Holding It All Together | Summer at College Park: Refreshed, Restored, Renewed
2026-07-12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6tH3aFHQW8

If you'd like to follow along, I think most of the Scripture will be on the screen this morning as we move through that. Before we dive into God's word, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. Father in heaven, I thank you for your people. I thank you that we can gather and we can share our joys and our sorrows and our struggles and our hopes. And I thank you that we can do so and that you hear us. We thank you for your goodness. Be with us this morning as we see your word. May you refresh us, may you restore us, and may you renew us. Help us this morning. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So, growing up, probably like a lot of kids in my generation, I read a lot of Calvin and Hobbes. At first, it was, you know, stealing newspaper comics when I could find them and reading

through there. And then, eventually, I realized that they collected these and put them in books and you get them at the bookstore and borrow them from your friends and trade them back and forth. And so, I was a big proponent. Still, I'm a big proponent. Like, I gave my kids Calvin and Hobbes as soon as they could read. Evelyn's, one of her first stuffed animals was a Hobbes. And so, I love Calvin and Hobbes. And there is a little three-panel strip from Calvin and Hobbes that sticks with me. And Calvin comes into his dad and confronts him about bedtime. And why can't I stay up like adults? It's not fair. And his dad responds with, "Well, life's not fair." And Calvin walks off mumbling, "Well, why is it never unfair in my favor?" And as a kid, like, my first thought was, next time an adult says to me it's unfair, I'm gonna respond with, "Well, why is it never unfair in my favor?" Which could be the reason why I was just in trouble my

entire childhood. But as an adult, when I hear Calvin say that, "Why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?" Sometimes it feels like he kinda has a point. "Why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?" And that really is, I think, the heart of the struggle that Asaph is having in the 73rd Psalm. He looks out at the world, he looks at how he has lived, and what he is doing, and his service to God, and he looks outside of those who are following God, and he sees how their life is going, and goes, "Is it even worth it to follow God?" And what he says in most of this Psalm is him struggling with that question, "Why isn't it really ever unfair in my favor?" Now, we don't like to admit that we sometimes have those kind of thoughts

in regards to God. And part of the reason we don't like to admit those times when we struggle is because we like to present ourselves as someone who has it together. We like to present the best version of ourselves to the world, which is why when somebody's coming over to our house, why we clean up, we want to straighten up, make sure it looks nice. And so sometimes what we're doing when we're presenting that best face to the world is we're simply hiding our struggles. And one of the things that I love about the Word of God, and one of the things that not just encourages us, but speaks to the truth of the Word of God is that the fact is that the Bible doesn't clean things up. When you meet people in the Bible, you see them how they truly are, both in their joys and in their sorrows and their victories and in their failures, their sin, their brokenness, their redemption, you see it all. And that is wonderful.

And that's what we're going to see in the life of Asaph this morning, is we're going to see his struggle, and the Bible doesn't hide it. So the book of Psalms is just a book of songs or poems that were sung together, essentially the hymn book of God's people, and it's divided into five divisions. And the first Song in division three, right, page one of book three of Psalms is Asaph's struggle, right? It's not hidden. It's not swept under the rug. It's not something we don't talk about or pretend that these questions don't plague our hearts and make our souls struggle, but in fact, it's drug right out into the light, and it's dealt with in a way that we can see in a way that is wonderful. Just a little bit about Asaph. He's appointed sort of worship leader by David over all the other worship leaders, and in terms of those who led God's people in worship,

he is one of the best, sort of top tier. He's credited by name with 12 Psalms, and his descendants will lead God's people in worship for generations. This is not a guy who we would look at and say, "Man, he has some growing to do," or "He really shouldn't be struggling." This is a guy that we look at, and he's sort of top of his game, top of his field serving God, and here he is publicly struggling. So what I want to do is sort of walk through this Psalm together for just a moment. Listen to verses one and two. Start with verse one. "Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart." And that sounds like one of those verses that we would read as we gather to worship at the beginning of service to remind ourselves and to have God speak to us in his glory and say, "This is who I am. Truly God is good to Israel, to those

those who are pure in heart." Now you've seen the public declaration, but look at Asaph's heart. "But as for me," he's not singing that with his heart. "My feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped." And the picture here of these words of your feet stumbling and slipping, there's sort of a two-fold picture here. It's one that your feet have sort of taken off the path. That they're trying to go this way, and you're trying to go this way, and your feet are trying to go this way. But the other picture here that is a struggle is that the ground is sort of dissolving out from underneath them. And so we begin this psalm with Asaph and the refrain of the congregation. "Truly, God is good to Israel." And Asaph is over there in the corner, who should be leading, saying,

"It feels like I can't stand up straight. My feet are going out from under me. The ground is dissolving underneath my feet." You can see his struggle. And if you said, "Well, why is this worship leader of God's people struggling?" Look at verse 3. "For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." Simply put, I looked around, and I saw my life, and I saw the life of those people who were evil, and they have it better than I do. And so as the congregation sings about the goodness of God, I'm struggling to stand on my own two feet. The heart of his struggle is heartbreaking. I've served the Lord, and I've suffered. They've run from God. They've followed their own desires. They're living their lives filled with sin, and they are doing better than I am. In fact, he'll summarize it like this in a few minutes, and we'll pick up those verses in between in just a minute.

All in vain, I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long, I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. The conclusion of Asaph's heart is this: It's empty, and it's vanity, and it seems like from the time I go to bed, from the time I get up, all day long, it's a struggle, and it's strife, and it's not worth it. Here's some good news in the midst of Asaph's struggle. And the good news is this: that God doesn't push the struggling away. Asaph is not the first to struggle with this, and he will not be the last. Job struggles with it. Jeremiah struggles with it. The congregation of Israel in Malachi chapter 3 struggles with it. John the baptizer struggles with it. As he sees Jesus doing all of these things, and he knows in his heart that there's a promise to set the captives free,

But he's in prison, and he sends his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?" Right? This is not a new struggle to the human heart. And God does not push them away. Now, there are ways in which we can deal well with this or deal badly with this. So, for example, in Malachi chapter 3 is the congregation of Israel struggles with the same thing that Asaph is struggling with. They do it by getting together and complaining about God together. That God is doing this, and he hasn't done this, and they just complain about him, as opposed to, for example, Job, Jeremiah, and John, who take their struggles directly to God. Who ask God, "Why is this happening? Can you explain it? Can you help me?" And so there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. And the wrong way leads us into a place of bitterness and brokenness, and the right way ultimately

leads us even in difficulty to a place of peace. Now, what's interesting about Asaph is he somehow has figured out a middle way. Like, not necessarily a good middle way, right? And what he has done is, first of all, he hasn't complained about it, so that's good. But he also hasn't taken it to God. Look at verse 15. "I said, if I had said, I will speak this way, I would have betrayed the generation of your children." So he's speaking to God. He says, "I didn't say. I didn't complain. I'm not." Even though Malachi 3 is in the future for Asaph, right? He's not gathering a group and complaining. He's not doing that. But he's also not necessarily going to God. But when I thought how to understand it, it seemed to me a wearisome task. And so what he does is he doesn't complain, but he also doesn't

go to God. He says, "I'm going to figure this out. I can do it by myself. I don't need any help from anybody else. I'm going to think my way out of this problem and out of this struggle." And what you find is that trying to do it himself leads him to this place. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in my heart, I was brutish and ignorant, and I was like a beast toward you. This is just a summary of anger. He said, "I didn't complain to everybody. I tried to figure it out on my own, tried to do it myself, and as a result, I was so angry." In fact, pricked in the heart has a picture of the depth of your emotions that literally means stabbed in the kidney, and as somebody with some kidney struggles, I understand that, and he's going, "All of this anger is filling me up, and I'm filled with pain, and I'm like a brute."

In part, because he didn't take it to the right place. And so part of Asaph's problem is he's not measuring things correctly. So when I was first learning how to work with wood, I don't know who told me this. It might have been my dad, right? You probably know this, right? You measure twice and what? Cut once, right? So the way I've taken that to heart is I measure once and cut twice, or sometimes I don't measure at all and just cut a bunch until it kind of fits, right? You know, it goes with what works. And so this week, Luke and I were building a Viking chair, which is a pretty easy project. And I cut the wood down to the size I need, and then I had to cut it in half. And so I cut the first piece and cut it beautifully, you know, as I normally do. And then as I'm looking at the measure, and I'm marking it, and it was like the rain is coming, you can tell the storm is on the way. It's like we got to move fast. So I measure it, mark it, you know, run my line, and I cut it. And then I put the two pieces

together, which are supposed to be even, and one is like this much longer than the other. And the problem wasn't the tape measure. The problem was, is that I was looking at it incorrectly in my rush. I didn't just take a breath and measure correctly. And in part, this is what Asaph has done. With all that struggle seeming to come toward him like a freight train, he has just sort of quickly made some assumptions about what is true, and how good is defined, and what what it means to be blessed, and how he should respond to these struggles. And so what you see next, is that part of the problem is that Asaph is just simply measuring wrongly. Asaph's problem isn't necessarily that he sees the data and it's bad, it's that he's looking at it wrongly. There's sort of three ways in which he measures wrongly. The first is this, is that he has a wrong definition

of what is good. So in Psalm 73:1, it just simply says this, "Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart." And then as he begins to work through his struggles, in this section that goes down from verse 4 all the way down to verse 12, as he looks at the wicked, he defines goodness like this. Right? They don't have any struggles in terms of their health. They're at ease, verse 5. Verse 12 is they have plenty of money and never struggle financially. And so as Asaph hears that God is good, his definition of God's goodness is that they don't have any physical problems, they don't have any struggles, life is at ease, and they are wealthy. And in between their ease and their wealth, he chronicles the depth of their unrighteousness.

All the things that they have done wrong, but yet they still have all this goodness. And Asaph says God is good, but the problem is that he's looking at goodness in the wrong way. And he's saying, "How can a God who is good pour out these things on these people?" And what God is going to do, and we'll see how this happens in just a minute, is God takes Asaph's definition of goodness and recalibrates it. Look, in fact, at how Asaph ends this psalm. For it is good to be near God. And so he begins with the congregation by saying that God is good to those who are pure in heart, and he defines the goodness in terms of outward material blessings. And by the time you get to the end of the psalm, God has shifted that, and we'll see how that happens in just a minute, to be to this place where he said that true nearness, true goodness is proximity to my God.

And so he has a wrong definition of good. But the second problem is that he has a wrong definition of what it means to be blessed. Look at verses 12 and 13. "Behold, these are the wicked. They're always at ease. They increase in riches. All in vain. I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence." And what Asaph is doing is he has essentially minimized the blessings of God to a transaction. That I have kept my heart clean, I have washed my hands, and that is my currency in order to get blessings. That in his mind somehow blessings have shifted from God's goodness and mercy being poured out upon us to something that Asaph can now pay for by being more righteous than other people. He views God's blessings as somethings that can be purchased. And underneath that is this idea that he has that seeking righteousness has been bad.

It's been a bad deal. Now what's interesting is that his view doesn't stay that way. Listen to what he says. And I love these verses, and these verses have brought me through some very dark valleys. Who have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and he is my portion forever. See what Asaph has said? He starts by saying, "I see blessing as all of these outthings. By the time God recalibrates his heart, he sees my flesh and my heart may fail. Nothing, nothing but you. You are my blessing." And part of the problem is that Asaph has only seen the servants. If you read through his description of the wicked in verses 4 through 12, you only

see external appearance. And he's comparing their outside appearance to his inward reality. In fact, in a few verses, he's going to say, "I had it all wrong. It was like a dream when one wakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself and you despise them as phantoms." And what Asaph is saying is that at the end of the day, he realizes he has this caricature of these people that is not true. It's like something that is in a dream or that he has made up and he's comparing an imaginary standard to what is true. Right? Asaph has dealt with it, first of all, wrongly by being alone, but he's also measured wrongly. Now, my purpose here is not to beat Asaph up. And that's not what God intends. Right? He has something more wonderful. He's going to do something more wonderful in the life of Asaph. And then Asaph, as we read, as we came to the table, he's going to say, "Let me declare your blessings

that God uses this moment for the proclamation of his glory." And so here's what I want you to see in the midst of this struggle where your feet feel like they're going to just go out from under you. There is hope. Remember where he is. The ground is melting. His feet are trying to go off in the wrong direction. He's seeing all the outward appearances of goodness and blessing falling on the lives of the wicked. He's trying to fix it, but deep inside he knows something is not right and it's not working. And here is where this whole psalm shifts. Until I went into the sanctuary of God and then I discerned their end. Notice that Asaph's solution, right? So as a man, right, the way I deal with my feelings is I just stuff them down as far as they can go and pretend like I don't have them. And if you're a man, you know what happens. Eventually that explodes like a volcano on those you love, right? It's not good. Sometimes we try to fix

it by self-discipline, right? If I work really hard, I can make it better. Solution is not new behavior. It's not even new arguments. Let me get some more information. The solution until I went into the sanctuary of God. And what is happening here is Asaph is saying, until I came into the presence of God, right? The sanctuary in ancient Israel is where God's presence dwell. And it's until Asaph leaves himself behind and stands in God's presence. Listen to what he says, "But when I thought how to understand it, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God." I want to be clear that the sanctuary, it's not just a magic place. It's not go to a specific place where you think God might be, but rather go into his presence. There's been a separation. There's a song in the

late nineties that talks about stick shifts and safety belts and bucket seats. They all have to go because when I'm riding in my car, they make my baby seem so far away, right? And I like the comfort of modern cars, but sometimes, right, you just want to have her slide over on the front of that like 1960s pickup truck seat so you can put your arm around her. And the problem for Asaph and the problem for many of us is God's over here and we're kind of over here. And we almost have that body language of somebody who's being confronted where we don't want to look and make eye contact. And it's until Asaph moves close to God. And when he does that, it changes his definition. It changes his definition of goodness, of blessing. Truly, you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors.

Like a dream, when one wakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourselves, you despise them as phantoms. Right? From the presence of God, Asaph sees the truth. Right? The wicked ones are walking on ice. The footing that he looked at and said, "I want to stand where they're standing." It's something that's going to collapse. It's not going to hold. It's going to cause them to slip and fall. Right? The permanence of their situation was not real. Right? His envy had read where they were at that moment as the end of the story, but it's not the whole story. And being in the presence of God, let him see the last page. And this is where his life gets recalibrated. Not by his effort, but by his proximity to God. By closeness. And he sees what good means and what blessed means and what the end is.

He's viewed himself as righteous and God is distant, but now. When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant, and I was like a beast towards you. And then he comes to this realization in all of my anger. Listen to this. Nevertheless, I am continually with you and you hold my right hand. Even when I got everything backward, everything upside down, you were here and you were holding on to me. And this is so deeply wonderful. Because he's saying I was terrible and I'm broken and I'm like a beast. And at the same time, you never let go of my hand. And if you go back to verse 2, there's this contrast between the people are singing about how God is good and Asaph. It says, "But as for me, I'm over here and I'm discontent in the depths of my soul."

It's the same word, that nevertheless, that separates the people worshiping and Asaph's complaint. Now that same word separates Asaph's bitter soul and the goodness of God. I am continually with you and you hold my right hand. You didn't leave. The same man, the same phrase, and an opposite ending. And I am continually, not that I've left you and came back, but you have been with me this entire time. Even when I'm full of anger in the depth of my heart like a beast, even when I'm just going through the motions, God was with him the entire time. Asaph doesn't climb his way back to God, but he sees God's presence and then he realizes God had never left him. Isn't that wonderful? Right? He does not grab hold of God. He sees that God has held onto him the entire time. And what this does now is it overflows into his life. It overflows into how he thinks, "Nevertheless, I am continually with me, with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward

you will receive me to glory." He thinks differently. He feels differently. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever, and his living has changed. For behold, foes who are far from you shall perish. You shall put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Lord my refuge that I may tell of your works. And so here we are. The same struggle, the same need to recalibrate and redefine our same fears, the same arguments, and the same difficulties. And here's the question. Where are you going to try to find those answers? So there was a time when I was in high school and I had a little sob. Well, technically my dad had a little sob, but I like to drive it. And I

I guess the Statue of Limitations has probably expired. I'd like to drive it really fast if I could. And this may come as a surprise, but there was a day where I was driving and I had an unnamed cousin who was on his motorcycle and there was this stretch of road that was wide and it was straight and it was two lanes for both of us. And so we just went for it side by side down the road. And at some point I looked down and realized the little peg where the speedometer hits was just like, it was stopped. And like the needle was like kind of trying to bend. And the speedometer did not go that fast. It went to like 85. It did not go that high. And I know how fast we were going. We were into the triple

digits at that point. But here was my worry. I just broke the speedometer of the car. Dad's going to know how fast I was driving. Right? Because I didn't know how speedometers in cars worked. I knew a little bit about how cars work. Did I like to drive? But here is my fear as the excitement of that moment begins to fade. I've broken the speedometer. So it's like, "Well, who can I go?" And there was a couple of adults that I knew that I could ask. One of them was Uncle Brian, but he was far away, right? Three hours away. He would have had some good advice. There was another guy, actually Uncle Brian's brother-in-law. And I said, "Phil drove the car really fast, and the speedometer went all the way, but I kept going faster. Did I break the

speedometer? And if I did, can you help me fix it before my dad finds out?" Turns out everything was okay. And confession is good for the soul, right? But here's what I've learned that now that I'm a dad, do you know who the best person I could have gone to with that was? It was my dad, because he's the one who truly loves me. Learning what I know now of his driving history when he was my age. Like, he had been where I had been, and he understood where I had been. And yes, I may have been in trouble, but that would have been for my good, not to steal my joy. And so instead of going to where I needed to go, I went to the place where I thought that I could get away with it. How many of us, when it comes to those moments of struggle, are doing

the exact same thing? We're going to that place where we think we can get away with it, where we can fix it on our own. And the problem is, if we do that just like Asaph, we end up in this place of bitterness. It wasn't until he went to where he was supposed to go into the presence of God. And here's the good news of the gospel, is that we have a blessing that Asaph does not have, because Jesus, the Son of God, stepped into our world in human flesh, and he has experienced what you and I have experienced, and he knows what it's like to face your struggles, to face the victories and the joys and the sorrows and the defeats and the loneliness, and he has been there. But not only has he been there, but he has the power to save you. And so many times, like

young, dumb, 17-year-old Brandon, we go to the wrong place instead of running to our Savior. Let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. Father in heaven, help us to see you in your goodness and in your glory, in all of your power and in your might, but also to see you as the shepherd buries the broken, hurting sheep. May we not run to other places. May we not run to those wells that dry up and leave us thirsty, but may we run to you. Forgive us, for we have become bitter in our hearts, and may you, like Asaph, bring this transformation that flows out of us like a fountain and results in praise and joy to you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're going to stand and sing, and one of the things I'd remind you, if you ever need

somebody to pray with you or for you, we've got people who are willing to do that. If you want to talk to me more about the gospel, I can't think of anything better I'd like to talk to somebody about. So just keep those things in mind. We are going to sing together His glory and our good.