Meditating on Psalms 37: Delighting in the Lord

Meditating on Psalms 37: Delighting in the Lord Meditating on Psalms 37 shows some very interesting things about the life of the believer and things I can apply to my own life. First is at the outset: "Fret not yourself because of evildoers...for they will soon fade like the grass." Why does the psalmist say this? He, as well as we, easily go here when we look around us at the prosperity of those who do not profess a love for God. They go around and life their lives, so it seems, without a care. They are like those in the book of James where he shares a story about the man who says to his comrade "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit" - yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Elsewhere in the Psalms we read, "Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said, "I will speak thus," I would have betrayed the generation of your children. But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end. Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!" The Psalmist of Psalms 37 knows the end of the wicked and the goodness of God to those he has set apart as his own and therefore he draws confidence. 37:4 we have an interesting statement given by the psalmist. He says that if I delight myself in the Lord he will give me the desire of my heart. First the desires of my heart must be aligned with the will of God. So therefore if my wish is to do something evil then it is evident that I do not have the mind of God and should not expect anything good from him. This is exactly what James states in the New Testament where he says these words, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." The apostle Paul states, "those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh (and) to set the mind on the flesh is death (and) the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Therefore the man attempting to use Psalms 37:4 as a proof text should realize that he must delight himself in God first before anything good might come his way. The unbeliever does not look for good things to come to him from God since he has no faith to believe. But this psalm instructs us that our delight is in the law of God. King David knew this oh so well and his 119th psalm expresses this succinctly. The next verse talks about commitment, progressively becoming an unpopular idea in our culture today to practice. But God requires it of his people. We must be committed to Him and His word. For we know that without Him we are doomed to live a life of despair and utter hopelessness. Life comes through His precious Son who died for us and therefore if we turn our backs to Him, we turn our backs to life itself. We learn this from reading the gospel of John the very first chapter, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Also, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world." Jesus says of himself, in chapter 8, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" and in chapter 9 states, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." I will continue in my meditation of this psalm tomorrow Lord willing. -Joe