when you feel like quitting Tom Cowan Guest Speaker Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday Sermon for 8 May 2011 Scripture Passage Psalm 73 A psalm of Asaph. 1
Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. 2
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. 3 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4
They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. 5 They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. 7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. 8 They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. 9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. 10 Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance. 11 They say, “How would God know? Does the Most High know anything?” This is what the wicked are like— always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. 12
Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. 14 All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. 13
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If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. 16 When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply 17 till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. 18
Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. 19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! 20 They are like a dream when one awakes; when you arise, Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, 22 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. 21
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 23
Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you. 28 But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds. 27
Personal story: I had a very bad fall in Cranbrook and was in hospital for 10 days. To be honest, I hurt myself very badly. Harriet flew in to take me home. When back in Victoria, I said to her, “I don’t know if we can afford it or not, but it doesn’t matter – I cannot go on; I have to quit. I am finished. With great wisdom Harriet said, “This is not a good time to make that kind of decision.” How right she was! Do you ever feel like quitting? The answer for most of us frankly is YES. But it all depends what we feel like quitting. Sometimes we feel like quitting our job. We have just had enough. Most of us might do it if we did not have bills to pay? I had a pastoral colleague many years ago who said he kept a letter of resignation in his drawer all the time. He used to say, all it needed was a date and his signature. We may think perhaps quitting a course of studies we are in. Why bother any more? Just get a job, which, of course, we may quit one day to go back to school. Some times we feel like quitting relationships. There may be a right time and a valid reason to do that, although I think we all know a different set of issues and challenges await us on the other side of any resignation from relationships. The more intimate the relationship, the greater the challenge. But have you ever thought of quitting on God, stepping out of the spiritual journey? Perhaps a long period of doubt and spiritual depression gives birth to a final act of despair. We quietly turn away from God. We don’t show up at church, vanish from the choir; we just vanish into thin air. We look around and say to ourselves, What’s the point? We wonder about the value of staying on the path of faith. What difference will it make to me? Perhaps I should just pack the whole thing in? Whenever you get close to that point, you need to get into Psalm 73. It is the inner struggle, the confession of a man who almost lost his faith, who was ready to give up. If that is where you are right now. This psalm is vital. 2 WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE QUITTING
This is not a psalm from the pen of David. David gave us some 73 of the 150 psalms. It is called a psalm of Asaph. So who was Asaph? Asaph was elected by his brothers to be the chief singer in the temple. In today’s titles, he was the worship pastor. He led the people in worship. So here is a man who is intimately involved in worship. He is to be close to the heart of God and lead the people in worship. He is that good pastor who would always be expected to have it together. If you are having a bad day, you cannot always have that in public and never on a Sunday morning. Somehow it seems we always have to have the joy of the Lord even if we have to pretend. Yet here is a man who almost walked away from God. I love the honesty of Psalm 73. I love its candor. I love its frankness. There are no evangelical clichés, no positive thinking slogans to inspire us, no happy clappy choruses to get us going again, no one quoting Romans 8:28 to us about how all things work together for good. It is the diary of a man who could not take it any longer and who tells us about his struggle. He invites us into feel his pain, to struggle with his questions, to see the dark side of his soul. The structure of the psalm actually gives us its message. The meaning is in the organization and composition of the psalm. Verses 1-14: his descent from God. Verses 15-28: his ascent to God. We need to avoid the temptation of trying to find the right number of points, which will usually be three, especially if they all begin with the same letter. I would like to go for a walk through the psalm with you and talk about what it says to us. We are not looking for a sermon this morning. We are looking for word of help and strength from God. Listen to the heart of Asaph. Open your Bibles with me.
PSALM 73 1
Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. That’s the right answer. That’s what he supposed to say. This is what he knows intellectually, but...
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But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. 3 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. 5 They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. 4
He sees the others, envies the ungodly, their success, their advancement. Their lives seem so easy. I work harder than anyone and never seem to get ahead. There will always be someone who has more than us, a bigger house, a better car. For pastors, someone with a bigger church, better parking! How come they never have the problems that I have? They don’t get migraines. They always seem to have enough money. Their children don’t give them any grief. How come? Whenever we take our eyes of God and look at what other people have, we will start to slip; we will wallow in self-pity and self-pity always leads to sin. Self-pity is like acid rain eating away at him, corroding our spirit. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. 14 All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. 13
He is saying, This has all been a waste of time. My striving for purity and righteousness has not got me anywhere. This is a man who has almost come to a conclusion: I quit! Believing in God has not helped him get ahead at all. In fact, everyone else is getting ahead without God, but in contrast, his life has been a waste of time. Asaph says, I almost buckled. He almost stepped off the ladder of faith. I sense that sometimes pastors commit moral failure simply as a way to get out. They buckle; they have an affair; they actually want to get caught. They do not know any other way out of their dilemma or their spiritual gridlock. Moral failure is sometimes an escape from spiritual breakdown and collapse. So at the end of verse 14 he finds himself as it were at the bottom of the ladder. His feet are just 3 WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE QUITTING
about to take the last step and he will step off the ladder of faith. He is at the point where he is ready to write his letter of resignation and leave it on the desk for some temple worker to find. He is ready to walk away. He is ready to pack it all in, not show up. Why bother any more? It has all been a waste of time. Asaph encourages us by letting us know that there is a way back. We can climb up the ladder again. Once again, resist the temptation to find three points for a sermon. Do not see these as linear steps. Think of them as personal challenging questions you have to confront. Perhaps one of them speaks to where you are at. Have you ever thought about?
WHAT KIND OF LEGACY DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE? How do you want to be remembered? If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children. 15
Sometimes in our tiredness we become overwhelmed by self-pity. What about me and my needs. When do I get ahead? When do I get what I want? Am I being noticed? How come all these other people get ahead of me? That is a spiritual issue. Oswald Chambers said, “Self-pity is of the devil.” There is a need to take our eyes of ourselves and see who is coming after us, and ask, What responsibility do I have to them? Edith Schaeffer said, “What is a family? We are in a relay of faith, passing the baton of truth on from one generation to the next. The only thing we have to do is this: run our lap well and, whatever you do, don’t drop the baton.” There are 7—almost 8—little people that call me grandpa. What legacy of faith do I leave for them? They believe in me. Their eyes trust me. They know my job is to teach people about God, so they drag storybooks up on my knee for their bedtime stories. Grandpa will always read stories. Sometimes when I am tired and want to get to the end of the story I skip bits, and I am told that I don’t read all the words, but I cannot betray them. Who is depending on you? Who is depending on us?
We have children here who depend on us passing on the legacy of faith to them. We need to be involved with them.
Each of us at one time or another needs a fresh touch of grace. Perhaps you need that this morning.
Who is depending on you in the family of God?
DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT YOUR LIFE WOULD BE LIKE WITHOUT GOD?
DO YOU NEED A FRESH ENCOUNTER WITH GOD? When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply 17 till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. 16
Sanctuary is the Holy of Holies, where God comes to meet us. The sanctuary of God for us is not coming to church. For some of us church is not always a safe place. Rather sanctuary is being at the place where God and humanity meet, and that is in the person of Jesus. Do you have a holy place where you can go and meet God afresh? Perhaps a walk on the beach or some forest, a place where you can pour out your soul and have him come and meet you. Do you have a place where you can laugh and cry? Do you have a place where you and God can meet in the person of Jesus? Where you can pour out your soul and he can stoop down and breath fresh breath into your life?
I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. 22
Without God, Asaph suddenly sees that we are like animals, brute beasts, seldom able to see the consequences of things, behaving instinctively, living for immediate gratification, satisfying our own appetite, tearing at our prey like the survival of the fittest. This is what people without God are like. What would you be like without God in your life? One day I began to think a scary thought, I asked myself: would I be a moral person without God? Neitzsche, the “God is Dead” philosopher, could not understand how Christian morality continued in England after they had said God is Dead. He scorned them and derided them and wrote: “When one gives up the Christian faith one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.”
DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHERE THE PROUD AND ENVIOUS REALLY END UP?
Asaph realizes that he could easily become like an animal, but at the last moment God help him again with his right hand.
He says I did. I saw their end, their final destiny.
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Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. 19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! 18
Instead of envying the arrogant and the wicked , he tells us that he now sees instead that they are to be pitied. Humanism roots us in this world— eat, drink, and be merry—but a biblical view of life is supernaturally oriented. There is the eternal reality, an eternal dimension. All of us need at times a fresh touch of the grace of God, and get a fresh glimpse of the meaning of our salvation. We can preach about it and sing amazing grace as many times as we want, but our own souls and spirits need points of renewal. We need moments when grace stops us dead in our tracks and reminds us of what is at the heart of our life in Christ. 4 WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE QUITTING
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. It means to take someone’s hand and escort them to a place of honour as you would do in a banquet. This is what God does to him.
DO YOU NEED A FRESH GLIMPSE OF GOD TODAY? Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 25
The false and empty desires he once had have gone, vanished, and it gives way to desiring God alone. This is his personal doxology. Asaph’s confusion and honesty helps all of us in those moments of tiredness, when we feel the twinges of envy, when we feel like quitting, when
we wonder about the value of our calling and even the point of our faith. So you close the pages on Asaph’s diary and sit back, you think, Boy, that took some courage to write. It was honest, frank, candid. It did not pull any punches. Do you feel like quitting? Are you thinking about packing it in? Asaph’s confession helps all of us who have more than twinges of envy, who wonder about the value of our discipleship. He invites us to take a fresh look at eternity, to get back in the spiritual race, to see Christ as that holy intersection where God meets us and we meet God. He alone is the strength of our heart. Asaph invites us into the sanctuary to meet with God. This is not the church building. It is the place where God meets humanity, and in the final sense, is the person of Jesus, the Word became flesh and touched the earth. We need more than holy places; we need a holy person. This morning, in the bread and wine of communion, can you meet again with Jesus and have a fresh touch of the grace of God in your life. If you are tired, turn again to Jesus. If you are feeling those deadly touches of self-pity, looking at what other people, turn again to Jesus. If you are thinking of quitting, turn again and look at Jesus of whom Hebrews says: Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus looked at the cross—and did not quit.
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