Psalm 37
Psalm 37
July 28 -
[ 001 ] Good morning, River City! Just wanted to once again give you a warm welcome today, and thank you for being here this morning. I know summers are busy and there’s a lot going on. But thank you for being here.
Jodi and I live on Highway 1 north of Kalona, and have been wanting to move to Riverside ever since River City started in 2019. We even started looking for places before that. So it’s been a while. And because we’re giving up a valuable property to move, we are a little picky about not just living in any old house that’s for sale. We want some land and mature trees and something that is near town. Well, we found a place that was several acres, room to grow our family, pond, timber, it all looked exactly like what we wanted. We made an offer on the home, and it was countered. Then we made a new offer and in the meantime the owner pulled the rug out from under us and sold it to someone else. Took the wind out of us.
Meanwhile, some dear friends of ours weren’t even looking for a new place to live, and they came across an incredible deal on a gorgeous home in a beautiful neighborhood – the stuff of movies.
And Jodi and I were angry. Not with our friends, but we were angry with life. Angry at God. Angry at why this family, who had no church involvement to speak of, no real heart for seeing God’s kingdom come in that neighborhood, not even really looking to make a difference in their community gets everything we wanted, when they didn’t even really want it! Here we are, trying to do the Lord’s work, feeling like he’s called us, and they get what we want and all we got was the rug pulled out from under our feet.
Have you ever had that happen? Where someone else ends up with your dream? It’s miserable! It’s no fun. Our story happened with another brother and sister in the Lord whom we love dearly, but the one here in Psalm 37 isn’t. This is a situation where you look at someone who is intentionally walking away from God, and they seem to be blessed at every turn. They seem to be successful. They seem to get away with murder, and nothing ever happens to them!
And you’re looking at your own life thinking, wait, I’m following God but I seem to be struggling – they are clearly not following God, but they have the abundance and get away with everything. Apparently this feeling is not unusual. [ 002 ] Here’s David’s opening statement:
1 Do not be agitated by evildoers; do not envy those who do wrong.
Man, we could spend a lot of time right here in verse one. First of all – who are the evildoers in your life? Who are those who do wrong? Does anyone fit that bill? Politics is probably where we go first. It’s the leaders and key players on the other side of the aisle from where you typically vote that are evil and do wrong. Or maybe you watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this week and saw a hideous display of drag queens, paganism, and what appeared to be a mockery of Jesus and the Christian faith. And you say, now that is evil,
Yahweh gives us two commands here in verse 1 through the hand of David:
- Do not become agitated at that – literally means, do not become hot with anger. It’s the picture of starting a fire. Don’t get hot under the collar with evildoers.
- Do not envy their success – literally, do not become painfully jealous of those who do wrong.
Now I think even David would agree, there is a time to be angry with evil in the world. To resist, to make your voice heard, and a time to subdue that evil. But most of the time,
[ 003 ] Don’t be agitated or envious. Why? For/Because 2… they (the evildoers) wither quickly like grass and wilt like tender green plants.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not helpful to me. They wither quickly like grass. They are here today and gone tomorrow. Yeah, but so am I! I understand they are going to die some day and be forgotten, but they don’t wilt fast enough! They could outlive me. I might have to tolerate them my entire life, and yet you say, don’t be agitated – they won’t be here forever! That doesn’t feel very helpful.
So what do you do when you find yourself in that spot where you’re tempted to be jealous and angry because it seems like evil keeps winning, and it feels like being a Christian, following Jesus, serving him, really isn’t “paying off” in him miraculously giving you everything you want?
CULTIVATE FAITHFULNESS
The Lord is so gracious to us and understanding, and actually gives us a plan for how we combat the “jealous anger” we often feel. David lists four things:
[ 004-1 ] 3 Trust in the Lord and do what is good; dwell in the land and live securely. It starts with trusting in the Lord, carrying on with your normal life, doing what is good and living with wisdom. That phrase “live securely” isn’t the best translation. It really means something more like, “live faithfully” or “with steadfastness”, “with no drifting.” Some of your translations might even say, “cultivate or befriend faithfulness.” That’s a much better translation. When you cultivate a field or a garden, you are removing the hindrances to growth. Weeds. Debris. Hard-packed soil. So, live your ordinary daily routines in life, and practice being faithful. Remove anything that stands in the way of faithfulness. Trust in the Lord, do what is good right where you live – rinse and repeat. The way the apostle Paul says it in Galatians 6 is “Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.”
[ 004-2 ]Secondly, 4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. What does that mean, to “delight” in the Lord? It means being satisfied with something, to enjoy something. So the first part is, if you are satisfied in the Lord, learning to seek and enjoy the Lord, then the second part says he will answer your requests! If you delight in hiking the mountains, what will your heart desire? More trips to Wyoming! If you delight in pickleball, what will your heart desire? Pickleball courts in the new church building! If you delight in Golden Delight donuts or good coffee or watching sports, what will your heart desire? More of those things you delight in. So, verse 4, if you delight in the Lord, what is your heart going to desire? More of the Lord! He meets you there with a promise that he will meet that desire. Jesus said it too – seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.
So start by practicing faithfulness in the ordinary things of life allowing the Holy Spirit to train our hearts to be satisfied in the Lord, trusting him to meet our needs. Thirdly:
[ 004-3 ] 5 Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act, 6 making your righteousness shine like the dawn, your justice like the noonday.
- Righteousness means “accurately meeting a certain standard.” Think of it like this. There is an atomic clock somewhere that marks official United States time. You can pull up the website of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and it’ll show you the perfect time. And it also happened to let me know that the time on my computer is .008 seconds too fast. So I pulled up the website on my phone, and my phone is .069 seconds BEHIND. So neither my computer nor my phone are “righteous.” They do not meet the standard. Close, but they are off.
- Justice means “no favoritism, bias, or deception when it comes to those standards.” So in my illustration, doing justice would mean continuing to hold up my computer and phone against the atomic clock, recognizing that it, not my computer or phone, is the standard. It would be a lack of justice to declare my kitchen stove as the official time, just because it says it’s 12:00 all day. Always lunchtime.
Scripture tells us that God’s holiness and perfection are the “atomic clock” and by that standard, we’re not even in the same time zone. And what’s worse? In our sinful nature, we insist on making our own version of righteousness the new standard, and judging everyone else accordingly. You can see why we deserve wrath from a holy God.
And yet – you can see his grace right here in Psalm 37.
In the original language, verse 5 literally means “Roll your works upon the Lord.” It’s the picture of someone carrying something on their shoulders that is too heavy for them, and so they roll it onto someone or something else who is strong enough to carry it. In other words, as you do what is good (remember, we’re trying to avoid being agitated at evil), don’t trust those good works to make you righteous. But commit those good works to the Lord, and he will act, making you line up perfectly with his standard of righteousness and integrity. Of course, that only happens through Jesus.
[ 004-4 ] And lastly for this section: 7 Be silent before the Lord and wait expectantly for him; do not be agitated by one who prospers in his way, by the person who carries out evil plans. [ 004-5 ] 8 Refrain from anger and give up your rage; do not be agitated — it can only bring harm.
The opposite of being silent and waiting on the Lord would be trying to play the same game as the evildoers. They break the rules, so you break the rules. They tell the half truth, so you do too. They say a lot of arrogant things, and get argumentative and defensive and have to be right, and so angrily you do too. David warns that the outcome of that is only harm. It’s never good. No good comes from you being in a rage about all the wrongs that are done on a daily basis in the world. Our calling is to combat that evil by going about our daily life doing what is good, committing everything we’re doing to the Lord, trusting him to defend us and never leave us hanging when we do what is right. BECAUSE… here’s our confidence:
GOD’S PROMISE
[ 005-1 ] 9 …[those] evildoers will be destroyed,
but those who put their hope in the Lord will inherit the land.
[ 005-2 ] 10 A little while, and the wicked person will be no more; though you look for him, he will not be there.
[ 005-3 ] 11 But the humble will inherit the land and will enjoy abundant prosperity.
The reason God wants you to chill out and trust him, even in the face of incredible evil in the world, is because you have a future inheritance of abundant prosperity that is coming to you if you put your hope in the Lord.
There are a lot of churches around the world today that teach what we call a “prosperity gospel” or the “health and wealth gospel” which claims that God’s blessing and favor can be measured by a person’s material wealth and physical well-being. That God wants everyone who is sick to be healed, and everyone who is in poverty to be released into a new season of abundant wealth and financial blessing. And that teaching goes off the rails in about 60 seconds because of how they view God, but the main thing they have wrong is the timing!
It’s not that we can’t pray for and expect God to heal or provide financially for us here on this earth. Jesus provided tax money for Peter miraculously in the mouth of a fish he caught. Prosperity teachers will put half of verse 4 (he gives you the desires of your heart) together with verse 11 (you will enjoy abundant prosperity) and assume that means here and now in this life.
But have the evildoers all been destroyed yet? No. Are there still wicked people around? Yes! Verse 10 says just hang in there “a little while” yet, and soon you won’t be able to find a wicked person anywhere you look. Verse 13 says “their day is coming.” But (by contrast) on that day the humble will be everywhere, enjoying an inheritance of abundant prosperity in a land that belongs only to them. He’s not describing the here and now – he’s describing the future kingdom of God!
We’re still in the “a little while” part! We’re still waiting for him to remove all the evil from this world, which means we’re also still waiting for the abundant prosperity and the new bodies and the inheritance that will come with it! That’s why David says, when you see evil in the world, don’t lose your head. Jesus would add and apostle Paul would say, don’t be anxious about anything! Why? Because in a little while, nothing you’ve experienced on earth, good or bad, is going to even be in the same conversation as the things you’ll experience in the new heavens and the new earth.
And if evil is allowed to continue here on this earth, what can you expect as a follower of Jesus in the meantime as you wait for your inheritance?
[ 006 ] 12 The wicked person schemes against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him. It’s just what they do. One of the things that is absolutely mysterious to me is that God does not stop evildoers from persecuting his church. He doesn’t stop it, in fact, he appears to let it happen as if it’s a normal thing. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
You can just expect that faith in Jesus in this country and around the world will be attacked more and more in the coming days. This is not a prophecy – this is just me trying to observe life objectively: Given the current trajectory, our children are going to face religious persecution in this country in a way we never did. That’s why it’s important that parents are working hard to train up their children in the ways of the Lord and prepare them for those days.
What is the LORD doing while the wicked person schemes about how to make a mockery of the God of the Bible? I know there’s a lot of hoopla about the opening ceremony of the Olympics – whether it was mockery of Christianity or not. Maybe. Maybe not. But if it was, what was the Lord doing while he watched that happen?
[ 007-1 ] 13 The Lord laughs at him because he sees that his day is coming. [ 007-2 ] 14 The wicked have drawn the sword and strung the bow to bring down the poor and needy and to slaughter those whose way is upright. But v 13 says the Lord sees what the wicked can’t see. The wicked are not all-powerful. They are not all-knowing. Even when they literally are controlled by supernatural demonic forces in the evil they commit, they still do not know everything there is to know. Yahweh, by contrast, is the only Sovereign. The Most High God. He alone sees the end from the beginning. He sees the day is coming when [ 008 ] 15 Their swords will enter their own hearts, and their bows will be broken. 17 For the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the Lord supports the righteous.
A LONG OBEDIENCE
So what is David trying to communicate here? What is he wanting you and me to understand? I think the next verses make it pretty clear:
[ 009-1 ] 25 I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous abandoned or his children begging for bread. [ 009-2 ] 26 He is always generous, always lending, and his children are a blessing.
That’s one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I have not seen the righteous abandoned, or his children begging for bread. This verse has carried Jodi and I through some very difficult financial situations in the past several years, even when God had to use other people to meet some of our needs.
Now he’s not speaking this literally – Even David himself (a righteous person in God’s eyes) had to beg for food a couple of times in 1 Samuel. We tend to want to be agitated and anxious at that kind of temporary inconvenience. But that’s the key word – temporary. The righteous in scripture are never permanently abandoned. “The same God who commands us to pray “give us this day our daily bread” is not going to hold back on the very thing he told us to pray for. He doesn’t get our hopes up only to let us down. We may have temporary lack in this life, but we are never left there. Even if we are sick for 70 years, or we live in poverty for 70 years, it’s still temporary. It’s not permanent. This world is not our home, and God has promised us in so many places to meet our needs all along the way until we get there.
So, do what is good. Turn away from evil. Don’t participate in it, no matter how good it seems to be. No matter how much “sense” it makes from a human perspective. Turn away from evil. Have nothing to do with it. Do what is good. Be generous. You realize that being generous doesn’t necessarily mean you have storehouses of wealth. Generosity isn’t always financial. Always lending – It’s the attitude that even my stuff is temporary. In fact, it’s not really mine.
Endure the hardship that comes. Endure the suffering that may come. Endure the persecution that will come. [ 010 ] 31 … his steps do not falter. 34 Wait for the Lord and keep his way. And do it on repeat, knowing that it’s all temporary. and he will exalt you to inherit the land. The one who perseveres until the end will be saved.
Once again, this Psalm points us to Jesus who knew he was being wrongly accused, knew he was being tortured and killed for crimes against God that he never committed, being whipped and beaten and mocked by people he could have killed just by blinking. Yet, Jesus trusted himself to his Father, committed himself in life and death to the Father, delighted in the Father by spending time with him late into the night or early in the mornings. And when the blows started to fall on him, scripture says, like a lamb being led to the slaughter he stayed silent and prayed that his Father would forgive the people crucifying him because they were ignorant to what they were actually doing.
And in his death on the cross, Jesus broke the bows of the powers of darkness. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that the law makes us sinners, and sin makes us spiritually dead. But, Jesus lived a perfect life to fulfill the law; he died to erase the record of sin that stood against us; and when he rose again, death was swallowed up in victory! [ 011 ] Colossians 2:15 says he “disarmed” the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly! He’s not talking about Roman rulers, or religious authorities – at the cross, Jesus broke the arms of the supernatural evil, the powers of darkness, the authorities and powers that laid claim to your soul because of your rebellion against Yahweh – Jesus broke their weapons and took away their power to hold you captive in fear and anxiety and anger and lust and envy for your whole life.
The day is coming when Jesus will return and cleanse this world of evil once and for all. On that day you’ll look for a wicked person and won’t be able to find one. Jesus will set up his earthly kingdom, we will inherit not only the land, but will inherit the very presence of the one we have delighted in – AND IT WILL. BE. PERMANENT.
As we participate in communion this morning, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again. As we share this tiny meal together we are once again recalling his victory over the powers of sin and death and darkness. In the bread and cup, we proclaim our union with Christ, that we are right with God because Jesus has taken our unrighteousness on himself and made us one with him so that his record of perfection is applied to us.
In the bread and cup, we rejoice that once we’re saved we don’t have to figure out how to maintain and keep our own salvation by our own efforts, but that Jesus’ death and resurrection paved the way for his Spirit to be alive and living in us right now – not in some sentimental way, like, Oh, I wish I was with you in person but I can only be there in spirit – but the third person of the Trinity is living in every believer, comforting, guiding, helping, counseling, leading, empowering us all along the way, and is our guarantee that we will be saved!
In this bread and cup we also remember that we are not home yet, but Jesus has secured our future and is preparing our inheritance for us right now as we speak.
If you have put your faith and trust in Christ alone to wash away your sin, cleanse you of your rebellion against a holy God, and you have received his gift of grace by faith, you are welcome to participate with us today, even if River City is not your home church.
As you wait, I’ll put a few thoughts on the screen for you to pray through.
- What might the LORD be saying to you through Psalm 37 today? Are you jealous of someone because they are living your dream? Where are you agitated by evil?
- “A little while longer.” How does that encourage you to stay the course?
- What part of the gospel do you need to believe again?