Staying Calm When Chaos Closes In

The title of the sermon today is “Staying Calm When Chaos Closes In”. Let’s start with a little check-in this morning. And like the others, the questions are easy at first, but then they start to probe a little deeper and require a little more honesty. As always, I’ll be honest if you’ll be honest.

Raise your hand if you have worried about something in the last year.

Raise your hand if you have worried about something in the last two weeks.

Keep your hands raised if there is some situation that is worrying you currently.

Keep your hands raised if you had to put something that you were worrying about aside in order to be fully present here this morning.

Raise your hand if you would say that worry or anxiety is an ongoing problem for you.

Keep your hands raised if the thing that you’re most anxious about involves the bad conduct of others over whom you have no control?

Now, raise your hand if you believe that God wants to help you with your anxiety.

God wants to help us with our worry and our anxiety. So with that in mind, let’s look to our text, Psalm 37:1-11, and we will see two keys to remaining calm as the chaos closes in.

[SLIDE: TRUST IN THE LORD…]

#1: Trust in the Lord, and do good

The first is: Trust in the Lord and do good. That’s in verse 3.

Before we get there, notice with me how the psalmist David sets the tone in verses 1-2: “Do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers.” This is a particular kind of anxiety. This anxiety has two parts: 1) seeing your own life turned upside down by suffering, while 2) at the same time you look around you and see people who do not fear or love or obey God, and they seem to be getting along just fine.

“I come to church and I serve God. But I’m getting older and I don’t feel well and I can’t do like I used to. And I see non-believers all around me older than I am and they can do more than I can. What’s up with that, God?”

This is an angry anxiety, an angry worry. This is a worry tinged with resentment.

“I work hard and I don’t have much money. Despite this, I try to save and I try to give y 10%. Still I can barely make ends meet, let alone save for the future. And yet, my non-Christian neighbor is rolling in money. What’s up with that, God?”

“I take care of my family. We pray together. We try to read the Bible together. And yet my kids or my grandkids don’t respect me. And here’s the nonbelieving neighbors who have perfectly behaved children. What’s up with that, God?”

That question is asked a lot in the Bible, believe it or not. Look at the response that’s given. There is wisdom here to help us with this: “For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb” (Psa 37:2 NASB).

We cultivate our yards and get them nice and green and trim. It looks beautiful through April and May and June, then July and August hit and the grass is dead.

God is saying: “Be patient. Wait. Things are not now as they seem. And things will not always be like they are now. The rich and powerful who seem so rich and powerful — they’re enjoying their power and wealth now, but they’re fading as sure as the grass dies ever summer. And one day they’ll have to stand before God. And then they will get what they have earned.”

And for us, in the meantime, the first key to remaining calm as the chaos closes in is, verse 3: “Trust in the Lord, and do good.”

There are three ways you do this.

A. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness

The first is, dwell in the land. Look at the second part of verse 3: “Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.” How do we fulfill this, given that we don’t live in the promised land? The land meant abundance and rest. It was called the land of milk and honey. The land meant the close presence of a good and kind God. But the land of Canaan was never an end in itself. It always pointed the way forward to Christ and what He has done for us. Jesus said “”The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 NASB).

Anxiety is the opposite of this abundant like Jesus wants to give us. So maybe now is a good time to define anxiety.

[SLIDE: WHAT IS ANXIETY?]

What is anxiety?

An emotional state of ongoing stress or worry

With varying degrees of rationality

May be physical symptoms too

Not the same as fear

The surest way to beat anxiety is to enjoy fellowship with God. Read His word. Talk to Him as you would a friend. Tell Him what you’re afraid of. Enjoy fellowship with God.

B. Delight yourself in the Lord

The second way you do this: “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

In the Bible, God consistently asks us to resist being afraid. In various forms we find this from cover to cover of Scripture: “do not be afraid”, “do not fear”, “fear not”, “be not afraid”. When the Bible repeats something like that so often, we know that it is something our God wants us to take to heart.

And here’s something to understand about when the Bible says “do not fear”. When the Bible says “do not fear”, it is rarely because God has removed the situation causing the fear. It is rather because God is present, and His presence changes the situation, not so that the danger is gone, but so that we can face the danger unafraid because He is facing the danger with us. Think of the four young men in the furnace of the book of Daniel.

You’ll notice that the psalmist here does not encourage us to make our bad situation go away. If you can, go for it. But often the things that worry us the most are the things we can do the least about — that’s why we worry about them, after all. We’re out of control, and worry is a way of feeling in control.

He’s not telling us to change our situation. He’s telling us to change our focus.

[SLIDE: PSALM 36:5-7]

Get your mind off of your worries and get it on God. Think of His attributes. Ponder his love. Imagine His beauty. Fill your mind with images of Him. Here’s what I mean.

Psalm 36:5–7 ESV

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O Lord. How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

“Delight yourself in the Lord,” verse 4, “and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4 NASB). We don’t believe the prosperity gospel. Are you familiar with the prosperity gospel? The prosperity gospel says God wants you to be happy, healthy and wealthy in an earthly sense and that if you don’t, something is wrong with your faith. That is blasphemy; it is false teaching that destroys people’s souls and pushes people away from God, because when they don’t get what they think God promised them, their faith collapses. They were all along believing in a false god.

God does not promise us we will always or even ever be happy, healthy and wealthy in an earthly sense. Happiness, health, and wealth: any of us can think of dozens of dangers in this world that can remove those things from us in the blink of an eye. The prosperity gospel offers us a lesser value, because all of what it promises can be taken away in an instant.

God may give you and I those things for our whole lives. He may give us those things for a while and then for reasons only He understands, take them away. Or He may never give us those things in this life.

He does promise us lasting joy, peace, rest, forgiveness, eternal life, hope, and so much more. These are things we can have no matter the chaos closing in around us. These are things we can never lose, because we can never lose God or be separated from Him.

Often with anxiety, we are anxious because what we want so badly does not line up with what God wants to give us. What we need is to have our desires shaped and molded by God so that what we want and what He wants to give us are one and the same. That’s what he means when he says “delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4 NASB).

C. Commit your way to the Lord

Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness; delight yourself in the Lord. Thirdly, commit your way to the Lord. The third thing we do to trust in the Lord is we commit our way to Him. The picture here is rich. I want you to look at this word for word with me in verse 5:

Look at the first word: “commit.” Underline that word “commit” if you underline in your Bibles — or highlight it in your Bible app. What the word means literally is “roll”. The picture is of transferring a heavy weight from one place to another.

We’re going word by word here. He says more: What are we transferring? What are we committing? “Commit our way”. What is the way? It’s the Bible’s way of describing the whole pattern of your life. The picture is of a pathway. Your daily routine — your habits — your work — your play — your patterns of thought. Your words. Your actions. All of it — the whole pattern of your life.

Still going word by word: “Commit your way to --” who? The Lord. What name of God is used here? It’s Yahweh. This is His personal name. This is His covenant name. This is the name by which He revealed Himself to Moses. Yahweh is the name of God that reveals who He is in His very heart toward us: He is a personal God, committed to us unfailingly, always loyal and faithful toward us even when we’re unfaithful to Him. It is the Lord — it is Yahweh — whom we are instructed to commit our way to.

And if “your way” is everything in your life, that includes the bad stuff too. What are you angry about? What are you grieving? What are you stressed or anxious or worried about? Can you transfer your worries to God? Can you commit those things to Him? He is trustworthy. Will you entrust those things to Him?

Let me share something with you on a personal note, church. More and more, I am seeing in my life that what is truly valuable can never be taken away. And I don’t mean things like family and all of that. Family is valuable, but it can be taken away. I’m talking about those things we can never lose. God - salvation - hope - eternal life.

God has been showing me over the last couple of years that I can trust Him — and in fact, that we don’t have any better options. We worry because it gives us a false sense of control. What does worrying get you? What does striving to control my environment achieve for me? “Who of you, by being worried,” Jesus said, “can add a single hour to his life” (Matt. 6:27 NASB).

This is why He goes on to say in the second part of verse 5: “Trust also in Him, and He will do it.” What is the “it” that you need God to do for you? How do you need Him to show up for you? Ask Him for what you need!

Because look at the promise here in verse 6. Why are we told to trust God? Why are we instructed to commit our ways — the entire pattern of our lives — to Him? Because God is faithful. He can be relied upon. And one day, as verse six says, God will vindicate you. Look at verse 6: “He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday”.

This whole problem of the unrighteous people who prosper alongside the righteous people who struggle — that’s a problem that is as old as the human race. And it will continue until the Lord comes back. Do you know why? Because God is just, but presently you cannot see it.

Because we know that God is good, and because we know that He is with us, and because He know that one day He will put everything right that is presently wrong, we can do what the Word is telling us to do — the first key to staying calm as chaos closes in: trust in the Lord, and do good.

[SLIDE: REST IN THE LORD…]

#2: Rest in the Lord, and wait for Him

Rest in the Lord, and wait for him.

How big of a problem is anxiety? Anxiety has become such a problem for kids and adults in this country that the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that people ages 7 to 65 be screened for anxiety even if they report no feelings of anxiety. That’s because anxiety can disguise itself as medical problems like chest pain, trouble sleeping, stomach problems. [https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183408392/adults-should-be-screened-for-anxiety-disorders-leading-health-panel-recommends, accessed Sep. 9, 2023]

But, the real problem with anxiety for Christians is that it isolates us.

Because, fear is a good thing. Fear is a good and rational response to a clear and present danger.

But fear turns into worry — and worry turns into sin — when we we turn inward.

We obsess about what fear. We turn it over in our minds. Our emotions get out of hand. No longer is it fear — a good and rational response to a clear and present danger. No, now it is anxiety — now it is worry — because our worry has become bigger than God, and our anxiety is causing us to be preoccupied with ourselves. Do you find yourself unable to cope with life because of fear? That’s not fear. That’s anxiety.

And over time, what it does to us is it isolates us from others. We become self-protective. Think about it. Worry is preoccupation with self. Preoccupation is the very definition of anxiety. Anxiety is inherently obsessive.

When that happens, we have less mental energy to care about what other people are going through. And we start to feel that God is a million miles away — that He’s indifferent — maybe He doesn’t care — maybe that He isn’t even real. And cut off from fellowship with God, we’re cut off from the source of life and strength that motivates us to be selfless and care for others above ourselves.

And yet, out of personal experience King David here invites us: “Rest in the Lord.” He is there. He is real. He does care. Rest in Him.

You see, God cared so much that you not feel like He’s absent in your suffering that He went to great lengths to convince you. “The word because flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 NASB). This One of whom John testifies — God Himself in human form, here with us to suffer for us in our plae — echoed King David: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and i will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28 NASB).

“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.”

There are not many things that are harder for us than resting and waiting. We’re much better at working than resting; we’re more comfortable pushing than waiting. Anger and anxiety are more common responses than resting and waiting. And yet, verse 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 carries out wicked schemes.”

Anxiety and anger are in fact closely related. Envy is sometimes at the root of both. Both anger and worry can come from envy. Anger comes from envy when we say, “I want what others have that I don’t have.” Anxiety that comes from envy says: “I do not have what others have, so I fear being neglected or deprived or not provided for.” We’re angry because we want something and do not have. We’re angry because we need something and do not have it.

Are Christians angry today? You bet. Should Christians be angry? Probably. But nothing that happens in our society, church, justifies some of the reactions that we make on social media. It goes something like this: “If someone disagrees with my politics, if I’m a Republican and that person there is a Democrat, or vice versa, then the gloves can come off. I don’t need to love them or be patient with them. They’re subhuman and they deserve it.”

Do you know, church, that some Christians are saying that it’s really nice and sweet that Jesus told us to love one another, and that’s all well and good, but that in 2023 that doesn’t work anymore?

We’re saying these things because we’re anxious. We’re afraid about where our country’s going. It is scary. It is infuriating, I know.

But we have to be different from the world us. We have to be able to deal with our anger and our worry in ways that are obedient to Christ. Christ tells us, “Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret” — and how about this? “It leads only to evildoing” (Psalm 37:7-8 NASB).

So can you throw your hands up in surrender? Jesus never told us to take up arms and fight for him. He told us to love others, obey His commands, and share His word. Let Him deal with the evildoers. Do we think He is unable to do this? Look with me at verses 9-11: “For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more; and you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there” (Psalm 37:9-10 NASB).

Since when have we been seeking after a solution that works? Is that even what Jesus called us to pursue? What about what’s right? What about obedience to Jesus’ commands, even when it seems ridiculous or ineffective? Let me remind you, friends, that Jesus of Nazareth conquered the world not through force or political power but through love showing itself in weakness, suffering, and death.

Trust in the Lord, and do good. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.

Call for response

Have you ever heard of Biosphere 2? It’s a completely self-contained ecosystem in the desert of Arizona. When scientists first built it, it could simulate every weather pattern except the wind. Supposedly within that biosphere they had created a mini desert, a mini rainforest, even a mini ocean. But no wind.

After a while, some of the trees within the biosphere actually snapped at the trunk. The reason is surprising. We think of wind as the force that can destroy trees, but the same wind that destroys trees strengthens the trunks of the trees.

Why does God allow evil us to worry? Why doesn’t He just take away the cause of the worry? In short, because God loves us. God wants us to become the kind of people we could not become unless we learn to bear up under suffering and choose faith over worry. He wants us to become the kind of people who truly believe that He will never let us ultimately go — that nothing will ever ultimately separate us from Him.

And the truth is, church, that we don’t learn that from a sermon. We learn it as we go through it. Sermons can prepare us for it. The truth of God’s word can build us up and strengthen us for it. But only the wind itself can strengthen our roots to stand tall and straight when the chaos closes in.

Some of you have burdens you need to give to God today. You are tired of carrying them. He is able to carry them. 1 Peter 5:7 says “Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” . Knowing that He cares for you, can you cast your anxieties on Him?

Stand with me, church. As our musicians come, we’ll have a time of worship. This is a time for you spend with God, just you and Him. This is a time for you to cast your anxieties on Him.