Psalms 131 Finding the Right Altitude

Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm glad to be back. I had an excellent week away last week at a pastor's conference in Chicago. Is this on?

Yep, okay, awesome. And I'm really thankful for Bill Smith being willing to fill in for me in my absence last week and bring the word. I can't express how grateful I am that God has blessed us here at this church with others who can step up in absence and be here and and bring the word to bear, and I would I just I commend them to you, and I'm grateful for the the work of God in their lives of bringing the word alive to us.

God has blessed us as a church, and so I'm grateful for that. And I do want to point out that I'm gonna be preaching obviously today and then next week, and then I'm gonna be gone for two weeks again.

And Bill is going to be able to wrap up that message that he started last week, and so he got two of four points in last week, and he's gonna finish that up the first week that I'm gone, which is two weeks out.

And then Rob Knoll is going to be opening the word. And I would encourage you, please come out and and hear and learn. The Word of God is the Word of God regardless of who is preaching it. It has the power to transform and to change lives, and so I ask that you would please don't allow your tendons to flow around when I'm preaching, but please be here to hear God's Word when they're there as well.

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So grateful for that. As we dive into the message this morning, kind of just as an introduction, I want to point out a Greek myth. I don't talk about Greek mythology very often, and it's certainly not the center of our faith, right?

You guys know that, right? And at the same time, we use illustrations from all over the world. I could invent an illustration for this right now, and we'd be okay with that. And so in a sense, I'm just using a Greek myth as an illustration.

This is not our text this morning. But there's a Greek myth that I was very unaware of up till just a few weeks ago. And then it just has been, or a few months ago, and it's been brought to my attention multiple times.

And have you, I don't know if you ever had that happen, where something keeps being reiterated. You read it in a book, and then somebody says it to you at work, and somebody says it over here, and you're thinking, maybe somebody's trying to teach me something here.

Maybe there's some kind of, like, maybe God has a message for me in this that he's trying to communicate to me. So I've had that happen recently. I heard the Greek myth of Icarus at my conference last week.

One of the, one of the pastors that was talking there used that as an illustration. I read about it in a commentary about my text this week. They talked about the myth of Icarus, the Greek myth, Greek myth.

And then also, a book that I'm studying with a group of men on Saturday mornings, is using that as a major part of the illustration for that book as well. And so it's like, hey God, maybe you're trying to, trying to tell me something here.

And then this text, then this text, that this myth of Icarus helps to snap into focus, and helps to bring to our attention this morning. Icarus was a man in mythology who struggled to set his altitude.

He struggled to set his altitude. Not, you might have read, when you first read the front of the worship folder that you received, you might have read it set your alt, your attitude. But it's not a, not a misprint.

As a matter of fact, when, when I gave that over to the office staff to actually print it, the original printing was, they thought it said attitude, and that's what it was gonna say. No, no, no. It's, it's altitude.

As the story goes, Icarus was born to the best craftsmen in the world, on the Greek islands. But both he and his father, Icarus and his father, were imprisoned on the island of Crete by the king Minos.

But the father of Icarus was such a fine craftsman, and as they were imprisoned in the top of this tower, he was able to take the things that were available to him in that tower, and construct an escape.

Anybody ever hear of the show MacGyver? A few of you have heard of the TV show MacGyver. That's what I thought about when I heard, when I read this, when I heard this myth explained. A guy who's in jail, or is locked up, and is able to take what's available to him, craft a key, and get out, or whatever.

You know, he's like, bobby pins, shoelace, and a coat hanger, and he's able to craft a bomb that blows out the back of the jail, and he's able to escape. You know, you know what I'm saying? So I'm gonna just call his dad MacGyver, Icarus's father.

I'm gonna call him MacGyver, because I can't really pronounce the Greek name very well anyways. So Icarus's dad MacGyver built a set of wings. They're trapped on the top of a tower, and he builds them a set of wings out of wax that he finds in the candles, and feathers.

So he finds feathers and wax, and he's able to craft wings for them. Don't try this at home, right? We know that you're not going to be able to make some wings for yourself, and fly away. But before takeoff, in this Greek myth, he has a little pep talk with his son, about the right altitude.

He says, son, don't fly so low that you skim the waves, and the waves wet down, and soak your wings, and pull you down into the water. And the interesting thing is, in the Greek myth, the word for flying too low is actually the word complacency.

So don't be complacent. Don't set your eyes too low. Don't fly too low. He feared that the water of the Aegean Sea would would splash up and ruin their wings, and they would clog up and draw them down.

Equally though, he warned his father, warned his son rather, of flying too high. He said these are made out of wax. If you fly too high, you'll get too close to the sun, and your wings will melt, and you will fall to your doom.

So he looks at his son, and he says, set your altitude at the right place, and we will escape, and we'll get over to the mainland, and we will be fine. But after takeoff, Icarus, who was immediately enamored with the thought of flying, any of you ever have a dream that you're flying?

You ever have that happen? Any of you ever have a dream that it would, how many of you think it would be cool to be able to fly? And then others, others are kind of like, flying sounds great, but the idea of falling, you're not so sure about heights or whatever, but the words of his father in that process.

And not only did he soar too close to the sun, but actually at a point in the myth, it says he set his gaze at the sun. He set his goal up to the heavens, and he said, nothing is beyond me, now I can fly.

And so he set the sun as his goal, and as he approached closer and closer to the sun, his wings melted, and he plunged into the ocean to his doom. And that is the fall of Icarus. He aspired to greatness and ambition to reach the sun, and he was, that was the cause of his downfall.

Now we didn't gather together this morning to hear about Greek mythology, we gathered together to hear a word from God's revealed scripture, and yet this is an illustration that I think you're gonna see why I'm telling the story in this context.

It's a strong picture for us this morning that I believe illustrates this text well. I'm increasingly amazed at the way, by the way, that God often draws out text for us. You know that I'm going through these Psalms of Ascent, and this is the next one in line, and it also happens to be the Sunday morning that we are going to be honoring in just a few moments, our graduating seniors.

And I'm amazed at how well this text ties in with a message for all of us. All of us need this message, but equally and significantly, our graduating seniors need this reminder as they are figuring out their altitude.

They are going to be going about their next few years determining what God has for them, what level is he setting them at, and what is it that he's created them to do. And I hope this text serves as an excellent reminder to our graduates to be mindful of their altitude.

All of us, of course, need to be mindful of our altitude. So let's open our Bibles to this very short Psalm, Psalm 131. If you're not already there, you don't have a Bible in your lap or a device to navigate to a Bible on your lap, if you could do me a favor and just raise your hand.

One of these guys back here would be able to bring you a Bible. We've got a couple up front here. And then if you don't own an English Standard version of the Bible, which is the one that I happen to preach from, it's not magical or mystical.

It just just happens to be my favorite translation. But if you don't own one, you can take that home with you. We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. And I think that it's good to have the Bible sitting at home where you can read it yourself.

Obviously, you can download it on an app as well. But follow along, recast. This is God's Word for us. This is what he desires for you to hear. This is a word from God this morning. Psalm 131. A song of ascents of David.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Let's pray. Father, I recognize that as we gather together this morning that there are all different kinds of thoughts, all kinds of pressures, all kinds of things that have happened to us this week.

Father, for some of us even as we read the words about calm and quiet for our souls, that seems so distant and so far for us. That those might be the things that we zero in on this morning and say that looks like something my soul is hungry for.

I want peace. I want quiet and I want calm and it doesn't seem like I can find it. So Father, I pray that you would speak through your word this morning to provide us a way to to find that place of quiet calm in our lives.

I believe it is your desire and I believe it is possible for you. And Father, as we have an opportunity to lift up our voices before you, Father, we have gathered together to hear from you. We have gathered together to exalt you, to lift you high.

Father, I pray that you would protect us from exalting ourselves, from lifting up our hearts high, but instead that we would lift you high with the words of these songs this morning. Thank you for the band that has prepared them.

I know that it is not their desire to put on a show, but it is their desire to lead us in worship this morning. So Father, I pray that all else would fade into the background as we recognize you and your glory and your majesty seated on your throne, high and worthy of all of our worship this morning.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, thanks a lot to the band for leading us. I'm very grateful again for what they do and just love worshiping God. I mean, it's awesome to be able to come before him with song.

And I encourage you to get comfortable, keep your Bibles open to Psalm 131, short passage, northbound. 131, sorry. I couldn't help but think that every single time I opened up to this passage, 131, that's a highway right over there.

But, you know, feel free to get up and stretch out or if you need more coffee or juice or donuts during the message, I mean, you're not going to distract me. I've mentioned this before, probably anything shy of coming up and giving me a hug in the middle of the message isn't going to distract me.

So, once in a while, like maybe the power going out would do that too. That happened a few weeks ago. But this is truly one of the shortest chapters in all of the Bible and certainly within the Psalms.

It's one of the shorter ones as well. And yet it packs an amazing punch, particularly regarding our current culture. Particularly regarding, I would say even, I say our current culture, but the culture of mankind, the culture of humanity, that is always surging forward, always trying to take on more, always trying to shoot.

Ultimately, in one sense, our curse is to follow after Satan and surge towards the glory of God, right? Ultimately, a movement towards dependence, not independence. And that's the nature of the fall was to say, to doubt who God is, and what he has done, and his awesomeness, and his glory, and his rightful place as creator and ruler over us.

But instead, we kick against that. We say, we've got this just fine, God. If you just step out for a second, we could manage this. We could run it. And we do that at a human level, quite a large scale, we do that.

But then we do that as individuals quite well in our own hearts, right? Some of you maybe could identify times where you've kicked against God in such a way that's like, I'm kicking against you so that I can get my own way, or so I can do my own thing.

So this packs a lot of punch in what we're going to see here, particularly in verse 1. But it leaves a lot up to us to determine for ourselves. It's not going to spell out for you how you avoid setting your gaze or too high, or how you avoid occupying yourself with things too great.

It's going to leave a lot up to us, and I would suggest to you that for each one of us as an individual, we're going to have a lot of application for ourselves here this morning that we're going to have to work through.

Our psalm this morning is written by David, a man that we can really get to know in scripture because a lot is written by him, a lot is written also about him. And so we get a pretty good handle. If you read the Old Testament, you're going to get a good view of who this guy is.

And he's writing one of these psalms that happened to be, remember this is a compilation, so how many of you have a Christmas song maybe in your Christmas by Bing Crosby? Or you have something in your Christmas list by a certain artist that you like, and so you have those in there, and it's just a compilation.

Well, this happens to be one by David that was incorporated in this playlist of Psalms for Pilgrims. And so it's important for us to remember that this is one of those psalms, one of those 15 that we're studying that is about the journey of life.

Think about it as a metaphor that these are picked out and chosen, they were actually literally used for a pilgrimage towards God, towards the temple, a literal pilgrimage annually for the Jews. They would pull these out, put in their earbuds, and listen to these on the way.

These were the traveling tunes of the day when you were going up to meet with God and sacrifice in his temple. One place designated for the Jews to worship God in that era, in that time. Not multiple churches all over the place, but in the ancient era you were to go to Jerusalem to make your sacrifices.

You're not supposed to make your sacrifice in your living room, you're not supposed to make your sacrifice in the backyard or in the high places or in all these other places, you were supposed to bring your sacrifice to the temple in Jerusalem, and that's why they were journeying there.

And these are songs that are metaphors for our life. So the first two verses are a prayer to God, and you can see that just in the wording, in the phrasing, who is being addressed, oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up and on it goes.

So it's a prayer. And verse one basically defines the humility of David before his God. We must remember that David was an extremely, I think you have to set who David is in the context of the humility that we see in this verse.

The more that you understand David, the more that this is a stark contrast to what he's going to write for us here in this first verse. We remember that David was an extremely successful warrior. The text tells us that he was handsome in appearance.

Songs were written and sung about his exploits on the battlefield. He was a hero, the hero of a nation, having slain Goliath just as a young boy. He was eventually crowned the king over his entire nation.

He was a Renaissance man from every indication. He was skilled with a sword, skilled with a harp, skilled in poetry. This guy seemed to have success follow him everywhere that he went. Have you studied the life of David?

Have you read any of his stuff? It seems like he was very blessed of God. And even despite what you might think in the back of your mind, well yeah, he had that moral failing, pretty significant. But even despite that, he was called a man after God's own heart.

And hear me carefully that yes, he fell morally and yet he demonstrated deep repentance. He shows us through his writings wisdom and patience and a desire to do what is right. He's going to model an example for us to some degree about what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, even though he was not perfect.

And in that sense, he does stand as a good model for all of us. And that we have failed, we have fallen, we have sinned, and we have broken God's commands. But we can be a people, we can be individuals who hunger and thirst for righteousness like he was.

And the only reason I'm saying this, kind of building up David in our minds and helping us to think through this is the contrast of all these accomplishments with what he writes in these three short verses.

If you or I had accomplished all of these things, if you or I were raised up to the office of president after leading our nation to military victory, destroying the secret weapons of the enemy like Goliath, disarming all the nukes in the world or something like that, and then you're raised up, how many of you think that you might begin to have some thoughts of pride in your heart?

Do you think so, maybe? If you had the gauge of pride, the needle might register a little bit if we had accomplished the things that David did. We might actually be moved to believe some of the songs that they were singing about us.

Right? Isn't that true? And so we recognize in our own hearts a tendency to do that. And in verse 1, we find this man, this extremely accomplished man, this victorious man, this man raised up with the crown on his head giving us four keys to setting an altitude of humility.

An altitude of humility. Setting our flight at the right level. First, to set our altitude correctly, we must start with God. Start with God. If you're taking notes, that's number one. Start with God.

Notice that David turns to the Lord. God is the place that we turn to to figure out our right altitude. The place that we should be flying in life. And we're going to be defining that throughout the course of this message.

But he begins with an address to God himself. And let me suggest to you that our goal in this text is going to be to avoid complacency and to avoid hubris, arrogance, pride. But to also equally avoid complacency, this setting low standards for yourself and they're equally problematic for our lives.

I think we can recognize times where we've been complacent. Maybe even avenues or areas of our lives. How many of you know that there are ways that you can have pride and arrogance and ambition and completely surging forward in one area while you're neglecting another?

While you're complacent as a father, but man, you are the hero of the office. Or vice versa. You could be doing the opposite, right? So there's a sense of not setting our goals too low and equally not setting them too high.

And that's going to be the nature of this message. There's a genuine risk in life, however, that without coming to God for our calling, not coming to God for our vocation, not coming to God and saying, what do you want of me?

What have you designed me to be and do? That we might actually fly too low. It's a real risk, right? We might settle. We might settle for things that God wants more of us and we settle for less. I would suggest to you that none of us were designed and brought on this planet to play video games.

None of us. That's not why we're here. I would suggest to you that none of us were made by God so that we could watch six hours of TV a day. Right? In our modern culture, complacency is a real risk because we could get by with doing little.

Right? We live in a culture where it's fairly easy. I mean, you can get by and scrape and just act like your life is all for you. Just like Icarus, who was warned to not fly too low, there's a genuine risk of squandering our calling.

But if you follow the myth of Icarus, it informs us a bit about what is the more common problem for us because Icarus didn't fly too low. Right? That's not the way that the myth goes. The myth goes, hubris, arrogance, pride, fly too close to the sun.

Set your gaze and your goals at things as the text is going to say, are too great and too marvelous for us. If our quest for our altitude is not rooted in the God who made us, the God who designed us, and the God who calls us, we more often, I would suggest to you humbly, that more often we will tend to fly too high.

I think that's more often our problem. Not saying, I mean, there's a risk of complacency. I mentioned that earlier. But I would suggest to you that probably our ambition is more the problem. We bite off more than we can chew.

We give ourselves, does this sound familiar? We give ourselves more credit than we deserve for the things that we accomplish. And many a leader has raised themselves up higher than their wings can carry them.

Right? Isn't that real? So David starts in his song with an appeal to the Almighty, to God. And we should as well. Where do we go to find our purpose in life? Where do we go to find what he has designed us to do?

Oh, I just said it. Right? He's designed you for something. And it is for us to go to God and discover that. And certainly he can use a multitude of different avenues to define for you what your calling is.

He'll use your studies. He'll use successes. He'll use others in your lives to say, when you do that, that works well. And to identify, and particularly for those of you that are graduating or going off to college, this is a season of discovery.

Make sure God is a part of that discovery process for what he has made you to be. We have a common saying in our culture, you can be whatever you want to be. And that's very popular to say to the seniors here today.

But why would you want to be? Be whatever you want to be? Or be what God has designed you to be? Do you hear the difference in that? You could be anything you want to be, and I'm fairly convinced that that's fairly accurate.

But why would you want to be a doctor if God wants you to be a teacher? You are going to be a miserable doctor. You're going to be a miserable doctor. If that's not what God has designed for you, and that's not what he's called you to, and that's not what he desires for you, man, that's going to be a rough road.

You getting what I'm saying in that? You can be anything you want to be, but why would you want to be? Be what God desires for you to be. The second thing, so we start with God. That's our first point.

Start with God. The second that David leads us into is to set our altitude correctly, we need to subject our hearts. Start with God first. Second, subject our hearts to him. To the ancient Jewish mind, the heart is so much more than just an organ that pumps blood in our chest.

They didn't have the distinction that we have in our culture between the head and the heart, so we talk about that a lot, and we can actually really muddy the waters of this word when we talk in those terms, when we're like, well, you know, God got my heart but not my head, or God got my head and not my heart, and that's not, scripture knows none of that in the Hebrew understanding of what the heart is.

Think like mini command center, where all the decisions are being made, where everything is happening. That's your heart. As a matter of fact, it wasn't in, in ancient cultures, they didn't even know what the brain did.

They thought it was a throwaway organ. They were like, I think this is kind of like the appendix. I'm serious. They didn't have the methods of measuring, you know, brain activity or electrical impulse.

It's kind of like, I don't know, there's this big gland in your head. I don't know what it's producing. So everything was centered on the heart in that ancient culture. So when, in the ancient language, when they say, I do not lift my heart up, they're not talking about an organ that pumps blood, but they're talking about their whole essence.

They're talking about themselves, their being, their essence, their will, their emotions, their thinking. All of those are a part of the ancient heart. Let me carefully explain that when David says his heart is not lifted up, we sing songs about lifting our hearts up, right?

Lifting our hearts up before God. I think it was in the lyrics, wasn't that a line in one of the songs we sang this morning about lifting our hearts to God? And so it's like, wait a minute. David said he doesn't lift his heart up and then we're singing about lifting our hearts up and is that a good thing?

Is that a bad thing? He's saying it like it's a good thing. God, I haven't lifted my heart up. But he didn't say I don't lift my heart up to God. He is here speaking of personally himself lifting up the center of his will, the center of his emotions, the center of his thinking.

So when David says his heart is not lifted up here in verse one, he's saying, I have not exalted myself. When they put the crown on my head, I didn't do that. That wasn't my aspiration. When I killed the giant, I didn't wake up that morning and say, you know what, I'm going to go kill me a giant.

It's on my bucket list and it just happened to work out today that I got the chance so I'm going to kill a giant today. He was faithful to do what was right in front of him at the time that it was given to him and he was just faithful to honor God in the moment.

David was not a giant killer. He was given an opportunity by faith and he took it and was honored by that for sure. But are you getting what I'm saying in this? He says, I haven't exalted myself. I didn't walk over the backs of people to get to this throne.

I am not self-exalting. Man, did God exalt David? He did, time and time again. It's a beautiful thing. When you think about the humility that's expressed in this psalm, the humility of just being faithful, that's what we're going to see.

Faithful in his heart and his being. Faithful in his goals. To not even set those too high. Faithful in his actions to streamline his life in a way that was honoring to God and then opportunities floated his way and he took those when they were there.

I have to pause and sit on this point for a minute about subjecting our hearts. We live in a culture that is primarily made up of many individuals who are regularly and routinely practicing the art of lifting up our own hearts.

Right? We work at it. We practice it. We set our goals at it. When we post to Facebook only the things that make us look good, we are practicing the art, honing the skill of lifting up our own hearts.

Everybody look at me. Everybody look at how good I am. Everybody look at how great my kids are dressed. Everybody look at the great arts and crafts that I can produce or whatever it might be that we might say.

I'm not making a case for you to share all the crud either. That's a bit annoying on Facebook as well. Everybody knows that Debbie Downer who everything that they post is negative and angry. Obviously we need to be cautious about our Facebook.

Can you imagine a pastor 30 years ago? That wasn't even an issue. That wasn't going to come up here. Now we're talking about what you share to people you barely know that you call friends on Facebook.

It's important for us to think through. When we make ourselves look better than we are, we're lifting up our hearts. When we say, God would never say no to something that makes me happy, what we're saying is my heart is high because he wants me to be happy.

We're lifting up our hearts. Whenever we put our needs above our neighbors or when we place our priorities over God, we are lifting up our hearts. But David is saying that he was not in a state of self-exaltation.

He was not in a state of exalting himself. And that helped him to set the right altitude for his life, cruising at the sweet spot of his calling. The third thing that David says helped him to set the right attitude, the right altitude, I'm sorry, I confused myself here, the right altitude, is that he has suppressed his gaze.

So he subjected his heart, that was number two. He started with God, that was number one. Number three is he suppressed his gaze. This is where I expect the gloves of our flesh to come off a bit. And I expect our hearts to want to come out swinging at this point.

And I would encourage you that if you feel convicted as I talk about this, where we set our gaze business, let some of that feeling that you have result in conviction over your life and where you have set your goals because America is the land of opportunity.

And I want to be clear that when David is talking about his gaze, it's quite clear in the Hebrew language that what he's talking about is his goals. He's talking about what he sets his eyes on to accomplish.

And we live in the land of opportunity where there is no such thing as a goal too high for you. Isn't that what we're told? Isn't that what our... Am I... Is this registering with you? Are you guys hearing this?

Do we live in a culture where we are told that there is no goal too lofty for you? We are told that. We are taught that. We are taught that from the time that we are little kids. Everybody is just... You know, you can do...

Again, that phrase, you can do anything that you want. And our culture says there is no goal too lofty. To set your eyes on anything that is above you is a noble thing in America. It is worthwhile to surge forward in ambition.

How could it be possible for any of us to, as this text says, to raise our eyes too high? How dare you, Don. Especially on graduation Sunday. How dare you suggest that there could be a goal too high for my child, or for me, for that matter.

Let me just suggest to you that setting your goals too high isn't going to harm God. It's not going to hurt Him. It's not going to break Him. But it's a recipe for disaster for you. You can set your goals too high.