Psalm 73
Elder Mark Schmeissing preaches from Psalm 73. Discussion points: The author struggles with seeing the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering, fellowshipping with God and his church helps us reframe our view of our struggles, God’s grace is more satisfying than anything this world has to offer.
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Scripture reader: [Psalm 73] Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They'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, and 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'm continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me through your, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward, you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? 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 every one 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.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Good morning church. As Alexis said, my name is Mark Schmeissing. I'm an elder here at City on a hill. Pastor Fletcher is out of town this week with his family, and it's, a joy and a privilege to be with you this morning. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share God's word with you all.
So I grew up a child of the 1990s and, and maybe everyone sort of believes this and assumes this about that decade of their childhood, but one of my clearest memories of the 190s is that there seemed to be like a never ending string of fads and things that kind of came up for half a minute and then disappeared until they make a documentary about it 20 years later, things like Beanie Babies. Or baseball cards or Furbys which were these weird little robot creatures that were kind of terrifying and you gave them to children.
One of my personal favorites that was a little bit popular for for kind of half a minute there is up on the screen behind me, and the screen is not broken, but these are things called magic eye pictures, and if you're under the age of 35 or 30, you may not have ever seen these before. but these were kind of popular for a moment. They were in a lot of books and posters, and I could, you could find them in, in a lot of different contexts. And at first glance on the surface, it just looks like a jumbled mess of sort of colors and a repeating pattern, but there is, it kind of looks like television, television static is how I would, describe that to someone, but there's a method. Where what you do is you take the image and you put it right up against your nose and you slowly move it away from your face and you allow your eyes to kind of relax and lose focus and kind of get blurry.
And as you do that, it takes a lot of practice and kind of coaching and and and attempts at it, but after you do that, there's a 3D image that kind of pops out with some level of depth and layers to it. It's like an optical illusion. This particular image has a 3D image of a shark that pops out. I can't really show you what it actually looks like. You kind of have to experience it for yourself, which you can't do kind of sitting in your chairs, but you'll have to take my word for it that that staticky image actually has an image of a shark kind of embedded deep in it.
And these kind of silly magic eye pictures come to mind for me as I read and consider Psalm 73. Because Psalm 73 is like the journey of this guy who was looking at one of these pictures and saying very obviously it's just a mess of colors and repeating patterns. everyone kind of sees that it's obvious and it ends with this, with this person who can see the layers and depths and the 3D shark that's kind of hidden behind that initial image. Psalm 73 is a testimony of Asaph. Asaph was a man who was struggling with doubts and questions about his faith, questions that I think are gonna feel very reasonable and sensible to us even today in 2025.
Asaph was a Levite. He was serving as kind of the, the worship director in the temple. He was appointed by David for this role. So this Psalm is not somebody who's doubting or or or or opposed to God or trying to prove that God isn't good. Now this Psalm is a doubting of somebody who believes that God is good. But he's very honest about the struggles in his life. We can believe that God is good. We've heard reasons why over the past couple of weeks in our series on theology, why even in this world of suffering, we have a God that is good and powerful, God is still in control. But Monday can come around. And we may get difficult test results from the hospital. We may see a promotion and our job go to somebody else, or we may get downsized unexpectedly. Or maybe there's a person in your life who's hurt you. And just sort of seems to live without consequences or repercussions for their actions. And suddenly all this theology, all the things that we discussed about the goodness of God, don't seem so obvious.
What we do in these moments when the theological truth of what we know and believe doesn't seem to line up with what we're experiencing. And that's where Psalm 73 meets us this morning. Right in this sort of seemingly disconnected space between what we believe and what we see all around us. Throughout this Psalm, we're gonna see that the Psalmist circumstances, the events in his life aren't changing. The wicked are still prospering from beginning to end here and the righteous still face hardship. But time and God's presence reframes all of it for him, and he sees it differently and that makes all the difference here.
That's our key idea for today. When our faith is faltering and we feel like life is not making sense. We should seek the presence of God to restore in us his perspective on the world and on our lives. He is unchanging. Only in God's presence. Can we see the full picture and have the proper perspective on our lives?
The passage begins in verse one with this theological statement, this fact or truth for the author Asaph. He says, truly God is good to Israel to those who are pure in heart. That's the doctrine that he believes, and it's also the conclusion that he's gonna get to at the end. But in the very next breath, Asaph says, but as for me, My feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. That's his lived reality. He believes that God is good. But he's struggling to see it, and it nearly leads him to abandon his faith. Our faith journey can be a struggle and difficult. And it calls us to not take easy paths. And this song deals with this real life challenge of making sense of God's work in a broken world. We can often start in the right place, and then something goes wrong, and we feel like we somehow seem to have lost everything. And the problem is how do we get back again?
And Asaph gives us this testimony or roadmap of how to arrive back at that place where we can find peace in the goodness of who God is. In this case, the seriousness and gravity of his thinking, and what he's experiencing truly almost made him lose his faith. I don't want to gloss over this because I think too often we don't recognize the slippery slope of temptation and how our decisions are connected to our faith and who God is. Michael spoke on Temptation a few weeks ago and kind of it's allure and it's attractiveness. And I also think in this case, temptation can often bring a clear sense of reasonableness or logic and innocence. Temptation will often say, there's only one conclusion to draw. Looking at the situation from our natural human perspective, it's gonna seem impossible or unanswerable.
Specifically, Asaph was struggling with two things. The wicked, we're living the good life. And the righteous were suffering. The wicked were living the good life, and the righteous were suffering. As we see in the next several verses 3 through 12, Asaph describes the wicked as prosperous. They're avoiding pain until death. In verse 4, he says their bodies are fat and sleek. Now this is not a common term of endearment used today. but in the author's time, that meant that they were blessed both financially and physically. They're not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind, and maybe most shockingly to Asaph, they openly and pridefully mock God and receive no punishment or retribution. They say how can God know? Is there knowledge in the most high? Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease, the increase in riches.
And when Asaph looks around, he envies the wicked. He wants what they have. They enjoy sexual pleasure and success and luxuries that the world offers, and he envies it. He hears God's radical call to obedience, but when he looks around, There seems to be another way, maybe a better way, certainly an easier way in this world. He sees the wicked living the good life. But that alone is not the only thing that's troubling Asaph. The idea of the prosperity of the wicked is coupled with his own struggles, his own suffering, his own difficulties. He says in verse 13, 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. There's a sense of regret as he looks at his own life. So when he focuses on the flourishing of the wicked, and he looks at his own life. He concludes that maybe he pursued purity in vain.
Which is quite a statement, but one I think we at times can identify with. Where we wonder whether it's worth it to live in radical obedience to the commands of Christ or to submit to Scripture's standards. To live simply in order to sacrifice and give more away or to live generously, is there really a reward in righteousness? You may be saying I've always gone to church and tried to do everything right, but I'm having all this trouble right now, whereas my brother or my friend never goes to church, never considers God has this great job, a nice home, an easy marriage, and none of the same troubles that I have, so why am I serving God? Or maybe you're thinking I've always tried to do the right thing. I don't drink or smoke or do drugs, but I have all of these health problems. Well, people I know kind of go around and do whatever they want. And they're totally healthy, how is that right, how is that just?
I think temptation can also be blinding. It blinds us to see outside of ourselves and it blinds us to God's handiwork. It blinds us and declares there's only one way to view the situation and the only conclusion is hopelessness. And this is the point where belief in God's goodness may feel hollow or disconnected from day to day experiences. Asaph had this focus and his perspective was limited to the wicked were living the good life. And the righteous were suffering. Temptation told them, this is it, you've got it all, you see everything, it's 100% a complete picture. It's just a mess of colors and repeating patterns, that's all there is. There's no shark. Which side do you want to be on? And temptation says the choice is simple, it's logical, and it's reasonable.
I think back to the story of Job, this man who had immense wealth and a large family, and all of that was taken away in an instant, and as he sat in ashes with boils covering all of his skin, the immediate reaction of the people around him was logical and simple and reasonable. They said, Do you remain firm in your integrity, curse God and die. They're quick to assume that the issue had to be with God's goodness. I think an easy comparison for us today is to consider an Instagram profile. The author of Psalm 73 was looking at an Instagram profile and temptation told him this is 100% accurate and a complete picture of this person's life. They go to the beach, constantly vacationing. They have 3,674 best friends. And their, their relationships are all photogenic and picture perfect. He looked at his own life. And he couldn't reconcile why God hadn't been as good or generous in his own life.
So what do we do with these feelings and struggles? How do we reconcile what we've heard and believe about God's character with what we're seeing around us? There's a lot to wrestle with. In a world where sex traffickers are flourishing, there's a lot of leaders and positions of power who openly mock God. Sinners seem to be succeeding. Why does God allow all of this? Is he not powerful enough to stop this? If he's just, then why isn't he put an end to the wickedness? And these are all questions that Asaph was struggling with. As I said, this Psalm gives us a testimony and really a roadmap of what Asaph did.
So let's look at verse 16, where there's the real twist. 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. When he enters into the presence of God, his entire perspective changes. Even amidst all of his questions and concerns and real struggles, his perspective is completely shifted. His his vision was blurry and fogged. And God's presence made it clear. He can see the shark. So let's look first together at what it means to enter the sanctuary of God. And secondly, how God's presence changed his and can change our perspective. What it means to enter the sanctuary of God.
For Asaph, entering the sanctuary. Quite literally meant going into the temple, the place where God's presence dwelled, where sacrifices were made, where prayers were offered. And God's word was proclaimed. It was a place where he could see God's holiness and justice and mercy on display. A physical place, a building where God dwelt. Now some of you may be saying that's. You know, God's presence not is not limited to a building. So how is this relevant? But I wanna first stop and thank God for giving us his house, this house, this church, a physical place where we could come and gather together and worship and be in community with other people each week by getting up off my couch and coming in here this morning. I'm already seeing other people in this room. I'm no longer alone and isolated. Viewing my situation as unique and hopeless. Because I'm not alone. I'm surrounded by other people also facing difficult situations, also navigating their faith in a broken world. A tendency I see in my own life and in others is that when there's doubts or difficulties or struggles. We often draw back or disconnect from others as we feel vulnerable and exposed. It's very opposite of what Asaph did here, and it made all the difference in his perspective.
If you're struggling or hurting here this morning. One of the best things you can do is more deeply engaged with the house of God and the people of God. Too often when I've seen people struggling, it coincides with this deprioritization of community groups and Sunday morning attendance can feel like an additional burden on top of the hurt that you're already experiencing. But those are the words of the enemy telling you that you see your situation most clearly and no one else has the same problems that you do. Entering the sanctuary of God is literally connecting with God's people and engaging with the church. Another way that we enter the sanctuary of God is through reading the Bible. And Asaph say they didn't have the whole Bible available to them, but we do. We have it anywhere and everywhere. One of the reasons God has given us this word. Is in order to help us with our situations in life.
Take a Psalm like this one, Psalm 73, an Asaph story or or the book of Job, merely reading what these people went through can guide me and put me right and other stories do the same. As we begin to read our Bibles, we're reminded of God's gracious purposes for our lives. There's also no substitute for a quiet and still heart before God. We enter God's presence in his sanctuary through prayer. When Jesus was at was at his lowest point, and the cross was right there in front of him, he spent his time in the garden praying, not as I will, but as you will. And I don't say this to be trite, whatever you're going through, just read your Bible and pray more. But because I truly believe that reading scripture and spending time in prayer reorients and corrects. Our thoughts upwards to who God is. And what he's done for us.
I encourage you all to make the same visit that Asaph did. Put yourself in the place where God can speak to you about the issues in your life. Be faithful in your attendance, be faithful in your daily Bible reading, be faithfully pursuing the Lord in prayer, and like ASAP, come into the sanctuary, come into the presence of God. Now I want to pause for a second. Because entering the sanctuary of God. Didn't erase the difficulties of life. But it reframes them. It takes the same circumstances and lets us see them through God's eternal perspective. It doesn't erase our problems and our struggles. But it changes us and how we view them. So Asaph was struggling with these difficult questions about his faith and his life, wondering. Whether it was all worth it, or if there's an easier way to navigate life. And in the presence of God and the sanctuary of God, he had his perspective changed.
What happened to Asaph in God's presence? I believe God's presence changed his perspective in three distinct ways. God's presence revealed the truth about others. The wicked God's presence revealed the truth about Asaph himself. And God's presence revealed the truth about who God is and what is good. Let's look first at verses 17. Through 20 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 a Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. God's presence reveals the truth about the wicked and their security. It's temporary and unstable. What seems solid is actually very slippery ground, and in God's presence, the illusion of their stability, it disappears. It's like the idea of watching this fat, very well fed cow, enjoying a meal on its way to the slaughter. He's no longer just looking at the cow in his current condition, but he's looking down the road and can see the path and where the life will lead them. That may sound like graphic or sort of severe language, but I'd argue in verses 17 to 20, it's almost worse. He says fall into ruin, destroyed in a moment, they'll be swept away by terrors.
How our perspective changes when we lift our eyes to God. They're similar severe words in Revelation 21, but as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. And I'm reminded of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4, where he says, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. But the things that are unseen are eternal. In God's presence, we can see the path and we can see their end. We see the justice of God. On display. And we can see that the wicked will ultimately be judged for their sins. The same is true for the wicked around us today. God is not asleep when it comes to sin, when it comes to sex trafficking or violence or abuse or any other sin in this world. He will rouse himself and assert his justice. May not be in our timing. May not be visible in a way that we can kind of see it on our Instagram feed, but God is active.
And if I truly grasp this perspective on sin and wickedness, there's no longer a shred of envy within me for their position. God's presence makes it clear the truth about the wicked and his justice. God's presence also reveals the truth about Asaph, about himself. In verse 21, he says, when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant. I was like a beast towards you. Seeing God rightly. Helps us see how foolish it is to view the world without considering his judgment against sin and his gracious purposes for his people. In his presence, we see our own hearts more clearly. The bitterness, ignorance, and self-focus that clouds our view. And this clarity is not to condemn us, but to heal us and to drive us towards repentance.
Martin Lloyd Jones has a book called Faith on Trial, which is really just sort of a collection of sermons on Psalm 73. And he says this about this passage. We heal ourselves so easily. Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that the trouble with most most most of us is that in a sense we are far too healthy spiritually. I mean by that that we are much too glib, much too superficial. We don't take trouble in these matters. We, unlike the psalmist in these two verses, are on much too good of terms with ourselves. We are so unlike the men depicted in the scriptures. In the sanctuary, he was not only put right about the ungodly and about God, but also about himself, and he noticed the way in which he deals with himself. We do not seem to do that in these days, and the result is that there is a false appearance of health, as if all were well with us. There's very little sackcloth and ashes, there's very little godly sorrow for sin. And there's very little evidence of true repentance.
Again, I go back to the book of Job, when he was in the place where he met God. He'd been tempted to say some of the same things that Asaph says here in Psalm 73, but at the end, when he considers his position, he says in chapter 42, I had heard of you by hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. It's part of the equation we'd really like to just kind of gloss over, push past rather quickly and get over with as quickly as possible. How much time in my life have I, am I spending truly confessing my sin and examining the sin in my own life before God? Because there's gonna be a direct correlation between the time I spend confessing and dealing with my sin before God. In less time, I will be able to say in verse 13 here, all in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
And that shift happened to Asaph. He thought it was a pure question of fact. There's the ungodly. Look at them, they're living well. And then there's good people. Look at me. He thought he was very rational. But he discovered in the sanctuary of God, how his thinking had been governed by his feelings and a narrow perspective on his life. He declares that he had been acting like a beast before God. The sanctuary of God, the truth about the depths of our brokenness and our sin are revealed. We understand Romans 3 more fully that for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
But thankfully it doesn't end there. And God's presence. We have a different perspective on others and ourselves, but also on who God is and what is good. Asaph comes to see that the nearness of God is the ultimate good and also as we sang about this morning. Not comfort, not wealth, not popularity or reputation or power, but God Himself is our portion forever. He says, nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward, you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you, but for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all your works.
This is a rewatch of all the circumstances and events in his life with all the knowledge gained and a more complete perspective on what's happening. Changes everything about how we interpret what we're seeing. This psalm ends with this description of how the fullness of pleasure in God far outweighs the fleeting phantom prosperity of the wicked. Described in the first part. With God there is real joy, lasting joy, real pleasure and delight. And we can declare what it says in Psalm one to be true, the one who fears the Lord is blessed. He concludes for for me, it is good to be near God, which is a massive turnaround. It's not about a change in the situations and events and and circumstances in his life. It's about a change in his heart and his perspective. Asaph comes away with this deeper understanding of God's justice through how he will deal with the wicked, a deeper understanding of his own sin and wickedness, and from that a clear understanding of God's grace and love and goodness for himself.
Martin Lloyd Jones again says it's a new realization of God's amazing grace. If this Psalm teaches us one thing more than anything else, it is that all that is best and most wonderful in life is entirely and solely the result of the grace of God. If we do not grasp that. We are really profiting nothing from our long consideration of the Psalm. The great message of this Psalm is that we are debtors to mercy alone, all the way from the beginning to the very end. The whole of our life is entirely due to the grace and mercy of God. This is an eternal perspective on our lives. God's goodness is not limited to my so-called rational ideas of what I can see around me of health and wealth and prosperity and physical attractiveness and ease and comfort. But God through His grace and goodness. And kindness and love for us, sent his son. To die on a cross for me and my sin.
Each week we talk about how we're forming gospel people, people who believe only that what Christ has done on the cross can truly both save and satisfy us, and that's what Asaph is experiencing and what I want you all to experience here this morning and describing here in Psalm 73. That an understanding of God's grace is more satisfying than anything, any alternative that the world can offer. I'm not perfect or immune up here to doubts and struggles and ASAP, the leader of worship. and the temple wasn't perfect. He says our flesh and our heart may fail. I contend that they probably will fail at least at some point. But God's presence has never left us, and he is like a refuge or a castle for when struggles and doubts can feel overwhelming. So where do we turn? When our life experiences don't line up with what the Bible tells us about who God is. Or it feels like we're slipping and doubts creeping in, or we're just trying to make sense of the brokenness of the world around us. I encourage you to enter the sanctuary, enter into God's presence and discover anew his grace and His love for you. Cause it can completely transform your perspective and help you see more clearly God's hand in your life.
Your circumstances may not immediately change. But your perspective will. We can follow Asaph's path here, come into the presence of God. Let him show us the truth about others. The truth about ourselves and about what is truly good. And then we too will be able to save, but for me, it is good to be near God. So we leave here this morning, I pray that we walk out in the freedom and grace of the good news of the gospel, knowing that there's nothing we can find that will be better than what God offers. Let's close together in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we come to you with hearts full of gratitude for the goodness of who you are. We confess that our perspective on our lives is limited and leads us to be anxious and critical and doubt your love for us. Father, you are all that we want and more than we need. We desire you more than getting our way. Having less pain or gain more control. You never guaranteed us perfect health or easy circumstances. But you've given us yourself. In the righteousness of Jesus and a perfect future. May we rest and find joy in your presence. We pray all this in the name of Jesus, Amen.