When the Wicked Prosper
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1 Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. 2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb. 3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass. 6 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday.
INTRO:
Do you ever find yourself getting angry about the current state of affairs in our country?…in the world?
Do you feel upset when you see wickedness prevailing and the truth being ridiculed?…when you see corruption?…when you see greed?…when you see the truth omitted and lies promoted?A
Do you feel frustrated?…helpless?…hopeless?
When the Wicked Prosper:
A Roadmap for Navigating Tribulation
Prologue: The Problem of Evil (Ps. 37:1-2)
Prologue: The Problem of Evil (Ps. 37:1-2)
1 Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. 2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And wither as the green herb.
This psalm anticipates our frustrations. Notice that right from the start we have a command - “do not fret”. We don’t even get a venting session! We are told right from the start that God doesn’t want fretting.
The word fret means “to be or to become hot, angry”. All we have to do is read a headline, a Facebook post, hear a news story and we are HOT! But God says, “Do not get hot!”
This command is repeated not once, not twice, but three times in this psalm: Psalm 37:1,7,8. It is also found in Proverbs 24:19 .
19 Do not fret because of evildoers, Nor be envious of the wicked;
Notice that David’s concerns are that the wicked evildoers seem to be prospering.
They just keep rebelling against God, they live in defiance of laws and authorities.
They lie, cheat, and steal with no apparent consequences! The word “iniquity” can relate to injustice.
And David was envious of them…Why can’t I prosper?
What are we supposed to do when the standards of our culture are being torn down and replaced with pluralism and falsehood ?
What are we supposed to do when lawlessness abounds?...when there seems to be no justice...when we have a broken system...when wrong seems a lot more successful than right?
That’s what Psalm 37 is all about!
(cf. Psalm 73:3
3 For I was envious of the boastful, When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Rather than worry about the wicked or stress about the sinful, God has given us a path - a mission - a roadmap - for navigating through this life when it seems like all that’s good in the world is gone and the side of evil is in triumph and when lies are touted as truth and truth is criminalized as hate.
God has placed the following verses in His word so that we have a focus point - a confidence - and a plan for moving forward.
Prologue: When Wickedness Prospers (Psalm 37:1-2)
Outline:
I. Trust in the Lord (Ps. 37:3a)
II. Do Good (Ps. 37:3b)
III. Dwell in the Land (Ps. 37:3c)
IV. Feed on His Faithfulness (Ps. 37:3d)
V. Delight in the Lord (Ps. 37:4a)
VI. Desire the Lord (Ps. 37:4b)
VII. Commit Your Way to the Lord (Ps. 37:5a)
VIII. Trust in the Lord (Ps. 37:5b)
Epilogue: When Righteousness Prevails (Psalm 37:5b-6)
I. Trust in the Lord
I. Trust in the Lord
Psalm 37:3a (NKJV)
3 Trust in the Lord...
trust: בָּטַח bāṭaḥ 118× to trust, rely on, put confidence in; to be confident;1
1 William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 904.
This seems like a catch-phrase or a “Christianeze” slogan - just trust the Lord...but it means so much more than a quaint saying that we tell people before we roll up our sleeves and do things our way.
This is about our faith in God which drives our thoughts, actions, and attitudes.
Heb. 11.6 - God is only pleased with faith.
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
God has always been looking for faith. It is always faith that saves and it is only faith that seasons us - grows us - into spiritual maturity.
We must resist the temptation to trust ourselves. Trusting God is a great idea when life is good, but when the floor drops out and you are falling into a dark abyss, our sense of self-preservation kicks in, and we start calculating risks and strategizing on how we can keep loss to a minimum and just survive...but God has something better.
In what or in whom are you trusting?
In what or in whom are you trusting?
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
II. Do Good
Psalm 37:3b (NKJV)
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good....
good: ṭôb, adj. , n. good; merry, pleasant, desirable; in order, usable; efficient; friendly, kind; morally good.1
1 Rick Brannan, ed., Lexham Research Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible, Lexham Research Lexicons (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).
This is the same Hebrew word used throughout Genesis 1-2 where God declares that His creation is “good”.
to “do good” flows right out of trusting in God - it is the natural progression in the Christian life.
If we are truly trusting in the Lord, we will automatically be doing good…the two are inseperable
One who is walking by faith will do good things!
When we are experiencing the effects of the prevalence of wickedness, God wants more than mere survival! Our faith in God can and will lead us to do good things. Even when going through a trial, God is still asking us to do good things.
Psalm 37:3b (NKJV)
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good....
Even when we experience the bad things, the unjust things, the lawlessness around us, God says, “Do the good things.” - but it’s never in our strength - it is always in His strength. That’s why God gives us a specific chronological sequence: Trust first, do second.
When trials come, we often find ourselves asking, “What should I do?...I don’t know what to do!”...the wicked are prospering!...the evil powers seem to grow without consequence!...lie after lie is perpetuated on us!...what is good is criminalized, while criminals are roaming free!...what do I do?!? Here, God gives us something to do - “Trust God and do good.”
What does this look like?...it will be different for each person depending on their context, but some things should be true of every Christian. We have a great example given by Jesus in the parable of the good Samaritan.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’
What can we learn?
find someone that’s hurting, bleeding, wounded, afraid and bind up their wounds.
Go out of your way to love another person. Find someone who is alone and be good company.
Find someone who is weeping and weep with them.
Find a soul who is hungry and in need and feed them, clothe them.
Find someone with a broken heart and be the hands of Jesus to bring healing.
Be willing to cross social, economic, religious, and political boundaries. Reach across whatever aisle is fixed and choose to love despite differences.
This is exactly what the Samaritan did...trust in the Lord to protect your precious reputation and just do the next right thing!
To do good will force us to experience discomfort, missed appointments, and messy hands.
This is how God combats the prevalence of wickedness…with GOOD!
Do Good!
Could what you do be described as “good”?
Could what you do be described as “good”?
So what are we to do when wickedness prospers?
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
III. Dwell In the Land
III. Dwell In the Land
Psalm 37:3c (NKJV)
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land...
Verb: שָׁכַן (šākan): “to live, dwell,” and it has several synonyms with which it is sometimes found in close proximity: yāšab and gûr
William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 904.
“dwell, sojourn,” e.g., Jdg 5:17; Ps 15:1; Isa 32:16; Job 29:25). In terms of possible nuances that distinguish these synonyms, šākan “reflects dwelling or resting that is consistently more temporary than yāšab, while more permanent, perhaps, than gûr” (NIDOTTE, 4:109–10).
So to “dwell in the land” means to be content on earth, yet to crave to be in heaven. To see this life as important, yet interim.
To dwell is to rest, to reap, and to remember what God has said in His word:
11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul,
On the other hand, we are to be here, in the world:
15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.
To dwell is to engage in this life with an eye to the life to come.
Yes, we have special memories of the past - but what is God doing right now??
Resist the “good old days” mindset- THESE are the good days! Why? - Because God is good and He is working right now...today! “Trust the Lord and Do Good” - today! To dwell in the land is to be PRESENT in the land! There are good things to do today! God is working, He is busy, active, and is calling us into His mission - let’s lift up our eyes and see what God is doing right now and plunge into it.
Paul said that he was forgetting those things behind - and pressing on towards the mark - the prize of the high calling- we can certainly celebrate what God has done, but never allow that to distract you from what God is doing right now, today!
God is dwelling in the land - and He is calling us alongside Him to do the same!
God is dwelling in the land - and He is calling us alongside Him to do the same!
The future should inform the present - what we do in this life can and will have eternal consequences.
We are tempted to bemoan the current political scene, or the state of morality around us, or how much and how rapidly things have changed just in the past generation - and we need to stand up for right and take our stand to defend the weak and to help the helpless - but to what end?? So they can have a better life now??…or so that they can live with eternity in view.
And one day this temporary dwelling will be replaced by that eternal abode: John 14:1-6
Where are you dwelling? (past, present, or future)
Where are you dwelling? (past, present, or future)
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
III. Dwell In the Land
IV. Feed On His Faithfulness
IV. Feed On His Faithfulness
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
“feed”: 10. to cultivate ⇔ shepherd† — to foster the growth of something, conceived of as shepherding it. Stems: qal,
1 Rick Brannan, ed., Lexham Research Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible, Lexham Research Lexicons (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).
As we are trusting the Lord, doing good, and choosing to dwell in the land, we also need to feed - or be cultivated - by God’s faithfulness.
We must allow God to cultivate us - to shepherd us.
11 He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, And carry them in His bosom, And gently lead those who are with young.
We might say “The Lord is my Shepherd”, but are we willing to be shepherded?
Sheep are completely at the mercy of the shepherd.
They go where he leads
They eat what he provides
They are completely vulnerable - they are PREY - defenseless vs. predators
When we truly decide to submit to the Good Shepherd, we are choosing to trust Him with our very lives.
While we do enjoy the green pastures and the still waters, sometimes the Christian life includes the dark, deep valleys of the shadow of death - some of you are there.
It is a very dark place, but with the Shepherd, it is a safe place.
Will we trust Him to cultivate us?…to feed us?…to protect us?
When this occurs, God changes our appetites! -
The Scriptures use many “food” metaphors to help us understand biblical truths:
We need to cleanse our spiritual palates by drinking the milk of the word:
1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
We need to enjoy the fresh, warm bread of Scripture from God daily:
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
We must make our spiritual diet a priority:
12 I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth More than my necessary food.
What are you hungry for?
What are you hungry for?
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
III. Dwell In the Land
IV. Feed on His Faithfulness
V. Delight In the Lord
V. Delight In the Lord
4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
When we see the wicked prospering and delighting in sin, God is calling us to delight in Him!
The wicked are delighting in their sin, drunkenness, partying…why are Christians often so sedate??…Don’t we have the truth?!?…We have the book of answers to all of life’s problems…why can’t we smile about that?!?
Consider the sequence:
First we are told not to fret, then to trust the Lord, which leads to doing good and dwelling and feasting, and now we are told to take DELIGHT!
Delight: ענג (ʿng), vb. pamper or refresh oneself; take one’s pleasure in
Warning: don’t assume this is a human perspective on pampering…this is a spiritual perspective…a spiritual pampering!
We noted earlier that God wants more than mere survival for us in this life - this reinforces that truth - God wants us to be pampered!
It’s easy to delight in the Lord when life is good, but this command to delight in God is not dependent on our circumstances:
19 In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.
This delighting in the Lord is not only when things are going good - we are to delight in the Lord even when going through the anxieties of this life.
There will be a time when we delight in the Lord in a time of abundance and peace:
11 But the meek shall inherit the earth, And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
Let’s go back to our text:
4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
Notice that the verse tells us that when we delight in Yahweh, He gives us our heart’s desires - He makes our dreams come true! (because they are actually His dreams for us)
This can only happen when we delight in the things that God delights in - therefore His delights become our delights - and we can enjoy what God provides because we are both on the same plane - we want whatever God wants, so we get what we want!
“desires” carries the idea of a petition - a request made to the Lord.
So there is some specificity that God is looking for...yes, He will give us these desires...but He expects us to engage with Him through prayer in order to request them...to petition Him for them because He desires fellowship with us in a relationship through Christ and continued by faith and in prayer.
As we delight in the Lord, we become accustomed to talking with Him about everything, and pretty soon we are asking Him for the things we need and we know that we need them because we have been hanging out with the one Person in the universe that knows what we need better than anyone else!
What or Who are you delighting in?
What or Who are you delighting in?
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
III. Dwell In the Land
IV. Feed on His Faithfulness
V. Delight in the Lord
VI. Commit Your Way to the Lord
VI. Commit Your Way to the Lord
Psalm 37:5 (NKJV)
5 Commit your way to the Lord...
This word, “commit” means literally to “roll or to roll away”.
גָּלַל gālal 17× [Q] to roll down, roll away; to commit, turn over
In other words, when we see injustice and wickedness prospering, we need to put it in God’s hands.
It’s out of our hands (for the most part) anyway, so why not just roll it over to the Lord?
Notice that it’s not “commit the wicked to the Lord”...it’s “commit your way to the Lord...”
God is saying, “Stop looking at all that bad stuff and look at Me instead.”
Proverbs 16:3 repeats this command.
3 Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established.
This command is an opportunity to REFOCUS our attention from the wicked to our own choices.
Yes, there is corruption and greed and lawlessness and broken systems and wickedness…but what about here?...what about at home?…what about in our own minds?…in our own churches?
Are we willing to take a biblical evaluation of our own lives and allow the Holy Spirit to pinpoint the corruption in our own hearts?…allow Him to expose the brokenness in our own system?…submit to the Spirit’s conviction of our own greed and lawlessness?
Are you rolling your life over to Yahweh to take care of?
Are you rolling your life over to Yahweh to take care of?
I. Trust In the Lord
II. Do Good
III. Dwell In the Land
IV. Feed on His Faithfulness
V. Delight in the Lord
VI. Commit to the Lord
VII. Trust in the Lord
VII. Trust in the Lord
Psalm 37:5 (NKJV)
5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him...
And now we have come full-circle, right back where we began, at “trust in the Lord”!
This is the same Hebrew word that we saw in verse three
trust: בָּטַח bāṭaḥ 118× to trust, rely on, put confidence in; to be confident;1
1 William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 904.
It all comes back to faith - what do we really believe to be true?!?
In what or whom are we placing our trust??
Epilogue: Psalm 37:5b-6
Epilogue: Psalm 37:5b-6
Psalm 37:5–6 (NKJV)
5 ...And He shall bring it to pass. 6 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday.
Notice that “He shall bring it to pass” -this is what God is going to do at some point in the future and it is the set up for verse 6:
God has your back! You don’t have to try and prove yourself or to force a situation to happen the way you think it should happen.
Yes, we should be engaged with our culture...talk with people...take a stand for what is biblically right...but if we have truly trusted in the Lord, been busy doing good, choosing to dwell in the land (sojourn), and to feed on and take delight in the Lord, we can rest in that.
This epilogue is a chance to rest…a chance to breathe...an opportunity to lean into our Yahweh...to leave the hard work and heavy lifting up to Him so that we can rest and be refreshed.
We can trust the Lord with our reputations.
Our true strength lies in how we are able to be still and quiet and know that He is God.
In closing, I want us to see that Jesus is connected to the verses that we just studied together.
Jesus Christ is our example for living out these principles. He, too, was born into a broken and corrupt system. Wickedness prevailed both in the Roman government and in the ranks of the Jewish leaders. And Jesus chose to follow these principles flawlessly:
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
49 And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
3. Jesus dwelt in the Land : John 1:14
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
3. Jesus dwelt in the Land : John 1:14
4. Jesus fed on God’s Faithfulness: John 4:34
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
3. Jesus dwelt in the Land : John 1:14
4. Jesus fed on God’s Faithfulness: John 4:34
5. Jesus delighted in the Lord: Matthew 11:26
26 Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
3. Jesus dwelt in the Land : John 1:14
4. Jesus fed on God’s Faithfulness: John 4:34
5. Jesus delighted in the Lord: Matthew 11:26
6. Jesus desired what the Lord desired: Luke 22:42
42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”
Jesus trusted in the Lord: Luke 2:49
2. Jesus did good things: Acts 10:38
3. Jesus dwelt in the Land : John 1:14
4. Jesus fed on God’s Faithfulness: John 4:34
5. Jesus delighted in the Lord: Matthew 11:26
6. Jesus desired what the Lord desired: Luke 22:42
7. Jesus committed His way to the Lord: Luke 23:46
46 And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ ” Having said this, He breathed His last.
Conclusion:
What do YOU do when the wicked prosper?
What have YOU done with Jesus?