In the sermon 'Dwell in the Land and Feed on His Promises' by Scott Brown, the speaker explores Psalm 37, emphasizing the commands and promises within the passage. The sermon highlights the importance of trusting in the Lord, doing good, and feeding on His faithfulness rather than being consumed by fear and fretfulness. It underscores the significance of dwelling in the land God has placed us in and committing our ways to Him. The speaker draws parallels between the ancient scripture and modern societal challenges, encouraging believers to focus on God's Word rather than the negative influences of cultural and political unrest. The sermon also discusses the futility of anger and the need for patience, assuring that evildoers will eventually be cut off while the meek will inherit the earth. Through obedience to God's commands and trust in His promises, believers can find peace and strength amid turmoil.

Please open your Bibles to the inerrant, the pure, sufficient word of God to Psalm 37. Psalm 37. Psalm 37. I'm just gonna read verses one through 11, it's a long Psalm. Verse one.

Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord.

Trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. 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 cease from anger and forsake wrath Do not fret it only causes harm For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more.

Indeed, you will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more. But the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Father, come and bless your people with these words that they would penetrate all of our hearts. Your word is truth and we love to hear the sound of it and to feel the effect of it in our souls. Pray that you would come and do a good work among us now.

Amen. You know the preaching of the Word of God is really designed for the equipping of the Saints for the work of the ministry. It's designed to strengthen, it's designed to comfort. The word equipping has to do with mending. It's really a word picture that tells a story of mending nets.

You know, nets that have been broken as a result of the stress of the press of the fish and all the things that are there. But everything that we do here in terms of from this pulpit is really designed for the equipping of the saints to strengthen, to help, to encourage. And this passage of scripture I've selected because it's a great help to walk through two multuous times. The people of God here are strong in the midst of a weak and fearful people. And Psalm 37 provides a wonderful roadmap for how to walk through the days that we're in right now.

You know, don't get too sucked in by the news cycle. Get sucked in by the Word of God because that's where you need to be. And this roadmap really calls you to dwell in the land and feed on its promises. Dwell in the land and feed on his promises. God gave you a land to dwell in, here it is, and he's given you all the promises you need to walk through it.

It's a very significant psalm for living in times of difficulty. Interestingly enough, Jesus quotes Psalm 37 eight times in the Sermon on the Mount alone. Isn't that interesting? The most powerful, the most popular sermon in the Bible, Jesus quotes this Psalm eight times. And these are times of unrest for sure.

We're seeing it all over the place. Suicide rates are up, domestic violence is up, Child abuse is up, depression is up, drug abuse, alcohol use is up, divorce is up, people are alienated, churches have been canceled, and the government has imposed restrictions like never before. Just before I came out here there were new reports of riots going on in the United States of America. It's been astounding to see the speed of all of this, particularly in the destruction or the defacing or the vandalizing of monuments that have been removed. Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Christopher Columbus, Juniper Ossera, Robert E.

Lee, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, And dozens and dozens of Confederate soldier monuments have disappeared over the United States in the last 45 days. In Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Maryland. That's a partial list in the last 45 days. I'll just give you my view of the monuments right now.

Keep them up and take your children there and teach the history. There's been an outcry to take down the monument of Margaret Sanger. I say leave it up. I want to take my children there and tell them what happened there with her. Tell your children the stories of the past, of what really happened.

And those monuments are places that you can go and tell the stories, for sure. All of these men were not perfect men. Many of them were ungodly men. That doesn't mean they should be taken down. They were part of the story of the providence of God in the world.

And it's so sinful to deal with this. The cultural Marxists are dominating the news feeds right now. They're working really hard at the deconstruction of society as we know it today. We have a political party called the Democratic Party that is 100% Marxist in its revolutionary policies attempting to undermine the morality, our entire justice system, our whole criminal, our whole police system, and really our culture. And, you know, these are the kind of times that we live in right now.

And in the midst of that are God's people, the happiest people in the world. Well, they sure ought to be, but why are they so happy? Well, they're happy because they have things like Psalm 37 to guide their hearts. You do not want to let CNN be guiding your heart. Let God guide your heart.

And I pray that that will be true of us here as we walk through these times here. Now, in this psalm are commands followed by assurances, or commands followed by promises. And the reason the people of God are the happiest people in the world is because they obey the commands and They believe the promises That's what makes a mighty people in the land obey the commands and believe the promises with all your heart and let that guide you Be guided from above not from your own culture, but from heaven And so let's begin with the first command, verse one. Do not fret. Do not fret because of evildoers.

Oh, that's, by the way, that's a command. Are you fretting? God is here telling you in your fretful condition, stop it. Do not fret. Is anybody fretful?

Don't raise your hand. I can see in your heart whether you're fretful. No. Some of you are fretful. Some of you are fearful about the future.

And here God Almighty with his voice is saying, do not fret because of evildoers. There are evildoers out there, don't fret because of them. God calls his people to rise above the evildoers and to have a completely different disposition not controlled by them but governed by him so he says do not fret because of evildoers nor be envious of the workers of the workers of iniquity. Isn't it interesting that this song begins with do not fret? Well, you've heard this before many times.

Some of you know exactly what I'm going to say. The most often repeated command in the Bible is do not fear. Why is that? Why is the absolute most common command in the Bible, do not fear? Because God doesn't want a fearful people.

He wants a free people, a happy people, rising above the wickedness of evildoers and not fretting because of the evildoers. They're always going to be evildoers so you might as well not spend the rest of your life fretting about it. If you say well I'm going to fret because of evildoers, you're just committing yourself to a life of fretfulness and stress and fear and all those kinds of things and God wants to deliver you from that. He wants to deliver you from all of your fears. So well like I said there's a promise, There's a command.

I've just issued the command. Do not fret on the authority of God, but what? For they will soon be cut off, like cut down like grass, and wither is the green herb. That's the promise. The wicked will be taken care of.

God will take care of them. They will be cut down. Someone will take an action against them. That someone is Almighty God. God told us, vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything. God is going to take the wicked down. And then There's a string of commands in verses three through five.

Hope you're looking at your Bible. There's a string of commands and then a promise in verses three through five. Command. Trust in the Lord and do good. Trust in the Lord and do good.

Well I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life. Do good. Do what is good. Pray that God reveals to you what's good and go do it. If you're a mother you know what it means to do good.

Go be a good mama. Go be a good wife. If you're a child you know what it means to do good. Go be a good mama. Go be a good wife.

If you're a child, you know what it means to do good. Go for it. You're not bound up. You're not chained. You're not held down by anything.

You can do good no matter where you are even in the lion's den. Somebody came up to me after the sermon last this morning and asked this question brilliant question Who do you think had a better sleep that night? Daniel in the lion's den or Darius in his chamber? Ah yes, just like Jesus sleeping in the back of the boat while the storms are raging. Trust in the Lord and do good.

Do all the good you can and focus on that. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. In other words, you don't need to go anywhere. Dwell in the land.

God put you in a certain place. He put you in a neighborhood. He put you in a certain state. Whatever it is, Dwell in that land that God put you in. He ordained that you live where you live right now.

So maximize the impact of that. Dwell in the land and what do you do while you're there? Well, I'll paraphrase it. Have a great time. In other words, feed on his faithfulness.

Dwell in the land, feed on his faithfulness. What you feed on is what you become. You are what you eat. You become what you listen to. And feed on his faithfulness.

That's what you should do. If you're fearful, feed on his faithfulness. The reason people are depressed is because they're not feeding on faithfulness they're feeding on their fears they're feeding on their discouragement they're feeling they're feeding on their losses and they feed and feed and feed themselves that garbage food until they don't feel very good. Feed on his faithfulness. I try to do that every morning.

I need it. It's the best thing that I can do in the day is to get fed in the morning before the day starts. So trust in the Lord and do good. These are commands. Dwell in the land.

In other words, stay put. By the way, if you have to move more than 18 inches to be happy you'll never be happy. Okay. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart.

And then the next command, commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him. So those are the commands, Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord and commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him.

So you notice how many commands are there. You can count them. Well, we're not done. There's a promise that follows all these and he shall bring it to pass. In other words, God's gonna do something good.

He's gonna get done what needs to get done. He's going to bring to pass your trust, your dwelling, your delighting, your way. He's going to bring those things to pass. And then there's another promise in verse 6. Well, he'll vindicate you with his justice.

He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday." And then verse 7 we hit our we hit into another command. Rest in the Lord. 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. He Repeats the do not fret principle again because that's really the theme of the whole the whole song Rest in the Lord This is better than psychology this is better than food This is help from heaven Rest in the Lord Cease striving and know that I am God.

That's what David said. Cease striving. It's not helping you at all. Well we've already heard trust in the Lord, delight yourself in the Lord, commit your way to the Lord, now it's rest in the Lord. Do you see the kindness of God?

He's just piling up really positive and helpful directions for your life. He's telling you what to do. He's telling you to stop fretting and start trusting and start delighting. This is God's kindness to us. He tells us the way things really are.

He tells it to us straight. And then there's a command in verse 8. Cease from anger. Cease from anger. Anger is one of the big thieves of happiness.

If you're angry you can't be happy. The most unhappy people in the world are the angry people, the unforgiving people, the people that are incensed because of what somebody has done for them. And they don't realize God's in control. They don't realize it was God who made that person offend them. God did that.

Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret. Got that? Are you looking at that verse, verse 8? Look at the pile up.

Cease from anger, forsake wrath, do not fret, And then the wisdom of that command is revealed in these words, it only causes harm. It only causes harm. Is there anybody here that needs to renounce their anger, to forsake their wrath, and to stop fretting. Is anybody in here that needs that command? Okay, we have one over here.

Do I have two? No. Well, it's followed up by a promise in verses 9 through 11. Are you ready for that? Another promise.

For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait on the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. You'll recognize that from the Sermon on the Mount. 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. In other words, there'll be a time when you'll look around and say, where did they go?

They're gone. They were so threatening. They made me so fretful. They made me so angry. But now they're gone.

So why was I so fretful? Why was I so angry? God swept them away. That's a promise. That's a promise.

Verse 11, but the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." The peace that passes all understanding. But recognize what this psalm is saying. There are commands and there are promises. And make sure you heed the commands if you want the promises. But the people of God are the happiest people in the world because they live by the commands of God, not the dictates of their heart.

And not by the bad news that they hear. They live their lives on the commands of God and the promises of God. And there's nothing better for your soul, there's nothing better for your happiness, there's nothing better for your marriage, there's nothing better for your work than to be a free person, free from fear, fretting not, dwelling in the land, delighting yourself in the Lord. What a blessing it is to know God and to have his word. Well, this is all for the equipping of the saints, for the strengthening, for the healing, for the mending of the nets that any of us might have.

I'll just close with how this Psalm ends. Look at verse 35. I'll read verse 35 to the end. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree, yet he passed away and behold he was no more. Indeed, I sought him and he could not be found.

Mark the blameless man and observe the upright, for the future of that man is peace, but the transgressors shall be destroyed together. The future of the wicked shall be cut off, But the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord. He is their strength in time of trouble. And the Lord shall help them and deliver them. He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him.

Praise God. Dwell in the land. Feed on his faithfulness. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall keep your path straight.

Amen. Okay so there you have it. Now Any questions or thoughts from this or the earlier?