We're going to change our reading in the
Psalms this week from the bulletin.
We're going to read Psalm 73 this morning.
I'll read the first, the odd-numbered verses.
Pastor Brian will lead the congregation in the
reading of the even-numbered verses through Psalm
73.
Let's stand as we read the Word of
God.
Truly God is good to Israel, even to
such as are of a clean heart.
But as for me, my feet were almost
gone, my steps had well nigh slipped.
For I was envious at the foolish, when
I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For there are no bands in their death,
but their strength is firm.
They are not in trouble as other men,
and neither are they plagued like other men.
Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain,
violence covereth them as a garment.
Their eyes stand out with fatness.
They have more than heart could wish.
They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression.
They speak loftily.
They set their mouth against the heavens, and
their tongue walketh through the earth.
Therefore his people return hither, and waters of
a full cup are wrung out to them.
And they say, How doth God know?
And is there knowledge in the Most High?
Behold, these are the ungodly who prosper in
the world.
They increase in riches.
Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain,
and washed my hands in innocency.
For all the day long have I been
plagued and chastened every morning.
If I say I will speak thus, behold,
I should offend against the generation of thy
children.
When I thought to know this, it was
too painful for me, until I went into
the sanctuary of God, and then understood I
was wrong.
Surely thou didst set them in slippery places.
Thou castest them down into destruction.
How are they brought into desolation as in
a moment?
They are utterly consumed with terrors.
As a dream, when one awakeneth, so, O
Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their
image.
And thus my heart was grieved, and I
was pricked in my reins.
So foolish was I and ignorant.
I was as a beast before thee.
Nevertheless, I am continually with thee.
Thou hast holden me by my right hand.
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and
afterward receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee?
And there is none upon the earth that
I desire beside thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth, but God
is the strength of my heart and my
portion forever.
For lo, they that are far from thee
shall perish, and thou hast destroyed all them
that go a-whoring from thee.
But it is good for me to draw
near to God.
I have put my trust in the Lord
God, that I may declare all thy works.
Let's pray.
Lord, indeed, it is good for us to
draw near to you, and that's why we
are here today.
That we might draw near to you, and
Lord, that we might find answers for some
of the problems that we face in life
as we seek to understand, Lord, some of
the different things that do not really seem
to add up as far as the world
in which we live.
There seem to be inequities, and we are
troubled, Lord, by what we see.
And so we ask, Lord, that you would
speak to us today through your word, and
that you might give us, Lord, a little
insight into the future and what you've planned
as far as the eternal plan of God
is concerned.
So, bless now our study.
In Jesus' name, amen.
This morning, we'd like to draw your attention
to the 12th chapter.
There in verse 1, Jeremiah said to the
Lord, Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I
plead with thee, yet let me talk with
thee of thy judgments.
Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?
Wherefore are all they that are happy that
deal very treacherously?
And then down in verse 5, he said,
If thou, as the Lord answers, if you
have run with a footman and they've wearied
thee, then how can you contend with the
horses?
If in the land of peace wherein you
have trusted, they have wearied thee, then how
will you do when you are in the
wilds of Jordan?
One of the problems of our Christian life
is that God requires that we walk by
faith and not by sight.
God does not always explain himself to us,
but so often just answers our questions by
saying, trust me, just trust me.
Many times, it takes years for us to
understand particular events that happen in our lives.
Events which at the time we looked at
as great tragedies.
But as the years rolled by and we
saw things in a broader perspective, we were
able then to see the purpose that God
had when he allowed us to experience that
time of sorrow or grief, suffering or pain.
I do believe that there are things that
happen to us that we will not understand
this side of eternity.
That when we get to heaven, we will
get a much broader then understanding as we
look back on our experiences in life and
we can see every detail and the purpose
and the plan of God in all of
the things that transpired.
God said to Isaiah, my ways are not
your ways.
My ways are beyond your finding out.
And we seem, however, to be constantly trying
to find out why God allows certain things.
Jeremiah happened to be in this very predicament.
He was asking God, why does God allow
the wicked to prosper?
You see, the men in Jeremiah's hometown of
Anathot, they didn't like Jeremiah speaking to them
about God's judgment that was going to come
upon them because of their wickedness.
Jeremiah had been predicting that God's hand of
judgment was going to come strong against the
nation because the nation had turned from God.
And as the result of their wickedness, God
was going to judge them.
But these men of his hometown didn't want
to hear that.
And so they began to plot to put
Jeremiah to death so that they wouldn't have
to hear these pronouncements of judgment that was
going to come upon them.
People who are living in sin do not
like to hear that God hates the sin
that they are committing.
They don't want to be told that they
are sinners.
They don't want to hear that God is
going to punish them for their sin.
They want to sin without any feelings of
guilt.
People prefer to hear lies rather than the
truth.
They want to be comforted in their sin.
Back in chapter five, Jeremiah said, the prophets
prophesy falsely, and the priests are in it
just for the money, and the people love
to have it so.
Tell me I'm all right.
Tell me how wonderful I am.
Tell me that I can do all of
these wicked things, and God doesn't really care.
That, you know, he is so soft and
so graceful and all that I can get
by with the evil that I wish to
commit.
But if you tell them, no, that's wrong.
That's a sin.
God hates that, and God will punish you
if you continue in that sin.
People don't want to hear that, but that's
what Jeremiah was doing to the people there
in Anathoth, and they were tired of it.
The wicked men of Anathoth actually said to
Jeremiah, don't prophesy to us anymore in the
name of the Lord, or we're going to
kill you.
We don't want to hear what you've got
to say.
And so Jeremiah has come to the Lord
here in chapter 12.
That happened in chapter 11.
But in chapter 12, Jeremiah comes to the
Lord, and he begins by saying, Lord, I
know that you are righteous.
He wants God to know that he's not
challenging God in this.
I know what you're doing, Lord, is right,
but I have a problem.
I don't understand what you are doing.
I don't understand, Lord, the things that I
see happening around me.
You know, Jeremiah is very careful as he
talks to Lord not to bring an accusation
against God, but he's very careful to say,
Lord, now, I know that what you're doing
is right, but I don't know what's right
about it.
I don't understand.
I'm at a loss here.
I sort of cringe when I hear people
say of how they talk to God.
I told God that I didn't think that
that was right, and I told God, and
I told God, and I told God.
Whoa.
I wouldn't dare to speak to God like
that.
I like the way Jeremiah approaches it.
Lord, I know you're right, but would you
mind explaining something to me?
I'd like to get some understanding.
I'd like to understand just why these things
are allowed by you.
I would like to talk to you, Lord,
about your judgments.
I have a problem understanding.
I know you're right, but I don't really
know why you allow the wicked to prosper.
And this is a real problem, isn't it?
As we look at the world in which
we live, we see so often very wicked
people who speak blasphemously against God, who speak
contemptuously of God.
We see them prospering, and we wonder, why
would God allow those wicked people to prosper?
In the psalm that we read this morning,
that was exactly the problem that Asaph, the
writer of the psalm, had.
He said, I almost slipped up over this.
It stumbled me.
When I sought to understand it, it was
actually too painful for me.
Why God allows the wicked to prosper.
These men who are so corrupt, they're so
blasphemous, and yet they seem to have more
than what they could ever need or desire.
Why does God allow this?
Here I am seeking to live a righteous
life, and it looks like I have problems
every day that are almost insurmountable.
And here is this wicked neighbor of mine,
and he has more than his heart could
wish.
Why is it that God allows those in
Hollywood to prosper, who are polluting the minds
of people throughout the world?
How is it that they seem to be
so happy when they are so treacherous?
How is it that they can live in
palatial mansions, they can drive around in limos,
and people worship them wherever they go, and
yet they are guilty of corrupting our whole
world?
When we see the wicked prospering, it's hard
for us to rationalize it in our own
minds.
Sometimes God allows his wonderful saints to just
barely eke by a living, living almost from
hand to mouth, while prosperous, wicked people spend
millions of dollars in purchasing some stupid picture
that you can't even understand when you look
at it.
And it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem
equitable.
And that was Jeremiah's problem.
Lord, I know you're right, but I've got
a problem.
I have a problem understanding why you would
allow this, why you would allow the wicked
to prosper.
Jesus told the story of a certain rich
man who fared sumptuously every day, and of
a poor man, a beggar named Lazarus, who
was at his gate daily, surviving on the
crumbs that fell from the rich man's table.
And the poor man died and was carried
by the angels into Abraham's bosom.
The rich man also died, but in hell
he saw Abraham and Lazarus being comforted there
in Abraham's bosom and begged Abraham to send
Lazarus to him to bring some water to
him that he might be comforted in the
heat.
The wicked, the righteous.
It doesn't always pan out during our life
cycle here on earth, but the answer finds
when we see things from the eternal perspective.
This particular psalmist that wrote Psalm 73, he
said, when I sought to know these things,
it was too painful for me until I
went into the sanctuary of God, and then
I saw their end.
I saw the end result of a life
of wickedness, and I saw the end result
of a life that is lived serving God.
And therein lies the answer in eternity.
We who have lived for Jesus Christ have
a hope of an eternal future of glory
and bliss forever and ever and ever and
ever.
Those who live wicked lives are going to
face the judgment of God and forever and
ever and ever be separated from God's love
and from God's kingdom.
Paul, the apostle who had suffered so many
things in his proclaiming the gospel of Jesus
Christ, threats on his life, attempts to take
his life, riots created, and men actually conspiring
and taking oaths that they wouldn't eat until
they had killed him.
Paul said, for I reckon that the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to
be compared with the glory that's going to
be revealed.
Lay them in the balance.
The present suffering against the eternal glory that
will be revealed.
Again, to the Corinthians, Paul said, for our
light affliction which is but for a moment
works for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory.
While we don't look at the things which
are seen because they are temporal, but the
things which are not seen because they are
eternal.
But the things which we look at, we
realize they're not going to last.
It's the eternal things and I'm living for
the eternal.
For we know that when this earthly tabernacle
or this body is dissolved and we recognize
that that's going to happen one of these
days.
This earthly body will have served its purpose
and our spirit will move from this earthly
body and our body at that point will
dissolve.
But when this body returns to dust, I
have a new body, a building of God,
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
So then we who are still living in
these bodies, Paul said, often grown earnestly desiring
to move out of them, not to be
an unembodied spirit, but to be clothed upon
with the body which is from heaven.
For we know that as long as we're
at home in these bodies, we're absent from
the Lord, but we would choose rather that
we might be absent from these bodies, that
we might be present with the Lord.
The present sufferings which are but for a
moment working eternal weight of glory.
It's interesting to me that when Jeremiah brought
his question to God, the problem that he
saw in the prosperity of the wicked and
in the happiness of treacherous people, that God
did not seek to explain to him the
answers.
When I was a child in church, they
used to sing a song.
The lyrics went like this.
We'll talk it over in the by and
by.
We'll talk it over, my Lord and I.
I'll ask the reasons.
He'll tell me why when we talk it
over in the by and by.
I don't think that's so.
I don't think when we get to heaven,
we'll say, Lord, I want to talk to
you for a few minutes.
Now, do you remember back in 2004 and,
you know, these things, why did you allow
that to happen to me?
Listen, I'm going to be so overjoyed just
being there.
The toils of this world will seem nothing
when I stand in the presence of Jesus
Christ, enter into the eternal joys and glory
of his presence in his kingdom.
I think that it is the height of
audacity for me to try to tell God
how he ought to run his universe.
I really have no right to even question
God.
As Paul wrote in Romans 9 verse 20,
who are you to challenge God?
Shall the thing that is formed say to
him that formed it, why have you made
me like this?
God said to Job in Job 40 verse
2, shall he that contends with the Almighty
instruct him?
How many times we contend with God and
seek to correct God.
Lord, you should have done it like this.
Don't you think this would have been a
better way?
And I think of the audacity of here
me, mortal man, trying to tell God how
he ought to do things.
Rather than answering the question of Jeremiah as
to why the wicked prospered.
The Lord asked Jeremiah a couple of questions
down in verse 5.
The Lord said, if you have run with
the footmen and they have worried you, how
are you ever going to contend with the
horses?
Jeremiah, you haven't seen anything yet.
Yeah, you're complaining and yeah, it's not easy,
but things are going to get much worse,
Jeremiah, before they get better.
You've been running with the footmen.
You're going to have to contend with the
horses.
It's interesting how the scriptures tell us in
these last days that evil days are going
to wax worse and worse.
God doesn't promise us a bed of roses,
a life of ease, a life of popularity
with the world, a life of the world
telling us what wonderful people we are.
But the world often, like those men of
Anathoth, hate the message that we have to
bring to them of God's displeasure with their
wickedness.
God said, if in the land of peace,
wherein you have trusted, you've been worried, then
how will you ever get by when you
are living in the wild areas of Jordan,
living in the land of peace, surrounded in
the shelter of a walled city, and yet
you're worried?
What's it going to be when you're out
in the open, when you're exposed to the
wild beast and all there along the Jordan
River?
If you're barely hanging on now, what are
you going to do when it really gets
bad?
Back in the early 50s, I was pastoring
a church in Tucson, Arizona.
There was an elderly lady in the church.
Her name was Mrs. Owens.
Her husband worked for the Southern Pacific Railway.
He was tough.
He was mean, ornery.
He never did attend church while I was
there, but I did happen to have a
chance to visit with him once in his
home.
And he was gruff.
He was just tough and mean.
And as we were conversing, and I don't
know how the conversation came to this, but
he said, well, they'll never put that mark
on me.
You know, I'll die before I'll let them
put a mark on me.
And so I knew that he had some
kind of a background with the Bible.
He knew a little bit about the mark
of the beast and how they're going to
force people to take it.
And whoever takes it, there's no hope for
their salvation.
So I recognized that he had heard something
about it.
He knew he had some kind of a
background.
But I thought to myself, here you are.
You think you're so tough and so, you
know, gruff.
If you can't live for Christ now, how
in the world do you ever hope to
die for him then?
And I think today, you know, we are
still surrounded in a fairly friendly environment.
When we come to church, we're in a
totally friendly environment.
We come here and we worship the Lord
together.
And there's that camaraderie that has developed between
us as we together are serving the Lord.
And we realize that we're all in this
one body serving the Lord.
And it's a glorious kind of a strengthening
place.
And for many, a sanctuary out in the
world during the week, it's a real blessing
to be able to come and to be
surrounded by people who are like-minded to
us in our desire to live for God
and to serve the Lord.
But some people are having difficulty serving the
Lord, even in this environment in which we
are living today.
The Lord is saying to Jeremiah, how are
you ever going to survive, Jeremiah, when things
really get tough?
Unless, unless you put your complete faith and
trust in me.
And that's the secret.
But this is where it gets hard for
us.
It's hard for us to understand so many
things of life where God just says, trust
me, just trust me.
And Jeremiah, if you can't trust me when
you're running with a footman, how are you
ever going to survive when the battle really
gets tough?
Some of you have been running with a
footman and you've become weary, but I think
of what the future holds.
The Bible likens the Christian life to a
race.
And it gives us instructions on how we're
to run this race.
First of all, it tells us to lay
aside every weight and sin, which doth so
easily beset us.
Get rid of all of the extraneous things
of your life.
Lay aside every weight and run, it says,
with patience, the race that is set before
us.
And then it tells us that we're to
keep our eyes on the goal, looking unto
Jesus, the author and the finisher of our
faith.
And then it tells us in another place
that though there are many who are running
the race, only one receives the prize.
So run that you might obtain.
In other words, it is telling you to
put everything you have into running the race.
Run to win.
Don't have the attitude, well, I can just
make it into heaven.
Boy, that's all I need.
And I'll be satisfied and happy if I
just make it in by the skin of
my teeth.
Paul said, oh no, that's not the attitude
with which you should run the race.
You should run this race, putting everything you
have into it.
Run to win.
The lessons that we can learn from this
story here in Jeremiah is that serving the
Lord is not a bed of roses.
The world doesn't want to hear the message
that God is going to judge them for
their sin.
It actually hates that message.
The world will seek to silence the messenger
with threats or with actual persecution.
We live in a world that's controlled by
darkness.
It's not really our permanent home.
We are aliens here.
We're just passing through.
So we don't look for our rewards here
on earth, but we will receive the rewards
when we get to heaven.
Paul the apostle said he prayed for the
church in Ephesus that God's Holy Spirit might
reveal unto them what is the hope of
their calling.
The hope that God has given to us
of being with him in heaven forever and
ever.
So we shouldn't be weary in well-doing.
In due season, we will reap if we
don't faint.
Don't expect things to get better.
Know that they're going to get worse before
the Lord comes for us.
And so be prepared to make that full
commitment unto the Lord and full trust in
him.
And though you may not understand how God
will allow certain things to transpire, know that
he is in control and that it will
all eventually work out for good for those
who have committed their life to Jesus Christ.
Father, we thank you for the hope that
we have for the future.
And we thank you, Lord, that though things
transpire in our lives that we don't understand,
it only drives the roots of faith deeper
as we know, Lord, that you are righteous
and that what you do is right.
And so, Lord, may we just put our
trust in you today.
We realize that there are people here, Lord,
that are going through difficult situations.
And today, like Jeremiah, they find themselves in
a real quandary as they can't understand why
certain things have been allowed by you to
transpire, reverses and painful things, suffering.
And Lord, they have questions.
But we pray, Father, that you will give
to them that faith, that trust that they
need to know that you are in control
and that you're going to bring good out
of this situation.
And thus, may they be sustained today, Lord,
through this heavy trial until you show the
victory that you have through Jesus our Lord.
Amen.