don't want to hear about. That's not grace, that's not mercy. I delight in that stuff. A true Christian delights in this because we hunger and thirst for righteousness. That's the characteristic of the people that truly are citizens of Christ's kingdom. And the day will certainly come when the wicked's prospering will be no more. And for them, it can come as quickly as a foot slipping on slick ice, and they're gone. Father, we thank you for these great promises, thank you that You are a God of justice. We ask that you would forgive us for not believing you and as a result, having this short-sightedness and looking at this present fallen world instead of looking ahead to your certain promises. We pray, Father, that Christ would come soon and come quickly and that the whole world, well, every knee will bow to him. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.