This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Psalms” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 6, 1987.

We are reading this evening from Psalm 37. We will be reading the first six verses. Tread not yourselves because of evildoers. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers, for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will do it, and He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.”

Then turning over to Isaiah chapter forty, verses three through eight, A voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, and let the rough ground become a plain and the rugged terrain a broad valley. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. A voice said, Pull out. Then he answered, What shall I pull out?

O flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but The Word of our God stands forever.

Now, O Lord, you establish your people, and they are built up upon that foundation which is laid in Christ Jesus through the apostles and prophets. Lord, your word stands, and we, your people, have been built up upon it as a household established upon a rock. Truly, the floods come, the rains descend, but this house stands, and that’s your glory. We ask, Father, that by your word we may revere your Son, our Savior, who died in order that we might live. Amen.

Psalm 37 is a journey, and possibly an arduous journey at that, if not a strange journey. For Psalm 37 will carry us into the thought world of the Old Testament wisdom literature. We’ve pointed out to you that there are many parallels between what we find in this psalm and what we find in the book of the Proverbs, for instance. There is great similarity of language. There is the similarity of style. We have also noted that this psalm is different in that it is what we call an acrostic psalm.

That is, it uses the letters of the Hebrew alphabet so that each unit or stanza in the psalm opens up with a line that begins with those letters of the Hebrew alphabet in succession. For example, verses one and two are the Aleph or A, letter A, stanza in the psalm. Verses three and four are the day or the B letter B stanza in the song. Now, interestingly, the next stanza is the letter G or the gimbal. You see, the Hebrew alphabet doesn’t go ABC, it goes ABG. You might be able to use that in your conversation.

Sometimes In this first stanza, verses one and two, we have what is called a parallelism. That is, this stanza is made up of verses of two lines each, those lines paralleling each other. Each line can be read for the other, or as an interpretation of the other. Therefore, each verse has two lines which virtually say the same thing, only in different words.

When David says, fret not yourselves because of evildoers, that opening line of the first He explains himself further with the next line by saying, be not envious toward wrongdoers. That is what we call parallelism in the Hebrew wisdom literature and also Hebrew poetry. But note how appropriate that second line is.

If the first line stood alone, we would be tempted to think that David here in this psalm is concerned with the aggravation, the aggravation which the wicked have become to him or to the righteous. They have become that aggravation, so it would be suggested, because they harass, they persecute those who stand for God’s law and righteousness.

It is then that second line that focuses the specific interest of David’s advice in the song. You see, David’s concern is that fretting that arises out of envy. The first line paralleled by the second. David’s concern is that fretting that arises out of envy.

Therefore, the thought is not As is often suggested, don’t worry about the wicked, because they are aggravating you, harassing you, persecuting you, etc. Rather, the thought is this. Don’t let yourself get heated up. That’s the literal translation of that word that is rendered threatening here. in the opening line. Don’t let yourself get heated up or enraged by the wicked, so that your anger and rage leads you into some competitive trap in which you try to outscore, outachieve, outmaneuver, outdo, outwit the wicked at their own game.

The end of all of this maneuvering, achieving, outwitting, outscoring, outdoing, the end is so that you might have what he has. So that you might gain what the wicked possesses. Now it goes without saying that their success is extremely attractive, compelling. How easy it is for us to look longingly, do I say it even stronger, lustingly, at what the wicked have.

But note now, note that the advice of David is directed against more than just setting our sights upon what the wicked have. The great danger is that our rage and our envy will lead us to become like the wicked in achieving what he has achieved, in gaining what he has.

Look at some parallel passages to this opening verse of Psalm 37. For instance, let’s look at Proverbs chapter three, verse thirty one. Solomon, in this passage. Tells us not to envy. Here is the same language not to envy the violent man. The man of violence. The wicked one here defined in terms of violence, but then in the parallel statement that follows, he goes on to say, do not choose any of his ways.

It is clear, isn’t it? What Solomon here is talking about is imitation. The temptation for the righteous, as they rage and envy the wicked, is to become like the wicked, so that they might then gain what the wicked have. Turning back to Psalm 37, look at verse 8. Look at it in regard to what we have noted out of the Proverbs. The second line of that eighth verse brings across the sense of the thing.

The rage and envy of the wicked only leads to evil doing. to wickedness itself. Don’t fret yourself. It only leads to evil doing. Your rage, your envy, directed as it is toward the wicked, only leads to wickedness itself. In other words, the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between you and the wicked, disappears. It is no more.

So then, the sense of the opening part of this first stanza is before us. The fretting has to do with envying, and that envying has as its fruit imitation. we becoming then like the wicked themselves in order to obtain what they have. The stanza concludes with verse two, and this verse then presents us with a sobering statement about the latter end of the wicked.

It uses a common biblical image to describe that end. The image is that of the grass, or of the green herb, or if you will, the flower. You can probably think of a number of instances in which this image is utilized. Psalm ninety, for instance. You may want to take a look at that psalm. Verses five and six.

The psalm here is contrasting God’s perpetual faithfulness with the brevity of man’s life. A brevity that is obvious, yet apparently not all that clear to man himself. For despite the brevity, man boasts. His boast seemingly to rival the eternality of God himself. But the truth of the matter is, as the psalm tells us, man’s life is but a day. when compared to the eternality of God.

In the morning, they are like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning, it flourishes and sprouts anew. Toward the evening, it fades and withers away. That is the life of man, despite his boast. Psalm 103 Here, in this psalm, verses 15 and 16, the psalmist contrasts the Lord’s loving kindness, which is perpetual, with man’s life. As for man, so the psalm goes, his days are like grass. As the flower of the field, so he flourishes.

When the wind passes over it, it is no more, and its place knows it no more. Psalm 129, verse 6. Here, those who hate Zion are compared with the grass that grows upon a housetop, the grass that grows upon the roof of a sodded home. It prospers but temporarily, and then it withers and it dies.

What can be said of that portion of Scripture we read this evening? Isaiah 40, verses six through eight, probably the most powerful use of those images of the grass and the flower. All flesh is as grass, and all its loveliness like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord abides forever.

In that Middle Eastern environment in which the Bible was written, the figures of the grass and the wildflower were appropriate images indeed, conveying as they do the transiency of life and its impermanence, and the fact that life, after a brief period, inevitably ends in death, in dissolution. Psalm 37, verse 2. Those images appear once more as appropriate images in which thought concerning the wicked is itself concluded. The wicked and their prosperity, the wicked and their success, are seen at a glance, together, as if they are one and the same. That prosperity, that success, merely be an extension of them, and neither they nor their glory shall endure.

The wicked have set their hearts upon the world and its riches and all that it promises, first of all. Above all else, they have set their souls upon the world and the world’s promise of blessing. They have set their souls upon the world and the world’s security. Having chosen the world, they are in the end overtaken by the world’s curse, the curse that is upon the world, that curse of death, which comes as a judgment upon them and their We should understand, then, why the righteous are not to envy the wicked. Our imitation of the wicked in order to gain what they have lands us in the self-same judgment that inevitably overtakes them.

There comes, however, the next stanza, verses three and four. A positive statement concerning the life of the righteous as that life ought to be. And here in this stanza, verses three and four. you have the answer to the rage and the envy that are outlawed in verse one.

The object of our choice, the focus of our desire not the way of the wicked, nor the world in which he secures himself, but the Lord himself, nothing less than the person and being of God. A trust in him, a trust of him. As that fourth verse says, We delight ourselves in Him, and then there comes the desire of our heart. We set our affections upon Him, and then the desires of our hearts. Does not this verse receive its quintessential exposition in Jesus Christ? In and through him, that one who encourages us to choose God’s righteous kingdom above all else, and then all other things will be added unto us.

Matthew 6, 33. Indeed, to choose the world leads to paths of wickedness in order to secure the world. But even more seriously, to choose the world leads to the conclusion that you will lose the world. However, in keeping with the psalm, to choose the Lord and to delight in Him, in a sort of world forgetfulness ends in gaining all, all that our hearts desire. Jesus then exegetes this song.

Surely he does by pointing out to us the object of our chief delight. But he does so as well by the life which he himself lives. For he is the one who perfectly resists the temptation to gain the world. by the root which the wicked have gained. He is the one who has trusted in the Lord perfectly, the one who has delighted himself completely in the Lord. He is the one who consistently rejected the world and its author, and as a result, the desire of Irfad, namely, to please his father, and to abide with him forever. The desire of his heart, this is conferred upon him as the conclusion of his life.

But more amazingly still, more amazingly still, so that grace may yet be preached from this psalm, even this psalm, The one whom we adore, Jesus Christ, actually gives himself over to the wicked. Those who have pursued the course of wickedness, those who have set their sights upon this world, they, for the sake of their ambition and their prosperity, have slain him. but He willingly gave Himself over to them, so that in the end even they might have hope, and perceive through His sacrifice that the claim of the world and its control of the soul is broken. The cross becomes transparent For through it now one perceives eternal glory and the prosperity that transcends the prosperity of this creation. For then, the sake of the wicked, the Lord Jesus gives himself over to the fate of the wicked, that the wicked themselves might be reclaimed. Is it not so with you? Your soul hesitating before Christ, seemingly incapable of choosing him, not knowing from moment to moment whether you are with him or against him. Because you love the world so much, give it up. Give it up.

There’s a better world, a much better one. And we who are the wicked, having set our hearts upon this world, have now been trained by the cross and by the empty tomb to see the best of worlds and an eternal prosperity. Now, Lord, let us not envy, even if we have indeed been the wicked. Let us not even think of returning to our former habits of life. For there, no life existed at all even in the midst of the promises of this world only death but now through death the death of your son we the wicked have had our eyes opened for there is a transparency to the cross that we through it may perceive the eternal felicity of the kingdom of heaven. Lord, may we set our desire upon you and all that you are and then live contentedly in this world.

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