From Envy to Eternity: Having Faith in a World that Doesn’t Make Sense

Holy God, we are grateful that we can gather here with great freedom to make much of you, to open up your Word, and we do pray in the name of Jesus that you would allow we to decrease and you increase, that your Word would go forth and you would change lives for your glory. We ask that you would encourage those who know you as savior and for those who don’t you would be merciful and allow them to repent and believe and we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Family we are finishing up our series on psalms, we did Hallel psalms. This last psalm is not a Hallel psalm actually, it’s a wisdom psalm so hopefully in my mind I’m thinking okay we did the Hallel psalms, which are about, we’re talking about worship and praise and so now we get to talk about worship and praise respective of a worshiper, Asaph, psalm 73 is where you wanna go and we get to look at, what does it mean when we look at how to be wise and God’s people. So, this psalm family is a very authentic intense psalm. Asaph is the author of this psalm. He was a Levite, just to give you a little background, appointed by King David as one of the chief musicians. He was a worship leader. You can find this information, you go to first chronicle, second chronicles and you can learn more about Asaph. He was a skilled poet and a seer. He wrote about 12 Psalms, and he often explores these themes of justice and worship and lament and perplexities of life which is exactly what we’re gonna see here. This Psalm, it’s one of those things where sometimes the plain psalms, like just plain psalms can just be so impactful and so I want us to not miss the impact because sometimes the descriptors just interpret themselves and this is one of those passages as we look at it.

So, let’s turn to Psalm 73 and look how he begins this psalm. He is struggling family. I love it because it’s a very authentic psalm in a sense of who he is and what he is struggling with. He starts by saying something that we all learn in Sunday school. He says in verse 1, “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” Alright he says, okay God is good. He opens it up. But then in verse 2 he tells us, “But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.” He’s saying, here I am this worship leader, I’m a Levite, but my, my theology is not meeting my practical demonstration of life. He says something almost fail. And then he gives us in verses 3 through 13 basically what the issue was. Give us the big picture in verse 3, he says, “The reason why I almost slipped is because I was envious of the arrogant” verse 3, “When I saw the prosperity of the wicked I found myself walking with the Lord, seeking Him, serving Him in the sanctuary, trying to honor God.” This is Asaph and yet I’m looking around and I see the wicked, I see them being arrogant, but I also see them being prosperous. What is this, wait I’m honoring you and they are getting all the goods. This seems unfair. It’s almost like he’s saying, man it makes what I’m doing, it is pointless. So, what Asaph does here he gives us, I’ll say four categories to kinda encapsulate this chapter of how he depicts the wicked. Now the wicked are the certain kind of people, so there’s not one person who fits all of these, he wants you as we’re going through this is to think of if you’re like this or if you know someone like this or if you’ve experienced this, but these are the character traits and so he does, he tells us they’re outwardly successful, they are morally corrupt, they influence God’s people, and they defy God with no fear. So, he says first they’re outwardly successful verses 3 through 5 and actually he says it again in verse 12.

We just read verse 3, man “I saw the prosperity of the wicked” and I’m thinking I’m thinking what? Verse 4, “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek.” Verse 5, “They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.” He says wait a minute; they appear healthy. The wicked appear invincible. They’re not, I’m looking around here and they’re not struggling like normal folk. I’m looking and I’m thinking they’re fit, they’re at the Y, they’re carefree, they’re rich and he’s thinking, man and I’m sitting here dealing with real pain. Outwardly successful.

Verse 6. “They’re morally corrupt.” You see this in verses 6 through 9. So, Asaph is struggling. I’m honoring you God, I’m walking with you, I’m seeking you, but I’m watching the prosperity of the wicked, I’m watching people kinda do laps around me in the game of life and I see the success they all have, but they’re also, what makes it hard is they’re successful and they’re corrupt. Therefore, pride is their necklace, “Violence covers them as a garment”, verse 6 says. Therefore, it’s interesting, their success actually induced the pride, therefore they have all these things, they’re doing all these things and therefore now pride is their necklace. The result is the violence covers them as a garment, they’re exploitative, this whole concept of violence, they wear their aggression, their dominance like clothing without shame. They’re doing this without any thought of consequence.

Verse 7. “Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies” the scriptures say. These verses here describe a grotesquely indulgent and arrogant person who is prospering. So not only are they successful, but then we see them prideful, but then they’re dominant with their pride, they’re using it to be aggressive and to exploit others and they’re wearing it like a badge of honor, then they’re indulgent. It’s a poetic way of saying that they’re just wanting more and more, there’s nothing to restrain them family. Look what it says here, it says, “Their heart overflows with follies.” In verse 8, “They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.” They’re speaking maliciously toward people. It says they threaten oppression, they speak maliciously and they’re saying if you don’t do what I want and say what I, I’m gonna use my wealth to threaten you, to oppress you. He’s thinking, I’m the Christian, I’m walking with God, and I’m watching people who totally don’t love you, who don’t love others well, who are mean and they’re prospering and they’re not even fake humble about it. They’re arrogant. He says they openly mock God.

Verse 9, “They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.” I mean they go and this is globally there, it is unrestrained to just mock God so they’re saying, ya know what, this is, I’ve done it, this is mine. And he’s thinking, man they’re not sick, you’re doing all that why aren’t you getting struck down, why isn’t something happening to these people? They defy God. So, we see they’re outwardly successful, morally corrupt, but notice this, then they influence the people of God. So those individuals as you listen to that word picture you’re thinking, these are really, really evil people. Look what he says, “Therefore his people turn back to them and find no fault in them.” Don’t miss that family. They turn back and they find no fault in them. People of God see these individuals and because they see nothing happens to them, you know what we start to do, we start to get weary, and we start to actually admire them, we start to actually excuse them.

Isn’t that interesting, we’re like no, yeah we do. Think about it, we start to think, well wait a minute maybe their value system should be my value system, cuz man their ROI is there, they’ve got the money, they have the power, they have the prestige, they have the notoriety is working for them. Wow, they just model to me that it’s a dog eat dog world, they model to me that the good guys don’t finish first, maybe I should just be like them or maybe even yet secretly what I’ll do it I’ll just kind of, I know that that’s bad stuff, but I’ll admire them and I really want what they want. I mean, isn’t that what we’re doing when we lift up people like Taylor Swift? Can we keep it real here. Isn’t that what we’re doing when I see somebody, I listen to the vulgar mouth. I mean have you ever heard, go listen to an interview of Lebron James. The vulgar mouth is amazing, with kids, I’m like bro you had a, you had a parade with kids, you just won a chip, and every two words is a cuss word? Guys look, I like good music, I like art, but we have to discern how to say, okay that’s good music, but we can’t be lifting up Kendrick Lamar. Now some of you older folk, like who’s he talking about, but the young people know who I’m talking about. Alright, you know what I’m saying. It doesn’t just go with stars though, athletes, some of you guys, you look at your bosses and your CEOs and people in your workspace and man, you find yourself going, oh man, okay I’ll excuse, I’ll laugh at that joke that’s not funny because man hopefully it will get me a little closer to what I need to get. We start looking at the world and we start excusing that stuff because we get weary. Even yet, ya know what, I think we started excusing that stuff because you know what a huge enemy of the church, a huge enemy of us being the radical people of God is our desire for comfort. We all wanna just have a lot of stuff and have it on our time and so what we want when we want it. Am I right? In the flesh comfort, we want comfort, so it’s amazing how prosperity, prosperity blinds us, it can blind us family to corruption underneath cuz we go, but okay I know he does all those things, but he’s successful and I am convinced that Satan uses prosperity and comfort as a main tool for you and me to compromise, to overlook worldliness. I’m convinced man, without conviction you don’t have Biblical Gospel sinner conviction that this life isn’t better than the next life, comfort will win all the time.

I think we have so many gifts. I mean I love our body. It’s been such a blessing to be able to help lead here and as I continue to serve in my life and my family’s life and in this church life, when I think of, when I think of the 70s, the Jesus movement, ya know, and everybody “We’ve gotta go serve the Lord, we’ve got the people just going everywhere and quitting school and ya know I don’t know how theologically accurate that was but they would do it for Jesus. Okay. The critique was the Orthodoxy cuz people was loving the Lord, but I don’t know what they were thinking from the Bible perspective and some aspects. What my prayers for us and for our culture is that their critique on us will not be man. They had great Orthodoxy, but they were so comfortable that they lost the radical edge to go and be for Jesus. They had to build a culture where our kids see their mom and dad, they see us radically sacrificing, they see it as normal for you and us to say we’re gonna identify with Christ, and we’re gonna give, we’re gonna serve, we’re gonna do radical things, and we’re gonna fight sin and we’re gonna be honest with you man, it’s a struggle because I want that stuff too, but God is better. So that our kids will grow up and know that that’s the norm, and then they’ll take risks for Jesus, and then they’ll go and serve and they’ll go to the 10/40 window and they’ll wanna be in missions and they’ll wanna be in ministry because they realize that this life isn’t better than the next and they realize and not just because we gave them good theology, but they saw us live it. They saw their mom and dad give, sacrifice, cry because of their heart hurting when they saw the hurting in the world. The wicked, they just didn’t fear God. Look what he does, he says, how can this go on. Verse 11, and they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the most high?” They just define who God is.

And then he gets to the core of the crisis right here family. He says in verse 13 and 14, he says, “I look at all that and 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.” Man he says, look it seems like living a pure and holy and righteous life has gained me nothing. Instead of blessing you see the verse in verse 14, he feels like actually he’s been punished, he is gut level honest here, right. This is gut level honesty, like man what’s going on, what are we doing. The most influential man in my life, Roger Hershey, one of our son’s middle name is Roger after him. He had a son named Brett Hershey. When I think of verse 13 and 14, I think of this because here’s a guy who loved Jesus, was just a, I mean, just was so fun, so down to earth, walked with the Lord, was gonna go to IU and did the GI bill, was doing, was gonna do ROTC. But he didn’t do ROTC because he got deployed, he was deployed so he was gonna go and be deployed for a few years, get money so he can go back to school. He was joining the staff at Camp Susque for Christ and was engaged to be married and that following year, or pretty soon after, while he was in Afghanistan. Roger Hershey served the Lord, I can’t even count the number of years, he helped lead me to Christ when I was in college in ’94 and now he’s still serving the Lord right now in Pennsylvania. The Lord is usually in the lead. Man, I mean there’s thousands of people in ministry night right now because of this brother by God’s grace, right, literally and they call him like the, I’m saying now, but when Job returned, he had a good reputation, they called it the Jobe return of ministry because he was the Nittany Lion for Penn State. I’d have to say family, here’s a man who’s walking with the Lord or seeking God, got this son that’s awesome, he’s gonna be a great ministry of the Lord. I mean this guy is gonna be great for Jesus, goes on a tour, just doing a little landmine checks, the car runs over a landmine, blows up the car, he’s dead. He was about to get married, he was about to join the staff at Crusade. Man, wait a minute, but the Bible says pray to the Lord of harvest, to raise four flavors, that the harvest was plenty, and the labors are few. Here’s a laborer who wants to serve the Lord, why. We can say that with so many different stories right fam? Man, sometimes I’m like, it is not a pity party, this is real. Sometimes I go, man why, why does this gotta be happening to Asaph, ya know.

Look what he says in verse 15. This is interesting fam. He says, Alright so I feel like you beat me up Jesus, I don’t know what’s going on.” Then he says, “If I had said, I will speak thus I would have betrayed the generations of your children, but when I thought how to understand this it seemed to me a wearisome task.” I just think that’s a little nice commercial verse here. Look what he does there. Look what he says there. He says, hey, I’m feeling all this and I’m struggling. But he says you know what I had to, I had to pause, I had to not say it because I didn’t want to mess up the witness of other people. You see that, see that there, he says, “I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generations of your children.” So he says, I chose not to talk about these things in that way because sometimes y’all, like you keeping it too real, right, it’s like you, there’s a struggle he’s having here and he’s saying I’m being gut level honest but I realize that it was better for me to restrain what I wanted to say for the sake of those watching me. I just think that’s very interesting that the psalmist that put that in this passage while he’s keeping it real with us right now. I think there’s some wisdom for you and I as we think about how to grieve and how to talk about things in the kingdom. That’s a quick commercial break that I think they gave us in verse 16 and 15.

He continues on and he says something changed y’all, he’s having all these thoughts. In verse 17 something changed. He says, “I felt like this, seemed like a wearisome task, it’s hard to understand until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end.” See that, he says, he says, I went to the sanctuary of God and then God gave me spiritual clarity. Verse 18, “Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall otherwise ruin.” He learned that wait a minute, so the reality is their end is tragic. Wait, the wicked won’t win, God will win, their end is tragic, that is quick. He says it’s like slippery places, like you’re ice-skating on a quarter of an inch of ice and in just in a moment they’re gonna fall to ruin. So, he has this moment, this aha moment where he’s like, woah, I realize that now I don’t need to envy them because God is gonna provide judgement and now blessing eventually. Now here’s a question. What did he see, what changed, right, you went to the sanctuary but what happened? He had this picture, now he’s like, wait a minute, okay, I understand the demise of the wicked. He went to the sanctuary.

Family, Exodus 25 tells us what happens in the sanctuary. God is with His people in the sanctuary, right? Leviticus 1 tells us sacrifices are offered in the sanctuary, right. Priests will intercede and pronounce blessings in a sanctuary. Leviticus 16:6, God’s Word is taught in the sanctuary. In the sanctuary guys here’s what happened. It was no crazy, ya know, supernatural occurrence in the sanctuary. I think He would have shared that, I think whatever happens in the sanctuary happens in the sanctuary and you know what happens in a sanctuary guys, in the sanctuary God’s truth is talked about, God’s justice is displayed, God is proclaimed as holy and faithful and they worship God, they pray, they sacrifice, teachings are happening. You know what happened in the sanctuary of God, the ordinary means of grace happened in the sanctuary of God. You know what this brother just said to you and me, He said, man I watch the wicked prosper, I’m watching people let me around the life of this life, I’m watching people have money and resources and be evil and still not be sick and not feel like nothing’s happening to them. I watched all this and then he said, I went to church, that’s what He said. He said, man my eyes was playing tricks on me until I went to church and all the sudden when God did was he renewed my mind, He gave me his truth, He reminded me. See this is, I think, one of the coolest opportunities and displays, if you say that somebody needs to go to church, take them to psalm 73 because right here we see what happens is he goes into the sanctuary of God and God’s truth just boom gives him clarity and he goes, wait a minute what was I thinking. It reminds me of a GPS. I’m type A y’all, right, and I have, I am super directionally challenged, okay, my family will tell you, and the worst thing for me as a directionally challenged person is, when you’ve ever had, when you have your phone up there and you know you’ve got your instructions going and then for some reason it flips upside down, it’s the worst. Now I’m type A y’all, and I’m directionally challenged so now I’m like, oh no right, so now your left is right and like north is south now, right. That’s what’s happening here. See what happens in life, when you’re not in a sanctuary of God, when you and I are not finding ourselves in the environment of the spirit, well we’re not getting God’s Word, when God’s people aren’t proclaiming God’s truth, we’re not an environment of worshiping God, what happens is God, you start to think what caused stinkin thinkin. You start hearing the songs that you’ve been listening to and the movies you’ve been watching and the people you’ve been hanging out, all the sudden that stuff starts getting to you and you start believing it and you start beginning to value those things, you start to forget who God is and what He says about the world and what He says about you and what He says about those who are believers, and what He says about those who are unbelievers, and so the reason why we gather all the time, the reason why we do Bible study, the reason why you have small group, the reason why you have family prayer is to renew your mind because every once in a while you’ve gotta shake it back and go, wait a minute this thing needs to be working and you get it and it goes, okay, north is north, south is south. That’s what’s happening. When we come here and proclaim God’s Word to you it’s to say guys the world is crazy not you, just to remind you, cuz I know all week you’re like maybe I’m tripping, I mean I’m trying to walk with the Lord and this dude gotta escalate, and this guy’s got a scholarship, well maybe, no no, you’re not crazy. He rose from the dead, He’s worthy of your life. The reality is what you see is not what you’re supposed to hold onto, but God wants you to retrain your mind, have spiritual eyes, that’s what happened to Asaph family, God said, oh you took off your glasses, here let me put them back on for you brother. That’s what happened to him, he went to church, he went to church, and he said, oh now I know what’s gonna happen to the wicked. Like a dream when one awakes oh Lord, when you rise yourself, you despise them as phantoms so it would be quick like that, when you wake up from a dream, ahh, he says that’s how quickly God’s gonna take care of the wicked. Boom.

I love this. Got the glasses on now, you know what he does, kinda repents, he gets a little sheepish. Look at verse 21. Now I discerned what’s gonna happen, who you are, the journey of the world. I must admit, verse 21, “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in the heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.” See that. He said, he said, yeah I was, God I was trippin. That’s what he basically said, he says you know what, I got caught up, I got caught up in thinking the value system of the world made sense, but now what I love is in the midst of me being ignorant, verse 23, “Nevertheless I am continually with you and you hold my right hand.” You see that. “You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me into glory” the scripture says. Oh man praise God. Look how good God is. Despite his foolishness God remained with him. You see that. God, see that’s the whole point. He wants you to understand that, that God was holding and guiding him. He’s saying, you in the midst of me totally losing perspective, losing clarity, you held me, you’re guiding me, you will receive your people into glory, it’s a beautiful picture of God’s faithfulness. That grace guys when you think of grace it isn’t just mercy, it’s direction. God doesn’t just bless us with mercy, He then takes us and moves us in places, he guides us. That’s the beauty, see he realized, just imagine that just that revelation, just to be encouraged, like he realized wait a minute these people are acting like they’re running things. It reminds me of a kid. Do you ever go into the store, they don’t have this as much now, but back in the day they would have those carts where right at the top of the cart for the kids they would have like the fake little car, it would be like a little plastic, like you can like drive, you can have a steering wheel and have like a little fake horn and ya know, a little, ya know it depends on if you go to some of these uppity stores, you know what I’m saying, right. And you watch the kid, they’re just like, so you put, you know, the mom or dad it pushing the cart, the kid thinks he’s running things, he’s boop boop, he’s hitting the horn, he’s ready, you know, he’s making a left, making a right, I’m running things. He’s thinking he’s doing it and can you imagine Asaph, cuz God is helping Asaph to remind himself like, brother you don’t ever forget the fact that when you see the world with their big old egos, with their big old bank accounts strutting their stuff thinking that they’re running things, they are nothing simply then that kid in that plastic car thinking that they were, and guess what, they forgot that there’s someone bigger than them, someone who knows more than them, someone who’s more powerful than them right behind them actually pushing the cart. That’s your sovereign God; that’s my sovereign God. I need to know that in life He’s pushing the cart and that one day everybody will realize they were simply part of His plan while he was going shopping for his glory.

Family, he goes on to say, “You guided me”, verse 25,” Therefore you guided me, you’re giving me counsel, you’ve been so gracious to me Lord, whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” the scriptures proclaim. I love that. What a God centered declaration, praise God right? So with renewed perspective you now see clearly, and it leads toward this sense of like realizing that the psalms, when you think of the psalms as a whole, they basically are giving you to tender that man earthly things feel, the body weakens, earth may even empty you, but the reality of heaven and who God is should always anchor you. That’s the psalms in a nutshell. See here’s the thing, if you’re going be in counseling all the time, whenever you use worldly measures to measure God’s goodness, right, you think of money and health and all the things we go through, you’re gonna have a spiritual crisis every other week. You can never use, that’s the tip from the scripture, you don’t use worldly measures to understand who God is and what He is doing. You will be in a crisis of faith all the time because He doesn’t operate like that, it’s a difference and so He says this beautiful declaration that the earth, these are happen crazy here because I’ve got an awesome plan that I’m going here and sometimes you’re gonna understand it and sometimes you’re not so you need to trust that I’m good, you need to put your anchor in the fact of who I am not on the things I give you.

Asaph is getting that clarity. Verse 27. He says, “For behold, those you 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 love this, “I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of your works.” I love that. Family, this text is about not trading eternal wealth for temporal comfort. I mean you think about it, think about it family, his situation never changed, the evil is still getting theirs, they still, everything he said is still happening. What changed? The reality of what he knew to be true, the glasses, he put new glasses on, kingdom, Bible centered glasses and what did it end in, you see that at the end there, I love this, praise and testimony, you see that, “That I may tell of your works.”

Now family, this is when, okay, I know that sometimes in culture we can think especially Presbyterians ya know, hey man, sometimes it’s harder for some people to seek out to God than others, right, and I get it, my culture and where I grew up, ya know, I know we are quicker to cut a step than people here. I get that, I’m the same culture, I’m admitting that, I’m giving that display of grace here, but guys what I love about this passage is that God wants you and I to see that worship and praise is a declaration that God has been good to you, that’s what it is. And so I tell you, that’s, I think that’s why broke folks will dance quicker because when they see something happen they just see it and, praise them dododo, and what I wanna, I’m not asking us to change who we are, but I am saying that in psalm 98:9 he tells us, he says, “Make a joyful noise” unless you’re Presbyterian, nope, “Make a joyful noise” unless you’re Dutch, nope. He says, “Make a joyful noise” what, “all the earth”, right. There’s something that happens, the reason why we wanna go to proclaim the Gospel to our neighbors, the reason why we wanna go out and talk about God’s goodness is because what we’re doing is not, I wanna propose to you, it doesn’t have to be performance, it actually could be a response saying God was good to me. My prayer is that we would be free to experience that.

Fam, psalm 73 ends is worship because it is not a rags to riches story, it is a resentment to rest story. Fam, you hear me. It is a testimony of a believer, Asaph, who almost lost his faith until he stepped into the sanctuary of God. It’s about moving from confusion to clarity, it’s about moving from envy to worship with the only thing changing is perspective of who God is. He moved from desire to hope fam. So guys I wanna tell you, don’t, don’t, when you go this week and you see that you had that tension don’t envy the wicked, pity them, pity them because they may have everything now but without Christ they will lose it all forever and I wanna again ask us as the people of God, let us not fall pray to the God of comfort, but Lord give us the grace to say you know what, think about it, think about all the shows and then we’ve gotta go home, all the shows out here today. I mean you think about the show that was on for like 20 years, Survivor, the whole premise is like, is that people are willing to starve and lose 45-50 pounds and walk around with barely clothes on and eat weird stuff, why, for a million dollars. You see that, you see the key learning there, that’s nothing new, guess what that says, what the Bible’s been saying all along, what He’s been promising, is that people when they know there’s something better, they’re willing to sacrifice. That’s all He’s saying. And so what I’m saying to you, the scriptures are saying to us, guys if we believe that eternity makes this look like plastic pearls, if we believe that being with God and experiencing eternal life with our savior and experiencing all that He’s promised is more than the cars and the houses and just boating with the grandkids, we believe all that. If we believe all that should there be sacrifice? Judgement is coming, justice will not be much, we can be excited about that as people. No one gets away with sin is what the scripture is teaching us. So, when your mind starts playing tricks on you and you’re looking around and it looks like people are winning, I want you to get to the sanctuary of God, I want you to go to church, I want you to get that truth preached to ya. Remember that God is still holding you, don’t lose heart, when life makes no sense remember the end of story, that God’s people will not just survive, we won’t just survive y’all, we’re gonna thrive and until that day he wants to continue to remind you and remind me that God is enough. Will you pray with me.

Holy God, may you remind us that you are indeed enough. May you encourage us to see that is practically in our lives and would you give us the strength to just remember to keep those glasses on and Lord continue to bless us with a body like this where we can be in small groups and we can be reminded of your truth and Lord we can consider who you are and consider the journeys, the destinies of us the righteous and even those who do not know you. We pray for those right now if they’re here and they don’t even pray in church or they’re here and it’s their first time, we pray just the reality that you rein and no one else and we ask that you would allow them to see their need for Jesus and Lord that they were relieved that you died for them and rose for them Lord and that you would give them an opportunity, just be merciful to them as you were to us what we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.