If we could turn to Psalm 37. This is a Psalm of David, and I will read the first eleven verses. Psalm 37:1-11:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, 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. Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto JEHOVAH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday. Rest in JEHOVAH, 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. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon JEHOVAH, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
I will stop reading there.
If you get a chance, read through this whole Psalm because it really says a lot of things that fit our present day and what is to come, as we have learned from the Bible that May 21, 2011 is the rapture, followed by the five months of torment on earth, and then on October 21, 2011, it will be the end of the world.
Psalm 37 really gets into this issue by having us look at the world, looking at the people of the world, and then looking at the promises of God towards His people, towards each child of God. For example, as we just read, “the meek shall inherit the earth” but the “evildoers shall be cut off.”
This has always been the case, as this Psalm was written by David and David lived from 1037 B.C., which was when he was born, and he died in 967 B.C. at the age of seventy. So this was written maybe about three thousand years ago.
The Lord was looking ahead to our day and our time in order to help us to live, I think, during this period. And, you know, there is a question. When we hear May 21, 2011, there is a question that comes up. What comes to mind is how are you and I and everyone else going to live from now until then? Are we going to live like we ordinarily live, like we have always lived? Will we just do the normal things that we have done in the past? Are we just going to continue on in doing them from now until then?
This will be the case with many people. They are not going to be influenced or affected by this information of May 21, that the rapture is coming in such a short period of time. However, the child of God, the believer, I think, is probably in a similar frame of mind as someone who just came back from the doctor’s office where the doctor gave them a certain period to live, a short period of time. The cancer is out of control and the doctor says, “Believe me; you do not have very long.”
So the child of God is going to, I think, think about his or her life, looking it over. When we do this, what do we see? What do we see as we look back on our lives?
Well, it is different for each one of us, but I think that some things will be the same. Maybe we will see a lot of shameful things that we have done, a lot of things that certainly did not please God or glorify God. We look back and we undoubtedly see all kinds of wasted time—wasted time—wasted on various things. Maybe we even thought that they were important or maybe we knew that we were wasting time.
How many years have you wasted watching television? I could really let you know that I have wasted a great amount of time in my earlier life watching television.
Whatever the pursuit, if it is a part of this world, then, frankly, the Bible tells us that it has been in vain. It has been vanity. Ultimately, it has been a waste; it has been a waste.
So we can look back on our lives, each one of us, and we can see that we have not lived as the Bible would have us to live, as God would have us to live, and yet now God is giving us a great blessing. He really is, to the true believer.
What more can He bless us with? He has already blessed us with eternal life, living forever with God in Heaven, sins forgiven—we know all of the spiritual blessings—but now He has given us one more. He has given us one more and that is, “You have, as a child of God whom I have placed here in the world, you have this much time, from our present point until the world ends.” For us, this will be May 21 in 2011. “This is how much time you have to serve Me. This is what you have left. Now, I know that you have not served Me in many ways. You have done certain things.”
If we look at what the Bible demands, at what God requires, we have to admit that we have fallen far short of the commandments of God in the Scriptures to give up our life, to take up our cross, to give of ourself in whatever way that we can imagine or think of when it comes to sharing the Gospel.
So this is why it is a blessing for us now, because we can do it God’s way today and we can determine, by God’s grace since we are a child of God and we have His Spirit, that for the next less than two years, “I am going to addict myself, not to all of the things in the world that I have already been addicted to, but I am going to addict myself to the ministry of the saints, to getting the Gospel out to the world.” And we know that God is going to work this out in His people.
Let us go to Luke 21. This has nothing to do, I think, with Psalm 37, but let us go to Luke 21. We read there about the widow woman, the poor widow. What is interesting about this—there are a lot of things, but one thing especially should draw our attention—is that it is in Luke 21, which is a parallel chapter to Matthew 24 and Mark 13. God starts out this chapter that really relates to the Great Tribulation at the end of the world—to our present day—with information concerning a poor widow woman. It says in Luke 21:1-4:
And he looked up…
This is the Lord Jesus.
…and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all: For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.
You see, the reference is not really to the money. The money is just a symbol. The money is just an indicator of her life. She gave it all, all that she had. She did not hold anything back. As far as money goes, she gave it all.
Believe me, I am not trying to get anybody to open their wallets, but this is to teach us that we who are children of God—and, spiritually, God typifies us as poor and as a widow—we who are God’s people, when it comes to this time of the end, are going to serve God in a far more diligent way and God-glorifying way than we ever have before in giving of ourselves. Whatever this means in someone’s life, the Lord will work this out in moving His people “to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Then if you would read the rest, Christ goes on to speak of the temple and it is the Great Tribulation. He is speaking of the Great Tribulation.
Alright, back to Psalm 37, a Psalm of David, in Psalm 37:1:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers…
“Fret not.” Do you ever hear that? You probably have to be older to have heard this. You do not hear people say this kind of thing too much anymore, do you? Like the mother to the child, “Fret not!” Or the grandmother actually to the grandchildren, “Do not fret about it!” I have heard this. I have heard this and it means, “Do not worry; do not be concerned; do not be upset.” Fret not.
Well, this is what God is telling us, except there is a little bit of a different meaning to this word for “fret not.” It actually means, “Do not be angry.” This is translated most of the time as “wrath” or “wroth,” as in “God’s wrath is kindled.” That is this word that is translated here (I think at least three times) in Psalm 37 as “fret not.”
So this means, “Do not be upset.” Do not be upset by whom?
Fret not thyself because of evildoers…
“Evildoers” are you and me and the whole world. We “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Whenever we break the Law of God or transgress the commandment of God, that is evil. It is an evil act, and so the Lord identifies us as “evildoers.”
But here, He is actually speaking of a true believer who has become born again with a new heart and a new spirit. The Lord is not looking at true believers as “evildoers.” He is mostly identifying the rest of the people of the world who have not become saved.
God is saying, “Do not be angry or upset. Do not get yourself upset.” And this is a good way of putting it, “Fret not thyself,” because we get ourselves in a mess at times through our thinking, through our own troubles. Our troubles are bad enough, but then when we think about them and dwell on them, we make it far worse.
This is why the Lord tells us that we are to be, “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” This is where they should be. They should not be mulling around in our own minds where we are just going over them and over them and making the matter worse. So the instruction from God is that we should not become upset because of evildoers.
Look at Proverbs 24:19-20:
Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at the wicked; For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out.
Again, this is similar language to Psalm 37, “Fret not thyself.” Do not get upset by what you see going on in the world: the injustice, the wickedness that is everywhere, wickedness that is not only out there but maybe in your own house or in your own neighborhood. “Fret not!” Do not be concerned; especially do not be angry with your fellowman.
Remember that God says, “Vengeance is mine”; it is not ours. We are not to become a crusader who is angry with all of the sins of the people around us. This is easy to do because we hear reports of sin that is multiplying and we just shake our heads. A person can become very troubled, but God tells us not to get involved with these things.
Then it goes on to say in Psalm 37:1:
…neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
Has anyone here ever looked out into the world with envy? Has anyone here not looked out into the world with envy? Well, I think that this is a pretty common thing, especially with the world of today.
God has really not only given us a beautiful creation, a beautiful world, but He has opened up natural man’s understanding to a great many secrets of the earth in order for the technological age to happen and for all of this to come to pass. I know that this is hard for me to believe, too, but especially for the children who are growing up in our day with computers and with phones in their hands, growing up with all of this technology that we have today.
If you were to go back maybe 150-200 years ago, there were horses and buggies. Maybe they had a telegraph (I do not know), but all they had were dirt roads. They did not have telephone poles with the wires strung all across the country as yet. There was no instant communication. It was either by Pony Express in our country or you just sent a letter with someone and it would take a long time for them to get it. If you wanted to travel, you had better be prepared to take a voyage of several months, especially if you wanted to travel far away.
That kind of world we would look back on and say, “Well, they really had it tough. They really had it difficult.” But I think that God has opened up natural man’s understanding to technology in order to reach the world with the Gospel. At the end of the church age, the churches cannot be used. So God is using the electronic medium—Internet, radio, television, satellite broadcasting—to reach the world. But it also accomplishes another purpose, which is to give man what he wants, to give people what they want, i.e., the world and the world in a way that was never possible before.
We read of Satan showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in a moment. Satan could do this, being a spirit being. But it was never possible for the world or for the ordinary people of the world to grab hold of the whole world. They were normally in their little spot on earth and they enjoyed certain privileges and pleasures in their town as much as they wanted. Of course, there was drinking going on and gambling and that stuff back then—there was still sin—but now God has expanded things or opened things up so that ordinary people can sit down at a computer and can see whatever they want.
The whole world is right there. Just type it in. Whatever you want, whatever your particular pleasure is of this world or your particular weakness, you can have it to the fill. Just by sitting down at the computer and entering the information, it is right at your fingertips and then it is right there for your eyes to drink in. And God tells us that there is “the lust of the eyes” that sinners have a problem with because they are trying to find satisfaction, trying to find something that will fulfill them in this world. But the world promises much and offers much and yet can never do it, so “the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,” and the belly is not satisfied with eating.
This is how it is. This is how it is. There will not be satisfaction for any man in this world who goes after the world. But that is not going to stop people from going after the world. In their deception, they will continue to do this.
If we go to Proverbs 23, I want to read a couple of verses that relate to Psalm 37 and to our day. In Proverbs 23:17, it says:
Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long.
So do not envy sinners or people around you. “Let not thine heart” get involved with envying anybody and do not take a look at the world around you. It is very attractive today like it has never been before in history. It really is.
Sometimes when we are discussing how we know all of this information from the Bible, people ask, “How did you come to this date of May 21, 2011?” I like to point out to them, “Believe me; this is not because we are more diligent Bible students today than they were in the past.”
When we look at the faithful men of old, who were true believers as far as we know, they studied the Bible and studied the Bible in the original languages: the Hebrew and the Greek. They poured in hours on end because they did not have all of the Bible helps that we do to compare Scripture with Scripture. They did all of this maybe by candlelight and they did not have the distractions that we have today. We have tons of distractions that are all around us. We think that if we put in an hour, we did something pretty good, as far as study is concerned.
So it is not because we are more diligent today. They did not have all of these distractions in the past. But they studied as hard as anything and yet they could not come to truth. It is only because God has opened up the Scriptures, even to us who maybe are not as diligent as we should be. We can know information that has been concealed for generations. The mystery is being revealed to the people of God, despite ourselves in many cases, because we are gaining this understanding.
Proverbs 23:17:
Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of JEHOVAH all the day long.
So this would be for today and for tomorrow, really for however long we live. This is what God is telling us, “Fear the Lord; fear Jehovah.” And do it not only here and there or at certain times, but continually live “in the fear of the Lord.”
Then verse 18, which follows along with verse 17, gives us a good reason as to why we should do this:
For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.
You see, God is saying, “Do not envy those around you. Do not envy the people of the world.”
It is Sunday. They are at the stadium and they are having a great time. They are having a great time, maybe drinking and being with friends. They are watching their favorite team, as the stadium erupts with joy when the home team does well. There is a lot of exultation, “And here I am.”
Maybe I am in a family who believes these things. They do not want me to do these kinds of things. “I do love Mom and Dad, so I do not want to disappoint them. But here I am, kind of looking out the window at the world passing me by. I am just watching it all take place. Oh, the tug of my heart, the yearning, the desire, the envy I have for my friends! They are my friends and I could be with my friends on Sunday. We could go to the game. That could be me jumping up and down.”
But God says, “No. No, do not let your heart do this.” And there is a good reason why you should not let your heart do this. The reason is because surely—not possibly, not maybe, not perhaps—but “surely there is an end!” (exclamation point). There is an end! This is what the Bible teaches. This is what the Word of God tells us repeatedly, “There is an end!”
Now, of course, we know this. We know the end, and God is telling us that our expectation—the child of God’s expectation—will not be cut off.
What is your expectation? For you, personally, what is your expectation?
If you are not a true believer, your expectation is totally different than what the Bible would have somebody to expect. But the child of God’s expectation is the hope that we have in the Bible, in God, in the truth that we read in Scripture that there will be an end, number one. There will be a rapture. There will be a resurrection. There will be a taking up into Heaven of the elect people of God. There will be the gift of eternal life. There will be created a new heaven and a new earth, and there will be pleasures beyond imagination.
Just look at Psalm 36. I happened to notice this in studying Psalm 37. I will begin in verse 7, Psalm 36:7-8:
How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.
This is not like the little creek that we have in Darby, PA. We have a little creek that barely covers a pebble. It will not be like that. It will be rivers of pleasure. It will be rivers of water that the Lord will open up. And the Lord says, “I will make you, child of God, drink of those rivers.”
Compare this with the measly pleasure of this world that sin offers. If you remember Moses, “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt,” because he knew that there was a “recompense of the reward.” He knew that there was a payday, and we know that this is just being saved and all that comes along with it. Moses knew that there was going to be a time when God would fulfill all promises. All that He has told His people—the promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and to you and me, all who are true believers—will come to pass.
Let us also look at Psalm 73, which relates to envy. Psalm 73 is a Psalm of Asaph and it is speaking of a true child of God. Psalm 73:1-7:
Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.
You see, God has really opened it up. He has opened up the earthly treasure chest, we could say, and given man whatever it seems that man wants. Do you want a 60-inch television, plasma? Do you want that? Here you go. Do you want to be able to have instant communication with anybody in the world at any second? Here you go. Here is a flip-phone, and you can do others things with it, too, that I cannot figure out, but I know that my kids can. You can have it. You will be fed with the fatness of the earth, and the wicked have. Of course, not everyone. We know that there are poor people, people who are starving. But more and more in many nations of the world, individuals are getting a piece of the pie, a piece of the world that they lust after and desire. This is what they want and God is giving it to them as their inheritance. Here you go. This is it. This is all that you are going to get, so enjoy the iPod. Enjoy it. Listen to whatever you want to listen to, despite what your parents say. Now, I am not giving permission, but this is what happens. You can have your fill, but know this. Know this, “Surely there is an end.” There is an end.
In Psalm 73, this believer was looking at the prosperity of the wicked of the world of his day, 2500-3000 years ago, which was nothing in comparison to what is going on in the world of our day, and he was envious because of that ease, that life of ease. They are not burdened with chastisement from the hand of God. They are not burdened with the information that the Bible reveals, which is that we are sinners and under the wrath of God and subject to death. They would dismiss May 21 without even looking into it so that they can live carefree and without worry.
And, you know, this can be very attractive. This can be very attractive to the believer who is chastened and corrected and who is also trying to beat his body under, to keep his body under in obedience to the commandments of God. This would be an easy thing to do, but notice a little further down in Psalm 73:12-13:
Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.
That is, doing it God’s way is not worth it when you look out there. Then verse 14, Psalm 73:14-18:
For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning. If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.
Once again, envy, the longing of the heart for what we see around us and for what others have, up to a point, until “understood I their end.” Understanding the end of man removes envy. It does. I can give you an example.
Let us think about a billionaire who will remain nameless, a billionaire, not a million—we do not say that anymore—a billionaire. He has private jets and planes. He has boats and yachts. He has too many houses to count, all in the best places in the world. Whatever time of year it is, if something is going on in that part of the world, he can go there on his jet plane. He can vacation and take his ease and comfort. He can have the best food that the world offers.
A billionaire is not like you or me. When we go to a restaurant, we check out the menu to see what the $9.99 special is. A billionaire does not do that. A billionaire does not care about the price. “Send me the best!” He can eat the best. He can dress the best. He can have the best family because all the beautiful women—well, not all; there are some who would not be taken in by this—but many beautiful women would desire to be his wife and he can have the brightest children. He can have it all. Really, there is a lot more that a billionaire could have of this world.
Now, do you want to be him? And I am asking myself along with you. Do you want to be that billionaire? We will not go by a show of hands. No, we will not. But do you? Well, many people would say, “Yes.”
At work, do you ever hear the guys, “Oh man, look at this guy! Look at all that he has. He has all of this money.” They are hoping that a few crumbs might fall from the table so that they could have some. And, yes, we do have a tendency to desire that because he has the best of the world. Even a true child of God could sin in this way and be envious.
Alright, now let us add a little bit more information. This same billionaire is also young. He is a young man and so he has a great future ahead of him. Well, this same billionaire goes to sleep on the best mattress in the world. He hops out of bed one morning and just cannot wait to get at the day because, after all, “I am a billionaire.” So he hops in his shoes, pulls them on his feet, and forgets to tie one. He goes to the steps of his mansion and he trips either or his shoelace or maybe one of his sons left a very expensive toy car at the top of the steps. He comes tumbling down the steps and there is all kind of damage, brain damage; his neck is twisted. So they take him to the doctors, the best doctors that money can buy with the best medical technology on the planet and they hook him up to a machine to keep him alive. But even with all of this, even with all of this, the doctors go to his wife and say, “You know, I do not think that he is going to live more than a day or two.”
Now let me ask you the question. Do you want to be him? Do you want to be him at that moment? Why not? He still has the bank account. He still has the clothes. He still has the wife, the family, the jet, the cars, the great respect of all the people of the world. Why do you not want to be him? Because you are not a fool. You are not a fool. He is only going to live maybe 48 hours and then what? If I were him, then I am going to die and everything that I would have would be gone and I will lose it all.
Well, you see, you can envy a person up until you know their end. Once you know their end, it just drives out envy, does it not? It removes it. I do not want to be him. I do not care what he has. When he is on the hospital bed and he has such a short time to live, what do all of his possessions mean? They do not mean a thing because we know that when a man dies, he leaves everything behind. Actually, he not only loses the world and loses all of the possessions of the world, but he loses his own soul along with it. There is no greater poverty than that, to lose your own soul, to lose your everlasting life when it is possible and there is the potential of God saving a sinner and giving him everlasting life, the forgiveness of sins.
We know that the Lord is revealing the end of man to His people today and it will help us. Some people say, “Well, why do you get concerned about the end of the world? What does this have to do with living the Christian life? Let us concentrate on the fundamentals.” But since we know the end, it will greatly help us to live the Christian life.
If we go to 2 Peter 3:10-11, we read:
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
Do you see how it helps? When we see the end and we know that there is an end, “what manner of persons ought ye to be”? How should we live out the time that we have left? How should we live it?
We should live it to the glory of God. We should live it in holiness, which is a word that we do not hear much today. It means to do God’s will as He commands us, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” So we should be praying to God that He might allow us and give us the grace and the strength to live according to His Word as He would lead us and guide us for the rest of the world, “unto the end.”
Let us just go back to Psalm 37. Psalm 37:2-3 says:
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
When it all boils down, what it all comes down to—as far as understanding that May 21, 2011 is the rapture and all of the other information—is do we trust the Bible?
People say, “Where did you get this from?,” and you say, “There is a Biblical calendar of history in the Bible and this lays out the framework for God’s whole timetable.” Then we tell them about Genesis 7:4 and 2 Peter 3 and many other Scriptures, giving them information only from the Bible and from no other source. And it is sad but there are many people who cannot receive this evidence from the Bible. They always want more. “What else do you have? What else? What else on top of that?”
Well, you could get an encyclopedia of evidence and give it to some people and they are not going to believe and they are not going to react. They are not going to change their life at all. But on the other hand, there could be one Bible verse, like Jonah brought to Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overturned!,” and the whole city, from the king on down, repented on that flimsy evidence, that little bit of evidence, nothing more that we know of to confirm it, just that little bit.
So, you see, we must trust in Jehovah, as it says in Proverbs 3, “Trust in the LORD…and lean not unto thine own understanding.” We do not lean upon our mind or on what we think or on what man thinks, only on what the Bible says.
We will close here.