Psalm 37:12-29 - The Righteous and the Wicked Contrasted

Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm. In the Hebrew it is divided into 22 stanzas, each one pertaining to one of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. For some reason this acrostic form was not carried over into our English translations, where we find the psalm divided into forty verses. Because of its length I divided the exposition of it into three sermons. I covered the first eleven verses in the first sermon. In this second sermon I covered verses 12-29--ten stanzas in the Hebrew.

The first part of this exposition deals with the hatred that the wicked have for the righteous.

(12) The wicked plots against the righteous

and gnashes his teeth at him,

Our theology, our truth claims as Christians, is offensive to the sinful world. The gospel itself is an offense. If we genuinely believe the gospel and seek to live the gospel we will be hated. Sound harsh?

Understand that I'm not talking about Christians behaving in purposely offensive and obnoxious ways. There are plenty who do that in the name of Christ. No, I'm talking about genuine Christian belief and practice. Ours is to love and to speak the truth--but to speak the truth in love. And to live the truth we profess to believe. If we do so there will always be opposition. This is the norm in the New Testament. If we have not experienced that in our short lives living in the western world it is because we are an anomaly.

The second theme this particular passage takes up is that of wealth.

(16) Better is the little that the righteous has

than the abundance of many wicked.

The Bible has much to say about wealth and to get a balanced view of it would take more time than I had to put into that sermon. But what will help us to understand this passage and passages like it is to know that David is addressing ill-gotten gains. He is speaking of wealth accumulated by oppression. He's not addressing wealth gained by virtues such as hard work and wise investment. Abraham was wealthy and godly. Job was wealthy and godly. Even David himself, the writer of these verses, was wealthy. Profit is the reward of virtue and that is a truth that has been neglected in our day.

To the contrary, we live in a society where class envy is abused for political advantage. Envy is as wicked as oppression and it is possible for the powerful to use envy and greed to their advantage and take advantage of the poor by inciting them to envy the wealthy. This is why the Bible teaches us contentment. As Christians we should not be motivated by envy or greed in any way, but rather the pursuit of righteousness and Christ's kingdom.

Whatever God gives us in terms of material wealth we are to be content with it and use it for the furtherance of the gospel. But never, if we should find ourselves in a position of not having much, should we be envious of unrighteousness wealth, nor should we ever succumb to the temptation to seek wealth in an unrighteous way. That is what is being addressed here.

There is more to this sermon than this, including allusions to Christ and the gospel. I hope you will take the time to listen to it and be blessed. The sermon is about 30 minutes in length and you can listen to it by clicking the link below. God bless.

Click here:  Psalm 37:12-29

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