The Long Game of God: Psalm 37:34
Introduction: Judging by the Video, Not the Snapshot
One of the central challenges for the Christian is learning how to tell time. I do not mean learning how to read a clock. I mean learning how to read the age. We live in a world that is constantly screaming at us, demanding that we judge all of reality based on the five-minute news cycle. The wicked prosper, we are told. The godless are promoted. The deviant are celebrated. And the righteous are mocked, marginalized, and told to get with the times. And because we are frail creatures of dust, it is easy for our hearts to grow faint. It is easy to fret, to become envious, to wonder if we have followed God in vain.
Psalm 37 is God's gracious corrective to this kind of spiritual astigmatism. It is a psalm written to teach us how to see things as they actually are, which means seeing them from the end. David, writing as an old man, is giving us the wisdom of a long obedience. He is telling us not to judge the story by a single, blurry snapshot taken in the middle of the action. We must judge by the whole video. This psalm is a collection of divine aphorisms, a string of pearls, designed to teach the righteous how to think about the apparent prosperity of the wicked. The central command is "Fret not." And the central reason is that the wicked have no future, and the righteous have an eternal one.
The entire structure of this psalm is a contrast. It sets two paths before us, two destinations, two kinds of men. There are the evildoers, the workers of iniquity, who are like grass, flourishing for a moment and then cut down. And there are the meek, those who wait on the Lord, who will inherit the land. This is not wishful thinking. It is the iron law of God's moral universe. The temptation is to look at the green grass of the wicked's success and envy it, forgetting that the lawnmower of God's judgment is already being pulled from the shed.
Our text today is the capstone of this argument. It is a command, followed by a series of glorious promises. It is a call to a certain kind of posture, a certain way of living in the world, that is rooted not in what we see, but in what God has said. It requires a rugged, patient, and confident faith. It requires us to believe that God is not a liar, and that history is His story, moving inexorably toward His decreed end.
The Text
"Hope for Yahweh and keep His way, And He will exalt you to inherit the land; When the wicked are cut off, you will see it."
(Psalm 37:34)
The Twofold Duty: Hope and Keep
The verse begins with a compound command that defines the Christian life in its essence. It is not complicated, but it is profoundly difficult.
"Hope for Yahweh and keep His way..." (Psalm 37:34a)
First, we are to "Hope for Yahweh." The Hebrew word for hope here is not a flimsy, sentimental wish. It is not crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. It is the word qavah, which means to wait, to look for, to expect with confidence. It carries the idea of binding together, of twisting ropes. To hope in Yahweh is to bind your soul to Him, to intertwine your expectations with His character and His promises. It is an active, tenacious waiting. It is the posture of a night watchman who knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that the sun will rise. He doesn't know the exact moment, but the coming of the dawn is a certainty. Our hope is not in a what, but a Whom. We hope for Yahweh Himself to act.
This is the internal posture of the believer. It is a heart set on God, a mind convinced of His faithfulness. But this internal posture must have an external expression. It is not a passive, mystical waiting in a corner. We are also commanded to "keep His way." Hope is not idle. Trust is not passive. True waiting on God is an obedient waiting. To "keep" His way means to guard it, to observe it, to walk in it. It means that while we are waiting for God's grand, final intervention, we are to be busy with the daily business of obedience. We are to walk in His statutes, follow His commands, and live according to the patterns He has laid down in His Word.
These two commands are inseparable. You cannot truly hope in God if you are not seeking to obey Him. A refusal to walk in His way is a practical declaration that you do not actually trust His wisdom or goodness. And you cannot truly keep His way, not for long, without a vibrant hope in Him. Obedience without hope quickly curdles into legalism, drudgery, and eventually, despair. Hope is the fuel for obedience. We walk the narrow path because we are confident of the destination to which it leads. We keep His way because we hope in Him as our guide, our protector, and our exceeding great reward.
The Threefold Promise: Exaltation, Inheritance, and Vindication
Following the twofold duty, God gives a threefold promise. This is the logic of the covenant: you do this (by grace), and I will do that (by promise).
"...And He will exalt you to inherit the land; When the wicked are cut off, you will see it." (Psalm 37:34b)
The first promise is exaltation: "He will exalt you." This is the great reversal of the gospel. We live in a world that says, "Exalt yourself. Promote yourself. Make a name for yourself." But Scripture says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you" (1 Peter 5:6). The meek, those who wait on the Lord, are the ones who will be lifted up. This is not a promise of worldly fame or recognition in this life, necessarily. It is a promise of ultimate honor from the only one whose opinion matters. God Himself will lift you up. While the wicked are scrambling up the greasy pole of human ambition, only to slide back down into the mire, the saints are on a trajectory that ends in glory.
The second promise is inheritance: "to inherit the land." This promise runs like a golden thread throughout the entire Bible. It was promised to Abraham. It was the goal of the Exodus. And Jesus picks it up in the Beatitudes, quoting this very psalm: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). This is not just about a geopolitical strip of real estate in the Middle East. That was the down payment, the type. The ultimate promise is the earth itself, renewed and restored under the reign of Christ. This is a robust, physical, tangible hope. Our God is a creator God who called the material world "good." He is not going to scrap it; He is going to redeem it. And He is going to give it to His people as their inheritance. This is the heart of postmillennial confidence. The kingdom of God is not a spiritual retreat; it is a conquering army, and the meek are its shock troops. We will inherit the earth because Christ has already won it for us.
The third promise is vindication: "When the wicked are cut off, you will see it." This is not a promise to feed some petty desire for revenge. It is a promise of justice. It is the assurance that God will, in the end, set all things right. There will be a final accounting. The books will be balanced. The righteous are not to take matters into their own hands. Vengeance belongs to God. But He promises that we will be witnesses to His perfect justice. We will see the end of the story. We will see that the wicked, who seemed so powerful, so permanent, were nothing more than smoke, a fading blade of grass. This is a deep comfort. It allows us to love our enemies and pray for them, because we can entrust their final judgment to a perfectly just God. We can afford to be gracious because we know that God will be just. Seeing them "cut off" is seeing God's holiness and righteousness publicly vindicated. It is the final scene of the melodrama where the villain gets his due, and all the audience can say is, "Amen. True and righteous are your judgments."
Conclusion: The Patient Heirs
So what is the takeaway for us? It is profoundly simple. We are to live as patient heirs. We have been given an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us. But the title deed to that inheritance includes this world as well. We are heirs of the world.
Therefore, we must learn to wait. But our waiting is not a passive resignation. It is a hope-filled, obedient keeping of His way. We do not fret. We do not envy. We do not despair. We trust in the Lord and do good. We commit our way to Him. We are still before Him.
When you see the wicked prospering, when you see evil celebrated on every street corner, remember this verse. Judge by the video, not the snapshot. The story is not over. God is on His throne. Christ is reigning. And He has made you a promise. Hope in Him. Keep His way. He will exalt you. You will inherit the land. And you will see His perfect justice roll down like waters. This is the long game of God, and because we are on His side, it is our long game too.