Kill “Me ism” and Fix Your Gaze on Christ

I want to speak on something that has probably been the biggest battle in my Christian life over 50 years. And it's significant, because if we don't get this right, we will struggle all of our life. But if we get it right, and we reset it over and over again, we'll be on the right path.

So that's a trailer, anybody curious? All right, turn to Psalm 73 with me if you would. Psalm 73, follow with me in your copy of God's Word. This is the Word of the Lord, our God.

Psalm 73, the Psalm of Asaph. Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

Okay, notice the words almost and nearly. Thank God that they're in there. For I was envious of the arrogant.

When I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pain until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace.

Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell through fatness. Now, let's pause.

When he uses the word fat or fatness, he's not talking about something physical. He's talking about overabundance. Just so much about their prosperity and their ease and their possessions.

And just way over the top. That's what he's talking about. They scoff, verse 8, and speak with malice.

Loftily they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. Therefore his people turn back to them and find no fault in them.

And they say, how can God know? Is their knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease. They increase in riches. So his eyes go from them to himself.

Verse 13, it is in vain that I have kept my heart clean. In vain have I washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I've been stricken and rebuked every morning.

But if I had said this, in other words, if I had said this out loud in public, because of who I am, a psalmist, I would have betrayed the generation of your children. It's a prayer. He's saying, Lord, if I preach this, then I would have dishonored your people.

So verse 16, but when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task. The wearisome task is, even though you believe God is good to Israel, you come into times where your perspective shifts from upward to outward, and you're looking at those who are prospering like you're not. You're looking at those who seem to have it all together, and you don't.

You're looking to those who seem to make more in a month than you make in five years, and you're not doing as well as them. Your focus has shifted here, and you start struggling, right? That's what's going on here. Alright, back to the text.

Verse 16, when I thought to understand this dilemma, it seemed to me a wearisome task. Notice the next word, until. Now there is the shifting word in the whole psalm.

Until something happened. What happened? Well, he went to church one morning. Going to church when you're hurting, devastated, lonely, isolated, struggling, is the best thing you can do.

That's going to be the turning point. Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then what happened? He discerned their end. Light came.

Discernment came. Suddenly, there's an old 1960s, 70s song. I can see clearly now.

I won't sing it. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. The rain has stopped in his mind right now.

I discerned their end. Okay, keep reading with me. And then he begins, his shift goes back to God.

Verse 18. Truly, you set them in slippery places. You make them fall into ruin.

How they're destroyed in a moment, swept utterly by terror. So, the lifestyles of the rich and famous ain't always good, right? No, they don't have it easy all the time. He was totally deceived as he saw the prospering of the wicked in their fine mansions, driving their fabulous cars, in their designer clothes.

And they seem happy, but it's all a lie. They're often empty and deceived and suicidal. And their marriages are on the rocks.

Now, what we see outwardly is not often the truth. So, what does he say? I woke up like a dream when one awakes. O Lord, when You roused Yourself, You despised them as phantoms.

When my soul was embittered, now here he gets honest, when my soul was bitter, when I was pricked in my heart. Verse 21. I was brutish.

That means ignorant and foolish. I was like a beast toward You. Nevertheless, I am continually with You.

You hold my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel. And afterward, You will receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none on earth I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from You shall perish.

You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to You. But as for me, it is good to be near unto God. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all Your works.

Now this morning as we were coming, Linda and I and my grandson Wes, when we were driving here, I was saying in the car, so when we go to church, what kind of things should we pray and ask God for any Sunday morning? And so, I said, well, you know, we could pray, Lord, speak to me, where I know it's You. Lord, teach me. Show me.

Let me see things. Let me learn things that I need right now. Work in my heart today.

We get in a rut of going to church, don't we? And every time we come, we need to recalibrate ourselves to pray as we come, Lord, speak to me. So let's pray that right now this morning. I'll write a bell with me.

Father, bless the reading and sharing of Your Word this morning. Every one of us need help. Every one of us need to reset, to be recharged, to be renewed, to be refreshed, to be revived, and to be transformed to walk more and more as we should and as we can by Your grace.

So this time, Lord, is Yours. In Christ's name, Amen. How important is our focus in life? And I'm talking about biblically, spiritually.

How important is our focus? Well, focus, in one sense, it's everything because it has to do with perspective. How you view something, right? Our focus is phenomenally important. So, if this is true, what do you do when you lose focus in a bad way? Have you ever had a period, you were walking with the Lord, doing well, and suddenly something shifts and happens and your focus is off and your equilibrium is messed up and you get spiritual vertigo? And you're in a bad way.

Has that ever happened to you? It happens many times to Christians. Everybody loses focus at some point and in some way. So, what do we do when we've lost focus? Well, Psalm 73, it is one of the most autobiographical psalms there is.

Asaph, the psalmist here, is very personal and emotional and he is in real agony of mind and heart and he's completely lost his way momentarily, briefly. Whether that was a week, a month, six months, we don't know, but he lost his way. And he's one of the psalmists.

Did David ever lose his way? Yeah, so we all do. We're in good company. When you lose your spiritual focus, what's going on? Well, I'll tell you what's going on.

Your focus is in one of three places. Well, when you lose focus, it's in one of two places. It's either on others, outward, or it's on yourself, inward.

Are either one of those a good choice? Never. Never. The only right focus is verse 1. We see that.

The psalmist begins out with the right focus. Truly God is good to Israel, even those of a pure heart. But when our focus and our thinking shifts from God to others and then to ourselves, it is a very slippery slope into the pit of self-pity and self-deception.

And you stay on that slope path very long, you may well get messed up so bad, the recovery could take years. John Calvin wisely said this, Satan dazzles our eyes and plays tricks on our minds until we find ourselves in a foggy mist of unbelief. That can happen so easily and you didn't know it happened.

Satan is wise and subtle and is a master of deception. In paradise with two people that were innocent and not fallen, he deceived them in a big lie. I'm susceptible to being deceived and getting off track in our focus.

So look at the psalm with me. I'm going to show you the divisions. In this psalm of 28 verses, there are four divisions.

The first one is verse 1. And that's the foundational truth. That's one division. One verse is the foundational truth.

The second division is verses 2-12 where the focus shifts to man. The third division, verses 13-16, the focus shifts to self. And the fourth division, verses 17-28, the refocus is back on the Lord where it should have stayed the whole time.

Alright, here we go. First truth. Truly God is good to Israel.

Now, Israel he described as those people who have a heart for God, even to those of a pure heart. So it's defined, the pure in heart, the true people of God, to them truly God is good. Now that is a categorical, unchanging absolute.

That God is good, and He does good all the time. If there's a family of believers, and they're in a car wreck, and ten are killed, and one survives, God is good. He's good when the nine die, and He's good when the one lives.

He's always good. He cannot fail to be good. Asap knew that that was true.

He's walked in it and lived it. We can really assume that that's true. And it's always right thinking and right focus to believe in light of whatever you're going through.

God, my Father, is good to me. He has only been good to me. That abiding foundational reality must be in our minds and our hearts for us not to waver off of the right focus.

Alright. But the psalmist who believed this, guess what happens? His mind begins to wander. His thoughts begin to be horizontal.

He begins to study things and evaluate people and compare them with himself. And guess what's happening? He is on a slippery slope where he begins to believe a lie and his focus has shifted from the Lord to others. Look at verse 2. I'm going to go back to it.

But as for me, here's the contrast. Truly God is good to Israel, but as for me, here's my condition now. So he realizes that something is off, but he can't rescue himself.

And he got to such a bad place that he had almost fallen completely away. Almost completely crashed and burned. Almost completely slipped away and was almost gone.

What's happening to him? Well, his focus changes from the Lord to majoring on people. How many Christians have struggles because they're always examining others? They're always evaluating this ministry and this preacher and this website and this group and this movement and this liberal church and their focus is on the horizontal. It's on people.

It's on preachers. It's on celebrity guys. And you know what happens when people camp out there and you're looking at others? You will begin to spiral down into criticism and judgmentalism and legalism and a bad attitude will set in and a Pharisee you'll find yourself being and you'll begin to get bitter and sour against everybody because you alone are right.

You've evaluated all of them. That's what Asaph had done. He began to look at what he had compared to the prospering of the wicked and his heart turned from being the sweet psalmist of Israel to being a sourpuss because he's looking at people.

Focusing on man. Observing, analyzing, comparing. Particularly those around him that had it better than him.

He says he refers to them or their 14 times in this clump of verses. 14 times. He is laser focused on what others have and what he doesn't have.

How they're better off than him. They have it easy and he doesn't. He's laser focused.

He says it. I was envious of the boastful and prosperous and wicked. His jealousy had twisted his thinking because see it's all in his mind.

He may be journaling this but he's thinking it inside. This is his real battle. It's the battle of the mind.

He says they don't die painfully. Well, is that true? Do rich people never die painfully? Of course they do. See he's believing a lot.

They're not in trouble like other men. That's not true either. Verse 5. They aren't plagued or stricken like others.

Do rich people get cancer and die from it? Yes. So see he's just completely twisted in his thinking. He says they're prideful, violent, and bulging with abundance.

Well, that's true. Now remember his envy is speaking here. They have more than they could ever wish for.

They brag and curse God. Well, that's true. They always have it easy.

That's not true. You see what he says? He's evaluating wrongly because he says I envy them. I envy them.

Envy, coveting, jealousy, judging others, evaluating them will always lead you to a worse heart condition. Always. Cease from looking at people, people.

Get your eyes on Christ. The greatest will fail you. We've been seeing that in the last couple of years.

The celebrity going down in flames. And if that bothers you and throws you off and hurts you and disillusioned you, well, you've been making an idol out of men. Focusing on people in comparison to yourself is always a mistake and it's always a deception.

It will always lead you to either idolizing men or criticizing them. Envy, jealousy, self-centeredness are poison. And when your self moves from truly God is good to Israel to look what they have that I don't have, then you are in real spiritual danger.

And you don't even know it. Focusing on people then shifts you to a worse place. Because you go from seeing the Lord.

Lord, how good You are. This is glorious. This is peaceful.

I love this song. I'm worshiping You. Your focus shifts from the Lord to people and your smile begins to disappear and you go, why do they have more than I have? Guess where this leads to the next focus? Yourself.

Your eyes will go from upward to outward to inward. Because you start looking at yourself. Him.

Them. Me. Every one of us this morning are at one of those three places where our focus is.

Is your focus on Him? Or Them? Or Self? It's one of the three. This is bad. This is dangerous when you get to the place of going from the Lord where there is peace and rest and security to people where there is comparison, insecurity, fear and envy into the quagmire and the cesspool of narcissism.

It's horrible. Focusing on people in comparison to yourself will always lead you astray. Self.

And when that happens, the enemy has us right where he wants us. He had Asaph right where he wanted him for a period. And you will feel miserable.

You'll feel confused. You'll be hurting. But everything is about I, me and my.

And you can't even get your eyes off yourself. Good old self. Or should we say bad old self.

Adamic self. Fleshly self. Self-focused me-self.

Self is never good. That's why the Bible tells us die to self. Deny yourself.

And live to God. Live to Christ. Well, when our eyes are on ourselves continually, we will never get free.

We'll always get worse. Now which marks your life as far as a focus? Is your focus consistently toward Christ? Not perfectly, but purposely? Are you a person whose focus is Christ? You're seeking things above. Or are you a person that does that some, but then you start focusing on people and you start going down.

Because something offends you, stumbles you, makes you jealous or whatever. And then, you digress more where you're just inward on yourself. You're in your own little world about me.

Where are you today? Six times in verses 13-16, Asaph speaks about himself because his eyes are only on himself. It's amazing what he says in verse 13. He's even feeling like living a godless, a godly life was pointless.

Wait. What happened to truly God is good to Israel? No. He begins to think, it's been futile that I've been a believer.

It hasn't helped me any. The wicked have it good. I don't.

And so, it's been pointless to serve God. It's been futile. It's not really worth it.

It's been all in vain. It's meaningless. I've cleansed my heart in vain.

In other words, I really repented. But where's it got me? What's it done for me? It hasn't benefited me. It was all in vain now, is what he feels.

But listen, brethren. When your eyes are on men, you begin to think that way. But here's the truth.

What's happening to others out there, neighbors, friends, family, people, what's happening with others and to others is not to be an issue with your walk with God. They have no bearing on you walking with Christ. If every, if all of your favorite preachers or spiritual heroes, if all of them fell away and abandoned the church, it wouldn't change your marching orders one bit.

You still would follow Christ. You stay with Him. You stay on the straight and narrow path, though all men don't do it.

You do it. I've had friends, close friends, that I walked to the house of God with 30, 40 years ago in sweet fellowship who ended up divorcing their wife for another woman. That could have made me wash out the crushing sadness about it.

Could have made Linda and I devastated and we go into a shell and we don't keep serving Christ? No. No matter what happens among men, even those you respect the most, you keep your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. Get them off me and cease from man.

Because they're only flawed servants of God. Yes, some are hypocrites and sing good. Others are real and true, but they're flawed and if your eyes are on the flaw, you'll get hurt too much and you'll sink down too much because your eyes are on men more than on Christ.

Six times Asaph speaks about himself here. God really hasn't been that good. He's thinking, see.

Others do have it a lot better than I have it. That's true. Not the wicked rich people though.

You have it much better than they do. Others have more than I have. I don't think people love me enough.

I wish they would call me. If they loved me, they would know they need to call me and they would call me. Grow up.

What shallow, immature thinking do we go to in our selfishness? If we want to have others friendly to us, we must show ourselves friendly even if we don't feel like it. If God was with me, he wouldn't have let this happen. How could I lose my job? I was a good employee.

Everything is wrong and bad. So, thinks Asaph. Focusing on self, like he's doing, leads to a curable disease called meism.

You ever had it? It's diagnosable and it's curable. They have it better than me. Why is she married and I'm not? He's handsome and I'm not.

Why does everybody have it better than me? Asaph is oppressed and envious, completely self-absorbed. And then, then, look at verse 17, then something happens. He says until I went to church.

He's in this condition. However long, we don't know. Bad condition, we do know.

Struggling. He can't pull himself out of it. What'd he do? He said, until I went into the sanctuary of God.

What made him go? Had he been missing? Had he laid out because he was sick of mind? We don't know. But he decides to go is the point. In this condition, while he's darkened in his mind, while he's struggling, while he's a narcissist, he decides to go to the church meeting.

And when you're struggling at your deepest on a Saturday, the greatest decision you ought to make is I'm going to be in church tomorrow morning. I'm going to be in the place where I can get help. I'm not going to let the enemy isolate me.

Marginalize me. I'm not going to be a lone ranger. You know, even he wasn't.

He had Tonto. He wasn't alone. He had somebody with him at his back.

When you're in a hard place, spiritually, and it's dark and you don't know what to do and you're hurting, go meet with the people of God. And in that atmosphere, something transformational will happen. You'll start singing.

You'll hear the reading of the Word. You'll hear the prayers. And your spirit will begin to be lifted up.

And you'll begin to feel lighter. And you'll begin to feel some encouragement. Light will dawn through the preaching of the Word.

And you'll leave here encouraged. When you came in, just dragging on the ground. Until I went into the sanctuary of God.

And then, I discerned. Discernment came. Now let's see what happens.

The turning point has come. Verses 15 and 16. Something happens in his mind just at the point that he is wallowing in unbelief and being swept away.

New light comes. I think it was William Cooper who wrote in a hymn, sometimes... Somebody help me. You grade hymns.

Sometimes a light arises. He's true. He's right.

Sometimes in our darkness, light arises. And suddenly God is clearing the clouds and the cobwebs from your mind and thinking. Suddenly you are seeing clearly.

That's what happened with him here. Now how does that change come? He decided to go be with the people of God. When he can't take it anymore, he goes to church.

And then the light bulb comes on. Light breaks through and suddenly he sees things very clearly. I can see clearly now.

The rain is gone. I can see no obstacles in my way. Suddenly, Asaph sees several things clearly.

He sees the wicked clearly. He sees himself clearly again. And he sees God clearly again.

Look at this with me. Verses 18-28. He sees the wicked clearly, first of all, when he wasn't before.

Truly, Lord, here's the truth about it. You set them, that is the wicked, in slippery places. They're not stable.

They're unstable. You make them fall to ruin. They're not going to prosper to the end and die in peace.

No. God will judge them and bring ruin often. They're destroyed in a moment, swept by terrors.

Like a dream when one awakes. So he sees the wicked clearly now. But also, look at verse 21, he begins to see himself clearly.

Lord, I was bitter. Confession is good for the soul. He gets honest with himself and he gets honest with God and he says to himself, I see this perspective that I've had was all rooted in my own bitterness.

That's owning it. The blame shifting has stopped and he's owning it. I have been bitter.

And how I feel and in the condition I'm in is only my fault. Lord, I own it. This psalm is a sister psalm of repentance to Psalm 51 in many ways.

Alright, so he sees himself more and more clearly. He says, Lord, I was bitter. I was ignorant.

And I was acting just like an animal. Well, he not only sees the wicked clearly and himself clearly. He begins to see God clearly again, and that's the reset brethren.

If your life is on a rollercoaster of losing your focus, get control of this because your focus is all going to be on the Lord or others or yourself. You better get your focus reset and you better pray daily, Lord, keep my focus set stably by your Holy Spirit, by your Word and by your people because here is where you will get help. And many of you know that.

Some of you would have fallen away years ago if it weren't for the saints around you. Right? It's true. And I'm included.

I've had brothers come to me. You know, isn't it a challenge when you think you're holy and righteous and good and someone comes and corrects you? How quickly defensiveness rises up and how carnally you can think suddenly. Who do they think they are? Well, they're your brother or sister who loves you.

They love you enough to bring a wound that's faithful. We need the body of Christ. We need one another.

We need shepherds. We need brothers and sisters who care about us. So his focus is reset on the Lord.

And he sees the wicked and himself clearly and now God. And he says here to the Lord. Yet I am continually with you.

God was with him and he was with God, though we knew it not. And all the wrong focus. But he says still I am continually with you.

Now John Calvin says something that's really quality. Listen to what he says about that God is with us. Here's what Calvin said.

We are with God in two ways. First we are with him when we are become aware again of living in his presence and being constantly sustained by him. We are with God when we are aware of living in his presence and then he is always sustaining us.

Secondly, we're with God when he restrains us and keeps us from falling away. We are kept by the power of God, not by ourselves. Verse 23 the psalmist says he holds me with his right hand.

Verse 24 he says he guides us with his counsel and receives us to glory. So the deep dark focus Asaph had, he comes out of it and he's back where he was in verse 1. Truly God is good to Israel and even me, those of a pure heart. He sees God clearly again and his focus is restored.

Six times in verses 20 through 26 he says you, he's speaking to God, you Lord. Prayer. He's back on track.

He's back refocused. His focus has returned to where it always should have been in the first place. We don't have to lose our focus if we guard ourselves, if we're diligent.

Now we will at times, but the more we're diligent and serious minded and we do what's biblically right and wise, the less we will lose our focus. So how much do you want to keep a right focus? Well we need to learn in closing, we should learn a couple of lessons that Asaph did and here's the first one. Number one.

When temptation comes strongly upon us and we begin to wither and weaken, we soon see that our maturity is not as strong and stable as we presumed. I'll state that again. When temptation comes strongly upon us and we begin to wither and weaken, we soon see that our maturity is not as strong as we thought it was, as we presumed.

Now here's a question. Do you have firm assurance in your heart and mind, you know, if others fall away, I won't. Lord, others may deny you, Lord, but not me.

I'm willing to die for you. Do you have a firm assurance you will never fall? Beware. Beware lest him who thinks he stands let him take heed lest he falls.

Secondly, pride and envy places us at the center of the world. Everything becomes about us. Everything revolves around us.

We had a, there was a brother, you don't know him, far away from here and he had a phenomenally developed work he was doing academically and we had a meeting somewhere for lunch, seven or eight of us, and the conversation was with some men, not him, the whole meal time and we left and later the man confessed I really was bothered that the discussion didn't revolve around me and he learned a lesson. Does everything have to be about you at any time? When John the Baptist is languishing in prison, ready to get his head cut off, Herod is feasting and lusting and living in luxury. Guess what? It's happened the same time and guess what? God is still good all the time.

Seems unfair, seems wrong. God is still good. Nothing you see in the earth ever should say to you, God is not good right now.

No matter what's happening, God is good and He's in control. So brethren, the final lesson, me-ism and you and me must die. Kill it.

Kill it. I've been reading through Judges again and I came to where Cicero, one of the kings, one of the nations been mistreating Israel for 20 years I think it was and so Deborah the prophetess is raised up to be a judge and so she calls she calls for the charge and then she goes with the charge and they defeat Cicero's enemies, I mean Cicero's soldiers, the army. Well Cicero escapes and he takes off.

He's running. Remember where he goes? There's a woman, what was her name? Yeah, there you go. And she sees him and she has this nice Airbnb.

She has some refreshments in there and she says hey, come in, check in. Today's a free lodging. He says, well you got some water? Yeah, I'll give you more than that.

Here's some milk. Lay down and rest. And she brings him a drink of milk in one hand and in the other hand she brings a tent peg and a hammer and he drinks and he's resting.

His credit card's not going to get charged. His energy's going to get renewed and he's going to be on his way and soon the tent peg is through his temple into the ground. And she runs out and says hey, the man you're looking for, he's in here.

Come. Get him out of here. God is good to Israel but a tent peg needs to go through our minds and kill it dead.

It's got to be put to death to go on with Christ with a right focus. A singular focus. A single eye.

I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Right focus.

There's only one cure for me-ism and it is Jesus Christ Himself. To abide in Him. To love Him.

So this morning, be honest. Where are you this morning? Is your focus upward? Is it outward? Or is it inward? Are your eyes always on people? Circumstances? Or self? And you're getting weaker and weaker all the time. Refocus, brethren.

Refocus this morning because the psalmist's final testimony can be yours. Listen to how Asaph closed. Whom have I in heaven but You? Is that in your heart? Lord, I just want Christ and no one more than Christ.

There's none on earth that I desire besides You. God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. It is good for me to draw near to God.

And I have put my trust in the Lord God. With the Lord, you're always going to be stable. With men, you're always heading in the wrong direction.

With self, it will always make you messed up. The Lord, the Lord alone, there's stability because Christ is our focus. May God help us today to learn the lesson that Asaph did.

Truly, God is good to Israel. Let's pray. Father, we sang earlier, keep my spirit staid and sure.

Would You, by Your Holy Spirit, reset our focus today? And would You cause us to cease from focusing on men or self? Lord, if You can bring anyone back to right focus like Asaph or David or others, Lord, You can take us where we are and reset us that our eyes would forever be upon the Lord. That we would walk with You in a pleasing manner. For Jesus Christ's sake, we ask You to do it.

Amen.