Trusting God When Evil People Prosper and You Don’t (Psalm 37)
Big Idea: Don’t fret, but trust God when evil people get ahead and you don’t.
Do you ever look at someone else and think, “Where did I go wrong?”
I was sitting at a restaurant in Port Credit meeting with a friend. It was a beautiful day. As we ate, we watched yachts go by.
Now, God has been good to me. He has given me many material and other blessings. But as the yachts went by, I felt tempted to envy them. Somewhere along the line, their lives took a different path than the two of us sitting there.
It’s easy to look at the lives of others and feel like we want what they have. This isn’t just about material things, either. It’s easy to think that we wish we had their looks, personality, spouse, success, car, life, whatever. It’s especially hard when it’s someone who doesn’t seem to deserve what they have.
If you can relate to that, this psalm is for you.
A Wisdom Psalm
Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm. According to verse 25, it contains the wisdom of David in his later years:
I have been young, and now am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
or his children begging for bread.
It reflects the wisdom that David accumulated over his many years of living. It’s a psalm that reminds us of what we might find in the book of Proverbs. It wants to help us to learn to live well and to face a struggle that most of us will encounter.
I want you to notice how kind God is. God knows the challenges that we will face. He knows our struggles, and he speaks to them. As Spurgeon says, “It is a Psalm in which the Lord hushes most sweetly the too common repinings of his people, and calms their minds as to his present dealings with his own chosen flock, and the wolves by whom they are surrounded.”
This is one of nine acrostic psalms in the Bible. We looked at another one last week. An acrostic psalm is a poem where each verse or group of verses starts with consecutive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It's meant to help aid memorization and add a layer of artistic design to the text. In this case, the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet mostly introduce every other verse with a few exceptions.
The purpose of this psalm is to help us trust God when it seems that undeserving people are getting ahead when we’re not. It’s meant to help us with this very common problem.
The Principle (1-7)
Verses 1 to 7 give us the main idea of the psalm: Don’t fret, but trust God when evil people get ahead and you don’t.
Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
be not envious of wrongdoers!
(Psalm 37:1)
The word fret is descriptive. The phrase “do not fret” — which means don’t be angry or indignant or fly into a passion — appears three times in verses 1 to 8. So it’s not hard to pick up on the theme.
Why would we be agitated by those who are getting ahead? Often, because they don’t seem to deserve it. It doesn’t seem fair that wicked people often get ahead, and good people often don’t.
But here’s the principle: don’t get agitated about that. Don’t even worry about it. What’s the alternative? David tells us in verses 3 to 7:
Trust in the LORD, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your justice as the noonday.
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!
(Psalm 37:3–7)
This is a totally different way of living than getting agitated when others get ahead! Trust God. Delight in him. Commit your ways to him. Trust him. Be still before him. Don’t fret!
What is David saying? I think we get a good idea of what he’s saying by taking a closer look at verse 4, which is often misunderstood:
Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Sometimes people read this and think that God is promising a trade-off: you delight yourself in him, and in return he will give you whatever you want. It’s taken as a kind of promise that you can get the life you want in return for delighting yourself in God. Anything I want, and it will be mine! The job you want, the husband or wife you want, the cottage you want.
But what does it actually mean? It means something even better. Christopher Ash puts it this way:
We may paraphrase the verse like this: If you delight yourself in the covenant Lord, if you love him, if you want above all else to know him and see his kingdom, if this expresses the deepest desire of your heart, then you may be sure that God will give you what you want. Do you want God? You will have God. Do you delight in God? You will enjoy God.
If we want something other than God — a job, a spouse, a child, a healthy body, or whatever else we may want — we might not get it. But if we want what is ultimately satisfying — God himself — then we will get God, and God is not a consolation prize. God is what we need most. God is what will satisfy us most. Everything else is a consolation prize.
Again, as Christopher Ash says:
If I love God more and more, if my heart desires God more and more, I will know God more and more, enjoy God more and more, delight in God more and more. And somehow, as I do that, the blessings that loomed so very large in my hopes are moved to the side of my affections. Oh, sure, I still want healing, a happy marriage, a successful job, or whatever it may be. It would be very odd not to want these things. But they are no longer central. What—or rather, who — fills the screen of my affections is God himself. God promises me God as I delight in God.
The Reasons (8-34)
Why should we take David’s advice? In verse 8 to 34, he gives us two reasons. Here they are:
First: Because the wicked live short lives and then face God’s judgment.
For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.
In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;
though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
(Psalm 37:9-10)
And then verse 20:
But the wicked will perish;
the enemies of the LORD are like the glory of the pastures;
they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.
Take the long view, David says. When I lived in North Bay for a summer, they had these bugs called shad flies or mayflies. They seem to all hatch at the same time. For a day or two in the spring or autumn, they’re everywhere, covering every possible surface. But they don’t eat. Their lives are incredibly short. They usually live for about 24 to 72 hours once they emerge, and then they’re gone.
The wicked are like that, David says. Don’t envy shad flies. The wicked are prosperous for a short time, but then they face the Lord. Their prosperity won’t last forever.
David gives a second reason not to fret:
Second: In contrast to the wicked, God cares for his own.
Better is the little that the righteous has
than the abundance 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 blameless,
and their heritage will remain forever;
they are not put to shame in evil times;
in the days of famine they have abundance.
(Psalm 37:16–19)
I love what one study Bible says about these verses: “God watches out for them, and they learn that deep roots are more important than lofty branches.” They may not be as outwardly impressive, but they will have depth and stability even in hard times. It’s why the apostle Paul, who owned very little, could say that he owned everything (2 Corinthians 6:10). We may not have material possessions, but we have something greater: we have God himself.
And then look at verses 23 and 24:
The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t go through problems, but it does mean that God will sustain you even when you stumble and struggle. I love the story of George Müller, the founder of the great faith orphanages in England in the 1800s. In the margin of his Bible, beside verse 23 — “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” — Müller added the words “and the stops.” Apparently, Müller recognized that, for the believer, even apparent setbacks are ordered by the Lord and part of his gracious design.
David’s given us the principle: Don’t fret, but trust God when others are getting ahead and you aren’t. He’s given us the reasons: first, their success won’t last long; second, God will care for his own people. Now he gives us one more thing:
The Testimony (35-40)
David has already given us a bit of a testimony in verses 25 and 26:
I have been young, and now am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
or his children begging for bread.
He is ever lending generously,
and his children become a blessing.
This was David’s experience. It may not be everyone’s. It’s not a guarantee. But David could say that he’s seen God has a consistent track record of caring for his own.
In verses 35 and on, he continues.
I have seen a wicked, ruthless man,
spreading himself like a green laurel tree.
It looked impressive!
But he passed away, and behold, he was no more;
though I sought him, he could not be found.
On the other hand:
The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD;
he is their stronghold in the time of trouble.
The LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
When we look around, it’s really going to look like life isn’t fair. We’re sometimes going to ask ourselves, “Where did we go wrong? How come they’re doing so well, and I’m struggling so much?”
David tells us: don’t get agitated about that. Take courage. The wicked are shad flies. But you’ve got something greater than what they have, something of eternal value that will last forever. You have God himself. “Take it from me,” David says. “I’ve lived a long time. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Don’t envy those who have a lot and disappear. Aim to be someone who delights in God and will be satisfied forever.”
You know who did this well? Jesus. Jesus trusted God in a troubled world. Jesus delighted in his Father, committing his ways to him, delighting in him, and waiting patiently for him. Jesus did this, and in Jesus, we can too. We can run to the One who lived this perfectly and invites us to trust him with all of our insecurities, struggles, and doubts. Don’t fret, but trust God when others are getting ahead and you aren’t. Jesus lived this way, and if you come to him, he will help you live this way too.
