I want you to turn with me today, please, to Psalm 37.

Psalm 37.

Because it's such a long Psalm, I'm splitting it into two.

The message today, the first 20 verses, and then the next message, verses 21 to the end.

Most biblical historians have agreed that this Psalm of David

was written toward the end of his life. And if so, and I have no reason to doubt that

whatsoever, because you can see from the context, and I'm going to explain to you in a minute,

that this probably one of the last, if not the last Psalm that David had written,

wrote it his old age.

No doubt as he was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,

this last, if it's last, or one of the last Psalms,

he was reflecting back on the years that he was a fugitive

running from King Saul, running all over the country, all over the place. And during those years,

no doubt, he asked himself many times and then later, many times later, how come I knew that Prophet Samuel came

to my father's house as a young boy and he anointed me to be king of Israel? Why did I do this?

How come that I have been so faithful to Saul, and yet he wanted to kill me.

How come Saul was living in the palace of the king, and while I was sweating it out in the caves

and in the desert?

And as David reflects back in his life, he realizes that things do not turn out the way they appear on the surface.

Are you with me?

Things do not turn out as they appear on the surface.

And so he gives us an encouraging words in the middle of our discouraging times that comes

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