Psalm 37 – A Study on Wisdom P1, From His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark

This Sermon is also available in Arabic.

The following is the Sermon of His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, on Wednesday September 1, 2021:

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. One God. Amen. May His grace and mercy rest upon us, from now and forevermore. Amen.

Sermon Highlights:
~ Various titles given to Psalm 37
~ 3 traits of the successes of wickedness
~ Comparing grass to trees, an analogy for contemplation

Introduction

By the grace of our Lord, today we will begin a series of contemplations on Psalm 37, with a focus on the subject of wisdom. Psalm 37 is forty verses long, today we will contemplate the subject of wisdom in the first 11 of its verses, and we will cover the remaining verses over the course of the following weeks.

Psalm 37
1 Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.
2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.
6 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.
7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret—it only causes harm.
9 For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.
10 For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; indeed, you will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more.
11 But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The grace of God the Father be with us all. Amen.

Introduction

Psalm 37 is sometimes called “the storehouse of wisdom”; it is filled with wisdom about life and how to live it. It is composed of 40 verses and they cover many of the stages a person goes through in life – in both youth and old age, moreover, it talks about one of the main problems a person faces in life. What is this problem? It is the question of: What is the difference between the righteous and the wicked? Why is it Lord that we find righteous people suffering and wicked people succeeding?

And this is a question and a problem that one can face at any age, not necessarily just when they are young or old, we even see David standing before the Lord at one point and asking, “How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?” (Ps 13:1). This was because David was going through a period of many struggles, and this question arose despite that He was a righteous person, despite that he had referred to himself as “prayer” (Ps 109:4), despite the Lord Himself bearing witness of David saying, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will” (Acts 13:22, 1 Sam 13:14), and despite the fact that it is David’s Psalms that we read before the Reading of the Holy Bible during every Holy Liturgy, as if in the reading of just a few of his Psalms, the entire Old Testament is being represented.

And so this matter and question is one that preoccupies us: Why Lord are there both righteous and wicked? And why do we find righteous people suffering and wicked people living in comfort? And so here, David tries to offer us a philosophy of life and the perspective of God.

This Psalm is like a poem, a poem on wisdom. Many of its statements are also mentioned in the Book of Proverbs, a Book that is full of wisdom, [specifically] revolving around the subject of the temporariness of the success of the wicked versus God’s continuous help toward the righteous. And so David tries to draw us into a philosophical point – and as you know, the word ‘philo-sophia’ means ‘lover of wisdom’ – and the Psalm tries to describe for us the way of Divine Justice in this life. This is a very vast topic and could take up many discussions, but we will only consider the spiritual angle; the angle that affects all of our lives.

Various titles given to Psalm 37

1-A mirror to see God’s care

Many translators have wondered what title to give this Psalm, some have called it “the mirror of Divine care/help,” as if this Psalm were a mirror that we can look into and see how God cares for humans. And here is a very nice Bible study you can do: take a journey from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation and search for “God’s care;” search for how Divine care appears in its many and various forms.

2-A cure for grumbling

Others have given this Psalm the title, “a cure for complaining or grumbling.” When a person doesn’t like something, whether at home or at their work or whatever, they have become a person who complains, and since complaining is an undesirable human trait, when the fathers studied this Psalm they felt it was a remedy to cure complaining. And so a person who has the problem of grumbling or complaining should read this Psalm more than once and should practice it in their life.

3-The patience of the saints

Other people took a verse from the Book of Revelation, it being the very last Book of the Holy Bible, and used it as a title for this Psalm: “Herein is the patience of the saints.” And here I would like to reiterate the verse that says, “That each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor” (1 Thess 4:4), and so patience is the way by which a person can “keep” themselves. Patience is a virtue, a means, and a way of life by which a person can possess their soul, [in other words, keep oneself], instead of losing their soul to this life and this age.

Psalm 37

Psalm 37 is based on a comparison between the temporary happiness of the wicked and the continual reward of the righteous, a subject which we also find spoken of much in both the Books of Ecclesiastes and of Job.

But I want you to know that this Psalm is neither a hymn nor a lamentation, meaning that its words are neither joyful nor are they painful or of suffering, but they are words of wisdom. Do you want to learn wisdom in your life? Wisdom doesn’t come in a day or in a year, but it is learned over the course of a lifetime. And as the proverb goes, “The one whose parents did not discipline him, the days will,” because the days of life are like a school, and if a person wishes, he could learn from the lessons of this school of life.

The Psalm begins with David telling us to put our trust in God. Make sure that your trust in God is never shaken for any reason, in any circumstance, nor because of any problem. Put your complete and total trust in the Lord, for when we pray, do we not call Him “Ruler over all”? And that God is Ruler over all things means that life is operating in Divine order and that nothing is haphazard or left to chance; nothing in life is haphazard or left to chance.

I want you to have your complete and total trust in God, no matter what the wicked may do. Never feel or think that anything is outside of God’s control or out of His permissive Will. No one, not even the wicked, can do anything apart from the Will of God. And here I will remind you of the wheat and the weeds. The wheat we eat but the weeds, although they are plants that look like the wheat, they are not to be eaten and in fact, they may be harmful or poisonous.

In the parable of the wheat and the tares/weeds that the Lord gives in Matthew 13:24-30, the servants came to the owner of the field and said, “We found both wheat and weeds in the field; an enemy must have come in and planted the weeds, should we remove them from the field while the wheat is yet still growing?” And the owner of the field’s response was, “Let both grow together” (Mt 13:30).

Let them grow together, the wheat and the weeds, the righteous and the wicked. Why? Because if the people were to try to remove the weeds while the wheat and weeds were not yet fully grown, it would be too difficult for them to discern one from the other. The spiritual meaning of this is that God gives the wicked a chance to repent, because that person may repent today, tomorrow, or the day after; he may change his ways.

And this is what we call “the chance” or “the purpose” of a lifetime, for God gives us life-time as an opportunity for a chance to repent. Let us take Augustine for example. He was a person who lived far from God for a long time and was arrogant about his skills as an orator and about his fame. And the Lord kept giving Augustine one chance after another after another until one day he discovered the writings of Saint Athanasios, who was in exile in Europe, through St. Anthony, the father of monasticism. On another day, Augustine entered into the colossal Cathedral in Milan and heard the sermons of her bishop, St. Ambrosius. At another time, Augustine remembered that when he was younger his mother prayed [for him] with tears.

And so the three of these came together: the writings of St. Athanasios, the sermon teachings of St. Ambrosius, and the tears of his mother, Monica. The three came together and began to move his heart toward repentance and he repented, and now we call him “the intercessor of all who repent” and we celebrate his feast day on August 28th.

And so he repented and became Saint Augustine and he even became the first person to write down his autobiography for us and now we have his Book of Confessions; The Confessions of Augustine. Yes, God gave him a [second] chance.

St. Mary of Egypt is another example, also St. Paul the apostle who lived far from the Lord, far from Christ for a very long time, almost the first half of his life, but then returned to the Lord for the second half of his life, and so these are very good examples showing us that God does give second chances. Place your complete trust in God and be assured that in the end, the wicked will fail. Be assured of this, that no wickedness will succeed, not at all. The fate of all the wicked to perish, the suffering of the righteous is temporary, and the punishment of the wicked is eternal.

Another very nice thing about Psalm 37 is that it is one of the Psalms – and of course the Psalms were written in the Hebrew language – that was written according to the Hebrew alphabet, and so every two of its verses begin with one of the Hebrew letters. Other Psalms written in this fashion include Psalms 9, 25, and 34.

This Psalm requires a lot of time to read, or more accurately, it requires that you read it several times. It offers words of encouragement during times of trouble or throughout the journey of life, in general. And when you read it, take your time and don’t rush, and I would suppose that when the prophet David wrote it, he did not write it all at once but rather one or two verses at a time, as we will see in our contemplations of it over the coming weeks, if the Lord wills and we live.

Another nice thing is that it is Psalm 37 and it has many similarities to Psalm 73. I will read a portion of Psalm 73 so that we may see one of these similarities.
22 I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You.
23 Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand.
24 You will guide me with Your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.

He is using the same line of thinking here as he does in Psalm 37.

Another connection to Psalm 37 is the Book of Proverbs, which talks about wisdom on a much broader scale , but here is a single verse I have selected for you from it, from Proverbs 12:6, it says, “The words of the wicked lie.”

Another interesting thing about Psalm 37 is that the words “the wicked” appear 14 times in it; 14 times in a single Psalm! Yes, because this is the issue we are dealing with, and the issue is that people sometimes only see the temporary successes of wickedness.

Psalm 37:1-2 contemplation

Let us begin our contemplation. We will begin with verses 1 and 2, which are the entry point for this Psalm.
1 Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.
2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
This is the introduction to the issue at hand. The words “do not fret” appear 3 times in this Psalm. Here the Psalmist starts us off with a very gentle analogy, he says that the wicked person is like the nice-looking grass that we see on the street or everywhere around us, on the ground, but this grass is superficial, it is just on the surface of the ground. Grass does not have roots, it has no depth, so what will it rely on for support?

Another thing about grass is that it is worthless, meaningless, and sometimes, when it rains, you see grass growing all over the place; meaningless. And when we walk around, we always walk all over the grass, and when the sun shines [hard] upon it, grass gets burnt up.

Now let us make a comparison between the righteous and the wicked, to the grass of the field and the great big palm trees or the cedars of Lebanon. And now we begin to see why the prophet David keeps telling us, “Do not fret”:

~ Do not fret because of evildoers (v1) … for they shall be cut down.
~ Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
(v7)
~ Do not fret – it only causes harm (v8)

This is the report of the Bible that it is presenting before us, and so what is it trying to tell us? It wants to tell us to not to be troubled and fretful, and to not be envious nor complain when we see the wicked succeeding, and why not? Because although we see the wicked going on prospering, but this is just like the weeds or the grass of the field, it just keeps on growing but its fate and end are assured. And so we are to neither fret about nor be envious of such people because we must know and be assured that their end is near.

Another helpful analogy here may be that of a person, who gets an animal and raises and feeds it for the purpose of killing it. He feeds and fattens and grows this animal, but the animal’s fate is to be slaughtered, do you see? While on the other hand, there are animals that people get for other purposes, such as for protection and so on, but the success of the wicked is like one who fattens an animal, whose end is destruction. External success is fleeting and superficial, temporary and momentary.

In the Book of Proverbs we find similar verses, it says, “He who opens wide his lips shall have destruction” (Prov 3:13), and Proverbs 24:1 says, “Do not be envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them.” Do not ever see a person doing something wicked and say, “I wish I could do that too”; do not ever wish that because his end is destruction. And in the New Testament it says, “All who sin also transgress” (1 Jn 3:4), and to transgress is to break the Law, so be careful, be alert, and make sure that such thoughts [of envying the wicked] never enter into your mind.

Make sure that you never reach these worse stages [of transgression]. The first stage is fretting or being bothered – why be bothered over someone who is a thief and has some money? What are you upset about, that he is rich? Number two, the second stage, is that this fretting will give birth to envy, which is a form of repressed anger, which will then give birth to murmuring, grumbling, complaining, and not accepting things as they are.

Verse 8 says, 8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret—it only causes harm. And so we have fretting, then envy, then anger, and anger can lead to so many other sins – it is a chain with many links, so be careful and pay attention to yourself.

3 traits of the successes of wickedness

[Let’s look at our verses again to extract some wisdoms about life.]

1 Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.
2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

1-Short lived

In comparing it to grass and herbs of the field, the Psalmist is pointing to the shortness of life and that the success of the wicked is also short-lived, fleeting. And every so often we hear about someone who was a star, very well-known and coming and going all over the world, then all of a sudden all of this is gone. Wickedness.

2-Insignificant

Another thing that grass points to is the unimportance of the whole thing. For example, if someone were to tell you they were going to plant grass, what for? What’s he going to do with it? It is of very limited use. You would never hear anyone say that they are growing grass and they want it to “grow up and be this tall,” and so on. And nowadays we even hear about manufactured grass, like a grass carpet – at least it doesn’t need any water or care or anything at all; it just sits there and looks nice … it’s an imitation. On the other hand, you never hear of someone making an imitation orange tree. Why not? Because an orange tree is large, fruitful, productive, beneficial, valuable.

3-Quickly destroyed

As it is with the green grass, so it is with success that comes from wickedness; it is short-lived (temporary), unimportant, and it is also easily and quickly destroyed. The fate of green grass it that it will wilt, dry out, get torn, get burnt. People will even sometimes, on purpose, start a fire to the ground to burn up the worthless grasses and weeds in order to clear up the ground and make room [for something else]. And when it burns, grass transforms to carbon, which is an essential element, and maybe then, when it is mixed into the soil, maybe then it will offer some value.

In summary, fretting or worrying about what we do not have or what we see others have cuts us off from the blessings of God, both psychologically and physically. And if I were to try to find an example to show you what a person who lives in fretting, worrying, envy, and anger looks like on the inside, it would be like rust. When metal rusts, the corrosion of the rust eats up the metal; it literally eats up or consumes the metal itself! And this is exactly what worrying, envy, jealousy, and anger do to us. There is even an English saying that says, “Jealousy is a monster that feeds upon itself!” So pay attention to yourself and notice that everything we are talking about here is an invitation to a life of purity.

To summarize: the success of the wicked is deceptive. It is very short-lived, insignificant, and quickly destroyed. And here I remind you of the very wonderful Psalm 1, another Psalm on wisdom, it says:

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper …

This Sermon was originally published on the Coptic Orthodox Church Spokesperson Official Facebook Page. Please click here to read the full text.