Psalms 1 through 72, psalms and hymns for worship and praise. The aim for the series is that we, the students, want to learn that singing psalms of worship and praise will help him or her through good times and bad times. Our lesson today is rest in the Lord. The text, Psalms 37-41, and the focus on Psalm 37, verses 1-10, and 23-29. The key verse is verse 7, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him, fret not thyself, because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. And the application for this lesson is the students will rest in God, trusting Him to bring peace in the middle of life's chaos. So, thinking about that title, rest in the land, rest in the Lord, I think we've all heard someone a relative, a friend, probably recently, that said, I'm just too busy, I've got too much on my plate, I've got, I'm over committed, I need rest. We all need a rest, a day of rest. And this boy got instituted the Sabbath. Genesis 2 and 3 says that on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made and rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, or set it apart, dedicated it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. I'm sure you'd agree that we all could be better off healthier physically, mentally, spiritually, if we take a day of rest every week. But there's another kind of rest that isn't everyday rest. It's peace that comes from having a right relationship with God. Philippians 4-7 says it's a peace that has an all-understanding. And Jesus invited us into this rest in Matthew 11, 28-30, which says this, Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am weak and low in heart, and ye shall find rest into your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So Jesus invited us into this rest because this rest delivers us from the weariness of carrying heavy burdens, big problems, high stress, whatever our burden may be, big decisions to make. But this is, from reading Matthew 11 here, this is not a rest of sitting in our recliner and doing nothing, but It's not an arrest of being inactive, but, and we know that because he talks about taking up a yoke. A yoke indicates work. A yoke was used in the olden days when they used cows or oxen to, has at least a burden to pull things, whether it be a wagon to plow, whatever. They tied the oxen together, sometimes with an experienced animal, and yoke to an inexperienced animal. So it would train the inexperienced one in whatever the job was. And so we learned from this. Jesus said, this yoke is easy. because we're yoked to Him. He says, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's easy for us because we're yoked to Him, the one who can do for us, the one who can carry that burden. So with Jesus by our side, the burden of working with Him is light. And while we find, while we work with Him, we find rest for our souls. David wrote Psalm 37, as an older man, we'll find in verse 25 a little later in our lesson. Nothing can substitute for the experience that comes from living for a long time. And with that in mind, Look at this first question in seeking the context for our lesson. What advice would you give a younger person about living life? This class, by the way, has more accumulated years of life than any other Sunday school class. What have you learned from your life that would be good advice for a younger person? Okay. Even though they're young, they need to remember the God who created them. What else? Any others? I think the next one I would put on the list would be, know Christ as your Savior. Everything really begins and ends there, and then you can go through things that God requires with that or after that. which is baptism and church membership, and reading your Bible, praying, all those good habits, even comes down to, I would have been honored to choose good friends. A lot of young people get in trouble because they got the wrong kind of friends, and read good books. But that list, I'm sure we could spend the whole hour adding to that list. All right, our outline for today is trust in the Lord, verses one through six, rest in the Lord, same as our overall title, verses seven through 10, and in the care of the Lord, or how the Lord blesses us. A few other things, by the way, of introduction. David wrote many of the Psalms. and his writings run the gamut of emotional expression. At one moment, he could be expressing the greatest sorrow and a total lack of understanding. The next moment, he appeared to know what he was expected or what was expected of him. In both cases, though, David expresses his love for God and his desire to draw nearer to God. So his lack of understanding didn't keep him in his life's story and also in the Psalms that he writes. His lack of understanding at certain points in time didn't keep him from crying out to God for help during those difficult days, such as when he was on the run from Saul. And we also find the persecution he endured didn't lessen his trust in God. So whatever the circumstances, David lifted up his praise to God. And all the psalms that he wrote, we find that as a repeating theme. And the psalms that he wrote challenged God's people throughout all time. And like David, we can and we need to trust God in our lives. The structure of this psalm, 37, it's a teaching psalm, where David's teaching the people, his readers. It's also an acrostic psalm, where I think, what was it, Psalm 119, we studied recently on Wednesday night, and it's an acrostic with the different letters of the Greek alphabet, that go with different sections as you go through that psalm. If you look, there's 40 verses in this chapter. There's only 22 letters in the Greek alphabet, so it doesn't divide out evenly, but as a rule, there's a letter in the Greek alphabet starting with alpha. for about each two verses. You got two extra verses, so I think there's three sections that have three verses. But anyway, they did that because it's a teaching song, because the people, the readers then could associate whatever that letter is with whatever the thought is in that two or three verses. It would help them remember certain truths that David is trying to get across to them. And another thing that's common in Psalms is that the central verse, halfway through the psalm, will emphasize the central theme, which in this case is verse 20, which emphasizes that a wicked will perish. So throughout this psalm, David contrasts the righteous and the wicked. And he says, the wicked will vanish, and the righteous will inherit the land. We see that term, inherit the land, five times throughout this psalm. And it just means that God's gonna bless the righteous. So, the first ally, I'm going to trust in the Lord. I apologize for this small type. I've got a new computer and somehow it's not talking well with this file. I'll have it fixed by next week, but somehow I've got a glitch in there. Trust in the Lord, Psalm 37, verses 1 through 6. This first statement that David made, through the first part of the first statement, caused the people to relax and look at life from an eternal perspective. But it's what he says, the first phrase is, fret not thyself because of evil doers. Fretting, I would have said the definition of worry, don't worry. But this, what's going on here, it kind of takes this word to another level. It really means don't get irritated or don't get angry because of the evildoers, because God seems to be blessing them. I learned my word at GED that fretting is also another term for wear. But you got two parts rubbing together, kind of agitating, if you will, agitating. It causes wear, heavy wear in some cases. So it means to not become, fret not thyself means to not become angry. Looking at those who are wicked, but God seems to be prospering, causes the person to wonder, what's going on? What's God doing with them? And if they're living contrary to God's standards for righteousness, then why are so many good things happening to them? David wrote many of the Psalms. Man and Lamb of Asaph wrote a few, one of them was Psalm 73, and he sort of come to this same feeling and attitude. Psalm 73 says, Asaph says, For I was envious of the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And then he goes on down to the same chapter in verse 16 when he tried to understand this problem of what was going on here with people who were not righteous but were being seemingly blessed by God. And he said this in verse 16, when I thought to know this, it became too painful. Evidently in his mind, he's going round and round and just getting tired mentally trying to figure out why this is happening. But when he went, the Bible says in verse 17, when he went into the sanctuary of God, everything became clear. Asaph said, when he went into the sanctuary, into the temple, then understood I therein, When he took God's perspective, where God was coming from on these people of the universe, he understood that their day of doom was coming, that their judgment was coming. And when they were judged, that was going to be for eternity. Our life is maybe 70 years on average. Eternity is oodles. greater than that. Eternity is forever. We're just looking at a small blip on the radar screen, so to speak. So David told the people not to get angry when the wicked seem to prosper. We need to remember, when we see a situation like this, that we need to remember all that God's done for us and thinking life is not fair, and that the ungodly seem to have it so much better than us, shows a lack of trust on our part, a lack of trust in God, that God knows what he's doing. But at this point in time, The end of the wicked had not yet come, but they would soon face the judgment from God. Let me read, I don't think I finished verse one. I'm gonna read verse one and two together. Threaten not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Herb. Verse 3, says, Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. So the promise of God is to those who trust Him. It says the land will ultimately be their possession. And then he goes on in verse four, delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire to thine heart. I remember reading this verse four somewhere, and I, when I realized it was in this lesson, I guess I didn't read it the most because I thought, there's a psalm that says the word. I know there is, I've seen it before. And there it was, right in front of me. It wasn't somewhere else, it was in this lesson. But this looks like a promise, doesn't it? Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart. That sounds like an unconditional promise. How do you explain that? Does that mean we can ask for anything and God's obligated to to give it to us? He says, delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart. If we're delighting ourselves in the Lord, That means we're in alignment with Him, and we're gonna ask with His view, with His view or His will, and we're gonna ask for the right things. So it's not really a blanket. It's a promise that God knows that if we're delighting in Him, if He's the center of our life and our all in all, He's safe in saying He'll give us the desires of our heart because He knows where our heart is and He knows we'll ask for the right things. Okay, verse 5 and 6. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Verse six, and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noonday. So David continues his advice here to the people of God by instructing them to commit their way to the Lord. Commit here means to roll it over. And the expression comes from back in this era when at David's time, when they used camels for their beasts of burden. And the camel would lie down to be loaded, and then the men would roll the burden onto the camel's back, whatever it is, whether it's food or clothes or whatever, for their travels. And then the camel would get up and carry it wherever it was to go. So what David's saying here is when we commit, when people commit their paths to God, they determine that they're going to roll all their ways over to God and let Him be in control. Now that's difficult for most of us because We as humans want to think we're, want to be in charge of our lives. And to let go of the reins or let go of the steering wheel and let someone else direct the course that we're going is fearful, a little scary. And it's also easier said than done. But it can be done. It just takes a lot of prayer time to get our wants and our prayer requests in line with the will of God. And to do this says we're trusting God. And God can be trusted because He knows best, because He knows all. He's omnipotent, all-powerful, but He's all-knowing also, omniscient. So think about these next questions. What is it that you're fretting about right now? What is it that you're agitated because you don't know what decision to make? You've got a decision to make or a choice to make, and you don't know what the best choice is or what God's best choice for you is. And that has you agitated, unsettled, Have you ever noticed how when you've got a big decision to make, when you finally make it, it's like a load is taken off your back? What do you have that falls in that fourth category? And then the big question, will you trust God to take care of it? I've found that when you have one of these decisions and there's maybe three choices you could make, and you're trying to say, what would God have me to do? It seems like if you're patient and you wait long enough and give all the information, do all your homework, and pray that God will give you wisdom and all your sources of information to make the best decision, usually by that time you'll find either One of the three pops to the top, you say, this is becoming clear to me. Or two of them you find out are worse, that fall out of contention. And anyway, you're left with the one that God impresses you in the choices you make. So let's look at resting in the Lord, verses 7 to 10. Verse 7 says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass. These are theme verses. David continued this theme of trusting God that we talked about in the last verse by telling people, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. The idea is for us to simply let loose of life for God to be in charge of everything. What he's saying is when you turn loose of life and let God be in control, then you will have times of rest. And rest here speaks of a quiet mind that's not overwhelmed by these trials in life that we have. And if we're going to have a quiet mind where we're praying or thinking about this decision we have to make, We're going to have a quiet mind, we need a quiet atmosphere around us. That's why they call daily devotion a quiet time. We need time to think. It's hard to think when you're being bombarded by either people talking or radios, TVs, things like that. But it's to be still. Scripture said to be still. God said to be still and know that I am God. This is not to say we won't rest. This is not to say that trials won't come in our lives. Instead, it just assures us that God is there to help when those problems come up. Now, so we first read just a cease from anger and forsake wrath. Threaten not thyself in any wise to do evil. So cease from anger and don't make wrath even an option. Don't be agitated by others to do evil. So this is the final piece of David's advice. For people not to grow angry when things don't happen in the way they thought they would, or the way they thought they should. God knows the future and holds and will order things for His purpose, His ultimate purpose, to be done, to be fulfilled. Verse 9 and 10. It says, For evil doers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For ye have a little while, and the wicked shall not be. Yea, I shall diligently consider His place, and it shall not be. So evil doers will be judged by God, while those that wait on the Lord will inherit the earth, inherit the land. Verse 10 says, the wicked shall not be. At one point, one minute they're there, the next minute they're gone, they've been judged. Verse 11 is not part of our lesson, but it says, the meek, something similar, the meek shall inherit the earth. That's a repeat, that's an echo by Christ, that those words were echoed by Christ in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5. The meek are those who are gentle, humble, content with God and His ways. and they'll ultimately receive God's blessing. So we're looking for rest in the Lord. What are some things you can do to help you rest in the Lord? Pray. Okay. Pray. Through mine, I don't know what I said, right? Find a quiet place. Pray in God's system in the closet. Wherever you can. Pray and talk to God. Alright, the care of the Lord, or how God blesses the righteous. Now before I get to verse 23, let me just throw in something. These verses that we're not covering, verses 12 to 22, we could entitle, the Lord knows your problems. So whether bad things happen, when bad things happen to God's people, They sometimes think God's forgotten them or God's forsaken them. In reality, God knows everything that happens to His people. He hasn't missed anything. And it talks about, in these verses, it talks about the wicked plotting against the righteous. The wicked may seem to prosper in the present, But God's hand is against them and they shall perish eventually. In contrast to this punishment of the wicked, the righteous can be assured that God's eyes are on them for good. Okay, verse 23 and 24. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way. Verse 24, though he fall, he shall not utterly be cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. So you can see here's an illustration, and it was the same in these other verses we read, but verses 23 and 24 kind of go together. It makes sense to lump those two together. God watches over and protects his people, Verse 23 says, He orders your steps or establishes the way they're going to go, and He delights in their walk. Verse 24, even though He fall, He shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth Him with His hand. The good man is not perfect, and he will face difficult days. There will be times, well, God never said that saved people would never face problems. His promise to us is that even though we go through problems or tribulations, We're not going to ultimately fall. We're secure in Christ. He goes on, He shall not be utterly cast down or cast out, for the Lord upholdeth Him with His hand. We're secure. God props us up and holds us in His hand. Then verse 25, a statement of assurance. David said, I've been young and now old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed making bread. David says, from the time of my childhood, all the way through my little life, I've only seen God protecting his people. Consider what this means in David's life. David experienced many difficult and dangerous days. There were times when he almost despaired of life. Yet through it all, he could see the hand of God protecting and providing for him. He said, I've not seen the righteous forsaken, nor have I seen begging bread. He said, I've never seen the righteous children begging for a meal. And his conclusion in all this, that he said in verse 25, His conclusion is, God is ever-merciful. God is full of mercy. His mercy is sufficient for my needs. He's ever-merciful, I lendeth, and His seat is blessed. For David, to see this blessed means Solomon. Solomon became the next king. Solomon was, let's call it the golden year of Israel. Solomon was blessed beyond measure, this person. You see, it's true. And that's just one example. Verses 27 through 29, depart from evil and do good, and dwell forevermore. For the Lord left the judgment and forsake not his saints. They are preserved forever. But the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein forever. So David's The conclusion from verses 25 and 26 produced a challenge for living. He said, depart from evil and do good. The vast majority of the time, we know what's right. Sometimes we struggle to do the right thing. But even in our struggles with sin, God's with us and there to help us. He doesn't leave us. He doesn't forsake us. He doesn't forsake us at the first sign, the first sin we commit after we're saved. Instead, He gave us a Spirit who urges us to do what is right. So what are the takeaways from this lesson? Let's just, I'm not going to flip, make you dizzy here from flipping these slides back and forth. Let me just read the the first phrase of these verses that we've walked down through here. In verse 3, David said, trust in the Lord and do good. Verse 4, he said, delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire of thine heart. So delight thyself also in the Lord. Verse 5, commit thy way to the Lord. Verse 7, rest in the Lord and wait patiently. Verse 8, cease from anger and forsake wrath. And then verse 27 that we just read, depart from evil and do good. So David wanted, this is just some principles. David wanted the people of Israel always to remember the goodness of God. We see that come up over and over, what God will do for the righteous and the just because he's righteous and he's just. The wicked might prosper for a time, but they will face the judgment of God. Thirdly, David used many terms to show the value of building one's life on the principles and truth of God, and those are the terms that I just read from each of these verses. How do you trust yourself? Let's skip that one. How does your eternal home in heaven help you rest in the Lord today? How does your eternal home in heaven help you rest in the Lord today? Assurance. Okay. We know we're saved, and we have that security that helps us rest in the Lord and be active in serving Him. Someone told me it's the three S's—salvation, security, and service—in that order. We know where we're going. We don't have to worry about that. And that should encourage us to serve God with all our hearts. All right. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this lesson. Thank you for all that you do. Take it firmly. We're just thankful for all these things that you do for us and help us to do what you've commanded us to do so that we might have, might be able to rest in the Lord. And because of what you've done for us, we can rest in the Lord and serve you. Greatly bless your service. Pray for Steve in the hospital there, and your family, and the doctors, and pray that, you know, bless his life. Pray for us soon, and pray for God bless his family, pray he's blessed there. Comfort them as they grieve their loss. We pray that the people of our nation, our leaders, pray for all those in the 40 over us, that you give them wisdom, help them to make decisions that will please you.