Psalm 37: 3 Things to Do When Life Feels Unfair

The short answer: Psalm 37 is a psalm David wrote as an older man to teach a younger believer how to respond to three hard moments: when the wicked seem to be winning, when the future is uncertain, and when the future brings fear. In each case, the answer isn't a changed circumstance, it's a choice to trust, act, and wait on God rather than let anger, envy, or fear write the story instead.

This article is adapted from the sermon, The Stories We Believe... WHEN, preached by Pastor Scott Lehr at Southbridge Fellowship on Sunday, August 9, 2026. 

What to Do When the Wicked Are Winning

Psalm 37 is a psalm David wrote late in life, structured not as a prayer but as wisdom passed from an older believer to a younger one. It opens with a command usually translated "do not fret," a phrase most scholars consider too weak. The literal Hebrew sense is closer to "do not burn with anger." David isn't describing mild annoyance, he's naming the internal fire that builds while watching wicked people succeed, whether a world leader, a dishonest coworker, or someone whose integrity clearly doesn't match their outcomes.

Two Harvard researchers illustrate exactly what David is warning against. In a study of 257 people, participants were asked to choose between earning $50,000 a year while everyone around them earned $25,000, or earning $100,000 a year while everyone around them earned $200,000, with the same real spending power in both scenarios. More than half chose the first option, preferring less money as long as it was more than their neighbors.

The same pattern showed up in facial recognition studies of Olympic medalists across five Summer Games: bronze medalists were consistently happier than silver medalists, because silver medalists compared themselves to gold while bronze medalists compared themselves to fourth place. Envy, David is saying, has nothing to do with what other people actually have. It's a story the heart tells about what it deserves.

A friend's real story makes the cost of resisting that story concrete. A financial professional discovered the firm he had bought into was running a Ponzi scheme. He reported it to the SEC and FBI immediately, even though staying quiet would have made him wealthy. The people at the top of the scheme were never charged. He lost his firm and didn't work for two years. What David promises isn't that integrity gets rewarded on the world's timeline. It's that the wicked, like grass, wither, while the story someone tells about their own faithfulness doesn't have to depend on watching justice arrive on schedule.

What to Do When the Future Is Uncertain

Psalm 37:3 gives five verbs for facing an unclear future: trust, do good, dwell, delight, and commit. Trust in the Lord is dependence, not passivity. Commit is a Hebrew word that literally means to roll the weight of a burden onto someone else, the same image behind Peter's New Testament instruction to "cast your cares on Him because He cares for you."

Delight in the Lord is often read as a formula: do what God wants and He'll give you what you want. That reading misses the point. God is redefining the desire itself, not functioning as a vending machine for it. When someone doesn't know their next step, whether waiting on a boss's decision, a doctor's test results, or someone else's choice that will shape their future, the psalm doesn't offer a five year plan. It offers a much smaller, much harder instruction: do the next thing already known to be true, and let God carry the rest.

What to Do When the Future Brings Fear

Fear itself is not sin in Psalm 37's framework. It's a warning signal, similar to a smoke alarm or a check engine light. The problem comes when fear is allowed to direct decisions rather than simply alert to danger, because fear never describes the best case scenario and rarely points toward what is actually true.

David's answer is to "be still," a Hebrew verb meaning to relax, to stand down, closer to releasing a grip than gritting through anxiety. Verse 11 contains the psalm's most quoted promise: the meek will inherit the land. Jesus quotes this directly in the Sermon on the Mount, expanding the promise from the land of Israel to the whole earth.

Revelation 21 describes what that inheritance actually looks like: a new heaven, a new earth, and God dwelling permanently among His people, wiping away every tear, with no more death, mourning, or pain. Read through that lens, David's counsel becomes what he calls a bifocal faith: seeing clearly what's difficult up close while also keeping the longer promise in view.

Watch and Keep Reading

Watch or listen to the full sermon, The Stories We Believe... WHEN, preached by Pastor Scott Lehr at Southbridge Fellowship on Sunday, August 9, 2026. 

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