(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Drive Time Devotions.
Hi, this is Pastor Tom.
We're gonna look together at Psalm 73 today.
Actually, I'd like to look back one Psalm
and look at the end of Psalm 72.
Psalm 72 says, "This concludes the prayers of David,
son of Jesse."
Well, that seems like it should be the end
of the book of Psalms.
What's that about?
Well, Psalms were originally in five books
in the Hebrew language.
Remember, they didn't have chapters and verses like we did,
so they organized it in a different way,
and it was organized in five books.
And Psalm 72 finished the second of those five books.
Now, I want you to notice, it says,
"This concludes the prayers of David, son of Jesse."
Psalms are praises.
They are songs, but they're also prayers.
They are prayers that we sing,
and they are praises that we pray.
Prayer is at the center of Psalms.
The book of Psalms teaches us how to pray,
and Psalm 73 teaches us how to pray when we've been hurt.
This is what all of us need
'cause we've all been hurt in life.
We've all faced hurts.
Psalm 73 is a journey, as you read through it.
It's the journey of one man's life,
from feeling like at the beginning
he's on the edge of a cliff,
to being able to say at the end,
"God is the strength of my life."
Warren Wiersbe calls it the journey from believer,
to doubter, to wrestler, to worshiper, to conqueror.
And to go through this journey,
he had to face the hurt in his life, to deal with it.
This is a Psalm that tells you
what to do when you've been hurt.
It talks about some common causes of our hurt
and about how God can tenderly, powerfully heal that hurt.
First, some things that cause us to feel hurt.
This Psalm talks about some feelings
that are behind our hurt.
When you feel hurt,
one of the feelings you have, this Psalm says,
is this feeling of it's not fair.
We feel hurt 'cause we just feel it's not fair.
Listen to what he has to say, beginning in verse three.
"For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles.
Their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from the burdens common to man.
They're not plagued by human ills."
Verse 12, this is what the wicked are like,
always carefree, they increase in wealth.
It's not fair, he felt.
I mean, you do everything right
and seemingly you get no blessing.
That doesn't seem fair right there,
but what's really not fair is that those
who do everything wrong seem to get blessed.
This is why the Bible says again and again, don't compare.
When you compare, you're gonna feel
like it's not fair every single time.
I know that rhymes, apologize for that.
But when you compare, it feels like it's not fair
'cause life in this world isn't fair.
We're not looking for a fair life in this world,
we're looking for eternal life with God in heaven.
Comparing causes some of our greatest hurts.
Sometimes it's like a thousand little cuts,
seeing again and again and again
what others have that you do not.
Every time you compare, you're damaging your emotions,
your spiritual heart before God.
That's one of the feelings behind hurt, it's not fair.
Another feeling he says we gotta deal with
is this feeling I've been cheated.
I've been cheated in life.
Verses 13 and 14, "Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure.
In vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
All day long I have been plagued.
I have been punished every morning."
I've been cheated, he says.
The phrase is surely in vain.
I did the right thing and it was for nothing.
I was cheated, God.
We feel hurt when we feel like we've faithfully kept
our half of the bargain and the other person hasn't.
And to be honest, we feel hurt when we feel like
we've kept our half of the bargain
and God hasn't kept his half.
And you might be feeling that way right now.
How do you deal with that?
We're gonna talk about that in just a moment.
I feel like it's not fair, I feel like I've been cheated.
There's a third descriptor he has here
of the emotions we have when we've been hurt.
I don't understand.
He says, I just don't understand.
In verse 16, when I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me.
I couldn't figure it out.
It just caused the weight to be greater.
The hurt grows as we try to understand it
because it just doesn't make sense in this world
and that weighs on you.
Now, those are some descriptions of how we feel hurt,
but what are the cures?
There's a simple four-part prescription in these verses
that I've needed again and again through my life.
Now, because we're dealing with emotional hurt,
all four of these have to do with our heart
and what God wants to do in our heart.
So how do I heal from this hurt that I've gone through,
this feeling of it's not fair and I've been cheated
and I don't understand what's going on?
Well, number one, you check the condition of your heart.
Verses 21 and 22, when my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant.
I was a brute beast before you.
You check the condition of your heart.
And he realizes, I was grieved, I was embittered,
I was senseless, I was ignorant.
Could you be that honest with yourself?
Honest enough to admit what the hurt has done to your heart?
Yes, the hurt is real.
What was done to you is real,
but what that hurt is doing to your heart, it's also real.
You might not be able to do anything
about the hurt that was done to you.
You can certainly do something
about what's going on in your own heart.
And the writer of this Psalm gives us some important advice.
You don't do this heart checkup alone.
You do it recognizing that God is with you.
Look at verses 23 and 24.
Yet I am always with you.
You hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel.
And afterward, you will take me into glory.
So as you check the condition of your heart,
you remind yourself how powerfully God is with you,
even in your hurt.
Sometimes truth is we're harder on ourselves
than even God would be.
In these verses, he's the God who's holding you
by your right hand.
He's willing to guide you with his counsel,
who one day is gonna take you into glory.
When you check your heart in his presence,
you'll find that your confidence in his love
will make it easier to face the truth about that hurt
and what it might've done to your heart.
So first you check the condition of your heart.
Where am I?
Just honest to God, where am I?
And then out of that number two,
you change the focus of your heart.
He's hurt.
He's bitter.
He recognizes it.
He's honest enough to say I'm like a brute beast.
I'm not even thinking about what I'm doing.
But then comes this moment of change in verse 17.
Verse 17 says, "Till I entered the sanctuary of God,
and then I understood their final destiny."
What a moment.
"Then I understood their final destiny."
Where they were headed,
what was gonna happen in their lives.
"The focus of your heart determines your perspective
on your hurt.
I entered the sanctuary of God.
I understood their final destiny."
It put things in perspective.
That's why we go to church.
That's why we worship together each weekend
to put life in perspective.
When you worship, God uses getting together
with other believers to help you to clarify the things
that are going on in your life.
And he got this moment of clarity.
I see that what I've been seeing is wrong.
What I've been saying to myself is wrong.
It changed the focus of your heart.
And then out of that, you do the third thing.
Number three, you channel the desire of your heart.
Verse 25, "Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you."
So here's the question behind this verse.
What do you really want?
Do you really want to live the rest of your life
stewing in that hurt, controlled by that hurt?
Do you want to be like those that you envy?
I mean, if you've got the money that they have
or the influence that they have, what might it do to you?
Maybe the same thing it did to them.
Be careful.
You might become more like them than you ever imagined.
What you envy in others may be what destroyed them.
It's easy to see how often fame and riches
destroy relationships and character.
Just open a newspaper.
And he reminds us here that what you really want,
what I really want, more than anything on this earth,
whether I can recognize it or not,
what I really want is the goodness and grace of God.
That's what I'm seeking.
It takes me a while to see that.
I don't see that nearly as clearly as I wish in my life.
But I know it's the truth of who I am.
It's the truth that's veiled oftentimes
by the things that are in this world,
by the emotions that I have in my life.
But the truth about me is, whom have I in heaven but you?
On earth, there's nothing I desire besides you.
So you channel the desire of your heart
to recognize that God himself and his love for you,
that's the only thing that's gonna last in the end.
You remind yourself again and again
that your most important desire
is your desire for God's love.
And then you do the fourth thing.
Out of channeling the desire of your heart,
number four, you choose the strength of your heart.
We've gone through this process and now you're ready
to choose the strength of your heart.
Verse 26, my flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
To strengthen a hurting heart,
you remind yourself that God is the strength of your heart.
There's an old chorus based on these verses.
It's a chorus that's reminded me
of God's strength many, many times.
When I felt like I wasn't up to a task,
when I started preaching at Saddleback Church,
I came from a small church to a lot larger church
and all of a sudden I'm not talking to a hundred
or a few hundred people, I'm talking to several thousand
people and driving into church I'd feel like,
I can't do this, I'm not able to do this,
I don't have the skill to do this,
I don't have the experience to do this.
When I felt like I wasn't up to a task,
when I didn't have it in me, I would remind myself
of the words of this song, whom have I in heaven but you?
There's nothing on earth I desire besides you.
My heart and my strength, many times they fail,
but there is one truth that always will prevail.
God is the strength of my heart.
God, you are the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
Let's pray together.
And Father, in prayer right now,
we want to do what this psalmist just taught us to do.
We ask before you that you would check
the condition of our heart.
And out of what we see in our own heart,
you change the focus of our heart to you.
You channel the desire of our heart to your love.
You help us to choose the strength of our heart,
not being in us getting the answers
or us seeing life turn out like we wanted,
but knowing that God, you're in charge.
You are the strength of our heart and nothing else.
And so we choose you because you have chosen us.
We remind ourselves of that choice today.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Tomorrow we're gonna look together at Psalm 74
and what to do when you feel like God is far away.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)