Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons,
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sermon. God bless. Let's pray together. Oh Lord
God, we thank you for your goodness to us. You
are good and your mercy endures forever. We pray
Lord that you would be with Peter our pastor
and his family as they vacation. We pray that
you would be with all of our loved ones who are
not here today and we pray for those of us who
are here. Speak to us today in your word and
by your sacrament. Lord, help us to know you
and love you better. Now may the words of my
mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts
be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, our rock
and our Redeemer. Amen. All right. Hello all.
Psalm 73 is a poem in which the speaker expresses
indignation against the bad guys who appear to
just get away with everything. There appears
to be no justice in the world for the speaker
of the poem and I resonate strongly with this
because I am a football fan and for years and
years the New England Patriots kept getting into
scandal after scandal and kept getting away with
it and winning Super Bowls. There was no justice
in the world. The NFL fan looked up And behold,
in place of righteousness and truth, there was
Tom Brady deflating footballs. Let me read you
some of Psalm 73 as I would have read it not
long ago in my own spiritual life. Please follow
along with the ESV in your pew for reference.
So this is starting with verse three. For I was
envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity
of the patriots. For they have no trouble from
the league office. Their owner's pockets are
thick and deep. They are not flagged as others
are. They are not officiated as the rest of mankind.
I could go on. I was really pretty intent about
this. I would not be able to sleep at night because
I'd be so angry after the Patriots won again
on Sunday night football with the help of the
refs. This is actually all true. But this is
all also kind of a false start, isn't it, as
regards the actual text in front of us? Because,
why, even though this poem expresses rage against
the wicked, I don't really think the poem is
about the wicked, finally. It's rather about
the speaker and his relationship with God, right?
After all, what's the danger in this text? We've
seen other Psalms pretty recently where there
seems to be actual physical violence being threatened
against the speaker and he's saying, oh Lord
make haste to help me, right? That doesn't seem
to be the case here. In this one, the bad guys
aren't actually threatening, they're just bad
and they're comfortable being bad and that in
itself makes the speaker uncomfortable. The danger
here is spiritual. The danger is having a heart
that is out of alignment with God. As Jewish
philosopher, Martin Buber says about this Psalm,
quote, the state of the heart determines whether
a man lives in the truth in which God's goodness
is experienced or in the semblance of truth where
the fact that it goes ill with him is confused
with the illusion that God is not good to him.
So God is good to us, but we can see the world
out there and become convinced that God is not
in fact good to us. Another commentator says
that the theme of this poem is quote, the occupation
of the heart with others and subsequent distraction.
We can get distracted when we look at others,
right? So the speaker is upfront about this.
He knows that even though he's upset at the wicked,
the real problem is his own heart. We have this
long complaint about the wicked that lasts from
verse four, all the way to verse 15, but it's
all headed by verse three. And if you look there,
what does it say? I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. So we're
hearing from the poet himself that everything
that follows about the wicked is not going to
be an impartial, dispassionate kind of an account,
right? I considered within myself, calmly, and
I beheld the wicked were being wicked, right?
It's not that kind of thing. This is colored
all the way through by envy, just like my own
long standing hatred for the New England football
team. So I'm calling this sermon Heart Health.
because the word heart occurs six times in the
text. And it's pretty obvious that the speaker
is in spiritual discomfort in the first half
of the poem. He's in a condition that I'm thinking
as a kind of heartache or heart sickness, but
then he's reminded of the trustworthiness of
God and he gets to a state of ease or heart health
by the end of it. So the question for us in reading
this poem can be, How do we go about getting
to a restful state for our hearts? How do we
achieve heart health in this world that can absolutely
cause us heartbreak? Here's what I think the
Psalm teaches us. If we want to avoid spiritual
heart sickness, we will put our trust in the
true God, and we can deepen our trust in the
true God in church. That's my thesis. If we want
to avoid spiritual heart sickness, we put our
trust in the true God and we can deepen our trust
in the true God in church. And because I'm training
to be a Presbyterian minister, I'm going to break
that into three points. And because I was talking
to Dale a few weeks ago, I'm going to try to
break each of those points into two sub points.
You can grade me on this afterwards. All right.
So here are my three points for biblical heart
health. They are reality, routine, and relationship.
Okay? Reality. So in thinking about the first
half of this poem, we can be reminded of what
Peter has said here in the previous weeks, which
is that God is interested in how you really feel.
We don't have to fake things before God. We should
pour out the reality of our feelings to him.
We shouldn't need the to self -censor. to the
Lord. But then, having expressed ourselves honestly
to God, we should then examine what the causes
of our feeling actually were, actually are. So
in this case, am I angry at the wicked because
their behavior is harming others? Am I angry
at the wicked because their behavior is dishonoring
to God? Or am I angry because I'm secretly jealous
of the wicked? Take a look. This poem is not
just about bad people in general. It's about
the wicked rich people. The prosperity of the
wicked is what causes the speaker's anger. We're
talking about the big guys, the fat cats, sort
of literally. Verse four, their bodies are thick.
They're fat and sleek. Verse four, they are not
in trouble as others are. They are always at
ease. Verse 12. So why would we envy people we
think are bad? Well, if we only think about worldly
success, we can do it pretty easily. If our goal
is riches and power, we will envy the rich and
the powerful, whether or not we like them personally.
If we start thinking only about them and their
earthly success, we can stop thinking about God.
God is pretty absent from the first half of this
whole poem after the first verse, right? When
we do remember God, it's only to wonder why he's
not doing what we would like him to do. Look
at verse 11. They say, how can God know? Is there
knowledge in the most high? That is, I don't
have to worry about God, right? He's not gonna
do anything about me. And follow this, if the
speaker is envious of them, This is the way he's
picturing the bad guys speaking. And if the speaker
is envious of them, that means that's secretly
sort of the way he wants to regard God too. He'd
rather not think about him, right? He doesn't
want to have to worry about pleasing God or following
his laws. That's not going to make him rich.
So I think the first step to heart health is
actually to ask, what is it that's causing us
heart distress? Is there a part of our heart
that just wants to be bad ourselves and get away
with it? The text sees this. Later on, it calls
this type of thinking bitter. That's verse 21
or brutal in verse 22. The thoughts of the speaker
have diagnosed themselves and discovered that
even though it was angry at bad things, it was
angry in bad ways or for bad reasons. And I think
we should be willing to look critically at our
own big feelings and pronounce judgment on them.
And isn't that the same thing as a confession
of sin? I wanna come back to that. But worldly
envy is a root cause of discomfort that we should
be aware of. It is a reality that we can try
to hide even from ourselves and we should discover
it, right? Because we don't like to think of
ourselves as envious, we like to think of ourselves
as righteous. So let's look at a flip side of
that thought, wanting to be righteous, right?
The flip side of that desire to be righteous
and not seeing it, not feeling comfortable in
the world is a distrust of God. What do I mean?
Well, you can see distrust of God in the way
the speaker expresses his outrage. The wicked
have it easy. They're fat and they're happy,
but I'm doing all this good stuff for you and
where's my gold sticker, God? You're not doing
your job right. You're supposed to be rewarding
me and punishing them. Let's back up to the beginning
of the text here. So we get the language of stumbling.
My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly
slipped. That's verse two. And then after this
mention of slipperiness and stumbling, then we
have this 13 or so verse rant against the wicked.
It's a poetically worded rant, but it is a rant
nevertheless. The text seems to regard that long
section as a kind of swamp of bitterness that
envy has led us into or that we sort of slipped
into because of envy, right? So even if the speaker
is right and the bad guys are bad, the swamp
is not a good place to be. There's a big hint
here that we can know this is not the right way
to think. Look at verse 13. It says all in vain.
I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands
in innocence. That's a bitter cry of frustration
against God because he's not rewarding people
the way that we think he should. But it's a really
interestingly worded one or it's an interesting
picture, right? There's only one other guy that
I'm familiar with in the Bible who washes his
hands and he says, I'm innocent. And that is
the deeply not innocent pilot. So if our anger
is a swamp, Why does this almost stay in it for
half of the poem? Well, I think if we're honest
with ourselves, we can realize that there's something
really satisfying about telling ourselves over
and over again how right we are and how wrong
and bad the bad guys are. That's the temptation.
It's concluding that since God is not providing
visible justice in the world the way that we
want, we'll just have to do his job for him.
We're gonna prove to ourselves how right we are
and how we have been wronged and we can get stuck
in that Our own Bruce Weatherly in his soon -to
-be published book calls that cyclical thinking
a Cycle and I think he's absolutely right in
saying that this is a trap that can ruin the
peace of our hearts So how do we get out of the
cycle? Brings me to my second point here routine.
We need a good routine to keep us in heart health
This poem centers, pretty literally, in a pivot
point in verses 16 and 17, if you look there.
Verse 16, but when I thought how to understand
this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. The speaker
is weary, he's tired, he's exhausted of all this
kind of thinking, right? Until I went to the
sanctuary of God. That is the change. point,
that's the emotional center of the poem. That's
the answer to the problem that's posed by the
first half of the poem and the rest of the poem
parallels the first half but now it's on an upward
trajectory. The routine of going and worshipping
the Lord, go to the sanctuary, in the ordained
place of worship, reorders the speaker's thoughts
so that he can deal correctly with the world
now. There's another point here that argues for
church going being the main point of this text
and that is the Psalms place in the Psalter,
in the Bible itself. We saw last week that Psalm
72 was the end of book two of the Psalms and
of course then 73 begins book three. Well, many
commentators say that book three, this section
of the Psalter is primarily about the sanctuary
or the temple. That is where God meets with his
people. It's where the material world in which
we live and God's spiritual reality, those two
things kind of touch, right? So if this is the
first poem in the book of poems dedicated to
the sanctuary, it's pretty obvious that the verse
about the sanctuary in the center of this poem
is important. Okay. So friend, what's the cure
for heart sickness? What's the cure for feeling
like the world is broken? and leaking acid all
over the place. The cure for this feeling says
this poem is go to church. How about that? Welcome,
everyone. We're glad you're here. We're happy
to provide this spiritual service for you. Does
this sound self -serving from a guy in front
of the church? Man, I didn't write this text.
I found it in this book. Christian, hear this.
Church is important and somehow many of us don't
think that it is. So I listen to Christian music
on Pandora, the like radio song thing on my phone
while I'm washing dishes and on my Christian
music channel, every once in a while they have
this smarmy ad that comes up and it says, you
go to church to worship. Why not bring church
to you with our great worship song compilation.
And look, all I mean to say here is Pandora is
a bad theologian. I don't need to like dunk on
a fine product, but the insufficiency of that
view of church is drastic. Church is not something
you can bring to you whenever you turn on your
phone. Church is the body which is ordained by
God for the sanctification of his people to the
end of the age. So. in the context of this poem,
what is it that going to the place of worship
does for us in terms of heart health? First,
it gives us an eternal viewpoint. Verse 17 again,
I went to the sanctuary of God, then I discerned
their end. So it can seem like bad guys do win
all the time in this world, yeah, but this world
isn't all there is. And church helps reminds
of reminds us of that. The bad guys aren't going
to get away with it, right? Verse 18 says, truly
you set them in slippery places. Now, if you'll
remember back in verse two, but as for me, my
feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly
slipped. I was slippery when I was envious, but
when I remember that God is for the good and
against the wicked, I see that they're truly
the slippery ones and my feet get firm, right?
That's a parallelism that I think also reinforces
this idea of the two halves of the poem. These
guys look like they have it so nice, but that's
false in the long term. It's an aberration against
reality, right? They're gonna fall to ruin. That's
verse 18. Verse 19, how they are destroyed in
a moment. They're swept away utterly by terrors.
Verse 20, they're like a bad dream, gone in the
night. So right now, it often looks like crime
does pay, but from the standpoint of eternity,
that's just illusion, as Buber pointed out. Goodness
is going to have the last word. God is good to
those who are pure in heart, verse one. And the
other texts that we read this morning, Isaiah
and the gospels, show that we really do want
to be on the side of the weak. and the powerless
over against the powerful who use their power
wrongly, right? When God makes his final judgment,
those guys are not in a good situation. Church
reminds us to widen our scope and not just look
at the present. What else does going to church
do for us? It humbles us. It helps us see that
our judgments aren't always correct. Where do
we see this? Look at verse 23. So after going
to the sanctuary and being rescued from his bitterness,
the speaker says this, nevertheless, I am continually
with you. You hold my right hand. The you here,
by the way, is God. You may note that you doesn't
show up until verse 20. The whole verse half
of the poem is just kind of spitting out angry
things. But in verse 20, again, after the turn,
this becomes quiet, calm, and it becomes a prayer.
Okay, let's keep reading. So you hold my right
hand, you guide me with your counsel. So this
poem has turned from anger to peace, and it gets
there by means of a really interesting metaphor,
right? God is holding us by the hand. Well, that
puts us in a position of childlikeness, right?
In the first part of the poem, the speaker is
taking the point, the stance of a sort of ferocious
attorney. He's arguing with God, but now he's
in the position of a child being led by God.
It's a radical change of heart, right? So if
we need to be held by the hand, we're not in
a position to judge anybody because we're in
danger of falling down ourselves. We must remember
what Jesus says, right? We must become like little
children. Go to church. Remember that God is
big and you are small and your judgments err.
Here's an example that illustrates this on a
small scale. Recently, one of my daughters was
very angry at another daughter because daughter
number two threw a book. and the book's cover
had exploded off of the pages when it landed.
Daughter number one was shouting, she was furious,
she was ready to throw the book at daughter number
two, as they say. She wanted justice for the
sin against the stalker family library. Well,
unbeknownst to daughter number one, but known
to daddy, was that a third daughter had actually
been the one to knock the cover off of the book.
She actually sort of pried it off. And the cover
had just been put back over the pages, but not
glued back on. So while daughter number two certainly
should not have thrown the book, she was not
guilty to the extent that daughter number one
thought she was. Or you could perhaps say daughter
number one could not view daughter number two
as wholly wicked, like perhaps she wanted to,
without thereby including daughter number three
in the same category, which she didn't want to
do. Justice is tough, and we don't often have
the info we need. We need the Lord to hold our
hand, and when he does, we will remember that
we're all guilty. We're all sinners and have
fallen short of the glory. We need to remember
to judge not, that we be not judged. In short,
we will allow ourselves to take a position of
childlikeness before God, who is our father,
and admit that his judgments are the ones that
matter. We can't trust our angry judgments to
reflect the state of the world angrily. Look,
how about this? Is the first half of this poem
even correct? How about that? Look, they are
always at ease. Has anybody in the history of
the world ever experienced his or her own life
in this way? Anybody thinking about themselves?
Oh, yeah, I'm always at ease, right? I'm so glad
I started being wicked. I'm just always at ease
now, right? This is a bitter judgment from the
outside. The judgment isn't fair, right? It's
colored by envy. Leave the judgments up to God.
Let's take a brief moment and rehabilitate daughter
number one right now. So she's not the littlest.
So I don't need to hold her hands when we're
crossing streets and things like that. But often,
though she is a big girl, she will voluntarily
take daddy's hand, right? So she chooses to become
like a little child, which is what Jesus says.
You must become like a little child. She chooses
to take that position, right, of humility because
it's relational, because she knows that she can
trust, okay? So let's get to our last point.
That's relationship. Look at verse 25. This is
a beautiful line in the poem. Whom have I in
heaven but you, and there's nothing on earth
that I desire besides you. What's the cure for
envy? It's satisfaction, isn't it? I'm not gonna
envy somebody else's house if I really love my
house. I'm not gonna envy somebody else's football
team when my football team happens to be the
best in the world. and I'm certainly not gonna
envy the wicked fat cats when I'm satisfied with
God. Why? Because their money is irrelevant to
my true desires. Thoreau says, money is not required
to buy one necessary of the soul. He's not exactly
quoting the psalm, but I think the psalmist agrees
with him on this point. Money is not required
to buy one necessary of the soul. Let's go on,
verse 26. My flesh and my heart may fail. You'll
die one day. It's a public service announcement.
My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the
strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Portion, it means inheritance. It's what you
get. It's what's coming to you. Friend, what's
coming to you? After you die, if you have trusted
in Christ, you get God. He is your portion. He
is your inheritance forever. He is your great
reward. And guess what? It gets even better than
that, sort of. How? Well, it's not just that
you get God. It's that you get God and God happens
to be very good company. Let's keep looking at
this. God is relational. We can know him. A relationship
with him will calm our hearts and give us peace.
This is a cool point. Throughout this text, we
have some mentions of God, but the word used
for God in Hebrew is either El or Elohim. And
both of these are sort of generic terms for God.
It's like a class name or something like that.
Those are the gods, El, right? Those terms can
be used of false spirits, for instance. But when
we get to the end of the text and it makes its
firmest affirmation of stability, look what it
says down here in verse 28. It says, but for
me, it is good to be near God. That's L. The
church reminds us it's good to be near God. I
have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell
of all your works. So here, if you're looking
at your text, That second mention of God in the
verse, Lord God, it's written in little capitals.
Well, that's the way the English version designates
the covenant name of God that the Hebrew uses,
Yahweh, right? So we've thought about God in
a sort of philosophical sense. He's the one who
judges things, but doesn't do it the way that
we want. But then when we remember that it's
good to be near God, we remember our relationship
with Him. And then we speak of Him in a relational
way, right? God, Adonai Yahweh, I've made him
my refuge. God is not some distant scoring machine.
He's not some distant judge. He is our refuge.
He's our savior. And where do we see God precisely
in his saving relationship with us? Well, it's
the person that the New Testament consistently
refers to as Lord. Adonai, right? Jesus Christ
is God in relationship to his people, Emmanuel,
God with us, and it is good to be near him. It
is good to make him your refuge. I'll give you
the gospel in miniature, right? One, it is good
to be near God, and two, God has come near to
us in Jesus. And Jesus is also the definitive
example for the righteous person not being well
rewarded in this life externally. He was born
poor. He lived poor. He died horribly. And yet,
we know that he was the beloved of the father.
In him, the father was well pleased. If you look
around the world and you say to yourself, man,
I'm not as rich as those wicked guys are. You're
in good company. The son of God is right there
with you. All right. There's a lot more here
in this poem, but I think I'm going to be done.
I just have some application points to leave
you with. First. When you're reading this poem,
where do you find yourself in your normal state,
in your habitual state? Where do you feel most
comfortable? Do you recognize yourself most in
the first half of this poem where we're complaining
about the wicked? Or do you recognize yourself
at the end where you're saying, I have made the
Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all his
works? Friend, if you are happier complaining
about bad guys rather than telling about God's
goodness, chances are your heart is sick. and
it needs rest. Come to the Lord. Second, I think
a real application of this text is to come to
the Lord, even when you're not feeling well put
together, right? The guy's angry, angry, angry,
comes to the Lord and changes, right? Come to
the Lord in your anger, come to the Lord in your
sin. If you find yourself in a slippery place,
listen for the loving guidance of the Lord, and
no matter how bitter or how brutal you have been,
you will be led to safety, and church is a very
good place to come and hear the Lord's voice.
Finally, let's take the long view. To get back
to my opening illustration about football, I
could have saved myself years of anguish if I
had just said to myself, you know, things may
look bad now, but Tom Brady can't continue winning
Super Bowls forever. One day, he'll have to retire,
and probably he'll be a commentator, and almost
certainly he'll be in the broadcast booth when
my favorite team wins the Super Bowl, convincingly.
That would have eased my heart. And we can do
far better than that, can't we? We can say, you
know, things do look bad now. Bad guys can seem
to be in control in really hurtful ways, but
God is the strength of my heart and my portion
forever, and afterwards he will receive us to
glory. Amen. Let's pray. Oh Lord God, whom have
we in heaven but you? There is none to desire
besides you. Help us to reorient our lives, that
knowing you, seeking you, serving you, these
are the only important things for us. We ask,
oh Lord, that you would prove yourself again
and again. faithful to us and help us to seek
you out in your sanctuary. Give us this grace,
we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you for
listening to Second City Sermons podcast. We
hope this sermon has encouraged you to worship
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