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Let’s approach the Lord in prayer before we look to His Word.
Let’s approach the Lord in prayer before we look to His Word.
[PRAYER]
O Sweet and Gracious God, You have placed in the soul of all human beings an incredible desire.
A thirst and a hunger for joy, for pleasure, and for happiness.
Many search far and wide to satisfy this deep desire.
But, You have purposed for us to find this supreme satisfaction for our souls in only one place.
You.
And You’ve revealed how we can find our ultimate joy, pleasure, and happiness in You through the pages of Scripture.
So, we ask, as we open up the Scriptures in a moment that you would reveal to us and teach us to dig our roots deep into You.
That we might tap into the heavenly storehouse of priceless treasure.
That we might find Jesus Christ, a Treasure worth more than any other.
And upon finding Him, we would take delight in Him and know Him more.
It’s in His wonderful name I pray.
AMEN.
There’s a quote from Jonathan Edwards that I have hanging on my wall in my office.
It’s there in the center of all my other quotes and pictures for a reason.
It’s a daily reminder to me of where I must set my heart in order to be truly happy in this life.
It’s a quote from one of Edwards’ sermons titled “The Christian Pilgrim”.
I just want to share the first part of the quote this morning and if I can remember, I will share the rest at the end of the month when we arrive at another Psalm in our series.
Here is what Jonathan Edwards reminds me of daily:
God is the highest good of the reasonable creature.
The enjoyment of Him is our proper happiness; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.
Asaph, a man appointed by King David to be a worship leader of Israel, and the human author of 12 Psalms, including our Psalm today, , really needed this reminder in his day.
If we were to read through the first half of the Psalm, we’d see an inward conflict going on in the heart of Asaph.
Asaph began on a high note in the first verse of the Psalm, declaring God’s goodness to those who have committed themselves to serving Him.
But, then in verses 2 and 3, Asaph described his dilemma.
He observed how the wicked lived and how they were rewarded for their wickedness and it made him envious.
He spends the next sizable chunk of verses, 4 through 12, describing the good fortune of the wicked despite the fact that they didn’t live according to God’s law.
He noted that the wicked arrogantly asserted that God didn’t know what they were doing and they continue to increase in their prosperity.
All the while, Asaph noticed that the righteous were suffering injustice, they were oppressed, and weren’t being reward for their faithfulness to God.
So, in verses 13 through 16, Asaph expressed his doubts.
He questioned whether following God and remaining “pure” was really worth all the hardships he and many other followers of God faced if they couldn’t enjoy life like the wicked.
He was about ready to give in to his envious desires and pursue those things that made the wicked so happy in life.
In his heart, Asaph wanted their treasures.
He wanted that sort of prosperity.
And his feet had almost stumbled and his steps had nearly slipped off of that Rock of that glorious profession in verse 1 about God’s goodness.
But, in verses 17 through 20, Asaph’s doubts were settled when he went into the sanctuary of God, where he experienced assurance of God’s justice.
He came to understand that he was envying people and their treasures that would one day waste away.
And so, in these verses, God seems to have pressed the “reset” button of Asaph’s heart to focus on the only treasure that would satisfy his soul.
Let’s read what happened to Asaph’s heart after it was “reset” in verses 21 through 28.
(ESV)
21 When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
22 I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.
23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 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.
Asaph’s focus shifted from envying the wicked and their treasures TO desiring and delighting in God as his supreme treasure.
He recognized that, although he never acted upon his envy, he had been unfaithful to God in his heart and had set his heart on lesser treasures.
Yet, despite his failure and his envy, God had remained faithful to Asaph and had revealed Himself to Asaph as a Treasure more precious than anything else in all of heaven and earth.
That’s a vital lesson we need to come to understand this morning, especially since we are coming to the Lord’s Table in a bit.
We have a great need to have our hearts reset and focused on Christ.
So, as we stroll through verses 21 to 28, I want to invite all of us to:
Delight chiefly in Jesus Christ, who is unwavering in His faithfulness and incomparable in His preciousness.
Let’s learn first of Christ’s Faithfulness to Us; and then we will examine His Preciousness.
I. Christ’s Faithfulness to Us in Our Failures
Asaph, in verses 21 through 24, confessed his heart failure before God and then Asaph professed that God was faithful to him despite his failure.
“When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.
[Then here comes Asaph’s assurance and peace] Nevertheless, [What a wonderful word!] 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.”
Asaph took a hard and honest look at himself and saw how foolish he had been.
His envy had driven him to bitterness.
And although he never confessed that he physically acted upon these desires that were in his heart, they were in his heart nonetheless.
Although Asaph was a saint, he essentially claims to be a sinner who had failed to be truly faithful to God.
His actions may have looked alright on the outside to anyone who passed him by, but inside his heart toward God had been full of faults.
Thankfully for Asaph, God used his failures for his good.
And thankfully for us, the Lord does the same.
He allows us to mess up, to fail, to fall down in our walk with Him in order for us to understand some essential truths about ourselves and about Christ.
1. Failures reveal our absolute need for Christ (v.
21–22)
One essential truth that our failures reveal to us is our absolute need for Christ.
God teaches us valuable lessons when we fail Him.
One lesson He teaches us is that we aren’t “there” yet.
We aren’t perfect!
I mean, look at Asaph.
He had an extremely high position.
He was basically a worship leader for the people of Israel.
Yet, just because Asaph had a prominent spiritual position didn’t mean he was immune from sin and failure.
He came to understand, in these two verses, that he was far from perfect!
We need that sort of awareness when we fall short in our faithfulness to God.
We certainly need to come to realize that we will and do fail God.
The Bible says, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” () and “Pride goes before destruction” ().
That was the apostle Peter’s problem if you recall.
How many times had Peter been confident in his abilities?
The greatest example of his pride was when Jesus prophesied concerning His death how all His disciples would fall away and scatter.
And what does Peter say? “Surely not I, Lord!
Even though all these guys might fall away and fail you, I won’t!”
And then Jesus responded, “Tonight, you, Peter, will deny me three times.”
And again, Peter boasted, “Even if I have to die with you, I won’t deny you!
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