The Delingpod - James Delingpole - Psalm 37: Pooyan Mehrshahi

Sept. 5, 2025 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:50:34

Psalm 37: Pooyan Mehrshahi

Pooyan Mehrshahi was born and raised in Iran as a Zoroastrian but after emigrating with his family to England he converted to Christianity. Since 2007 he has been pastor of Providence Baptist Chapel, Cheltenham, just about the only local church to stay open throughout ‘Covid’. You can watch some of his learned, thoughtful sermons at the church’s website https://cheltenham.church You can find his sermons and articles by visiting his personal website pilgrimshelp.com https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Podcasts/Psalms/

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Psalm thirty seven This is the Miles Coverdale version for the Book of Common Prayer Fret not thyself because of the ungodly, neither be thou envious against the evildoers, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and be withered, even as the green herb.
	Put thou thy trust in the Lord, and be doing good.
	Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
	Delight thou in the Lord, and he shall give thee thy heart's desire.
	Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass.
	He shall make thy righteousness as clear as the light, and thy just dealing as the noon day.
	Hold thee still in the Lord, and abide patiently upon him.
	But grieve not thyself at him whose way doth prosper, against the man that doeth after evil counsels.
	Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure.
	Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.
	Wicked doers shall be rooted out, and they that patiently abide the Lord, those shall inherit the land.
	Yet a little while, and the ungodly shall be clean gone.
	Thou shalt look after his place, and he shall be away, but the meek spirited shall possess the earth, and be refreshed in the multitude of peace.
	The ungodly seeketh counsel against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
	The Lord shall laugh him to scorn, for he hath seen that his day is coming.
	The ungodly have drawn out the sword, and bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of a right conversation.
	Their sword shall go through their own heart, and their bow shall be broken.
	A small thing that the righteous hath is better than great riches of the ungodly.
	For the arms of the ungodly shall be broken, and the Lord upholdeth the righteous.
	The Lord knoweth the days of the godly, and their inheritance shall endure for ever.
	They shall not be confounded in the perilous time, and in the days of dearth they shall have enough.
	As for the ungodly, they shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall consume as the fat of lambs, yea, even as the smoke shall they consume away.
	The ungodly borroweth not, borroweth, and payeth not again, but the righteous is merciful and liberal.
	Such as are blessed of God shall possess the land, but they that are cursed of him shall be rooted out.
	The Lord ordereth a good man's going, and maketh his way acceptable to himself.
	Though he fall, he shall not be cast away, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.
	I have been young, and now am old, yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.
	The righteous is ever merciful and lendeth, and his seed is blessed.
	Flee from evil, and do the thing that is good, and dwell for evermore, for the Lord loveth the thing that is right.
	He forsaketh not his that be godly, but they are preserved for ever.
	The unrighteous shall be punished.
	As for the seed of the ungodly, it shall be rooted out.
	The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.
	The mouth of the righteous is exercised in wisdom, and his tongue will be talking of judgment.
	The law of his God is in his heart, and his goings shall not slide.
	The ungodly seeth the righteous, and seeketh occasion to slay him.
	The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.
	Hope thou in the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall promote thee, that thou possess the land.
	When the ungodly perish, thou shalt see it.
	I myself have seen the ungodly in great power, and flourishing like a green bay tree.
	I went by, and lo, he was gone.
	I sought him, but his place could nowhere be found.
	Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.
	As for the transgressors, they shall perish together.
	And the end of the ungodly is they shall be rooted out at the last.
	But the salvation of the righteous cometh of the Lord, who is also their strength in the time of trouble.
	And the Lord shall stand by them and save them.
	He shall deliver them from the ungodly and shall save them, because they put their trust in him.
	Welcome to the Psalms with me, James Dellingpole.
	And I'm delighted to invite my special guest, Puyan Meshahi, to talk to me about Psalm 37.
	Thanks for taking on this one, Puyan.
	It's one of the big ones.
	Yes, it is a big one, but it's a wonderful psalm.
	It is.
	It is.
	And by the way, thanks for doing this.
	It's been ages since I last did a Psalms podcast.
	And people are probably wondering, what, has James lost interest in the Psalms?
	No, I have certainly not.
	I've been learning them apace.
	I think I'm now definitely over a fifth of the Psalter I've got under my belt and possibly heading towards a quarter.
	I'm very happy with that.
	The difficulty is finding people who are both interested in the Psalms and informed about the Psalms and at the same time people who are awake.
	Because I can't, sorry, but I can't really talk to people who aren't awake about anything.
	Is that wrong with me?
	I don't think so, no.
	No.
	Okay.
	So Psalm 37 was one of the obviously the toughest of all the Psalms to learn in terms of length is Psalm 119.
	But I think Psalm 37 is one of the longer Psalms.
	And the reason that I decided to learn it was because have you ever been to Westminster Hall in London?
	I have, yes.
	If you look at the roof at the ceiling, you'll see inscribed into the ceiling are the words of a psalm.
	I thought, oh, these are some good lines, really good lines.
	What psalm is that?
	And I looked it up and it was Psalm 37.
	I think it's got some of the best lines in the Psalter.
	But my criticism of this psalm, I don't know whether you share my feelings, is that it's got some really good lines, but it doesn't flow in the same way that some of the Psalms do.
	Some of them read like lyric poetry and they're glorious and they flow and they're a delight.
	Psalm 37 feels to me more like something from the book of Proverbs.
	It's a sort of series of statements which don't really flow.
	That's right.
	There is a ruggedness about it, but it is because it's a wisdom psalm rather than a normal psalm that we are used to.
	It is meant to be fatherly counsels.
	So there are short maxims, as it were.
	They are just, but obviously eternal truths.
	But it's not cold, it's not detached instructions.
	It is very personal, so it can be, they're just very pithy statements and they are painfully realistic, but then they're very warm as well.
	You know, it's an old man speaking to, as it were, young son or the future generation.
	He says in verse 25, I have been young and now I'm old.
	Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
	So that's the tone of it.
	It's a very aged saint.
	Yeah.
	Actually, I suddenly realize, before we go on, I'm dying, because I've spoken to you before, and you're an incredibly erudite, thoughtful man.
	You're clearly possessed of a deep, deep faith.
	So I'm really looking forward to your take.
	But let's find out a bit more about you.
	I mean, I discovered, for example, you told me that you used to be a Zoroastrian.
	I don't know what Zoroastrians believe.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Well, I was originally, I'm originally from Iran, and I was born in 1980, and I arrived in the United Kingdom in 1993.
	So I was about 13 years old when I came to the UK with no English at all.
	My father came to study, do his PhD, and so we came with him.
	But I was brought up in a religious family, but our faith was Zoroastrianism, which is an ancient religion, the ancient religion of the old Persia.
	Before Islam came, about sort of it goes back to roughly around 1500 BC, something of that time.
	And it's the religion of Darius, Cyrus, you know, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, all of those people.
	When Daniel was in Babylon and in Persia, that was the religion of the day.
	And when the three Hebrew children were thrown into the furnace, it was actually a demonstration that this God of the Zoroastrians, or at least the representation of the God of the Zoroastrians, were going to swallow up these Hebrew children.
	But they actually came out, not even the smell of a smoke on them.
	Because Zoroastrianism is an ancient religion of, we could say, it's a mixture of Babylonish-Persian religions mixed under one roof.
	And there is very little evidence in terms of manuscript evidence of the early writings.
	But it was an amalgamation of these various, borrowed from Mithraism and various other Babylonian New Age religions.
	So when I was a boy, the priest would say to us, we need to turn towards the fire.
	There was the old Mithraistic religions.
	They had elements of fire worship in them.
	So that was brought in.
	And so we would stand in a fire temple and they have fire temples there.
	And the fire in there, the priests have the responsibility of keeping the fire burning.
	So in my city, I think it was for 700 years, this fire in the fire temple had been burning.
	And so we would turn towards the fire and say our prayers, recite our prayers and burn incense.
	Or if there was no fire, we would turn towards the sun.
	So it was part of that Mithraistic religion of sun worship as well.
	They would say we are not worshipping the sun or the fire.
	They would say we are worshipping God but through these elements.
	And God represents himself in the fire and they would bring various sort of spiritual lessons out of that.
	But that was the religion really I was brought up in.
	And it's quite nationalistic as well, the religion.
	We believe that we are the true sort of Persians and that we have pure blood and that kind of a thing runs in it.
	And so it brings with it quite self-righteous attitude that we are better than others.
	We are better than Muslims.
	We are better than Christians, the Jews, because we have the pure religion that is older than these.
	And during Hellenism, the Hellenistic sort of Christians were being affected by the Zoroastrian teaching, which was really destroying Christianity in those early days of the first 300 years after Christ.
	So I was brought up in that.
	I don't want to go too much into that, but I came to this country with that sort of proud attitude.
	But we were taught that England is a Christian country.
	And so we expected coming here, still people believe in God or believe in Christianity and they know what to say about Christianity.
	But very soon I found out actually there are a lot of atheists and I couldn't understand it.
	How can you be an atheist?
	How can you see the world and deny that the world had a Creator?
	And it just we couldn't understand it.
	And then realized actually a lot of people are not Christians at all.
	They might wear a cross, but they don't know what the Bible teaches.
	They don't know what is the message of the gospel.
	And so for a number of years, I went, did my education, you know, GCSEs, A-levels, with my broken English.
	And it was in my final year of A-levels in Sheffield that friends at the Sixth Form College that I was at, they challenged me about God and religion and the Bible.
	And I always was able to sort of, I always had an answer for them.
	I always was able to say, well, no, your religion, you borrowed from us.
	And so I was so arrogant.
	But somebody gave me a Bible to read and I began reading it.
	But at the beginning, I began reading it to find faults with it.
	I began to say, look, there are the inconsistencies here and there.
	But the more I read it, I read Genesis, I've read halfway through Exodus, then it was really difficult.
	I couldn't understand.
	I had no Christian background.
	So then they said, well, why don't you start in the Gospels?
	And actually the Psalms, the Psalms I began reading and they were so helpful.
	I used to always think, how did God know?
	Or how did the psalmist know about me?
	Because this is talking about me.
	And then I read the Gospels, I read Romans, but the more I read, even though I was looking to find faults in the Bible, it was finding faults in me.
	And I became really, I felt the more I was reading it, it was like, I don't know if you've read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the man with a burden on his back.
	I really realized I am that man.
	I always get emotional when I speak about these things because it is so, I still remember it, just how I felt this load of guilt and sin.
	And after two years of really battling against all of these things, I came to realize, you know, I had read John's Gospel so many times and I read this text that Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
	No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
	I read that and for, I don't know, maybe fifth time or something like that.
	And my eyes were opened.
	I have been on a different road.
	I've been on a wrong road.
	And Jesus Christ is the only way.
	And he's the only Savior.
	He's the one who died for me.
	And he rose again and he gave his life for me.
	But there was a question, if I could say this as well, I'm waffling on, but there's a question that a friend at school asked me, and he said this.
	He said, what would you do with your sins on that final day?
	So I had all this guilt.
	I had all this burden on my back, as it were.
	And he said, what would you do with your sins on that final day?
	And I remember talking to my parents.
	I remember talking to other Zoroastrian friends and even writing to one of the priests saying, what does our religion teach about sin?
	How can I have my sins forgiven?
	For sure.
	These boys at school, they know for sure, but how can I know for sure?
	And everybody said, well, you just follow the rules.
	You never know for sure.
	And you just follow what you have been told.
	Our religion is ancient.
	Don't you know?
	You were brought up in this.
	God selected you to be born into this.
	And you can't question it.
	Don't question it.
	And so every time someone says to me, you're not allowed to ask questions, that for me, it's a red rag to the bull.
	I have to question it.
	And so I said, that was the final straw, as the English say, that broke the camel's back.
	I became quite disillusioned in this because I thought, I have this guilt of sin, I have this debt to God, and what I have been brought up in has no solution.
	It is ancient, but all it's saying is work harder, do more, be more committed.
	But actually, there is no assurance.
	Have I done enough?
	How do I know?
	And yet the Bible was telling me Jesus Christ paid the price for my sin.
	And it is all dealt with.
	It's all paid for.
	So after two years of wrestling with all of this, it was 1999.
	And my eyes were opened.
	I read that text, reading through the Gospel of John, and my burden fell off.
	And I knew the Lord Jesus Christ paid for my sin.
	I was set free from this bondage.
	And so then, really, the rest of it is really history.
	Unfortunately, the churches that I was going to, I had no idea about churches.
	I didn't know what was a church or anything like that.
	And the Bible was not being explained.
	The gospel was not being clearly explained.
	People were, it was more to do with entertaining people.
	And really, it was a charismatic Anglican church in Sheffield.
	And it was fun.
	It was sociable.
	But I wasn't learning the Bible.
	And I was just reading at home and coming with questions.
	But, yeah, God led me into different places.
	And so this is where I am now.
	I've been a minister now in our church in Cheltenham for the last 18 years, since 2007.
	And so, and my desire is to explain the Bible and preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to anybody and everybody in the open air.
	We go regularly every week into the open air in Cheltenham, in Gloucester, in Stroud.
	And even before the parliament last month, I went with a group of ministers outside the parliament, preaching.
	And last week, the police came saying, oh, you're not allowed to do this kind of a thing.
	And I often say, you know, we are living in the United Kingdom, that the foundations of this country, the foundations of our laws are our scripture, the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
	And I always say, beginning my open air preaching, are you thankful for living in the United Kingdom with the heritage that you have?
	Don't lose it.
	A man stood there about two months ago.
	Sorry, I'm waffling here.
	No, I love it.
	But two months ago, he was walking by with his dog, very posh man.
	And he said, go back to your own country.
	And normally I say that to people, you know, to foreigners, go back to.
	No, I don't say that.
	This is only a joke.
	But normally, so this man said, go back to your own country.
	We don't want to hear this.
	And I said to him, sir, are you an English man?
	He said, yes, I am.
	And I said, I am so thankful to live in England because, you see, I have freedom because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
	Jesus Christ sets sinners free and the gospel set this country free from tyranny.
	And I said, do you believe this?
	He said, no.
	I said, what kind of an English man are you that you don't believe the very thing that has set you free?
	And I said, do you have a Bible?
	He said, no, I don't need all of that superstitious stuff.
	I said, Englishman died so that Englishman would have a copy of the Bible.
	I said, what kind of an Englishman are you?
	He said, I'm an atheist.
	I said, well, why don't you pack up and go to North Korea?
	Why don't you pack up your bags and go to a place where consistently it is following your values?
	But I am thankful to God for God for bringing me into this country where I learned about Jesus Christ and the gospel and the Bible.
	I have been an out of lokitain that is a co-host.
	If you say, yeah, there's nothing wrong with thequeries and the people who areichten.
	There's nothing wrong with the Bible on the Bible on the Bible on the Bible.
	Thank you.
	And I want to tell everybody about that.
	And the law protects me to be able to say these things.
	But if I was in a country where you would be the king, an atheist king, I would not have these freedoms.
	So I said, I think I am more of an Englishman than you are.
	You should go and find a country that believes what you believe.
	Anyway, by that point, there was a crowd that had gathered, and people generally were laughing at these things.
	But I think it's important to say these things to people that actually the freedoms we have is not because of our secularism or atheism, it's because of the Bible.
	The Bible set this country free.
	And that's why I love to preach it to people.
	Yeah, because it sets us free spiritually.
	You are a fighter, I can tell.
	And I just wanted to ask you something arising from what you said earlier on.
	You talked about Zoroastrian, Zoroastrianism, Zoroastrians thinking of themselves as the B's knees of all religions because they're really old.
	And I've heard this a lot, by the way.
	You hear it particularly in sort of New Age circles, people who sort of want to demonstrate that Christianity is just this sort of a new thing and there are older religions which are more authentic.
	But you quoted that key line from John: No one comes to the Father except through me, which is Christianity claiming for itself the same exclusivity that Zoroastrianism does.
	What is it?
	You obviously like the Christian message, you read the Bible and it appealed to you.
	But how do you know that Christianity is the real deal and Zoroastrian is not?
	It is because there are really ultimately two religions in the world.
	There's a religion that says it is all down to you.
	You have to do something.
	But then there is the religion of grace that speaks is by grace you are saved through faith.
	And that not of your own, but it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.
	There's the religion of grace that says Christ has done everything.
	His final words was, it is finished.
	There is no other religion like this.
	There is nothing else.
	Everyone else is a shade, their name may be different, but in terms of the essence, how can a man be right with God?
	That's the question.
	How can I have my sins forgiven?
	That was the clincher of a question that really affected me.
	And there are only two things that people say.
	Either you just have to try harder, get up earlier, have a cold shower, you know, do this, follow these rules, and maybe.
	They never say for sure.
	They say maybe, hopefully, I hope.
	And then there is a religion that the Apostle Paul says, I know whom I have believed, and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep me.
	And so he was sure.
	And the promises of Jesus Christ are sure.
	There are not maybes, that hopefully, if you just do enough, maybe.
	So that's really it.
	That coming to a conviction that my sins are all dealt with and I have had no part in it.
	He loved me and gave himself for me before I ever knew him.
	That's powerful.
	There is nothing else like it.
	So anyway.
	Let's get back to the Psalms.
	I mean, I could talk to you for hours about this stuff.
	And in fact, I've already said, and we're going to do this, we'll do a separate podcast where we can talk about more of this stuff.
	And I want to find out your views on Bible translations, because this is a fascinating topic which I haven't covered yet.
	and you're the man i can tell but let's talk about the psalms which you've probably encountered there's there's quite a lot of christians out there who who sort of think the new the new testament is everything and they sort of they they see the old testament as well c.s lewis actually described it as a sort of jewish thing a sort of it belongs to it belongs to the jews I've never felt that.
	Jesus quotes the Psalms more than any other book of the Old Testament.
	But tell me why you think the Psalms matter.
	If it was a Psalm, if it was something that Christ quotes more than any other book, the Apostles the same, it was the hymn book of the church, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, then it must be so true.
	And there is so much of the New Testament in the Psalms as well, because there are the shadows in the Psalm that are fulfilled in the New Testament.
	So you read the New Testament and you say, actually, wait a minute, I have read this already somewhere else.
	And so there are allusions that you get in the New Testament that we will look into some of the allusions in Psalm 37.
	And there is Christ in the Psalms.
	I've got the Scottish Psalter in front of me.
	And we sing this Psalm every, well, not this Psalm, but the Psalter.
	We sing the Psalter through in our church.
	And it's wonderful to actually sing the words of Scripture, the words that Jesus Christ sang with his apostles.
	So if it was important for the apostles, the early church, then it should be important for us.
	Truth never changes.
	Two plus two has always been four.
	And truth of the scripture always is going to be applicable and relevant for us.
	So.
	Have you ever wondered what the tunes might have been that Jesus might have sung?
	I mean, do we have any idea what...
	There are certain, I think, certain evidences about certain of the Psalms, I believe.
	But on the whole, I don't think so.
	Even the titles of the Psalms, which are actually part of the inspired text, this is an issue I have oftentimes.
	People read the Psalms, they don't read the titles.
	But actually, in the Hebrew text, the titles were part of the first verse.
	And they're part of it.
	Oftentimes, it explains, it describes who should be singing it.
	To the chief musician, for example, Psalm 36 says, a Psalm of David.
	It explains who the author of it is.
	And then it says it gives the servant of the Lord.
	And Psalm 37, it simply says a Psalm of David.
	But I don't think we would know the tunes exactly for today.
	No.
	Well, there are some classic lines in this Psalm.
	And one of my favorites is very near the beginning, and it seems to contain the essence of everything we do.
	Put thou thy trust in the Lord and be doing good.
	Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
	I mean, how reassuring is that?
	That's right.
	That's right.
	Well, the whole psalm begins with such wonderful words as well of, you know, fret not thyself because of evildoers.
	Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
	It begins with, fret not.
	There is nothing to fear.
	And this was the psalm that the Scottish Covenanters would be singing when they were being persecuted.
	Or during the Civil War, the English Civil War, Crumbull would be encouraging the army, the parliamentarians, to sing this.
	And even in the American Civil War, Stonewall Jackson, this is one of his favorite psalms that he would be reading them out, and then they would sing out either the cover version or the Scottish metrical version.
	They would be singing.
	And you can only imagine what it would sound like.
	All these soldiers, and they're facing a battle.
	It's a battle psalm.
	And they're facing a battle and everyone's singing.
	They're facing life and death.
	And yet the Psalm says, fret not thyself because of evildoers.
	It's wonderful.
	They shall soon be cut down like the grass and be withered even as the green herb.
	This is a common theme in the Psalms, isn't it?
	This we are as grass.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	And James refers to this.
	Isaiah refers to this.
	And so.
	And it calms the soul that where are we in our lives?
	That word fret obviously doesn't necessarily just mean worry in our modern sense.
	The Hebrew word for fret is to burn, to grow hot with frustration.
	That's what the Hebrew is.
	It's a sort of internal agitation that you're feeling.
	And when you see corruption, you know, when you see corruption in the world triumphing, and there's that burning sensation, you say, the wicked are prospering.
	No one seems to care.
	It's a heart slowly, as it were, catching fire.
	It is with holy zeal.
	Or I'm sorry, I should say it's not with holy zeal.
	It's actually with resentment.
	And David is saying, basically, and God through David is saying, don't go there.
	Don't let the sight of the wicked flourishing light that fire in your heart.
	Why is that?
	Because verse 2 tells us, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb.
	So the wicked is saying they look wealthy, healthy, they're untouchable.
	But David is saying, well, like the farmer who's just gone out, has watched many seasons, and it's reminding us, grass always gets cut.
	Green herbs, they will wither when the sun beats upon it.
	They're temporary.
	Their glory is superficial.
	That's what the psalmist is saying here.
	Their root is shallow.
	And so instead of fretting, what should we do?
	Verse 3, it tells you, instead of that, there's this sort of five-fold instruction that we are giving from verse 3.
	If you look down to verse 8, so what's God's remedy for people who are restless in their heart?
	Maybe there are people watching this and they are going through great anxieties and everything around them may be crumbling.
	And you think, well, what should they think?
	Verse 3 says, trust in the Lord.
	That's the solution.
	You trust in the Lord and do good.
	So shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.
	So the call isn't just passive sort of waiting, but actually active trusting and obedience.
	Keep doing good.
	Live faithfully.
	Dwell in the land.
	That is, stay in your calling.
	Don't run.
	Don't panic.
	And so God is promising, says, you shall be fed.
	That's simple faith, a childlike faith.
	It's not striving, it's not plotting, it's trusting.
	This was Martin Luther's psalm when he discovered justification by faith.
	He fretted deeply.
	He beat himself before he was truly converted.
	He was beating himself.
	He fasted endlessly.
	He confessed obsessively.
	But he had no peace.
	And it wasn't until the gospel pierced his heart.
	The just shall live by faith.
	And his soul was still.
	And he devised a hymn out of this psalm as well.
	And he would sing these verses again and again.
	And then the next step, it's like as if there are stepping stones.
	Verse 3, 4, 5.
	The psalmist says, instead of fretting, these are the steps you take.
	So trust in the Lord.
	Then, secondly, delight thyself also in the Lord.
	And he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
	So this doesn't mean that you get whatever you want.
	It means that when you delight in him, and we can say with New Testament eyes, we can say, when we delight in Christ, your desire changes.
	You want something else.
	Then he becomes your treasure.
	And when God is your portion, Christ is your portion, then the longing of your hearts are satisfied, not with things, but with him.
	And so we go to him.
	He says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
	So, yeah, and then the next step is verse 5: Commit thy way unto the Lord.
	Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.
	So, that word commit in Hebrew is wonderful.
	And I've just finished revising the Persian Psalter from the Hebrew text.
	And I do translation work for a Bible society as well.
	And this word in the Hebrew is wonderful.
	It's fantastic.
	Because literally, it means to roll it off, trust, sorry, commit thy way unto the Lord in verse 5.
	It means you roll something off your shoulders onto somebody else.
	So you've got burdens.
	It says you've got fears, you've got all of these issues, frustrations, this weight of sin.
	And he says, God says, roll them onto me.
	I will carry them.
	And of course, that's what Jesus Christ did.
	He took our sins.
	He became sin for us.
	And so we can see these fulfillments in the New Testament.
	So, yeah, I could go on verse 5.
	Then it says, Rest in the Lord.
	That's the next step you take.
	Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.
	Again, the word rest here is be silent.
	Be silent.
	Stop murmuring.
	Stop plotting.
	Stop trying to take control of what only God can do.
	We want to be in control.
	That's my big problem.
	I just want to fix things.
	Are you a fixer?
	I don't know.
	We want to fix other people's problems too.
	I'm a great worrier.
	And I tried this one day.
	I was worrying about arrangements and decisions and stuff.
	And I thought, I was learning Psalm 37 at the time, I think.
	And I was inspired by some of these lines.
	I thought, I don't know what I'm going to do.
	I'm just going to trust God and leave it to God to sort out.
	And I'm not going to fret.
	And sure enough, the next day, all the things that I'd been fretting needlessly about had sort of been arranged.
	And I find it, this stuff is very effective.
	I'm sorry, by the way, that delight thou in the Lord, and he shall give thee thy heart's desire doesn't mean you get lots of cool stuff.
	But at the same time, am I not right in thinking that if your needs are in tune with what God wants for you, you do get it.
	I mean, it's not like he's not a meanie.
	He's not stingy.
	No, he does bless with all that we need and even more.
	Our cup runs over.
	That's what the psalmist says.
	And so, but so there was a Scottish pastor called Andrew Bonner, and I recommend his writings to you.
	He said that the hardest grace to learn is patience.
	And he wrote some of the wonderful hymns that we sing.
	And patience.
	Oh, that I would learn patience.
	And because when I'm not patient, I'm saying I could do it better than God.
	I wish he would hurry about things and do it in my time.
	But there in verse 7, it says, rest in the Lord.
	Be silent.
	And then it says, wait patiently.
	So he says, let the wicked rage.
	Let the wicked rage.
	Let them worry.
	Let the world mock you.
	God is not slow, he says.
	He's never early.
	He's never late.
	But be patient on him.
	He's not going to run the world on your clock.
	That's what the psalmist is saying here.
	So I need to refuse to fret.
	And you need to.
	Everybody else who reads this psalm needs to.
	Instead, I wait on the Lord.
	And it talks about verse 8.
	If you look it up, it says, cease from anger.
	Yes, this is interesting.
	So this is another of, I think, the most useful phrases in this psalm.
	fret not thyself because of the ungodly neither be thou envious against it sorry sorry sorry not what am i talking about i'm I've criticized it.
	Yes.
	Leave off from wrath and let go displeasure.
	Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.
	I found that so useful.
	Whenever I'm tempted to burn somebody or to take, I'm plotting my revenge because somebody has aggrieved me and done me wrong.
	And the point those lines are making, surely, is actually this is a waste of your energy.
	You're putting yourself on the level of the people that have annoyed you and you should just let it pass.
	Definitely.
	Bitterness, anger.
	Isn't it like a poison to our soul?
	Faster than any kind of trial, it destroys us.
	And people who are angry and bitter, they're never happy.
	It will turn us into the very thing that we hate, doesn't it?
	And David knew it firsthand.
	You remember when he raised against Nabal?
	He was so angry at Nabal and he would go and kill him.
	God has stopped him in his mercy.
	So all of these things are saying, you know, don't fret, trust, delight, commit, rest, wait, cease.
	And they're not just commands to us, but they're lifelines for the true child of God in a dark world.
	And we are living in a dark world.
	This is a charge that's often leveled against Christians.
	That they are essentially too passive.
	That they're like, leave it to the big man.
	We don't have to do anything.
	And it's used against us, isn't it?
	I mean, this is the problem with you Christians is that you're not taking any action.
	You sort of sit around trusting in God.
	How do you counter that?
	I would say that the trusting here does not mean being idle.
	The trusting is actually a very positive thing.
	We then go on the attack.
	The Christian is a warrior.
	He's a soldier.
	And our aim in life and our purpose in life is the glory of Christ.
	And it means that we want the knowledge of Christ to dominate the world.
	We are actually on.
	I want the whole of Cheltenham to become Christian.
	I want the whole of Gloucestershire to become Christian.
	I want to go into, and this is what we are actually doing, going into areas where there are Muslims and reach them with the gospel.
	I want them to be converted.
	Like me, I was once lost and had false ideas about who God was.
	And so actually it is very, very powerful.
	It's not idling about or going into a monastery or hiding ourselves somewhere and say, I just want to keep the world out.
	I don't have to do that because I've got a sinful heart that it needs the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse my sin every day.
	And I can't shut myself away.
	I must fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
	And Jesus Christ's plan for us is to go into all the world and preach the gospel.
	And the Bible then transforms nations.
	It sets the laws.
	It sends the behavior, the moral standards, all of these things.
	So this is why I seek to, when I'm preaching the Bible, I'm saying, so what does that mean?
	In what way will it affect your hands?
	What way will it affect your feet, your tongue, your eyes, your ears?
	Or else it is just useless words.
	But God never gives us useless words.
	And so the Christian actually is the most busy person.
	They should be.
	They are not just there to go to church, but they're taking this powerful message that transforms everything.
	There's an excellent book I have just at the back there, The Book That Changed the World.
	I don't know if you've ever seen it before or not, but by Vishal Magwivaldi.
	It's an Indian Christian theologian.
	And he shows how the Bible actually has transformed so much of the Western world and even his own country of India.
	No other book has done that.
	So this book is so powerful.
	It's sharper than two-edged sword.
	It transforms people not just to go to heaven, but in this world.
	So I don't agree with the kind of waiting on the Lord that means I just sit back and do nothing.
	That's not what it means.
	David was the most, the psalmist himself is showing you that he didn't live like that.
	There is more to it than what we see on the surface.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So this next bit, it's sort of reiteration.
	I mean, what I find this Psalm does is it says something in one section and then it repeats it in another one.
	So wicked doers shall be rooted out and they that patiently abide the Lord, those shall inherit the land.
	Yet a little while and the ungodly shall be clean gone.
	Thou shalt look after his place and he shall be away.
	And that line gets repeated later on in the Psalm.
	So you're constantly enjoying, yeah, even though the baddies are really annoying and they seem to be thriving, don't worry.
	Ill paths.
	They're going to be gone soon.
	Definitely.
	And the first part of it, the first eight verses, is really speaking about trusting the Lord, not fretting, not listening to the BBC, not listening to all of this stuff that is just saying you need to constantly be worried.
	the world is coming to an end the world is going to this is going to happen this is and And then verses 9 to 22, it's saying the fate of the wicked versus the righteous.
	So verse 9, as you read, for evildoers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.
	So we are not, it's taking us deeper into this psalm.
	And David doesn't simply tell us not to envy the wicked.
	He shows us why it is foolish to do so.
	Because the wicked, he says, may climb high.
	They might have all of these establishments, but their rope is very short.
	The righteous may seem very lowly, but their foundation is eternal.
	It's in God.
	So the wicked have short-lived success, he says.
	So verse 9, the evildoers shall be cut off.
	Verse 10, yet a little while and the wicked shall not be.
	Verse 12 to 14, the wicked plotteth, gnasheth, draw the sword.
	Verse 15, their sword shall enter into their own heart.
	Verse 17, the arms of the wicked shall be broken.
	Verse 28, the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
	So this is not just poetry, it's actually prophecy.
	God has declared their end.
	Actually, we know what is going to happen.
	We've got the final chapter of the book of the world.
	So all of their plan, all of their wealth, all of their lineage, all of their strength, all of it will collapse.
	Their own weapons will be turned against them.
	The very strength that they have, it will be their own downfall.
	Yes.
	Can I ask you something which has often puzzled me about the Psalms?
	The baddies in the Psalms always seem to be slightly cartoonish.
	The ungodly seeketh counsel against the just and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
	They're constantly sort of making threatening noises, but rarely do they get physical.
	I mean, okay, they seeketh occasion to slay him.
	It sometimes does get more visceral.
	But generally, the baddies are just kind of threatening and they're not physically.
	They don't seem like a real threat.
	And that puzzles me, because after all, this is written in a time where there were real baddies killing people with their swords and spears and butchering babies and stuff.
	Why does it kind of present them in this kind of cartoonish way?
	It is because ultimately they are not as powerful as we can see and they think they are.
	Ultimately, okay, I'll explain it like this.
	Wicked people have come and gone, but the Church of Christ still is here.
	They have sought to destroy it, but they have done their utmost to destroy it.
	There was Voltaire who famously in France mocked Christianity and predicted, said in 50 years there will be no Christianity in Europe, Voltaire said.
	And when he said it, or he said in 100 years, the Bible and Christianity would be forgotten.
	Within 50 years of his death, do you know what happened?
	The Geneva Bible Society was printing Bibles in his former house.
	That's what happened.
	Take that.
	You can Google it and find out.
	He was cut off, even though he did everything in his power through his teaching and writing to destroy Christianity.
	But the Geneva Bible Society was using his house to print Bibles.
	So he was cut off, as the Psalm says, and his lamp was extinguished.
	And verse 10, it says, and yet a little while and the wicked shall not be.
	Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall not be.
	So you may search them, you may Google them, you may write biographies about them, but they will be gone.
	History forgets them.
	Heaven never knew them.
	I get the overarching truth of this.
	I get the big picture stuff.
	But suppose you were one of the people who sang that.
	Well, anytime.
	When was the psalm written, roughly?
	It is roughly sort of 700.
	Sorry.
	It would be end of David's life, whenever that was.
	Just over 1000 BC, something like that.
	1000 BC.
	Okay, so people have been singing this psalm for over 3,000 years with great sincerity.
	But a lot of them will have, shortly after singing this psalm, will have died horribly.
	They'd have been butchered by the very people that the Psalm is not warning them not to fret about.
	How do you explain that?
	Because they see themselves not just in their own locality and in their own individual.
	We are part of the body of Christ.
	The body of Christ cannot be destroyed.
	There will always be a witness in this world.
	And Jesus Christ is actually conquering this world, not necessarily, not with sword, but with his truth and the gospel.
	And so the Christian sees his life, I am just part of this building block of the body of Christ.
	If I am truly a Christian, that's where I am.
	Jesus said that fear not them that kill the body, but fear him that kills the body and soul in hell.
	So my body may be burnt, but if I'm part of the body of Christ, the body of Christ is growing and it will dominate.
	So that's the hope, that's the glory.
	That's why John Hooper, who was just down in Gloucester, he was the bishop of Gloucester, one of the early reformers that was burnt at the stake, he sang this psalm as he was being burnt at the stake.
	And Hugh Latimer as well, who went before the king and the king had asked him to preach a sermon.
	And everyone was scared of the king, obviously.
	And Hugh Latimer began his sermon.
	He said, Now, Latimer, know before whom you are preaching.
	And now, Latimer, remember who it is who hears your word, and so on.
	He went on for ages talking to himself before the king.
	And he said, It is not the king of England, but it is the king of kings that you are preaching before.
	And he says, So make sure you do not offend the king of kings.
	It does not matter if the king of England is offended.
	And Latimer, he preached and sang this psalm in his life, but also at his death.
	It was one of the favorite psalms because it really speaks of ultimately they may burn my body, but actually they are the losers.
	They will die and perish.
	Who remembers the person who ultimately burnt Latimer?
	Nobody knows who it was.
	But we know Latimer.
	We do.
	So, well, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, were they burned by Mary?
	That's right, yes.
	1565, was it?
	So Henry's daughter, Henry VIII's daughter, presumably Henry VIII was the king you were talking about, that he was right.
	And Cranmer, of course, wrote large chunks of the Book of Common Prayer.
	So he lives on that as well.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I just wonder, do you think that being a Christian makes your end less painful?
	I mean, physically painful.
	Pain at all?
	No.
	No.
	No, two weeks ago, I was at the side of a godly lady, 44 years of age.
	She was dying of cancer, full of pain, full of horrible stuff going on.
	But do you know, the night before, she was singing psalms and hymns.
	She was praising God.
	The night before she died, her body is riddled with cancer.
	And she says, I'm victorious.
	I'm more than conqueror through Jesus Christ.
	So, and she's left three children, two, three-year-old, and seven years old.
	She's 44, you say.
	She was 44, yeah.
	That's awful.
	And she's left her husband.
	But her husband says, you know, our peace is in Jesus Christ.
	He's the one who has my wife safely home.
	I don't have to worry about her anymore.
	I know that she's secure in Christ.
	Her sins are forgiven.
	And the night before, knowing all of these things, she was singing God's praise.
	She was the victorious.
	She wasn't in a prison of cancer.
	She was actually looking forward to arrive safely to the place where Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you.
	So that's the victory of the Christian.
	The sting of death is gone.
	Paul said, Oh, grave, where is thy victory?
	That's the Christian.
	Everyone else is fearful of death, but through these Psalms, and even David himself, he knew he was always going to be in the presence of the Lord.
	If he was to go to heaven, if he was even going to go to hell, he says, Thou art there.
	And so for the Christian, for the Psalms.
	That's right.
	It's a wonderful experience that the Christian has.
	I don't have to fear death anymore.
	Death is just a doorway into the house of my Father in heaven.
	And so this is just the experience just two weeks ago.
	Her funeral is in next week, next Friday.
	And she was singing with thankfulness.
	She wasn't bitter.
	She wasn't angry.
	She said, I wish I could be there as a mother for these children.
	And I wish I was there to support my husband.
	But I know that the Lord would care for them.
	And I can leave it with the Lord.
	And so that's the triumph of the gospel in a sinner's heart.
	That we are.
	That's why the Christian can be the most useful person in the world because we actually fear no one but God.
	We don't fear the tyrants, the parliament, all of these people.
	And so in the 15th of July, there was a group of ministers.
	We said, with the abortion bill going through parliament, with the assisted dying bill going through, so what are we doing?
	Am I just going to come and type on Facebook?
	Isn't it so awful that this is happening?
	So we contacted some of the MPs who said they were Christians and who actually had spoken.
	And we said, well, we need to just go and speak to the people.
	I wrote a little tract actually.
	This one here might not say it's hope for our nation.
	And I wrote this very quickly.
	Just in one day, I wrote this and we got it printed.
	And we gave out 3,000 copies of this to people passersby and politicians that were going by.
	And the police came and they actually said, Look, don't preach here.
	Go and write in front of the parliament.
	So just in front of the gates, we were preaching on these issues and saying, you are answerable to the king of heaven.
	The word of God is the law.
	And so what I'm saying is actually the Christian has no fear of man anymore.
	If we fear God, and we fear our own sin, we don't have to fear the devil.
	The devil is limited.
	He's not infinite.
	And the governments of this world, they only have enough power that God allocates to them.
	But the king of heaven, that's the one I fear and I must serve.
	And so we can be as bold as a lion as we read in the word of God.
	But humbly, not with arrogance.
	It's not because of me or anybody else.
	How do you understand fear of the Lord?
	I know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it presumably doesn't mean we should spend our lives in a state of abject trembling terror at God's wrath.
	It's something more all-encompassing than that.
	Definitely.
	The fear of God is actually so vast.
	It's a pregnant world.
	Yes, it means we stand in awe of Him.
	It means that we respect Him.
	It means that we actually love Him.
	We love His law.
	It is like a child to the Father.
	There is that familial fear, but not a slavish fear.
	We are not slaves.
	We have been set free.
	The Lord Jesus Christ says, I call you friend.
	But it's that sense that this Savior, this King came down from heaven and He died for me.
	It's that kind of a fear that it is unbelievable what he did for me and my whole life is given for him.
	And why would I want to do anything to offend him?
	The fear is actually full of affection, full of trust and full of joy as well.
	It's not a morbid kind of I'm shaking in my boots and I'm worried God is standing above me with a stick.
	That's what I used to think of God before I was converted.
	God was so distant, detached.
	But the psalmist, he speaks of the fear of God with love.
	He says, I am with you.
	You are with me.
	Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
	That's the fear of God.
	Yes.
	That actually to know that the Lord actually will use his rod to even prod me and discipline me, that's a great comfort.
	He won't let me go.
	And he will defend me and he will save me from myself, my own foolishness too.
	And so the fear of God is a wonderful subject that actually Christians have forgotten what the fear of God is.
	It's not preached.
	And yet the Bible says it's the beginning of wisdom, it's the beginning of knowledge.
	But fools despise it and reject it.
	But the righteous man, the Bible also says that, he fears God.
	And this psalm is about the righteous as well.
	The righteous is secure, it says.
	Those that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth.
	The meek shall inherit the earth, verse 11, and shall delight themselves in abundance of peace.
	Verse 16, it says, a little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
	I love this.
	A small thing that the righteous hath is better than great riches of the ungodly.
	And I was thinking, whenever you look at Bill Gates or Elon Musk or all these creepy characters who've got all their fancy toys and stuff and they're swarming around the world.
	But a small thing that the righteous hath is better than all their great riches.
	Definitely.
	Definitely.
	But that is contentment, pure and simple.
	Better one slice of bread with Christ than a banquet with the devils, the Puritans said.
	John Bunyan, you know, he was in prison for 12 years.
	When he was there in Bedford Jail, he had very little, just a jug of water, a crust of bread, and his Bible.
	Yet he said, and I'm quoting this, I never had in all my life so much of the presence of God.
	So his little was better than the riches of kings.
	I knew a little old lady in Bath.
	My wife went to Bath University, and there's this little old lady.
	Her name was Frances Latimer, actually.
	No, Frances, that's right, Frances Latimer.
	And she had no fridge, she had no TV, she just had a cold slab of stone, and she put her food and so on on there.
	But she's the most joyous person I've ever known.
	She was 98, and she had a horrible upbringing.
	Her stepmother would lock her in a cupboard under the stairs.
	It was child abuse.
	She was abused severely.
	But she said, I have Jesus Christ.
	It means so much to me.
	And she said, you know, she was just always smiling and said, what have I?
	This world will be gone.
	And so she would go and knock on, she had a hunchback and she used to go and knock on all these students' doors.
	That's how we got to know her because she had gone and knocked where my wife was staying and had invited her to church and giving hospitality and saying, what can I pray for you?
	And all sorts of stuff.
	She was a busy, busy woman and full of joy.
	What a testimony it was to the grace of God.
	She had nothing, a little, a very little she had.
	A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
	And you know yourself of people with so much of this world and they're miserable, worried about insurance and thieves and all of these things, inheritance tax and all this kind of stuff.
	But the Lord knows, it says in verse 18, the Lord knoweth the days of the upright.
	He knows their path.
	That's what it means, their time.
	He knows their trials.
	He knows their temptations.
	But what of the wicked?
	Just going through, I'm just trying to go through the verses.
	We're right.
	That's right.
	We could be on this, you know, and it's such a wonderful psalm.
	We could be.
	As I said, I think I preached about 20 sermons on this.
	But verse 19.
	You can just whistle through bits and just pick out little nuggets of in verse 19.
	It says, it says, what is going to happen to the wicked?
	They shall not be ashamed in the evil time.
	This is the righteous.
	In the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.
	Even when the economy crashes, when the crops fail, when the funds dry up, God feeds his own.
	Have you heard of George Muller?
	George Muller.
	He was in the 1800s.
	He was a preacher, a pastor, a minister from a German extraction.
	He was a brethren leader in the brethren movement, but he was a pastor of a church in Bristol.
	He had one of the largest orphanages in the world at the time.
	And he never asked for a penny.
	He said, I want to live by faith.
	I won't ask for a penny.
	He fed thousands of orphans and he had no guarantee of income.
	You can read about him.
	It's fascinating how God provided.
	So one morning they would come, there was no food.
	They had nothing.
	And all these hundreds and hundreds of children were gathered together.
	And he said, okay, let us give thanks for our breakfast.
	But there was no food.
	But he said, let us give thanks.
	God has promised to provide for us.
	So we just take him at his word and we'll give thanks.
	So he prayed, thanked God for this morning's breakfast and said, Amen.
	As soon as they said amen, there was a knock on the orphanage house.
	And there was a man who was delivering milk, but the cart broke down.
	He couldn't deliver the milk to the place that he had to deliver.
	It says, it's going to perish.
	And I'm just right outside of this place.
	I thought maybe the children would like to have them.
	So all the children had milk that morning.
	Then another similar thing happened at the same time.
	So there were these people coming to the place and this is real.
	This is not a story.
	And newspapers were writing about this.
	Here is a man who has never asked for a penny and yet thousands of children are being fed.
	I would recommend you to read his story of George Muller.
	It is so fascinating.
	Is there a book about him?
	It is, yeah.
	There are quite a number of books written of him.
	And yes.
	I've often wondered about that line, they shall not be confounded in the perilous time, and in the days of dearth they shall have enough.
	Because lines like that have a resonance when you're living in times where you and I and most of the people listening to this podcast know that there are some really bad times coming engineered by the powers that be.
	They've been engineering famine, they've been engineering food shortages, they've been creating all sorts of situations where we're going to have to have rationing, there's going to be great suffering.
	And I've often wondered, okay, so those people who haven't been prepping, for example, when there's no food around, if they're good Christians, will God be true to his word in Psalm 37?
	In the days of dearth, they shall have enough.
	I hope so.
	I pray so.
	And it has happened.
	You read about the revival that took place in Korea in the early 1900s during the time of the Japanese invasion, the Chinese invasion.
	They would read this psalm and the Lord would provide.
	God would provide for these persecuted Christians through other Christians.
	There was a network of Christians helping each other out and they said, well, God is answering prayer.
	Not through some miraculous way, but here is a Christian coming.
	and he knows we need.
	And I think to myself, yes, it is good to prep if one can.
	But there are individuals who are living somewhere in some sort of apartment, high-rise flat in London.
	How are they going to manage?
	What will they do?
	We can't say to them, if I'm sitting in my affluence, say, well, I'll be all right.
	You need to be prepping.
	But what's going to happen to that old woman who is a Christian, godly person, and they just can't manage it.
	But the Lord then uses his body.
	We should be ready to be a blessing.
	It is more blessed to give than to receive.
	We were just reading that in our family worship this morning.
	And so I said to the children, we need to be thinking about giving more than what we do today, because it is through these things God blesses others and fulfills these promises too.
	Excellent.
	I'm looking at verse 23, the steps of a good man.
	It's speaking about God's sovereignty.
	God is in control.
	The world tells us no one's in control except the elite.
	And we just need to trust.
	We just need to don't ask questions.
	Just do what you are being told by the establishment or whatever it is.
	But actually, we are being told in the Bible all the time, actually, my steps are ordered by God.
	It's not random wanderings.
	It's not leaping.
	It's not flight.
	I'm not fleeing.
	There are steps, it's called.
	Every day, every detail, every sorrow, every success, all are ordered, not by fate, not by luck, but by the Lord.
	So there's purpose in my life.
	The word they're ordered in the Hebrew, it means established, it's fixed, it's set in place.
	God doesn't just react to your life.
	He has written it.
	He is the great sovereign who guides his child through the maze of life with infinite wisdom.
	And who is this good man?
	He says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.
	Who is it?
	David isn't saying that He is ultimately good.
	He's not saying if you're morally superior, God will guide you.
	Rather, he says, the good man is the one made good by the grace of God, the one who has been made righteous by faith in the Lord.
	God is the one who makes me good.
	I can't make myself good.
	So there's a lot of Christian truths in these things.
	And verse 24 talks about the fall.
	He says, I have been, he says, I've been, sorry, though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.
	He says, that's wonderful.
	God doesn't say his people will never stumble.
	He says when they do, he catches them.
	And this is not a promise that they won't sin, they're perfect.
	But he says God is going to sustain them, help them.
	And there was the man, Robert Murray McShane.
	Again, I'm mentioning these names.
	He was a Scottish Presbyterian minister.
	Under him, the city of Dundee, there was a mini revival that took place under his preaching.
	He was a weak man.
	He was only a minister for seven years.
	He died as a young man.
	And he wrote so many hymns.
	McShane's hymns are wonderful.
	And he wrote a daily reading plan as well.
	It's called McShane's Daily Reading.
	You read the Bible.
	We use it at home.
	You read the Bible basically once in the year, but the New Testament Psalms twice.
	And in the city of Dundee, there was a mini revival of so many people were converted.
	And he wrote these journals.
	I would recommend you to read it.
	He says, I see a man falling into sin and yet being restored.
	The only explanation is this.
	God upheld him.
	He says, we don't keep ourselves.
	The Lord keeps us.
	I don't keep myself.
	I'm being kept, Peter says, being kept by the power of God.
	So the Christian recognizes that the only reason a Christian doesn't stay down is because God is intervening.
	And so furthermore, David says in verse 25, he says, I have been young and now I'm old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
	And he's speaking, this is a voice of experience.
	David is not saying that the righteous never go through hardship.
	He says God never abandons them.
	That's what it is.
	So they can sink when they have got cancer.
	The world can be all around them, collapsing.
	The government might be saying this.
	They might be thrown into prison.
	And this is what I've said.
	You know, we do need to resist tyranny.
	We do need to do that.
	But we do need to also understand the consequences.
	Am I willing to pay the consequences?
	If I am willing to pay the consequences in the name of God, God will provide for me.
	I can still rejoice.
	I can sing in the presence of my enemies.
	And I can still be bold and declare the truth in front of a police officer, you know, who rang us one time.
	And he was reprimanding me about things.
	And I said to him, Excuse me, sir, you sound more like the Iranian police who want to shut down churches.
	And I said, I came to this country not realizing actually the police would be reprimanding Christian ministers for the preaching of the gospel.
	This is still a Christian nation, you're supposed to, supposedly.
	And he didn't know what to say.
	And I said, you know, English men died in the Second World War, in the First World War, in its history, to keep our freedoms.
	And yet you're saying that we only have to say certain things in our own church.
	Don't come out and say anything about Allah or about other things.
	No, I said, no, you cannot keep our mouth shut.
	But as I am saying this, I have to recognize the consequence of what I am saying, that I may have to suffer for it.
	And that's fine.
	As long as I've got my Hebrew grammar and dictionary, I can carry on with my translation work.
	I'll be quite happy to do that.
	But my wife says I'm very selfish for talking like this, you know, to go into prison so that I can finish my Old Testament translation.
	But we just need to know the consequence.
	But God preserves.
	There's a lasting inheritance as well.
	The Church of Jesus Christ will never die because as long as Jesus Christ is alive, his body will continue.
	And that's what it says in verse 26.
	He says, he is ever merciful and lendeth and his seed, it says, is blessed.
	It's talking about the seed of the Christian, the offsprings of the Christian.
	In verse 29, it says, the righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein forever.
	So there's a generational blessing.
	The life of a righteous man affects his children, affects society.
	His seed is blessed.
	And it's not because of wealth, but it's because of who he has become in God, through God.
	So he's talking about long-term thinking as well.
	The wicked are building their own empires that crumble.
	Just think about all these big empires, they become so proud and they ultimately crumble.
	They're not there anymore.
	Where is the Persian Empire?
	Where is the Roman Empire?
	But there was a man called Jonathan Edwards.
	I don't know if you know of him.
	He was a man who was the head of Yale University in the 1700s.
	He was one of the greatest American theologians.
	And he was used in the great awakening that took place, I believe, in Massachusetts.
	And he preached a sermon.
	It is called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
	He preached on the fear of God.
	And he couldn't read very well.
	So he held his script a sermon in front of his face and with a candle in the other hand.
	And he was reading the sermon.
	While he would read the sermon, people are falling in front of him.
	Hundreds and hundreds of people are turning to Christ, being converted, and it had nothing to do with music because they didn't play any music or his amazing gift of preaching.
	But the power of God came down.
	And again, you can read about this.
	And newspapers began writing.
	The town of Massachusetts is changing.
	It's like 1859 in Northern Ireland.
	Have you read about the 1859 revival?
	The newspapers began writing about it because the prisons were empty.
	The judges had no cases to judge in Northern Ireland.
	So the judges and the policemen were coming to England to find work in Northern Ireland, from Northern Ireland, in 1859.
	So at the time that Darwin published his Origin of a Species in 1859, there was this thing happening in Northern Ireland and people were being converted.
	The prisons were emptying.
	It's unbelievable, but it happened.
	And still there are the news extracts that you can read.
	The journalists would go into churches and they themselves were being converted.
	And there was a hymn that was sung at the time.
	It was called, What's the News?
	What's the news?
	Because every day people were going around saying, what's the news?
	Where has God come down today?
	And where is God working today?
	this was happening in this country in 1859 but that's the and the legacy of it was all over Northern Ireland there was prosperity because there was little crime The judges used to be given what was called a white glove to say, you have no case today.
	And that was happening every day.
	The judges were given a white glove saying, there is nothing for you to do.
	Just go home.
	It's unbelievable.
	How did it end?
	Why did it end?
	It did go on for a while, but it was a powerful work of the Spirit of God that was happening.
	It was a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God for a season.
	It actually happened in London as well at the same time in London.
	It seemed to be in certain locations that God powerfully was visiting.
	There's a church in London called the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
	The minister there at that time was called Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
	If you've heard of Spurgeon, he's called the Prince of Preachers.
	And under his preaching, just that year, no other time, just that year, there was a massive, massive influx of people coming and were being converted from all kinds of walks of life.
	But it seemed to be just a localized blessing by God.
	But what was happening, so this wasn't just people being converted, becoming Christians, and then just waiting to go to heaven.
	No, Northern Ireland became the most productive place in the whole of Britain.
	Why was that?
	Because these people were no longer drinking and gambling and wasting their time.
	They were God-fearing people who were, they talked about, when I was in Northern Ireland, I lived in Northern Ireland for four years, and they would talk about the Protestant work ethic.
	Yes.
	And that was it.
	So when our grass in front of our house was not cut, this lady used to come and say, your house is not Protestant looking.
	Meaning you need to cut your grass.
	But that was the attitude that actually the Protestants were hardworking.
	But where did that come from?
	It was the ethics coming from the Bible that had affected the people.
	And so they were industrious, they were giving.
	When there was famine in Scotland, Northern Irish folk were providing help to Scotland and so on.
	And so true Christianity is actually, it has legs, it has arms, it has teeth.
	It actually is very, very active and it's glorious.
	And the psalmist is talking, it's generational.
	It affects future generations.
	I mentioned about Jonathan Edwards with him reading this sermon.
	This is where all of this, the rabbit holes we went down of revival.
	He was reading this sermon.
	Many were being converted.
	But he was a man who said, we need to pray not just for our own children, but we need to pray for our grandchildren.
	We need to pray for their children.
	We need to live in such a way that what is going to be my legacy for them, what am I going to leave behind?
	And you know, somebody did a historical sort of investigation into the lives of the children of Jonathan Edwards.
	There were so many hundreds of ministers, missionaries, presidents, judges, and important people in the United States.
	God was answering their prayers, his prayers into the future.
	And so it says the righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein forever.
	And of course there are gospel truths in all of these things, Christian truths.
	And the marks of the, if we could maybe start winding down, but the marks of the Christian are seen in verses 30 to 34 as well.
	David there, it's coming to the conclusion of this and he returns to the theme of the righteous man.
	And this time he's showing us what a life of grace of God looks like in speech, in thought, in conduct.
	These are all identifying markers.
	Not a checklist for a person's salvation, but it's a fruit of the work of God's grace.
	So it says in verse 30, the mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom.
	We've got foolish men speaking foolishness in our society today.
	Their mouth is not speaking wisdom.
	They're like children who speak in our parliament.
	They are pretending that the king has clothes when he is actually naked.
	And a child can laugh at these things.
	But this is the society.
	So the mouth should be affected.
	Wisdom, justice, truth should be spoken.
	The Lord Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
	So again, if I could just turn to something historic, Kiddeminster, not far from Gloucester, there's a Puritan pastor called Richard Baxter.
	Again, there's a statue of him in the center of Kidderminster.
	He was a really godly man.
	And he was said to preach as a dying man to dying men.
	And before his death, it says that the whole of town of Kiddeminster was converted to Christ.
	And that it was one of the most successful, productive towns of the time, full of life, not misery, not grumbling.
	The same could be said of there was a man called Richard Hobson of Liverpool.
	Again, the area in which he was a godly Anglican minister, and through the preaching of the gospel, he said this area where there was full of prostitution and all sorts of evil that was going on, the whole area of Liverpool was changed, transformed.
	That's what the gospel does.
	It just doesn't prepare people for heaven.
	But for now.
	So, anyhow, I think just on your point about Kidderminster, I think that the forces of darkness sometimes take revenge.
	And poor old Kidderminster, have you ever been to Kidderminster?
	Yes, I know.
	I mean, it's completely been destroyed by the ring road.
	The church has been separated from the rest of the town by this horrible.
	It's really unattractive.
	And I wonder whether town planning was Satan's revenge.
	I am serious.
	The devil doesn't like it when people are good Christians.
	Before anything goes wrong again, let's bring this.
	But I've got to do one of my favorite lines, which is, I myself have seen the ungodly in great power and flourishing like a green bay tree.
	I went by and lo, he was gone.
	I sought his place and he could nowhere be found.
	I love the idea of this bay tree.
	Do you know why did they choose the bay tree?
	Can you just remind me of the verse?
	It's towards the end.
	I myself have seen the ungodly in great power and flourish.
	It's about 10 lines from the end and flourishing like a green bay tree.
	Oh, yes, that's it.
	So the bay tree there, it's I'm just looking at the Hebrew to see what the wording is there.
	It is basically a word for a luxurious tree, a tree that is extremely green, that is in its own native soil.
	So it is not in foreign soil, it is in native soil.
	That's what the Hebrew is indicating here.
	So yeah, that's the wording.
	I find it one of the more reassuring lines.
	And again, it reiterates what the Psalm says throughout this theme.
	That look at these baddies.
	They're doing really well, but don't worry.
	Don't fret not thyself.
	They're soon going to be gone.
	But tell me, Pian, this is a question I often ask.
	What's going to happen to us Christians at the end, when all the bad stuff's happened?
	Do we come back to this earth when we're sort of resurrected?
	Do we live back on earth?
	The way the scripture puts it is that the heaven and the earth will come together, but this earth will be a renewed earth.
	In the book of Revelation, it says, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
	The elements will burn with fervent heat.
	That's the major global warming that God will bring about.
	But it says the elements will burn with fervent heat, but he renews all things.
	So heaven and earth will combine, that men will walk with God.
	And there'll be no sea.
	No.
	C is a picture of division.
	Sea is a picture of division.
	It's by sea, men are divided.
	So it's basically saying that God's people will be together.
	There'll be nothing to divide us.
	That's the picture there.
	So we'll still be able to go swimming and stuff.
	Yeah, I think so.
	That's good.
	I think so.
	Yeah.
	And I love the idea that when this happens, every single wind turbine will be destroyed and obliterated.
	There will be nothing.
	There will be no evidence that these monstrosities ever existed.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	No, well, it will be far, far greater, the glory of the future.
	It will be far, far greater than Eden.
	There is no other fall.
	In Eden, man fell, but in heaven, there is no fall.
	There is no pain.
	There is no death.
	And so there is nothing that corrupts.
	So the picture of the wind turbines is a picture of corruption.
	Man's corrupting the earth.
	There's nothing that will corrupt heaven.
	But it's going to be great when it happens.
	But as the Psalm tells us, we've got to be patient, right?
	Patient, work, fight, seek to speak the truth.
	Be willing to lay down your life.
	Be willing to fight a good fight of faith.
	And this is the greatest of fights.
	The Christian's fight is better than any fight, because actually we are not fighting a losing battle.
	So there are people who have lost their lives in battles and wars, but they still have won.
	The nation has still won.
	And what happens to us when we suffer?
	We taste something that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced as well.
	We enter into his experiences and we can appreciate something of what he went through.
	So the Christian's life is a glorious life.
	It's exciting.
	So you were going to say something.
	Well, I wasn't complaining that the Christian life wasn't exciting enough.
	I think that those who characterize Christians as being boring are just basically doing the devil's work, but they're not being accurate, are they?
	No, no.
	So just going back to the bay tree, the green bay tree, it's really, I've just written down some notes.
	I couldn't find it earlier on.
	But it's a picture of prosperity.
	That's why literally it has the meaning of lush, luxurious, very fruitful tree.
	It's flourishing.
	It is tall.
	It's strong.
	It draws admiration.
	But the wicked may seem invincible.
	He dominates.
	He expands.
	He intimidates.
	David saw it in his own lifetime.
	There was Doeg, the Edomite.
	There was Saul.
	There was Hithophel.
	There was Absalom.
	Men who rose quickly, but then they fell suddenly.
	And that's happened again and again.
	You know, during the French Revolution, atheist men seized power.
	They mocked the Bible.
	They said God is dead.
	They flourished like green tree.
	But within a few years, blood, chaos, collapse, all of those things, they were gone.
	The revolution devoured its own.
	It's like the communist.
	Karl Marx and Lenin and so on, they devour their own.
	Their names are become a byword.
	They are not seen as good men, but the righteous outlive them.
	You know, still, this year is the year of William Tyndale's Bible, the 500-year anniversary of Tyndale's Bible.
	And, you know, who would remember us in 500 years?
	But Tyndale did a great thing for the English-speaking world.
	And we still know him.
	He did a mighty thing for this country and for the glory of God.
	And his name is still outlasts.
	Those people who killed him.
	So, yes, the wicked often may flourish, but it's the flourish of leaves, not fruit.
	It's all for show.
	That's what it is.
	So, and verse 36, it says, yet he passed away, and lo, he was not.
	Yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.
	So it's gone.
	They will be erased.
	Not just dead, they'll be erased.
	No legacy worth remembering.
	Their memory stinks.
	So.
	Can I just say a brief word in favor of bay trees, though?
	I mean, it's not fair to just blame them as just being a leaf, because they're actually quite useful for making stocks and things.
	I like a bay tree.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	But I didn't want you to be a bear on the bay tree.
	No, I was looking at the Hebrew text.
	But it says, mark the perfect man in verse 37, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.
	And it says, it's the perfect man.
	It doesn't mean he's sinless, that he doesn't make mistakes, but it means he's wholehearted.
	That's the wording in the Hebrew.
	It means he's sincere, he's upright.
	He's walking with God.
	He's walking with power.
	And it says, mark him.
	Watch his life.
	Track it.
	Observe him in his youth, in his middle age, in his old age.
	At his death, you look at him.
	His life is not chaotic.
	His death isn't terrifying.
	His end is peace, it says.
	And I mentioned to you about the dying saints, dying Christians, they are dying as victorious.
	One old believer said to me, I'm not afraid to die because I'm going to the one I have known and loved all my life.
	I'm going home.
	I'm not going somewhere I don't know.
	I've been looking forward to it.
	And can we all say that with all honesty?
	And verse 38, it says, but the transgressors shall be destroyed together, it says.
	The end of the wicked shall be cut off.
	So that's final.
	There's no escape from it.
	People can't run away.
	And on that day, when Jesus comes, the scripture says men will run to the mountains and they say, Fall on us.
	They would rather be killed by a rock falling on them than having to face Jesus Christ.
	And there's no appeal.
	There's no second chances.
	Cut off, it says.
	God is very patient, of course, but he's not indefinitely patient.
	The axe is laid to the root of the tree, John the Baptist said, for Israelites.
	The judgment may be delayed, but it's not cancelled.
	So there was Felix, wasn't he?
	That's a good illustration.
	In the book of Acts, there were two wicked rulers who hated the gospel, but they heard the gospel.
	There was Felix who trembled, and Agrippa was almost persuaded.
	And both of them rejected Christ ultimately.
	Both of them rejected truth, and both of them were cut off.
	And history doesn't remember them as kings, but as fools.
	And then verses 39 and 40, it speaks about the final assurance of the Christian.
	And so it's ending, it's coming to an end.
	The conclusion is, but the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord.
	He says, I can't save myself.
	I can't make myself to be a Christian.
	But it is God who saves me, keeps me, and ultimately saves me.
	He is their strength in time of trouble.
	And the Lord shall help them, deliver them.
	He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him.
	So that's again not poetry, it's promise.
	It's a prophetic declaration.
	It's a wonderful call that we could say it's a gospel call.
	The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord.
	That's amazing.
	No power, no government is going to save us.
	No.
	It's just so public.
	That's right.
	And the only nation that will be exalted is righteousness.
	Righteousness exalts a nation.
	That's what the Bible says.
	So, you know, the key starmers of this world, they will not be remembered.
	So those who are bowing their knee to our parliament today and they don't hold them answerable to God and to the word of God, the parliament will perish one day.
	It will collapse.
	They are so proud and arrogant, like the empires of the old, and they'll proud, and they'll perish.
	So it destroys this psalm, it destroys all boasting, all self-righteousness, all man-made stuff.
	So, yeah, it's really saying what Jonah said.
	Jonah, he confessed in the belly of the fish in Jonah chapter 2 and verse 9.
	He says, salvation is of the Lord.
	And that's the psalmist ends.
	It says, he will help you.
	He will deliver you.
	The Lord shall help them and deliver them.
	Verse 40, this is the last verse now.
	He shall deliver them, he says, from the wicked and save them because they trust in him.
	So it ends on a high note.
	Your help comes from God, your deliverance.
	God will pull out his people out of danger.
	And it says, because they trust in him.
	Not because they earned it, not because they were flawless, but because it's not our trust that saves us, it's in whom, the object of our trust.
	That's the thing that saves us.
	So it is, when I take a spoonful of, I don't know, some wonderful meal, it's not the spoon that saves me.
	It's what I put in my mouth that I find delicious.
	It's not the spoon.
	And that's why, you know, it is Jehovah.
	It is God.
	It is Jesus Christ who is our Savior.
	And so the Christian can apply these things to themselves, but I hope that these thoughts will make us to realize actually the righteous man ultimately is Jesus Christ.
	He was forsaken that we might never be forsaken.
	He was condemned that we might be delivered.
	These are the applications of, I think, this psalm with New Testament eyes.
	He died that we might live.
	He rose that we might be saved forever.
	Like that dying thief on the cross, he could turn to the Lord Jesus with faith and say, Lord, remember me.
	And today the Lord said, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
	So it's wonderful, I think, this psalm.
	And if people get a little appetite of studying it and memorizing it, that would do them good, not just for now, but into their life, into the future.
	There is a better day coming.
	The media would say, the establishment would say, no, you need to be in the state of fear all the time.
	The psalmist here says, fret not.
	The establishment says, there's worse days coming, and we are causing it.
	And God is saying, no, it's actually the wicked are causing it.
	And they'll be gone.
	So don't be part of the wicked world.
	Don't be part of the ones who are actually putting more fuel on the fire.
	Don't be amongst them.
	But we need humility to turn to the word of God and turn to Christ.
	Well, I'll leave it there.
	Thank you.
	Puyan, you've been an absolute joy of a guest.
	It's really sweet that you told me before we set this thing up, you said that you were familiar with my podcast and you thought, yeah, you're quite a fan, you quite liked it.
	But you didn't sort of dare, well, you didn't think of putting yourself forward because you're too modest and humble and stuff.
	But you were quite pleased when I contacted you.
	Surely it must have been God what made it happen.
	I was surprised.
	Yes, my wife said to me, you can't believe who just rank.
	She said I knew his voice.
	And when he said this was James Delling, Paul, she knew you, because we both have listened.
	And so I was quite surprised.
	I'm so glad.
	You were absolutely fantastic.
	People are going to be dying to know.
	Oh, by the way, thank you for coming from the land of Cyrus the Great to preach the word.
	I think Cyrus was quite a goodie in a way, wasn't he?
	He was.
	He's actually referred to as the Saviour.
	He's referred to in the Bible as the Saviour.
	And he's a picture of Christ as well.
	But yeah, he was.
	He did good.
	Yeah, God used him mightily.
	So people are going to be dying to know.
	They're going to come and want to see you and hear you preach.
	So where can they find you?
	So our church is in Cheltenham.
	It is called Providence Baptist Chapel.
	And people can look us up online.
	It's simply Cheltenham.church is the website.
	But Providence Baptist Chapel, if you put my name in a search engine, there isn't many Puyan Mershahis out there.
	So they can find me in that way.
	But yeah.
	Well, thank you for being fantastic.
	And thank you to the, I can't remember which one of your congregation it was that recommended you, but thank you to him.
	What's his name?
	Well, it's actually her, Jamie O'Connor.
	Jamie O'Connor.
	Jamie, thank you.
	You were right.
	He was brilliant.
	And I hope to be able to pop down someday and hear you and meet you because you've been great.
	Thanks a lot.
	Thank you, James.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, that's it.
	Until next time, I hope the gap won't be so long before the next psalm.
	But thank you for that.
	I'll be glad.
	And yeah, thank you so much for being willing to do this.
	And I hope that the glitch that we had, you'll be able to look at the devil.
	Yeah, you can bring it together.
	We'll smooth it out.
	And anyway, people are used to slightly disasters happening in my podcast.
	It's on brand.
	If you have any problem, If you do have a problem with the video thing, I'm happy to fix it.
	Okay.
	I can do that easily.
	Okay, thank you.
	He's wonderful.

▲