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 20, 1987.

Tonight we will be reading verses 12 through 20, after which we will be turning to the New Testament and looking at some verses in John’s Gospel, chapter 19. Let’s begin tonight with Psalm 37, verse 12. The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, for he sees his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy, to slay those who are upright in conduct. Their sword will enter their own heart. and their bows will be broken. Better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the Lord sustains the righteous. The Lord knows the days of the blameless, and their inheritance will be forever. They will not be ashamed in the time of evil, and in the days of famine they will have abundance. But the wicked will perish, and the enemies of the Lord will be like the glory of the pastures. They vanish like smoke, they vanish away.”

And then in John chapter 19, beginning with verse 1, “…then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him, and the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head. and arrayed him in a purple robe, and they began to come up to him and say, Hail, King of the Jews, and to give him blows in the face.

And Pilate came out again and said to him, Behold, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in him. Jesus therefore came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to him, Behold the man When, therefore, the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify! Crucify! Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves, and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.

The Jews answered, We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself out to be the son of God. When Pilate, therefore, heard this statement, he was more afraid. And he entered into the praetorium again and said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to him, you do not speak to me. Do you not know that I have authority to release you and I have authority to crucify you? Jesus answered, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above. For this reason, he who delivered me up to you, as the greatest. Our father, according to your will, you have raised up servants.

For by them, the word is proclaimed so that those who have not heard might hear and might believe. How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they are sent? O Lord, we would be those then that commit ourselves in prayer to the Lord of the harvest, that laborers for the harvest may be raised up, in order that your harvest may be gathered And we, with all of your people, rejoice. Rejoice especially as the great day of our Christ dawns. We pray, Lord, therefore, that as we are given to this sort of activity, we might also live with expectation in the knowledge that our God will not delay, but he shall soon come. and grant reward of the inheritance to those who have believed. We ask our father that we might remain faithful in every circumstance for your name’s sake.

By now we are familiar with the general structure of this 37th Psalm. It is written along the lines of the Proverbs, by and large. It is also what we call an acrostic psalm, set out for us by way of the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, 22 in all. Each stanza begins with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in turn. So far, we have covered six of the stanzas, six of the twenty-two stanzas of this psalm.

This has carried us through verse eleven, and we have seen in these verses something of that strain that arises before us out of the psalm as a whole. That strain, that strain which is placed before us by the psalm within the context of the Old Testament scriptures.

Namely, a question. Are we to conclude from this psalm that the righteous, after all, always do prosper in this life, and that the wicked, in time, within a lifetime, within our lifetime, are exposed, shall be exposed for what they are, and given their just deserts. That is the strain, that is the problem of the psalm. And we have set that problem for the psalm in contrast to what we find elsewhere in the falter with a cry of despair goes up and the questionings before the Lord are voiced will in fact the righteous be vindicated and the wicked judge. Interestingly, this morning we read the thirty-ninth psalm in our responsive reading. You might rehearse that psalm again and think of it in light of what is said here in the thirty-seventh psalm.

You might also think of Psalm seventy-three and its reflection upon the prosperity of the wicked and the fact that very possibly the wicked will not be judged in your lifetime. and the righteous will not be vindicated in your lifetime. That strain made all the more apparent in the contrasts that are presented to us in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Contrasting the book of Proverbs, for instance, in which it seems righteousness is guaranteed an immediate vindication and wickedness is guaranteed an immediate retribution. Contrasting that with, for instance, Ecclesiastes, and possibly even the Book of Job.

So then, the strain, the strain and the problem of Psalm 73, sorry, Psalm 37, put in front of us. We have suggested, as we have worked our way through this psalm thus far, we have suggested that the problem and the strain for the psalm is one that will find their answer only in and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The difficulty in the Old Testament will be resolved by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the character of that inheritance, the nature of that inheritance which he brings to light, our vindication. in terms of that inheritance, an eternal inheritance, one that is perceived at present only by faith. But we have also observed the spiritual and psychological trauma inherent in this psalm.

The focus of this psalm, at the beginning, is a fretting—note the opening verse—is a fretting for the righteous, or, interpreted a bit differently, an overheating of the righteous. An overheating that comes about, as the second line of that first verse suggests to us, an overheating or a fretting that comes about out of envy, out of envy of the wicked. The pressure brought to bear is that of emulation. We, so envying the wicked and what they have, that we are driven to imitate the wicked in order to obtain what they have. But contrasting, contrasting that life of envy and fretting is a life of trust. This psalm, then, in a matchless fashion, I might say, a matchless fashion within the Old Testament canon, surveys for us that disposition of faith, character, characteristic of those who are described as the wrenches.

And it does this for us in verses 3 through 11. That disposition of faith, if you are concerned about a definition for faith, if you are asking yourself the question, what is faith? If you are reflecting upon that, then turn to Psalm 37 verses 3 through 11 and read them again and again to understand the significance of faith.

That faith, in its disposition, wonderfully answering all the connotations, denotations of the fretting and envying of the saint. The life of faith, we are told in verse three, expends itself in activity, in a doing of good, a doing of good that contrasts the doing of evil with which the righteous is tempted, because of his envying of the wicked. The life of faith settles into a tranquility. in which it feasts upon the faithfulness of the Lord. That’s the force and power of the concluding sentiment in that third verse. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness, or feed yourself upon God’s faithfulness. The imagery is that of the pasture. It’s a bucolic scene. It is one that is filled with tranquility and peace. The life of faith is a life of tranquility.

It is a life of feasting upon the faithfulness of God, in contrast to a life that frets, that frets and troubles itself about the general inequities of life. and the injustices which one then is caused to endure. The life of faith, we are told in verse four, delights itself in the Lord and in his promises, and that in contrast to the machinations and the devices of the wicked. The life of faith commits its way to the Lord, or if you will, as verse five suggests to us, rolls all its cares up upon him, since that life of faith knows God as the one poised to carry all the cares of his saints, of his people. Cast all your cares upon the Lord, so writes Peter, knowing that he cares for you. This life of faith not only rests in the Lord, as verse seven suggests to us, but more perfectly interpreted, it signals a cessation of complaint that arises out of envy. The force and power of the opening of that seventh verse is this.

Be still. Be quiet. Shut up. and wait patiently, patiently for him. For all of the distress of your soul, and all of the thoughts that pass through your mind as you are questioning your own stance, your own stability, you may do well as an act of faith to simply tell yourself to shut up and trust, rest, quiet yourself in the Lord. Wait for Him. Some of us talk to ourselves way too much. Way too much.

This life of faith, we are told in verse 8, douses a raging fire, the raging fire of anger. The life of faith flees from wrath, which leads only to the imitation of the wicked. The quickest way to land in the lap of the wicked is to cultivate within oneself a spirit of anger, to feed the fire of your rage within you. Along that route, you find adequate justification for deeds that are less than righteous. You vindicate yourself in your anger and in your. And content yourself that your actions are just and appropriate. When they are not. Rather, they are a contradiction.

And finally, in verse eleven, the life of faith here in the description of it is one of meekness and humility, and that patterned well after the figure of Moses. You can think of Numbers 12, verse 3, Moses, the meekest man in all the earth, who is assaulted and insulted by his own family members, his brother and his sister. who have decided that all wisdom doesn’t rest in him, nor should the leadership of Israel be vested with him.

But Moses does not plead his own cause, rather he appeals to God. God is the one who will vindicate him. He will rely upon the justice of God. and not the devices of evil. Now, of course, as we have gone through these first eleven verses, we have also seen how our Lord, Jesus Christ, becomes the perfect practitioner of such faith as here described. He is the one who exercises the kind of faith that is described here. He exercises it perfectly. But not only is the Lord Jesus the perfect practitioner of such faith, He also becomes the object of faith, that one in whom we trust. So as to introduce us into the realities of that better reward, that better reward that transcends even the reward and prosperity which this world may offer to us.

Well then, verses one through eleven, and tonight we want to move on to verses twelve through twenty, and the next five stanzas of this psalm. It is in this section, 12 through 20, that Psalm 37 changes gears. The tone of the psalm turns descriptive and away from the hortatory. In verses 1 through 11, the message was, don’t do this, rather do this. Don’t act as the wicked. Rather, act as the righteous by exercising your faith, by trusting in the Lord. The message of verses 1 through 11. But here, verses 12 through 20, the message is this.

Here is how, descriptively now, here is how the wicked behave. And this is what The Lord, descriptively again, this is what the Lord will do about it. Described then are the respective ways of life. The way of life for the wicked and the way of life for the righteous and their respective ends. The gloves are coming off, so to speak. clearly in view.

Now, as we move into this section, is more than any mere envying of the world, envying of the wicked by the righteous. Spelled out for us here is the implication now of any imitation of the wicked. The implication of that imitation in all of its horror, its stark reality, brought before our eyes.

You see now, as the psalmist deals with the situation in view, the reason the wicked have prospered is because of the advantage they have taken of the righteous. Therefore, by envying the wicked, the righteous are themselves turned around until they too become those who take advantage, no, even persecute and oppress the righteous, becoming the opposite of what they have been called to be. The righteous, through envy, become as wicked as the wicked. their lives becoming, as with the wicked, an exercise in power-broking and in people-breaking, all in order to attain and retain the inheritance of this world.

Note David’s expose of the wicked. He tells us here in the twelfth verse, the wicked are consumed by an obsessiveness. The evil man is inflicted by a fanatical contempt, a contempt that he doesn’t clearly completely understand himself. For laid within his heart is the testimony that what he is grabbed and possessed is not his at all. What he is claimed is threatened, in fact, by the very existence of the righteous. His life The life of the wicked, therefore, is filled with a perpetual plotting, a continual murmuring and muttering against the righteous.

The source of that second line of the twelfth verse may well be that the wicked one grinds his teeth at the very sight of the righteous. A vivid description, indeed, and one that reminds us of a reaction of those who persecuted and taunted Christ in his extreme distress. The muttering, the grinding of the teeth by the wicked is overlaid with a coating of sardonic laughter and mockery.

Where is your God? If he is on your side, let him come to your rescue. But while there is this coating of sardonic laughter and mockery emanating from the world, there is a laughter that transcends it. A laughter that transcends it emanating from heaven.

The Lord laughs, verse thirteen. The Lord laughs at him, for he sees his day coming. Or, in the language of Psalm 2, he who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them all in derision. Before the Lord, the futile arrogance of the wicked is so ridiculous, a truly funny sight For the Lord, who not only sees the future, but in effect, lives in it in such a way as to know infallibly the conclusion of the way. But this laughter, this laughter emanating from heaven, this laughter of the Lord, informs the disposition of the saints. It is meant to do so, for they too now are enabled to laugh, not that the righteous are doubled up at the thought of the foolishness of the wicked. Yet there is a comic sense to the whole affair, comic in the medieval sense, in the sense intended by Dante and the Divine Comedy. in that the Saints are assured a blessed conclusion, and they, in light of that conclusion, are able not only to face but to endure their oppressors and the oppression that comes upon them.

There is, then, that note of sublime comedy in the exchange between Pilate and Jesus. Pilate says, don’t you know I have the authority to release you and that I have the authority to crucify you? To which Jesus replies in the perfection of his faith and as his own quarto in the truly divine comedy.

You would have no authority over me unless it has been granted to you from above. That insult for the wicked, that insult for the wicked, that authority, power, the wealth and riches of God’s creation, do not belong to the wicked in the end. It is an aggravation, however, that mocks them and their pretense. The confidence of the righteous, whose faith is being perfected by Jesus Christ, is a liberty the wicked so thoroughly hate that the deepest motivation of their souls is the quelling of that liberty and the silencing of the laughter generated by that liberty.

Before Pilate, then, Jesus stands as one handed over by a higher authority. And in light of the will of that higher authority, Jesus finds himself bound not by Pilate, nor by Roman law, nor even by Jewish law, nor by the tyranny of his oppressors. He is a man who is utterly free. He is a man who is utterly free, and in that freedom he can laugh, as it were, at his tormentors, because, in the end, they have no power over him except it be granted from above.

The stance, then, of that one who believes, the stance of that one who trusts in the Lord, is utterly radical. It is a stance which the world itself cannot tolerate. It will not abide such a stance. And its position, speaking as it does out of its wicked soul, out of its wicked heart, is to quell the liberty of the sons of God and to silence their independence and their laughter.

The saints in prison behind the Iron Curtain. They stand apparently weak and powerless, yet there is no power stronger, there is no power greater in the earth than that which is being manifested in them. Those who believe before the tyranny expressed presently in the continent of Africa Those who believe, unintimidated by their oppressors, not because it isn’t a frightful thing to have your body torn apart, but because in their faith they know that he who sits in the heaven laughs. And their liberty is not judged by any human authority or power.

So it is, you see, that some thirty seven in many ways becomes a charter of liberty and independence for that one who believes it says here some thirty seven can be read as an Old Testament epistle to the Galatians. in which the threat within some thirty seven is that of apostasy, that the righteous may be tempted to abort the stance of righteousness and choose the positions of the wicked in order to gain what the wicked have.

By so doing, become wicked themselves, the channels through which oppression flows. How tragic a sight, then, for those who have known the sight or the side of righteousness to abandon it out of their envy of the wicked and their lust for the world, actually becoming practitioners of evil. Losing sight of Christ and the eternal and the eternal reward. They have sealed the covenant with death. Instead of being able in the end to laugh with God, they have become those at whom the Lord laughs.

Psalm 37, thus far then through verse twenty. the warning against a fretting born of envy. Instead of envy, trust. Instead of the machinations of the wicked, a life of godliness, even though that life may well be threatened by oppression, by opposition, by suffering a life of faith a life of liberty which transcends the intimidation of the oppressors and lands us in the lap of him with whom we shall laugh over the foolishness of the wicked and the tragedy of their course of life and its obvious foolishness. Let us pray.

O Lord, it may well be that in the days of David, he considered the threat of apostasy, not just a threat that came to Israel from without, but one that arose from within, wherein the righteous were tempted to forsake the paths of faith for the paths of envy. fretting, distrust. Oh Lord, how well he paints the picture of the conclusion of such an exchange. Abandoning the way of righteousness for the route and road attending, ends us in the lap of the wicked. And with them, determined to hold on to the prosperity the blessings, the advantages of this world.

O Father, we pray that through Jesus Christ it may be plain that we have been introduced into the great inheritance and, Lord, into a liberty that that inheritance bequeaths. May we delight in that liberty, rejoice in it with all our hearts. not forsake the way of truth, but give ourselves all the more to it. This we pray, knowing that it is only the power of Christ in us that enables us to achieve the end in you. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.