Sermon: Truly God Is Good

We're gonna look together this morning at Psalm seventy-three. Invite you to turn there in your Bibles. If you are using one of the pew Bibles, it's on page four hundred and eighty-five. Before we come to read God's Word, let us go before Him and ask for help in understanding.

Oh Father, we, we do thank You. We thank You that You have given us such a firm foundation on which to stand in Your Word, that You have revealed Yourself, made Yourself known to us. Would You, by Your Spirit, as we look at Your Word this morning, would You give us understanding? Would You enlighten our minds and our hearts that we might see rightly, we might see You rightly, we might see ourselves rightly, we might see

this world in which we live rightly, and that we might live rightly in light of who You are. We ask these things in the name of Your Son, Christ. Amen.

Listen now as I read Psalm seventy-three. This is the very Word of God.

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 are not in trouble as others are; they are 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 tongue struts 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.

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 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.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, was a, a twentieth century Welsh-English pastor, and he has an entire book of compiled sermons from just this psalm. I would highly recommend it to you. You will see as we go through here we will just scratch the surface of this psalm this morning. Uh, it's called Faith on Trial, and, and I want you to hear how he opens the preface to that book.

The seventy-third Psalm deals with a problem that has often perplexed and discouraged God's people. It is a double problem. Why should the godly frequently have to suffer, especially in view of the fact that the ungodly frequently appear to be most prosperous?

This is a psalm that I return to over and over again, both for my personal edification and in seeking to encourage others. I love it. It's one of my favorite chapters in all of the Bible precisely because, as Lloyd-Jones points out, it deals with such a common struggle, and it does so with such honesty and clarity as it gives insight into how to navigate these questions in light of the character and the nature of our God.As

we seek to dig into these verses, we are going to do so by considering the psalm in three parts. First, we're going to look at the goodness of God to his people. Then we will look at the deceit of how things appear. And then we'll look at the reality of how things are. And if I get one piece of feedback more often than anything else at my home from my daughters, it's please make sure you repeat the points often so we can take good notes.

So I will try to do that as we go through. The goodness of God to his people, the deceit of how things appear, and the reality of how things are. First, we will consider verse 1 and the goodness of God to his people. Psalm 73 begins, as many psalms do, with the main idea that the psalmist wants to draw out. Out of the gate, Asaph, who is the author of this psalm, gives you the conclusion that he wants you to know and to walk away with.

A truth that is certain and on which you can resolve to live and to die by. This thesis will provide a framework through which to view and to understand the rest of the psalm. So what is it that Psalm 73 is about? What is the main thing that you are to know and to believe and to live in light of? I want you to hear again verse 1. Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

God wants to communicate, he wants you to know through this psalm that he is good. That he's dependable, trustworthy, righteous, and particularly that he is all of these things to and for his people. God is a God who is faithful to his people and to his promises. The Jewish people, Israel in the psalmist's day, Christians, the church in our day. If you belong to him and you seek to live in light of the purity of his word, he will

not forsake you. For God is for his people and God is good to his people. This is a fairly straightforward truth. It's not hard to understand. The psalm doesn't linger on it, but simply states the fact. God is good to his people. But as you know from your life and as Asaph is about to describe from his own experience, believing that this is true is not always easy. In fact, it can at times be very difficult. Life in this fallen, broken world is often lived in

fog and clouds that make it difficult to see clearly and to trust that God is who he says he is. So before the psalmist goes on to describe his experience with that cloudiness and fogginess, he wants you to know and hold on to the goodness of God to his people. No matter what, stand on the firm foundation of God's character and of his good dealings toward his people.

That brings us to the second section of our psalm, the deceit of things as they appear, which we'll look at in verses 2 through 16. So having set forth the thesis that he wants you to stand upon, the foundation upon which he's going to build and what he is seeking to argue, the psalmist moves on to lay out his personal struggle to believe and to live in light of this truth. And the trouble for him emerged from what he saw and observed in

the world around him. Consider what he saw in verse 3. He says that he saw the wicked prospering. They had no pangs until death, he says in verse 4. This could be referring to the fact that their lives before death seem relatively pain-free. Also could refer to when death does come, it is peaceful. That the wicked seem to be dying of old age rather than some other more traumatic end of their life. They seem to have ease

in their lives and in their deaths. Continuing in verse 4, their bodies are fat and sleek. We don't tend to think of fat as a positive, but here it means that they are healthy. It's an indication that they have enough to eat and they are comfortable. Their bodies are not worn down through hard labor or gaunt from lack of food. In verse 5, he sees that they are not stricken and are not in trouble. Unclear exactly what trouble or strife they might have

otherwise found themselves in, but it's clear that it stands out as unique among other people. It seems to the psalmist that the wicked have more peaceful and fruitful lives than those who are around them.And they are not shy about how they live. Verse six, they wear pride like a necklace. They display their arrogance. They are proud of their pride. They cover themselves with violence as you might with a jacket. It's the very clothes that they wear.

They believe they are superior, and they act like it. They don't care who gets trampled in the process of them moving forward. This is what the wicked are like. He goes on to describe their eyes swelling out through fatness in verse seven. They're so indulgent that you can literally see looking at their faces the abundance and indulgence of their lives. Verse seven continues revealing that it is not only physically and

materially that they are indulgent, but in their hearts as well. Their hearts can't contain all of their follies, and so foolishness overflows, pouring out of their hearts with seemingly no negative repercussions.

And if all of that wasn't enough, the psalmist goes on to describe their speech.

Out of the overflow of their foolish hearts, their mouths speak, and we see that they scoff. They speak with malice. They threaten oppression in verse eight, and they do this loftily. They dismiss others. They're malicious. They view themselves as the powerful ones. They speak down to others. And their words continue in verse nine. They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues strut through the earth. The combination of heaven and earth is often in

scripture, and here I believe, used as a shorthand or a summary for all of creation. They speak against all that has been made. They are walking around and talking like they own the place, and the place is the entire cosmos.

To make matters worse, in spite of their manner of living and speaking, it seems that God's people are drawn to them, or at least find no fault in them. And then on top of it all, the wicked even dare to speak against God himself in verse 11. The one who made all things, who knows all things, who sees all things, who can do all things, they mockingly ask, can God know? Does the Most High have any knowledge? They defy God with their words, and they set themselves

up as functional gods. And yet, they remain, as verse 12 describes, always at ease and increasing in riches. This is the psalmist's summary of his perception as he looks around and, and of the wicked. You can see in verse 12, he, he pauses, behold, look. He'll do the same again when he summarizes the second half of the chapter in verse 27. Here's his summary. Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease. They increase in riches.

They are foolish of heart. They're wicked, brash, and smug. They speak down to people. They walk around like they rule the world. They lead God's people astray. They even dare openly to mock and question God, and they live lives of ease and prosperity.

This is what Asaph sees around him, and it is enough to present a difficult challenge on its own. But then he adds verse 14. All of this is in contrast to his own experience. The wicked are not stricken. He is stricken all day long. He wakes up every morning to a fresh rebuke. He is not at ease. He is not increasing in riches. And here is where temptation often arises, and it does so here for the psalmist. Trying to reconcile what you see with who

God is. Asaph has three data points, the prosperity he sees of the wicked, the suffering of the godly, including himself, and the claim of God's goodness to his people, and he cannot reconcile these in his mind. So what does he do? I want you to consider now how he responds to what he has seen. In verse three, he confesses that he was envious. He knows that they are wicked, foolish, and ungodly, and yet he gets to the point where he would say, "I wish that I was in their

shoes. I was jealous of them. I envied the wicked and the arrogant."In addition to being envious, he begins to doubt God. In vain have I followed you. In vain have I sought to live a holy life, to keep my heart clean, and to be innocent and godly. It has served no good purpose. Seeking to be faithful and obedient has borne no good fruit in my life. And as a result, bitterness begins to grow in his heart, which he will

confess later in verse 21. The result of all of this is that he finds himself in the precarious spot of stumbling and almost slipping and falling, at risk of losing his own footing and in danger, if he were to give voice to his thoughts, of leading others astray as well. Look at verse 15. If I had said I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. He feels like he is on a slippery slope downhill,

and he is at risk of leading the children of God away from God.

To be fair to the psalmist and to us at times, it is no easy task to live by faith, to grasp that God is governing the affairs of the world when the world so often seems upside down.

This is the challenge that Asaph was facing, trying to reconcile the prosperity of the wicked, the suffering of the godly, and the goodness of God, and he could not make it make sense.

When he tried to think it out and to come to some understanding, he says he found the task wearisome. And in his weariness of understanding, he gave in to the temptation that presented itself as a comfort to envy and despair, doubt and bitterness, putting himself in danger and in danger of leading others astray.

Most of us may not be quite as brazen as Asaph is to articulate quite so bluntly that you feel the vanity of following God or are envious of the wicked and foolish. But if you have lived as a Christian for any amount of time, you know and have felt the temptations to jealousy and bitterness and doubt. In the home, in the classroom, in the workplace, in life in general, there is something that you desire and don't have while others do, or

there's some hardship that you are walking through that others are spared from, and God seems indifferent. Things happen in your life, and they are not how you would have done it if it was up to you. It seems like God is not doing good to you. You seek him and struggle, and those who oppose him seem to be thriving. It doesn't seem that God is being fair or upholding his end of the bargain. This is where Asaph finds himself at the end of

verse 16. He has looked around at the wicked and at himself, and it seems that God is not being faithful to his people.

However, things are not always as they seem, and the psalmist is about to be taught this lesson and to make this clear as he turns to show the reality of how things are in verses 17 through 28.

And somehow I lost my place. So trying to come to an understanding for the psalmist was an exhausting task until he went into the sanctuary of God. We'll come back to the sanctuary of God in a few minutes, but Asaph comes out of this encounter with the understanding that he had failed to come to when he sought it on his own. He sees that he had misjudged the value of prosperity and had too small a view of what God's goodness meant.

Before, he saw the ease and prosperity of the wicked and the difficulty of his own life. Now he sees something different, and I want us to take a few minutes to consider what it is that he observes after he went into the sanctuary of God. First, he sees where the wicked are headed. He sees what their end is. They have been put in slippery places. At the beginning of the psalm, you'll remember, he expressed his own danger of

slipping, but now he can see that God has put the wicked on slippery ground and will cause them to fall to their ruin.

Verse 19, he sees that they are destroyed in a moment and utterly swept away by terrors. They are walking around at ease and increasing in prosperity, proud and violent, speaking down to others and against God, causing God's people confusion and doubt, enjoying life without a care in the world, and then gone.In a terrible moment. They vanish like a dream, and are despised as phantoms, barely even real. That which was the source of such envy and

distress, the psalmist now sees rightly as the mirage that it was, mere shadows without substance. And then in summary, in verse 27, Asaph can now see clearly that those who are far from God will perish. All those who are unfaithful to God, who commit adultery with God by serving and worshiping other gods or simply themselves, God will put an end to them.

It's very different than what he saw at the beginning of the psalm.

Before we go on, I wanna pause here for just a second. Th- this psalm, I believe, is, is written to God's people. It is written to strengthen the faith of God's people against the temptations that the psalmist himself fell prey to. However, there is a warning here to those who are apart from God or are in sin. You may look down and speak down to others. You may wear pride and violence as you walk through life. Life may be easy and

prosperous. You may feel like you're on top of the world. You may feel like you're standing on solid ground, and that God, if there is a God, doesn't see or know how you live and speak, and certainly He isn't going to do anything about it.

The reality is He does see it, and He is going to do something about it. There is a day coming, a moment, we're told here, coming, when His perfect justice will demand an account for every evil deed and every evil word. Those who have not been made pure in heart through faith in Christ will perish.

And it will be, in that moment, too late, but it is not too late right now. Turn to God in faith and repren- and repentance, and you can rest assured that He is good to His people. And this is where Asaph turns next, because he sees that goodness as he sees not only the end of the wicked, but the end of the righteous as well. He sees where they are headed. Consider now his description of what is coming for God's people.

Nearness with God Himself, who holds them by the hand, guides them by His all-wise counsel, and ultimately receives them into glory. Fellowship and communion with God, the security of always having Him near, and the hope of eternal, glorious existence with Him.

As if that wasn't enough, in addition, the Almighty God is their strength and their portion forever. Portion is a way of saying He is their inheritance. As God's people, as God's children, they have a rich heritage and inheritance beyond all imagining. You have a rich heritage and inheritance beyond all imagining. The Almighty God is their strength. He is their portion in this life and for all of eternity.

So as we, as we think about where the psalmist is now, in, in one sense, nothing has changed. In another sense, everything has changed. Circumstances are the same as they were, but they look completely different now that they are seen with the eyes of faith. The psalmist can see how superficial his judgments were about both the wicked and the godly. He sees clearly now, with the end in view, how unstable their life is, and how secure he is,

how rich he is, and how poor they are. He was envious, doubting, and bitter before, but now consider his response in light of the broader eternal view that he has of things. First, he responds with humility. See this in verses 21 and 22 and 26. He recognizes his sin and his limitedness. He sees that he was ignorant and bitter before. He did not know what he was talking about. He was living and acting as a brute beast, as an

animal. This is a description of what sin will do to you. It will cause you to live in subhuman ways. You will think and act like a beast, and not like a man.

You should not be surprised that you don't understand all the workings of God. You do not and cannot stand in judgmentIn Isaiah, God makes it clear that his thoughts and ways are not your thoughts and ways, and that his thoughts are higher than your thoughts, and his ways are higher than your ways. Humility acknowledges that this is true, and it is the proper starting place for man before God. As Asaph says, it's true of him, and it is also true of you,

your flesh and your heart are capable of failing. Which is why it is such a wonderful thing that God will never fail. In addition to humility, there is an eruption of praise in verse twenty-five. Again, we see here heaven and earth as shorthand for all of creation. Only this time, it is in praise of God, who in all of the con- cosmos, in heaven and in earth, in all of the created realm, is most valuable, most desirable, most

glorious, most satisfying, most delightful. Nothing can compare to Him. The earthly ease and comfort and prosperity that had loomed so large a few short verses ago now fades from view, pushed aside by the captivating brilliance and desirability of God Himself.

And seeing this about God leads to another response, an overwhelming confidence. There is a certainty to everything that is coming. He will be with you. He will guide you. He will receive you into glory. He is your strength. He is your portion. There's no might. There's no if.

And so the psalmist can declare, "For me, it is good to be near God. I have made Him my refuge." Asaph began with God being good to His people, and now he concludes, having wrestled with this truth in light of this fallen world, by testifying to the truth in his own life. It is good to be near God. He's saying, "God has been, and is, and will be good to me and to all of His people."

Lloyd-Jones, again, speaks to this com- combination of confidence and humility in a way that I think is helpful. I want you to hear what he says. "This is to be truly Christian. On the one hand, utter, absolute confidence in God, and on the other, no confidence in myself and what I may do. If I take that view of myself, it means that I shall always be looking to God, and in that position I shall never fail." And this is where the psalmist is at the end

of the psalm. He has seen some of the reality, and he responds with praise. He responds with a right view of himself in humility, and a right view of God with a confident hope. And then he concludes with one final response. He is going to tell of God's work. I want you to remember that before he entered the sanctuary of God, he would not speak. While he was in the midst of his wrestlings, he was afraid of leading others

astray. But now that God has brought him through to the other side, he is eager to speak and to tell of all God's works for the praise of God and for the benefit of others. And he did it. Among what o-- whatever other ways Asaph may have told of God's works, he at least accomplished this desire in part by writing this psalm that we might read, telling of God's work and s- of saving him from slipping and falling.

I wanna encourage you to learn from Asaph on this point. We live in a culture that assumes every thought should be or maybe needs to be shared, perhaps digitally especially, but even in other interactions. That is not the case at all, and I wanna encourage you to be thoughtful about what you say. Just because you feel it doesn't mean that you need to verbalize it in order to be authentic or sincere. Be especially thoughtful of how your words may impact others.

Be very, very slow to speak in such a way that may lead others to join you in envy, or despair, or doubt, or any other sin. And be very quick to speak of things that will benefit and build up the people of God, to testify to the Lord's goodness and to all of His works, perhaps especially the way that He has saved you and brought you near to Himself and kept your faith through the ups and downs of life. That is what Asaph has done for us in this psalm.

He has declared the truth that God is good to His people, and then has shared his own experience of struggling to believe this truth, and told of how God has brought him through that struggle to a certain-Hope. I would suggest to you that this chapter is a clear example of the radical distinction between living by sight, which is seeking to understand God in light of the world around us, and living by faith, which is seeking to understand what we experience

in this world in light of who God is and what He has promised. And these two ways of living, by sight and by faith, lead to radically different understandings of both God and the world. And this is why I return to this psalm over and over again. I constantly need to have my mind and heart reoriented to remember the reality of the way things are so that I don't become deceived by the way things appear to be. As we come to the end of the psalm, I want to take a few minutes and go

back to the moment of change for the psalmist. The change occurred in the middle of a sentence in verse seventeen. In sixteen, he was weary of trying to understand, but then in seventeen, he finds understanding when he went into the sanctuary of God. Going into this sanctuary made all the difference in the world, and I want us to just think for a minute about what that was that he did and what that mean-- might mean for us as, as we seek

to have our perspective changed like his was. Most commentators agree that this was likely not some sort of vision or symbolic statement, but that he actually walked into and entered the physical sanctuary. He went to the temple. He heard a reading from the scroll of God. And there in the midst of God's people and listening to God's Word, he discerned reality. When he was wallowing in self-pity, he was led to despair and doubt and jealousy.

When he attempted to figure it out in his own wisdom, it was insufficient, and it led him to weariness. It was not until he went into God's presence and heard God's Word, surrounded by God's people, that he was able to see rightly. You and I need the same thing. We have access to the presence of God through Jesus and to the Word of God in a way that the psalmist never did. We need to enter into God's presence, and we need to hear from

His Word, personally, individually, and corporately.

Your experience in this world and in the one to come, as it was with Asaph, will largely be shaped by how much the Word of God shapes you and your mind and your heart. True thoughts of God will guard against all sorts of temptations and doubts. It is in His Word that God reveals Himself and His goodness to His people. It is in His Word that God reveals His Son in whom we have the goodness of God to His people on full display as He has come, lived, died,

risen, sent His Spirit, is sanctifying His people, will return, and will glorify His people. It is in God's Word that we learn that it was not in vain that Jesus kept His heart pure, even as He hung on a cross, and it seemed to all the world that He had been forsaken by God. And yet, in that moment of apparent disregard, God was doing a good more wonderful than anyone could have imagined, securing salvation for His people.

It is in God's Word that we learn that God is holy, righteous, all-knowing, all-wise, unchanging, just, loving, and good. It is in God's Word that we come to know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that He will never leave nor forsake His people, that He who promised is faithful, that He who began a good work will bring it to completion, that He made the world, upholds the world, and sovereignly rules over this world.

It is in God's Word that we are shown these wondrous things and so many more. It is in God's Word that we see things as they really and truly are, spoken to us by the One who made things as they are.

Do not be deceived by worldly thinking, but enter into the sanctuary of God. Do not neglect meeting together to sing and pray and hear God's Word. Hold fast to this truth. There, there is much in this life that will be confusing. There is much that we will not understand. But this you can know beyond a shadow of doubt, God is good to His people, and those who put their trust in Him will never be put to shame. Would you pray with me, please?

Father, would You help us as Your Word directs to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we might see things as they truly are, and that we might live in hope and confidence of faith. We ask these things in the name of Your Son, Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Amen.