Fretting, Faith, and Fading Flowers (Psalm 37:1-3) | Worship Service

Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. And your dominion endures from generation to every generation.

Let's sing together this morning, all creatures of our God and King. Just a couple of announcements here this morning before we get to our scripture reading in Psalm 36.

First, this one's kind of a seasonal announcement, but just a reminder not to park too close to the building on either side when we have snow up there, because the building will shed that snow.

And if your car is underneath of it, then that's it. You don't want to do that.

Second, we have a Thanksgiving fellowship dinner coming up and you have something in your bulletin that looks like this.

They'll give you some of the details if you want to be part of that Thanksgiving meal here at the church. Talk to Amanda Hammond and make contact with her on with the information that's on that little flyer.

And then also there is a youth choir practice today at 1215. Rachel Gordon is overseeing that.

So talk to Rachel if you need information on that. And then finally, this Saturday is a KCC youth fair here at the church.

Information in your bulletin on that as well. I just want to make you aware of that so you can come and support some of the young entrepreneurs in our church who build things and make things to sell to you.

You never know. We could have the next Elon Musk sitting right here amongst us, and we want to make sure that we support them.

Turn your Bibles, if you would, please, to Psalm 36. Psalm 36.

As we're going through Psalm 37, we're going to look at various psalms during the scripture reading portion of the service that describe the righteous and the wicked,

God's promises to the righteous, God's judgment upon the wicked, et cetera. And Psalm 36 is one of those psalms.

The superscript says for the choir director, a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord. Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart.

There's no fear of God before his eyes. For it flatters him in his own eyes concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.

The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit. He has ceased to be wise and to do good.

He plans wickedness upon his bed. He sets himself on a path that is not good. He does not despise evil.

Your loving kindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God.

Your judgments are like a great deep. O Lord, you preserve man and beast.

How precious is your loving kindness, O God. And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They drink their fill of the abundance of your house, and you give them to drink of the river of your delights.

For with you is the fountain of life. In your light, we see light. O continue your loving kindness to those who know you and your righteousness to the upright in heart.

Let not the foot of pride come upon me, and let not the hand of the wicked drive me away.

There the doers of iniquity have fallen. They have been thrust down and cannot rise. You stand with me as we pray.

Our Father, we praise you for your kind goodness to us, your people, though we are among those who have been called out from the wicked, we look upon our past life, and the description that is here in this psalm describes what we once were.

We were once those who had no fear of God before our eyes. We delighted in doing evil and in iniquity.

We had departed from every good path and every good way. We had violated your law, cursed your name, profaned you.

We had committed idolatry and adultery of heart at least. We had cursed your name.

We had hated our neighbor. And Lord, we had violated every precept of your law, every holy and righteous and good standard.

And yet by your grace and your grace alone, you looked down upon us and saved us, called us to yourself, sent your

Son to bear the price for our sin. And we thank you for that. It is because of that great work of salvation that the redeemed gather together each and every

Lord's Day to praise your good name, to thank you for your kind gifts, and to rejoice in the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ by the grace of our triune

God. So we thank you, Father, for choosing us. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying on a cross to bear the burden and the penalty for our sin.

And we thank you, Holy Spirit, for drawing us to yourself that we may know the grace of our God and be redeemed.

And now we pray in our time of worship and fellowship together that you would fix our hearts, our expectation and our confidence upon your goodness, upon your grace, and upon the hope of our reward that is to come.

We praise you in the name of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's sing together, whate 'er my

God ordains is right, is holy.

Psalm 46, be still, be still, my God. Please, to Psalm 37.

Psalm 37 gave an introduction to this psalm last week, and we're stepping into the opening verses of this psalm today,

Psalm 37. And before we begin, let's bow our heads with a word of prayer.

Our Father, we pray that you would cause our hearts to rest in you, to trust in our great

God. And in a world in which we are surrounded by chaos and uncertainty, in a world in which we are cast about by things on every side of us, we pray that you would cause us to find our perfect peace through our trust in you.

Settle our hearts today, we pray, with the confidence from your word that you are good, that you are sovereign, and that you rule over all.

And we pray that our minds and hearts may find that peace in Christ our Lord, in whose name we pray. Isaiah 26, verse three, which

Josh just read to us here before that final song, says the steadfast of mind, you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you.

That is a challenge in the world in which we live to have a resting and perfect peace of heart, peace of mind, peace of soul, especially in a world where everything seems to militate against that peace.

And we want to be at trust, at rest, and we want to trust in God. And it is very easy to say when we are cast about in every way, you just need to trust in the

Lord more. But it's more difficult to do that than it is to say it. Because doing that requires that we constantly come back to certain foundational truths and analyze and examine our own hearts and diagnose what the problem is, that it is a lack of trust, it is a lack of confidence and faith, and then find ways in which we are to put off that uncertainty and instead turn our hearts and our trust to the

Lord. And we live in a world that is full of anxiety and distress and restlessness, turmoil, uncertainty, chaos, nervous tension, uneasiness, apprehension, injustice, corruption, violence, wickedness, oppression, dishonesty.

It's all around us, a constant upheaval and turmoil that can cast even the most grounded of believers into a disquietude of soul that is quite vexing.

And when we realize that we are surrounded by the wicked and the evil, and we see them sometimes prospering in their evil deeds, that makes the righteous tend to fret and to be even more disquieted because we feel like something is not right.

We live in this upside down world, and it is easier to just simply say, well, you need to trust the

Lord than it is to actually do that when life constantly assaults you with these inequities and these injustices and the chaos around us.

Psalm 37 deals with that issue of the prosperity of the wicked. And we are looking at that, that notion of the prosperity of the wicked is the backdrop of the entire

Psalm, as we saw last week when we looked at the introduction to this. Psalm 37 recounts many of the blessings that God gives to the upright.

And the opening eight verses reorient our focus off of the wicked and the things that assault us and onto the

Lord. With a relentless drumbeat, the author just brings our focus back to the

Lord, back to the Lord, back to the Lord over and over again with these various commands that we find in the first eight verses.

Because the answer to our vexation over the wicked in this life is not a theological argument about why bad things happen to good people.

There are no good people, so that's really not even a right theological question to ask, but it's not a treatise even on the nature of justice or the timing of justice or really even the legitimacy of God's promises.

Really the answer to the vexation of our mind and heart, though those things play into it, really comes back to focusing our mind and our heart upon God, who

He is, what He has promised and how He is good and sovereign and gracious.

And then we are encouraged to wait patiently upon Him for our vindication. So the author begins by focusing our heart and mind upon God in these first eight verses.

We see that the first thing that God gives to those who are His is peace. He provides peace to us.

So let's read these first eight verses and then we'll make a few observations about all eight of them. And then we'll jump into the beginning, the first three verses this morning.

Psalm 37, verse one, "'Do not fret because of evildoers. "'Be not envious toward wrongdoers, "'for they will quickly wither like the grass "'and fade like the green herb.

"'Trust in the Lord and do good. "'Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. "'Delight yourself in the

Lord "'and He will give you the desires of your heart. "'Commit your way to the Lord. "'Trust also in Him and He will do it.

"'He will bring forth your righteousness as the light "'and your judgment as the noonday. "'Rest in the

Lord and wait patiently for Him. "'Do not fret because of Him who prospers in His way, "'because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

"'Cease from anger and forsake wrath. "'Do not fret, it leads only to evildoing.'"

These verses deal with our response to evildoers and to wrongdoers. I want you to notice a couple of observations just about those eight verses before we jump in with the first verse.

First, notice that there are a number of commands in these verses, some of them negative and some of them positive.

Look again at the psalm. Look at the positive commands. Verse three, trust in the Lord, do good, dwell in the land, cultivate faithfulness.

Verse four, delight yourself in the Lord. Verse five, commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him. Verse seven, rest in the

Lord, wait patiently for Him. Verse eight, cease from anger, forsake wrath. And then you'll notice that there are some negative commands.

In fact, the negative commands kind of bracket this section of the psalm. Verse one, do not fret and be not envious.

And then verse seven, do not fret. And then verse eight, do not fret. And in fact, that command, that negative command to not fret, do not fret, sort of brackets all eight of those verses.

The verse one begins with do not fret and verse eight ends with do not fret. And in the middle are all of these various commands that we are given.

Four of them, four of these commands directly reference the Lord. You can see them in verse three, four, five, and seven.

Trust in the Lord. Verse four, delight yourself in the Lord. Verse five, commit your way to the

Lord. And verse seven, rest in the Lord. And four times there, the name of God is used, translated as the

Lord in all caps in your translation, likely unless you have the LSB, which translates it as Yahweh, which is the name of God.

Trust in Yahweh, delight yourself in Yahweh, commit your way to Yahweh, and rest in Yahweh. Trust, delight, commit, and rest.

That would be a good four -point sermon actually for the whole eight verses, but we're not doing that this morning. Just wanted you to notice that.

Today, we're gonna be focusing on the first three verses and the counsel that the psalmist gives us for dealing with or being at peace with the state of the wicked in this world.

Verse one, two, and three, we're gonna see one principle from each of these verses. In verse one, we must refuse to fret.

In verse two, we must remember they fade. And in verse three, we must respond in faith.

Refuse to fret, remember they fade, and then respond in faith. Look at verse one, do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers.

Now this is, it's interesting to me that this is how the psalm begins, do not fret. It doesn't even begin really the psalm with talking about an attribute of God that we are to focus on.

It is right out of the gate from the very first word, here's what you're doing, here's what you ought not to do.

And so do not fret, and instead, we are to fix our attention on the Lord. Be not envious for wrongdoers, verse one continues.

The most natural response for the people of God in a world such as ours, when we are surrounded by wicked people is to fret.

That's the most natural inclination of the human heart is to get upset and to be anxious.

That's what our word fret means, to be anxious or upset, to be vexed or agonized or troubled over something, to fuss about it.

And that kind of captures the idea of the Hebrew word that is translated fret here. There's really no single

English word that captures kind of the passion of this word, and I'll tell you what it means. Our English word fret has to do with being anxious or worried or fussing over something.

And this word is a little bit more colorful than that. 35 of the 93 times that this word translated fret is used in the

Old Testament. It describes becoming hot or angry, and it is translated as hot or angry, to become hot or angry, to be kindled or to burn with anger.

In fact, the noun form of this word is used back in Psalm two, verse five, speaking of Yahweh, then

He will speak to them in His anger, that's the word, the noun form of that word, and terrify them in His fury.

And when it is used of God's anger or human anger and translated that way, it describes more than just simply a worried anxiousness over something.

You can see how that doesn't fit. That idea doesn't fit in Psalm two. God does not speak to them in His worry or His anxiety over something, but He does speak to the wicked in His anger.

And so this word describes a disquietedness of soul, of heart, that has the idea of heating oneself into a vexation.

It's kind of, in some ways, a reflexive verb in the sense that it describes one who gets churned up because they churned themselves up, especially with human anger, over some injustice or something that is going on in their lives, to heat up oneself in vexation.

It describes God's burning anger, and when used in human beings, it describes human anger that is likewise burning and heated.

The noun form of it, or sorry, the verb form is used three times in the Old Testament. Once, three times here in verse seven, verse one, verse seven and verse eight, and then one time in Proverbs 24, verse 19, where we read almost the exact same words that we find in verse one, "'Do not fret because of evildoers "'or be envious of the wicked.'"

Alan Ross, in his commentary on the Psalms, says that this word fret here, the word translated fret says this, quote, "'It expresses a passionate intensity, "'a consuming indignation.'"

Now stop there for just a second. Hear those words, a passionate intensity, a consuming indignation, like you are being burned up on the inside because of what you see.

Do not have this burning intensity that consumes you because of what you see going on with the wicked.

Ross continues, "'Kraus' says," I don't know who Kraus is, but probably a German guy from the name, "'Kraus' says that it goes even further than that.

"'It is a passionate frustration "'and inquiry about the power and the rule of God.'"

Close quote. So this isn't just an anger that is disconnected from God in some way.

This is a disquieted state of soul, a consuming, passionate anger over a situation that drags

God into the middle of the anger and becomes vexed and frustrated and fretting about His rule and His power.

So it's not just I'm angry that this bad thing happens in the world, but I'm angry because this bad thing happens in the world and God should do something about this now.

And because He's not doing something about it and righting this wrong, therefore I am upset,

I am consumed with this because some injustice has been done and it has escaped

God's attention. So it's an anger over what God is doing, anger over what

God is working, how He works and when He works and what He decides to do in His time.

How God is dealing with the issue and it really is describing an impatience with God. This is the state of soul, though He doesn't use it, that Asaph expresses in Psalm 73 when he says, "'Surely in vain

I have kept my heart pure "'and washed my hands in innocence.'" See, Asaph was consumed over this issue of the prosperity of the wicked and after wrestling through what he saw, he says, maybe then

I have been pure before God and I have been pursuing holiness and I have been casting away my sin all for nothing, all in vain, because God deals with the wicked this way and with the righteous this way and that is an inequity and an injustice and these scales are flipped and the whole universe is upside down and then you get this disquieting anger within you that brings

God, as it were, into the courtroom where, God forbid, you take the throne and begin to pass judgment upon God's deeds and His works and what

He does and how He works it out in His timing. As if you or I could be God's counselor and say, here is how you need to deal with the wicked and here is what you need to do to the wicked and until this happens,

I will be disquieted in my soul and I will have this grudge, this burning indignation against how

God works in this world. So the psalmist commands us, do not fret. Now, there is an anger that is right and just in this world.

The Psalms express that kind of anger. Ephesians 4 .26 says we are to be angry and yet do not sin and not let the sun go down on our anger.

So there is a righteous indignation and an anger that is righteous and holy. The anger that is righteous and holy is not an anger for my own honor, my own glory, my own good, my own sense of justice, but rather it is an anger over God not being vindicated,

God being blasphemed, innocent people suffering. There is a righteous anger that is angry the way that God is angry and for the things that anger

God. But when I become the one who is hard done by and then I'm angry over that, that is an unrighteous indignation.

But there is a righteous indignation and it's easy to understand how we can be angry over what the wicked do in this life.

The injustices abound all around us and as righteous people, we have to deal with that. When protesters burned down city blocks during the summer of love in 2020, over the death of a criminal in a street somewhere and meanwhile pro -lifers by the current regime are being raided and arrested and put on trial for standing outside of abortion clinics, that should make you angry.

There's a place for righteous indignation over that. But it becomes a sinful anger when

I bring God into the dock as it were and begin to judge him and try and dictate to him how he should deal with this situation of injustice.

We can understand being angry when violence and law -breaking go either unnoticed or even rewarded in some cases.

Like say for instance, somebody were to start a GoFundMe campaign to get a criminal out of jail for burning down a police station or something like that.

Maybe a vice presidential candidate. They were to do something like that and meanwhile they are prosecuting and persecuting the righteous.

That should make us angry. It should make us angry in a righteous way that this injustice is happening and thus

God is being blasphemed. When it is okay in our culture to teach children, to openly groom children in every corner of our society, but if you teach children biblical sexual ethics, you are a puritanical domestic terrorist.

That seems unjust. It's easy to understand how the righteous would be perplexed by that.

When we endure infliction and yet the wicked seem to delight themselves in ease and abundance. Spurgeon said this, it is alas too common for believers in their hours of adversity to think themselves harshly dealt with when they see persons utterly destitute of religion and honesty, rejoicing in abundant prosperity.

Close quote. It is part of our nature to be prone to be upset over these injustices and the more finely tuned your sense of justice and righteousness is and the more you desire holiness and righteousness and are aware of your own sin, the more likely you are to be vexed and to fret over the unrighteousness of those around us.

Spurgeon calls this inequity paradoxical providences. I love that phrase, paradoxical providences.

It just doesn't seem to be right, does it? And yet by God's providence, this is how it flows out in this life.

But it's paradoxical in the sense that it's the opposite of what we would expect to see at times.

To see lawbreakers, Spurgeon says, strutting on horses in the upright, walking in the mud.

So what is the answer then to the fretting? Stop it. That's it, read again verse one if you doubt that.

Do not fret, stop it. Cease from your fretting and if you have trouble with that, go down to verse seven.

Do not fret because of him who prospers in the way. And if you're still not understanding what the psalmist is saying, read verse eight, the very end of it.

Do not fret, it leads only to evil doing. Stop it. That is difficult,

I understand that. Have you met people who are just seething with rage over the wicked?

That is not healthy, that is not right. That is not righteous. The anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God.

Remove whatever it is that is causing that anger, put off the fretting, and you're gonna put on faith, that's verse three, but we're not there just yet.

Fretting is the opposite of faith. Now look down at the end of the second half of verse one.

Notice the second half deals with envying, be not envious towards the wrongdoers. We have two negative commands right off the start, do not fret and be not envious toward those who are wrongdoers.

Envy really is a weakness of faith, it is the opposite of faith. Envy is when we desire to have what the wicked have or to desire to be what the wicked are, to enjoy what the wicked enjoy, to have their station in life and to mimic it, to enjoy it as well.

Envy is what leads to fretting because we see what the wicked have and we want what the wicked have, and then we become angry when we don't get what the wicked have and the wicked don't get what we have or what we think at least that they deserve.

And envy then also leads to imitation. Proverbs warns us about this, Proverbs 3 .31,

do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways. Do you hear that? Do not envy the man of violence, do not choose any of his ways.

Envy is what leads to choosing the path of the wicked because we see what the wicked have and we say, but I want that and if they got that by doing that, then we are inclined or at least tempted to pursue their ways to get what they had the way that they got it.

So do not envy the wicked man or you will be inclined to pursue his ways. Proverbs 23 .17, do not let your heart envy sinners, but live in the fear of the

Lord always. Fearing God keeps us from envying the wicked. Now that is difficult when you are in school and you see one of your schoolmates being advanced to the top of the class and their student of the month and even valedictorian and they cheated all the way to the top to get that.

They used some AI to write their tests and they are teacher's pet and so of course, they're always getting the benefit of the curve and always getting the benefit of the teacher's spare time.

They get to the head of their class and yet you know that the student is not working hard. They're cheating at every opportunity they have and you are the only one that notices it and if you envy that student, then you will be tempted to do what that student has done to get off with the ease that that student has enjoyed.

Likewise, if you are in a workplace and your coworker is promoted after fudging the numbers and adjusting the charts just a little bit and lying to his supervisor and he gets promoted and you get passed over, you will be tempted to do the same thing that your coworker does, if it means that you could enjoy some of the pleasures and benefits that he also received from his cheating.

If you envy their path of the wicked, then you will imitate that because first we envy it and want it and then we get angry when we don't get it and then we are willing to sin in order to get it and so we will follow their ways and their path in order to get what they have.

Here's the worst part, this is the final step, then you justify the sin by excusing it saying,

I was due this thing, I didn't get this thing, I deserve this thing and therefore it's okay for me to sin to get this thing because it was owed to me.

This was something that was mine by right and so then you justify the sin. So the psalmist begins, refuse to fret.

Now look at verse two, remember they fade, verse two, they will quickly, wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb.

Here's the perspective that we must have on the wicked and this is, we're gonna be coming back to this time and again as we work our way through Psalm 37.

The perspective we must have is that the flourishing of the wicked is short -lived and their destruction is sudden and swift.

Now this agricultural analogy here of the herb and the green grass, it's one that anybody who lived in Israel in ancient times or even today is familiar with.

There is a time of the year in Israel when it is lush and green and growing and fruitful and looks beautiful and then after a couple of months, that's the rainy season, then after a couple of months all of that goes away and everything is brown and dry and arid unless it's right next to the

Jordan River. The rest of the land goes from green to brown in a hurry because grass, when the heat of the summer months come, the grass withers quickly and fades away.

So like the imagery here is that the wicked are like an herb that is planted with shallow roots and shallow soil or like grass, its roots do not go down deep into the soil at all.

When that summer heat comes and the sun comes up, then that grass dries up and withers away quickly.

It's an agricultural analogy that is very powerful. In fact, the word wither here is used back in Psalm 1, verse three, when it describes the meditation or the man of God who meditates on the law of the

Lord day and night, it says he will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, its leaf does not wither, that's the same word.

So in Psalm 1, and whatever he does prospers, in Psalm 1, the righteous man, the godly man, the blessed man is described as the tree that does not wither and here in Psalm 37, the unrighteous, the wicked are described as the grass that does wither.

Now we may not see them withering now, but we will. It may seem as if they are flourishing now for a time, but they will wither and when it happens, it will be sudden and it will be quick.

They are green and lush and well -fed, fat and happy now, and they delight themselves in abundance.

But God's word promises that while they skip about with ease right now, there is coming a time when they will skip no more and they will wither quickly.

In fact, this agricultural analogy brackets the entire Psalm, Psalm 37, it's here in verse two, but then look down at verse 35 and 36.

I have seen a wicked, violent man spreading himself like a luxuriant tree in its native soil.

Then he passed away and lo, he was no more. I sought for him, but he could not be found. So there's another agricultural analogy kind of at the bottom of the

Psalm that sort of brackets everything that is in between as if the psalmist is reminding us at the beginning of the

Psalm and at the end of the Psalm that what we're talking about is something that looks luxuriant, well -fed, healthy, vibrant for a brief period of time, but like grass or like a tree with shallow roots in sandy soil, it will wither quickly once the heat of God's judgment comes upon it.

Once that summer comes, it will be gone. Their judgment will be sudden and it will be swift.

Psalm 73, which you're gonna hear me quoting Psalm 73 throughout Psalm 37, Psalm 73,

Asaph says, until I came into the sanctuary of God, then I perceived their end. Surely you set them in slippery places.

You cast them down to destruction, how they are destroyed in a moment. They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors like a dream when one awakes.

Oh Lord, you despise their form. A total destruction, withering grass. Psalm 92 verse seven says that when the wicked sprouted up like grass and all who did iniquity flourished, it was only that they might be destroyed forevermore.

Zophar is right in Job. Now, not everything that Job's counselor said is right or good, but Zophar was right in Job 20 verses four through eight when he says this, do you know this from of old, from the establishment of man on earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the godless momentary.

Though his loftiness reaches to the heavens and his head touches the clouds, he perishes forever like his own dung.

Those who have seen him will say, where is he? He flies away like a dream and they cannot find him, even like a vision of the night, he has chased away.

Perishes forever like his own dung. You have an issue with that, don't take it up with me.

I'm just reading to you what scripture says. This Psalm, Psalm 37 has plenty to say about the judgment of the wicked.

And we're gonna get to all of them before we get to the end of the Psalm. But for now, I just ask you this, to consider this, why would you envy that?

Why would you envy that? That's really the point. Don't envy the sinner. Why do you fret over that which is perishing quickly?

Has anyone ever envied grass and thought to themselves, you know, I wish I was like grass? Or a withered tree, a dead tree?

Nobody ever envies that. Let me give you another word picture and I'm borrowing elements of this from Spurgeon and I'm adapting it a little bit for my own purposes.

So when you get to heaven, don't blame Spurgeon for this, if something goes south, it's all me. Imagine that you're sitting in a theater watching a production on the stage and there's a young boy sitting right next to you watching the same production.

And on the stage, there's a man who is playing the part of a king. And he has on his stage robe, his cloak, his outfit, and he's got his robe on and his crown.

He sits on a throne up on the stage and he rules over a vast domain in this play.

And he gets to sit down in a couple of scenes and enjoy lush banquets and the best of foods, choice wine and all the comforts and ease that the commoners can only imagine and dream about, never get to taste.

And then imagine the boy sitting in the crowd next to you begins to envy the king on the stage.

And he thinks to himself, I would like to be that man. I would like to sit on that throne and wear that robe and have that crown and enjoy, sit at that stage prop of a table and enjoy the lavish banquet that's up there.

I mean, that looks like quite a feast. I wish that I could be that actor. But then the actor has to take off the robe and step off the throne and the curtain comes down and the lights go out and the theater empties out.

And that man who played the part of the king for a brief period of time has to go back to his house and live like the rest of the commoners.

But then imagine that the boy sitting next to you begins to say to you, I envy that king. I want to be like him.

I want to have what he has. And then further imagine that this boy sitting next to you is actually himself the heir to a large estate.

And the throne is his and the kingdom is his. And though he doesn't enjoy any of it now, the certainty that he will sit down at a table and enjoy a banquet that puts this one to shame and sit next to a throne that puts this one to shame and wear a crown that puts this one to shame, all of that is his and all of it is certain.

And that boy begins to envy what that actor has for two hours. Now, what would your counsel be to that young man sitting next to you, the heir to the throne and the kingdom, envying the guy play acting on the stage?

What would you counsel him? Do not fret or be envious of that man because everything that he enjoys disappears in two hours and you just have to wait and you inherit the kingdom.

That's what you would advise him. It fades. It's going to be gone.

We have to remember that. Such is the state of the wicked. To give you a second word picture, not nearly as good.

And this one, I'm kind of inventing myself. So I don't know where this is gonna go, but imagine that you're a barn animal and this is not an animal farm reference at all, but imagine you're a barn animal and you've been working the field for Mr.

Jones for all this time and you get your daily allotment of water and grain while that ox sits in the stall over there in the corner, never gets to go out.

He just lays around eating the best of grain, drinking the milk. He's just growing fatter and lazier by the day.

And finally, one day after you've worked hard out in the field, you're coming back into the barnyard and you see the ox being led with a bucket of grain out to the truck and now he gets to go away.

And you can only imagine it's to a vacation, some lush pasture somewhere where he gets to lay around and just eat the greenest of grass.

And then you would say to yourself, man, I sure envy that ox, but what's the problem with that? What you don't know is that ox is being led away to the slaughter.

Now where my analogy breaks down is eventually all the farm animals get led away to the slaughter, but stop there for just a second.

Just imagine the folly of standing there envying the ox being led away to the slaughter. You would counsel all of the other barn animals, don't envy him.

It is better to work the land for Farmer Jones. If only you could avoid the slaughter and inherit the whole farm, but you're not gonna.

So what the wicked have only hastens their ruin. It doesn't hasten their reward.

There is no reward. There is no reward. I promise you this, in 10 ,000 years, you and I will stand around and look at each other and shake our heads in disbelief that we ever even for a moment wanted to trade places with the wicked.

Shaking our heads in disbelief. And we will say, was that not just like a dream? And it vanished.

And here we are with the land and the kingdom under our feet and at our fingertips.

How foolish were we to envy them for even a moment, to even want to trade places with that for even a moment.

Do not fret. Remember they fade. And third, respond with faith. Look at verse three.

Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

Trust in the Lord. You'll notice all caps in your translation. It's the Tetragrammaton, which is the name of God.

YHWH, Yahweh. Some translations, the legacy standard translates that as Yahweh taking the name of God and translating it instead of just rendering it as the

Lord with all caps. It actually renders it as Yahweh. So it's trust in Yahweh. Fretting is a lack of trust.

And so the psalmist commends us rather than to fret and be envious, but instead to place our faith in Yahweh, trusting in him, his justice, his promises, his goodness, his wisdom, his timing.

Trust that the wicked will indeed wither and the meek will indeed inherit the earth.

Trust in the Lord and do good. That's the second part of that first statement, do good. There is a faith and there is good works.

These two things go together. Faith comes first, then good works flow out of that. So we trust in the

Lord and we do good. And this is in contradistinction to the wrongdoers of verse one.

So yes, we are tempted to fret over the wrongdoing of the evil and to be envious of them, but instead we trust in the

Lord rather than being envious and we do good rather than do evil or mimic the ways of the unrighteous and the wicked.

So rather than pursuing what the wicked do to get what they seem to receive for a period of time, instead we are to trust the

Lord and we are to instead do good. Notice the second part of that, but before I move on to the second part of that phrase, there is always the temptation when doing good without an immediate reward to begin to think to ourselves, why am

I doing this? Right? To lose heart in doing good. I do good, this is

Asaph in Psalm 73. I wash my hands in innocence and I pursue the

Lord. And what do I get out of it? I'm chastened every morning. While my neighbor who is wicked and is concerned nothing about the

Lord is fat and happy and well -fed. He has everything that the world could offer. He enjoys it with, seems like carefree, without a worry in the world.

So why do I wash my hands in innocence? Why do I do righteousness? Why do

I serve? Why do I mortify sin? Why do I apply the means of grace? If in this world it seems as if the results are so upside down to what they should be.

There's always the temptation to lose heart in doing good when you see the prosperity of the wicked. So the

Psalmist says, trust in the Lord and do good. Now, what does that look like? Second part of verse three, dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

It's interesting if you have other translations, you will notice that there's a different translation of that phrase.

It's somewhat enigmatic and uncertain to exactly how best to translate the second half of verse three.

I'll give you a couple of different ways that it's translated in major Bible translations. So the NASB, which

I just read to you, says dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Here's how a couple of other translations translate it.

The ESV, English Standard Version, says dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Befriend faithfulness. The NIV says dwell in the land and enjoy safe pastures.

That's quite a bit different, isn't it? The King James says, so shall thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.

I had to say that slowly because I don't normally speak in that kind of cadence, but so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.

And then the New King James, dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. And again, the

NASB, cultivate faithfulness. So how do we translate that? How do we understand what the author is saying there?

It really boils down to two possible ways of understanding what he's getting at. Number one, he could be referring to what

God does for us. He could be referring to what God does for us. And that would be the

King James, New King James NIV, right? Verily thou shalt be fed. You will feed on his faithfulness, the

NIV. You will enjoy safe pastures. Dwell in the land and God will do this for you.

In other words, what the author is describing here is God's provision for his own people. In other words, don't be envious of what the wicked have.

Instead, dwell in the land, be content with your lot and trust that God in his faithfulness will shepherd and feed and provide for you.

Now, God's provision for the righteous is part of Psalm 73. You remember later on when

David says, I've been young and now I'm old, and yet I've not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread. He talks about God's material provision for his own people in time by his providence.

That's part of the Psalm. It's part of the answer to the prosperity of the wicked. But I don't think that that's what the author is getting at here.

He's gonna deal with that later. I think rather in the second place, what the author is describing here is not what

God does for us, but what we are to do in being faithful. This is how the NASB translates it.

Dwell in the land and cultivate. In other words, it is another command to cultivate faithfulness. The ESV says, befriend faithfulness.

Literally the words mean shepherd fidelity. Dwell in the land and shepherd fidelity.

Because it is the word that is used of cultivating something, grazing something, shepherding, pasturing it, and then the word for fidelity or steadfastness or faithfulness.

And I think that what the author is saying here is that we are to trust in the

Lord and do good. What does that look like? We are to dwell in the land, that is to live in the apportionment that God has given to us.

In Israel, they had given each tribe a partition of the land in which to live, and they were to dwell in that land.

And part of dwelling in that land, in other words, carrying on life, living out your life, enjoying the things that God has given to you, you are to dwell in the land and live there and cultivate or shepherd your own faithfulness and fidelity to the

Lord. In other words, you trust in the Lord and do good, and make sure you protect, guard, feed, and take care of your own faithfulness.

Don't fret over the unfaithfulness of the wicked. Cultivate your own faithfulness.

Do not be worried about what the wicked have and envy it, and instead, enjoy what

God has given to you and make sure that you are fixated upon shepherding and guarding your own faithfulness.

That, I think, is what the author is describing. It's something that we must be diligent to do, to guard our own fidelity to the

Lord as we shepherd faithfulness in our own lives. So what does it mean to shepherd faithfulness? What does a shepherd do?

He leads and feeds and cares for and watches out for and protects those that are underneath of his charge.

We are to do that with our own fidelity and faithfulness, examining our own faithfulness and protecting it and making sure that we are not fretting about what others have, but instead that we are minding our own business, in a sense, if I can say it that way, that we are enjoying what

God has given to us and that we are cultivating our own faithfulness to Yahweh in the midst of living the life that he has called us to live.

And so then I would ask you this, what are you doing to cultivate faithful obedience to the Lord? Fretting will poison that.

Fretting will undermine that. Anxiety over evildoers is the death of faith. So do you spend more time agonizing over the wicked and every headline that runs across Fox News, or do you spend more time cultivating, monitoring, feeding, developing, protecting your own fidelity and faithfulness to the

Lord? So that again, in the language of Hebrews 12 and 13, you may finish your race. You may run your race and finish it.

And then having done the will of God, receive that which is promised. Ecclesiastes nine, seven through 10.

This is the reflection of Solomon, the man who saw life under the sun. And he says in Ecclesiastes, look, sometimes it happens to the wicked according to what the righteous should get.

And sometimes it happens to the righteous according to what the wicked should get in this life when viewed under the sun.

So Solomon acknowledges all of the injustices and the seeming vanity of life in this world without God.

But then every once in a while in Ecclesiastes, Solomon opens up the window and lets the sunshine in for a little bit.

And you get to see life as it is in truth. And he gives you some good wisdom along the way as he's wrestling through that issue.

In Ecclesiastes nine, Solomon says this, go then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart.

For God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white all the time and let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which he's given you under the sun. This is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.

I think that's what Solomon is saying. Dwell in the land, live your life, enjoy your bread, the gifts that God has given to you.

Focus on those, enjoy those things, live with those things, thank God for those things. And do good, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might because life is short.

And don't fret over the wicked. Don't worry about the inequities and the lack of justice and righteousness in this world amongst the wicked.

Instead, live life with the wife of your youth and enjoy the blessings that God has given to you.

Dwell in the land, do good, cultivate faithfulness, trust in Yahweh and he will bring it to pass.

Matthew Henry says this, when we look forward with the eye of faith, we shall see no reason to envy the wicked with their prosperity for their ruin is at their door and they are ripening apace for it.

Outward prosperity is a fading thing and so is the life itself to which it is confined. They will sooner be cut down by the judgments of God, their triumphing is short, but their weeping and wailing will be everlasting."

Close quote. Therefore, refuse to fret, remember they fade and respond in faith.

Let's pray. Our Father, we praise you for your goodness. Thank you again for the reminders from your word that your favor, your grace rests upon your people who are in Christ Jesus.

Thank you for your love for us. And thank you again for reminding us of how good you are and how worthy you are of our trust and our confidence and our obedience.

So encourage our hearts together with this truth, we pray. Fix them upon you, our great

God, that we may be said to trust in you and to do good. We pray that you would help us to put off fretting and to put on faith and trust and humble obedience in this world in the lot that you have given to us that we may honor and glorify our

God and our King who is worthy of our worship and our praise. And thank you for the hope that we have that we shall inherit the earth.

That is what you have promised to your people. So fix our hope on that, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

Would you please stand as we end our service this morning and let's sing together how deep the Father's love.