Open the Bible

Colin Smith: Prosperity is a great blessing, but it is slippery ground. The problem with prosperity and especially the prosperity of the wicked is that a man or woman without faith in God who prospers will usually become blind to reality. His money will make him feel secure, and that is a slippery place.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Colin, it sounds like this might be a message about money?

Actually, it's not. We're in a series called I Almost Gave Up, and this is all about those times when a Christian may feel absolutely overwhelmed and tempted towards despair.

This happened to a very godly man by the name of Asaph, and one of the reasons he was tempted to give up was he looked at the world and he said, "Now, people who are in rebellion against God, wicked people, God seems to be blessing them. They've got all the money. And here am I, and I'm trying to be faithful to God, and it seems like my prayers are not being answered."

Well, there's many Christians who know what that is. Why is God blessing the wrong people, and why is he doing something for people who are defiant towards him? They seem to get away with everything. And what is God doing for me? Well, these are questions of discouragement. And if you're asking these questions, you're certainly not the first. Asaph was there before, and he had to work through these questions, and God brought him through these questions and put his feet back on a solid place. The prayer for this series is that God will do that for us all also.

Guest (Male): Well, I hope you'll open your Bible and join us in Psalm 73 as we continue this message, "Think!" Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: The encouragement of God's people is one of the great means that God uses to strengthen us when we feel like giving up. By the way, that is why you should never withdraw from God's people when you're discouraged. When we become discouraged, there is a certain impetus that says, "Hey, I'll just stay home. I'm not going to come to worship. No, I'll just withdraw."

Isolation is your greatest danger when you're discouraged. You need others around you. We all do. Asaph does the right thing. He not only goes to a sanctuary where he finds the presence of the ark that speaks to him of God's faithfulness over generations, but he comes to the place where he's going to meet with others who share the same faith and are able to encourage and strengthen one another in God.

God will use his people to bring strength and encouragement to you. Sometimes that will happen in the most unexpected of ways. Let me speak personally. Let me tell you how God blessed me last Sunday. Dick Bender. Dick's one of our senior members. He's been through very extensive surgery. He's a man of extraordinary courage.

Last Sunday, we had just finished the third service. I had my coat on and was about to head out through the main entrance to head off home. I got to the front door of the church, and Dick was there with his stick, about to leave. I hadn't seen him or spoken to him for quite a while. I said how good it was to see him at church after all that he'd been through, and he made some comment about just keeping pressing on.

I held the door for him, said goodbye, and walked across the car park. Here's what I was thinking: "If he can do what he's doing after all that he's been through, what in the world do I have to complain about?" Actually, I think God was speaking to me through Dick, and he knew nothing about it.

The truth is, I've thought about him four or five times in the last week. I've thanked God for his testimony, and I've drawn encouragement from the example of a man who just keeps struggling on, who wants to be here in worship despite great difficulties. He loves Christ and he just keeps pressing on.

So I'll tell you, I'm really glad that Dick made the effort to come to church last Sunday. I don't know what it did for him, but I know what he did for me. Of course, he wouldn't have known anything about it, except that I phoned him. I said, "Dick, I want you to know that just seeing you at church last Sunday was a blessing to me." Then I asked him, of course, if it would be okay if I said that this morning. In true style, he said, "Aye, you can use my name. Just don't go too much on the heroics."

See, I see a single mother struggling to bring up her children in the faith, and I'm encouraged without anything being said. I see someone with a child who's seriously ill, and they're trusting the Lord in their difficulties. It inspires me. I see someone who's experienced great loss, and they're struggling to hold back the tears, but they're trying to sing because they want to affirm their faith in God, and I'm strengthened.

Let me say this especially to some of our older people. You don't know what ministry you have just by your presence, by your smile, by the fact that despite all that you have gone through, you did not give up. Our pastors meet for prayer every Wednesday. Every week, we receive a list of folk who are in hospital, confined to home, or enduring some other significant difficulty.

It's always printed on a green sheet of paper, so of course, we call it the green sheet. I'll tell you, some of the names on the green sheet are an inspiration. All you can do is thank God for some of those folk and pray that you would have grace to be like them. Don't ever underestimate the importance of your staying the course. You are showing the rest of us what it means to persevere.

Your faith in these difficulties is part of our testimony to God's grace, and the whole body draws strength from it. Now, you see when Asaph came to worship, he says, "I come into the sanctuary, and here's what God did for me. It straightened out my thinking." How? Because it's here that I'm reminded of God's truth, and it's here that I meet with God's people. There will be a thousand ways in which God speaks from one member of the body to another today. Most of them you may know nothing about. Only God himself knows the full extent of ministry that goes on as the body gathers. I entered the sanctuary of God. Is that not a wonderful thing?

Second, I understood their final destiny. Not only does he remember God's truth and meet with God's people, but he, in the sanctuary, considers ultimate outcomes. I understood their final destiny. Now, of course, Asaph is talking about the final destiny of the wicked. Remember that his whole problem began in verse three, when he was raising the question of why the wicked prosper.

Asaph uses two pictures here that it seems perhaps God brought to his mind when he was in the sanctuary. God does speak to us in wonderful ways. He gives us two pictures that describe the ultimate outcome of the wicked. The first is a picture of walking on ice. Look at verse 18: "Surely you placed them on slippery ground." He's talking about the wicked. Now, why has God placed the wicked on slippery ground?

The answer is, God has placed the wicked on slippery ground by prospering them, which is, of course, the whole point of the Psalm. Prosperity is a great blessing, but it is slippery ground. The problem with prosperity, and especially the prosperity of the wicked, is that a man or woman without faith in God who prospers will usually become blind to reality.

His money will make him feel secure, and that is a slippery place. Remember the words of Jesus about the man who amassed great wealth and then had marvelous plans for all that he was going to do in the future? God said to him, "You fool," the strongest of words. "You fool," God said, "don't you know that tonight your soul will be required of you?"

Now, if prosperity is a slippery place for the wicked, we'd better take note and realize that it must be a slippery place also, therefore, for the righteous. If God has given you money, be thankful, but also be careful. Be thankful; be careful. It's like walking on ice. It really is. Pride can easily come in when God prospers you, and pride comes before a fall. It's like walking on ice, you see. It's a slippery place. Be thankful; be careful.

See, that's why Paul says to Timothy, and notice the strength of this language in the New Testament. This is the apostle speaking to a young pastor, and he says, "Command those who are rich in the present world not to be arrogant." He's talking about believers here. The danger for the believer who has prospered is that he'll become arrogant.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. A message called "Think!" It's part of our series on Asaph from Psalm 73 called I Almost Gave Up, a really great series on how we persevere in the Christian life. We're going to pause here, but we'll get back to the message in just a moment.

Well, we've been talking this month about Pastor Colin's book Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross, as well as the brand new graphic novel based on that book. We also have a one-hour movie. It's available for free at our website, and it's been translated into over 20 languages. You can find out all the languages and watch it online for free when you come to our website, openthebible.org/heaven. Let's get back to the message from Psalm 73. Again, here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: The danger for the believer who has prospered is that he'll become arrogant. Paul says to Timothy, who's just a young pastor, "Command those who are rich in the present world not to be arrogant or to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God." Thank God for those who give us a model of that, who put their hope in God who provides richly us richly with everything for our enjoyment.

So he says, "I'm thinking about the destiny of the wicked, and I see that it's like walking on ice. They're going to fall over to their ruin." Then secondly, he says in verse 20, "It's like waking from a dream." "As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies." It was Augustine, the great Christian writer, who speaks about a beggar who has a dream. Let me try and paint the picture for you.

In the dream, the beggar wins the lottery: fifty million dollars. In his dream, he sees the home he will buy. He sees the car he will drive. He sees snowmobiles in winter, jet skis in summer. He sees himself flying first class around the world, the Taj Mahal, all the wonders of the world and all the rest of it. He sees himself cruising the Caribbean. He's dining in the finest of the world's restaurants. But when he wakes up, to his horror, he realizes it was only a dream. The reality is he's a beggar.

Now, Asaph is saying, "I realize that is the destiny of the wicked. It's a terrible thing to contemplate." Thinking that they have everything, living the dream, they wake up and find they have nothing, to their horror. C.S. Lewis puts it this way. He says it is to be left utterly and absolutely outside, repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored.

Now, you see, Asaph's saying, "I came into the sanctuary, and that's where God straightened my thinking out so that I was able to face life." It happened as I remembered the truth, as I met with God's people, and as I contemplated ultimate outcomes. It began to change my whole perspective. I began to say to myself, "If that's the end of the wicked, why in all the world am I envying them?"

Then, of course, he contemplated not only the destiny of the wicked but the destiny of the righteous. Look at verse 24: "You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me to glory." Now, one of the commentators here points out that there's an interesting parallel between verse 17 and verse 24.

If you look at verse 17, "Then I understood their final destiny." Now, the word translated "final destiny" literally means their "afterward." I understood the "afterward" of the wicked, and the "afterward" of the wicked is that they fall over and they're ruined and they wake up and they're disappointed.

Now, what about the "afterward" of the righteous? Well, it's in verse 24 and translated with precisely that term: "You guide me with your counsel and afterward." You see the parallel? "You will take me into glory." This is one of the greatest verses in the whole of the Bible. It describes the whole Christian life. "You guide me with your counsel," that's what God does for us now, "and afterward you will take me into glory."

What a statement. "You will take me into glory." You never know what's going to happen when the phone rings, right? Some years ago, I was sitting at my desk in London, and the phone rang. "Hello," said this voice I'd never heard before. "My name is John, John White. You don't know me. We've never met before, but my wife and I are going to Israel and we wonder if you'd like to come. Sales call."

He continued, though. "We'd like to take you," he said, "my wife and I, if you'd like to come." "Sorry, could you say that again?" John and Rosemary belonged to a church in another part of the country. I'd never met them before. They had a great love for Israel, and they had a great love for the preaching of the Word. They had apparently been encouraged, unknown to me, by the ministry, and they wanted to give to Karen and to myself the opportunity of seeing the land where Jesus walked.

"We'll make all the arrangements," they said. "You'll just meet us at the airport if you'd like to come. We'll take you with us." You're kind of sitting at the end of the phone, saying, "Sorry, I've never met this guy. I've never spoken to this guy before." Doesn't happen every day, by the way, but it happened.

John and Rosemary were experienced travelers. They'd been to Israel several times before. They knew their way around the country. They took us to Israel. They paid for our trip, and we traveled in their company and they've become dear, dear friends to this day. They took us to Israel.

Now, says Asaph, looking up, as it were, by faith into the face of God, he says, "You take me to glory." That means you pay the price of getting me there. That means that I travel in your company. That means you are with me every step of the way. That means when I get to crossing the border with all its hazards and with all its fears, you take me into glory. That's the future.

And when he takes you into glory, he's taking you into the place with which he is supremely familiar already, and he will spend eternity showing you its delights to his joy and to yours. You get your eyes focused on that destiny, the whole of life begins to look somewhat different. Remember God's truth, meet with God's people, consider ultimate outcomes.

When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their final destiny. So to wrap it up, here's where we've come. Remember, it's a five-point turn, and there's more to follow. We're at the second point of a five-point turn, but boy, Asaph's already well on the way.

This is what he wants us to know. Let me tell you my story, he says. I was facing these problems, my mind was confused. I'm going round and round and round, and I almost gave up. I couldn't even see the point of continuing to pursue a godly life at that time. I had to stop and I had to think.

I found I couldn't do it on my own. It was oppressive to me. I got nowhere till I entered the sanctuary of God, and I remembered God's truth. I met with God's people. It changed the way I was thinking, and that's where God opened my mind and I saw the afterward of the wicked and the afterward of the godly. And I'm thinking to myself, I actually thought it wasn't worth it? It changed my whole perspective. It got my thinking straight. It made it possible for me to go out into the world and to face the realities of life.

Guest (Male): What a great reminder from Pastor Colin today, that when you're facing a spiritual crisis—and sometime in life, you will—we've got to keep that eternal perspective: to stop, to think, and to remember God's truth and meet with his people. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. A message entitled "Think!" It's part of our series on Psalm 73, a look at Asaph's life. Our series is called I Almost Gave Up.

And if you ever miss a broadcast in the series, you can listen online. Just come to openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download it in MP3 for free. You can also listen if you have the Open the Bible app. You'll find that for free at your app store. It's a great way to listen to Pastor Colin's teaching when you're on the go.

Well, Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry. It's your generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching, and as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you three copies of our very first graphic novel inspired by Pastor Colin's book Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross, plus one copy of the original book. Colin, who is this graphic novel for?

Colin Smith: Well, I'm super excited about this graphic novel. It is a brilliantly illustrated 48-page story. It's got clear and compelling dialogue, and it's designed to reach younger people and for anyone who thinks of themselves as being a visual learner.

And it tells the story of the thief on the cross, which is really a story that I think everyone needs to know. It teaches us that entrance into heaven doesn't depend on a person's performance in the Christian life. And I think that's something that everybody needs to grasp, but especially younger people who have grown up in church and yet may not have grasped the heart of the gospel and may be tempted to turn away.

I hope that we can get it into the hands of as many younger people and visual learners as possible so that people will understand the marvelous news of God's grace. Jesus opened heaven for the thief on the cross. If he could do that for the thief on the cross, he could do that for any person. There is hope for every person in Jesus Christ. So, who's a young person in your life who needs to understand the grace of God? We'd love for you to be the means of getting the story of God's grace into their hands, and who knows what God will do as a result.

Guest (Male): Well, we want to send you three copies of Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross, the graphic novel version, plus a copy of the original book as our way of saying thank you for your financial support. You can give online at openthebible.org or call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6364 or openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.

Colin Smith: At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the gospel around the world. And to that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints.

You know, in the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it. And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in. Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children, and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website, openthebible.org/gf. That's openthebible.org/gf.