Sermon Ps 131
(FYI Besides my own study I relied on a article, “Peace, be still”: Learning Psalm 131 by Heart by David Powlison found in the Journal of Biblical Counseling. Vol18 #3)
Turn to Ps 131.
Busy, busy, busy, we are all so very busy.
If it’s not ice skating lessons, it’s gymnastics.
If it’s not soccer, it’s baseball. If it’s not working at work, it’s working at home.
We are obsessed, on edge, covered with post-it notes and to do lists.
There is pressure from others, pressure from within, achieve, produce, accomplish, generate, attain, complete.
We’re afraid of failing, afraid of disappointing, afraid of being seen as weak or incompetent, anxious about outcomes and results and decisions, anxious about what others think, and anxious about the future.
Guilty about the past, regrets, sorrows, questions.
We’re irritated, annoyed, aggravated, frustrated, apathetic, indifferent, discouraged, depressed, hopeless.
Like the tossing sea that stirs up refuse and mud, there seems to be no rest for our soul.
Life is messy, Life is troublesome, life is complex, life is busy!
and there are times when we just want to get away and seek solace, quiet, peace.
What is it for you?
Where do you find rest for your weary soul?
Maybe it’s the TV after work to calm yourself, or a glass of wine,
or that favorite comfort food.
Or maybe it’s when the kids can finally fend for themselves and you don’t have to change diapers,
or when they have grown up and moved out of the house.
Maybe when you retire, and you are free from the demand of work,
then you will know the calm and peace you are seeking.
We seek it at camp, we seek it at church, we seek it in friends, we seek it on vacation.
How many times have you said, “I need a vacation!”
How are you on the inside?
Are you quiet?
Do you know peace?
Has your soul found rest?
If the answer is NO, then you must ask yourself “what is going on on the inside?”
What is the noise inside my soul?
There is no doubt that life is busy,
but for the next few minutes I would like you to listen to a psalm of David.
Listen carefully and quietly to his prayer.
Drink deeply from the well of living water.
Ps 131:1-3 1 My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.
This person is quiet on the inside.
He has learned the secret of contentment.
His soul is quiet.
IN THE MIDST OF THE NOISE! He is at rest.
Who is this man that has found rest for his soul?
He is Dave, Son of Jesse, brother, shepherd,
defender of his flock, defender of Israel,
Stood up to wild animals, stood up to giants,
a loyal friend, a respectful subject,
competent soldier, righteous king,
musician, poet, political leader, husband, father,
Leader of Israel, worshipper of God.
This is not a man who retreated from life.
This is not a man who sought a vacation.
This is a man deeply involved in life.
This is the man whom we quietly eavesdrop on.
This is the man we hear praying.
For if we are to get all we can from these short 3 verses,
we need to know that we can’t gain rest for our souls by escaping our circumstances or retreating from our busy lives.
David was busy! His life was messy!
A thousand years later we see Jesus.
His life was not about escaping or avoiding people, problems, sorrows, and pain.
In fact He dove in head first.
He approached life face to face.
Yet he also knew peace.
Not peace that the world offers, but peace from above.
Lasting peace.
Peace that surpasses understanding.
Like Jesus, we can no longer be satisfied with the false claims of rest, ease, peace, and relaxation that the world entices us with.
This is a psalm, a prayer that invites us in and encourages us to think deeply about it’s words and about our lives.
It teaches us about inner peace, composure, rest for our souls.
And that rest is something we must learn.
It is not granted instantly, it is a process.
It is also not about willpower, gritting our teeth determining to be at peace.
No, it teaches us that rest is a process that is learned in relationship with Someone Else.
You are trained into such rest.
And that quiet place CAN be found.
You can get there from here and Ps 131 shows us the way.
Let’s take a deeper look.
In verse one we see the Results,
1 My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
Now in order to be able to say “I am not something” one must be able to identify what that something is.
As we turn this psalm around and create sort of an anti-psalm,
we begin to see more clearly where the noise inside comes from.
Listen carefully as I give you the Anti-psalm 131:
My heart is proud (I am self-absorbed),
O Self, my eyes are haughty (I look down on other people),
and I go after things too great and wonderful or difficult for me.
My soul is turbulent and noisy;
like a hungry infant fussing on it’s mother’s lap;
like a hungry infant I am agitated and upset.
I pin my hopes on things that falter and fail all the time.
Proud Heart
Do you see the problem?
Do you see why the anit-psalmist has a noisy soul?
It all starts with a proud heart.
We think we are bigger and more important than we really are.
“Oh no, not me.” You say.
“I am not like that.
I’ve seen pride and it’s not me.”
Yet it’s the sin we are all guilty of.
In fact pride is at the root of everything that is wrong with us.
Every sin, every selfish act is a result of pride.
Pride refuses to depend on God and be subject to him.
Pride refuses to rely on Him.
It is the voice of that toddler who says, “I can do it myself.”
It credits self with the honor due God.
A proud heart would rather say “No” to God and disobey
than to not get its own way!
That is pride.
But pride can reveal itself in a hundred different ways.
Have you ever found yourself thinking or saying…“I do think I ought to get a little appreciation for what I do.
And a little respect would be nice too.
Of course I expect the home appliances to work
and the car mechanic to be honest with me.
They call me shy, but I know I am just protecting myself.
Or Yeah I’m the life of the party, but I won’t let anyone too close.
People ought to just acknowledge that I am right and own up to the fact that they are wrong.
I don’t want much, but I expect people to treat me right.
Comfort, ease, convenience.
Oh do I have to get up from the couch again!
I want to feel good about myself,
to have more self-confidence, to believe in myself.
Well, when it comes right down to it I want things my way.
I want people to do what I want,
when I want, and the way I want it done.”
I want this sermon to go well.
Pride. It effects us all. Do you get the picture?
Yet David has quieted his soul.
He does not have a proud heart.
Rather he has become dependent on the Lord,
trusting in Him for all things.
Haughty Eyes
Now when your heart becomes proud your eyes may become haughty (literally “high” or “raised up”).
It goes with the territory that as pride rules our heart we become opinionated,
we routinely criticize and look down on others.
It is quite a different expression from the one described in Ps 121 which says,
1”I lift up my eyes to the hills.”
There the psalmist is standing below and looking up beyond the hills to God.
In Ps 131 the picture is of a proud person
who puts himself in God’s place, looking down on everyone else.
Pride says, “I am right and I am good.”
Haughty eyes says, “I’m right and I am good compared to you.”
You see pride is not just about Me.
It is also about you.
I must look down on you in some way.
Especially when I feel like I’ve been forced into a tight corner
or my pride has taken a hit,
I am quick to judge, quick to find fault,
quick to criticize and grumble,
quick to point out the speck in your eye.
That’s haughtiness. That is what haughty eyes looks like.
But David says, his eyes are not haughty.
His heart is not proud and his eyes are not haughty.
He sees himself from God’s perspective.
He simply wants to please God and so what others think about him is of little consequence.
We see a good example of this when David has the ark of the Lord brought to it’s new home in Jerusalem.
As the ark enters the city David began “leaping and dancing before the Lord.”
However when Michal, his wife, saw her husband dancing half naked
and carrying on as he did before all the people
she despised him and said,
“How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today,
disrobing in the sight of the slave girls as any vulgar fellow would!”
But David responded this way, “I will celebrate before the LORD.
I will become even more undignified than this,
and I will be humiliated in my own eyes.”
Wow. What’s David saying?
Did the opinion of others control him?
Did his own spouse’s opinion carry any weight?
No, In fact he would gladly be even more undignified and humble
for any chance to worship the Lord.
God was the one David feared.
God was the one David worshipped.
God’s opinion was the only one that mattered.
David lived to please God alone.
What I chase after
This takes us to the next line in our Psalm which says,
“I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.”
Let’s define a couple of words first.
The Hebrew word for concern is literally means “to walk” or “go after”.
It carries the idea of pursuing or chasing after.
Next we have the words for great matters and things too wonderful.
These words are used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to the acts of God,
things that are unusual and beyond human capabilities.
In other words, things that are beyond our reach or out of our control.
They are God’s business, not ours.
So putting it all together we get this…
I do not pursue things that are out of my control,
I do not interfere with God’s business.
I do what’s pleasing to Him and trust Him for the rest.
I don’t fret over the “Whys”. I just trust in the “Who”.
Yet even the small, everyday things that everyone races after are, in fact, “beyond us”.
From your daily bread to your abilities and opportunities,
these are gifts from God that you don’t control.
What happens when you attempt to control another person’s attitude and choices, to bend them to your will?
You set yourself up for all sorts of ugly things.
Despair or rage, anxiety or short-lived euphoria, suspicion or manipulation.
What happens when you attempt to ensure that you will not get sick?
You become obsessed with diet, supplements, and exercise.
You may be plagued with fear that any nagging pain might be the big one.
What happens when you are obsessed with getting people to like you.
You become flirtatious or artificial, a coward or a deceiver, a chameleon or a recluse.
What happens when you live for success in sports or career?
You get injured. You retire.
Someone comes along who is better than you.
Or what about physical appearance?
Then someone prettier comes along or you get old.
What happens then?
What happens when we pursue or chase after things that are beyond our control?
Noise!
Peter calls these things “the corruption in the world caused by evil desires”
And Paul uses the term “youthful lusts”.
So what are we to do?
Do we simply live without ambition?,
without aspiring to anything great?
May it never be!
Listen to Paul as he tells us what we are to pursue and tell me if it is not grand!
1 Timothy 6: 11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and
pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.
Fight the good fight of faith!
Now isn’t that worth living for?
Those are the things that are in our control.
Those are things we ought to pursue.
Contentment with our circumstances,
Pursuit of what God has placed before me.
(Phil 3:13) “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
David, like Paul a thousand years after him, pursued the right things.
He didn’t cross the line.
He left God’s things to God.
Process: weaning
V2 takes us from the result of rest to the process of rest.
Look at v2…“2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
Our anti-psalm read like this:
My soul is turbulent and noisy; like a hungry infant fussing on it’s mother’s lap;
like a hungry infant I am agitated and upset.
First of all we notice that this is something David does.
He is active in quieting his soul.
He is not zoned out, unplugged, or in an altered state.
And notice there is no reference to his circumstances.
So we can assume that David, in spite of the turmoil of this world, stilled and quieted his soul.
Secondly David uses a very interesting picture here to describe his current state.
His soul is like a weaned child.
The word weaned indicates a process.
An infant doesn’t go from unweaned one moment to weaned the next.
It doesn’t just happen.
It takes time. There is a process. There is learning. There is growing.
Third, let’s take a closer look at what it mean to wean.
Weaning is the process of gradually introducing the infant
to what will be its adult diet and withdrawing the supply of breast milk.
It’s the process of taking away what the baby wants
or what it thinks it needs to be happy and satisfied,
in order to give it what it really needs,
something infinitely better.
And once it discovers how good the new thing is
it no longer longs for what it used to want,
or is agitated that it doesn’t have it.
What once seemed indispensable now means nothing.
And the child sits on his mother’s lap content and at rest.
That is David’s description of the state of his soul.
Though David says that he stilled and quieted his soul,
he recognizes he doesn’t do it on his own.
No amount of penance or willpower could stop him
from being irritable, fussy and discontent.
So we see here that David speaks of a weaned child with its mother.
The mother knows what’s best for the child.
The mother gives what is good to her child.
The mother knows what will make her baby healthy and strong.
So, too, does our heavenly Father.
He is willing to take us off of what we want in order to give us what we need, for our growth for our maturity.
Yet like an unweaned child we long for what we had
rather than knowing the peace and rest we find in trusting our Father to give us what we need.
Moses along with David learned this lesson.
Listen to Heb 11:24-26 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
Is the weaning process easy? No.
In fact it can be quite difficult for us.
But we must trust that God knows what he is doing.
We must, through training and practice,
grow to depend on God to give us what we need
and not clamor for what we want.
And so, verse 3 O Israel (or put your own name in there),
put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore.
Hope in God.
Here is the reason David’ soul is at rest.
He knows God.
He trusts in God.
His hope is in God.
You see, pride dies when the humility of faith lives.
Haughtiness lowers its eyes as the dependency of hope lifts up its eyes.
You stop pursuing impossibilities when you start pursuing certainties.
So Hope in God.
Find rest for your soul.
Let God be your Lord.