Don't Fret - [Psalm 37]

Let's open with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, work in our hearts as we begin to look at the word. Quicken our hearts, Lord. May the Holy Spirit apply this message to us as David shares his wisdom from a lifetime of walking with you.

We would ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Here, we've got the collected wisdom of a mature saint of God. He has indeed spent his lifetime walking with God. He is called a friend of God. And even though he has certainly sinned grievously in his life, and he has certainly paid the price and paid the consequences of those sins, nonetheless, the pattern of his life, the testimony of his life is that he has been a man after God's own heart.

And so, he writes this psalm towards the end of his days. And he's going to address a couple of things. He's going to address, first of all, the question of why do the wicked prosper? Here on this earth, it seems like the wicked get ahead, you know.

They, the wicked, get the promotions. The wicked make the money. Those that live in a way contrary to the way that God would lay before us, that we should follow him and his precepts, these other people seem to get ahead.

We don't. We frequently suffer, or at least we are put down because of our Christian testimony. And here are these other guys, and they're discharging along. Life's hunky-dory for them. Nothing happens to them.

They don't have family members that die suddenly, whatever it is. And their lives seem just fine. And what about that? How are we supposed to deal with the apparent prosperity of the wicked? And in a very interesting way, this psalm is a commentary, if you will, upon the third beatitude of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Even though it was written several hundred years before Jesus. Nonetheless, it comments to a great deal upon the third beatitude, which is blessed are the meek. And so, David has probably also preached this sermon to himself repeatedly during his lifetime.

And before he wrote it down, before he preached it to someone else, and that's certainly the way it's going to have to be, the way it should be. We must apply the principles that are set down to our own lives first before we can start giving it to someone else.

Matthew Henry says this, the instructions here given are very plain. Much need not be said for the exposition of them, but there is a great deal to be done for the reducing of them to practice, and there they will look best.

This is very practical information that David is going to set down. This is something that we can apply to our lives, to our profit. This is also an acrostic psalm. There's a bunch of those in the psalms.

An acrostic psalm somehow fits into the Hebrew alphabet, and in this particular one, this is divided actually into two-verse stanzas, and each two-verse stanza begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

And that makes it sort of difficult to outline sometimes if you're trying to look for an outline of that, but James Boyce outlined it this way. Verses 1 to 11 are the quiet spirit. Verses 12 to 20 are the way of the wicked.

Verses 21 to 26 are the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked contrasted. Verses 22 to 27 are an old man's counsel. And excuse me, verses 27 to, there's a misprint here. Verses 27 and on there are an old man's counsel, and finally beginning in verse 34 is taking the long view to the end.

That should be verse 27 to 33 are an old man's counsel. And since James Boyce, I have a great deal of respect for him, and his outline is as good as any and better than most, we'll stick to that one for the remainder of this sermon.

The Quiet Spirit: Fret Not Yourself

But anyway, David begins with the quiet spirit. He states its fundamental premise in verse 1, fret not yourself, and I'm reading tonight from the English Standard Version, fret not yourself because of evildoers, be not envious of evildoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb.

He says, don't get heated, or if you want to put it in modern vernacular, be cool, you know, be cool. Don't fret yourself because of evildoers, and don't envy the apparent success of evildoers. Why? Because they're going to fade away.

It's very temporary. Their success is fleeting. Their success is an illusion. It's the same thing that Solomon is going to say in the book of Ecclesiastes that we looked at a couple of weeks ago, it's all vapor.

It's all just going to disappear. And he repeats himself in verse 7. He says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way or the man who carries out evil devices.

And verse 8, refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not yourself. It tends only to evil. And so, first of all, his advice is, besides don't get heated about it, accept God's works on God's terms and on God's timetable.

Worry itself is a sin. And the sin of worry leads to other sins, like the sin of envy, for example. And these sins, sins like worry, sins like envy, they're sins that they carry their own punishment with them.

If you're constantly worrying about everything, your life is going to be pretty miserable and the lives of people around you are going to be pretty miserable as well. And envying others and what they possess does nothing except to underscore your own lack, what you think of as your lack, if you're constantly concentrating on what somebody else has that you don't have.

And if you're constantly envying others, their success, it simply emphasizes in your own mind that you aren't successful, making you more miserable than you were before. It carries its own punishment with it.

And so, three times in the first eight verses, David repeats himself, do not fret, do not worry, don't get yourself worked up because evildoers seem to be prospering. We're like little children, so often we're afraid that somebody is going to get away with something and that God is somehow going to miss something and somebody is going to sneak in under the radar and get away with whatever.

And so, like little children, we have to run and tell mommy and daddy and tattle. And of course, as good parents, when our child comes and tattles to us, first of all, we have to discipline them for tattling and then we have to sneak off and go find out the truth of whatever they were tattling about, you know, take care of that too.

But David is saying, don't fret, don't be like little children. Yeah, it's not our job is what he's saying. God will take care of this. God will take care of this. The destruction of sinners is certain.

And this, of course, is directly opposite to the world's view. The world says things like nice guys finish last, right? Stand up for your rights, you know. First of all, we built a society where everything has become a right somehow.

I heard a commercial just the other day. You probably have heard it too. It appears that good vision is your right. So I don't have a right. I'm going to sue somebody because I have to wear glasses, you know.

We've made everything into a right and then stand up for those rights, man. You know, don't give way to anybody. And or if those of you who are familiar with the Lerner and Lowe musical Camelot, there's a line in there where the actor is singing those seven deadly virtues.

It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt. You know, that's sort of the world's view of things. You know, it does not pay to, it doesn't pay to be meek. It doesn't pay to place others before yourselves or any of those things.

And to the casual observer, it certainly seems that the world's way seems to work, doesn't it? The non-Christian seems to prosper. The wicked seems to prosper. And when we use the term wicked here, you have to understand that we're talking about everybody from absolute criminals to people who live what appear externally to be a good moral life except they are not children of God and they are not following God's precepts.

They are not Christians. But all of these people seem to prosper. They have great lives, you know. They, maybe they pay lip service, they tip their hat on Christmas and Easter to God and they go along and their lives seem to be fine.

It doesn't seem to bother them about all. These people get ahead. Their schemes produce results. The office politician seems to advance much quicker than his less devious fellows who simply come in and do their jobs.

I mean, what kind of a deal is that? How then is the Christian supposed to react to this? How should we look at this? And so David gives two remedies, two things to do. First of all, look up. Secondly, look ahead.

Get your eyes off the wicked and get your eyes off yourself. Get your eyes on the Lord. Now, airplane pilots, those of you, any of you have been around airplane pilots, you know they have a checklist.

They have checklists before they do things to make sure they got all the steps in place before something happens. You know, you want to be sure the wheels are down before you land, you know, those sorts of things.

And so, David gives us a five-point checklist to avoid the sins of fretting and envy. He says, this is all in verses 1 to 11 now, trust, delight, commit, be still, and avoid anger. First, trust in the Lord, verse 3.

We are to focus on God and his truth. When we trust, that implies faith and faith is active. If I say that I trust, another airplane metaphor here, if I have trust and faith in the men at Boeing that designed this jet, what am I going to do?

I'm going to get on. You know, it's, if I stand in the jet way saying, yeah, I believe in the guys that designed that, that's not faith because I haven't been active. Active, true faith is active. True faith takes action based on what you say you believe.

And so, faith involves three elements. First, there is the content, what is believed? What is it that I put my faith in? And then there is an assent, there is a mental assent. I agree that this is true and I am going to act on it.

But then there is the trust and that is the commitment part, commitment to what is believed. That's where the action comes in. If I truly believe what I say I believe, then I will act on it. This morning, when Pastor Dave was preaching, if you recall that passage, the faithless servant comes and he says, well, you know, I knew that you were a hard guy and you know, you reap where you didn't sow and all these things.

And the nobleman says, yeah, you know, I reap where I don't sow and I take profit, you know, where I haven't invested. Well, what's he say, is he agreeing with the faithless servant? No, he's not. What he's doing there is he's saying, you know, you're really lying because if you had really believed that about me, you would have acted differently.

At least you would have taken the money and gone to the bank with it. And so it's the same thing here. If you really believe what you say you believe, it will affect your life. There's no such thing as saying, oh, yeah, sure, I believe that, but it doesn't affect you.

That's not faith. And so there can be no justification without regeneration. And the regenerated will live a new life that is commensurate with their nature. True faith inevitably results in right conduct.

The next thing is delight in the Lord, that's verse 4. The more that we know about God, the more we learn about him, the more that he is the source of our delight. Young men, when you meet the girl that you think you're going to marry later, what do you do?

You want to be with her so that you can learn about her. And the more you are with her, the more she delights you. You start off by simply, you're attracted to her and you say, you know, I, I, I might really like her.

But then you start, it gets emphasized as you're together, you know. But that's not going to happen unless you are together with each other. And so you have to spend time with God. You have to spend time in his word.

You have to spend time with him in prayer. You have to have this close walk with your heavenly father and you will begin to delight in him. And then he says, he'll give you the desires of your heart, delight yourself in the Lord.

He will give you the desires of your heart. And that, friends, is not an invitation to, this is not a blank check. It's, you know, I do this and then God gives me everything I want. What he's talking about is your desires will get aligned into the right channels.

He will give you the desires of your heart because you will desire the right things. Because what will be the first desire of your heart as you, as you delight in the Lord? What is the desire of your heart as you delight in another person?

It is to be with them. And the same thing happens to the believer as you delight in the Lord. You want to be with him. And he, indeed, he gives you the desires of your heart. Then he says to commit, commit your way.

And verse 5, commit your way unto him. And this is, the sense here is to roll your weight onto him. Let him support you. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of having been injured or for some reason that you, you, you fainted or something like that.

And someone comes along and supports you and what do they tell you to do? Put your weight on me. Don't carry your weight on your own legs. You know, you lean on me and I will support you. And that's the sense here.

Roll your burden over on him. Now, Dwight, Dwight L. Moody was not a particularly well-educated man. And when he spoke before the young men of Cambridge in England who are some of the best educated and most erudite men in the world at that time, his opening words were, young gentlemen, don't never think God don't love you because he do.

They got the point. Even though that was stated in less than literate English, they got the point. God cares. God is equal to any task and sufficient for all things. Therefore, we can commit our paths to him in the confidence that he will guide us in the way that we should go.

This, frankly, is the answer right here. You know, commit your way unto the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. This is the answer to young people in particular who are constantly, they're looking for the God's will.

You know, what is God's will for my life? And I'm so scared to do anything because I'm afraid it might not be God's will for my life. And somehow we've got this idea that God's will is this little path and God's up there just waiting for us to take one step off of it.

You know, whoop, gotcha, you know, out of my will. That's not the way God works. He says, you commit your way unto me and I'll guide you in the right path. You can have confidence that I'll guide you in the right path.

You know, you fulfill my directed will. There are certain things that the Bible says that we are to do. It says, do this, don't do that. Well, see to it that you do this or don't do that as the case may be.

And other than that, do what you want. Secure in the knowledge that God is going to direct your paths and put into your heart the desires that he wants for you to have and to lead you on. As Peter puts it, same thing, 1 Peter 5, 7, same idea, cast all your care upon him.

Like I said, it means roll your burden upon God. Take your burden off your own shoulders and put it on him. And then point 4, verse 7, he says, be still before God. Be still. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

This is so difficult for us because particularly in this country, we want to do something. Whenever something happens, we got to do something right now. You know, and men and women are kind of different like that.

You know, men are doers. And so our wives come to us and they present us with this, with some problem that they have and what do we come up with? We come up with three very well thought out solutions to this problem right away and start going into it and we can't understand why our wives are mad.

And they didn't want a solution, they wanted us to listen, but we're not like that. We don't listen much, we do. And so we get so worried, we won't do something, you know, and better, well God's got to do something.

He's got to do it right now. But verse 7 says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. We so often, we want God to respond on our time schedule and in the way that we think he should respond.

And when he doesn't do that, we get upset. But God says, wait patiently. Rest in the Lord and keep quiet. Psalm 62 says, for God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be greatly shaken. You know, surprise, surprise, God is not a cosmic bellhop that responds whenever we ding the bell. You know, he responds in his way and on his timetable. And so it's much better for us to listen to Solomon, Proverbs, where he says, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.

And finally, as part of our five-point checklist here, refrain from anger, verse 8. Refrain from anger, forsake wrath, fret not yourself, it tends only to evil. Now, David right now is thinking, I mean, this could be applied to anger in general, but David is specifically thinking here about anger against God.

Don't be angry with God when he does not respond in the way that you think he ought to respond and with the speed that you think he ought to respond with. Do not be angry at anything God does. God is the sovereign king.

And he does what? What pleases him. But even better than that, because we could say, well, God does what pleases him because he's sovereign. But the thing of it is, is that God, unlike us, God is not irresponsible.

God is not flighty. God knows all of the facts. He knows all of the facts in the situation. And not only does he know what's happening now, he knows what is going to happen down the road and how that's going to fit into what is happening right now at this moment.

He has everything before him, all of the motivations of all of the people involved in the situation, whatever it is, he knows them all. He's got everything in his fingers. And therefore, unlike anyone else in the universe, he is qualified to say, I have the best plan.

You know, my plan is the best plan. I have decreed what's going to happen. And he tells, he tells Israel and he tells us too, I have a plan for you. I know what the plan is and it is the best thing that can be brought into your life.

So, don't be angry at anything that God does. Whatever God does, it will be absolutely the perfect response. It will be delivered at precisely the right time. It will happen at exactly the right time.

And so, at the first signs of discontent with whatever it is that God may have brought into our lives, we should take vigorous action to pound it down. Fretting against God is a constant temptation during times of adversity.

When Hurricane Katrina blows through your town, it's very easy to get angry with God. But I was going to look, I was going to look up where I read this, but I didn't get around to it. But there was, there was an account of one lady, elderly lady who had been brought into one of the refugee centers, her entire possessions consisted of a little plastic bag with a few things that she had in there and four Bibles.

And she's sitting on this cart, exclaiming, or this cot exclaiming how God has blessed her and praising God, you know, that's the right attitude. Oh, your house has been blown away, well, praise God, you know, I'm alive, aren't I?

And she had the right attitude, you know, she had what was important to her, she had her Bibles and a few other little odds and ends. And so, I got everything I need, that's the kind of attitude you look for.

We, too often, we assume that God is there to shield us from natural disasters and we get upset when he doesn't do that. We also assume that God is there to shield us from the consequences of our own action.

I'll never forget seeing an interview, this was years ago out in California, there had been a flood out near the Colorado River and a bunch of summer homes had been wiped out. And this old sheriff, he wasn't impressed.

He was being interviewed and he said, you know, there's a reason we call this a flood plain. Well, you know, if you build on the flood plain, don't blame God if your house gets washed away. If you didn't take the proper action to see to it that that wouldn't happen.

Don't fall into that trap, but live your life in quiet confidence that God really is in control, he really does know what he's doing and all things truly are gifts from his hands. And I say in quiet confidence, this is not fatalism, this is not saying, well, what happens will happen and there's nothing we can do about it.

God expects us to use the mind that he gave us. But on the other hand, we are to have this quiet, settled confidence that whatever is brought into our lives is he is in control of it. Our lives really aren't spinning out of control even though they seem that way.

The Way of the Wicked: Their Plans Collapse

So then David moves on to the way of the wicked and even here he's comparison, he's making comparisons. First of all, verses 12 and 13, the wicked plots and the Lord laughs and the sense here is a derisive laughter.

You know, here's so and so making his little plot but, you know, it's going to come to nothing. God scoffs at the wicked, God scoffs at the wicked, he holds them in derision the Bible says. And one scoffs only when one knows for certain that the plans of the scoffee, whoever they might be, will come to nothing.

And but the Lord scoffs at the plans of the wicked, you guys are going nowhere. And keep in mind that in a great many of the situations of life that we find ourselves, only God knows what is going on, even in Job.

You know, Job had, there were four speakers plus Job, all of them were clueless. Not even Job had an idea what was really going on. The only one in that whole situation that knew what was going on was God.

But he did know what was going on, that's the point. He knows what's going on and he's in control of things. David says, verses 14 and 15, the wicked draw weapons but they fall by their own hand. Sin carries the seeds of its own destruction.

Evil may survive for a time and seem to prosper but ultimately it falls from its own corruption and its own weight. The Soviet Union seemed like an unstoppable monolith. And those of you who were alive during the 1950s, which is the true height of the Cold War, remember what a fearsome thing that was in our minds and where is it today.

And how quickly it went. That was the amazing thing. Once somebody pulled that bottom card out, how quickly the whole thing collapsed. It was amazing and yet it seemed unstoppable. In the 1950s or even in the 1960s, if you had predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, you would have been laughed off the stage.

It simply couldn't possibly happen and yet it happened within a period really of a few months. And so, sin always collapse, collapses of its own weight. Wealth and power are transient but God sustains the righteous.

That's verses 16 and 17. Good is not measured by quantity because what does it say? Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked. If God chooses to put relatively little of the world's wealth in the hands of his children, doesn't that tell you something about the relative value that he places on that?

Because what has he promised us? He has promised us to give us the best of all things. He promises his children the very best. And so, apparently in God's economy, money doesn't fall very high on the scale.

Money sounds like about number 12 on the top 10. And so, wealth and power are transient. It takes time to learn this lesson. I suspect David tried to teach this to Solomon but Solomon had to get to the end of his days before he really understood this message and wrote it up in Ecclesiastes that wealth is just vapor, wealth is transient.

Even if you amass great wealth, you can't take it with you and you're probably going to leave it to your kids and you don't even like your kids. So, where is it all going? And then, verses 18 to 20, the righteous will survive whatever deprivation comes but the wicked will ultimately perish.

So, despite the seeming prosperity of the wicked, despite the seeming difficulties of the righteous, things are not what they seem. And that's another theme of Ecclesiastes as well. It may seem that everything is going fine for the wicked but the true situation is they are standing on very slippery ground.

The writer of Psalm 73, whoever that was, found out the same thing because he was complaining about the wicked seem to be prospering. And then, he winds up in Bible class and gets a different perspective.

No, from God's perspective, they are standing on a muddy slope that's very steep. And their feet are going to slip. Their feet will slide in due time. And so, David compares their condition to that of grass in verses 2 and in verse 20.

Grass looks nice one day and it's burned up the next. Grass does not last. Grass has no permanence. Even the grass of the field, the wheat, the whatever it is in the field, it's here today, it's gone tomorrow.

There's nothing permanent there. Whatever the wicked may be relying upon, it's all transient and it will all vanish like smoke. I wish this fly would vanish like smoke. Beauty fades, influence wanes, popularity vanishes, wealth overextends.

Jesus used the account of a beggar named Lazarus to drive this point home. It was Lazarus the beggar and an anonymous rich man and you know the story. Lazarus got none of life's comforts. Apparently, he was in abject poverty all of his days.

We gather from the story. And this rich man got everything. And yet, ultimately, when we see those two men have passed into the afterlife, the situation is completely reversed. Lazarus is now comforted while the rich man is tormented.

And the thing of it is, and the point, one of the points Jesus was making is that this is the eternal condition. Lazarus is going to be eternally comforted. So what does it matter that he spent a few little short years on this earth being tormented?

And in the ultimate sense, the rich man is going to be tormented for eternity. So what does it matter that he had a few years of ease here on this earth? We should hope in God. God understands our troubles.

The Righteous and the Wicked Contrasted

Then he goes on to, and I have to speed up a little bit here, he goes on to contrast the righteous and the wicked. Starting in verse 21, the wicked borrows but does not pay back. By contrast, the righteous is generous and gives.

For those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land, but those cursed by him shall be cut off. A couple of things could be in view here. First of all, David is contrasting those who are takers and those who are givers.

And David is more concerned with heart attitude than physical action. He's looking for the attitude of the heart here. But he says a few things about the takers. First of all, they're slow to pay back what they owe.

Now, why is that? Well, they want to hang on to their money just as long as they possibly can, every last second. Even when somebody else has a rightful claim to it, I'm going to hang on to every last penny I can, you know, get that last few cents of interest before I'm finally dragged kicking and screaming to paying this bill that I owe somebody.

Or maybe they don't pay at all. Perhaps they think they can cheat their creditors. Again, it's a mental attitude. What can I get away with here? Or maybe, maybe they don't pay because they can't pay. Their scheme has collapsed around their ears and they no longer have the resources to pay.

That's another possibility. They have squandered their substance in some wild scheme. But however it plays out in actual practice, people with a selfish spirit are stingy and they keep a mental spreadsheet of what they're owed.

Now, practical, practical application here. If in your company, you're surrounded, you have to deal with a person like that, keep track of that because when you borrow a buck from somebody like that, they want it back and they keep, don't think they don't keep books because they do.

You know, there are two kinds of people that you find in the office. One kind, you go up and say, hey, can I borrow a buck for the Coke machine? Yeah, they give you a buck. They don't expect that back and you know it.

But there's other kinds of people, they got it down to the penny, you know, how much they're owed. And it's the spirit behind it. It's the spirit behind it. The person who is generous of spirit simply doesn't regard wealth as an end in itself.

Wealth is nothing but a tool. It's a tool that is provided by a loving father and it is to be used for his purposes and it is to be enjoyed. If God gives you wealth, enjoy it. You know, don't feel guilty because he's given you wealth but use it wisely and use it for his purposes.

Second thing, the righteous will inherit the land but the wicked will be cut off. There's probably a couple of applications here too. First of all, I think David certainly does have in mind God's promise to Abraham, that he has promised the children of Israel a certain parcel of land that they will occupy.

That's part of the Abrahamic covenant. But in a larger sense, we can make some spiritual applications to the New Testament saint as well. But we do have the promise that believers will someday reign with Christ when he sets up his earthly kingdom.

There's also a general promise of prosperity to the righteous and I will hasten to say, do not confuse that with the wealth and prosperity nonsense that gets put out on CBN or something like that. But in general, speaking in general, we are told that a righteous life is better than an unrighteous life.

And the righteous will in general prosper. And so there's that sense, living a moral life is better than an immoral one and following biblical precepts is always a good thing. And another possible way to look at this is that the righteous enjoy God's creation in ways that the unrighteous simply do not.

As you see scenes of beauty as you travel around, we're about to head into the turning of the leaves. And frankly, the righteous are going to see that and all of that beauty that will be displayed upon God's palate in a different light than those that do not acknowledge him will.

Basically, the righteous regard everything as a gift from God's providence. Everything is a gift from his hand and it causes them to always give thanks for everything that is presented to them. The next thing is the righteous may stumble, but the wicked will be cut off.

Verse 23, the steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way. Though he fall, he will not be cast headlong for the Lord upholds his hand. The righteous may stumble. We may find ourselves down on our knees with our knees skinned.

We may find ourselves flat on our faces in the dirt. However, God is not going to leave us there. God will gently raise us up, dust us off, and urge us further up the narrow path. And so, it's interesting what David, David's going back to his days of being a shepherd here.

It's interesting what he's talking about because he said he will not be cast headlong, the Hebrew word there, the King James translates it cast down. But the Hebrew word is a shepherd's term because it is an interesting characteristic of sheep that if a sheep gets rolled over on her back, she can't get up because of the way her body is arranged and the way the center of gravity is.

That if a sheep, for some reason, winds up on her back, she cannot get up. She cannot roll herself over. And so, she, and of course, she's very vulnerable like that. And she has to stay there. And that's the term that David is using because the shepherd has to come along and roll this sheep back over and stand her up and hold her upright until her circulation returns to her legs and she can walk again.

And so, that's what he's saying. He said, God is not going to leave you helpless on your back with all four legs in the air. You know, he's going to come. He's going to roll you back over. He's going to revive you and he's going to gently urge you along his way.