Do not fret, beloved saints who are persecuted for Christ’s sake. For beloved you are. Do you not hear the words of David? Do they not speak to you and comfort you? These are not the words of David, except by the Spirit who inspired David—the very Spirit of Jesus Christ who was in David and taught David these things when he was brought into similar circumstances in which you find yourself. And Christ himself! What wickedness the wicked perpetrated against the holy and just one! And through it he became heir of all. His Spirit taught David. His Spirit teaches you.

Who like David—and Christ—saw the wicked prospering in their ways and bringing their wicked devices to pass? Saul. Doeg, Saul’s stool pigeon and enforcer. Shimei, cursing and kicking dust as he came. Annas and Caiaphas, the New Testament seed of those Old Testament reprobates. Wicked men who were members of the church. Indeed, they were rulers in the church but murderers of priests, oppressors of the poor and needy, relentless hounds against the righteous, opportunists for evil. They are the reprobate and powerful in the earth.

They will be cut off. You will search for them in the whole earth, and you will not find them. Jehovah will laugh at them because he sees their day coming—appointed by him—when Jehovah will break the arms of the wicked, pierce them with their own swords, and break their bows. The end of the wicked is to be cut off, rooted out, and destroyed, them and their seed, and the Lord will leave them neither root nor branch. 

Not yet! You must suffer a little while at their hands. But Jehovah will not leave you in their hands. Be patient!

The wicked must fill their cup of iniquity in their vile plotting and evil persecution of the righteous.

Be patient, dear child of God. So you are addressed: rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for him. That is the command to you because of who Jehovah made you by his grace. In calling you to rest in him, Jehovah calls you his child. He speaks to his children in the circumstances into which Jehovah himself brings us. In our earthly circumstances—cast down, cast out, cast away—we do not appear as his children. Yet does not Jehovah call us his heirs? Does he not speak of a grand inheritance laid up for us in heaven, of inheriting the whole earth, and of a new creation in which you can search from end to end for the wicked and never find them? Does he not call us to look to heaven, to that new heaven and new earth in which righteousness will dwell and from which all who love and make a lie are cast out and in which we will dwell with God forever?

Let us more closely examine these children of God. They are God’s according to his eternal decree of election. According to that decree he has adopted them as his children and heirs by faith. They are with him in the covenant of grace. They belong to him and are precious unto him. In him they rest. Like a little baby who presses himself into the arms of his mother, the believer presses himself into the arms of his Father. Joined to Jesus Christ by faith, righteous in Christ by faith alone, by faith the believer reposes in Jehovah God as the God of his salvation, rests in Jehovah, relies on him for time and for eternity—does nothing for his salvation, for salvation is of the Lord.

By faith they know Jehovah God, particularly his goodness. If Jehovah is Jehovah, then he is good. He is good in himself as the perfect and perfectly blessed God. Jehovah is good in all that he decrees, and thus he is good in all that he does. In his goodness Jehovah blesses the righteous, and he curses the wicked. If Jehovah is good, then he cannot curse the righteous. Ever. In anything. If Jehovah is good, he cannot bless the ungodly. Ever. In anything.

Whence, then, the success of the ungodly in the earth and the suffering of the righteous at the hands of the ungodly? Jehovah is good! He cannot bless the wicked…? He cannot curse the righteous…? But the wicked bring so many wicked devices to pass! 

Patience, beloved! Wait on Jehovah. Wait patiently for him.

Faith is the power of the child of God’s patience in this world. Patience, a wonderful word! Seeming contradiction! For the word means to be anxious and to twist and to writhe. Are we being anxious for nothing? Oh, yes, be anxious for nothing. Take no thought for tomorrow; sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Rest in Jehovah; wait patiently for him. Yet are we stones that feel no pain, sorrow, or anguish? We writhe and twist in it. In the face of all the pain caused by the ungodly in one’s heart, mind, soul, and spirit; in the face of the terrifying presence of the implacable wicked, who set their faces against you like a stone and who are unmoved by your pleas for mercy, let Jehovah fill all your thoughts. Wait for him, for his judgment, for his deliverance, for his coming, for the fulfillment of his promise of your salvation, and for the execution of his promise that vengeance is his and he will repay. Wait for Jehovah, trusting that according to his word he will come to set all things right—all things that seem in the earth to be turned upside down and so out of place, so that the wicked flourish and the righteous are driven out of the land and away from their inheritance. Wait on him with ardent desire, fervent prayer, and uplifted head, and pray, “Come, O Jehovah, come; Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

Waiting on Jehovah, the believer endures. Waiting is enduring. He waits upon Jehovah, that is, he endures Jehovah! Oh, you would expect something so different. The believer endures the wicked. He endures the persecution. He endures the pain and suffering. No, he endures Jehovah. Such is the viewpoint of faith, and such is the anxious waiting of the believer for Jehovah. Jehovah so fills the believer’s thoughts, and the truth of Jehovah’s sovereignty over all evil so fills the believer’s mind and is the conviction of his heart, that he receives everything as from the hand of Jehovah. Jehovah said, “Curse David.” At the cross the Jews did whatsoever Jehovah God determined to be done. In your life and in my life, the wicked cannot so much as move apart from the decree and command of God. The believer endures Jehovah in this sense, that, knowing Jehovah’s sovereignty and goodness, the believer also receives with patience whatever Jehovah sends to him in this life. He receives from the hand of his Father fruitful years and barren, riches and poverty, sickness and health, life and death. He receives from Jehovah’s hand the wicked persecution and bewildering success of his enemies against him, the truth, and righteousness. He endures in the earth believing Jehovah is good, even while the believer is brought to nothing and the wicked flourish like a great tree in earth. The believer endures without the failure of his faith. He trusts that in all that Jehovah sends unto him, Jehovah is good to him and works all for his salvation. That Jehovah blesses the righteous and he curses the wicked is the believer’s conviction! Surely and certainly, without respect to appearances, Jehovah blesses the righteous and curses the wicked. The believer is blessed in his suffering, and the wicked is cursed in his successes.

Faith endures. Faith endures because Jehovah God in his goodness is its object. Jehovah is the believer’s strength in time of trouble. By faith he trusts that God is his God. He believes that God has forgiven his sins and that he is righteous before God and an heir of eternal life and of the whole world. He trusts that Jehovah will bring forth his righteousness as the light and his judgment as the noonday. All will be made as plain as the sun in the heavens.

Surely this is what Jehovah God did in Christ. The wicked succeeded in putting Christ to death. All was in God’s plan. They did only what God ordained to be done. It was for righteousness and for salvation. Through it Jesus Christ was exalted to the right hand of God. In Christ, God established his own righteousness as the righteousness of the believer and that on account of which he is saved and blessed. This righteousness, the very righteousness of God worked out in Christ, will be publicly declared to be the righteousness of believers. Those whom God has transformed in the very depths of their beings, whose ways and steps are ordered by God, whom he has taken to be of his side in the world, and whom he caused to know and love his truth will be acknowledged in that day as his children. Those whom all men shouted down, whom they mocked and ridiculed, and whom they declared to be the offscouring of the earth will be acknowledged to belong to the Son of God, and their cause, which was declared by many judges to be heretical, sinful, schismatic, and wicked, will be acknowledged in that day to be the cause of the Son of God. 

Not yet! Patience! Wait on the Lord! Rest in Jehovah! Do not fret!

To fret is to be in pain and, as a consequence of that pain, to be angry. Cease from anger. Let that go. Do not be consumed by that anger, for anger is a fire that burns, and it will burn you up and burn you down. Forsake wrath. Oh, yes, wrath is like a poison that kills the soul and one’s entire existence. Give that up. Do not fret.

And what could cause the dear child of God so much pain, sorrow, and anguish of soul, mind, and life that he becomes angry, burning with rage, and poisoned by wrath?

The wicked man who prospers and increases. Who is that wicked man? Let us examine him according to the psalm. He is in the church, for he is in the land and has a place in that land. He had a part in Canaan in David’s day. He takes root in that land and flourishes like a great bay tree. Saul was such a man, a Benjamite, the Lord’s anointed, always ready with the name of God on his lips, always carefully grooming his own image. So the wicked is strong in the church. He sits on school boards, consistories, councils, classes, and synods. When he speaks, other men listen. All men seek his counsel and his advice. He is the big man. He has all that heart could desire from an outward point of view. He brings to pass all his desires and has success and happiness in the earth as far as you can tell.

And he hates the just. He hates their testimony. He hates their place in the land. He hates their very existence. It is not worthy that they should live.

Supposing that he reclines in the lap of God, he plots against the just. They are an offense to this godless, earthly-minded, and sensual man. He watches the righteous and seeks to slay them. Sinister! He bides his time, whispering, plotting, and planning in his secret meetings, scheming with his like-minded friends. Oh, yes, there are many, and they increase in power and riches: they validate and encourage one another in their hatred of the righteous and in their own wickedness. At the opportune time the wicked draws his sword and bends his bow to kill the righteous and to remove them from his presence. He takes the righteous in his hand and gnashes on them with his teeth. And so he brings his wicked devices to pass. By his wicked devices he himself increases in riches and in stature with men. By his wicked devices he exults himself against God and against his people. By his wicked devices he persecutes the godly. By his wicked devices he takes the land for himself and casts the godly out of it.

Yes, surely that was David’s experience, and such is the experience of the godly always.

Do not fret, beloved. Do not be filled with the fire of rage and the poison of wrath. 

Rest in Jehovah.Wait patiently for him!

For Jehovah shall laugh at the wicked. The man who laughs now shall weep in that day, for Jehovah sees the day of the wicked coming! The wicked is displeasing to the Lord. The wicked is that eternally according to God’s decree of reprobation. God is not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; the evil shall not dwell with him; he hates all the workers of iniquity. In his heart and in all his deeds, the wicked man is displeasing to the Lord. There is nothing in that man’s life or in his thoughts that is pleasing to God. He is an enemy of Jehovah. He hates Jehovah, and he particularly hates God’s truth and his church and his people.

And behold, as we observe him, he prospers in his wicked way. He brings his devices to pass. The word wicked is not in the original Hebrew text. The text is not so much interested in the wickedness of his devices, for the man himself is wicked, and so are all his works. Very often—mostly—he clothes all his wicked devices in the cunningly crafted garb of righteousness. His wicked devices he makes sure are declared before the world to be utmost righteousness. But they are devices for all that. Cruel and evil plotting and planning carried out against the just. And this wicked man brings all his devices to pass, and he prospers in his way. He tramples on truth and justice, decency and order, and crushes the poor and needy under him, and all the while he pours down contempt upon the godly. All his plans come to pass; there appears to be no frustration or setback in his life; he runs in the way of wickedness, and he prospers in his way: this wicked man, who says, “I am a Christian, I am Reformed, I love the Lord, I am righteous, I do God a favor in putting this man out of the church.”

Fret not thyself because of evildoers. Urgent warning.Constant refrain. Necessary instruction.

The believer sees the evildoer who prospers in his way and brings all his plans to pass, especially as he plots against the godly and is able to bring to pass his wicked oppression of the godly, and the believer frets.

Fretting is anger, yes, but jealousy too! That wicked man is enjoying the good life! All men speak well of him, of him and of his wicked devices that are praised as most just? Perhaps…oh, perhaps…that is the blessed life and the good way? Like a fire and a poison in his pain, these thoughts eat away at the believer’s convictions. Jehovah blesses the wicked in their wickedness…? Does Jehovah not see…? He will not judge…? The righteous are chastened and cursed…? Will the wicked escape in their wickedness…? Is…oh, a destructive thought…is Jehovah good…? Clean hands are worthless and pure hearts are vain…? And the soul is full of fretting, the fire of rage, and the poison of anger.

Do not fret, beloved! Do not be filled with the fire of rage. Do not be overcome by the poison of anger.

Then you will be dissatisfied with your lot. The angry man is not content, and anger is a lack of contentment because anger is an expression of displeasure. He is displeased with his life, displeased with God, and displeased with his suffering.

Displeased, he loathes his life. He is angry at his lot, at the work that he is given, and at the suffering that he must endure. He loathes his job, his car, his clothes, his house, his wife, his children, his food, his body, and his whole situation. He hates it. He hates the persecution and mockery that he has to endure. Wrath brings strife. First in a man’s soul and then in his whole life as that anger burns like a forest fire, and wrath poisons all his thoughts. His flesh is enraged and controlling in his whole life.

Do you know what he does? He sins. Is that any surprise? “Fret not to do evil,” says the Spirit. So the fretting believer seeks to imitate the wicked man who is prospering in his way and follows his evil ways. What is the cause? The believer is fretting. Dissatisfied and angry with his lot, he supposes that the lot of the wicked is good. He lets these thoughts take hold in his mind and in his soul: God is not displeased with the wicked, and indeed they are good people, and their lives are good too.

O beloved, do not envy the evildoer, and imitate none of his ways. For the evildoer shall be cut off. What is there to envy in the life of a steer whose trough is never empty because he is being fattened for the slaughter? What is there to envy about the careful husbandry of a forest of trees that is going to be cut down and ground into sawdust? What is there to envy in the life of the man who enjoys seventy or eighty years of success in the earth and is cast into hell forever? What is to be envied in the life of the man who makes God his enemy? Evildoers shall be cut off.

Not yet! Wait on the Lord!

They must grow up like a great tree and luxuriate in the earth for a while to manifest who they really are in themselves and fill up their cup of iniquity in their persecution of the righteous. And in all that, Jehovah, the righteousness judge and executioner, has his sword drawn and is waiting only for his ordained moment to drop his sword and to cut them down and with them all workers of iniquity. But those who wait on Jehovah shall inherit the earth. Cast out now and their place made very small and even nonexistent in the world, they shall inherit all the earth. In this life the wicked act like the world belongs to them, and they thrust out the righteous from his inheritance. In the world to come, the wicked will be judged and cast out, and the righteous will inherit all the land.

Not yet! Patience! Do not fret!