The best introduction I ever got was at first Baptist Church in Vancouver, and I was asked to speak in one sermon on the doctrines of revelation, inspiration, and illumination. I didn't know how to cover all that in one sermon. When I chose as my text, Numbers 22 through 24, which is the story about Baleum's donkey, the secretary called me up Tuesday before I went to preach, and she said, what's the title of your sermon? Not very good at titles. I said, on the spur of the moment, well, let's call it the talking donkey. Well, when I got to the church, that son, it's in a major intersection in downtown Vancouver. There on the bulletin board, it said, the talking donkey. Dr. Walkey. I looked at it, and I thought to myself, I'm sure glad I said donkey. But that's the truth. As I think that's the best introduction I ever had. Whatever God has done for me, it's all his grace, ask my wife. Okay. Ah, Dan, it's just a delight to get to know you, to be with you, that Dan is a student, he was an excellent student, and just spending time with him this weekend has been a real blessing to me. And how wonderful God is to the saints here, to give you a Dan, to carry on a wonderful ministry, God bless ministry, and I am so thankful to be entrusted with the pulpit now and lecturing from which God has been pleased to use Dan, but numbers of years, it's an honor to be here. Now I think I have to read the scriptures online. My text this morning, I think, years ago, I spoke on this Psalm, but I've given more thought to it. I'd attract your attention to Psalm 73. You want to turn me there? Psalm of A sat is the first Psalm in the third book. Third book of the Psalms is the dark book of the Psalter, and it is real into the exile. This is its introduction. Surely God is good to Israel, and good means He's beneficial and most desirable. Surely God is good to Israel, more particularly to those who are pure in heart, who are Israel who includes both nominal Israel, that is not pure in heart, but we're talking here about the regenerate within Israel, who have pure hearts before Him. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foot old, by which he means I almost lost the ability to make that confession. I almost walked away from God with the conviction that God is good. For I envied the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity, the word prosperity, is shown all, everything you want in life. Prosperity of the wicked, the wicked are those who advantage themselves while disadvantaging others. The wicked are those who sell people things they don't need. The wicked are those that play the lottery, hoping to get the money from poor people, so they'll have it all for themselves. The wicked are the selfish who have no love of God. They are not necessarily adulterers or murderers. They can be politicians who give promises they don't keep. That's the wicked. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens. They are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace. They clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes an equity. The evil conceits of their minds know limits. They scoff, speak with malice, with arrogance they threaten oppression, that malice they claim to have it, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore that people turn to them and drink up waters and abundance, the wicked say, how would God know? It's the most high, no anything. This is what the wicked alike, always free of care, they go on, I'm asking wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence, all day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments. If I had spoken out like that, I would have betrayed your children, when I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply. When I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny, show you place them a slippery ground and cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors. They were like a dream when one awakens. When you arise a Lord, you will despise them as fantasies. When my heart was grieved and my spirit embedded, I was senseless, ignorant. I was a brute beast before you, yet I am always with you. You hold me by my right hand, you guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. 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. Those who are far from you will perish. You destroy all who are unfaithful to you, but as for me it is good to be near God. I have made the sovereign Lord my refuge. I will tell of all your deeds shall we pray. Father, how privileged we are that you have worked upon our hearts to assemble, to worship, to meet with you, to learn of you, to enter into the holy places, thank you that we have a chapel, a place where we can meet, a place as your children to offer you our praises, our songs, and you dwell in the midst. We know that you are always present with your people in word. You do not appear to us by sight, but you appear to us in word and in spirit. In word that points us to our Savior, points us to his cross, points us to his death, to his burial, to his resurrection, to his ascension, to his mediating and accessory ministry on our behalf, to his coming in glory at great power. And to think, we who are nobodies that we are related to your beloved son set apart from eternity past to forgive us our sins, we stagger not in unbelief at your promises. A swage, a sorrow, we pray, Lord, we may be discomforted where we should be discomforted. May we take all of our cares and our griefs and find your healing. Forgive us when we try to save ourselves and don't look to you. Forgive us when we miss out on all of your grace. You know the sufferings, the joys of each one of us. You know our hopes, our disappointments. And we know your spirit, and take your word, and be a healing bomb appropriately to each of us which is our prayer. May we be able to join the angels in singing your praises. May we know who we are in Christ, be encouraged, lift it up, and go out and be able to be salt and light in our weary world. May we be like the dew of the morning that refreshes the earth. May we shine as little rainbows, reflecting all of your gloomings. Make us a blessing because we look to you. We come as children asking for fish, you will not give us a serpent, we're looking for eggs and not a stone. You'll give us bread because you're good, you're Christ's name, amen. We turn again with me to Psalm 73. I chose the Psalm because I came up in theological discussion group to which I belong. In my home church we have small community groups, and I belong to a group that meets my condominium. Most of the people who attend are from the condominium. And we've entitled ourselves the doubting Thomases. And it's a time when people can express their doubts and concerns, questions about the Christian faith. A time when I try to share and people honestly express their doubts, and we've seen cut some come to Christ and some on their way, and I think one of the funniest things to me, and I don't know if you agree with this or not, but I encourage them to come to church, the only way they'll come to church is if they can sing. So in the front row of a choir, I don't think anybody knows it except me, there's a Buddhist and an atheist, but I'm thankful they're singing and learning doctrine through the hymns, whether that's right or not. I think it's good that they're getting doctrine through the hymns, and so they're willing to come and hear the word in that way. One of our group had a, she's a pharmacologist at the University of British Columbia with a degree in pharmacology, a very fine Christian woman, honestly expressed her concern. She said, you know, in my workplace, she said the people there, and I may paraphrase, they're both a godly and ungodly by which she, with me, a godly, this is though God doesn't exist, they live without God, and they're ungodly. They don't live by any moral code, and so for example, she says, or she knows none of them are married, they just live together as partners without making any life term commitment to one another, but she said, as I observe it, they seem perfectly happy and carefree. If fact she said, sometimes they seem happier than I am. This is the complexity of Psalm 73, and maybe you can identify with her honest verplexity. A SAF expresses his own experience, and he says of the wicked who live a godly, an ungodly, and he uses the logic, that logicians call a forciory, that is from the greater to the lesser. He puts in an extreme, so they have no struggles, and that would cover all the ungodly that we may know that have less struggles than we have. Their bodies are healthy and strong, that is, they die in good old age. They are free from common human burdens, they are not plagued by human ills. And since they're unconstrained, they're like bank robbers without anybody protecting the bank, and they can go their own impious ways, and they're ungodly. Therefore pride is their necklace, that is to say, they boast of their lifestyle, and they clothe themselves with violence. In other words, their evil customs have become their costume. From the Calus hearts, this is really Septuagint, we translation, which I think is right. From the Calus hearts comes aniquity, the evil conceits of their minds, no no limits. They scoff, speak with malice, and arrogance, they threaten oppression, and as I observe the world, they live in hate, and being hated, and all kind of strife is in the workplace as I observe the world. And they're not only ungodly, they're agodly, their mouths may claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth, therefore, that people turn to them, drink up water as an abundance, and I must honestly say, I'm not sure what that means. The wicked say, how would God know, does the most high know anything, in other words, he is irrelevant? The song has 28 verses, as you can see, and it falls into two halves. In the first half, he shows us the steps by which he steps down and away from God, and in the second half, how he climbs back up to heaven, I've entitled the sermon, the slippery slope to heaven, because the slippery slope, where he sliding down and away from God, begins to be the foundation by which he steps back and attains the highest levels of spirituality in the Old Testament. You can see the movement of the psalm when he begins in verse 2, but as for me, my feet had almost slipped, I had nearly lost my foot hold by which he means I almost slipped off the cliff of faith and fell into the abyss of hell itself of unbelief. But instead of finding himself in hell through his meditation and reflection, by the end of the psalm, he finds himself in heaven. You see that in verse 24, you guide me with the counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. I do not understand how the liberals say there is no immortality and no resurrection in the Old Testament. What else could that mean? But afterward he will take me into glory, and then he is whom if I in heaven but you seems to me this fellow got to heaven somehow or another, and I don't see how he could say there is no immortality and no resurrection in the Old Testament. It utterly baffles me that people make that assertion if that is the common thing in the liberal seminaries. So anyway, you can see the movement, almost slipping into hell and ending up walking unbuilily and in the plains of heaven, and we want to see how he gets there. There are three slides down, the slip is cliff of unbelief, and how he had taken the third, he would have fallen off the cliff entirely. His first slide is in the second half of verse 3, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. His first false step was when he began to take his view of life solely from what he can see. And there are many people who only believe what they can see and they can touch. In fact, that's what they're told in the university. Don't believe anything that doesn't conform to your experience. They have what Azganez calls a keyhole theology. They look at life through a keyhole. They see a part, but they can't see the whole. And unless you see the whole, you can't make sense of the parts. You can't see clearly. And the truth is none of us can see the whole view. We all are looking at life through a keyhole. We just see a little small part for the 70 years or 80 years we live. It's just a little fraction. In philosophy, we make a distinction between ontological knowledge and epistemological knowledge. Ontological knowledge is to know as things really are. Epistemological knowledge is to know as humans know which is relative. That is only God sees the whole. You have to be eternal to see the whole. We can only see a fracture from a part. Maybe I can help you understand the difference between ontological and epistemological knowledge by our experience when we moved from Westminster at Philadelphia to Regent in Vancouver back in 1991. There was an apartment close by to our college. In fact, my wife Elaine could stand out on the balcony and I am my office week.