Well, as I think all of you know, we're still making our way in a stately fashion through the 1689 Confession. We've been in Chapter 31, which is titled, Of the State of Man After Death and of the Resurrection of the Dead, for the last couple of times, actually more than that, actually, I think it's been about a month and a half, we've been on a digression Before we talked about eternal punishment and eternal blessing, I thought it would be good to get to some of the fundamental issues, and that really comes down to who God is. So we started talking some time ago about God's holiness, and then about God's righteousness and justice. Now as I've been thinking about these issues, making this first digression, I've kind of come upon a second digression with your indulgence. For a couple reasons. First of all, I find it interesting myself as I kind of think through issues and I follow other ideas in my mind as one thought leads to another, one theme leads to another. Another reason is that because of the focus of the 1689 Confession being on individual issues, individual topics of theology, it's sometimes easy to get a little too narrow and And so people maybe aren't getting fed as well as they might otherwise be. And so if we broaden our scope a bit, I think that helps us not only understand the topics under particular consideration, but we also get a chance to maybe get a bit of a glimpse outside of the specific topic that we're addressing. So I hope this will be fruitful and worthwhile for us all. The digression that I refer to is one that does directly link with God's righteousness and justice, and that is looking at the question, if God is so good, if God is so righteous and just, why is it that the wicked prosper while the righteous often suffer? That's one of the most common questions throughout history. It's a major theme in the book of Job, for example. Remember the friends of Job who saw Job suffering so so much after the death of his children and all his belongings being taken away and the severe disease he was suffering from. Well, their answer to Job in a nutshell was, you must be a really bad sinner for all this bad stuff to happen to you. And the truth was, Job was a righteous man. We get that from God's own mouth. And yet, the lesson in Job is that the righteous suffer for God's inscrutable purposes. We know that whatever God does is right, and so we just endure the suffering for God's sake because we know He has our good in mind, and He'll be glorified. We also, in our day, with the cult of celebrity, people always want to know who's dating whom, who's marrying whom, who's divorcing whom, what are the rich and beautiful people doing, and trying to almost live a surrogate existence through these people. Maybe my life is boring and dull and nothing is going on, I'm not beautiful or rich, but I can sure enjoy the lives of these rich celebrities. and say, wow, if I could just be like those people. And there are lots of temptations, maybe not so much to us, I hope, but to many people in this world, to envy those people who have really no desire to please God. People who hate God, who have no time for God, very often seem to be those who are most wealthy, most prosperous. Even many professing believers have departed the faith If they've gone through a time of great suffering, of great trial, they see their lives with so many negative things happening, and they see a friend of theirs who maybe doesn't care at all about God, who's prospering, they could even abandon the faith because of a wrong mindset like that. And they may believe that God has treated them unfairly. Look, God, I've tried to follow you. How come all these things are happening to me? And they just give up. Also, many unbelievers have ignored the faith because they see their life so pleasant, so good, so happy, that they think they don't need God. Or maybe you see this in history, some men even defiantly shake their fist at God and deny God and say, Lord, if you're there, why don't you strike me down for my blasphemy? And God doesn't strike them down for their blasphemy at that moment. So they figure, well, God doesn't really care or he's not even there. So these kinds of issues with the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering can really cause a lot of trouble, especially for people who are maybe new Christians or not very well taught in the scriptures. And so I want to look at these issues through the eyes of the psalmist. In Psalm 37 and 73, this topic is addressed very thoroughly in these psalms. Remember, from the broader perspective, we're thinking of God's righteousness and God's justice. In a specific instance, how can God be righteous if the wicked prosper and the righteous themselves suffer? One nice thing about these two Psalms is they have the same theme, and the numbers of the Psalms are just the reverse of each other. Psalm 37, Psalm 73. I know myself, except for a few well-known Psalms, you have a verse that pops into your head, you know it's from the Psalms somewhere, but you don't have time to go flipping through 150 different Psalms to figure out where it is. If your concordance isn't handy, or Brian's not handy, Brian seems to know where all the verses are in the Psalms. So he's my resource if he's around, if my concordance isn't handy. But sometimes you think, well, that's Psalm something, and I can't remember where it is. Well, if you're thinking about this topic, if you can remember Psalm 37, just flip the numbers, you have Psalm 73, or vice versa. Hopefully that'll sort of stick in your head, and you can address these issues if they pop up in your own heart. or in the hearts of those people who might ask these kinds of questions. Let's look at Psalm 37 first. This is a Psalm of David. Psalm 73 is a Psalm of Asaph. Psalm 37 is what's called an acrostic. There are a number of acrostic Psalms. What that means is in the Hebrew poetic format, very often they will take verses and they will use the letters of their alphabet for the lines of the poem and then increment the letters. So we might have a poem that begins with lines starting with A and then B and C and D. A similar thing happens in this Psalm 37. As the Psalm progresses, the lines of the poems begin with subsequent letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So there might be several verses that begin with the letter Aleph and so forth. What I want to do is Just read through this psalm, make a few comments. I'm not going to do a lot of elaborations this morning because I think it very much speaks for itself. I'll talk about a few of the verses early on and then let some of the later verses speak for themselves. Psalm, although it thematically addresses the same kinds of issues, doesn't really have much of a progression. It's sort of like many of the chapters in Proverbs where you have just a number of statements that may have some thematic connection but don't necessarily follow each other in a sequence. Let's start reading Psalm 37. David begins, do not fret because of evil doers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. So we have here first a negative command that is do not fret. It's a command to stop doing something that you are doing or might be tempted to do. It's almost as if David's saying, why would you want to be envious of those who have this pleasure only for a moment? Certainly sin and iniquity has its momentary pleasures, but they vanish away. And those who do iniquity shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as a green herb. They flourish for a moment, but soon pass away. Verse three has a positive command. actually two positive commands. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. So while we say do not fret in verse one, verse three says on a positive note trust the Lord and do good. Let me read you a couple of quotes from Charles Spurgeon here. When I am studying or thinking about the Psalms, the first thing I turn to if I want some further understanding is the Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon. And I know that many of you have profited from that as well. Not only does it have a lot of Spurgeon's comments on it, but he also takes the comments from many, many theologians from the past generations and puts them in the appropriate places in the Psalms. So if you want to get a jump start on what a Psalm means, what it's trying to say, that's a good reference. And he says about this trust in the Lord, faith cures fretting. Let me read that again. Faith cures fretting. The antidote to fretting from verse one is to trust in the Lord. Sight is cross-eyed and views things only as they seem, hence her envy. Faith has clearer optics to behold things as they really are, hence her peace. Now, people who are not people of faith say that, if I see it, then I can believe it. But the truth is, your eyes can deceive you. You can see things that may look like a rich person is prospering on the surface, but you don't see the real thing going on behind the scenes. The fact that their destiny, unless they turn to Christ, is one of great torment and great suffering, and their pleasure is only for a moment. So if we are looking only with the eyes of the flesh, we tend to envy those who have more than we do. And yet if we have the eyes of faith, we can be peaceful as we trust in the Lord. And not only do we trust in the Lord, but we do good. And Spurgeon continues, true faith is actively obedient. Doing good is a fine remedy for fretting. There is a joy in holy activity which drives away the rust of discontent. That's an end quote. So if we fill our time with good deeds, we won't have time to fret. I've seen this in my own life as I tend to, if I tend to feel sorry for myself or wonder what's God doing, my life just seems to be going nowhere. Part of the problem is I'm spending too much time focused on me, worrying about me, and I'm the focus of my life. But when you turn your life outward, looking at God, looking at other people, filling your life with good things, that takes away that focus, and you get so much joy out of doing those good things that you do not have time to fret. Let's move on to verse four. David's building here. He says, trust, do good, verse 3, then delight yourself in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Spurgeon says, make Jehovah the joy and rejoicing of thy spirit. Bad men delight in carnal objects. Do not envy them if they are allowed to take their fill in such vain idols. Look thou to thy better delight and fill thyself to the full with thy more sublime portion. In a certain sense, imitate the wicked. They delight in their portion. Take care to delight in yours. And so far from envying you, you will pity them. There is no room for fretting if we remember that God is ours, but there is every incentive to sacred enjoyment of the most elevated and ecstatic kind. Every name, attribute, word, or deed of Jehovah should be delightful to us." Those of you who have read John Piper's book Desiring God know that he says that all of us were made to desire pleasure. Those who Our unbelievers try to find their pleasure in worldly things. And those who know God are to find their pleasure in God himself. So we both are following similar kinds of impulses in the sense that we all want pleasure. None of us, unless we have some sort of mental illness, want things that are going to be painful to us or hurt us or you don't like the things you hate. But it's the object of those pleasures that is at issue here. Those people who pursue earthly things have earthly pleasures. Those who pursue heavenly things, those people who pursue God himself, receive God himself in great abundance. So we delight in the Lord and he will give the desires of your heart. Not that, as some people say, God is sort of a heavenly ATM machine. You know, you just say, I'll just keep following God and I'm going to be rich. But what happens is, is when the Lord is your sole delight, you want those things that God wants, and God is abundantly gracious in giving those to us. He's willing to give those sorts of things to us. Verse five says, commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass. This echoes some of the earlier verses. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noon day. So we have this active committing your way to the Lord and trusting in him. Verse seven has sort of a passive view. It says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only causes harm. The unrighteous very often want to fill their lives with much activity in pursuing the lusts of their own flesh. And yet we, in contrast, can rest in the Lord and wait for him. We do not need to fret. Again, this is the second time David has told us not to fret. Spurgeon says it's about the term wait patiently. Time is nothing to God, let it be nothing to thee. God is worth waiting for. He never is before his time, he never is too late. In a story we wait for the end to clear up the plot. We ought not to prejudge the great drama of life, but stay to the closing scene and see to what finish the whole arrives. If you read a good story and you, if you ever put yourself in the mind of the characters, maybe a story you've read many times, you know the end, but the characters in the story have no idea what's coming. And if you put yourself in their place, you might think this is a hopeless situation, but the author in his mind at least for good books that have a good ending, know where the plot is headed. They know where they want to go. Just as God is the author of our lives, He knows where He's going. He's revealed some of that to us in Scripture, but not all of it. But we can trust in Him that He, as the good author, is going to make our story good. He's going to do good in our lives. And so we can just wait for that to happen. We don't have to run around trying to keep all the circumstances just the right way we want them. We can just rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him and not fret because of him who prospers. Spurgeon continues about fretting. There is no good and much evil in worrying your heart about the present success of graceless plotters. Be not enticed into premature judgments. They dishonor God, they weary yourself. Determine, let the wicked succeed as they may, that ye will treat the matter with indifference and never allow a question to be raised as to the righteousness and goodness of the Lord. What if wicked devices succeed and your own plans are defeated? There is more of the love of God in your defeats than in the successes of the wicked." Let me read that again. There is more of the love of God in your defeats than in the successes of the wicked. God loves us, and the wicked he does not love in the same way. They are not his children, and so we can delight even in our difficult times because we know that God loves us. Verse 8 has another command to not fret. Do not fret, it only causes harm. You think David's trying to teach us something here, to remind us of something, of repeating this command three times, do not fret, it only causes harm. Another comment from Spurgeon, fretfulness lies upon the verge of great sin. Many who have indulged a murmuring disposition have at last come to sin in order to gain their fancied rights. You may think, God owes me this. I've served Him for 5, 10, 20, 50 years. God owes me this particular thing. God owes me this grace in my life. And those people who desire that in a wrong way and grasp for it, often do that in great sin because they're not doing it in faith. They're not trusting the Lord, but they're just grabbing what they think belongs to them. David continues, verse 9, For evildoers shall be cut off But those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. That sounds a lot like what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. Even further in verse 11. Let's look at verse 10. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall be no more. Indeed, you will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more. But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. So, we see in the first 11 verses here a number of commands. We see, do not fret, do not be envious, trust in the Lord, do good, feed on his faithfulness, delight yourself in the Lord, commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, do not fret, cease from anger and forsake wrath, do not fret. just a bunch of similar kinds of commands to those of us who would tend to fret because we see the evildoers prospering. And we see also in these first 11 verses a number of contrasts. We see verse 2, how the wicked shall be cut down like the grass. We see the wicked in verse 9, for evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more. Indeed, you will look carefully for his place, and it shall be no more." There's the wicked on the one hand. On the other hand, we have the righteous who will dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. We have the righteous who are given the desires of their heart from the Lord. Verse six, God shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. Verse 9 says, those who wait on the Lord will inherit the earth. And verse 11, the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. So as David looks with the eyes of faith at the true destinies of the wicked and the righteous, he sees what is really happening. The wicked may prosper for a time, but that is only a temporary prosperity. The righteous may suffer for a time, but that's only temporary suffering. Their true delights will come both now and in eternity. Let's look at verse 12, "...the wicked plots against the just and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, for he sees that his day is coming." This is something like what Paul says when he quotes the Old Testament, says, "...vengeance is mine, I will repay it," says the Lord. When you see the wicked plotting against the righteous, it's the Lord who laughs at him, and that's a laugh of derision, not a laugh of hilarity. for he sees that his day is coming. That wicked person may plot for the moment, but his plots will be turned against himself. The wicked have drawn the sword and have bent their bow to cast down the poor and needy to slay those who are of upright conduct. Their sword shall enter their own hearts and their bows shall be broken." That's what happens to the wicked who plot against the righteous. Now I'm just going to read the rest of this psalm without further comment unless I think of something, but you'll see that it kind of just replays a lot of the themes that he's already mentioned in the first eleven verses. So follow along with me and be reminded of these things as David just emphasizes these points. Let's start at verse 16. A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous. The Lord knows the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish. Into smoke they shall vanish away. The wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous shows mercy and gives. For those blessed by him shall inherit the earth, but those cursed by him shall be cut off. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. I have been young and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants baking bread. He is ever merciful and lends, and his descendants are blessed. Depart from evil and do good, and dwell forevermore. For the Lord loves justice, and does not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the descendants of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell in it forever. The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, and his tongue talks of justice. The law of his God is in his heart. None of his steps shall slide. The wicked watches the righteous and seeks to slay him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. Wait on the Lord and keep his way, and he shall exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree. Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more. Indeed, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the blameless man and observe the upright, for the future of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together, the future of the wicked shall be cut off. but the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord. He is their strength in the time of trouble and the Lord shall help them and deliver them. He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him." We're about out of time, but what I'd like to challenge you to do is if you are tempted to envy the wicked, if you are tempted to question from time to time the Lord's goodness in your particular circumstances, Pick out a verse or two from Psalm 37. Let that nourish your mind this week. Maybe you think that as you look at your financial situation that you are not being blessed enough by the Lord or you're just barely hanging on by your fingernails. Well, you could maybe look at verse 16 and hold on to that. A little that the righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked. Maybe you are tending to envy the wicked. You can remember Psalm 37 verse 1, "...Do not be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass." Just pick something here, if that is your temptation today, because the Word of God is a hedge against those sorts of thoughts. I know how easy it is to get into a train of thought where you get a temptation and you mull it over in your mind and soon that temptation turns into discontent. It turns to envy and, of course, it turns to wickedness as we even question the goodness and faithfulness of God. And so to immediately counter that threat, that temptation, as Jesus did when he was tempted, we need to throw up the blockade of Scripture against those things that would want to storm into our minds and take us over and cause us to dishonor God and our thoughts. Any comments or questions before we close? We'll look at Psalm 73 next time. Lord willing. Yes, the Lord is in control. Whatever happens. whether the wicked or righteous prosper and we won't put labels on anybody. In your own mind, you can think about who you have chosen or who you will choose on Tuesday. But the Lord is in control and whatever happens in this world, we have a greater treasure in heaven. So let's not lay up treasures in Washington of all places. Washington, D.C., I mean. Okay, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these Psalms that are so rich and so so pointed in the way that they confront our temptations. We know that David and Asaph and all the men who wrote down your words for us were men just as we are. They suffered the same sorts of doubts and fears, temptations, tribulations, and yet as they contemplated who you are, that protected them from falling into sin. And we pray that you would give us that heart of David and Asaph that looks continually to you. Whatever the temptation, whatever the envy, whatever the doubt, may you use your word in our hearts, particularly this psalm this week, to counter those sorts of fears, that you might receive all the praise, that we might trust in you more fully. In Jesus' name, amen.