Guys, it's one of the most exciting things we do. In a lot of ways, it's why we exist to get the gospel where it is not. And it happens through people just like that.
And it happens through you guys. We are all either goers or senders. Okay, so one way to say that is we go or we send or we disobey.
Alright, and one of the great things to just kind of note if I can wire this up and connect it real fast. People don't just wake up one day and decide to go to the mission field. Okay, there is years and years of discipleship and stacking yeses before someone stands up on this stage to go.
Man, they've gathered well, they've grouped well, they've given well, and now they're going well. And we want to have people in our church that are goers like that, but also people who have a heart for sending and it starts at a young age. It starts with Kids Week.
It starts with being very intentional in the home. It starts with student camp. Alright guys, our student camp has only has 15 slots left. Alright, so if you have a teenager, and they're not part of camp yet, we have 15 slots left. And I pray that those will fill up today.
Alright, and that needs to happen, man. I know that some of you guys are like student camp that important. It's probably the most important week of their whole summer. It's a lot more important than in baseball lessons. I'll tell you that it's a lot more important maybe even in the family trip at the beach. Okay, they're going to end up having about six months to a year's worth of relationships that happen in one week.
It's a supercharged environment. I know when I grew up, going to camp was one of those times where I just feel like the Lord kind of really honored get away from all the technology. I mean, we didn't have phones then but you now now it's like get away from phones and just focus in. And so my prayer is that you guys will really push hard and if you got a teenager, get them to camp. I know people say they're like we're new to church. They're in sixth or seventh grade. They don't want to go to camp.
What does that have to do with it? If they don't want to go or not, right? We don't follow them around. We lead them.
I understand when they get into high school, a little bit older, that cement begins to get a little bit harder and I understand that but you got 12, 13, 14 year old kid, you know, we have the opportunity to kind of put them in the environments that we feel like they need to be in. And so I pray that you guys will jump on that and be prayerful, really prayerful about our camp situation. All right, let's dive in. We're going to be in Psalm 37 today. And man, I'm excited for this message. I have never preached a message on fretting before, but that's what this is about. Okay. It's about fretting and envy.
Here's the thing. We know that the book of Psalms is very helpful to us in a broken world to respond in the right way. All right, we want our responses to the Lord to be the right response and he gives us the words to praise him in every season to respond well in every season. Martin Luther said it like this. The Psalms are a mirror in which we see the full range of human experience.
This is the important part and find the proper way to respond. To God in every circumstance. Now how important is that find the proper way to respond to God in every circumstance.
We're going to need that today. And here's why. Psalm 37 deals with an age old question that I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're a Christian, not a Christian. Every one of us have dealt with a bad response to the situation that Psalm 37 brings up and that is how do you respond when you see the wicked prosper? How do you respond when you see the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?
What happens in your heart? The Bible says in Psalm 37 there are two natural responses to the prosperity of the wicked. Natural response is to fret about it. We're going to talk about what that means or to envy the wicked for their prosperity. Those are natural responses, but church we're after a supernatural response. And the supernatural response is only going to come through trusting God's wisdom. Here's the big idea.
Trusting God's wisdom guards us against sinful reactions. Maybe it's something out there. It's a news story. It's whatever. How many of us see the superstar athlete that has a litany of sexual misconduct allegations?
Man, no character, crazy social media. Like you just kind of get a picture of who the person is and then they sign $100 million contract because they can run really fast. And I don't know about you, but you're a little bit like, really, God? Like, do you know what we could do with that? Do you know how much we good we could do with that?
Or, man, do you know they're just going to squander this or whatever? Like, really, God? And there's just an angst.
There's a fretting that happens. How many of us in here, you know, can feel what our students feel? Guys, AI, all this stuff. I mean, how hard is it?
How easy is it, rather, to cheat nowadays? And what's happening in high schools and colleges? It's like, you got people that are flying by A after A after A while you got the other person who is trying to do it with integrity, barely scraping by with a B or a C. And we just look at that and we're like, man, that's not right. And it bothers me.
And it looks like the wicked prosper. And maybe I should just give up on this whole godly thing and just try to do what everybody else is doing. Fret and envy are our two natural responses. We need a supernatural response.
Only going to get there. Through trusting God's wisdom. And Psalm 37, this is cool, it is called a wisdom psalm. Many of the psalms give you words to speak back to God, not Psalm 37. Psalm 37 is not about your words to God. Psalm 37 is about God's wisdom and words to you. And that's what we see. Let's dive in.
We're going to just walk through this today as best we can. Verse one says this, fret not yourselves because of evildoers. Be not envious of wrongdoers. So fret and envy. For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Don't fret and envy them. Why?
Because they're not going to be here that long. Look at verse seven. We're going to skip around in verse, we're only looking at nine verses today, but we're going to skip around a little bit to try to circle some of these themes. Verse seven, part B. Fret not yourselves over the one who prospers in his way for the man who carries out evil devices.
Now, it's pretty straightforward, right? You don't fret and you don't envy. The wicked. Why? Verse two, because it looks like they're prospering, but I'm telling you, they're going to fade like grass. It will not last very long. And in the end, what we're going to see is that we don't fret over them because there's going to be a cutting off and a gathering in.
And we know that's coming and it's coming sooner rather than later. So don't fret. The Bible here is talking about fret and envy and I think we probably ought to try to define both of them. What does it mean to fret?
I don't know if you've even used that word lately, okay? Fretting is a visible, immense agitation. That's what it means. Fretting is, man, I am having anxiety and stress over a particular issue that is leading me toward, and he'll say this later in the Psalm, anger and wrath. The word literally means, if you kind of look back at just the notion of what does it mean to fret, it means to get hot. Have you ever had something happen and you say, man, that just burns me up inside? Or something like that? That's what it's getting at here. That kind of burning.
So the person that you know that was born with the silver spoon in their mouth has never worked a day in their life and has zero character, but continually falls backwards into money through mama and daddy's inheritance. And you look at that, and you're like, why them? Why this? Not me? How could God give them that fretting? I'm just getting a little hot.
I'm getting a little kind of burned up by the whole thing. Now, the other idea here is envy and envy is maybe even more dangerous. Envy is resentment over someone else's good fortune. God, I see that you have blessed them in this way. You've blessed them and I wish it was me that you blessed in that way. I don't want them to have that blessing.
I want to have that blessing. It's the it's it's the the high school athlete that you're looking at and you're saying, man, no character treats women like that. He's just awful.
Okay. But he's super athletic. And now I'm sort of kind of wishing I could be more like him even though he's ungodly. And that's what happens in resentment. You're in you're in India and envy rather, you're starting to want what they have, even though it means turning loose of your godliness. I don't want to follow Christ anymore.
I don't want to have this target on my back anymore. I'd rather just kind of forfeit all that and go for the world because I see the prosperity that is in the world. You know, another good example of this in family life. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this but do travel. Envy is a big thing. Okay, there's there is such like Instagram accounts, millions of followers that are just built on playing on people's travel envy. You know where to go and people want to go. Now what's funny for me is I have zero travel envy.
Alright, zero and I mean this. Okay, there's there is nowhere on earth that is worth for me to get on to an airplane. Okay, I'll go for work. I'll go for a vacation trip. But just like, hey, do I want to get on the airplane?
No, it is wholly unnatural to fly. That's just my opinion. Okay. But I've just I'll just assume stay my tail and my little slice of Summerfield.
Alright, I'm fine with that. But a lot of people have travel envy. They love to go.
They love to go and do and all that. And I want you to think about that family who has decided we are going to be a generous family. We're going to set the floor of our generosity as a tithe or a 10th. What's so funny is people are always like, the New Testament doesn't say you have to tithe. It's like, yeah, I know the New Testament frees you to give a lot more than that. That's kind of how that works. Okay, so we're going to set a floor of a tithe we're going to give. But here's the deal. There is no generosity without sacrifice.
What that means is you're taking steps back from your peers who don't have that Christian ethic that you have. And so maybe a family looks in and they're like, hey, man, that that family is always going on crazy vacations. It seems like we just kind of go to Carowinds every year, you know, and and it's like, well, why?
Well, they don't have that ethic of giving. And maybe you start to think if we weren't as generous, we could do more. We could drive different. We could go on a different trip.
We could satiate some of our travel envy desires. And it's that moment. Do I envy the wicked because of their prosperity? Or do I realize?
No, wait a minute. This is a very fleeting thing. And that's what verse two tries to tell us. Look at verse two. For they will soon fade like grass and wither like the green herbs. Get down to verse nine with me.
You'll see it very clearly here. For the evildoers shall be cut off. But those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land now as a bear command.
If you just look at verse one bear command. Don't fret. Don't envy. It's like, okay, why? That's hard. Why? All right, now we get into the reasons. Verse two. You know why?
Because it looks prosperous. But it will fade very quickly. See what Psalm 37 does is it gives us a wise view of time. And a better perspective on time helps us deal with the prosperity of the wicked, doesn't it? I don't know about you. With me, I see some injustice. Man, a lot of times this happens to me in the news cycle. I hear another news story about another thing that burns me up and is totally ungodly. And I'm just like, oh, right? And I have that. And all of a sudden, I forget that we live in this little tiny blip and that eternity goes on forever.
And all I can see is the here and right now, right in front of my face. Or the person that jumped ahead of you in your job. And you know it was from lying, backstabbing, and gossip. And it burns you up. But we think, man, it's always going to be this way.
God, what are you ever going to do? We need a proper perspective of time. I've used this illustration before. I think it's a good illustration.
It helps us. I want you to think about this rope, okay? And I want you to think about this white rope as representing our life for all of eternity. Now I want you to really think about this. Because what the Christian ethic is, and Christian teaching, is that, man, we have a soul that goes on forever and ever and ever.
Alright? So it just goes on forever and ever. I want you to think about if this rope was like our existence, and yes, it had a beginning, it never has an end. Just imagine this rope is tied up somewhere, I mean, it has circled the equator 10 times and is not even close to getting done.
It goes on forever and ever and ever. But here's the thing. You and I live all of our existence on this earth in this little piece of red. This is our life on earth.
This is the blip. I mean, when you think about the eternity of the whole rope, this thing is just a blink of an eye, but it's everything that we see right now, isn't it? The thing is, because it's everything that we see right now, we see the injustice in the world, we see somebody get ahead, we see the prosperity of the wicked, and we want it because all we can see is right here. And you know what Psalm 37 does, I think?
I think Psalm 37 teaches us, hey, you need to learn to live in light of all of this eternity rather than living in light of that little red piece of tape. You could say it like this. Hey, man, don't worry about what don't last. Don't worry if it don't last.
If it's going to be something that is light and momentary, fading like grass, then don't worry about it. But we fixate on it so much. You know, the kids used to say YOLO. All right, what it means? You only live once. What does that mean?
It means everything is focused on that red tape. If I miss it here, I'm never gonna get it. I've gotta, you know, they used to say FOMO, fear of missing out.
I'm so afraid of missing something. We are so fixated. On this little piece of red and Psalm 37 is telling us, man, zoom out, it will fade away like grass. There is an eternity.
Zoom out and see it. I think our culture is so fixated on age. Man, we don't want to get older. Somebody says something about your age, it gets into you in a different way. Why? Because we're so fixated on the red. I mean, it just gets into us, but it shouldn't.
I mean, for a Christian, every day I get older is one day closer to eternity and a glorified body, but I don't like it. See it like that when somebody says something about it. One day when my kids were really little, me and the boys were wrestling in our basement and I was trying to teach them how to trash talk. Okay. And so I'm like, Hey, you know, you, I was like, you gotta be intimidating.
You know, when you come out in your corner and, and we're doing the whole, it's like the WWF style, you know, and I'm like, all right, you do a big trash talk and try to intimidate me and then I'll try to do it to you. All right. And he said, well, my AP said, well, you go first.
He was real little. And I said, well, all right. And I was just, I can't remember what I said. Something funny. Hey, you know, your feet stink and I'm going to squash you like a bug, you know, or something like that. He said, okay, I think I got it. Was that right, bud?
We'll give it a shot. Without hesitating. He looked at me and he said, you have no abs. I said, what? He said, your abs. You got no abs. He said, you're old.
You walk with a cane. I'm about to blast you back to the 1960s where you came from. I said, whoa. Okay. I was like, I was like, just, just whoa. I said, how'd I do?
I said, you did pretty good. Right? I think you got into me pretty good there. I'm pretty intimidated.
We don't like it when somebody starts to talk about our age. Right? Why? We're so fixated. But here's, here's the point. When we can't get out of seeing only the red tape, it's going to make the prosperity of the wicked feel like it's eternal and it's not.
It fades fast. Here's the thing that we could don't understand. Ruin is already at their door.
It's that close. It's short time. And when we realize that and we start to gain what this wisdom Psalm is getting us, getting to us, getting us to see, then we have the opportunity to start walking in that wisdom. And that's what you have in verses three through six. Look, trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land. Befriend faithfulness. These are all, man, we could preach whole sermons on all this. Okay.
But they're just, let this kind of wash over you. Delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him. He will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noon day. He will dwell, delight, befriend faithfulness. He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit to him. These are not knowledge things. They're knowledge that is applied things. They're, they're things that we're going to do.
This is very important, guys. Alright, I want you to think about wisdom for a moment. Wisdom is not just knowledge. Knowledge is facts. Wisdom is steps. Knowledge is things you know. Wisdom is things that you know. And then you begin to act differently because of. It is knowing that this is the environment that God has made. And I am conforming to the reality of his truth.
And now I'm walking in a different way. You could say it like this. Wisdom is knowledge applied. It's not just knowing it.
It's deciding to throw your life into it. I used this illustration 10 years ago. I have no idea why it stuck. People still bring it up to me. I continue to use it. When I was in high school, there was a movie called Save the Last Dance.
And yes, I'm surrendering whatever man card I have now, okay, for the sake of you and your spiritual edification. Okay, so anyway, in this movie, there's this girl who grew up in an affluent background somewhere else, okay. And because of death, I mean, she's a ballerina. She's all this, she's got all this kind of silver spoon type stuff. And, and all of a sudden through a different event, she ends up getting thrust into this, this really tough inner city high school. Okay, it's this high school that everything on the movie is trying to make it just seem like a really tough, you know, high school really hard environment.
Okay. And, and she's, she's out of place, man. She don't look like everybody else. She dressed different than everybody else.
It's her first day there. And she's trying to navigate this new world she's in been thrown into, and she's at her locker, and she's getting stuff out of her locker, and she puts her backpack on the floor. She's getting her locker, she turns around backpacks gone.
Okay. And it got stolen, but it didn't. It was actually a good Samaritan that saw her, sees, man, she's, she's out of place. Okay, she sees the girl, she knows she's out of place. She walks up to her with her backpack, and she puts the backpack in the girl's chest, and she says, in this school, don't put your stuff on the floor.
And then she turns around and walks away. Now, here's my question for you. Knowledge is knowing that this is the type of school that you don't put your stuff on the floor. What do you think wisdom is? Wisdom is deciding to conform your life to the reality of that environment that you are in.
That is the true environment. Wisdom is deciding, actually, you know what, I'm not going to put my bag on the floor. It's not just knowing, it's knowing and applying. And so here's the wisdom that we see from, from Psalm 37. The wisdom is the wicked look prosperous, and we are tempted to fret or envy because of it, but don't because their time is short, and God will honor in the end, He will cut off those who are wicked, and He will bring in those who are righteous. So in the meantime, what does it look like to walk in that wisdom, trust, do good, dwell, befriend, delight, commit.
That's what it's getting at. Trust the Lord. Man, it says to befriend, verse three, befriend faithfulness.
That is a agrarian term, culture. That's what it means to cultivate it, due to faithfulness, what someone does to a garden. Verse four, delight. Delighting in God is not a suggestion. Delighting in God is a command. Delighting in God gives us the power that we need not to fret or envy.
Delighting in God gives us the expulsive power of a new affection. We see injustice. We see evildoers. We see enemies. We start fretting.
We start envying. Delighting God. And when we delight in God, it pushes us to the it gives us a different obsession.
It pushes out all of these other things. He says this, when you delight in God, He will give you the desires of your heart. I know some of you have probably wondered about passages like that before.
What does that mean? Is it a prosperity passage that if I just do the right thing, God will give me whatever I want? Well, actually, what the Bible is saying, I think, in passages like this, is when you delight in God, your desires begin to change. When you delight in God, let your kingdom come to earth. You know he's gonna do that, right?
You start praying for your own maturity and your kid's maturity and that we would grow. We we want his presence. We wanna know him in greater ways. If you delight in him that way, yes, he will give you the desires of your heart. It says, commit your way to him, trust in him, and he will act.
I love this. You know why? Because this is the proper way that we show faith. We trust God and then he acts.
How many of us wanna do this though? God, when you act, I'll see it and begin to trust you. You move first, then I'll trust second. That ain't faith. That's gratitude, maybe. I look back on what God has done. That's not faith. Faith is the evidence of things that are unseen. Okay, so this is like faith. God, I will trust you and I know that you will act, meaning, God, I know that you're not gonna allow this world to go on being broken like this forever.
And it's very fast and it's a fading grass. Our life is a vapor, but God, you will restore all things. Verse seven, here's what it says.
This is really what it comes down to. Be still before God, wait patiently for him. Verse nine, for the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
I do believe this is a big word. I do believe this is eschatological. What that means is the Bible is talking about what happens in the very end. Man, the Psalms are always like that. There's a little mountain and there's a big mountain. The little mountain is what's happening in our life right now. The big mountain is, God, one day, you are going to cut off those who are wicked and we do not envy them for that.
But God, one day, we will inherit the new heavens and the new earth and we can trust that. I'm not telling, listen, this sermon is not telling you if there's something unethical going on at work that you never tell a boss about it. That's not what this is.
Somebody on the campus or college campus, this is not saying that if somebody's cheating ahead, that should never be brought to light. That's not the point. The point is, instead of fret and envy, we can do this. Be still. Before God and wait patiently on him to move.
Here's the application point for this weekend. I want to call you to trust and follow God's wisdom. Trust and follow God's wisdom.
And you know what we have to do here? We have to make sure we go all the way to the end of the book, the end of the Bible to understand really how we have an opportunity to do this. Y'all, we can trust God's wisdom when things look out of control. We can trust God's wisdom when it looks like the wicked are prospering. Because you know what, actually, if you're a Christian, I know not everybody is, but if you're a Christian on our campuses today, you're going to know this. You and I have a story that is intimately familiar with what it looks like for the wicked to prosper and the righteous to suffer.
Let me explain this, okay? I want you to think about for a moment, you get all burned up inside because that wicked person and this in our culture and this new story and I just can't believe God. How could you bless them? Look how wicked they are. Well, wait a minute. Did God bless you because you weren't wicked? Is that why you got blessed? I want you to think with me for just a moment.
Like we say, God, how could you ever move for them? Look at what they've done. Well, what did you do?
What did I do? I mean, the Bible tells us, you know, we interpret the Bible, we read the Bible front to back, we interpret it back to front. When I get through the end of the book and I begin to look back, here's what I know. Every single one of us is in the category of the wicked because of our sin. And if I have been blessed by God through the gospel, it was not because of what I did. It was because of what he did on my behalf.
And so here's the point. You and I look in at the gospel story. What is the gospel story? The God of heaven sends his son Jesus Christ to come down.
Jesus Christ, 100% God, 100% man. Jesus comes into our skin. He takes on humanity in one of the greatest miracles that have ever been in the history of the world. He lives life in our shoes and dies in our place.
In three days' letter, he bursts forth from the grave alive. And here's the deal. If we admit our sin, believe and confess, we have an opportunity to be born again with him. All right, now, that gospel story, though, looks pretty crazy, doesn't it?
Here's what I'm asking you. How can you trust God when it looks like the wicked prosper? Because a pretty similar story, the wicked prosper, the wicked prospering is exactly what it looked like when you and I had the single event that bring us into the kingdom. I mean, there's only been, listen, there's only been one truly righteous person who ever suffered.
And it was not us. It was Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus suffered, the wicked looked like they prospered, and the door was open for you and I to come into the kingdom. And if that is our story, then we can certainly trust him when we look out and we see what we feel like is the wicked prospering now.
Jesus was caught off so that we could inherit our salvation. It looked like the wicked prospered, but instead, God was doing something with it. And that is true to this day when we see things in our world, all right? And we've got to believe and got to trust that. So let me apply it two ways and I'm done, all right?
The first way is this. Some of us here today, man, you're not fretting about the prosperity of the wicked. You're not envious of the prosperity of the wicked because you are living the prosperity of the wicked. The practice is going really well.
The kids are super athletic. You know, things couldn't be better. You know, you're just you're just living the dream that you had set out. But here's the deal.
You're not in Christ and you need to hear this today. Ruin is at the door. Wicked prosperity is fleeting and ruin is at the door. You might be trading a lot of toys and being known and money in this life just to have a little bit of success and pleasure in that red tape.
But you might be trading all of the white rope. So how do you feel? How did you feel? You feel Hey, there's an eternity for what you have right now. I mean, I don't know how to say it.
I try to shoot it pretty straight. It's like dude your life might be going awesome. But hell ain't gonna be awesome. And so it's like we need to get that kind of straight and figure out is what I'm doing now gonna be worth a godless eternity later? And I'm telling you from reading the Bible, it won't be. And I also tell you this, and the things that you think maybe are life right now they're probably not really life, you know, they're not actual life. They're not that that God has for you you're not finding your delight in him I pray that you would find him today admit believe and confess but here's the deal if you are a believer this is how we're gonna close you know what do you need to do today to get away from the fretting and to get away from the envy we need to trust the gospel we need to trust what God is telling us in his wisdom Psalm man this world is not gonna stand forever it's gonna be like a vapor that wickedness looks like it's forever it's not God will right every wrong what burns you up man is it another news story is it is it something with Palestine and Israel is it is it another trans athlete that takes all the medals home and and stands on the podium instead of the women that work so hard to get there is it you know I don't know what it is in your life I know for me one of the things that is very personal for me Anna and I before our kids were being born and before we adopted faith and you know Anna went through miscarriage and went through that multiple times and I remember during that time you know I mean how much it would just kind of burn what would I say the word Fred is to get hot to think about what our family was going through with miscarriage and yet understand this country aborts a million babies a year and it's like you throw your hands up at God God what are you doing how could this be the case and there's a fret there and what I would tell you is the only way to get away from that is to trust what we see in Psalm 37 it will not be this way forever and we do have one who has come and taken the cutting off so that we could inherit the land all right God has brought us into his family if you are a believer and we can trust that he is our greatest delight you maybe you're envying you're envying some of the wicked right now and I'm just telling you you already have in the gospel the things that you think you want from them well they've got you know they have money you have riches in Christ they have health you have an eternity in heaven they have status you're a child of the king you know let's go back and look at what God has given us in the gospel suddenly that prosperity of the wicked I think it will be something that that we don't fret or envy but instead we're able to run to God trust commit delight in him let's pray father God we come before you right now and we just pray God you give us a powerful response powerful moment here together as we respond to you Lord if we are in fret or we are in envy God I pray that you will remove that from us and we would trust your wisdom around time and we would trust in the gospel message today that we have been given those things that we may be tempted to envy someone else over God I pray some people would find freedom today in Christ's name
