Breaking Arms and Holding Hands (Psalm 37:16-26)

Kootenai Church

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And now please be turned in your Bibles to Psalm 37. And let's bow our heads before we begin our study of God's word.

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Our Father, with the eyes of our heart looking heavenward toward you and your goodness and your grace, we also look to you to be our teacher and our guide here this morning.

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May the preaching, the reading, and the singing of your word serve to sanctify your people.

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Convince us of your grace all over again, of your goodness, your wisdom, your sovereignty.

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We pray that we may come face to face afresh with the reality of our good and gracious God in the pages of your word.

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Be honored here through this time. We pray that you would keep us attentive and alert to your word and teach us those things which you would have for us.

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That we may walk away from here changed, conformed, at least in some measure again to the glory of Christ and to the image of Christ, that we may reflect his character as we set our hope and our affection upon him.

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We ask it in his name, amen. Psalm 37, this next passage we're gonna be looking at over the next couple of weeks is verses 16 through 26.

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This psalm, in case you are here for the first time today, addresses the issue of the prosperity of the wicked. It is specific, it is one of two psalms that specifically really address it in earnest, the other being

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Psalm 73. And the issue in Psalm 37 is how the righteous respond to the wicked around us and then what the righteous receive in the midst of a wicked world.

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In verses one to eight, we saw the peace of the righteous. We looked there at how the righteous can be at peace in the midst of a wicked world.

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Verse three, we trust in God. Verse four, we delight ourselves in the Lord. Verse five, we commit our way to the

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Lord. And verse seven, we rest in the Lord. Then in verses nine through 11, we looked at the promise that God gives to the righteous, namely that the righteous will receive an eternal prosperity in a renewed land that is blessed by God and purged of the wicked.

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That's verses nine through 11. And then last week, we finished looking at the protection of the righteous, that Yahweh's judgment on the wicked brings their evil designs back on their own heads.

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Their pernicious plans to destroy and afflict the righteous end up being turned back upon their own head as God visits a poetic judgment of sorts upon the wicked.

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And now we come to this fourth heading in verses 16 through 26. And if you're following along with the outline that I gave you several months ago or a couple months ago when we started

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Psalm 37, we're looking now at the provision, God's provision for the righteous. Now I mentioned at the beginning of this

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Psalm that this Psalm is notoriously difficult to outline. And today you're gonna see exactly why that is.

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James Boyce in his commentary on Psalm 37 says, I acknowledge how difficult it is to outline this

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Psalm, probably because it is an acrostic Psalm and the flow of thought merely follows the alphabetical structure, close quote.

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You remember at the beginning of this, when I introduced Psalm 37, I mentioned every verse begins with the next letter of the

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Hebrew alphabet, the first one starting with the letter A and then going through the Hebrew alphabet until you get to the end.

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The only variation from that pattern is I think that there's one letter that's missed and one letter that's used twice in the

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Psalm. But other than that, it follows that acrostic pattern, which means that we have thoughts in the

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Psalm that are repeated various times. For instance, the promise that God will cut off the wicked and give the righteous the land, we see that mentioned five different times in the

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Psalm, it's sort of sprinkled through the Psalm. And so since it follows the acrostic pattern and not a clear flow of thought where one thought or idea sort of leads to the next and this sort of can be broken up into paragraphs, it makes organizing this around any kind of a preaching outline very difficult, notoriously so, as it bounces between different major ideas throughout the

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Psalm. And part of that is because of the proverbial structure of the Psalm, much of the book reads like it, much of this

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Psalm reads like chapters out of the book of Proverbs. I mean, just look at verse 16, for instance, better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked.

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That sounds like something you would read in the book of Proverbs, better this than that. Proverbs is notorious for having that comparative structure where two things are compared or contrast and one thing is likened to another in order to give us sort of an analogy or a metaphor or a simile or a similarity between two items.

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Look at verse 21, the wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives. That could come right out of the book of Proverbs.

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Psalm 37, verse 22, for those blessed by him will inherit the land, those cursed by him will be cut off.

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Notice the comparison between the righteous and the wicked, those blessed and those cursed. And one of the features of Proverbs is this comparison and this entire

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Psalm kind of reads like Proverbs. So it's as difficult to outline in that way as the book of Proverbs is, since in one proverb you might have slothfulness addressed and the very next one drunkenness addressed and the very next one, the qualities of a good father addressed.

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And how do you take three or four of those Proverbs and outline them in any way that people will think is coherent?

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It's a real challenge. I say all of that simply to lay the groundwork for this revelation.

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Keep your expectations low when it comes to the outline for these next several verses. It's notoriously difficult.

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So if you were sitting here and you think, and you're gonna criticize this coming outline,

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I challenge you to come up with, if you can come up with a better one, then I will use that and I will credit you when I write a book on this

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Psalm sometime in the next couple of years. I would welcome the feedback. So those of you who are here, who teach, you are so challenged.

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So here's my outline, I'm gonna give it to you. Again, keep your expectations low and we'll see where this goes.

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If you keep your expectations low, I promise not to disappoint. Now you do your part, I'll do my part.

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If you are disappointed, it's only because you didn't hold up your end of the bargain, your expectations were too high. If you keep them low, this will not disappoint you.

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So here we are, verse 16, I see as kind of an overarching principle that sort of is fleshed out in verses 17 through 26.

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The overarching principle is this, better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked.

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That's the sort of the umbrella idea under which 17 through 26 was describes

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God's provision and the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. All of that teaching kind of falls under that general principle.

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Then this section, verses 17 through 26 is full of these kinds of comparisons between the righteous and the wicked.

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And the verses seem to be divided into two parts, verses 17 through 21 and verses 22 through 26.

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They cover the same kind of ideas, but those first five verses 17 through 21 address kind of five different ideas and verses 22 through 26 sort of restate in many ways some of the same things that you have in the verses 17 through 21.

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So those 10 verses kind of divide up into two sets of five. Follow me so far?

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If you don't, you're gonna be lost for the next couple of weeks. There are repeated ideas between those two sections.

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So we have something in those first five verses stated and then we see it repeated a little bit later on, but it's not a one -to -one correspondence, not the kind of parallelism that we had in the previous four verses.

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So it's not like verse 17 corresponds to verse 22, verse 18 corresponds to verse 23, et cetera.

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It doesn't go like that through the passage. It's kind of, remember when you were a kid and you had to connect the two things and you had a list of these and a list of these and you would draw the line between those and it was kind of squiggly.

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Sometimes it was one -to -one, sometimes it was top to bottom. That's kind of how this section of the Psalm is structured. Again, if you're not following along,

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I pity you. So in order to avoid, but to give you an example of the repeated subjects, look in verse 18, you have a reference there not explicitly mentioned, but an allusion to the inheritance in the land, which will be forever.

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That an eternal and forever inheritance is the land promise that is mentioned throughout the Psalm. You see it again in verse 22.

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You see both sections end with the same idea. Verse 21, the wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives.

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That second set of verses ends the same way or with a similar theme. Verse 26, all day long, he is gracious and lends and his descendants are a blessing.

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So you can see the parallelism there. So after taking a run at this passage over the course of, and this is no exaggeration, two weeks of working on this and probably six or seven different attempts to outline it, here's what

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I've landed with. Here's the big idea of verses 16 through 26. Yahweh makes the little of the righteous better than the much of many wicked.

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Yahweh makes the little of the righteous better than the much of many wicked. And he does this in five ways.

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And here is where our structure comes into play. First, the Lord sustains the righteous materially and spiritually.

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So I'm giving you all five points. We're only gonna get to the comparison verse in verse 16 and then the first of these points today.

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The first is the Lord sustains the righteous both materially and spiritually.

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You see that in verse 17 and verse 24. Look at verse 17, for the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the

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Lord sustains the righteous. Verse 24 seems to hint at or describe that type of sustaining, but also in a spiritual sense, when he falls, he will not be hurled headlong because the

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Lord is the one who holds his hand. There is a material as well as a spiritual sustenance. Second, the second way that the

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Lord makes the little of the righteous more or better than the much of many wicked is the

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Lord blesses the righteous eternally. Verse 18, the Lord knows the day of the blameless and their inheritance will be forever.

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Verse 22, for those blessed by him will inherit the land and those cursed by him will be cut off.

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The righteous makes the little of the, sorry, the Lord makes the little of the righteous more than the much of many wicked by blessing them in an eternal sense.

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Third, the Lord provides for the righteous in lean times. That's verse 19 and verse 25.

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They will not be ashamed in the time of evil and in the days of famine, they will have abundance. Look at verse 25,

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I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread.

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The Lord provides for the righteous in lean times. The fourth way that the Lord makes the little of the righteous better or more than the much of many wicked is the

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Lord establishes the steps of the righteous. That's in verse 20 and verse 23. Verse 20, but the wicked will perish and the enemies of the

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Lord will be like the glory of the pastures. They vanish like smoke, they vanish away.

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In contrasting to that, verse 23, the steps of a man are established by the Lord and he delights in his way.

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The Lord establishes the steps of the righteous, whereas the wicked are like the midst or the dew that vanishes away, like a smoke that is blown off of the scene.

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Contrary to them, the righteous are established by the Lord. The fifth way that the Lord makes the little of the righteous better than the much of many wicked is that the

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Lord uses the righteous as a blessing. That's verses 21 and 26. The wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives.

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All day long, he is gracious and lends and his descendants are a blessing, verse 26. So you can see how there's one verse in the first five that's kind of paralleled with a verse in the second five.

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So that's how we're grouping together this outline. It's not gonna be going from top to bottom, it's gonna be kind of grouping them according to theme or truth that is stated there.

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Today, we're gonna look at verse 16, examine this comparison statement, which I said is the overarching statement of the

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Psalm and then next week, we will look at, and then take the first of those that the

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Lord sustains the righteous material and spiritually and next week, Lord willing, we'll take the next two and then the following week, the following two.

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So we're looking at four verses in each of the next two weeks. Verse 16, let's return our attention there.

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Verse 16, the comparison here that sort of is the overarching truth of the entire section here of the

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Psalm, better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked. You notice that it is a comparative statement, you notice that there is a contrast there, but I want you to notice that there are three separate and distinct contrasts that are made.

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There is the contrast between the righteous and the wicked, there is the contrast between the little and the abundance, and there's the contrast between the one and the many.

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Did you notice that? The one and the many, better the little of the righteous, singular, than the abundance of many wicked.

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So three different contrasts there, first is the little versus the abundance. Better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked.

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Now that is not to say that all of the righteous are without in this world, that's not true.

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That wouldn't be an accurate description of all of the righteous in this world. It is not to say that all of the righteous go without all of the times.

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There are many prosperous, righteous people. We live in a land of prosperity, and there are a number of prosperous, righteous people.

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Nor is this to say that the wicked are never without, that the wicked never go hungry, that the wicked never lose anything in this world, that the wicked are never destitute.

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That's not true at all. You can walk through the downtown of almost any major city in our country, at least the ones that have perpetual summer, and you will see people who have next to nothing, who live, who do not know the

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Lord, they are in the classification of the sinners and the wicked, they're not righteous, and they have nothing. So it's true that many of the wicked do have nothing, and many of the righteous do have a lot of things.

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And it's also true that in our country, even the poorest among us live better than 99 % of the people who have ever lived in the entire history of humanity, even the poorest among us.

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My thermostat, my microwave, my refrigerator, my running water, indoor plumbing, and ibuprofen, those five things give me a lifestyle that kings of old could never have even dreamed about.

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Solomon, for all of his wealth and all that he built, could not adjust the temperature in his castle, in his palace, to within one degree of what he wanted and thought comfortable.

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I get warm, I go turn it down one degree. Solomon got too hot, and he had to find some way to get cold water.

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We live better than most people have ever lived in human history. Just those five blessings alone, not to mention all of the other things that we enjoy.

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But generally speaking, it is true that the wicked are, in our world, the wealthiest among all of us.

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That's true. It is lopsided. And that's what the psalmist is observing. There's a lopsidedness to what goes on.

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Maybe it's because the righteous are fewer. That may be. If the wicked were 1 % of the population or 2 % of the population and the righteous were 98%, maybe that would look differently.

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But in a world where the path to righteousness and the righteous are on the narrow road, and there's not many of us, there are few that are called and chosen in that way, it seems as if the wealth of this world is certainly unequally distributed between the righteous and the wicked.

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So generally speaking, it is true. You could probably name 10 abundantly prosperous wicked people off the top of your head without even thinking about it.

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You saw them on the news, heard about them in the headlines, scrolled through their stuff on Twitter this morning,

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Rod X, and yet it would probably be difficult. And for those 10, you would probably be able to maybe name one or two prosperous righteous people that would be equal to the 10 wicked people that you were able to name.

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It is probably also true, though there are exceptions to this, that most of this world's goods rest under the control, under the influence, and in the laps of those who are most offensive to God and those who hate him the most.

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The righteous, generally speaking, have little, and the wicked, generally speaking, have much.

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Obviously there are exceptions to that, but those exceptions are just that, exceptions.

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But all things considered, the righteous are still better off. That's verse 16.

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Better is the little bit that the righteous man has than the abundance that is owned by many wicked.

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And that brings us to the second comparison there, the one versus the many. The little of the righteous, singular, is better than the abundance of many, a multitude of wicked.

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Take 100 wicked people, all that they own, all that they control, all of their estates, take the top 100 if you want, put it all together in a pile, and then compare that to what is owned and possessed by even the least of the righteous, the little that they have in terms of this world's goods.

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And here is the assessment of the word of God. It is better to be that righteous person and have little than to be all of those wicked and to have all of their wickedness.

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And I'll go further. If that sounds preposterous to you, let's go further. Take all that all the wicked have in the whole world and put it on one side, and take the little that a single righteous person has and put it on the other side.

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It is better to have the little of the righteous than the abundance of all the wicked, every last single one of them.

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Now that is radically counterintuitive. There is not a single wicked person on this planet that would agree with that statement in verse 16, not a one.

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That's how counterintuitive that comparison is. But if the wicked lose it all and their soul, and they suffer everlastingly under the wrath of God and spend eternity with no good thing, while the righteous who begin with little inherit the kingdom and delight themselves in pleasures prepared for them beforehand by God at his right hand forevermore and enjoy the new creation and all of its treasures and all of its joys and all of its glories and gain the kingdom forever, then tell me which one of them is better off, the person who has much for a little while and loses it all forever, or the person who has little for a little while and gains everything forever.

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So from the vantage point of eternity, not just time, and from the vantage point of God's perspective, and not just this world's, and from the vantage point of truth and not just our human desires, the comparison is obvious in verse 16.

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Better is the little of one righteous than the abundance of many wicked. The abundance of the wicked can never last and the little of the righteous isn't even intended to last.

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And I said, this is the kind of comparison that you would get elsewhere in the book of Proverbs, and it is, let me give you three other

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Proverbs that describe the same type of comparisons. Proverbs 15, 16, and 17, better is the little with the fear of the

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Lord than great treasure and turmoil with it. Better is a dish of vegetables where love is than a fattened ox served with hatred.

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Proverbs 16, eight, better is the little with righteousness than great income with injustice.

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Notice that each of those Proverbs is comparing material possession, but there's an element that comes into that evaluation, love and hatred, righteousness and wickedness, or the fear of the

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Lord and turmoil with it. In other words, there are things that are more valuable than the level of comfort and ease and provision that one has in this world.

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That's the point. There are things that are more valuable than all of this world's goods. And the wicked would never say that.

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The righteous can say that. Spurgeon said this in his commentary on Psalm 37.

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This is a fine proverb. The little of one good man is contrasted with the riches of many wicked, and so the expression is rendered the more forcible.

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There's more happiness in the godly dinner of herbs than in the stalled ox of profane rioters.

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In the original, there is an allusion to the noise of a multitude as if to hint at the turmoil and hurly -burly of riotous wealth, and to contrast it with the quiet of the humbler portion of the godly.

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We would sooner hunger with John than feast with Herod. Better feed on scant fare with the prophets in Obadiah's cave than riot with the priests of Baal, close quote.

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That's true. The psalm is here comparing the situation of the righteous and the wicked, and he puts them side by side, and again draws a conclusion that no wicked person could affirm.

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But I think he draws a conclusion that every righteous person, if we really think about it and see it from God's perspective, could and would affirm.

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The comparison here is between the righteous and the wicked, and it should indicate to us that not all comparisons are wrong.

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The way that we compare things often is wrong. The way that we measure the comparisons often is wrong.

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We tend to compare ourselves with the provision that others have. We say, I have more of this, or I have less of this than this person.

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Free time, wealth, house, material possessions, retirement, whatever it is. We tend to simply compare ourselves with ourselves and compare ourselves among ourselves, as the apostle says in 2

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Corinthians 10, and then the apostle says, those who do so are not wise. We compare with others and determine whether we have better or worse.

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I wish I had this, I wish I didn't have that. And really, that type of comparison is what creates the envy that the psalmist condemns in verse one, when he says, do not fret because of evildoers, do not be envious toward wrongdoers.

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We only envy what somebody else has if we measure it against what we have, and then convince ourselves that what they have is better than what we have.

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And the psalm is making a comparison between two things, the little of the righteous and the abundance of many wicked, but coming to the opposite conclusion that most people would come to, and he confirms or affirms that it is better to have the little of the righteous than the abundance of the wicked, because he is not measuring it by the terms that we typically measure things in that causes us to be envious and to envy the wicked.

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The cause of our envy is that we compare our little with the abundance of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab or any other world villain, but better is the abundance of one, or sorry, better is the little of one singular righteous individual than all of the movers and shakers that are part of the world economic form.

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And the answer here is then to evaluate what we have by the proper criteria, and to remember that verse 17 says, the

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Lord sustains the righteous, to remember what verse 20 says, that the wicked will perish, to remember what verse 22 says, the righteous will inherit the land, to remember what verse 22 says, the wicked will be cut off, and what verse 24 says, the

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Lord holds the hand of the righteous. You see, the end of all things must be considered in order to rightly evaluate any kind of comparison, like the righteous and the wicked and the abundance and the little.

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Now I would suggest to you, the verse 16 is not a bromide or a cliche, it's not some banal trope or a platitude that's just intended to make you sort of feel better, to assuage your angst over this situation, sort of like a salve that the writer is trying to put on your wound when you look at what the wicked have, it's not that type of a thing, it's not like when you just say to your child, you really don't want that after all, you really don't want ice cream, that's not what you really want, and it's to kind of soothe it over, that's not the type of, that's not what this is, this is not a platitude or a bromide, this is in fact

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God's evaluation of the prosperity issue. The little of the righteous is by God's design, attended with his blessing and with his oversight, and therefore it is abundance in the eternal perspective, this is the final assessment of their circumstances, and it cannot be arrived at apart from verse 11, the humble will inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant prosperity, that's what the righteous look forward to, that abundant prosperity that verse 11 mentions that the righteous will get, that is an eternal and everlasting prosperity or shalom, it will never fade, it will never rot, it will never be taken away, it will never be lessened, and that will be our reward, so that's the overarching principle, and now we look at the first way that God makes, that Yahweh makes the little of the righteous to be more than the much of many wicked, and that is that he sustains the righteous materially and spiritually, and now we'll turn our attention to verse 17 and verse 24, let's look at verse 17, for the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the

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Lord sustains the righteous, that is a graphic description of judgment, and it is not a literal idiom, he's not talking about a literal broken arm, as if you should go out here after the service and expect to go see wicked people walking around with their arms broken, unable to move them, that's not saying that all the wicked will have their literal physical arms broken, it is in fact a graphic description of the judgment that awaits the wicked, it is intended to communicate a real destruction, the word arms there can be used literally, and it is in scripture though not often, and the theological word book of the

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Old Testament says that the literal use of that word that's translated arms there, is rare among the 90 times, the 90 plus times that the word occurs in the

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Old Testament, most often it is used figuratively like arm of flesh, you go to Egypt and you trust in their arm of flesh, meaning their military might, their power, their strength, their prosperity, their prestige, the things that this world considers powerful and something to be reckoned with, in the immediate context it is probably intended to refer in a figurative sense to the weapons of war or the dangers that confront the righteous, we looked at last week verse 14, the wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy to slay those who are upright in conduct, now what would you use to draw the bow or to draw the sword or to bend the bow?

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You would use your arms and now here we are a couple of verses later and the author is saying that the arms of the wicked will be broken, meaning that he's saying their ability to afflict the righteous will eventually be destroyed and come to nothing, their strength and advantage over the righteous will be destroyed, their power and their force, their ability to cast down the afflicted as verse 14 describes that will be broken, their strength, their power, their force, their arms, what they rely upon and it may even be here that the author that David intends that to refer not just to the strength that they use to oppress the righteous, but also the power or force that they have to make their prosperity, they rest upon the ability to use their arms in order to accumulate or gather in wealth, meaning that David probably has in mind here two aspects of the wicked that he has described throughout the

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Psalm, number one, their ability to use force and violence to oppress the righteous, as well as their ability to seize and to grab those things that made them prosperous to begin with and he is saying their arms will be broken, so all the power that they bring to bear against the righteous and against God's people, that itself will come to nothing and be destroyed and all of the prosperity that they have accumulated with those arms and their ability to acquire more also will be destroyed, this is judgment that is being described, the

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Lord will not sustain the wicked, he will cut them off and sustain only the righteous through the end in order that the righteous will inherit the land when the

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Lord cuts off the wicked as the Psalm describes, verse 15, remember that the sword will enter their own heart and their bows will be broken, but for the righteous

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God makes them to stand, verse 17, the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the

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Lord sustains the righteous, he makes them to stand, they will endure, the righteous will endure all the way to the end and come out in the kingdom and the righteous can testify to this,

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I believe it is the testimony of the righteous to be able to say if you have walked with the Lord in spite of the hostility or animosity of the wicked, in spite of the things that happen to us and around us, that the

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Lord sustains those who are his and David certainly knew this, that God was ultimately our vindicator and our vindication,

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David knew by experience when Saul hunted him and hated him without a cause, he led the entire military to pursue him on multiple occasions, pushing

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David and his men into caves and crevices just to avoid Saul's prosecution and persecution and Saul had literally drawn the sword and bent the bow at David and intended to kill him and what happened?

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The sword entered Saul's chest literally and his bow was broken when his strength and his force, his ability and power was taken from him and the kingdom was delivered over to David, there's a little microcosm of the very thing that God does, turns the evil plans of the wicked back upon themselves and ends up delivering the kingdom to the righteous, this is

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David's testimony, the little I had wandering around in the wilderness from running from Saul was better than having the kingdom of Saul because the blessing of God ended up turning the evil designs of Saul upon his own head and delivering to David the thing that God had promised to him, a microcosm of what's gonna happen to us in the end.

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The other verse in this section, verse 24, we've looked at verse 17, the other verse 24 is connected to it and verse 23 kind of goes with it a little bit, let's read verses 23 and 24 and then we'll focus on verse 24.

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Verse 23, the steps of a man are established by the Lord and he delights in his way. When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong because the

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Lord is the one who holds his hand. Sometimes the righteous do fall, that's what verse 24 is describing.

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Disasters do strike the righteous because we are not in this life promised a preservation from all evil that could befall us.

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If we were, then there wouldn't be any angst over what happens to the righteous compared with the wicked. But the reality is that we do sometimes fall.

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But the promise of the Psalm and the promise of scripture is that that fall is not fatal and it is not final and it will not be his end.

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You can think of examples of this in the Old Testament, the New Testament, Job was stripped of all he had,

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Joseph was thrown into prison, sold to a caravan, Jonah was cast into the sea, Jeremiah was put into a pit,

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Peter denied Christ. In fact, even most recently from Hebrews chapter 11, those of whom the world is not worthy are tortured, not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

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They experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword, they went about in sheep skins and goat skins being destitute, afflicted and ill -treated.

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That's Hebrews 11. Sometimes that is the lot of the righteous in this life, they fall, they are tread under.

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We are ruined in some sense. The word translated fall here means to fall behind or to collapse or to be cast down and it kind of parallels the idea in the previous four verses where the design of the wicked is to draw their bow and draw their sword and bend their bow to cast down those who are upright in conduct.

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Sometimes the falling that the righteous experience is the result of wicked oppression. We are persecuted, we are hated.

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Just as Hebrews 10 says, the righteous sometimes have their possessions seized and respond with joy, they are reproached for the name of Christ, that is true, all of that is true.

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So sometimes the falling is the result of the wicked oppression, persecution, et cetera. Sometimes the righteous fall into sin and despair when they observe the inequities of this life.

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Just as Asaph said in Psalm 73 verses two and three, as for me, listen to his language, my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped for I was envious of the arrogant when

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I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Asaph looked at the wicked, saw their prosperity and then later from the vantage point of God's perspective, he said, at that moment, my feet were close to stumbling and my steps almost slipped.

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Sometimes seeing the wicked and how they prosper in this life can cause the righteous to fall into the envy and the fretting which leads to evil doing that we looked at in verses one through eight.

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But the righteous may fall into the sin of fretting, the righteous may fall into the sin of envying, the righteous may fall into the sin of desiring and being greedy for the prosperity in this world.

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But God's promise is that in verse 24, you will not be hurled headlong. You may fall down, but you will not be cast off.

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This word translated hurled here is an interesting word. It means to be cast off or to be thrown away or even to be thrown off violently.

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It's interesting how it's used. It's used two times to describe Saul hurling a spear at David.

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Now it wasn't just kind of tossing it, like you might toss a lawn dart. Remember the good old days when we had toys like that?

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They toss a lawn dart, just toss something, a ball across the yard. It says in that description of Saul hurling the spear at David that he wanted to pin him to the wall.

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Do you know how hard he had to throw that if the intention was to pierce him and go through him and pin him to the wall?

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He was hurling it. Second, that word is used in the book of Jonah four times to describe in some instances them hurling the cargo off of the ship.

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In other words, chucking it out for total loss into the depths of the sea, never to be seen again.

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And then they did the same thing intending to do that to Jonah. Jonah himself was hurled off of the ship and cast into the sea, expected never to be seen again.

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That's the word that is used here. Then it's used also three times in the book of Jeremiah to describe in context,

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God's judgment. Jeremiah 16, 13, listen to this. So I will hurl you out of this land, into the land which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will grant you no favor.

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Jeremiah 22, 26, I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another country where you were not born, and there you will die.

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But as for the land to which they desire to return, they will not return to it. Is this man

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Keniah a despised shattered jar or is he an undesirable vessel? Why have he and his descendants been hurled out and cast into a land they had not known?

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See that language? Like throwing a spear so hard you could pierce somebody and pin them to a wall, cast off thrown into the depths of the sea, chucked out of the land of promise where they would be judged.

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But the righteous will not be cast off. They will not be thrown violently far away or hurled off to loss, never to be seen again.

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The righteous may fall, but they will not be forgotten. The righteous may fall and the righteous may fail, but they will not be forsaken.

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For even in the stumbling of the righteous under the oppression of the wicked, that stumbling is not final and it is not forever.

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We are not cast off from the promises, we will not be condemned along with the rest. The wicked will be cut off, they will be cast off, but the righteous will inherit the land forever.

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Spurgeon, to quote him again, he says this, no saint shall fall finally or fatally. Sorrow may bring us to the earth and death may bring us to the grave, but lower we cannot sink and out of the lowest of all, we shall arise to the highest of all.

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That's beautiful. Now in the context, the contrast between the righteous and the wicked in this sense is intended.

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In other words, the righteous will not be hurled headlong, but the wicked will be hurled headlong.

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This is their judgment. They will be hurled headlong, thrown far away, cast off into the depths of their sin and judgment, never to be seen or heard from again.

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And though they stand over the righteous now and even rejoice in their triumph over the righteous and exalt themselves over the righteous to humble them and to cast them down, they, the wicked in the end will be hurled out, thrown out violently and forever.

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As the psalmist describes being cut off from the land while the righteous inherit the land. So though the righteous may fall and even are for a time trampled under the feet of the wicked, that falling is not final and it is not fatal.

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Why is that? Verse 24, because Yahweh is the one who holds his hand.

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You see our preservation through all of this and being delivered into the kingdom is not because we are inherently more righteous than they, it is not because we are more meritorious, it is not because we deserve any better than the wicked, but this saving and sustaining grace is entirely the work of a sovereign and gracious God who loves to save sinners and not only loves to save them, but to secure them everlastingly for his glory.

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So Psalm 37, verse 24 says, Yahweh is the one who holds his hand. The righteous are preserved through this falling because Yahweh makes us to stand.

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He makes us to stand. He strengthens the righteous for this very purpose. He sustains us materially and he sustains us spiritually.

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And while we may fall into sin in envying the wicked or fretting over the prosperity of the wicked, we will not be cast off by him.

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He alone is our security. The righteous are not hurled headlong, not because we have a good grip on God, but because God has a good grip on us.

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That preservation is entirely his work and the strength that he gives to his righteous to cling to him is itself his enabling grace that strengthens the righteous to cling to him as he clings to them.

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This is the very idea that Jesus was alluding to in John 10, when he said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish.

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No one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. And Jesus is simply saying there, the Lord holds his own.

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He holds us. That's the answer to the falling. That's the answer to the fretting. That's the answer to the envy to know that even though the righteous may fall and the righteous may fail, ultimately we will not and cannot be cast off because God himself is the one who holds on to us.

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This is his sustaining grace. Christ does not save sinners only to cast them off everlastingly because of some failure.

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Just as that is my confidence as one who believes in the sovereignty of God and the grace of God, just as it is my confidence that God will not cast off Israel simply because they have failed and give the promises in the land to somebody else.

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He gives it to the righteous. He keeps his word because he is the one who not only keeps his word, but he sustains the righteous for the fulfillment of those promises.

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It is the Lord who does this. This is God's work. He saves the sinner. He sanctifies the sinner and he secures the sinner and holds their hand and carries them through to their eternal reward.

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Now, no such promise exists for the wicked. The wicked are only promised pardon and forgiveness and righteousness and preservation on the basis of repentance and faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And if you are outside of Christ, God's promise to you is that you will be judged for your every sin in the presence of God on the final day.

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You can have forgiveness. You can have righteousness. You can have eternal life and you can have this preserving grace, but it is only available in and through Jesus Christ because he came into this world to live a righteous life and to die in the place of sinners.

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And he rose again the third day. He is coming again to judge the living and the dead. And God commands you this day to repent and to trust in that savior who is worthy of your worship and your adoration or face that judge on the final day.

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But for the righteous child of God, yours is the kingdom. This is his promise.

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He will sustain you to the end. And for that, we give glory to his very good name. Let's bow our heads.

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Our father, we thank you for your great mercy. The mercy that has reached down in love to save a people for your own possession and the mercy that sustains us to the final day by the grace of your son.

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Thank you that our security and our eternal joy and blessing does not rest in our ability to please you.

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It does not rest in our ability to hold fast to you, but that all by your grace, you hold fast to us and you will fulfill all that you have promised to us.

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And so we thank you that we have here in your word, this evaluation of how you view prosperity from the final perspective, from your perspective.

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This is better to have a little and be counted among your people than to have abundance, even all that this world has and yet to lose our very own soul.

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So it is our prayer today that you would draw to yourself those who are here, who need to trust the savior, that they may see that their most precious possession is nothing that this world provides or offers, but Christ and Christ alone, for he alone will carry them through to eternal glory.

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And may you confirm that truth and settle these truths in our hearts of your righteous ones, your people here today as well, for the glory of your great name, amen.