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Kootenai Church, would you please stand with us this morning as we begin our service with a call to worship from the book of Ephesians. In Ephesians 2, four to seven, it says, "'But God, being rich in mercy because of his great love "'with which he loved us, even when we were dead "'in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.
"'By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him "'and seated us with him in the heavenly places "'in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come, "'he might show the surpassing riches of his grace "'and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.'".
Let's sing together this morning alive.
My heart of stone was dead to you Asleep within a world Until you breathed into my soul Hooked up to you With a Not be measured Chosen before All time I am alive, I am alive in you.
Let's sing together, My Soul Will Wait, Psalm 62.
My heart.
My fears.
Are pressing in.
I will.
This is mercy.
I.
I have peace that's undeserved For the Past.
And I fear.
Nation My steadfast hope That won't be shaken My soul will wait My soul will.
You're my I.
My Shore Foundation.
My.
Love Could remember No wrongs we have done Omniscient All knowing.
He counts not their sub.
Thrown into a sea Without bottom or shore They are made.
Would you please remain standing for the scripture reading?
From Psalm 138. Please turn your Bibles to Psalm 138. Psalm 138, a Psalm of David. I will give you thanks with all my heart. I will sing praises to you before the gods. I will bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your loving kindness and your truth.
For you have magnified your word according to all your name. On the day I called, you answered me. You made me bold with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth will give thanks to you, O Lord, when they have heard the words of your mouth, and they will sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.
For though the Lord is exalted, yet he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. You will stretch forth your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand will save me.
The Lord will accomplish what concerns me. Your loving kindness, O Lord, is everlasting. Do not forsake the works of your hands.
This is the word of our Lord.
If you would like to sit for the prayer, you can do so at this time, because you're gonna stand again for the singing. So you're welcome to sit if you'd like to.
Let's bow our heads.
Our Father, you are a great and merciful God, worthy of all our praise, our adoration,.
Worthy of all that we could give to you,.
Worthy of all that we could offer before you. And we thank you that you have called us here together into this place to worship you this day, to sing of your praises and your great worth. And it is our desire that as we are here gathering and singing, that you would be exalted by the words of our mouth, by the meditation of our hearts, by our affections and in our love for you.
We pray that you would be glorified through our unity, through our fellowship, our worship, through the reading and preaching of your word, and that you may receive the praise that you are due. Thank you for so great a salvation that you have taken us from the pit, you have raised us from spiritual death, and that you will one day raise us to eternal and physical life, to dwell with you forever.
Thank you for that hope. Thank you for our salvation. And thank you for the grace that has made it possible. And we ask Lord that you would watch over us, brood over us today, over your word, over our worship, that it may be pleasing to you for the glory of Christ in whose name we pray.
Amen.
Let's continue our worship this morning and sing how vast the love.
The praise upon your Savior holds your prayer on ear Come rest, my being, find endless stores of joy
It says in verse seven, blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh and whose trust is Yahweh. And he will be like a tree planted by the water that sends forth its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green.
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor refrain from yielding fruit. The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick who can know it. Yahweh, search the heart. I test the inmost being.
Even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds. We're gonna sing together, Lord, you have searched me, Psalm 139.
And now will you please turn to Psalm 37.
Psalm 37. And before we pray, we're gonna read together verses 27 through verse 34. Psalm 37. Beginning in verse 27, depart from evil and do good so you will abide forever. For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake his godly ones.
They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom and his tongue speaks justice.
The law of his God is in his heart. His steps do not slip. The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand or let him be condemned when he is judged.
Wait for the Lord and keep his way and he will exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you will see it. Let's bow together. Father, it is a mercy to us that you give us your word for you desire to be known and you have revealed your word so that we as sinners may know the justice and righteousness and holiness of God.
And so we pray today that you would teach us your nature, teach us your will, teach us from your word by the power of your spirit. And we pray that we may behold ourselves in the light of your truth and that we may behold the face of Christ and be conformed into his image.
For his glory, we ask this, amen. Well, today, Psalm 37, we are starting today the fifth section of this psalm. The psalm, in case you're here for the first time today, is addressing the prosperity of the wicked and rather than focusing on what the wicked have and the prosperity that they enjoy, the psalm really answers the conundrum of the prosperity of the wicked by reminding us of what the righteous receive from God.
This I said, 27 through 34, is the fifth section of the psalm. In the first section, verses one to eight, we saw that the Lord gives peace to the righteous. The righteous can be at peace in the midst of a wicked world surrounded by wickedness.
When they trust in the Lord, delight themselves in the Lord, commit their way to the Lord and rest in the Lord. That was verses one through eight. Then in verses nine to 11, we looked at the promise to the righteous, which is the land promise, that the wicked will be cut off and the righteous will inherit the land.
Verses nine through 11, we saw that the righteous will receive an eternal prosperity in a renewed land that is blessed by God and purged of the wicked. Then the third section was verses 12 through 15, where we looked at the protection of the righteous.
Yahweh's judgment on the wicked ends up bringing their own evil back upon their own heads as the pernicious plans of the wicked are turned back upon themselves. And God's judgment is both poetic and appropriate when he judges the wicked for the very things in the very same way that they had planned to do harm to the righteous.
Then the fourth section, which we finished last week, was verses 16 through 26. And we looked at the provision for the righteous, that Yahweh makes the little of the righteous to be better and more than the abundance of many wicked.
And we looked at the various ways that he does that. He sustains the righteous, blesses the righteous, provides for the righteous, establishes the righteous, and uses the righteous for his ends and for his purposes.
So those are the first four sections. Today, we're doing section five. Well, not all of section five, but we're starting into the fifth section of this psalm. And that's verses 27 through verse 34, looking now at the preservation of the righteous.
And then the final section of the psalm is verses 35 through 40, which describes the posterity of the righteous. So that's six sections of the psalm. And if you're keeping track, and I know that nobody here is, but just in case you might be, originally when we started the psalm, I told you there were seven sections and not six.
I want you to know I folded verses 30 to 34 into that previous one. So I sort of eliminated the ponderings of the righteous in case any of you were tracking. So we just have six now. As we kind of worked our way through the psalm, it kind of became obvious that there was one there that kind of belonged up to the rest of it.
So I'm just revising that on the fly for you. So verses 27 through verse 34 is the preservation of the righteous. Our God keeps the righteous. He keeps his people. He keeps us materially. He keeps us financially.
He keeps us spiritually. He keeps us eternally. In fact, this section of the psalm describes God's keeping process, his keeping ways and how he preserves the righteous. So now to take verses 27 through 34 and to kind of give you an outline of this section about the preservation of the righteous, we see in verses 27 through 29 that the Lord preserves us for our eternal possession, our eternal possession.
You'll see there in verses 27 to 29, look at verse 27, depart from evil and do good so you will abide forever. For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake his godly ones. They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off.
The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. So the Lord preserves us for our eternal possession. Then in verses 30 and 31, we see the Lord preserves us by his enduring precepts, his word.
There is a preserving element of the word of God in the life of a believer. Verse 30, the mouth of the righteous utters wisdom and his tongue speaks justice. The law of his God is in his heart. His steps do not slip.
Then thirdly, verses 32 to 34, the Lord preserves us in earthly perils. Verse 32, the wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand or let him be condemned when he is judged.
Wait for the Lord and keep his way. He will exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you will see it. The Lord preserves us for our eternal possession. He preserves us by his enduring precepts and he preserves us through earthly perils.
That's verses 27 through 34. Now you might be thinking, that sounds like a great three-point outline for today. That's actually a good three-point outline for three weeks. Today, we're looking at verse 27 through 29 and I shared with somebody before the service, this whole outline is like a Russian nesting doll.
We keep going down further and further as we get down towards the verse level. So verses 27 through 29, here's what we're going to observe. There are three things here that are true of the righteous man.
In verse 27, the righteous man is pure in his walk. Depart from evil and do good so you will abide forever. In verse 28, the righteous man is protected by his God. For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake his godly ones.
They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. And then verse 29, the righteous man is promised a reward. The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. The righteous is pure in his walk, protected by his God and promised a reward.
That's verses 27 through 29. So let's begin with verse 27. The righteous man is pure in his walk and you'll be relieved to know that we are going to get to all three of those points today, those three descriptions of the righteous man.
Verse 27, depart from evil and do good so you will abide forever. And before we jump into that verse, I want you to notice that the word forever occurs three times in these three verses. It's mentioned in verse 27, 28 and 29, you will abide forever, they are preserved forever, and they dwell in that land forever.
So as the psalmist is sort of drawing the psalm to a conclusion, we're getting near to the end now. It is as if the idea of foreverness, the everlasting nature of the prosperity of the righteous is one of the last things that he wants ringing in our ears.
He wants us to hear about the forever promise. And it's a reminder to us that the inequities of this life, the prosperity of the wicked, the want or the lack thereof comparatively of the righteous, these things can never be evaluated in this life on their own terms in terms of just the time of this life.
The psalmist is constantly through the psalm reminding us that there are future realities that the righteous look forward to. A land in the future, an exaltation in the future, a forever shalom or abundant prosperity in the future.
The wicked will be cut off in the future. All of the inequities of this life can only be evaluated and can only be really the story be told in terms of the eternal perspective. And so here towards the end of the psalm, he's reminding us again that we are going to abide forever.
We will be preserved forever and we will dwell in that land forever, forever, forever, forever. How long into forever do you think it will take for you to say, now I think we've reached equity. Now I think that this is evened out.
A week into forever, a month into forever, 10 ,000 years into forever. Does it really matter? Because it's forever. I suspect that when we step into that moment of time that will last forever in the new heavens and the new earth, my suspicion, no, I would say my confidence is that 10 seconds into that, we will say, it is all good and the judge of all the earth has done what is right.
And from then on out, we will see the abundance of the shalom that God has promised to the righteous. Psalm 73, by the way, Asaph in that psalm, which describes the prosperity of the wicked from a little bit of a different perspective.
In that psalm, Asaph says that my feet almost stumbled and I almost slipped as I saw all that the wicked enjoyed. And this was perplexing to me, he says, until what? Until I stepped into the sanctuary of God, then I perceived their end, right?
I got a glimpse of the end of that. And Asaph says, then I realized the justice of it all. So it's the eternal perspective that Psalm 73 and Psalm 37 both put before us. Depart from evil, verse 27 says, and do good.
That is an imperative. It's a command to leave and to depart from evil. It's a moral injunction. Psalm 37, you remember, is what we call a wisdom psalm. It has a proverbial structure to it, but it sort of lays out the difference between wisdom and folly, between a right path and a wrong path.
And so it's known as a wisdom psalm. And you remember at the very beginning of this psalm, when I introduced the psalm, I told you that there is, in wisdom, that wisdom is not just a mental skill, it is a moral skill.
You remember that? Wisdom is not just a mental skill, it is a moral skill. Wisdom is the ability not just to know what is right and wise, but to know how to apply what is right and wise, and to walk in the paths of righteousness.
So wisdom and folly are not mental or intellectual categories, they are moral and ethical categories. You cannot separate righteousness from wisdom, and you cannot separate folly from unrighteousness.
The fool says in his heart, there is no God, and he lives accordingly. In his iniquity, in his unrighteousness, in his impenitence, and in his sin, in a transgression, the righteous man knows that there is a God, and he walks in the way of Yahweh and lives accordingly.
So wisdom and folly are moral categories, they are moral actions, not just mental or intellectual. Proverbs 1 .7 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 13 .19, desire realized is sweet to the soul, but it is an abomination to fools to turn away from evil. It is an abomination to a fool to turn away from evil, because he loves evil. See, so the evil and the wickedness cannot be separated from the element of folly and foolishness.
Proverbs 10 .23, doing wickedness is like sport to a fool, and so is wisdom to a man of understanding. The man of understanding and wisdom does righteousness, doing wickedness is like sport to a fool.
So there is in Psalm 37 this comparison between the righteous and the wicked, because comparisons between righteous and wicked, between what is moral and immoral, between what is wise and what is foolish, that is the mark of the book of Proverbs, that's the mark of wisdom literature, and that's why Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm.
It lays out the path of righteousness, to know and to walk in the ways of Yahweh, it lays out the path of the wicked, which is to delight in iniquity and to do wickedness, and these two paths are compared for us in Psalm 37, and not just the paths, but the outcome, the eventual end of each one of these paths is contrasted in Psalm 37.
Evil is how the wicked are described throughout the psalms, so when he says depart from evil, he is talking about the active workings of those whom he has classified throughout the psalm as the wicked.
Psalm 37, verse one, we're not to fret because of evildoers, we're not to be envious toward wrongdoers. Look at verse seven, there's a man who carries out wicked schemes. In verse 14, the wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy and to slay those who are upright in conduct, and then in verse 32, the wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.
So throughout the psalm, the activity and the workings of the wicked are described in these violent and abrasive terms. The wicked run to evil, it is sport to them. The righteous run from evil, and so the psalmist here is imploring us to depart from evil, which means to turn away from, to leave off of.
It's kind of the same idea that Paul has in mind when he says that we are to flee youthful lusts, and we don't entangle ourselves in them, we don't have dalliances with them, we don't justify it, we don't excuse it.
Instead, we turn from sin and turn from evil because the righteous man is one who is pure in his walk. There can be among the people of God, no participation in the deeds of darkness. Paul says we shouldn't even speak of those things which are done by them in secret, but instead we are to expose them.
That is, we don't delight in those things, and instead our delight is in the law of Yahweh, which means we expose the evil deeds of darkness. The Christian life is a life of repentance. It's always turning from sin.
Every day you have opportunities to sin, temptations to sin, allurements to sin, and yet the Christian life is a life of constantly bringing our thoughts, our hearts, our minds, our actions, our words, and our deeds into conformity with the person of Christ as we turn from one sin after another always toward righteousness.
That's what it means to depart from evil. Notice that the psalmist has here the opposite of the evil, which is to do good. So we turn from something that is evil and we turn toward and do something that is righteous and good.
The believer, the righteous man, does not justify his evil deeds or rationalize his evil deeds or excuse them or think little of them. He sees sin for what it is and he desires in his innermost being to turn away from that and to have nothing at all to do with it because the righteous man is thinking of his Lord.
He is thinking of his lineage. He is thinking of other people, the people of God. He has everybody and everything else in mind as he turns from sin and turns toward righteousness, departing from evil and doing good.
Spurgeon said this, quote, "'We must not envy the doers of evil, but depart altogether from their spirit and example. As Lot left Sodom without casting a look behind, so must we leave sin. No truce or parley is to be held with sin.
We must turn away from it without hesitation and set ourselves practically to work in the opposite direction.'". In other words, it's not just turning from an iniquity, it is turning from an iniquity to do something that is good and righteous and holy and true.
If you're familiar with the language of biblical counseling and what it means to turn away from sin and to practice righteousness, this is the putting off and the putting on of the Old Testament. You stop lying and you speak truth.
You stop being lazy and you start working. You stop criticizing and you start building up. You stop being angry and instead you speak truth with your neighbor and be loving. It's the putting off and the putting on.
You depart from evil and you do something that is good. It's not enough just to depart from evil. That is insufficient in and of itself. That's a good thing, but to depart from evil and to turn and to do that which is good sets our feet on a path that is righteous and holy and just and true.
And then we are active about doing the thing that is the opposite of the evil that we are turning from. This is the mark of a righteous person, pure in his walk. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of the scoffer, right?
Psalm 1 .1, he departs from evil, he departs from evildoers. The righteous person does not desire the intimate company of the wicked. He doesn't desire their partnership. He does not desire or envy their life or their conduct or their destiny or their possessions.
Psalm 34, verse 14, depart from evil and do good. Same command, seek peace and pursue it. Job 28, 28, behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. And to depart from evil is understanding. Here are the moral categories, wisdom and departing from evil, that is understanding.
Proverbs 16 .6, by loving kindness and truth, iniquity is atoned for. And by the fear of the Lord, one keeps away from evil. The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom is what keeps our feet from the evil path.
When we step onto the evil path and pursue a course of sin and rebellion, it is because we do not fear God adequately. The fear of the Lord keeps one from the evil way. Proverbs 16 .17, the highway of the upright is to depart from evil.
He who watches his way preserves his life. The mark of one who has been inwardly transformed by the grace of God and who fears the Lord is that he will depart from evil and pursue that which is good and righteous.
Because the righteous man knows that Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds. Titus 2, verse 14.
Since that is what God has given his son to accomplish, our holiness and our pursuit of good deeds to deliver us from every lawless deed, if that's what God has intended in offering up his son as a sacrifice for sinners, then we would be wise to pursue the very end that God has in giving up his son for us, to turn us from every lawless deed and to pursue good deeds.
So my question, do you fear the Lord? And does your fear of the Lord cause you to depart from evil, to turn away from the sinful path and to do that which is good and true and pleasing in his sight so that God may be pleased with our paths?
So the righteous man is pure in his walk, that's verse 27. Second, he is protected by his God, verse 28. Read verse 28. For the Lord loves justice and does not forsake his godly ones. They are preserved or kept forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off.
The Lord loves justice. Justice and righteousness are inseparably linked. They're linked because when God makes us righteous, he declares us to be just or declares us to be righteous. In fact, you even hear it in the words justified and righteous.
The righteous man is one who has been justified. He has been declared righteous, not because he practices righteousness and has earned a declaration of righteousness, but a righteous man is declared righteous before the bar of God on the basis of faith.
And so the righteous man is one for whom justice has been satisfied in the person of Christ. So a righteous man is a just man or one who is made just or justified because the righteousness of another has been credited or imputed to his account.
So the righteousness of God is what causes him to justify us because the sacrifice of Christ has paid the price for our sin. And so since God is just, he must declare righteous those for whom his son has died.
And it would be therefore unrighteous and unjust for God to punish in eternal damnation those for whom his son has died. If his son has died for somebody, that person must be declared righteous in time, therefore justified, and it would be unjust for God to punish those whose sins have already been paid for.
That is why he can link in verse 28, the justice of God and the being forever preserved for our eternal inheritance to inherit the land in verse 29. Psalm 11, verse seven says, "'The Lord is righteous and he loves righteousness.
"'The Lord loves righteousness and the Lord loves justice.'". Psalm 45, verses six and seven. And these words, by the way, are the words spoken by the father to the son, says, "'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
"'A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. "'You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. "'Therefore God, your God, has anointed you "'with the oil of joy above your fellows.'".
Psalm 99, verse four, "'The strength of the king loves justice. "'You have established equity. "'You have exalted justice and righteousness in Jacob.'". You hear how justice and righteousness go together?
So we're talking about a God who is just and righteous, and the psalmist describing the righteous ones, and in the context of that, describing us being preserved forever, being protected by God, the psalmist reminds us that God loves justice.
Verse 28, "'The Lord loves justice, "'and therefore he does not, in fact, he will not.'". And I would go even further to say, he cannot forsake his godly ones. He cannot forsake the righteous. Because God is just, he will not forsake his justified or just ones.
Those who have been justified, those who have been declared righteous, God will not forget. He cannot forget them. The righteous cannot be abandoned. They cannot be cast off. They cannot be forsaken. They cannot be left alone.
They cannot forever perish. They cannot be cut off to not inherit the land. Why is that? Because the Lord loves justice. And because God loves justice, he cannot do something that is unjust, and it would be unjust and unrighteous for God to abandon or forsaken his godly ones.
Psalm, look at verse 30 of Psalm 37. "'The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, "'and his tongue speaks justice.'". So if the Lord loves justice, and one of the marks in verse 30 of a righteous man is that he speaks that which is just, because the word of God fills his heart, and so his ways and his words are just in the sight of God, then God must also love the righteous one whom he has justified and who speaks justice.
And therefore the Lord will preserve him forever. The descendants of the wicked will be cut off, but he cannot, he will not, and he does not forsake his godly ones. If he were to cut off the righteous, that would be an injustice, because God will not damn those who have been declared righteous by his grace.
That would be a slight against his justice. So this obviously speaks then to the issue of whether a righteous one can eventually perish and be forsaken and lose his salvation. You cannot, why? Because if God has laid your sin upon his son and has forgiven you of that sin, and he has declared you righteous, not on your own merits, but on the merits of another who lived and died in your place, then it would be unjust for God to take that righteous and just one who has been forgiven and to cast them off into hell so that they might perish and be forsaken forever.
Therefore, the justice of God keeps him from ever forsaking the righteous ones. Your security, your preservation hinges upon the beginning of verse 28. The Lord loves justice, and therefore he does not forsake his godly ones, because that would be injustice.
They are preserved, and the word preserved here is a word that describes being kept or watched over, observed, in the same way that we talked about in verse 18, when we saw that the Lord knows the days of the blameless, he is intimately acquainted with the ways and the days of the blameless, the righteous.
He knows it. Well, he observes and watches over, guards, protects, and keeps. That's what it means to be preserved. The Lord will watch over the paths of the righteous forever. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, Psalm 1, verse 6, but the way of the wicked will perish.
So our God is intimately acquainted with the righteous, with all of our doings, all of our ways, all of our days, the content of our days. He knows our frame, and he knows our future, and he is keeping us for it.
The righteous are the objects of God's care and concern. But contrast that to how the wicked are treated in verse 28, and what they receive, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. That, my friends, is the most tragic end that could befall anyone, is to have their descendants cut off.
Not just themselves to lose themselves and their own soul, but to have their descendants perish after them. Psalm 37, verse 26, look at verse 26. Notice how the descendants of the righteous and the descendants of the wicked are contrasted.
All day long, he is gracious and lends, that is the righteous, and his descendants are a blessing. So the righteous, their descendants are a blessing. The wicked, verse 28, their descendants will be cut off.
The descendants of the wicked will be cut off. It might be helpful for us to think about what this would mean in terms of a Jewish culture and a Jewish understanding, particularly in the ancient world, of having your descendants either be a blessing or to be cut off.
In the Jewish mindset, in their culture, they valued legacy. They thought not just in terms of their children, but in terms of their children's children. They thought that way, they saved that way, they passed down land that way.
They were planning not just for today and next week, but they were planning in terms of their entire lineage and legacy. Jews did not think of life in terms of the moment just for themselves, but instead, they thought of their children and their children's children in the decisions that they made, at least the righteous Jews did.
A contrast to that with how today, we don't think of the future at all. We have leveraged our children's future so that we can enjoy the peak prosperity that we do in our land today. And so we borrow against future generations.
We spend the money of future generations. We waste the inheritance of future generations and think to ourselves that the best way to live is to not leave anything for the future, but instead to just spend everything we have right up to the last minute until we have not a dime left, and then we die after we spent our last nickel.
That's the mentality of our modern age, but that's not how Jews thought. We don't think about the future. We don't think about our children or our children's children. But by we, I mean our entire culture, our society doesn't think in those terms.
I trust that this would be different amongst those of you who are sitting here. Whereas our culture sacrifices the future for the now, in ancient times, particularly Jewish culture, they were willing to sacrifice the now to ensure the blessing and the benefit and the continuation of the future and future generations.
Their concern was for the generations to come. The blessing of the generations to come, the prosperity of the generations to come. And the biggest blessing, one of the biggest blessings that a Jew could have was to know that his descendants would live in abundant shalom and peace and wholeness and prosperity walking in the ways of Yahweh.
That was the best thing that a righteous person could hope for. So the righteous are promised in verse 26 that their descendants will be a blessing. The wicked are promised in verse 28 that their descendants will be cut off.
And the assumption here, by the way, is that the descendants would be marked by the same thing that characterized their ancestors. So it's not that a righteous man can have wicked descendants and God will bless the wicked people of a righteous progenitor.
It's the opposite. It's the assumption is given the nature of a parent's influence upon their children, that the righteous descendants, the descendants are blessed and are a blessing because they are following in the same path that their parents went.
And the assumption with the wicked is the same. The descendants are cut off, not in spite of being wicked, but actually because they followed in the same path that their parents walked. So the descendants of the righteous who continue in the paths of their fathers will be blessed as their fathers were.
And the children of the wicked who persist in the rebellion of their parents will likewise be cut off. That, of course, assumes a profound impact from parents to children. And that is an impact that's not just true in ancient cultures, it is an impact that is true today.
One of the great and profound losses to a wicked person is not just to perish themselves, but for them to perish alongside of those they have damned by their influence. To see not just themselves cut off from any blessing or grace, for all of eternity, but to see their descendants whom they have cursed by their own lifestyle cut off as well.
The judgment that falls on the lineage of a wicked person is one of the worst judgments of all. His descendants will be cut off. That just cuts right to the heart of all of it. The righteous man is a man who's pure in his walk, he is protected by his God.
And third, verse 29, he is promised a reward. Verse 29, the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. Now, we don't need to spend a lot of time on this verse, you'll say, thankfully, because we have gone through the issues of the land promise all the way through this Psalm.
This is the central promise of this Psalm that the righteous will inherit the land and the wicked will be cut off. So it is repeated throughout the Psalm. And if you're keeping track, the land is mentioned in verse three, not in terms of eternal future prosperity, but it is mentioned we are to dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
It's mentioned in verse nine, the promise of the future land inheritance, mentioned in verse nine, verse 11, verse 22, here in verse 29, and then again, later in our section, verse 34. In verse nine, we are told that we are to wait on the Lord and inherit the land.
In verse 11, the humble will inherit the land, and that involves an abundant shalom or prosperity that will last forever. Verse 22, those who are blessed by God inherit the land. Verse 29 shows us that this is not a temporal land.
It's not a physical inheritance in this life that is intended here because it is something that will last forever. It is something that is possessed for eternity, and we will dwell in it forever. And in verse 34, the inheriting of the land will be coupled with our exaltation.
You will be exalted to inherit the land. Notice in verse 27, the word abide, you will abide forever. Verse 29, the word dwell, you will dwell in it forever. It's the same word used there, translated two different ways, meaning that in verse 27, those who depart from evil and do good, you will inherit the land and live in that land, dwell in it, abide in it forever.
So verse 27, by allusion has in view the land as well, that promise, you're going to abide forever. He's not talking about abiding and living in this world, in this land today forever. Instead, he's describing a future inheritance, a future promise that will go on forever.
Verse 29, the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever. The righteous man walks pure with the confidence that he is protected and preserved by God for his eternal inheritance in the land that he will live in and dwell in forever.
So what is our eternal dwelling? It is a land. In the ultimate sense, it is the new heavens and the new earth. But in a nearer sense, the land that we will inherit with the saints of the Old Testament is the promised land, a land that Abraham was promised, but he never possessed, never owned it in his life.
Israel never occupied it. Israel never possessed all of it. It's not a spiritual thing or a symbolic thing. It's not alluding to the church. It's not describing some spiritual inheritance that we sort of symbolize or turn this into an allegory.
It is describing a land promised to Abraham that will be blessed, productive, fruitful, and renewed by Yahweh during the coming kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the land that is being described.
At the beginning of that, according to Revelation 20, all the Old Testament saints will be resurrected and we will come back with Christ. And in resurrected form, we will dwell with him and we will reign with him for a thousand years on this planet in that land that was promised to Abraham.
After that kingdom is done, this entire creation will be resurrected and renewed and there will be a new heavens and a new earth in which only righteousness dwells. That's 2 Peter 3. And in that new heavens and that new earth, the wicked will be cut off and excluded from it.
And you and I will enjoy life eternal in a creation where we cannot die. We will never deteriorate. We will never grow old and we will dwell in that and live in that in resurrected bodies forever. That is the promise.
If you have your hope fixed on that, 1 John says, you will be pure just as he is pure because we are looking for our Lord to return and to transform us into his image. And if you have your eyes fixed on dwelling in that land forever, you will depart from evil and you will pursue and go after and do that which is good.
You will desire to be pure because you have your eyes fixed on a reward at the end of it all. And Paul was able to say with utter certainty and confidence in the midst of all of his afflictions and all of his trials, he said this, 2 Timothy 4, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.
To him be the glory forever and ever, amen. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely through to his eternal kingdom. That is our hope. That is what the righteous are promised. And that is what God is preserving us for, our eternal inheritance.
Our father, we are grateful to you for the rich blessing that is ours in the future. And we have seen over and over in this psalm, your promise to those who are yours, to the righteous, to those declared righteous through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And Lord, we are desirous that we would fix our hearts and our minds upon that great end, that great promise. And that by your grace, you would work in us your sanctifying work to purify us from every evil, from the stain of sin, that you would give to us a holy hatred for iniquity and transgression, that you would work in us repentance, a continual life of turning from sin and iniquity so that we may do and pursue that which is good and holy and righteous and true.
Give us a proper love and affection for holiness and righteousness and purity. We pray that you would do this work in us for the glory of Christ. We pray that you would give us a hatred for sin so that we may find it repulsive, that we may not in any way think that doing evil is sport, that we may walk in the paths of our great God and pursue righteousness, that you would work within us wisdom so that we may walk in a way that is pleasing to you,.
Our great God.
We ask this in Christ's name, amen.
Would you please stand as we dismiss our service this morning and sing together what a friend we have in Jesus.
What sins and griefs to pay for
Out of him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy. To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority.
For all time and now and forever. And all God's people said, amen. And you are dismissed, have a great week.
