Would you like to sit down? What a privilege it is to be here with you this morning. We're having so many memories. I remember showing up here at this place one time at about four in the morning and I got in while I was driving my little Vega And I was following Bob Black and a bunch of other folks driving up over the grapevine on our way to Scott's Flat Lake for a ski camp. And I was the speaker at the ski camp. And so I got to meet several families, and it was kind of interesting. I don't know, were you guys at that one? I think you were. I'm just remembering that I couldn't get up on a single ski. I couldn't do it. I don't know if the boat wasn't strong enough or I was too heavy. I don't know. Anyway, Bob introduced me to this church. Bob Black is an old friend from way back, way back. I'm so glad that Patty and I got to go up and see him about three years ago. We drove up and had lunch with him and Susan and a couple of other friends. And it was right after he had been diagnosed with this kidney stuff and how he had decided to go through the dialysis instead of the transplant thing. And I don't know, there's so many ways that Bob was, what used by the Lord in so many lives, both in Mexico, with the Yugo ministry, as well as in our lives, and introducing me to Charlie Gerringer and getting me to come to this church. It was an amazing thing to look back and see that. And then if you want to look at that funeral, you'll find out that Bob really did have an effect on a lot of people. It was exciting to watch how he was used by the Lord in so many lives, including my own and our own. So anyway, it's great to be here today. Let's start with a question. Is anybody here upset? Is anybody here unhappy maybe with the results of the election? Anybody upset with what's going on with the inflation stuff? Is anybody upset with some other place where you've been cheated in life? Anybody ever pass you on the freeway and almost kill you? There are a lot of ways that we can have effects in our lives that really do upset us. And I want us to take a look at a passage of scripture that will really help us with this. And so, The last time I was here, I don't know if it was Psalm 119 or which Psalm it was, but in our continuing study in the book of Psalms, you know, year after year, it's going to take us 150 years to cover all of them. But today I want us to look together at Psalm 37. And I just love reading through the Bible. And if you haven't started that yet, get going on it. Find different translations. Do it every year. Do a regular thing. It takes about 15 minutes a day to do the chapters you need to do in order to read through the Bible in a year. I mean, 15 minutes, who doesn't have that? You could do it. So reading through the Psalms, I came through this one that really did make me want to know, what is it saying to us? And so the first word, well, I guess it depends on the translation you have. The first thought in here is about the word fret. And I wanted to know what in the world is fretting? Most of us, and I was thinking about asking for a show of hands, but most of us are thinking that fretting is the same as worrying, right? Because you say fret and worry. Don't fret or worry about that. And the way I have discovered this is looking back at the original word in Hebrew. And the original word in Hebrew is not worry. The original word is get heated. Don't get heated. In fact, one old guy translated it, heat not thyself. What in the world are we talking about, getting heated? How is it that we get heated? Let's read the rest of verse one. Do not fret because of evildoers. And a lot of times, evildoers are the ones that get us upset. We're unhappy with what evil people are doing to us, doing to us and our family, and our community, and our country, and our world. And we get upset. We get heated. The translation of one guy, heat not thyself because of the evildoers. You go, what are we talking about? Don't get heated. Do we ever get upset by the evil that's going on around us? Do we get heated on the inside? Is it a thing that really bothers us? There's so many different terms for being heated. I've had fun asking people, what other terms do you use? In fact, I even looked at my word perfect word search about other ideas about this thing of getting heated, being upset. My first thought is don't be hot and bothered. You know what it is to be hot and bothered. Don't be angered. Don't be fuming. And too many times we do get fuming or worked up, put out, galled, our blood boiling, our teeth gnashing. How about like your dogs, do your hackles get raised up? Do you get riled? And my favorite one, from an old friend was, that chap's my hide. Sometimes there are things going on around us that really get us upset. And so here, David, the author of this one, is saying, don't get heated. Don't get upset because of the evildoers. Now, that idea can include worry. Because sometimes we get all roiled up on the inside and we're worried about something and we are heated in a sense of worry. But don't get worried because of the evildoers. The rest of the verse, be not envious toward wrongdoers. Don't be envious about those who are having success. Now, one of the things that, one of the good answers to this is to stop watching the news, right? But we really don't want to do that. We need to kind of know what's going on, but then we get upset about some of the things that are going on around us. Now, one of the problems that I see in the American church is that we tend to think that the Bible is all about the USA, and we're not thinking about the evil things that are going on around the world. and understanding the evil that's going on in the Ukraine, the evil that's going on at our border. I don't know if you've heard about how many of the kids and women that are being escorted, brought to the border, are being abused, physically, even financially. It's crazy some of the things that are going on. I just, I saw a news thing this week about a guy from El Salvador in Tijuana who's being abused by the cartel members in Tijuana and even the police are getting to, if they, they're in a little, little flophouse, they're able to stay there until six in the morning and then they kick them out and they have to go somewhere. If they go to the park, they have to pay to go to the park. If they go to the beach, they have to pay to go to the beach. And they're being abused. And sometimes these things make me wanna go do something about it. And what about what's happening in Nigeria? Oh my gosh, 4,000 Christians killed this year. Doesn't that make you wanna grab a rifle and go over there and help? Anything to help these people because the evildoers are doing evil. What about India? Churches are being burned. because the Hindus don't want their churches, their foreign religion in their community. And people are being killed because of that. How about North Korea? Did you know if you're caught with a Bible, you're sent to prison and your Bible is immediately destroyed? There are evil things going on all around the world and we could get upset. What about Indonesia? Even there, there are Christians who are being attacked because of their faith. And the point is, we can learn about these things and then kind of have a reaction that is in our gut, and we get hated, we get upset. We are hot and bothered because of these things, and we want to know, okay, Lord, you're telling me here in Psalm 37 I should not do that. Well, there's a balance. There's a balance between what it is to do something about it and what it is to not get all hot and bothered, to not be heated, to not fretting, because fretting really is a sin. The issue is what's our focus? What are we really looking at? Let's finish verse two. Don't be envious toward wrongdoers, for they will quickly wither like the grass and fade like the green herb. Is anybody else here trying to start a lawn and to watch the lawn die? They call it not a green thumb, but a black thumb. It's kind of the way it works with us. But you watch these things wither. And the lesson when you're watching something wither is that the evildoers are gonna be taken off of this planet. And even though the scripture keeps telling us it's gonna happen quickly, it's gonna happen in a little while, it's going to happen. Our good God is faithful and he's going to take care of those things in his time. And in the meantime, we have to keep learning. We have to keep learning what is it that he wants us to do? So David says, don't fret, they're gonna be gone. Instead, look at verse three, trust in the Lord and do good. Trust in the Lord. This whole idea of trust is something that I think we don't understand always. There are things about trusting that may sound kind of difficult for us to do, and yet we need to take the lesson that instead of fretting, when we're tempted to fret, we need to say, Lord, what is it you want me to learn from this? And how do you want me to react to this? Instead of fretting, I say, Lord, I'm gonna trust you with this. I'm gonna trust you with this situation. I'm going to trust you with what the IRS is doing to me. I'm gonna trust you with what's happening in our country, with what's happening in our community. I'm gonna trust you with what's happening on the freeway. My goodness, every day we wake up and we need to put our trust in Him. We need to acknowledge that this is another day where I am learning to trust. And he will give us lessons for trusting. And a lot of times, that's the issue. Why am I going through this? Don't ask, why am I going through this? Ask, Lord, what are you teaching me through this? What do you want me to learn in this situation? And our situation can be very difficult and tough to find sometimes. I appreciate the prayer time this morning, because we're talking about people who really are laying their lives in the hands, not just of the medical community, but their hands of the Lord, because he's the one guiding them. And so we need to be trusting in the Lord. Trust in the Lord and do good things. is what the verse says. Let's follow on. Trust in the Lord, do good, dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Grow your faithfulness. Get rid of the weeds that are keeping you from being full of faith. Do the things that will keep you moving in him. Verse four. This is one of the most misunderstood and misused verses in the Bible. Verse four, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. And you're thinking, oh, I'd like a new boat. Maybe a yacht. I'd like a new car or a bigger house. I'd like to go on a 12 month cruise around the world. And you start thinking that, okay, I'll delight myself in the Lord, and you kind of forget that, and then I'm gonna get my desires, right? There are preachers going around the world telling poor people this. When you give it all to God, then he's gonna give back to you. Give me your money and God will bless you. Obviously, we know that's not the way it works. The first thing you gotta start with is what is it to delight yourself in the Lord? What is it to delight yourself in the Lord? Do we really enjoy our time with the Lord? Do we really enjoy times of prayer, times of worship? What is it? The chief end of man is glorify God and what? Enjoy Him. Enjoy Him forever. Now, one of the problems that we have in the presentation of the gospel is that we are saying, people, do you want to go to heaven? And you think, of course, I want to go to wherever the paradise is that everybody talks about. and everybody talks about some really neat thing that we're gonna be able to be doing forever, but the question oughta be, do you wanna spend eternity with Jesus? Or would that be really boring for you? Do you wanna spend time with Him in His presence, in all of the blessings that He has for us? Do we really enjoy Him? Are we delighting ourselves in the presence of the Lord and in the things of the Lord? Do we really enjoy times of Bible study and Bible memory and learning all these things about the Lord? I think that the real problem is that we misunderstand the idea that we delight in the Lord and we get all the things we want. It's not really what it says. It says we delight in the Lord and he's going to give you desires. He'll give you the things that he wants you to want. He'll change what it is that you want as you're delighting in him. As you understand who he is and all the things that he does in this life, and you understand what a wonderful, loving God he is, and then you start wanting to do the things that he wants you to do. I have a clear memory of junior high school. Centennial High School in Norwalk, California. And every week we were responsible for current events. Anybody ever have current events that you had to present? You bring a current event, you cut a little thing out of the paper, and you get up in front of the class and you stand there and you read your current event. You know what I remember? I remember going back to sit in my seat and somebody would say, Leonard, your face is so red. How come you blush like that? And the thought was, I don't ever want to get up in front of people again. And you know what? He changed my desires. I love teaching the word of God. I love standing up in front of people and helping them understand what the word of God says. My desire was totally flipped around on that. I love sharing with people. I love teaching. I love sharing the gospel. I love going through the, well, last Monday, I was down in Mexicali, and on my route, I meet with three pastors, and I talk with them, and then I have to do a little circuit, and my circuit takes me through a toll booth, and in the toll booth, it's so neat to be able to give the lady the money and a gospel tract. Here's something you can read while you're here. And then after I'm done with the last guy, I go to the Mexican gas station because the gas down there is only 385 gallons. It's funny because it's the same gas as from here. They just ship it down there and charge less. It's Baja California, not California. Anyway, one of those times, I handed the guy the little tip for washing my windshield in the tract, and he asked me some questions, and I told him to get down to the church two miles down the road. And now every time I'm there, he's just real happy, brother, how are you doing? And this last time, he didn't wait on me, but another guy did. So I gave the other guy the tract. And the other guy looked at me and waved, you know, God bless you. It's a neat thing to be able to do things that the desires that God puts in your heart. You delight in Him, you enjoy Him, you spend time with Him, and He's gonna start changing your desires, and He'll give the desires that He wants you to have. So we need to trust, right? Put our trust in the Lord. It really is the beginning of salvation. Remember, it's not believe in God because the devils believe in God. It's trust in God, placing your faith in what Jesus said, as well as what he did. We trust in the Lord. We delight in the Lord. And then the next verse, verse five says, commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him and he will do it. Now there were a lot of translators having a hard time with the last part of that verse. Trust also in Him and He will bring it to pass. He'll do it. He'll do the thing that you're committing to Him. And so you gotta commit your way to the Lord, and so that's what we have to do every day. Lord, this is your day, I commit myself to you, I commit this project to you, I commit this next challenge to you, I commit my career to you, I commit whatever it is that's on your plate for the next thing, and he'll make it happen. Commit your way to the Lord, and he'll make it happen. Verse six says, and he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the new day. He's gonna make you Christ-like as you commit your way to him. Verses seven through 11 are kind of a summary of these first verses. We're not gonna go through the whole thing here. One of the problems with this psalm is it's an alphabetical psalm. And I don't know if you know that several of the Psalms are alphabetical. Only in Hebrew, it's alephbetical. It's not alphas Greek. Aleph is Hebrew. So alephbet is the AB of the Hebrew language. And so the writer of this one, it's a little different from some of the other ones. If you go to Psalm 119, There are 22 sections in Psalm 119, and each section starts with that letter of the alphabet. And the second eight is the second letter of the alphabet and the third. And if you ever want to see that, I'll bring my Hebrew Bible and show you. And you can see that the aleph starts all the first. Anyway, in this one, it's alphabetical. And when they do an alphabetical psalm, it's not like a preacher going through a message from point A to point B to point C to point D. When you're doing the alphabetical thing, you have to start the verse with that letter. And you gotta try this sometime. When you're thinking through something or even reading a passage, you can say, okay, how would I start this verse if I wanted to do it with the letter A? and my wife Patti found a place and googled the alphabetical Psalms and somebody has done that. They took Psalm 119 and they did it all, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, all the way through. I can't remember which letter it is, because there are only 22 sections. But the point is that this one, it tends to go thought, thought, other thought, other thought, back to the first thought, and then it kind of does it differently because of the alphabetical way that it's arranged. And it's kind of fun to see how it does that. So read with me the next several verses, 7 through 11. Kind of says the same things in other words. Seven, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret. There it is again. Do not fret because of him who prospers in the way because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret. It only leads to evil doing. Is that true? Verse nine, for evildoers will be cut off. For those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more. You will look carefully for him, for his place, for he will not be there. But the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity. And you can read through the rest of the psalm and see some of these same things being repeated in different words and expanded on a little bit. But I'm wondering about verse 11, because I think you've know that verse from somewhere else. I think you know that Jesus had something to do with writing this psalm, right? At the very least, he memorized it and he knew it. Because in Matthew 5, 5, and you have that memorized, right? Blessed are the meek or gentle for they will inherit the earth. Now the word here in Hebrew is the same word for earth as it is land. And the point is we can think about, okay, here he might be just talking about Israel, but Jesus is talking about the earth. And so we need to move on over to Matthew chapter five to see a little bit about Jesus' commentary on this psalm. And it might be difficult for us to understand completely what was Jesus' relationship with this psalm. Did he memorize it as a child? And then quote it later on? Or later on, did he remember that he was helping David write it? And he says, the meek will inherit the earth. It's Matthew five, verse five. And it looks like these two chapters are kind of commentaries on each other. The point is that Jesus took these things out of Psalm 37 and he took them farther. Here we have The evildoers are going to be done away with, right? Don't worry about them. Don't fret over them. Don't get upset because the bad guy is getting all the money. The bad guys get all the success in business. Don't get heated, upset because of what they're doing. So Jesus said in verse five, the meek shall inherit the earth. And the word meek in Greek is a good one because it has the idea of a horse that's under control. He's got strength but it's under control. And the meek in the New Testament are those that are strong but their strength is under control. They don't fly off the handle, they don't fret. at the evil that's going on because they're able to do the things that are pleasing to God. And here Jesus says that they're going to inherit the earth. The person who is meek or gentle, he's angry at the right thing for the right reason, for the right amount of time, and with the right answer for whatever the issue is. I'll look down toward the end of this section here. What is he said? It was said, I'm looking for the exact verse here. Verse 43 in Matthew 5. Now think of this as a commentary on Psalm 37. You have heard it said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Don't get upset about the evildoers. In fact, pray for them. Oh my goodness. We should be praying for the ones that are doing us wrong? We should be praying for those who are doing evil in this world? Oh my goodness. When's the last time we prayed for the Taliban? When's the last time we prayed for the evildoers in India and Africa and North Korea? Do we pray for them? Now, another one that we've lost recently is a man called Brother Andrew. He started an organization called Open Doors. Brother Andrew was known as God's smuggler. And I remember back in my Biola days, he would come to the campus and share about his incredible experiences about loading up his little Volkswagen and driving up to the East German border and saying, Lord, you made the blind eyes to see, please make the seeing eyes blind. And then the car in front of him would be taken apart basically with all the stuff they're looking at. He'd come up to the border and they'd wave him through. And he would take thousands of copies of God's word into the communist regions and doing amazing things. And you know what he did when he learned about the guy named Arafat? Anybody remember Arafat in Gaza? He was the evil man going after Israel. What did brother Andrew do? He went to Palestine and visited with him and shared the gospel with him. Talk about a Christ-like figure. Amazing thing. We can have an evil reaction, we can get all hated when people are doing wrong things, or we can do the things that the Lord Jesus would have us do. And it's so difficult to know how to balance this. I believe in the police. I believe in the army doing its thing to protect us. But I also believe that you and I have to have the attitudes of being a blessing. He blessed us so that we would be a blessing. He blessed Brother Andrew so he could be a blessing. He blessed us so that we could do the things that we need to do instead of getting all heated and upset, hot and bothered. Let's pray. Let's pray for those doing the evil. Let's pray for those people on the street who are stealing things all the time. Let's pray for them and try to figure out something to do for it. It's so difficult for us to have a balanced right attitude about this. Another thing that Jesus said in this whole context here, in verse 43, he said, you've heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor. Now that is an important thing, right? Second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. So the question comes to us, do our neighbors have a clue that we love them? Do our neighbors have a clue that we even know their names? Do the neighbors in Garden Grove know that the people in First Baptist Church love them? Now, I've been challenged recently in this whole area because I'm typical American now. I've got my little castle and I'll go in there and forget everybody else. I've tried to do some other things. I've tried to take my hundreds of lemons off my lemon tree and share them with the neighbors and maybe with a gospel tract, at least maybe trying to get to know them. But I learned a new thing recently. In fact, I'm gonna give your pastor a book. It's called Loving Your Community. And this guy back in Indiana, for 30 years, he's been trying to make this practical, trying to make his church be practical in the way they love the neighbors. Now, back in the early days, I had a thing called the Love Corps. Does anybody remember the Love Corps? Afton Light, Afton and May Light were members here, and they joined me in the Love Corps. It was like, how can we start showing the love of Christ to some people around us? And you know, we kept having the people coming into the church. You don't have that anymore, right? People come and ask for gifts, maybe every week or so. We had this young guy, about 12 or 13 years old. Something was wrong with him. He was obviously not being fed right. He was overweight but unhealthy. And learned that, I don't wanna tell you the whole story, but the deal is, Afton and May started really helping this guy. And it ended up that his, Grandfather had died, and his mother was sick, and she ended up dying, and so we ended up needing to go help him with his funeral. And it was a really amazing thing to be able to see people in the church doing something for other people. And the fact is, everybody here has some kind of gift where you can help somebody else. We don't know what it would be. In fact, whatever the church does, depending on what the way the Lord has gifted the church, And this guy has hundreds of ideas, things that you may not be able to use, but at least pique some interest on how we might be able to show love to the people around us. And we know there's a lot of evil around us. Wickedness is not just doing an evil thing. Wickedness is not recognizing God for who he is. And if we could do something to show the love of Christ to our neighbors, then we would be doing the thing that the Lord says here. Don't get upset about the wickedness all around you. Pray for it. Ask God to show you if there's anything you could be doing about it. because there are things we can do that will glorify the Lord our Savior and lift up his name, especially during this time of year when people are hearing really the gospel and doctrine being put on radio all over the place, and we just pray that they would listen and that the Lord would cause that to really bear fruit in their lives because of the truth that they're hearing. Let's pray for our neighbors. Let's pray for our world. While we're praying for our church and its leaders, let's pray instead of fretting. Let's pray now. Father, thank you for your word, for the wonderful things that you do in us and you want to do through us. Use us, we pray. Bless us. Thank you for your word. In Jesus' name, amen.