"Psalm37" Tagged Sermons
Psalm 37 can sound, on a surface reading, like a promise of immediate prosperity for the righteous and immediate judgment for the wicked. It teaches nothing of the kind, once the whole psalm is read together rather than in isolated verses. Faith here, like everywhere else in Scripture, is already real and not yet fully vindicated.
Verses 21 and 24 sharpen the contrast already built up across the first twenty verses, the wicked borrowing without repaying against the righteous who give freely. Christ alone perfectly exemplifies the life of faith this psalm only gestures toward. His faith, not our own imitation of it, is what actually becomes ours, laying up the true riches of the kingdom of heaven.
Verses 12-20 describe how the wicked actually live and what the Lord intends to do about it, a real threat taken seriously rather than dismissed. Christ’s silence before Pilate in John 19 embodies exactly the trust these verses call for. Psalm 37 functions, in its own way, as an Old Testament Galatians, arguing for freedom against a works-based anxiety.
Psalm 37 works on both a theological and a psychological level, addressing real anxiety about the wicked’s apparent success as much as doctrine. Faith itself is the psalm’s real subject across verses 3-11, not merely patience. Christ’s own faith, lived out perfectly, is what these verses actually describe before they ever describe ours.
The acrostic structure and careful parallelism of verse 1 reward a second look, more crafted than a first reading suggests. Verses 3-4’s call to delight in the Lord sits at the heart of the psalm’s whole argument. Christ’s own sacrifice for the wicked, not merely their eventual defeat, is what finally answers the psalm’s concern with evildoers.