Now I want to look at Psalm 37
again tonight. This is our second part in this
psalm. So if you want to look in your
Bible with me at Psalm 37, and because I read this last time
and because there are 40 verses in this psalm, I'm going to go
to the last two verses of the psalm and read those two verses,
and then we're going to look at this together. We'll go through
the psalm, okay? In verse 39 of Psalm 37, it says,
but the salvation of the righteous is of 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. Now, this
really is a summary of the entire Psalm. If you just took the words
in Psalm 39, the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord,
then you could summarize this entire Psalm. In this Psalm,
we see the contrast God gives between the righteous and the
wicked. We see that God says that the end of the wicked is
destruction, And even though in this life
it seems that they prosper, that there is no reason for us to
envy them, there's no reason for us to fret over them, because
God has them in His control and He sees their end. So this is
a general summary of what is spoken of here. And throughout
the Psalm, we're encouraged by God Himself to trust in the Lord
and to find our all in Him. And that's what we want to see
here. Last week, I was trying to stir up our thoughts as we
look at this psalm to consider what the difference is between
the righteous and the wicked, as it's spoken of here in the
psalm. And we naturally think of that difference being how
we behave, what we do. And the wicked, obviously, in
traditional interpretation of not only this psalm, but all
of the Bible, are those who behave badly. and at least in the view
of men. And we can find people who are
worse than ourselves, and that comforts us, because we can look
at the most shameful people, at least in our estimation of
shame, and we can say, yeah, they're bad, and I'm not like
that, so I have some hope that I'm among the righteous. But
when we think about it in that way, and we consider the rest
of scripture, we realize that that's wrong thinking, that all
of us are without a righteousness. We're all without, in God's eyes,
there's none good, not even one. So we took that last week and
we looked at the New Testament, for example, the publican and
the Pharisee in Luke 18, and we considered how the scribes
and the Pharisees were constantly bringing out the fact that Jesus
attracted sinners who were openly sinners. He attracted harlots,
he attracted publicans, people who were notorious in their sin.
Remember the woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried
them with the hair of her head and poured ointment on him. These
kinds of people were notorious and they were vilified by the
scribes and the Pharisees, and they were considered by the scribes
and the Pharisees as the wicked. And they consider themselves
to be righteous. And so this is such a strong theme in the
New Testament, especially in the Gospels, that we understand
now the difference between the way God sees things and the way
that man sees them. God looks at the heart, man looks
at the outside. And since all of us are, by nature,
wicked in our minds and our imaginations, then God has to do something. He has to do something to distinguish
between the righteous and the wicked. He has to make us righteous,
and He does that by putting us in the Lord Jesus Christ and
giving us His own righteousness, which consists of His obedience
unto death. Remember in Philippians 2, verses
6 through 8, it says that the Lord Jesus Christ submitted himself
unto the obedience of death, and that obedience unto death
is the righteousness of God, which is imputed to every believer. And that's, for example, reiterated
in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, where it says, God made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin, he knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. And so that is describing the
work of Christ on the cross, and how by that work, the Lord
Jesus Christ, in his obedience and his shedding of his blood,
made us righteous. And that is our eternal redemption.
That's how we're justified before God. We're justified by His blood,
as it says in Romans 5.9 or in Romans 3.24. We're freely justified by His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. So it's on Christ's redeeming
work that we're justified, and that's entirely by God's grace. a recap of what we talked about
last time, and I just want to go through this psalm with you
now. Let's go through, let's just review, and first one, he
says, So here what we have is Very similar to what happens
in Psalm 73. If you want to look at Psalm
73, because this is such a powerful psalm, and so similar to this
in the way that it's described here, it's worth looking at this.
In Psalm 73, it was written, it says, in the beginning, a
psalm of Asaph. Asaph was appointed by David
to be one of those singer musicians in the priesthood, and they were
to sing, and David was the psalmist, he wrote the psalms, and so most
likely the psalm was written by David and given to Asaph to
compose into a song that he would lead the the men who were the
sons of Korah, I think, who sang. So this is a psalm of Asaph,
meaning it was a psalm, I believe, that David wrote and gave to
Asaph. But notice how the psalmist here,
presumably David, he says, truly God is good to Israel, verse
1, even to such as are of a clean heart, but as for me, my feet
were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped, for I was
envious of the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
But there's no bands in their death. But their strength is
firm. They're not in trouble as other
men. Neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride
compasseth them about as a chain. Violence covereth them as a garment.
Their eyes stand out with fatness. They have more than heart could
wish. They are corrupt and speak wickedly. Concerning oppression
they speak loftily. It goes on in verse nine, they
set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through
the earth. You see, he's highlighting their arrogance in their own
presumption of having the approval of God, or perhaps their presumption
in thinking that they're above and too far from God to judge
them because they're righteous in their own eyes. So he's describing
them this way, and they're called by the psalmist, the wicked. He says, that was the foolish
actually in verse three. But notice back in verse 11,
I'm sorry, in verse nine, they set their mouth against the heavens,
their tongue walketh through the earth, verse 10, therefore
his people return hither and waters of a full cup are wrung
out to them. And they say, how does God know
and is their knowledge in the Most High? Behold, these are
the ungodly who prosper in the world. They increase in riches. Verily, he says about his own
self, I have cleansed my heart in vain, washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been
plagued and chastened every morning. If I say, I will speak thus,
behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children.
Now, verse 16, when I thought to know this, it was too painful
for me until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then understood
I their end. So see how this psalm is very
similar to Psalm 37? In Psalm 37 he says, don't fret
yourself because of evildoers. Don't be envious of the wicked,
the workers of iniquity. In verse 2, they shall soon be
cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Psalm 73 says,
these wicked, these workers of iniquity, these foolish, these
ungodly, they walk through the earth in their arrogance, they
have riches, it doesn't seem like there's any pain in their
life, no pain in their death, they're not in distress, they
don't do as he says, where he chastened him all day long, I've
been plagued and chastened every morning. They're not like that. Their life is ease and they seem
to be doing well. It's natural for the righteous
to consider the wicked and to look at their lives and think,
wow, really, is this what the life of faith is all about? It
seems like it's a hard life. But Jesus said the way is narrow
that leads to life, didn't he? And that way is so narrow that
we can't get in unless we have nothing, and Christ is our all. That's the message of Psalm 37.
So back in Psalm 73, he says, notice, until I went to that
sanctuary of God, then I understood their end, verse 18 of Psalm
73. Surely thou did set them in slippery
places. Thou castest them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation
as in a moment? They are utterly consumed with
terrors. Notice the end of the wicked. They're consumed with
terror. They're cast down to destruction.
They're made desolate in a moment. And so the Lord says in verse
20, as a dream, when one awaketh, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou
shalt despise their image. You know how it is when you have
a bad dream? and you wake up, oh, that was horrible. Well,
the Lord says that when he awakes to judgment, then these people
described here, who the psalmist was initially envious of, they're
gonna be brought to utter ruin. And the reason for that is because
God never gives them the salvation that he gives to his people.
That's the difference. God never designates them for
salvation. He doesn't set them apart for
himself. He doesn't choose them and adopt
them and put them among His children. He doesn't give them to Christ
to redeem. He doesn't give them His Spirit
to know these things in their heart. And so they never receive
more than outward blessings. They never receive more than
physical blessings. They don't receive any inward
blessing from God of mercy in the heart. They never receive
the spiritual blessings. They receive only physical blessings,
nothing eternal, only temporal. Only in this world, nothing in
heaven. And all that is because in order
to have those blessings which are internal, spiritual, and
in heaven, in order to have those, only one man is given those,
and all those who are in him are given those blessings, and
that's the Lord Jesus Christ. So that when God created the
earth, he testified of this when he said to Adam, have dominion
over all things. In Hebrews chapter 2, God says
the one he put all things under his feet was Christ, the man
to whom God put everything under his feet and we are given everything
in him. So that's the revelation of the
gospel. He's the second and last Adam.
In the first Adam, we died. In the first Adam, we lost everything. All of the earthly blessings
that we had in the first Adam, we lost. Well, we may have temporal
blessings in this world by God's goodwill, but those blessings
attended by grace are only going to last while we live. Okay,
so now, back in Psalm 37. I say all that to give you this review of what's happening here.
Before I leave Psalm 73, though, I want to read these verses to
you. He says in verse 23 of Psalm
73, notice, after he went into the sanctuary of God, after he
learned the end of the ungodly, the proud, he said this, Nevertheless,
I am continually with thee. Thou hast holden me by my right
hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy
counsel. His counsel is what? The Lord
Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God, the treasures of wisdom are in
him. He says he's called the counselor. Thou shalt guide me
with thy counsel and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have
I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth
that I desire beside Thee. Now, this is very important because
this is what we're going to see here in Psalm 37 as we review
this again. His desire, his delight was the
Lord Himself. He says in verse 26 of Psalm
73, My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my
heart and my portion forever. His inheritance was God in Christ. And the strength was the Lord
himself. The strength of his heart was
God. And so, this helps us to see this parallel between Psalm
37 and Psalm 73, and how it shows us that even the godly man who
penned the Psalm in Psalm 73, was tempted to consider the outward
benefits and blessings of the wicked, and it appeared that
they were prosperous. And so it's natural by just what
we see to assume that we are walking on a promise that doesn't
appear to be true. to our natural senses, but that's
why God gives us his word to tell us what's real and true,
even though in our experience it doesn't look that way. Okay?
So Psalm 37 is about this. Don't fret because of evildoers.
Don't be envious against the workers of iniquity. What we're
talking about here are those who have no part in Christ. who
judge those who do love Christ and need grace, and they afflict
them, they persecute them, they seek their destruction, they
hate Christ, they hate God, they hate grace, and so they're constantly
opposed to that. In fact, they oppose their own
salvation. And so don't covet them, don't envy them. He says,
verse 2, for they shall soon be cut down. Why would we fret
over something that's going to be burned up? We wouldn't, would
we? Besides that, we don't have to
fret over the workers of iniquity because they're in the Lord's
hands and God is using them to accomplish his will in the world
in history. He's going to do that. Remember
Romans nine. There are vessels of honor and
there are vessels of dishonor in every house. And in God's
house is no different. God chose Pharaoh to be a vessel
to dishonor Esau, a vessel to dishonor Balaam. And you can
go on down the list, all the people in scripture who were
held up to us to be vessels of dishonor. But he's chosen his
people in Christ to be vessels of mercy, vessels to honor. the
praise of the glory of His grace. And that is our salvation. When
Paul wrote, the Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Ephesians,
this was a city in the middle of an ungodly place. God sent
Paul, the Lord Jesus Christ, sent Paul all the way around
from Jerusalem up the Mediterranean Sea coast to all those places
along that coast. And he came to the Ephesians
and he taught them. And then he wrote to them after he had
been with them and they believed the gospel. And what does he
write to them? He opens the letter. by telling
them that they had been chosen of God the Father before the
foundation of the world, chosen in Christ, given all spiritual
blessings in Christ, all heavenly blessings. They had been chosen,
not only chosen in Christ to be holy and without blame, But
they were adopted by God the Father and predestinated by God
the Father to be redeemed by his son. They were made accepted
in the beloved. And he just keeps stacking these
blessings on top of one another. He writes this way to the Ephesians
because there were those who tried to tell them that Paul
was false and that what he had told them wasn't the full gospel
they needed to hear. And Paul says, no, you listen
to me. You can't get any higher than this, that from eternity
you were chosen to salvation by God the Father and a certain
salvation that couldn't fail because God himself staked himself
to it and gave Christ and put the responsibility all on him
to bring it to pass and to accomplish this work so that they were overwhelmed
with these blessings. And then he goes on to describe
to them in their own experience how God called them since they
were so chosen and redeemed. He called them by His Spirit.
He quickened them to spiritual life, gave them His Spirit, and
therefore they were made to see the unspeakable riches of Christ
and understand the height and depth and length and breadth
of the love of Christ. And all these things were built
up, not only that in Ephesians 4, he goes on to talk about the
church, and the apostles, and the Father, and the Spirit, and
all these things that are given to those who were so saved by
God. So see how God made the difference,
and how He separated them to Himself. And it wasn't a last
thought. It wasn't a historical, oh, I
think I'll do this kind of thought. It was something God always had
in His mind. And that's why it was worked
out the way it was. So we can look at our lives and see how
God's grace towards us has brought us to love the gospel of how
we're saved by Christ alone so that we need it day by day. And
even though we have these times where we seem cold and distant
from God, sometimes we go who knows how long without even thinking,
we're proud in our own independence and then the Lord brings us back
and we're falling in love again with Christ and his gospel. That's
the work of God. It's because it's an eternal
work of God, he won't fail to do it. And he exhorts us, now
don't be envious of the wicked. Don't even consider them. Don't
fret yourself about them. God's got them in His hand. He's
going to take care of them. But you, verse 3, you trust in
the Lord and do good. To do good. What is it to do
good? Everything we do out of love to Christ is called a good
work. Even though we have sin in that
action, it's a good work because we do it on Him. Remember the
woman in, let me find the reference here, I think it's in, well,
I'll just tell you if I can't find the reference, but remember
the woman who anointed Jesus with that alabaster box of ointment,
and the people were complaining about that, the self-righteous,
even some of the disciples were offended by that. But remember,
it was in Mark chapter 14, Jesus said this, leave her alone. You leave her alone. Why do you
trouble her? Now see, this is like, overlay
that on Psalm 37. Why are the wicked troubling
these people, this poor woman who poured this ointment on Jesus?
He says in Mark 14, 6, let her alone, why trouble ye her? She
has wrought a good work on me. You see that? Why? Because she
did what she could. She anointed the Lord Jesus for
his burial. She did it because of her love
for him. Like the woman, she was forgiven
much, so she loved much. And that's the good work. It's
doing what we do because we trust in the love of God which is in
Christ Jesus, our Lord. We trust Christ. And because
we trust him by God's grace, that inward faith that God has
given to us persuades us that the love of God towards us is
in Christ. And so our hearts run out to
him in love, and we do what we do for him. out of love. And we sometimes wonder, have
I ever really truly loved the Lord and done anything like this
woman here? The point is, as God tells us,
trust in the Lord, do good. Don't trust in your goodness.
But you trust in the Lord, and trusting Him, you'll find a love
springing up, because faith works by love, and that love toward
Christ will cause you to do things. And the Lord Himself is going
to discover to His people things they don't even know about, that
they've done in His name, because they either forgot it, or they
don't remember it, They didn't know it because they were acting
out of faith. And you don't know what it is?
Why do we keep a record of it? We don't want to keep a record
of it. I don't want to even know what my left hand is doing. Keep
that information from my right hand, okay? So trust in the Lord,
do good. And it's very important, we see
the theme here is to trust in the Lord, in the Lord. To trust
in the Lord is to not trust in ourselves, right? Why envy the
wicked? They trust in themselves, and
what do they have? Only what they are. But the righteous
trust in the Lord. Therefore, we have nothing to
envy because we have all that's his. You see? You see the big
contrast here? Don't do like the wicked. They
trust in themselves that they're righteous. They trust in their
attainments. They trust in their wisdom, their
strength, their riches, or these things that God tells us. Do
not do that. Let not the wise man glory in
his wisdom, the mighty man in his might. or the rich man in
his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in the Lord."
Jeremiah 9, 23. So here what we're seeing is
this emphasis is to us, in the Lord. In the Lord is the Lord's
answer to the righteous against this temptation to envy the wicked,
right? No, you trust in the Lord. You
look to Christ only. And looking to Him, you have
what you believe. You have the one that you believe.
Your faith will be realized because God has given you a true faith.
that sees Christ as the object of your faith, and the Lord will
give you as you believe. God's given you that faith, okay? So trust in the Lord. Do not
look with envy upon the wicked. They will perish. Their riches
are worldly, fleshly, and temporal. Rather, look to the Lord Jesus
Christ and to him alone for everything, especially everything in your
salvation. We look at our lives and we think,
how could I be saved? Well, trust in the Lord. And
then what? Well, then you're going to have
to wait for him to bring it to pass, aren't you? If salvation
is of the Lord, that means you cannot do it and you have to
rely on him to do everything. OK, that's trusting in the Lord. So we look to him in the Lord
Jesus Christ. There's everything righteousness,
peace, strength, joy, assurance, love. Comfort, wisdom, holiness,
redemption, everything is in him. The believer is said to
be complete in him in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells. In other words, he is a man in
whom God dwells and there's nothing lacking in him. And we are complete
in Him. So there cannot be anything lacking
since all that we need is in Him. Everything God requires
of us is in Him. And this is the great blessing.
This is the revelation God gives to His people. Trust in the Lord. Okay? All right. So this is a
good thing. He also says to dwell in the
land. And we know that the land here doesn't mean a physical
land. It means the land of our salvation, the land of all of
God's promises in Christ. He says he will feed us in verse
three. Verily thou shalt be fed. What
does that mean? Remember in John 10, someone was asking me about
this the other day in church, and it doesn't matter who it
was, but it says in John 10 that the Lord Jesus Christ would bring
his sheep He's the door. He would put them in the fold
and he would lead them out of the fold. And someone was asking,
what does that mean? Well, it means that in Christ
we're kept and we're preserved and we're kept safe. No one can
take us from his hand. And when he leads us out, he
leads us like a shepherd to the pastures, the grass that we lie
down in, that we eat. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want, because he leads us out, he gives us food. So this,
we will be fed, is really just a reference to that. He will
shepherd us, he'll lead us in, he'll bring us in, and he'll
lead us out. We'll have the liberty and the
provision of Christ himself for all of our needs. He will keep
us safe, He has saved us in Himself, and He will feed us, He will
lead us to these green pastures of plenty, which are the gospel,
the gospel to us, always given to us in every time, okay? In
verse 4, He says, delight thyself also in the Lord. and He shall
give thee the desires of your heart." Now, to delight yourself
also in the Lord is to double underscore this phrase, in the
Lord, isn't it? We delight in Christ. And faith
is just that, it's delighting in Him, isn't it? When we believe
Christ, we find such delight to have the peace and satisfaction
of Him being our all in salvation. He's our food, our drink, our
life, He's everything. And so the desire of our heart
is to have Him. In one sense, this promise, as
I said last time, is that God would give us a desire for Him.
And in another sense, it's that God would fulfill that desire
by giving Christ to us in our experience. Like when it says
in Romans 5 that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us. And then he goes on and
he just He empties the gospel out. When we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. When we were without strength,
Christ died for us. When we were enemies, God reconciled
us to Himself by the death of His Son. We're justified by His
blood. We shall be saved by His life. He's risen. He sits in
glory. He's going to save us to the
uttermost. And all these things are poured out from the gospel
by the Holy Spirit given to us. And that's this God giving Christ
to us, okay? And then he says, delight yourself
in the Lord. We're to revel, really, really
just revel, take complete delight in the fact that we're saved
entirely by the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't you revel in that? I do. And it always happens to me when
I'm when I'm not reveling in it, that I'm brought again to
revel in it, I realize how great this salvation is. And that happens
so often that it seems like it happens all the time. So we're
to delight ourselves in Christ, that everything God requires
of me, he provided in his son. Isn't that something to delight
in? We're to delight that Christ has worked it all out. Don't you delight in that? We're
to delight in God's unspeakable grace that's given to us in Christ. We're to delight in all of the
eternal blessings, the immeasurable blessings that God has given
to us in Christ. These are riches beyond measure,
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, a redemption
and eternal inheritance. And we're to delight in knowing
that God has given to the Lord Jesus Christ all of this fullness
in Him bodily, and that we're complete in Him, and that it's
certain, and it's for all eternity, and that all the conditions of
it have been fulfilled by our Savior. Is there anything not
to delight in here? For the poor and needy, this
is rich, rich blessings, isn't it? When Christ is your all,
then you have Him. It says in 1 John chapter 5,
if you have the Son, he that hath the Son hath life. It's
all about having the Son, isn't it? If you have Him, you have
everything. And if all you have is Christ, then you have everything. That's what He says in Scripture.
Now, in this Psalm, He's addressing that. Because when we look out
in this world with our eyes, We see people who are doing much
better than us, much better emotionally, it seems like when you watch
them, much better financially, much better in their families
perhaps, much better in whatever way we can think about it. But
God has given us a blessing that goes way beyond these observable
things. It's in our hearts and it's faith
in Christ and all the blessings of the gospel. All right. We
desire and delight in Christ, and we desire and delight to
be like Him. And God promises us He's going to give us the
desires of our heart. If Christ is your desire, you
will have Him. If to be like Him is your desire,
you will be like Christ. Because throughout scripture,
God says, the Lord Jesus said this to people, as you have believed,
so be it unto you. Your faith has saved you, that
kind of thing. And you wonder, what does that
mean? It just means that the view that God has given you of
the truth of salvation in Christ, being the truth of God, And now
you're persuaded of that, and that's what you're holding to?
God's not going to fail to give you all that you believe. He's
going to give you Christ and everything in Him. What an amazing
promise. that God would give us everything
in Christ. All right, verse five. He says, commit thy way to the
Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. We
know God's ways are higher than our ways, and we know that Jesus
is the way to the Father, and since God has made him our way,
then God will bring our way to pass. He will save us to the
uttermost. This is God's work. This is God's
work. Remember Abraham? He was fully
persuaded that what God promised, he was able also to perform. He knew he couldn't do it. He
and Sarah couldn't have children. Their bodies were dead, so he
didn't consider his own body. He waited on the Lord, and God
gave him that. This is in Philippians 1.6, He
which hath begun a good work in you shall perfect it unto
the day of Jesus Christ. You see that? It's God's work. He began it. He perfects it. You see that? From first to last.
This is a work of God and that means it's a work of grace to
us. It says in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23, the very God of
peace sanctify you wholly, w-h-o-l-l-y, wholly, completely, entirely.
The God of peace do that. Doesn't that take the pressure
off? It does for me. This is God's work. This sanctification
is God's work. He says, and I pray God, your
whole spirit, soul, and body, there's no part of you that's
not left out, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. Isn't that a blessing? So what
he's saying here is, commit your way to the Lord, trust in him,
he shall bring it to pass. Do you see that? Let me read
another one to you, because these just keep getting better. In
Hebrews chapter 13, verse 20, now the God of peace, who made
our peace by the blood of his son, the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that's the proof of our
peace, that great shepherd of the sheep, Through the blood
of the everlasting covenant, Christ's blood was shed, the
covenant is made, all the blessings now flow to us which were given
to us in Christ. Remember? He's the seed to whom
all the promises of God were given. He says, through the blood
of the everlasting covenant, in which all those promises given
to Christ are ours because of his shed blood, make you perfect
in every good work to do His will working in you that which
is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ to whom
be glory forever and ever. That's Hebrews 13, 20 through
21. These are powerful, powerful
promises, aren't they? In Isaiah 26, 12, he says, Lord,
thou wilt ordain peace for us, for thou also has worked or wrought
all our works in us. What a what a testimony of God's
goodness. Oh, Lord, our God, other lords
beside thee have had dominion over us. But by thee only will
we make mention of thy name. See how God delivered us from
idolatry. He did it. All right. Okay, so now this
is our way. God has made Christ our way.
He made him our way to bring us to God and faith, that gift
of God to us, shows to us, reveals to us these things so that we
receive them as the way things are and we rely on them and come
to God by them. This is what faith does. And
so the Lord says, according to your faith, be it unto you. You
believe Christ is all? You believe He is God? And you
believe that all in Him is yours from God, and all that you have
is what you have in Him? Be it unto you, according to
your faith. God did that for you, and He did it because He
chose you in Him from the foundation of the world, and redeemed you
by Him. Now that's a great blessing,
isn't it? All right, we're reluctant to receive these words as our
comfort, aren't we? Because we think that some part
of us has to be involved in this. But faith divests us of everything
that might be called ours. Faith does that. And that's why,
because it is of grace, it has to be of faith. Or you could
say it like the scripture says, therefore it is of faith that
it might be by grace. Faith is consistent with grace.
Anything else is works. And so faith cannot bring anything
of its own because faith looks to Christ alone. And that's where
our comfort is, okay? Now, I want to keep going here,
trying to pick up speed here. It says in verse 6, Psalm 37,
6, and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and
thy judgment as the noon day. Our righteousness, we don't have
righteousness. Our judgment would be that we're
condemned in our sins. But because God has put us in
Christ, He brings forth the obedience and blood of Christ as our own
personal righteousness. He brings it to light. He shows
God is not going to be ashamed of His people in the day of judgment.
He's not going to be ashamed. He's not going to be disappointed
in them. There's not going to be one thing
that God looks on with remorse or regret concerning His people. That would be to admit failure
on God's part. But because their salvation is
of Him, He does the work. It says in Ephesians 2.10, we
are His workmanship. We're God's work. where God's
working Christ. God is not gonna mess things
up, is he? He's not gonna fail. He's not
gonna do anything less than perfect. And since He's perfected us in
Christ by His one offering, and since He's given us His Spirit
that we are created in righteousness and true holiness in our new
man, and He's going to raise our body, our vile body, He's
gonna change it to be made like His glorious body, He's gonna
conform us to the image of His Son, and when we see Him, we'll
be like Him, and we'll be satisfied when we awaken His likeness.
This is all God's work. And He's going to bring this
righteousness that's ours in Christ and all of the things
that follow righteousness, life, even eternal life, He's going
to bring it to light without shame. He's going to set forth
His glory To the onlooking universe and no one will think that any
and there's been any Fixing of the books here. God did it perfectly. No one will be able to say that
because If God has justified us that he somehow took a shortcut
No, he didn't. He delivered up his own son.
So there's no shortcut here. This is a massive weight on the
balance of the scales of God's justice. It's so far outweighs
our sin that it brings us to God in heaven and makes us his
sons and gives us all that is God's heirs. Okay, this is beyond
our understanding. So he shall bring forth thy righteousness
to the light. And Todd Nybert made a point
on this verse. He said, when the Lord Jesus
hung on Calvary's tree, he felt shame because my sin had actually
been made to be his sin. OK, he felt that shame. He was
ashamed of it. And you can't be ashamed of sin
if it isn't yours. Right. I mean, I wouldn't personally
be ashamed of sin if I didn't commit it. It belongs to someone
else, so you're not ashamed of it. But Christ felt shame because
our sin became truly His, and therefore He was ashamed and
suffered for it. Now, in the same way, just as
our sin became His, His righteousness becomes ours. And that's why
He says, He shall bring forth thy righteousness to the light
and judgment as the noon day. and so that the righteousness
of Christ is brought to the light in the gospel and he will bring
forth his righteousness as ours in the day of judgment and even
now he sets it forth in the gospel and declares it to me and gives
me faith to believe him for it. This is what God does. so that
in my conscience I'm persuaded that His righteousness alone
is the only righteousness there is, and all of it is mine before
God. If it isn't, I have no hope.
I'm persuaded that God has provided and required Christ's righteousness
for His people, and I'm persuaded that Christ fulfilled all that
God required, and that as a sinner, I'm exhorted by the Lord Jesus
Himself to look to Him and be saved. Look unto me, and be ye
saved, all the ends of the earth. And that I find, when in so looking,
that in the Lord I have righteousness." That's in Isaiah 45, 21-25. And
he says that the Lord says that Jesus is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone who believes Him. He says of His
people, their righteousness is of Me, Isaiah 54 and verse 17. and that God the Father has made
him unto us to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
as it says in 1 Corinthians 1.30. And so by these I'm persuaded
that the Lord Jesus Christ is all-sufficient, and I can see
how God will bring forth Christ's righteousness to light. and His
judgments as the noon day. I can see it because God does
not at all compromise His holiness and glory when the righteousness
and blood of His Son justifies the ungodly. I can see these
things in Scripture. I believe it. I'm persuaded of
it. And I know that that's by God's grace. I can see that the
scales of God's justice with my sin on one side and Christ's
righteousness on the other is far more balanced than anything
that anyone could ever have done, that the Lord Jesus Christ did
this. And so, what do we do? Well, look at the rest of this.
Verse seven, rest in the Lord. Rest in the Lord. Now, we only
rest when everything's done, don't we? I know sometimes it's
late at night and you have some work to do and you think, well,
I'd really like to go to bed, but I'm gonna finish this work
because otherwise I won't be able to rest tonight. Have you
ever felt that way? Well, that's just a principle.
We don't rest unless the work is done. And even though we are
sinful, God has convinced us that the work that needs to be
done for us to rest is that God has to approve of the work. And
God himself said, they shall enter into my rest. There remaineth therefore a rest
to the people of God. That's in Hebrews chapter four.
And the Lord Jesus Christ said this, it is finished. Now, that statement of Christ
was from the cross. Just before he died, he gave
up the ghost. He laid his life down. But it
was the stamp, the final stamp of his words on all that he came
to do. In Luke 2.49, he was with The
scribes in the Sanhedrin in the temple at 12 years old and his
parents, Mary and Joseph, asked him, where were you? And he said,
didn't you know it must be about my father's business? He had
a work to do. In John 4, 34, Jesus said, my
meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish
his work. And so you could go through the
gospels, especially the book of John, over and over again.
Jesus said, I came to do the will of him that sent me. And
this is the will of him that sent me. Of everyone that he
has given me, I should lose nothing but raise him up at the last
day. Jesus said, it's finished. since you can't rest unless the
work is done. And the Lord says rest in the Lord. What is he
saying here? The work is done. The work is
done. So so he says in Hebrews chapter
four, he that is entered into his rest has ceased from his
own works as God did from his. God stopped working when the
creation was done. He stopped working to create,
he just rested on the seventh day. And he showed by doing that,
that when the work of our salvation was done, we are to cease from
our own works because Christ did the work. In Hebrews 4, verse
3, we which have believed do enter into rest. He tells us,
rest, rest, wait patiently. Okay? Now, to wait patiently
means that even though we're observing the wicked seemingly
prospering, seemingly doing better than us, that maybe they live
longer, maybe they're healthier, maybe they're at ease. It doesn't
matter what it is. Things just seem to go better
for them. They don't have the stress that we have, whatever
it is. They have whatever resources to take away the stresses of
their life. The Lord says to us, you rest
in the Lord and you wait patiently for Him. Do not forget that whatever
is taking place is God's will being done for His glory. Don't
forget that. And if you do, you'll rest. The
work is done. Everything is following the will
of God to bring glory to His Son and to save His people. And
then he goes on in verse eight. He says, cease from anger and
forsake wrath. Fret not thyself because of any
wise to do evil. OK, so what does it mean to cease
from anger? Stop. Stop being angry. Just put wrath away. It won't
do you any good. What happens when you get angry
and are full of wrath? You're really only hurting yourself.
I mean, you might hurt other people, but the person who's
most damaged by it is you, yourself. So there's really no reason to
get all hot under the collar, is there? We should have temperance. The fruit of the Spirit is peace,
joy, love, temperance, all these things. So this patience that
comes from God is this patience that comes in knowing what God
has done for us in Christ and knowing that he's in absolute
control of all things. We don't have to be angry. because we have no reason to
try to grab hold of whatever the circumstances that aren't
going our way and turn them to our advantage. We don't have
to do that because it's all in the Lord's hands. We can rest
in Him. We can stop being angry. How?
How are we supposed to stop doing what we naturally do by our sinful
selves? How do we stop something? There's
only one way. How do we cease from doing any
wrong? We just have to look to Christ.
He's the one who brings it to pass. Remember, trust in the
Lord and he shall bring it to pass. Okay, so we look to him. And if we do that, if we're enabled
by God's grace to just stop being angry and stop and forsake wrath
and not fret ourselves in any wise to do evil, what happens?
We're happy. Peace, joy, things work out for
us, okay? Look at Psalm 37, verse 9. He says, for evildoers shall
be cut off, but those that wait on the Lord, they shall inherit
the earth. So here's why we shouldn't fret.
First, because it doesn't do anyone any good to fret, does
it? We can't bring God's will to pass by trying to put out
all the fires of wickedness, can we? But the reason given
here is this, that God will cut off the evildoers. We have to
leave them alone. Remember, Darwin Pruitt has pointed
this out to me several times, but he loves to remind me how
the scribes and Pharisees were far more cunning and intelligent,
as men can be intelligent, compared to the disciples. The disciples
were just ordinary people like us. But the scribes and Pharisees
were long in the tooth when it came to studying the theology
of scripture, they thought. They thought they had it down.
So they were too much for the disciples, but they weren't too
much for the Lord Jesus Christ. Their most cunning attempts to
shame him or humiliate him or to get the edge over him were
put, they were utterly routed and put to shame. But he told
his disciples, he told them, leave them alone. Now what is
that other than fret not yourself because of evildoers? In other
words, do not attempt to undo their twisted knots of false
doctrine. That's in their own heads. Don't
try to engage with them to prove that they're wrong, and don't
fret over them. They're vessels of dishonor for
God's use to show His power and His wrath over them, as it says
in Romans chapter 9, verse 20 through 22. They'll be cut off.
That's what he says here in this verse. He says, cease from anger,
fret not thyself in any wise to do evil, for evildoers shall
be cut off, verse 9. Let them alone. Jesus said in
Matthew 15, concerning the scribes and Pharisees, he says, let them
alone. They be blind leaders of the
blind. And if the blind lead the blind,
both shall fall into the ditch. Better not follow them. Don't
be trying to do what they do. Don't follow their ways. of proving
your intellectual superiority over others or your religious
superiority or theological. Look, if you really are on point
theologically, what are you going to say? Look to the Lamb of God. The greatest prophet that ever
lived said this. Behold, the Lamb of God. Now, that's theology, isn't it?
That's the truth as it is in Jesus. point people to Christ,
strip them of all self-confidence, and direct them to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Okay, he says, those that wait on the Lord shall inherit
the earth, not only the earth, Because when he says the earth
here, he doesn't mean like we're going to get the redwood forest
over there in some place in California, or the Rocky Mountains, or some
seaport, you know, the Mediterranean seaport where all the swells
go. He's not talking about that.
He's talking about how he says in 1 Corinthians 3, 21, he says
all things are yours. everything, whether life or death,
present things, things to come, the apostles and their ministry.
The world, everything is yours. Why? Because you're Christ's
and Christ is God's. It all belongs to him. God owns
everything. He gave it to his son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is both God and man. And in Christ, he's
given it to his people because they're heirs of God and joint
heirs, joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. Could you even
begin to imagine that truth with any propriety of of honesty,
unless God had said it in his own word, that we're joint heirs
with Jesus Christ. He says it this way in Romans
8, 32. If God has delivered up his son,
if he gave his son for us and delivered him up for us all,
then he will not without he will without fail give us all things
in him. God is going to give everything
to his people with Christ. He's going to give them everything
he gives his son as the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that
he gives his son is theirs. So it's not just the physical
earth. It's everything that belongs
to the Lord Jesus Christ. We live and reign with him. We're
made kings and priests to God. We're made heirs of God, children
of God, sons. We're conformed to the image
of his son. These are things God does. according to his eternal
good pleasure, all to the praise of the glory of his grace." Now
that's amazing, isn't it? And I don't want to keep you
too long, so I just noticed the time is running out here. We
got started a little late, but let me take one more verse. Verse
10, Psalm 37, verse 10. For yet a little while, and the
wicked shall not be, yea, thou shalt diligently consider his
place, and it shall not be. God is saying that the wicked
are going to be turned into hell, as it says in Psalm 9, verse
17. They shall be in torment, and
the believers will not even be thinking about them. You shall
diligently consider his place? It shall not be. They shall not
appear with the saints. They will not be in the blessed
inheritance of the saints within glory. They will not be in the
presence of Christ. God's people will be in the presence
of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is going
to tell them, depart, you cursed into everlasting fire. That's
the end of the wicked. Why would we covet what they
have? Why would we envy them? Why would we think of their life
in this world as something we need to be concerned about, or
fret over, or get angry about, or be full of wrath about? No, we have to trust in the Lord,
you see? It's just... It's being reiterated
here throughout this psalm over and over again because the temptation
to do this is strong. It's the temptation to walk by
our sight instead of faith is strong. So we want to avoid that.
Look to Christ, delight in him. God's going to bring his people
along the way of Christ in such a way that he will fulfill his
work. He will bring it to pass. What a blessed hope that is.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for your great mercy, the riches
of your grace and mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ, for your great
love wherewith you loved us. We are resting in your love.
We are resting in your son. We are trusting him to do everything
necessary to put away our sins. to bring us to God in a holy
righteousness, to make us holy in His sight, to make us blameless
and without fault in the presence of God in His glory with exceeding
joy, that we would have no shame, but we'd have boldness in the
day of judgment, because our entire basis for any confidence
and joy and peace is the Lord Jesus Christ alone. What a blessed
revelation of the mind and heart of God concerning His people
and His work and His grace. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.