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Colin Smith: I like to try and keep in touch with what's popular on the reading list, and I picked this one up: The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Reading through this book, I'm absolutely fascinated. Five people you meet in heaven, and Jesus isn't one of them. It's a Christ-less heaven, which doesn't exist. There is only one heaven, and Jesus Christ is at the center of it.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. Just as there is no heaven without Jesus, Colin, we're looking at what is genuine and real faith. We're looking at that through the lens of Asaph and Psalm 73 today and making sure that we see that when we take our eyes off of God and lose track of what is biblical faith, that could discourage us or cause us to be tempted to give up on a faith.

Colin Smith: Yeah, well, the world is always trying to get rid of Jesus Christ. You see that throughout His life, through in the crucifixion, and it's still true today. So that's why when people talk about faith, often faith gets talked about without the object of faith, who is Jesus. If there's no Jesus, there is no Christian faith. When people talk about heaven, you end up with all these ideas of heaven and apparently not Jesus. Well, you take Jesus Christ out, you haven't anything that is worth talking about in relation to Christianity. You might as well forget the whole thing because it's all about Him.

We're in a series where we're looking at how God brings us through the darkest valleys of discouragement. And you know what? Only Christ can do that. Only Christ can walk you through the darkest valley, the day where you feel like there isn't any point. Psalm 73 is just a wonderful story of how God brought one godly person through that dark valley and brought that person to a place of faith, of confidence, God-centered faith. Not confidence in myself, but in the ability of God to see me through life, through death, and into eternity. In this God, I can trust. I’m so glad we know that God in Jesus Christ and that we’re able to proclaim Him and to trust Him today.

Steve Hiller: Well, that's exactly what we're going to do in today's broadcast. Join us in Psalm 73 as we continue the message, Believe. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now this is then the fourth dimension of the five-point turn, and we've expressed it in this one word: to believe. To come to a God-centered faith. Really, what we have in these verses before us is one of the finest expressions of faith that you will find anywhere that you will ever hear. Let's look at it in three ways as we focus in on verses 25 and 26.

The first is this: He affirms a faith in God who is in heaven. God in heaven for you. “Whom have I in heaven but You?” Verse 25. Now, the first thing that you need to know about heaven, of course, is that heaven is utterly God-centered. When John saw his vision of heaven that's recorded in the book of Revelation, you remember that he saw, he states it twice in chapter five and in chapter seven, that the Lamb of God, that's Jesus Christ, was at the center.

If there is just one thing that you need to grasp about heaven, it is that Jesus Christ is at the center of everything there. Now, it seems to me that this is precisely the point that Asaph has grasped. He comes to a God-centered faith and it begins here. “Whom have I in heaven but You?” Let me try and illustrate this for you. Imagine with me, please, Tom and Mary, a young couple engaged and about to be married.

The wedding is just five days away, and Tom takes Mary out for a candlelit dinner. Looking over, get in a bit of a romantic mood here, will you? Looking over the candle, Tom says, “I can hardly wait till Saturday comes.” Mary smiles as she looks back over the candle into Tom's eyes. “Tell me,” she says, “why are you so excited about Saturday?”

Now, all Tom has to do at this moment is to say, “Because on Saturday, I get to marry you.” But Tom's a bit of a dummy. He doesn't always get his cues. So he says, “You know, Saturday, my great uncle Jack's coming in from Boston and I haven't seen him for ten years.” Or he says, “Saturday, the guys from the football team at college are all going to be here and, you know, we're going to go out on Friday night.”

Or he says, “Oh, the reception's going to be at the Grand Hotel Ballroom, and I love the food that they serve there.” Now, of course, all these things may be wonderfully true. It is great that Uncle Jack and the football team are coming and there will be a marvelous meal. The problem is that by making them his focus, Tom has completely missed the point, right?

There is only one heaven and Jesus Christ is at the center of it. Heaven is about Christ. Eternity is about Christ. And once you've grasped that God-centered, Christ-focused reality of eternity, then you know how to live life in this world. “Whom have I in heaven but You?” God in heaven for you.

Second: God on earth with you. “Whom have I in heaven but You?” verse 25, “and earth has nothing I desire besides You.” This is the second dimension of this God-centered expression of faith. You're at the center of everything for me in heaven; You're at the center of everything for me on earth. “Earth has nothing I desire besides You.”

Now, you can see here how far Asaph has come, can't you? At the beginning of this psalm, he's all tied up because there are certain things in his life that are not as he'd like them to be. He's bothered by other people's prosperity. He wants certain things to be different, and because they're not, he's miserable. But now he finds a new freedom in this God-centered faith. What's my life on earth really all about?

Thank God I can be released from this preconceived agenda, this life plan. Here's what my life on earth is about now that I've discovered that You're at the center of heaven. I can live with freedom with You at the center of my experience in life on earth. Now, Asaph, of course, is not saying that there are no other legitimate desires for life on earth.

He's simply saying the same thing as the apostle Paul said and we sang it earlier in our worship: “I want to know Christ.” That's what matters. That's the driving ambition of my life. Paul and Asaph are expressing precisely the same biblical faith. “On earth nothing I desire besides you,” says Asaph. “I want to know Christ,” says the apostle Paul. They're saying the same thing.

Now, of course, Paul had other desires. He wanted to preach. He wanted to plant churches. He wanted to see people converted to Jesus Christ. These are good desires. But here's the thing: even good desires, even the best desires, can become idols. And Asaph gets it exactly right. He teaches us that beside the Lord Himself, everything else must take a secondary place. “Earth has nothing I desire besides You.”

You see how God-centered it is. Now, if we have really come to love the Lord Jesus Christ and have entered into what biblical faith is all about, then surely we will see the rightness of this. Let's go back to our friends Tom and Mary and fast-forward their story five days, and we now come to their wedding on the Saturday. They stand in the church and they take their vows.

“I, Tom, do take you, Mary, to be my wife. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” Now, think with me about what Tom is actually saying. He's saying, “If being with you means I am richer, I'm with you. If being with you turns out to mean that I'm poorer, I'm with you.”

“What matters to me, Mary, is not richer or poorer. It's not better or worse, and it's not sickness or health. What matters to me is you. So, bring it on! Because no matter what happens, that's the agenda of my life, that's the commitment that I'm making: I'm with you, come what may.”

Now, you see, that is how a real Christian feels about Christ, isn't it? And isn't that why the New Testament uses the picture of a marriage to describe the relationship between Christ and His people? Christ bonds to us, whatever. And we bond to Him, whatever. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. When life goes as I want it to, when life goes as I don't want it to, I'm with You. Bring it on! What matters to me is You.

This came to me this week with great force. Because just looking again at biblical faith as it's framed in this God-centered way, it came to me in a fresh way: What have we done to the gospel in our time? Because if you turn on your television these days, you will hear a very different message from some. You will hear preachers who invite you to come to Christ for three reasons: health, wealth, and a better life.

In other words, we have moved in large parts to an alternative gospel. A gospel that is geared to our unchanging self-interest, in which a person is invited to make a commitment to Christ that would amount to saying something like this: “I, Colin, do take You, Jesus, to be my Savior, for better, for richer, and for health. And by the way, if You don't deliver on what I'm asking of You, I got a problem.”

That's not loving Christ; that's self-worship. And a person who comes to Jesus on that basis will abandon Jesus on that basis as quickly and as surely as Judas did. Now, listen to biblical faith, Asaph's faith. “Earth has nothing I desire besides You.” You're at the center of all things in heaven, and grasping that, I now know how to live in these short years that I have before I enter into Your presence. You are to be the center of all things in my life on earth, whatever.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. A message called Believe. It's part of a larger series called I Almost Gave Up based on Psalm 73. You know, there are many people who may be tempted to give up on God. Maybe they think that they're too far gone and God would never accept them. The story of the thief on the cross tells us something completely different. Pastor Colin has written a book entitled Heaven, How I Got Here: The Story of the Thief on the Cross. That’s also become a graphic novel and a one-hour movie. We’ve translated that movie now into over twenty languages, which you can watch for free at our website. Check it out when you come to openthebible.org/heaven. Again, that’s openthebible.org/heaven. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: God for you in heaven, God with you on earth, God beside you at death. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Now, clearly this statement moves in the direction of death. “My flesh and my heart may fail.” That's moving in the direction of death. He may be talking about heart-stopping experiences, times when our heart fails us even through life, times when we come to these great difficulties like Asaph has been enduring.

But he's talking about the progression through life that ultimately is going to come to the moment of our death. And he says, well, even there, “God is the strength of my heart and is my portion forever.” The New Testament way of saying this again comes from the apostle Paul. There are some fascinating parallels that run right through this.

The New Testament way of saying the same thing as verse 26 is Paul's wonderful statement: “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” That's what Asaph's saying. See, even if my flesh and my heart fail, even when I die, it's God who is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. What has been my life now because there's nothing on earth I desire besides You will continue through death and into heaven itself where He is exalted. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

John Piper has made, I think, the central point of that verse or expressed the point of that verse very well by saying this: that if living is Christ for you, then dying will be gain for you because in dying, you get more of Christ. That's it, you see. For me to live is Christ, to die is gain. If living is Christ for you, then dying will be gain for you because in dying, you get more of Christ. Right into His presence.

Think about that. You see, if you take Christ out of that verse, you'll soon see that any other way of living ends with disaster. See, look at this text if we blank it out: For me to live is [blank], to die is [blank]. Now, fill in the blanks. For me to live is career. Well, you see, if for me to live is career, then to die is disaster, isn't it? Because it's all gone.

For me to live is family or friends. Then to die is just loss because I'm taken away from them. It's all it is, just loss, just loss. For me to live is health, fitness. That is for some of us. Great shape. Well, to die is a total failure for you then, isn't it? Ultimate failure. And by the way, it won't just be at death that you discover that.

If for you to live is sex, expect a tough time as you get older. You lose your appeal, you lose your vigor. Some of us are living in ways that are setting us up for disaster. If for you to live is family, the kids leaving home will destroy you. If for you to live is work, retirement will destroy you. If for you to live is pleasure, sickness will destroy you. If for you to live is Christ, nothing will destroy you.

For me to live is Christ, and even to die is gain. I have no fear as I look at the future. Paul was in prison when he wrote these words. Things had not worked out as he had hoped or he had expected. But, hey, I'm not preaching anymore, I'm not doing what I thought I'd be doing anymore, but for me to live is Christ. I have no loss. I want to know Him. It's what my life is about.

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” This is the liberating power of a God-centered life. And that's why in the book of Hebrews, it tells us that Jesus Christ came into the world for this reason: Jesus came to free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

And the way that that happens, you see, is when we're converted from self-life to a life that is centered in Jesus Christ. Well, here's the fourth dimension. This is real biblical faith we're talking about here, isn't it? And Asaph, who no doubt had known it for many years, re-embraces it in a new way because his feet had almost slipped. He'd almost lost sight of what it really was, you see.

God in heaven for you, God on earth for you, God at death beside you. And Asaph's God-centered faith restored delivers him from the misery of his own self-centeredness and it brings him through to the glorious freedom of a God-centered life. And you say, well, how in all the world am I going to get there? Well, remember how Asaph got there. It is grace that births God-centeredness.

That's what happened to Asaph, this mature believer. Everybody respected him. He came to the point where his feet almost slipped. He became bitter, he started living on impulse, his heart ruled his head. But he comes into the presence of God and he sees what's been going wrong in his life. He falls on his knees, he confesses his sin, and he experiences grace.

Somehow his soul is filled with a fresh love for Jesus Christ. “I was a brute beast before You, Lord, yet You hold me by my right hand.” That's grace. And his experience of grace restores his faith and brings him to the point where he's ready to face the future in an entirely different way. Do you know, there’s wonderful good news here. This is the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

He can use your worst sin to give you a new appreciation of the wonder of His grace. See, some of us have been looking for a long time about what we can do for God, what we can do for God, and suddenly we hit something and we discover what He can do for us. And grace births God-centeredness. Do you know about that? Truth, prayer, faith. “Whom have I in heaven but You, and earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Steve Hiller: I love those closing thoughts that Pastor Colin was sharing with us. How grace births God-centeredness and how as we take a look at our own sin, well, that can lead to an appreciation of God's grace. You're listening to Open the Bible. Our message is called Believe, and it's from a series from Psalm 73 called I Almost Gave Up. And if you want to get a copy of the series for yourself, ask about that when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or openthebible.org.

Whether you listen to Open the Bible on the radio, online, through the podcast, or however you've connected, it's all made possible through your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we'd love to send you a copy of a book by John Stott called The Incomparable Christ. And Colin, what's the one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, Jesus once asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And that is the most important question I think that any of us could ever answer. When you settle in your mind and your heart who Jesus is, you really lay the foundation for your life and for everything else. You can rest the weight of your life, your death, and your eternity on Him.

And Peter's answer to that question, when Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ.” Now, this book, The Incomparable Christ, really lifts up who Jesus is, how He's presented to us in the New Testament, how He has been understood throughout the history of the church, how He's inspired people through the centuries, and how He will be when we see Him in His power and His glory when He returns. It's a marvelous book. I think it's the best book you can read about Jesus: The Incomparable Christ. And I think that people will be greatly blessed by this book.

Steve Hiller: Well, we'd love to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for financially supporting Open the Bible this month. You can call and give over the phone. The number is 1-877-673-6365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-OPEN-365. And our website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: Everyone has questions about heaven, but the question that matters most is how do you get there? Many people have the idea that if a person was to get into heaven, they'd get there by living a good enough life. Well, the thief on the cross hadn't lived a good enough life, and he wasn't in a position to start living a good life. But Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Well, if the thief could get into heaven, so can you. Heaven, How I Got Here is a compelling 60-minute film in which Stephen Baldwin portrays the thief on the cross in a one-person play. Many have found that this story opens their eyes to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and to the hope of heaven. You can watch the Heaven, How I Got Here film for free on the Open the Bible website. For more information, visit openthebible.org/heaven. That’s openthebible.org/heaven.