([A Psalm] of David.) Fret not thyself because of evil-doers, and be not envious of them that work unrighteousness;
Psalm 37 opens with a problem every honest believer meets: wicked people often do well, and it stings. Its first words give no explanation — they give a command about the heart, and the reasons follow in the rest of the psalm.
The success of the wicked is real, but the psalm treats it as short-lived.
The first two verses present the theme of the psalm — a warning to the godly not to fret in spirit because of the present prosperity of the wicked. Like the grass they will soon be cut down.
The psalm sets two groups side by side, and gives each a different future.
Psalm 36 shows us the wicked set against God's character. Psalm 37 sets evildoers against the godly. The contrast has two parts. The first concerns the present life, when evildoers are the great majority and hold the upper hand. The second concerns the coming age, when God will remove evildoers in judgment and the godly will enter the liberty of glory.
The two forbidden attitudes are not the same, and neither is innocent.
Self-will and the desire for present satisfaction get mixed in with the love of righteousness. A person wants righteousness, sometimes partly out of fear of the power of evil, and at the same time is selfish because he wants a quiet life. Such a person easily frets because evil has its way. All of this is the same spirit of unbelief, joined with other desires. But it is unbelief and self-will. The wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. We are not to fret, which is distrust. We are not to envy either, which is even worse, because it is self-interest.
Being sensitive to wrong does not protect you from this. It can make you more vulnerable.
This "fretting" is a very common complaint, and Christians are not free from it. In fact, they have a sharper sense of what is evil and a deeper appreciation of righteousness, so they may be more prone to it than anyone... We seem to be in so many awkward situations, and the evildoers seem to have such an easy time! Nothing is easier than to envy them — and fret.
Under the complaint about injustice sits something much smaller and more personal.
Alas, it is this envy that lies at the bottom of the fretting... We are like a child who sulks and frets because another child was given a bigger apple — and the child with the big apple was the naughty one! Oh, what mischief can envy work in the heart of a saint!
Anger at the evildoer ends up shaping the angry person.
So stop being angry and let go of wrath. Their only result is to make you copy the evil you resent.
That does not mean pretending the wrongs are not there.
We cannot stop seeing the sad deeds of those who do evil. To stop would only mean shutting our eyes to the facts and living in a fool's paradise. We should not stop feeling the wrongs, the oppression and the strife. That would crush the God-given feelings and sympathies inside us, which are ours because we are born of God. But we should stop fretting.
Verse 2 gives the reason, and it also shows who has the right to act.
Those who do evil are not going to last for ever, as verse 2 shows... but the judgment that ends their career is God's act, not ours. It is a good thing that it is God's act. We are far too small, too one-sided in our thinking and too self-centred for such a trust.
The psalm does not stop at what to avoid. It gives five positive commands.
Faith in the Lord is the way of escape from this snare. So the word to the godly soul is, "Trust in the Lord"; "delight yourself also in the Lord"; "Commit your way to the Lord"; "Rest in the Lord"; and "wait upon the Lord."
The alternative to fretting has a name, and a perfect example.
Meekness, which ends in the inheritance (see Matt. 5:5), seems to be the attitude of soul that makes us willing to be nothing until the promised inheritance comes. The Lord Jesus, in whom everything was perfect, expressed it fully. Though Lord of all, He was content to have nothing... This Psalm may therefore be read by us all.
- Fret — the command targets the heart, not the circumstances; the evil is real, but the psalm forbids the agitation about it.
- Distrust — fretting is unbelief and self-will in disguise; envy is worse still, because it is plain self-interest.
- Envy — it hides under the complaint; we say wickedness grieves us, when what stings is that the wicked have the bigger apple.
- Copy — left alone, fretting makes us imitate the evil we resent, so anger at sin ends in sin of our own.
- Wait — the wicked are grass; God removes them, not us, so trust, delight, commit, rest and wait take the place of fretting.
for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and fade as the green herb.
The psalm opens by forbidding two reactions: fretting and envy. This second verse gives the reason. What looks like the success of wrongdoers lasts only a short season. So the question is this: do we judge people by what we can see now, or by the end God has fixed for them?
The verse is not a bare statement about grass. It gives a reason to a heart that is troubled by what it sees.
The first section insists that the blessing of the righteous lasts for ever. It sets this against the quick and complete end of the wicked. It makes this an argument for full rest of heart in committing yourself to God. Wickedness seems to succeed now, and that naturally stirs up fretting and envy of the man who appears to have so much the best of it in things here. But this forgets that faith's part must be in the unseen.
The trouble is rarely a pure concern for what is right. It is the sting of comparison.
It is this envy that lies at the bottom of the fretting. We are under trial, and the worker of wrong seems to be having such an easy time. We cannot bear it! We are like a child in a nursery who pouts and frets because the other child has a bigger apple than the one he was given. And the owner of the big apple was the naughty child of the nursery! Oh, what mischief envy can work in the heart of a believer! And what misery too it can produce, and what sin!
Another writer gives each of these feelings its plain name:
The first exhortation is to peacefulness of spirit, and it is general and applies to the state of the mind... We are neither to fret, which is distrust, nor to be envious, which is even worse and is self-interest.
The verse promises an ending. But that ending is God's work, not ours.
And moreover, it is all so futile! The workers of wrong are not going to continue for ever, as verse 2 shows... but the judgment that ends the evildoer's career is the act of God, not an act of ours. It is a good thing that it is God's act, because we are far too small, too one-sided in our thoughts, and too self-centred to be trusted with it. Our anger and our wrath against sin can never have the height and holiness that belong to God.
Withering grass can sound like being wiped out of existence, and some read the verse that way.
People bring in a host of passages here that say nothing at all about eternal judgment. They speak only of what the Old Testament is full of — the removal of sinners from the earth, so that the righteous may inherit it. The thirty-seventh psalm is an example of this... This is the language people constantly quote to prove annihilation! It is quite true that the Old Testament is full of it, for it is full of the time we usually call "millennial." In that time all this will be fulfilled, and the earth will be cleansed of the long reign of evil on it. But this language says nothing of hell or of eternal judgment.
The psalm does not say this once and drop it. One writer finds God's care behind the repetition.
God knows where the believer is in danger of breaking down, before the day of deliverance dawns. So He encourages him to be quiet and to wait... And as if to stress the command to be patient under evil, we meet the words "Fret not yourself" three times in the first eight verses. They are: "Fret not yourself because of evildoers" (verse 1); "fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way" (7); "Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil" (8). In judging people and things, how likely we are to make mistakes!
- Sight — the eye says wrongdoers have the easier life, and that is what starts the fretting.
- Envy — under the fretting sits the nursery quarrel over whose apple is bigger. It breeds mischief, misery and sin.
- Reason — the verse answers with a fact the eye cannot see. That success fades fast, and faith's part is in the unseen.
- Restraint — the ending belongs to God, not to us. Our anger never has the height and holiness that belong to Him.
- Rest — so the command comes three times in eight verses. God knows where we are likely to break down before deliverance dawns.