Psalm 73 • Why Do 'They' Get the Window Seat
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Well, that's the way Kathy and I started.
I was the new single pastor, and she was the piano player worship leader.
Kind of turned out good, I think.
[Laughter]
Our Psalm this morning as we continue our Summer Psalms is Psalm 73, page 485 in your grace bibles.
As you turn there, you will see that this is a psalm of Asaph.
Asaph was a worship leader in ancient Israel.
Twelve of the 150 psalms that we have are written by Asaph, and all have a rather special character in that Asaph apparently was willing to be very honest about human struggle.
One of the things that we have welcomed here in recent months is striking testimonies of people saying, "Here's where I've struggled; here's how the Lord has helped."
Asaph is very honest about his struggle.
The struggle that he is facing is one that you will identify with.
It's a common thing that we struggle with: Why do good things happen to bad people?
And why not to me?
We envy the wicked.
It starts early in life, you know, whether you're on a ride in the family car to grandma's house or you're on a jet liner to Timbuktu, you wonder why your stinky brother or an obnoxious tourist gets the window seat and you have to sit in the middle.
And so you fume and envy the wicked and wonder where God went.
All of that, Asaph is willing to talk about.
Let's read his response: Psalm 73.
Would you stand as we honor God's Word together?
Psalm 73, "Surely 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."
Well, I think you catch the drift.
Go on to verse 11, "And they," that is the wicked, "say, 'How can God know?
Is there knowledge in the Most High?'
Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.
If I had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.
Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.
How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
Like a dream when one awakes, O 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 am I of heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works."
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, thank You for a church and a people that delight to tell Your works.
Help us to do it well with Vacation Bible School this week, where hundreds of young people will come to be built up in faith, and some will come to know Christ for the very first time.
Bless staff and volunteers, teachers and leaders and helpers.
Father, make it a time of spiritual richness, we pray.
Now for a psalm that we cover, which deals with tough things but in such a tender way, help us to prepare even for the hard things of life, because it was good for us to be near You here.
Here by Your Spirit You teach us.
Open our hearts to receive Your Word, we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
One day in the life of a Christian in Peoria, Illinois.
One day's newspaper headlines beginning: "Same-sex marriage law turns one."
And the subtext: "About one in ten certificates for marriage entered--, issued in Peoria County in this past year has been for same gender couples."
Same headline first page: "Vanity Fair Magazine features Bruce Jenner's new look on its cover."
Conservative columnist David French writes, "A man is damaged in surgery, put on the front page of a fashion magazine, and the rest of us are required to applaud."
Same front page, same day, our town: "Erotic dancer sues her club owner over lack of minimum wage being provided to her."
Our town, front page, one day.
One week of being a Christian in our world, this past week.
It was the anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square massacre, marking 26 years of state sanctioned oppression of Christians as religious expression is suppressed and fellow believers, our brothers and sisters, are not allowed to gather in numbers or worship freely.
Same week, world headlines: The story of Ji Seong-Ho is published, a North Korean refugee who expressed how in his classroom he slowly watched as desk after desk after desk was emptied because his classmates had starved to death.
And then he was imprisoned and tortured for the crime of losing his leg in a train accident.
The real crime: He had embarrassed his country's leader by becoming an invalid.
Escaped through the work of friends, but others have not escaped.
In Syria this last week, I.S.I.S. terrorists are allowed by the Syrian government to take Aleppo, the country's largest city, assuring that churches and Christians that had been there for millennia will no longer be protected.
Most are already in refugee camps, the few remaining in great danger.
In the Sudan this same week, two Christian pastors are put on trial with death sentences hanging in the balance, their crime: One preached the gospel; the other complained that he was put in prison, his friend was put in prison.
And for that reason, both are on trial, the official charge: Undermining the government.
And this same week, the job application, if you wish to join Al-Qaeda, has been published on the internet worldwide.
It includes not only blanks to fill in your name, age, and marital status but questions such as these: "Do you have military training?
Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?
Do you have family members or friends who work with the government?
Whom shall we contact if you become a martyr for Muhammad?"
One week of being a Christian in this world.
One month of a being a Christian in our nation just a year ago: In that same month, California enacted the so called transgender rights law, allowing both genders access to single gender bathrooms in public schools if your preference does not agree with your anatomy.
That same month, New Jersey governor Chris Christie signed a law banning therapy for anyone under 18 struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction.
It does not matter what you want, nor what your parents want, nor even what the therapist wants: You are now banned from offering therapy to anyone under age 18 for same-sex attraction.
The New Jersey Supreme Court, in that same month, ruled that evangelical photographer Elaine Hue could neither claim religious freedom nor freedom of speech in refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding ceremony.
Same month, Oregon's Bureau of Labor investigated a bakery for declining to prepare a cake for a same-sex wedding.
And the Oregon Bureau of Labor said that those who owned the bakery not only had to be investigated but the conclusion was they had to be rehabilitated in order to continue in their business.
Same month, the California legislature prepared to strip the Boy Scouts of their tax exempt status.
You may know that the Boy Scouts won that case in court, but just this last month, Robert Gates, the current president of the Boy Scouts, and the former head of the Department of Defense of the United States, said that the Boy Scouts should change their standards and allow same-sex oriented persons to be leaders.
Same months, Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty," was threatened with loss of his job for comments about same-sex marriage.
Same months, Brendan Eich, C.E.O. of Mozilla, also made comments, and though Phil Robertson kept his job, Brendan Eich was purged from his job as the C.E.O. of Mozilla.
Now, we all wait, don't we?
This summer for a ruling from our nation's Supreme Court, which may constitutionalize same-sex weddings.
One month, just one month, in our country.
What about one generation in our country?
In this last generation, as a consequence of experiments with marriage and sexual expression and no-fault divorce, forty percent of the young people born in this country will be born outside of wedlock, forty percent in this country now born outside of wedlock, even though we know that a child born outside of wedlock will be five times more likely to be raised in poverty or go to prison.
And in that same generation, fifty seven million children have not been born because of the ravages of abortion in this country since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
One day, one week, one month, one generation in our country.
Well, aren't you glad you came?
[Laughter]
Can you identify with the psalmist who said, "When I considered the prosperity of evil in my nation, my feet had almost slipped"?
I didn't understand what good faith was.
I look around me, and it seems that those who prosper are those who have very little to be concerned about with regard to the Word of God.
They don't follow God.
They don't seem to be concerned about His ways.
And, yet, they are the very ones who seem to get the most prosperity, that seem to have the least of cares.
What good is it to be a Christian?
My feet had almost slipped.
First lesson of the day: When we ever begin to think that we are the only ones who have had to stand the challenges of evil, we do not recognize that every Christian in every age in all places at all times faces the same challenge.
This is par for the course.
Part of not slipping is just recognizing we are not unique, but we're also not unique in what threatens to trip us.
What threatened to trip the psalmist?
He's pretty plain about it.
Verse 4: "There are no pangs for the wicked."
They are fat and sleek, happy as clams, fat as ticks.
[Chuckles]
Sleek as minks.
Verse 5: They are untroubled.
Verse 11: They are unnoticed by God.
He doesn't seem to notice them.
And verse 12: "Yet they are always at ease and always prospering."
Yes, one problem is looking at the others and saying, "It doesn't seem like it's any good to be good."
But, of course, the psalmist is far more honest than that.
The problem for his heart, for his faith, for his soul is not simply that the evil prosper: It's that he wants what they got.
"I envy the wicked."
It's so plain in verse 3, right?
"For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked."
Verse 13 even more plain: "All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence."
Verse 14: "For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning."
Not only do I want their stuff: I want God to stop being mean to me.
It's just kind of the big boy, grownup way of saying, "Why do I have to sit in the middle?"
[Chuckles]
"I want the window seat.
"Why do they always get the window seat and I have to suffer over here?"
And if that sounds silly, you have to recognize that we don't make sense of this psalm until we make it just that personal.
Why do they get what I don't get?
I'm trying to be good.
I'm trying to follow God.
Why do I suffer?
We don't just have to think about national, global, and generational issues: We just have to come right into our own lives and ask the questions that we really have.
Why, if I am faithful, do my children get sick?
Or does my spouse get sick?
Or, worse, why do they turn away from me?
Or turn away from my faith?
Why do really good Christians struggle with job security and infertility and bad neighbors and tornados?
We long for solid relationships and an end to loneliness and feeling like God is really close and going to help us.
But at the very same time, we see other people without solid faith, without Christian expression who get good jobs and fast promotions and attractive spouses and fancy homes and carefree lives and healthy families.
The real question, of course, as we go through it is not just, "Why do the evil prosper?" but "Why don't I?"
The real problem is not evil but envy.
I want what they have.
I want their life as I perceive it from this outside place.
All of that, the psalmist says, in poetic and powerful terms: "They get it better, though they do not follow God."
And real honesty comes in verse 15 when he says, "If I had said, 'I will speak this,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children."
That's a--, I'm thinking it; I feel it, but I better not say it; the kids might hear.
After all, we've got Vacation Bible School coming.
We can't talk real questions.
We can't put real critics of God in front of people, because it will hurt the children.
Now, there is some truth in that, of course.
I mean, do we really want to teach our children that selfishness is the path to satisfaction, that money will bring you love?
I mean, something in us knows that really isn't the message.
So even though we struggle with the game that those who do not follow God have, we're just taken aback a little bit say--, but what do I want to teach my kids?
Do I want to say, "If you just pursue greed, you'll be content"?
We know that's not the answer, and it's just that little blink of sober reflection: What do I actually want to teach the children?
That sends the psalmist down an entirely different path, not the path that causes his feet to slip but the path that settles his heart.
What does he say next?
Verse 16: "When I thought how to understand this," that is the good that comes to the evil and not to me, "it seemed to be to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end."
Now, I know this can just sound like kind of churchy stuff, you know, the Sunday School lesson that we're supposed to teach.
So I went to church, and that fixed it.
No.
What does the word "sanctuary" mean?
A safe place.
I went to a safe place with my hard questions.
I mean, it's kind of an amazing statement, a learning lesson for all of us.
How we have been blessed and benefited by people in recent months who have come and stood before you and with testimonies that are real from a real world have talked about: Here were the struggles of my life.
Here's the difficulties I faced, and here's how God helped.
Here's what the gospel made a difference in.
I'm going to tell you the real stuff.
I'm not just going to sugarcoat it.
I'm not going to look past the bad stuff.
I am going to tell you that I struggled, but I came to a safe place.
And in sanctuary, I was able to deal with the difficulties.
And that is actually what is happening in this place.
As the psalmist comes into the sanctuary, he begins to say, "Then I began to discern true reality.
I mean, not the reality that says, 'Just evil people prosper and I don't get their stuff.'
I began to see things as they really are."
First truth: God is not done yet.
Yes, it is certainly true that the evil may prosper, that evil may have its day.
But God will have the final say.
And God is not done yet.
Those who seem so secure: What is their true situation?
Verse 18, speaking to God: "Truly, Lord, you have set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.
How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly in terror."
Evil far more than we are willing to admit at times is actually what is on the slippery slope.
We have firm foundation in our Lord, and, yet, evil has no foundation but human endeavor, human wiles, and human achievement.
That's all you got.
And if all you've got is yourself to depend upon, that is a slippery place to stand.
We know that.
We know there is insecurity now.
I mean, if we will not put on the rose-colored glasses of the secular perspective, of a perspective without God: If we will put on real glasses, what do you really think is going to be the future of Bruce Caitlyn Jenner?
Now that the operation's been done and now that the publishing contract is in place and now that there is renewed fame, you and I rest assured he will be perfectly content, that all relationships will be solid, that there will be no more worries in his life.
Right?
What world do you live in that you think that would be true?
I mean, you must believe that because Michael Jackson had wealth and fame that he was totally content and had no worries.
Is that what you believe?
I mean, everything we read, everything we know denies that.
What gives us the impression that if you get enough wealth, fame, and power that kings and dictators and house speakers have no fears?
What world is that that we live in that we'd actually believe that sort of thing?
what makes us think that you become a movie star, you become a Hollywood idol and you're suddenly a balanced person with no more issues in life?
Really, people make millions of dollars talking about the issues of the people who are most famous about us.
Every reality, if we will actually face us, is telling us that apart from God, that is really the slippery slope.
That is where you're most endangered.
And if you do not accept it about the present insecurity, the psalmist actually is willing to point forward and say, "Even if things go okay now, what is ahead?"
Do you remember?
That is addressed as well.
Verse 27, "For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you."
Plain talk.
Everything good the faithless will receive; they will get now and no more.
That the span of life that they have right now is the only time at which they will experience good in all of eternity.
That, yes, there may be good now, but there is judgment coming.
And you cannot spend your money in hell and the achievements here will mean nothing then, and judgment will come.
And so the psalmist speaks with clarity and says, "You face the real reality.
You know enough even in the earthly moment to know those who pursue life without God do not know satisfaction and contentment.
And you should know that there are consequences far beyond this life."
But what is your reality if you are a person who is seeking God?
What reality do you actually have?
Number one, you have grace now.
You have security now.
Verse 21 and 23: Do you recognize how honest these verses are?
"When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you, God.
Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand."
Alright, I ask hard, disrespectful, mean, beastly questions, and how does God deal with me?
He holds me by my hand and will not let me fall.
I said the worst about You, and what do You do?
Kathy's song: "I hold onto you; when you can't hold onto Me, I hold onto you."
It's a wonderful message for the church in any generation.
Some of you remember when Francis Schaeffer, the Christian philosopher, established L'Abri Christian Fellowship in Switzerland with the express purpose that America's youth who were so disenchanted with the pursuits of their parents and even the faith of their parents were given the invitation to come to Switzerland and they would get honest answers to honest questions.
You ask the most beastly question you want.
You challenge me, and I'll do my very best to give you an honest answer to your honest question.
And how that simple ministry of saying, "I won't let you go when you challenge me; I will answer as best I can when you treat me beastly," is actually a reflection of the gospel of grace.
I will be here for you even when you challenge me.
I think of the generation of that time and the praise music of that time that meant so much to so many.
The song "What would you do if I were untrue; would that mean that it is all over," God's response: "I will be with you, child, and I will leave you never."
But, Lord, I can't hide that I'm foul inside.
I am lost and I am a sinner.
"I will be with you, child, and I will leave you never."
I think of the song in terms of today's generation, a blog posted this past week: "I'm Christian, gay, and too angry even to read the Bible."
"But I will be with you, My child, and I will leave you never."
"I'm a Christian, abandoned by my spouse and wondering why I bothered to trust Christ."
"But I will be with you, My child, and I will leave you never."
"I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief."
That's in the Bible.
"I will be with you, My child, and I will lave you never."
The psalmist: "If I ascend to heaven or make my place in the grave, even there will your hand hold me; your right hand will guide me."
"I will be with you, My child, and I will leave you never."
It is the grace of the moment that God's people claim with the recognition that He is saying, "I am for you."
That is the greater reality.
That's beyond your complaint.
That's even beyond your rebellion.
Those hearts who have turned to God, He says, "I will not let you go."
What difference does it make?
Verse 24 says, "You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory."
God is not just saying, "Listen, there is grace now."
He is saying, "Listen, from beastliness to glory: I am with you and every step in between."
You rebel or you're near to glory and I am with you.
I will not let you go.
In fact, I will guide you all along the way.
And the great God who shows us His care and His compassion in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us says, "By My law, by My ways, by My word, I will guide you.
Follow Me.
It's a reflection of My character and My care.
Here's My compassion for you.
You wonder what you should do; you wonder if this will make sense.
I will guide you.
And I will guide you all the way to glory."
And some of you recognize that that word "glory" in the Old Testament is almost exclusively reserved for God, as He is saying, "I will guide you to Myself."
But now it will be your glory, so that all the greatness of who God is, all the wonder of who He is, is going to be provided for you.
And the consequence of that is verse 25.
"So whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you."
I hear that and I think: Could that really be, that you could have such a sweet relationship with the Lord that you would desire nothing else on earth?
How do we interpret verse 26?
"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
All of my preaching life, I think the verses that I have wrestled with the most in the psalms are the ones that say God is our portion.
We just by our humanity, you know, I want more portion.
If that's my piece of pie, I want more portion.
You know.
It's our inclin--.
Could God ever really just be sufficient?
And, yet, that is what the psalmist is saying: that there is contentment, there is satisfaction that's possible.
How does that happen?
Well, again, if we just put on reality glasses, the glasses of scripture that things that are proclaimed in the sanctuary, the safe place, even with hard questions.
Then we say: What would you give to be held by the most powerful being in the universe in such a way that you knew everything that happened in your life was being worked together for good?
That even when you sinned, He would not let you go but in providing His own Son to take the penalty for the worst of your life so that you could be free of its guilt and free of its shame, and Him knowing the worst about you would secure you, not only not but forever, for eternity, so that what that means is that this momentary existence that we live is not the full picture of what we will face.
But the suffering of the moment, the trial of the moment, the difficulty of the moment is but a second in the eternity that God has for us.
If that was your piece of the pie, that you knew that the God who loved you infinitely eternally would walk with you through any crisis and it would have its end but eternity would have no end and God would use your life for testimony and witness and good and every second of it for an eternal purpose, you'd say, "That's a pretty good portion."
I mean, if that's really what You're promising me, then that outweighs everything.
I would give everything for that.
That would be the pearl of great price.
That would be the thing I would long for.
It's not that there's nothing else to disappoint us.
It's not that there won't be trials that we face.
But the promises being made of the gospel are so overwhelming that the psalmist says, "This is my portion.
This ultimately is what satisfies.
This actually is what will make things right."
And it's not just guidance forward: It is glory forever, which means as I face reality, I recognize that, yes, the evil gain things in this life, but everything the evil gain exist only for this life.
But all that troubles you will exist only in this life and then no more.
No more tears, no more pain, no more darkness.
The Lord is saying, "I will take you to glory, which is eternal where you will share My own existence; you will share the glory with Me."
And that reality that is to be ours is the great counterbalance of the realities here that are forcing the world to say, "There's got to be another alternative."
That are even forcing us to say, "I got to tell people that there's another alternative to the pain and the indignity and the injustice that's here."
And it is what God is offering.
And I put that on the other side of the scale, and I want to tell people, because it even means so much to me.
Do you believe that?
I mean, we sing "Amazing Grace," right?
And we sing that last verse: "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun."
Ten thousand?
Why, that's just like that in heaven.
Ten billion.
Ten billion times ten billion, which means our entire existence here is a nanosecond in heavenly time.
And what God is promising to you and to me is the reality that we are not simply earthly beings with a heavenly future: We are heavenly beings in an earthly moment.
And that heavenly existence is what God is promising our portion to be, as we in this time in this place live faithfully to Him with the recognition that all is being worked to--, for good, that He is securing us, that He is holding us, that He will not let me go until He takes us to glory.
And that reality is the reality that sobered and then made rejoice a psalmist who said, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
One of my present generation heroes is Cassie Bernall.
Do you remember the name?
The girl shot in the Columbine killings.
She was the one that the initial news report said when one of the gunmen came to the library and found her under the table, he put the gun in her face and said, "Do you believe in God?"
Cassie said, "Yes."
And that was her earthly end.
The night before that, Cassie Bernall, who, by her own account, had lived a beastly teenage existence, had come to know faith in her God.
And the night before the shooting, she wrote in her journal, "Honestly, I now want to live completely for God.
It's hard and it's scary, but it's worth it."
Some of you know that.
It's hard.
It's scary.
But if God is my portion forever, it's still worth it.
The day she was shot, she read a devotional that had these words: "We can only win, really win, in our lives when we remain faithful to the truth that every little part of us is completely safe in the divine embrace of our Lord."
Every little part of us is safe in the divine eternal embrace of our Lord.
So she was shot that day.
And the news went around the world: Cassie said yes.
Now, enough of you are informed that you know witnesses later wondered if Cassie had said that.
In fact, others in the library said it was probably another.
So did that make it worthless?
Some weeks later, Cassie's mom, perhaps the one who had lost even more, Cassie's mom appeared on Oprah.
And when she was questioned about her faith, she said on Oprah, "I keep thinking of things I should do for Cassie, and then I catch myself.
I don't need to do that; the Lord is doing the mom things now for Cassie."
Hard things, yes?
But even when "my flesh and my heart may fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
As 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."
May God be your refuge, that the world may know and little children too of all His works.
In His divine embrace you are secure forever.