Sermon Tone Analysis

Crash and Burn

ATT

It was a normal January day.

I had been working at the church in Elizabethton, TN. and lunch time came, so I headed down the street to my home for lunch.

When I walked through the door, I could tell something was terribly wrong.

There sat Marie, our baby sitter on the couch with a look of horror on her face.

At first I thought something had happened to Jenny, but as I came into the den I realized what was wrong.

On television they were reporting that the space shuttle, Challenger, into which so much work had gone: that first shuttle on which there had been civilians; the first shuttle on which a wide eyed, expectant, excited school teacher had ridden, had exploded in mid-air.

I watched, with that sickening feeling you get inside when something terrible happens, as they replayed the tape of the disaster over and over again.

I listened as the impersonal voice of the Houston space Center announcer droned time and time again: “Obviously a major malfunction”... OBVIOUSLY!

How much like our lives this is!

About the time we finally get it together; about the time we’ve gone through the hard preparation and have conquered our last frontier; about the time we’ve “blasted off” and set the controls to automatic pilot, OUR WORLD EXPLODES AROUND US.

It may be a wayward son or daughter, an unfaithful spouse, a close friend who disappoints us, the loss of a job, financial reversal, an unexpected, unfavorable diagnosis, or any number of other unwanted disappointments that bring us crashing back to earth.

And we wake up afraid, confused, hurt, and yes, even angry.

NEED

Well if this describes your position today, let me say that I sympathize with your pain and I can even understand your disillusionment, but I am also concerned for your well being.

For you see, it is in these crash and burn times of life when we are at our lowest point, that the tempter, our arch enemy, Satan whispers lies like: If God really loved you, how could He let this happen; or if Christianity is really legitimate and if God’s power is real, how could such a spiritual person in whom you had so much confidence have fallen; or if God owns everything why are you suffering need when those who don’t really love God seem to have everything they want?

If you are going through anything like that right now, I know that sermon series on “joy” can really make you feel very disillusioned.

There are problems and issues that we deal with in our lives that leave us feeling quite hopeless and even ready to abandon everything we’ve ever trusted in.

I am so glad that God’s word is honest when it comes to talking about our feelings.

You cannot read the Psalms without encountering the deepest of emotions, expressed honestly and without fear.

In Psalm 73 we see a person, Asaph, who has obviously encountered one of these deep disappointments.

If the caption of this Psalm is correct, this is Asaph, the worship leader who is writing.

He was an important musician and worshiper of God.

But in this psalm, he’s lost his song.

He opens up with refreshing honesty and allows us to look into his heart.

There is no attempt to hide his disillusionment or to sugar coat his pain with spiritual cliches.

And more than anything the story of Asaph has something to offer you if you are in the valley of disillusionment.

Asaph offers your HOPE!

Read this text with me: Read Ps. 73

This psalm points out a great truth about joy and it is this: Joy depends on your perspective.

How you see your life and your situation will greatly determine how you feel about it.

So how can you keep the kind of perspective that fills your heart with joy no matter your circumstances?

Well, there are some truths about joy and perspective that you have to understand.

In the first place:

D1: WRONG PERSPECTIVE DESTROYS JOY

EXP

Whatever you might say about this worshiper, Asaph, you have to say that he seems to have lost his joy.

Now we don’t know what caused Asaph’s great disillusionment, but it does seem that something traumatic had happened to him.

In verse 2 He says: “My feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.”

Asaph says that on the slick slope of great disappointment his spiritual feet had almost slipped.

In other words he was saying “I was like a drowning man going down for the third time.

I was tired of serving God when it didn’t seem to pay.

I was tired of going to church when no one else seemed to think it was important.

I was tired of giving my tithe when others kept theirs and could afford to build bigger homes and drive fancier cars and send their kids to college.

I had had enough!”

What was wrong with this guy?

Wasn’t he the psalmist?

Hadn’t he wrote many words of praise and adoration to God/ how could such a man of god come to this place in his life?

Look at verse3: Hey, what’s wrong Asaph?

Why have you become so disillusioned?

Why are you about to quit?

He says, “I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

Uh, oh! Asaph is looking around him and, when he does, his perspective gets redirected and he becomes focused on the wrong things.

And he demonstrates this truth: When you have the wrong perspective, you will reach the wrong conclusion.

Now Asaph had the wrong perspective.

Does that ever happen to you?

Say, does that ever bother you?

Does it bother you to see millionaires that live in open sin day after day after day and just get wealthier and wealthier?

Does it bother you to see senators in congress peddle their influence for money and then lie or buy their way to freedom when they are called on the carpet?

Does it bother you when businessmen, by hook or crook, find a way to avoid paying thousands of dollars in taxes when the IRS hassles you for making an honest $50 mistake?

Well old Asaph was having a problem with the rich and the famous.

He had suffered a great disappointment which had led to disillusionment and now the very core of all he believed was on the verge of collapse.

His faith was faltering and as you read on in this Psalm, you see why.

Verse 4: He says of the wicked: “They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.

They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.

Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence from their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.

They scoff, and speak with malice; in their arrogance they threaten oppression.

Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.

Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.

They say, “How can God know?

Does the most high have knowledge?”

You see, Asaph’s wrong perspective was the result of his misguided sight.

Whatever he had experienced had caused him to take his eyes off of the Lord and begin to look at those around him and Asaph didn’t like what he saw!

It always happens!

When you take your eyes off of god, and you no longer view your world through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, your vision becomes cloudy.

You are blind to the goodness of God and blinded by the injustice of this world.

You can tell that Asaph was having eye trouble in verses 4-11.

Listen to what he says of the wicked: In verse 4 he says that they have no struggles; in verse 5 he says they are free from the burdens common to man; in verse 6 he calls them proud and violent; in verse 9 he indicates that they seem to respect or answer to no one in heaven or in earth.

They are totally free, totally happy, totally healthy, totally lawless, totally unaccountable.

It’s as if they are living their lives as they please and God can’t do one thing about it.

Now I ask you, was Asaph right?

No! Absolutely Not!

There are plenty of millionaires who die of cancer.

There are plenty of rich playboys who are lonely.

And there are plenty of work-a-holics on Wall Street who will one day wake up and wish to God that they would have made more time for their children instead of making money for their retirement accounts.

ILL

This came home to me a many ago when I was living in Nashville, Tn.

I was teaching music in a Christian school and was out for the summer.

As so many teachers do, I had, of necessity, found me a summer job.

I had started my own business named Russell’s Jetspray in which I would go around to different homes and pressure clean their decks and sidewalks.

Well it was a hot summer day and I was working at Mr. Beaman’s house.

Now if you ever lived in Nashville, you knew of Lee Beaman.

He was about the wealthiest man in town, because he owned the local Pepsi distributorship along with many other investments.

As I was pressure washing the sidewalks in his palatial garden, I began to feel a little like Asaph.

I looked around and saw the lovely estate he owned, and I began to think, “This guy probably makes in one day what I make in one year.”

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself until I saw something moving inside the house.

I watched as the most pathetic human specimen I had seen in a while hobbled by the window.

Stooped over and moving with slow, painful steps, Mr. Beaman walked past his huge livingroom window.

All of a sudden, the tables turned.