Psalm 37: Truth for Tumultuous Times Part 3

In the last two posts, we've walked through the first 26 verses of Psalm 37, noting how God wants us to respond to times of tumult by resting and trusting, being content with what God has allowed us, and standing firm on the certainty that God will not forsake His own.

Today, we're picking up our passage in verse 27, with the continued theme of responding to the apparent prospering of the wicked by simply doing right. 

"Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore"

It's amazing in this passage just how many times God tells us why He wants us to respond the way He does. 

"For the Lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not His saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever."  (28-29)

Those are encouraging truths, to be sure! Our departing from evil and doing good should be motivated by the fact that we are God's --we belong to Him, and He will preserve us "for ever". The wicked may seem to be prospering, whether with fame, fortune, or success in driving situations or laws to further their own wicked goals, yet the wicked are ultimately acting in vain. God sees, God knows, God will judge. That should motivate us to be living in such a way that the wicked will see that we are different, because we belong to God.  

Next, God paints a picture of what this should look like:

"The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgement. The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide." (30-31)

This is a good place for us to stop and check our own lives. How is your speech? Is it characterized by wisdom and judgement, rooted in the Word of God? You see, amidst the clamor and chaos of the world, our words should not just echo the din of opinions out there. We should be able to speak with authority from the certainty of the truths of God's Word. 

It is convicting to think how many words I say (or write) each day, and yet how few of those relate directly back to Scripture. I wonder what an impact it would make on our society if we as Christians began to commit to speaking God's truth instead of our opinion.  

God also gives us a portrait of the wicked. 

"The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him." (32)

If it feels like the wicked have it out for you, it's because it really is true. The current crises in our country have made it even more clear to me that this world really does watch Christians to try to catch them tripping up in some way. 

I'm reminded of several men in Scripture who were watched with evil intent: Daniel and Mordecai come to mind right away, and of course, Jesus, whom the Pharisees were always watching, trying to find an excuse to put Him to death. 

Jesus explained this phenomenon when speaking to the Pharisees,

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." (John 8:44)

Before salvation, sins such as lying and hatred and even murder were natural to us all, for we were sinful human beings, serving Satan. Once saved, the Holy Spirit indwells our hearts and does battle with our sin nature. With God's empowering, we can have victory over the sin which once was just a way of life. The wicked seek to destroy us because Satan seeks to destroy us. Darkness cannot coexist with light, truth cannot coexist with lies. That is why the battle rages. 

But lest we be discouraged by this reminder that the world (and our greatest enemy, Satan) watches us with the intent to destroy, God followed this truth up with another promise:

"The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged." (33)

God has already won the victory over Satan, and the wicked of this world will likewise perish, but even if it seems that God leaves us in their hand in this life, we will be free from their persecution for eternity to come. In the final judgment, all their efforts to destroy God's children will come back upon their own heads, and we who have accepted Christ's gift of salvation will be pardoned and welcomed home. 

The following verse gives another admonition:

"Wait on the Lord, and keep His way, and He shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it." (34)

I think this encapsulates everything God says in this psalm about responding to the wicked. Waiting on God covers delighting, resting, committing our ways to Him, and being content with what God has allowed. It includes keeping our eyes on God, letting Him order our steps and lift us up when we fall. If I had to choose one thought to give you from this passage it would be this: wait on the Lord. 

But God is not done. There's even more to encourage us!

"I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." (35-36)

Here, as in verse 25, David gives us his Divinely-inspired words of testimony. This time, he illustrates the truth of just how fragile the rule of the wicked really is. 

I am reminded of the time (long after David's reign) when Jerusalem was besieged, and the hosts of Sennacharib had surrounded the city in all their pomp and might. Yet, when Hezekiah humbly prayed for deliverance, God took care of them in one night, without the Israelites having to do a thing! (2 Kings 19) 

 No matter how mighty the wicked may seem, no matter how strong the forces of spiritual warfare may appear to be, we must always remember that God is infinitely mightier and stronger, and it is He who will triumph --who has already triumphed-- on our behalf. 

"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together; the end of the wicked shall be cut off." (37-38)

Here is one last contrast: The end of the righteous is peace, but the end of the wicked is destruction. This should encourage, but also burden us. As easy as it is to talk about "the wicked" and "the world" (and it is Biblical to do so), it can be just as easy to forget that both those categories we speak of are collections of individuals. The wicked are headed for destruction, and while that is obviously meant in this passage to encourage us to do right no matter what they do, it also means that each one of those individuals in the world who have rejected Christ are headed to Hell for eternal punishment. More than anything, they need us to be Christlike testimonies and bold witnesses to the saving work of Christ. 

It is appropriate to pray for God's justice to be done, for that is God's heart: "to fulfill all righteousness", as Jesus said. (Matthew 3:15)  but it is just as much a part of God's heart and nature to pardon. We should never pray for the wicked to be judged without also praying that the wicked might be saved. 

After all, that's what we're here for, right? 

This psalm of encouragement ends by bringing us back to the root of the matter: 

"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 from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in Him." (39-40)

Whatever happens in this crazy, turbulent, chaotic world of ours, we can rest assured that God is at work, and that our salvation from sin as well as our victory over the wicked are not of ourselves, but of God. It is He who gives us the power to "Depart from evil, and do good".

A Christian Writer’s “Victory Garden”

My neighbor and I were doing some yard work on opposite sides of the driveway the other day, and got to chatting about our respective gardening plans. I told him what my parents had planted in the raised beds, and he told me about his new strawberry plants. He made the comment, “Our President says we’re in a war, so I planted a victory garden.”

The idea intrigued me, and I began to think about the victory gardens planted during the Second World War. The idea was that by turning lawns, flowerbeds, and any other available patch of land into food-producing gardens, the gardeners made a significant contribution to the cause of victory. In the days of food shortages and rationing, a kitchen garden was not only a help --it was often a necessity. And with every seed planted, the gardeners felt themselves one more step towards victory.

Now, whatever your views and opinions concerning our President, I have to say that when he mentioned that fighting this virus is basically like fighting a war against an unseen enemy, he summed up how many people were feeling. For the Christian, it is doubly so, because we are not just fighting the spread of a virus; we are in fact fighting against Satan’s attempts to use this crisis to derail any progress we might be making in our walk with the Lord. Whether through worry, fear, or anything else, Satan wants to get our eyes off God and onto circumstances. He wants to get our hearts and minds so distracted that we have no time or energy to focus on what God has for us to be learning and doing during this time.

And we have to fight. Not in our power, of course, because as Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.” (John 15:5) But the fact that we need God to help us fight doesn’t mean it won't still be a fight. We are told to “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) A preacher I heard once said that this means we are to say “yes” to God, and when we say “yes” to God, we will say “no” to the devil.

This fight is different than the fight against the Coronavirus, because our spiritual war has already been won. Jesus has already won our final victory, and we can read about what Satan’s end will be in Revelation 20. 

As I Peter 2:24 says of Jesus: “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” That is the victory He has won for us: victory over sin.

So what does a spiritual victory garden look like? It will look different for each one of us, since God has different "seeds" He wants sown during this time. The point of a victory garden was to produce fruit, and a spiritual victory garden is a decided and prolonged effort to produce fruit for God's kingdom, either in our own lives or the lives of those around us. Perhaps God wants you to be memorizing verses so you can confidently share the gospel with others. Maybe it is a skill God wants you to learn which He intends to use for His glory later on. Or perhaps it is a seed of character He wants planted in your own heart; a lesson learned now to prepare you for the next step in your Christian growth. Whatever it is, now is the time to be planting.

 I don’t know how better to illustrate than to tell you about my own victory garden, which has to do specifically with writing, but the principle is still applicable even if you aren’t a writer.

When the pandemic quarantine began, I was disappointed as plans were postponed indefinitely and even church was cancelled. As I began to try to adjust to this stay-at-home way of life, I was struck early on by the thought that God had a purpose for me during this time, and that it was no accident that I was faced with extra time at home just as writing was becoming a major part of my life. I knew God wanted me to use this time to develop my writing skill and to make progress on the different writing projects I had begun.

That was when I began to plant seeds in my writer's victory garden. I began a challenge of writing 500 words a day for 30 days, and carefully thought about how I was using my time. I listened to audio books and podcasts as I worked at tasks that didn’t require much mental exertion, and I started in on my substantial “to be read” pile, giving first priority to the two books I had bought about writing, but hadn’t had time to read yet.

I also thought seriously about what kind of schedule I wanted to keep to prepare me for the summer. I had already decided to treat writing just like a job during my summer break, and teaching from home via online lessons has given me the chance to get myself into a regular at-home schedule. Now that I’m in a routine, it is getting much easier to sit down and write when it’s time, and that summer schedule is looking more and more possible. I'm also learning important lessons and growing in my walk with God even more, since I have been focusing more on my relationship with Him, as the source from which I want my writing to flow.

To tend this victory garden of new skills, new habits, and new knowledge, I will have to weed out distractions and things that sound fun, but would eat into the time I need to use for writing. I will need to keep my mind well-watered by continuing to read and learn, first and foremost by immersing myself in Scripture, but also by soaking up all the knowledge I can about my subject matter, as well as about the writing craft itself. I will also need to keep out the “pests” of worry, fear, and self-reliance that will eat up my productivity.

And hopefully, by the end of the summer, my little victory garden will be bearing fruit, whether in finished projects, skills honed for further use, or simply in my own heart’s victory over the temptation to misuse this gift of time God has given me.

"But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

I Corinthians 15:57