Psalm 37: Don't Fret and Trust God from A to Z

Psalm 37:1, 3a "Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! Trust in the LORD, and do good."

Here's the question this morning: do you ever fret? Now, perhaps we don't use that word too much anymore, but I think we all still have a basic idea of what it means. To fret is to "be constantly or visibly worried or anxious" (at least, according to Google). Oftentimes in this life, we do fret. We fret because of some "bad news" that we recieve (see the previous Psalm devotional) and perhaps many other things. Nevertheless, Psalm 37 teaches us that we don't have to fret no matter what comes our way. Let us turn there this morning, and be encouraged.

Psalm 37 is a weighty 40 verses long, which can often seem overwhelming. Certainly we won't be able to touch on every aspect of this psalm this morning, but I would like to first point out something to y'all that you may not notice about this psalm, that is, it's acrostic. As I mentioned before, this week we are going through acrostic psalms. What is an acrostic psalm? Well, let's find out.

In Hebrew poetry, there was a huge emphasis on structure. Where in today's world we focus on meter and rhyme, Hebrew poetry focused more on things like acrostics and parallelism. In Psalm 37, this is exactly what we see. The entire psalm is an acrostic. Now, in English, we understand what an acrostic is. We have a word, such as "joy" and have one word for each letter of that word, such as "Jesus," "others," and "yourself." Now, the same thing happened in Hebrews poetry (accept instead of choosing a word to make the acronym out of, they would just go through the alphabet), but the stinky thing is this: there's no possible way to translate that into English. This stinks, does it not? I suppose we'll all have to go learn Hebrew. Just kidding! You don't have to learn Hebrew, but it is cool to see how the Hebrew is working behind-the-scenes in acrostic psalms, is it not?

Now, I hope I haven't lost you with all that Hebrew poetry stuff, but here's the point. Acrostic psalms make that point that from A to Z, from beginning to end, from all of everything, [insert theme of poem here]. For instance, the theme of Psalm 37 is that because of God's great character in punishing evil and upholding good, we can surely fret not but rather trust in God. Thus, because of the acrostic nature of this psalm (even though Psalm 37 is considered an irregular acrostic*), we can learn that from A to Z, from beginning to end, from all of everything, we can fret not and trust in God. It doesn't matter what comes our way, because from A to Z, God has it covered, isn't that cool?

I surely hope I didn't lose you in all of that Hebrew poetry talk this morning, but I think its pretty cool. The take-away for today is this: no matter what is going on in your life, you can fret not and trust God. Scroll up and read the verses at the top of this blog post again. You didn't do it, did you? Okay, I'll give you another chance. Still didn't do it. You lazy person you. Scroll up and read them! Aren't they encouraging? They ought to be. Fret not. Trust in God. And he will have you covered from A to Z.

*I'm not exactly sure why it's called an irregular acrostic, or what the pattern of the Hebrew letters are. Nevertheless, it's still an acrostic.