Psalm 37 (Responding To Evil)

Psalm 1 and Psalm 42 as a Model for Life’s Highs and Lows

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Shepherd Church podcast. My name is Kendall, and I'm so thankful that I get to be bringing this message to you today from the book of Psalms.

And I love the Psalms because they describe all of life. Sometimes you're feeling blessed like that tree that we talked about in Psalm 1 that is planted beside the streams of living water, and then there's other times where it feels like your soul is in the throes of despair and you have to grab yourself and shake yourself and preach the truth of God to yourself, like we discovered last week in Psalm 42.

And of course, all of us have been there. We've been on the mountaintops with God, and then sometimes we've been in the valleys. We've been in the gardens, and we've also been in the deserts. And I love the fact that Psalms really describes every situation that you and I can walk through as a Christian in this life, which makes it an incredibly relevant book for you and I to be studying.

The Question of How the Godly Respond to Evil

Now, today, I want us to continue our study in this book by looking at Psalm 37, which is a really important psalm, and it's a psalm that's grappling with the question, how do the godly respond to evil in the world?

How do we respond when this world perpetrates and perpetuates all kinds of evil, and how do we think and how do we act when the wicked seem to be prospering, when evil thrives? What are we supposed to do?

And again, this is an incredibly relevant thing for us to be looking at, especially in light of the current events that have been happening in our nation. You know, much like the world that we live in, David lived in a similar world where the world around him seemed to be in open rebellion against God, where the wicked were seeming to prosper and to win, and where hatred was abounding, and where racism and sexism is burying people under an inescapable weight, and David, along with us, are tempted to respond to the world in turn with hate and with malice, just like the world does to us.

We are tempted to fight fire with fire, we are tempted to fight hate with hate, and evil for evil, and we're honestly and shockingly getting to see this play out right before our very eyes this week in Minnesota and in various cities across the country.

Just this week, and I hope you've been following, but if you haven't, just this week a law enforcement officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota used the full weight of his body to crush another human being, his name was George Floyd, to death.

And there's so much that we could say about that, but we can clearly call that evil. There's no justification whatsoever for what this man did. It was awful to watch, and it's rightly angered an entire nation.

So how are we supposed to respond to that? How are we supposed to speak into that? Well, I think Psalm 37 has something really powerful to say to us because we've seen lots of responses. Some have taken to the streets and they've begun looting and stealing and burning down buildings and committing all manner of violence and retaliation for what has happened.

And some have used this opportunity as a moment for sin to do things that they wanted to do, but they didn't have an opportunity to do, so now in the wake of this awful tragedy, they're taking advantage of the situation.

You can look on social media, it is filled with all kinds of responses to this, but what do you think that the Lord would have us do? Even beyond this situation, this is just what's most recent. We live in a world where Planned Parenthood and others are senselessly murdering babies and becoming rich off of it.

We live in a world where shady business practices are making people into millionaires. We live in a world where it feels like that the way to prosper and the way to win is to join the world and to embrace its evil and implement its strategies.

But what's God say about that? What are we supposed to think? How are we supposed to think biblically in this? How are we supposed to act in righteous ways? And how are we supposed to respond to a world that is wicked and is evil and is perpetuating all sorts of violence around us?

How are we supposed to act in God-honoring ways in that scenario? To get at that today, I want us to look at Psalm 37 and I want us to see how David deals with this question. Now, I'll admit the Psalm is longer than what we're used to.

It's 40 verses and if you know me, that is a miracle that I would tackle anything larger than four verses, but we're going to go with 40 today and I want you to hang in there. There's going to be a lot of Bible in this passage, but I think we need it.

I am so broken over the way that the world is responding currently and the way that the world always responds to evil and this passage deals beautifully with it. So if you'll hang on with me through these 40 verses, I believe that you will see God's ordained response to evil and I believe that it will be a blessing to your life as you examine it with me.

Reading Psalm 37 and Seeing Its Structure

So let's dive in with Psalm 37. Let's read it together and then let's examine it in its parts. So in him and he will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as light and your judgment as the noonday.

Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in the way of the wicked because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Don't worry about that. Cease from anger and forsake wrath.

Do not fret. It only leads to evildoing for evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more and you will look carefully for his place and and he will not be there but humble.

The humble one here at the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity. The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth, but yet the Lord laughs at him for he sees his day coming.

The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy to slay those who are in an upright in conduct, but their sword will enter into their own hearts and their bows will be broken.

Better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of the wicked. For the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the Lord will sustain the righteous. The Lord knows the days of the blameless and their inheritance will be forever.

They will not be ashamed in the day and the time of evil and then the days of famine. They will have abundance, but the wicked will perish and the enemies of the Lord will be like the glory of the pastures.

They will vanish like smoke. They vanish away. The wicked borrows and doesn't pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives. For those blessed by him by God will inherit the land, but those cursed by him will be cut off.

The steps of the man are established by the Lord and he delights in his way. When he fails, he won't be hurled headlong because the Lord is the one who's holding his hand. The psalmist says in verse 25, I've been young and now I'm old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging for bread.

All day long he is gracious and lends and his descendants are a blessing. Depart from evil and do good so that you will abide forever. For the Lord loves justice and he does not forsake his godly ones.

They're preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked will be cut off. The righteous will inherit the land and will 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. I have seen the wicked, violent man spreading himself like a luxurious tree in its native soil.

Then he passed away and lo, he was no more. I sought for him, but he could not be found. Mark the blameless man, and behold the upright, for the man of peace will have a posterity, but transgressors will be all together destroyed.

The posterity of the wicked will be cut off, but the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord. He is their strength in time of trouble, and the Lord helps them and delivers them. He delivers them from the wicked and he saves them because they take refuge in him.

The Problem of the Wicked in a Fallen World

Now again, I know you're probably thinking, how are we going to get through 40 verses? I know you're thinking it, right? But I promise that my remarks on this passage are actually going to be quite brief because I want the Bible to speak here.

I don't want this to be about Kendall. I don't want this to be about my thoughts. I just want the Bible to speak here. I want the Bible to say what the Bible is going to say, and I want us to examine that.

So in this passage, we have basically four things that the author is trying to do. He's trying to introduce us to the concept that wicked and evil exist, and then he lays out for us three responses to the wicked that each and every single one of us should examine so that we have a proper view of how we, as Christians living in an evil world, can and must respond to it.

So first, he talks about the problem of the wicked. Psalm 37 teaches us that the wicked people really do exist in a fallen world, and that there's all kinds of people who provocate all kinds of wickedness and evil in human society, and that's a fairly obvious point that I don't think we need to labor.

We all know that evil exists. We all know that there's all kinds of wicked and evil people in the world. When I worked in law enforcement for seven years, I met men and women charged with all kinds of egregious sins.

The very first man that I booked into jail was arrested for, as a 50-year-old, was arrested for molesting his infant granddaughter. I've put men and women behind bars who've butchered and hacked fellow human beings to death.

I've met thieves, liars, rapists, and for seven and a half years, I was surrounded by all different kinds of evil. And you don't have to work in a jail to know it exists. You just turn on the news. Just look around you at the state of our society and the state of the world, and you know that evil exists.

But often, what we think about is the kind of evil that's captured and the kind of evil that gets some semblance of human justice, like in a jail. These men and women were captured. They were behind bars.

They were awaiting sentencing, and we certainly know that that's evil. But what about the evil that is not caught? What about the evil that's out there in the world continuing to prosper? What about the evil that doesn't seem like it's going to be dealt with, and it doesn't seem like anyone is noticing it?

What about that kind of evil that the world turns a blind eye to, and justice never seems like it's going to come? That's the kind of evil I think David is talking about here, the kind of evil that looks like it's winning, that looks like it's prospering, that looks like it's thriving.

And David certainly doesn't give us an exhaustive list here, but he does give us a few examples. For instance, he says in verse 12 that the wicked plot and scheme against the righteous and even gnash their teeth in anger against those who follow the Lord, which is an ironic image if you think about it.

I mean, the same kind of behavior that is present in men and women who are in hell, who are angry at God, eternally angry at God, so captivated by their own wrath and stuck in their own anger and their fury that they're clenching and gnashing their teeth without the ability to stop.

David's telling us here that the kind of hellish seeds of anger, eternal anger, are already so present in the wicked because of their sin that they're not only angry against God, but they're also angry against God's people, and they even plot, and they even scheme, and they even strategize against them.

Now, this may be a difficult thing to imagine here in America. Sometimes it doesn't feel like that the text of Scripture is relevant to where we're at because it doesn't feel like that the wicked are scheming and plotting and manipulating and strategizing against God's people like it does in other countries where we see persecution so much more out in the open.

But I'll tell you the truth. This actually really and surely happens, and I'll give you a few examples, but the examples are actually legion. I don't know if you were following along a few years ago in Colorado, but there was a baker who was persecuted by a group of homosexual people.

They were a couple, and it was found out that they were purposely targeting this well-known and outspoken Christian baker, and they were seeking services for their wedding, and they knew that this man was going to reject it.

They knew that this man was not going to bake that cake. And when the openly Christian baker refused, which they knew that he was going to do, based on his religious convictions on marriage, they sued him and attempted to destroy his business.

And it gets even worse than that. This man eventually won a landmark decision in the Supreme Court, which is thoroughly astounding that the case would have went that high, but he won. And I'm assuming, thinking that the persecution was finally over, he went back to his business, but was sued a total of three different times from three different people who were targeting him because of his religious convictions.

The last time was when an attorney who knew about the previous cases came into his shop and tried to get him to bake a cake commemorating the anniversary of his gender transition. Now, that kind of plotting and scheming and tooth gnashing evil that would go after God's people in that way in order to destroy them is exactly what David is talking about.

We see an example of this recently. A Mississippi Pentecostal pastor was fighting for their church to be reopened during the coronavirus. And listen, whether we believe that that was wise or not for this pastor to insist on in-person worship during a pandemic, whether we agree with his reasoning or not, here we have a pastor who is going through the proper channels of local government in order to fight for in-person worship.

And someone plotted, schemed, and with the same sort of tooth gnashing anger burned their church to the ground, mocking them even with a misspelled curse that read, I bet you stay home now, you hypocrites, spelling hypocrites with a K.

That kind of thing is happening in America. That kind of evil is bubbling under the surface of this free democratic country. And whether we like it or not, it is only getting worse. The division in this country and the divide and the politics and the social issues and the anger and the unrest, all this bubbling it feels like.

It feels like everyone in this country is divided along party lines and the anger and the response is just not helpful. I would say these things are definitely happening in our country. Verse 14, another example, teaches us that it's the wicked who are the ones who oppress and subjugate the needy.

It is the wicked in verse 21 who borrow money with no intention to pay back the loan. It is the wicked, according to verse 32, that spy on the godly and seek to harm them and who are punishing them for their righteousness.

It's the wicked in verse 7 who are prospering and who are getting ahead because of their schemes. No one has to be convinced that evil exists in this world, but what I think we're seeing here is more than just the existence of evil.

What I think we're seeing is a sort of ungodly hatred for the people of God, where men and women are spending all kinds of energy using a sort of demonically fueled aggression against God's people. And to top it off, it feels like and it looks like and it seems like they're winning.

Now that should make us zealous for God's justice. That should break our hearts. We should long for justice. And now the psalm is going to play out in a threefold way. How do we respond to the wicked?

How do we respond when it looks like evil is winning? How do we respond when it looks like that the righteous are losing? Verse 1 is really the beginning of the first way that we respond, our response to the wicked, the Christian's response to the wicked.

Verse 1 really begins that by starting quite simply and saying, don't fret because of evildoers. Verse 7 continues that theme and it says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of those who prosper in his way because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

What David is trying to get at here is not to let yourself be given over into worry. Listen, as we're developing this doctrine, this doctrine of how do Christians respond to evil in the world, the very first thing is that we must not be afraid and we must not allow ourselves to be given over to worry.

We must let our hearts be at peace. We cannot be scared. We cannot be panicked. We cannot be consumed by everything that is going on around us. We must have courage and I think it's fair to admit how difficult that is.

When we see evil, it's easy to be afraid. It's easy to be given over to fear. It's easy to allow the news media clickbait fake news culture that will take things and spin them in order to inflate the disaster, in order to gaslight the disaster.

It's easy to look at that and allow that to make us to be afraid or to be nervous or anxious or frustrated. But this text is going to teach us and we'll look at this in just a moment how we don't have to be afraid and we don't have to worry.

We'll see that again in a moment. But for right now, let us simply observe that the psalmist is making a command under the power and the authority of the Holy Spirit that Christians are to respond to evil without fear.

That's the first thing. The second thing, the second way that Christians are supposed to respond to evil is to not be envious of it. Verse one again is instructive as it finishes this way, it says, be not envious towards wrongdoers.

Meaning, even though it seems like they're succeeding, don't allow your heart to become sour and to long for their sort of poisoned blessings because they're not from God. Again, we're going to see why this is true in just a moment.

But right now, the second thing that the psalmist is saying under the power and the guidance of the Holy Spirit is for Christians to respond to evil, not with fear, not with envy. Second or the third thing it tells us in verse eight is not to respond in anger.

David says, cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not worry because it only leads to sin. And I think that this is incredibly instructive for you and I right now in this time that we're living in and in this world that we're living in because it seems like evil is winning and it seems like that we should be angry, that we should be living in our frustrations and fueled by the same sort of aggression that's causing the world to win.

But don't allow yourself to go that way. The psalmist is saying, biblically speaking, don't allow yourself to envy or worry or be fueled with sort of righteous wrath because these emotions don't produce the righteousness of God.

These responses do not overturn the wickedness that is being perpetrated in our society, but they sort of make us feel better because they give us this sort of vigilante justice that our hearts are longing for and they substitute real justice for our justice.

And this passage is going to teach us how that is just not good, that God's justice is better. So don't allow your hearts to be filled with the sort of anger that is going to produce sin in you and produce unrighteousness in you.

It's okay to be angry and not sin. The Bible does give us an example of that, but it's not okay to be angry and to be let down this path of sin and wickedness, which is what this passage is thoroughly speaking against.

Three negative commands right in a row, don't worry, don't be anxious, do not be angry. Then it turns to some positive commands, and I'm just going to read through these rather quickly. How do we as Christians respond to evil in the world?

Here's a few examples. Trust in the Lord and do good, verse three. Dwell on the land and cultivate faithfulness. So instead of giving yourself over to worry and envy and anger, trust in God. Use your energy and your passion to do good in the world.

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Verse four, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Verse five, commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him and he will do it.

Verse seven, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way. Verse 11, but the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

Verse 16, better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of the wicked. Verse 34, wait for the Lord and keep his way and he will exalt you. Now this all might seem to you like a bunch of platitudes.

Like you might even be wondering, does the Bible really mean that we're to simply just trust in God? That we're to put our proverbial heads in the sand and that we're to try to fight evil by doing nothing?

That's what it might feel like to you. That we're not to raise up our arms, we're not to commit any violence, we're not to worry, we're not to be fueled with anger, and that we're seriously just to humble ourselves and be quiet, do good, and pursue righteousness, live meekly, delight in the Lord, trust in him in everything we do, and wait on him.

Is that what it's saying? That's absolutely what it's saying. That is exactly what this text is telling us to do. While evil exists in our world, and while it's going to prod you and tempt you to get involved in an emotionally driven response, and it's going to tempt you to be angry and to sin in your statements and in your action and your character, the Bible says, trust, hope, seek, delight, rest, and wait in God.

And you might be asking yourself, why would God tell us to live this way? Doesn't he want us to be part of the solution? Doesn't he want to fight against the evil that is happening in this world? And it's here that I think we need to see the second response that is listed in the psalm.

You know, first, God tells us what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to trust, hope, seek, delight, rest, and wait in God while not being angry, while not being envious, and while not being afraid.

Those are the commands that this passage is teaching us to do. But that's not all it tells us. It tells us how God responds, and God responds in two ways. God responds first to the wicked, and then God responds to the righteous.

And this is why. This is utterly why. You and I do not have to sin. We do not have to be angry. We do not have to be threatened. We don't have to worry, and we don't have to be anxious, and we don't have to be envious.

This is why, because of the way God responds first to the wicked, and we'll look at that right now. Verse 13 begins this section, and it tells us how God first and foremost responds to the wicked. And it says that in verse 13, the Lord laughs at them.

The Lord laughs at them, for he sees their day coming. You see, while you and I are tempted to lose heart, and to be angry, and to be scared, or be envious of the wicked, God is laughing at them, because they attempt to amass an empire built upon grass that is totally going to wither.

Verse 2 demonstrates how temporal their success and how limited their kingdom truly is. David says it like this, for they will wither quickly like grass, and they will fade like the green herb. You see, from God's perspective, these men are like ants.

They're here today and then gone tomorrow. They're building impressive little holes in the sand, but soon they're all going to be gone. Like grass, they're soon going to wither. And even more than that, they're going to receive no inheritance.

Verse 9 and 10 is striking here. It says, for the evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait on the Lord, they will inherit the land. Verse 10, yet a little while, the wicked man will be no more, and you will look carefully for his place, and he will not be there.

Think about what David is saying here. All that the wicked have, everything that they own, is in this life. They may live better than we do, they may have more than we have, they may go further than we go, and they may amass tremendous wealth in this life, but they cannot take it with them into hell.

Think about it. Where is Nero Caesar in his palaces? After a single generation, he was gone, and so was his wealth. Where's Herod? King Herod and the beautiful houses that he built, or the Herodian temple that sat atop the Mount of Jerusalem?

It's gone. After a single generation, God visited the wickedness in Jerusalem and leveled it to the ground through the Roman armies. It's gone. The wicked, like grass, will quickly fade. Think about a modern example, or at least a semi-modern example.

Where's the Third Reich? Where's the Reichstag? Where's the Nazi party? Yeah, you can argue that there's examples of this that are underground, but all of it, at least from a German perspective, was totally pummeled to the ground in just a few years.

They prophesied this thousand-year reign of the Third Reich, and yet in just a few short years, all of it was gone. If you think about our day, our time, where's the wicked going to be in a hundred years from now, if the Lord decides to tarry that long?

They will be no more. Their kingdom will be in decay. Moth and rust are going to level them, and they will be nothing but a footnote in a dusty history book that commemorates their ruin. That's the glory of the wicked.

For 70, 80, 90 years, they have what they wanted, and for the rest of their existence, they have an eternity of agony, because their heaven was in this life, and now their eternity is in hell. But this is not so for the righteous.

Our inheritance is eternal because of what Jesus Christ has done in bringing us into his kingdom. We're never going to see decay. While it seems like the wicked are prospering in this life, and they're having their heaven here on earth, the righteous are awaiting the day when we step into Christ's incorruptible kingdom forever, the day when we meet the Lord Jesus face to face, the day when all pain is crushed, and when all the wicked become his eternal footstool, and you and I live forever with him in perfect peace and safety and wellness.

And look at, guess what? If the wicked have their heaven now, let them have it. If they have their blessings now, let them have it. For what does it profit a man to gain the entire world, but yet to forfeit his own soul?

What real gain is it for a man or a woman to have heaven here on earth for the sum total of at maximum 120 years, and then to die and lose every single bit of it in the eternal flames of hell? But not for the righteous.

For while you and I may live the most wretched life here on this little floating blue rock, while we may endure all kinds of pain, while we may be accosted on every side, provoked and persecuted, hated and abused, while you and I could experience hell on earth, I want you to remember something, dear child of God, that this life is nothing but a drop of water in comparison to a universe of oceans.

When in compared with eternity and what God is doing for you, this life is absolutely nothing in comparison to that. You can have your hell on earth, and you can have it with hope, because God is working infinite into you.

Because of Jesus Christ, you and I will not be like the wicked who withers after a single generation of triumph. You and I are going to be kept for eternal victory, while the wicked will die an eternal death of defeat.

And that, my brothers and sisters, is why you and I do not need to resort to violence. That's why we don't need to riot. That's why we don't need to set fire to buildings, and that's why we do not need to despair.

That is why we do not need to be given over into fear, and that's why you and I really can trust God, we really can rest in His truth, and we really can wait for His justice to come and not take it into our own hands, because the wicked will not win.

Though they seem like they are triumphing right now, they will be thoroughly destroyed in an instant. Look at what David says in verse 15 -20, their sword will enter their own heart, and their bows are going to be broken, which really is just pointing to the fact that every single weapon that they have used against us is going to soon be turned on them.

The bow that they aim at us is soon going to eternally point squarely at their chest as they are plunged into eternal ruin. The sword that they use to harm the children of God will be used on them. The words that they use to weaponize against you are going to be spoken over them.

The fierce anger that fueled their oppression is going to be poured out on them. If you look at any evil that is currently thriving in this world, that evil is temporary, it is limited, and it will utterly be defeated.

This is why the psalmist can make such a bold statement in verse 16 where he says, Better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked. This is why he can tell us in verse 17 that the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the Lord is going to sustain the righteous.

Even though the wicked seem like they're prospering right now, they are going to be broken. Better is the little that you and I currently have than the abundance that is going to eternally crush the damned.

The psalmist tells us in verse 18, the Lord knows the days of the blameless. Verse 13, he says, the Lord laughs at the wicked because he knows their day. He knows when they're going to be destroyed, but the Lord knows our days, and he says to us that our inheritance will be forever.

And I just want to point out here, the Lord knows how we suffer. He says the Lord knows our days. The Lord knows how we live. The Lord knows how we think. The Lord knows what happens in our life. The Lord knows how we suffer, and the Lord knows how painful things are on this side of eternity.

And while David, the author, had no idea how all of this was going to work under the authority of the Holy Spirit, he wrote these words. But we see these words coming to their fullest completion when the Lord Jesus Christ steps onto this planet.

Jesus Christ came to this world as the only righteous one. He's the only human being who could ever be called blameless by God. And in every human way imaginable, he experienced what you and I experienced.

He experienced hunger pains. He experienced rejection. He experienced abandonment. He experienced the lack and want of this life. He experienced thirst. He experienced beatens. He experienced cursings and stabbings and betrayal.

He was murdered. His life was cut short at 33 years of age, all while the wicked cheered and seemed like they were winning and seemed like they were prospering. But how few their days of triumph truly were.

For on the cross, Jesus sealed their eternal fate while also sealing our eternal reward. Though we suffer in this life, he won for us an eternal inheritance. Far beyond what David could have imagined as he surveyed the physical land of Israel and he said that the inheritance is going to be for the land, Jesus Christ won us the new heavens and the new earth.

He won us a new land, a global, physical, redeemed, restored planet filled with mercy, grace, and love and purged of all of its curse and all of its evil, where you and I are going to live forever in an eternal paradise with our King, protected from any slithering satanic intruders for eternity.

David tells us in verse 19, they will not be ashamed in the time of evil and in the days of famine, they will have an abundance. Again, all of this is true because of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, you and I are never going to be put to shame, even for a moment that we're going to endure shame in this life, ultimately, we're never going to be put to shame.

This psalm looks beyond David. This psalm looks further than David could possibly see. It looks beyond what the natural man could grasp and it looks to the one and only God who is working all of these things out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

And what's the purpose of God? The purpose of God is that you and I would abstain from evil in this life, that we would meet evil with good, that we would trust the Lord and wait on His perfect justice to pour down the mountains like water, that we would rest in His goodness and His truth and that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is going to be the one that's going to fight our battles.

He's going to be the one who puts down evil and squashes every rebellion in His good time. Therefore, it's not about us taking matters into our own hands, it's about trusting the hands of God to execute justice.

Things like racism are going to be no more because God is going to put them down, even though right now it feels like these things will never end. Sexism is going to be no more because God is going to put it down.

Wars and rumors of wars are going to be no more because God is going to squash that. Riots and burning, mob riots and lynchings, police brutality and systemic violence, all of these things are going to be put down by God in His good time.

And while I know that every fiber of our being wants to grab the pitchfork and the torches and run angrily with the mobs and pillage, I'm asking us to consider Psalm 37 as the biblical approach, that this is what we're in fact called to do.