I Have Quieted My Soul

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Feb 2/2025 | Psalm 131 | Expository Sermon Dr. Joel Arnold

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.
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I'm delighted always at the privilege of looking at God's Word with God's people.
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And I'd like to ask you to look with me at Psalm 131. Psalm 131.
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I heard a comment from a friend, it was probably six months ago, and it just stuck with me.
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And he talked about as life progresses, and somebody continues to walk through the pathway of life, he just said, we accumulate scars and bumps and bruises and injuries.
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It's just the bumps and the bruises and the pain of life on a broken planet.
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And the accumulation of that across decades, it weighs on you. And I think of passages like the comment in Job, man who is born to woman is born to trouble like the sparks fly upward.
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I think of that every time I sit around a campfire, you just see the sparks go up. And it's inevitable and invariable, it's always headed one direction.
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Like the sparks are impelled in one direction, and I think there's my life.
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Fast, it's gone. And yes, balancing this with Ecclesiastes, life is good, life is a gift, life is joy.
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And life is always also constantly fraught with struggle. That is life on this broken planet.
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I was preparing this message, and I was down in my basement office area.
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And so I sat down one morning, I think this was like maybe Wednesday. And I was thinking of an opening illustration that would kind of capture that notion of the struggle portion of life.
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So I sat down in my chair, I had my coffee. I'm going to start out thinking through an illustration.
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Before I get going, I stretched out my hands like this. And something, I don't know what, but something about the way
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I stretched my hands, I felt this sharp pain of a muscle spasm in my back right here.
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I mean, something pulled. And for the next three days, I was walking around a little bit different.
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It's all good now. And I thought, well, there goes my illustration. Just the little bumps, the bruises, the pains, the jabs.
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The odd, weird, inexplicable back spasm type of pains. I think that's what this psalm is addressed to.
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And I would turn our hearts and eyes to it. I'm going to read the psalm. I'll read it in its entirety.
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It won't take long. Psalm 131. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up.
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My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
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But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.
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Like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the
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Lord from this time forth and forevermore. I'm going to start out just by pulling together some strands of context for the psalm.
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And an initial bit of context is what I think is automatically striking as soon as you read the text.
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This is one of the shortest chapters in the Bible. It's not the shortest. Psalm 117,
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Psalm 134 are just a little bit shorter. It's the third shortest chapter in the Bible.
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And I wonder as a starting observation, maybe even the brevity of the psalm is itself making a bit of a point to us.
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It's a psalm that speaks with profundity to some of those deepest pangs and aches of the soul as you walk through this pilgrimage called life.
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And addressing those deepest struggles. I mean, it's possible and God does in places give us long stretches of literature.
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Like a book of 42 chapters that's addressed to this question and this problem.
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Sometimes God speaks in verbose extended stretches, literary flourishes.
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Sometimes He speaks in three short verses. He just quiets your soul. And maybe even just the brevity of the psalm speaks to the profundity of the thought.
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Passing comment. As a possibility for your week this week ahead, you could memorize this psalm.
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I think that's some of the utility of it. It's rich and profound.
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But you could in a day or two memorize it. And you carry this compact answer to some of those deep questions.
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You can carry it as a way of quieting the struggle in your soul. C .H.
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Spurgeon commented on this. It's one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.
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I think that's some of the richness of it. Maybe the brevity is part of the point. Second bit of context setting up, just even before we turn to the psalm itself, is to notice where it falls in the
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Psalter. This is Psalm 131, and that means it's part of Book 5. For a long period of my
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Christian life, I just would read through the psalms. I'd come across Book 2, Book 3, okay. And never really grasped that there is a progression.
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And the Book 1 through 5 framework is actually an important part of the way you read the psalms.
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It's a bit of a journey. And so I'm just going to talk kind of flyover style through the books.
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And if you've encountered this, great. And if you've not, maybe this shapes the way you think about the psalms.
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But as you start from the beginning, Psalm 1, Psalm 2, the foundational psalms that kind of cast the shadow across the rest of the psalter,
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Book 1 is the foundation of blessing in God's kingdom. If you know
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God's kingdom and you know God's word, and you acknowledge the king, think Psalm 2, and you acknowledge his law,
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Psalm 1, you're blessed. Blessed is the righteous man. And eventually that blessing will extend to the entire world,
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Book 2, which is Psalms 42 to 72. So God offers blessing in his kingdom through his
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Messiah, but it's not just for Israel. It's for the world. And so in those psalms, 42 to 72, you get lots of international flavor.
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You get the notion that the salvation will extend to the furthest reaches of the earth. I mean, those themes are all over the psalter, but especially in those psalms.
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It's glorious. It's hopeful. It gives life and it gives confidence. And then it turns to crisis,
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Book 3. Because in Psalms 73 to 89, you feel the bottom drop out underneath.
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God's kingdom is glorious and it's great and it's going to be worldwide. Oh, but Israel is an exile.
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Israel has failed. Israel is a broken people. And so kind of the flavor now of by the rivers of Babylon we wept.
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When will God deliver us? Has he forgotten us? Has he judged us?
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Have we send so disastrously that there is now nothing left? And the answer comes in Book 4,
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Psalms 90 to 106, a reaffirmation that God's kingdom program is going forward.
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The people failed and the people destroyed so much, and yet God's goodness remains and it endures forever.
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So that Book 5, Psalms 107 to 150, the last section, because of that we can worship and praise.
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And if you just read that last section from 107 all the way to the end, you see praise and hallelujah and songs.
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And you get these back and forth kind of structures where the speaker is crying out praise and the audience answers back for his love endures forever.
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Those kinds of patterns. And in some ways this psalm then might feel like it sort of fits in Book 3.
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Sorry, that doesn't mean anything. Tracking, well, the progression again. God's good kingdom, Book 1.
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For the world, Book 2. But the bottom drops out Book 3. What happened? Is there hope?
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It kind of feels like that. Has God forgotten us? I suspect actually the psalm here though is in light of the entire journey.
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And it's kind of that the psalmist has walked from Book 1 all the way to Book 5.
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God's kingdom is blessed. It's for the world. Oh, but sin has made such a mess of it all.
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And yet God's kingdom continues. Praise the Lord. And it's like he's walked through the entire journey, and it's from that standpoint, looking back across the entire journey, he speaks with hope.
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And I think that will fit as we move forward into the psalm because you're going to see all of that.
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It's like a microcosm of this altar packed into this one psalm. From the promise of hope all the way to the disappointment to, yes, the restoration,
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God is still at work. A third bit of context, this is one of the
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Psalms of Ascent. You can see it right at the top, A Song of Ascents of David. And the
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Song of Ascents is actually a little book within the book. This is Psalms 120 to 134.
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And they're labeled this way. I mean, if you read this out, look at the psalms around it, you'll see a Song of Ascent, a Song of Ascents. They were traditionally sung as the people traveled up on their way to the feasts.
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They had a series of different feasts, primary among which would be the Passover feasts.
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And so people are coming up to Jerusalem, literally coming up because they're moving up in altitude towards the city.
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And so Song of Ascent, you're climbing as you work your way up the roads, up the hills. But the notion of the ascent concept then is also, the framework would be like a pilgrim theology.
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It's a whole framework that there's a sense as you're traveling up the hill, right?
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And you're feeling the burn in your legs as you climb up. You're feeling the altitude. You're realizing you're on an incline.
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It's evident as you're working. You feel the burn as you're going, and yet you have the sense of destination.
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I'm going somewhere. And my hopes and the future and my confidence is wrapped up in that place.
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I'm going up to the temple. I'm going up to God's place. In the meantime, we aren't there yet.
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We want to be there. We feel the burn on the way, but we're still pilgrims traveling.
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And there is in that a mixture of lament and joyful hope as you read through these psalms.
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These Psalm of Ascent, 120 to 134. I mean, there are times when you'll hear a cry like the psalm just before.
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Out of the depths, I cry to you. And there's also hope up there. I believe and I affirm up there.
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I'm on my way. It's a journey. I'm a pilgrim. But up there, there is still hope.
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There is still confidence. And all of that joyful hope is wrapped around the confidence that God will eventually restore his people in their place through the
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Messiah. And that's where we're headed. A Psalm of Ascent. Language like Psalm 121.
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I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? Kind of a how long, oh Lord.
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Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come, feel. Psalm 122. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
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Psalm 126. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
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You hear the mixture of lament and also hope. Right? Pain and also confidence.
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And as then, one of the Song of Ascents, this psalm picks up that pilgrim theology.
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Oh Lord, how long? Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come, the hope. Final bit of context is to pay attention to this psalm in relationship to the psalm that comes right before.
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It has a very close relationship with Psalm 130. And I think that's most obvious if you look at the last verse of each psalm.
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Or I guess it's verse 7 in Psalm 130. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord. Now look across to Psalm 131 verse 3.
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Oh Israel, hope in the Lord. Okay, you picked up the same phrase. And in both of those, what follows is this explanation.
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Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore over in Psalm 130 because God will redeem
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Israel. In both of them, place your hope in the Lord because he's going to answer. Both of these psalms are similar because they're both prayers drawn from a place of struggle.
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I mean, look at the opening for both psalms. Out of the depths, Psalm 130 verse 1. Out of the depths
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I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive. A prayer as well as our psalm,
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Psalm 131. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up high. My eyes are not raised too high. And there is then, there's the similarity between the two.
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They're definitely partner psalms. Most of the commentators observed that. Like there's no question these two to go together. There's pairing, but there's also progression.
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And I think this is actually, it's rich. If Psalm 130 starts out with the depths,
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I cry to you from the depths. Psalm 131, my eyes are not raised too high.
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I think the pairing between these goes that if Psalm 130 has a bit more the tone of lament or despair.
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It's like in Psalm 131, the psalmist has come through that now. He's on the other side of it.
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He's worked through the sorrow. And on the other side of it now, he's come to some sense of hope.
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Not that the problem has gone away, but that by God's grace, he has worked through it.
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And he's come to a place of trust. And that's where now
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I'm able to focus our, not just context, but focus in on Psalm 131.
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Simple structure. I mean, it's an easy psalm to outline, isn't it? And this is from Jim Hamilton, a commentator.
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But in verse one, David sets out what he does not do. In verse two,
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David sets out what he has done. And verse three, he sets out what God's people should do.
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I think that highlights the notion in verse one, we've got a contrast. Like I've not said this way or my attitude has not been this way.
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Here's what I have done, verse two. Now then he turns to everyone else and invites them.
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Come, hope in the Lord, together with me. And that's my simple outline. I mean, I'm just going to take those three sections and each one in turn,
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I want to consider them with you. Let's start with verse one. My heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high.
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This is, as you can tell, addressed to the Lord. Oh, Lord. It's a prayer. And if I'm just going to examine some of the expressions in that, the notion of the heart, the internal, the eyes, the external are both expressions of pride.
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I'm not lifting myself up like a question would go here. How do
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I view myself? Where do I place myself on the social scale assumed the way
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I view myself? Where do I place myself on the scale of personal sense of value?
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It's just a pride question. What do I pride myself in? Heart is probably all inclusive.
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It's values. It's desire. It's ambition. I think the way scripture uses the heart, it's the notion of our core being.
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It's our affections. It's our love. You could express it like this. What's the stuff that lights you up?
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What's the stuff that when you hear that in the conversation, you gravitate towards it? What's the stuff that you would say, oh,
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I really like this kind of people? And inevitably, we wrap ourselves into some of that.
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The people that we like tend to have the traits and the values and the things that we ourselves pride and the things that we aspire towards.
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And the psalmist comments that my heart is not lifted up. My view of myself would not be aspirational in that sense that I would place myself high on the chain.
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The eyes lifted up in the second phrase. Again, an expression of pride.
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It's probably also an expression of your thinking. In other words, what I tend to look at, perception.
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My eyes are my instrument of perceiving the world. And so the notion of lifting up my eyes would have the idea of my trying to go about and comprehend, understand, grasp things in this world that are beyond my pay grade.
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Psalm 105 uses both of these. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart,
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I will not endure. That's actually both of those two expressions. And if I was going to put all of this together, then my heart parallel with my eyes.
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What do I occupy myself with? What do I think about? What do I try to understand?
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How do I evaluate myself? What do I think I'm capable of? All of this stuff is interrelated.
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My view of myself, my view of myself in comparison to other people, the things that I reach for, the things that I love.
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Continuing the second half of the verse, to occupy myself is to walk about, kind of as though I'm taking a stroll, or I'm spending my time and my interaction in the zone of things, he says, that are great and marvelous, and things that are too great and too marvelous for me.
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The great marvelous expression, that's a very common expression across Scripture and across the
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Psalms. Listen to these Psalms and see if you can catch what the great and marvelous things are.
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Psalm 86, verse 10, talking to God, for you are great and do wondrous things.
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You alone are God. The great and marvelous things, the works of God. Psalm 136, four, to him who alone, even that word alone is striking, to him who alone does great wonders, because his steadfast love endures forever.
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Who does the great things? God alone. Psalm 145, verse four, one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts on the glorious splendor of your majesty, on your wondrous works
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I will meditate. And the whole notion of this is that this is God's territory. The great and marvelous things, the mighty acts of God.
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His glory, his conquests, his nature, his plans for the ages.
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And the psalmist looks at that and says, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
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The implication being, there is a territory of things that are just entirely outside of my pay grade.
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You ought to work, you ought to think, you ought to plan, you ought to ponder. And somewhere in there, there's a line that says,
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I go this far and no further. And beyond this point, this is
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God's territory. Can I break that down? Because I could talk about that in the abstract all afternoon.
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And maybe without it actually landing. How about I'm going to give you three different expressions of things that would fit this notion.
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Things that are too great, too marvelous for me. Things where the right and godly response has to be and must be to not lift your eyes there.
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To not raise your heart to that level. And so three of them. First, what about this?
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How about trying, an expression of this, is trying to enter into questions that are just beyond our capacity.
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I like to think about theology and work through questions.
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Try to work through fine distinctions. The joke with theologians is that you can forever nuance every concept.
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There is sometimes a vision floating around about theology and theologians. As if you've got five wizards up in the top of a castle somewhere.
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Big pointy hats and lots of vials and all kinds of colors things.
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Some arcane writing on each of the vials. People getting out a little drop of that and a little drop of that.
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You mix it all and poof. So cool. And there is only everything wrong about that vision of theology.
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A vision of theology that is some kind of pride in the sophistication of the person that is doing it.
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Really? Some kind of game that is getting played up there. Like tricks. Parlor tricks or something.
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Really? That the right vision of theology puts you on your knees or on your face before a holy
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God who is glorious. And all you can say in awe. I can't possibly rise to even the smallest portion of the profundity, the richness and the glory of who he is.
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Theology rightly done makes you feel really small. Must always make you feel small.
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And you can go beyond that. You've got these areas of theology. All of theology really, ultimately it's got to be beyond our comprehension.
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But you've got these areas that you get to them and there's just no way. I'm thinking here of the
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Trinity. Talk about it for a thousand years. You can talk about it for two thousand years if you want. Because the church has.
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And you're not going to find a way to make this perfectly work out. Three persons, one essence.
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How do you make that work? Incarnation. Fully God, fully man.
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And all the... Jesus' consciousness. He was simultaneously omniscient and also limited and he learned.
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Got that? Sovereignty and responsibility. Problem of evil. The infinity of God.
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Each one of these areas. Here it's said better in the words of Scripture.
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Ecclesiastes 5. Do not let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God.
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For God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. It's like just remember who he is and remember who you are.
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And sort yourself out accordingly. And grasping that truth cannot do anything except cause you to shut your mouth.
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Let your words be few. And you could just continue on from that.
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I mean, I love Habakkuk. Habakkuk says, I'll wait. I'll stand by the watch post. I'll look and see what his answer will be according to my complaint and God's answer.
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His soul is puffed up and it's not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. Job 26 .14
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is a favorite here. Behold, I mean, in the context it's talking about all the wonders of what
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God does in nature, in heaven and earth. The glory of his deeds. And Job 26 .14,
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after all of that. The majesty of nature. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways.
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How small a whisper do we hear of him. The tiny slice of revelation.
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The tiny slice of theology that we have. Blows our brains.
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These are but the whispers of who he is. And the verse continues.
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But the thunder of his power. Who can understand? Calvin comments.
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You have to get the context of what he means by this. But he comments that God lisps to us as a mother lisps to a child in order to aid our understanding.
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He's not meaning by that to denigrate revelation or denigrate scripture. Just to grasp.
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Before someone would work through a passage and walk away with a conclusion, oh, I've mastered it.
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One, you didn't. Two, God's speaking with just the smallest slice of the glory of the truth of who he is.
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And we can't handle that. And all of this were summed up in Romans 11 .34.
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For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
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Who interacts with God to know his mind or give him advice? Answer, probably all of us try at some point in our lives.
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But if we got it right, we would grasp the truth that from him and through him and to him are all things.
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To him be glory forever and ever. That's the proper way to view. Life, world, and the universe.
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And see, my point here goes that the attempt to enter into these great and marvelous things.
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To occupy ourselves with things that are too high for us. To raise our eyes as it were and pretend somehow that we're entering, disgusting, into the counsels of the almighty.
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And that we would give him a word or two about how he might manage his universe.
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Yeah, it's beyond your pay grade.
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And I mean if you want, you can rail against that. You can rail against the almighty.
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You can throw yourself repeatedly against his sovereignty. Like throwing yourself against a brick wall determined that if you do it hard enough and long enough, eventually you'll break through.
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And at the end of it, all you're going to succeed at is coming back exhausted and bloody.
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You can pretend that you figured it all out. In which case, all you managed to do is deceive yourself.
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You could be convinced that right around the corner if I get like 23 more degrees in philosophy, then maybe
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I can understand God. You can maintain that God has no right to exist if he doesn't give me specific, satisfying answers to my questions that satisfy my personal standards for coherence and rigor.
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Or you could respond like the psalmist. And at some point come to terms with reality.
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My heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not, maybe you could say it as a declaration.
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I must not, I will not, I should not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
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There are things above my pay grade. And the sooner I just come to terms with it and accept it, it brings a whole lot of rest to the human heart.
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Which actually takes me to the second expression of it. I'll call it grief or I'll call it struggle with God's goodness.
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You find yourself sometimes, I can think through my life and I can give you bullet point moments.
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You find yourself in life in situations where life just hurts. Sometimes the hits come almost coordinated.
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It's almost like the Job 1 and 2 feeling. You feel like the hits are coming one after another and they're coming fast and they're coming thick.
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And you almost can start to wonder if God has something against you. Is he judging me? Is he chastening me?
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I mean, well, and this may help. There's always, you know, you can think like, did my behavior get off track?
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And so God's kind of hammering me. Truth is, there's always something I need to be chastened for.
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It's just the mercy of God that I'm not always feeling. Well, it's the cross that I'm not feeling the full force of that all the time.
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Is this just a trial? How would I know the difference? If God is good, why won't he answer my prayers for relief?
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Why is it taking so long? Why is it so hard? Why do I keep on hurting? Why won't
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God help me? You can be looking for something.
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It's very helpful that expression Romans say, all things work together for good. Sometimes we're reading that on the most surface possible level.
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When what we're looking for, I want a one for one. Like, okay, I was in the hospital for five days, but I got to witness to 17 people.
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We're looking like for a one for one correspondence. Most of life you don't get to see, and you never do discover the one for one correspondence.
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Reading that passage, of course, better in its context. The good is that he's conforming me to the image of Christ.
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See, but you get to these points where you just feel pain, and it goes on and on and on, and it hurts.
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And then after the hurt, it really hurts. And after that, it still hurts. It feels like it'll never end.
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And at those moments, it's pretty natural to wonder why God's letting you go through all of this. It's the why question.
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At some point, sooner or later, you struggle with the why question. This is a part of the human condition.
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You have a vendetta against me, Lord. What are you doing? And I think this psalm is so settling.
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Here's advice. Maybe you're there this afternoon. Here's advice to a heart in those moments.
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Oh, 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.
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The why question, what are you doing to me, Lord? What is this? Somewhere in there, you just kind of put a stop to it.
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I'm going to wait. I'm going to hope. I'll give a third expression of it.
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How about an expression of worry? Ironically, fear and worry are just a different form of the same kind of pride.
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If the last thing I was talking about, which is a brand of the problem of evil, why, God, are you doing this to me?
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If that's grappling with my inability to understand, I think worry grapples with the fact that I can't do anything.
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If the former angst is an understanding problem, this is like a strength problem.
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I think the notion of it goes, when we worry, I'm trying to go down the entire contingency tree.
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Here's a problem. I anticipate future problems. I'm looking like, if this happened, that's a branch, that would happen, but then it could be,
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I'm going to go down those six spokes off of branch one. I've got to come back to the trunk.
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I've got to go back up the next branch. I've got three spokes off. Oh, no. Each one of these spokes has seven off of it.
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You've got to explore all the little nodes in the entire contingency tree.
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You've got to come up with plans for all those things. You've got to mark off every possibility. You've got to figure out all the contingencies for it.
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Surprise, surprise. All you manage to do is exhaust yourself. The universe is too big, too unpredictable, more important.
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More importantly, there is already an architect for this universe, and it's not me.
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There's already somebody who knows all the contingency trees, and he left no contingency in it, because he already has a plan.
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And this thing is already planned out. I think what's actually going here, when
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I try to explore all the possibilities, I'm actually putting myself in the place of God.
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I'm shouldering aside the sovereign, and I'll plan this one out.
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The angst, the pain we feel in these kinds of moments is actually built into how the world works.
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You feel the struggle, you feel the angst, because you're trying to act like God, and it's not working.
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You aren't big enough to take that job on. It's not your job. And the link again goes back to the first verse of the psalm.
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Who do I think I am? To lift up my heart, and to raise my eyes, and to occupy myself with things too marvelous for me, such as the management of God's universe.
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That's the essence and the root of the worry I'm feeling. And as an antidote to that then,
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I move to verse 2. Because the answer to all of that, the answer to the heart that tries to unscrew the inscrutable, figure out the mysteries of the universe, the heart that tries to answer the why question, the heart that tries to worry through all the possibilities, the answer and the antidote to all of that is verse 2.
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I've calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
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Christopher Ash comments, and it's really helpful, four -volume commentary on the psalms.
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It's a great resource. He comments, peace is the opposite of pride. Really helpful.
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The notion that the angst in my soul, it could feel like I'm affirming my weakness,
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I'm affirming my desperation, but that angst in my soul, when I worry, when I struggle through, when
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I rail against, when I rail against the reality of God's greatness and my limitations, what's really underneath that is a kind of pride.
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It's a brand of pride. I'm trying to answer these problems for myself, independent of Him and shoulder
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Him aside. And in contrast to that, this language just gives rest.
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I'm going to calm and quiet my soul like a weaned child. Calmed is the metaphor of levelness, like leveling the ground, which makes something flat, which at first, what?
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I think the best comparison I can come up with, and actually scripture uses it at times this way, of like a river.
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So I was on a canoe trip last summer, and you're coming down and you see some places where the water's starting to do this.
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You know the water's going to speed up there. There's rapids, there's rocks, there's stuff underneath the surface.
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I met one of those trees and took a little dip, an unintended dip into the river.
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You know the rough places, and then you come on the other side of that and the water just smooth, calm.
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And the notion of calming is like if I imagine my soul is this, and then
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I've calmed my soul. It's just smooth water. That sounds great.
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Yeah, I need to do some of that. To quiet my soul, the concept here is just, well, it's exactly what it sounds like.
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It's to stop talking. So when you'll see the expression like hold your peace or keep silent used in scripture, it's probably this expression.
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It's just the notion of shut your mouth, stop running your mouth. It's time to listen.
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It's time to just... Lots of questions, lots of accusations.
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Quiet your heart. And both of these verbs are pointed inward.
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I mean, you can hear it just in the way it's translated. I have calmed and quieted my soul, or it could be like I've calmed and quieted myself.
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I have caused myself to be calm. I've caused myself to be quiet. It's like I recognize my soul is doing this.
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That's got to stop, okay? Shut my mouth. Clear water.
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Quiet my soul. Of course, the language of the soul, deeply internal, personal, inner life of a person.
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And I just want to drive this home as an application here. There is a personal moral responsibility here.
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You have a moral mandate to govern your own thoughts and heart and affections.
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You have an ethical mandate to quiet your heart. Sometimes, I mean, for sure, how many books are going to be on the front shelves at the bookstore or at Edmonton Public Library?
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And it's going to be self -help stuff about how to achieve emotional health. And sometimes we talk as if we want it.
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But the notion of actually getting to the heart of it to make the choices that would quiet our hearts.
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You have a moral responsibility and a mandate to do that. I'll hold for a second.
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I will talk about how to do that in a moment. Before that, I want to go to the next part of the verse.
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And it's this language. It's a comparison now. It's a metaphor. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
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It's beautiful poetry. You've got the two parallel lines, but they're also synthetic. In other words, they're building.
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Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. That is my soul within me, taking the emphasis deep within you, like your deep internal life within you.
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Quiet. But the metaphor of the weaned child with its mother, maybe it doesn't immediately grab us.
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I'd say for some years, I read this psalm and I didn't quite, what is this saying?
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It could be the idea of a child who is, you know, for the first, let's say, 18 months, two years, whatever, that space of life, they've needed constant feedings and now they've gone to solid food.
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That's the way we use the word weaned, right? And so they've needed constant help, constant, constant, constant.
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Okay, now they're stronger, they're more established, and so there's a maturity in it. Like the child's done with the every three hours, all the time feedings.
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Child is weaned. And that could fit when you get this language here, with its mother, probably is a more tender picture than the
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English would give way. NASB says resting against its mother. So what we have here is the picture of the child has been nursing and it's been constant need and kind of the constant dependence of that.
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Okay, now we're through that stage. Child's fed, getting stronger, sitting on its mom's lap, just resting.
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And there's a beautiful picture in that. I think probably a better reading, and I've done my digging on this to work through and support this.
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Happy to talk about it afterwards if you like. But there's good data to suggest that the better reading here is that what we're actually talking about is a child that's nursing and has just finished eating.
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Okay, so if you've walked through this phase of life, you've done the infant thing, or if you're in the infant stage right now, you've watched this play out.
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The baby is up, maybe you've got like the three hour window or when they're really little and they just entered the world.
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It seems like every two hours, but it feels like every 10 minutes or something. This child's desperate.
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And a baby that's ready to nurse or a baby that's desperate to nurse cannot be happy.
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Like nothing's right about the world, everything's awful. You can distract, you can do what you want with this baby, this baby will not be happy, period, end of discussion, no.
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Not only would the baby be miserable, but everyone around will also be miserable and this baby will be fed.
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You will be miserable till you do it. Okay? And then the baby starts to nurse.
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I remember watching our kids and it's like in some cases, literally watching their eyes roll back into their heads.
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It's just, right? Relief. And like what?
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Two minutes ago, everything about the world was disaster. Two minutes ago, the world itself was an insufferable agony.
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And now we just like, mere seconds, everything's fine, we're good, life's wonderful, it's great.
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Like we just went from Job to Ecclesiastes and we did it in like 15 seconds. And I think that picture probably grabs it or you could even extend it all the way out.
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The baby's finished nursing, they get to the stage where they've fed and they're full and they're like milk drunk and they're falling asleep.
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Sometimes in the middle of nursing, it's just like, yeah. Okay. And there's the total relief and satisfaction of that.
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And that picture, that metaphor, I think perfectly grabs what I believe this grammar, the verse is talking about.
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And also just how God speaks to us. I mean, how about this as a picture of rest after struggle?
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Where anywhere in our physical world can you find a more perfect, striking contrast than a baby?
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To picture for you the total inconsolable angst and then the immediate transformation.
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Okay, actually everything's fine. Where do you get the picture of the two sides of the human experience?
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The two sides of the human experience where you can both see like the scrunched up face, nothing is okay.
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Nevermind, it's all okay. And just momentarily. It's too easy,
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I think, to dismiss some of this like, oh yeah, babies, immature, they don't get it. How about this?
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I think the difference between the little infant that looks at that situation, the scrunched up face, the anger, and then a few minutes later relief,
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I think it's just a difference of scale. And I might be 40 years older than the child.
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And my angst followed by my relief might be at times separated by five years, 10 years.
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It might be lifetime long. Difference of scale. Because at the end of the day,
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I'm not really in any significant way fundamentally different from the little infant that says, nothing's right with the world.
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And then I find relief. Oh, now I see it now. How will it feel in the light of eternity, someday, when the clouds lift and the light shines through and all is right and good and beautiful at last, and the face that for however many decades was all scrunched up,
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I can't handle this, it's not right, I can't deal with, oh, okay. All is well.
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All is good. And I can rest. I think that actually maybe exposes a second side to the beauty of this metaphor.
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It really is just a really, it's a perfect metaphor. Because it's also a gentle pointer that we ourselves are children.
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And a huge part of our struggles in these situations is precisely because it's hard for us to trust and humbly wait like a child.
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I want to resolve the situation. I want to fix it. I think I have the means to do something about it.
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I imagine that if I can't resolve it, I imagine that I'll think about it, ponder it, mull it over, and I'll think of every conversation
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I might have with that person that I've got a problem with, or I'll come up with the retorts that I would give them, or I'll imagine pathways for how
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God could answer my struggle, or I'll imagine how my life could be different, or I'll feed my resentment because God hasn't answered my problem.
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I'll think of a thousand ways in which people haven't appreciated me or they don't appreciate my struggle.
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I mean, you can go down these tracks, and none of it works. None of that stuff works.
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At the end of it, I need a better solution. I need a real solution. I need something that doesn't leave me wrung out, resentful, hopeless.
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A whole lot better would be to calm and quiet my heart before God and joyfully affirm that I'm a child, and he's
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God, and he runs the universe better than me, and then maybe my heart could rest.
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I do want to make this application, I want to make this practical because you can hear some of this, and my heart goes the exact same place.
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I want to quiet my heart. I want to rest like a sleeping child on its mother's lap.
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I want it to be like this, but how? Can I give you a couple of, five different suggestions here that are drawn right from this psalm?
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I mean, what you personally ought to do. Let's start with this. Just observe that the psalm itself is a prayer.
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Oh Lord, it started out. It's addressed to God, and it's a confession before God.
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Life and struggle and sorrow are unnavigable apart from prayer.
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Can I encourage you when we finish this time, or when you head back to your home, or I'll just say the next time that some of these things start to crowd back into your heart, and your heart's going here, and the temptation now is to do this, or do that.
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Sorry. I was just talking. Something fell down. Okay. We'll continue on.
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All is well. The next time you're tempted for your heart to do this, or to go out the decision tree, or to chase all these things, can you take it to God instead?
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Take it before him in prayer. Second application of this, you really do have to choose not to occupy yourself with things above your pay grade.
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And again, I mean, my heart wants to go solve that problem, or fix it, or imagine the solution for it.
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Or somehow, you know, this thing that's so angsty for me, somehow if I could go back, and I could think about it for another hour, probably
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I would uncover some detail, or some insight, or I'd figure something out, and I'd turn that over, and I'd be like, and then everything would just fall into place.
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No, it doesn't work, and we know it. Our hearts try, and we try, as if, again, as if somehow
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I could manage to uncover by just pondering, change something about the universe.
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I'm not the sovereign of the universe. There really is a choice here not to occupy ourselves with things above our pay grade.
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Third, there's an element of waiting here, and I'm holding some of this because it's our next idea, but the advice at the end, hope in the
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Lord. I mean, somewhere in here, the Christian journey is the story, the pilgrimage of carrying some of this stuff and waiting.
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Sometimes, at some point, the final answer of the Christian story, you're going to need to carry that.
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There is, I think, a helpful tension in here if now I'm comparing again Psalm 131 to Psalm 130.
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Psalm 131, the metaphor of the weaned child calming and quieting its heart, that is also not incompatible with the advice of Psalm 130 my soul waits for the
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Lord more than the watchman for the morning. They're there, and they're together. I quiet my heart, and yes,
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I am also longing. It's the tension, the same New Testament tension that says that in Christ, I rejoice, and I also raise up my eyes, and I say, even so,
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Lord Jesus, quickly come. You can't come soon enough. And both of those cohere.
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I'm not always sure how they cohere. Both of those are Christian instincts. I am going to be content, and I am also profoundly and deeply longing for Jesus to return.
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And here I would encourage us with a reminder, the Christian ideal is not that you reach a place where you kind of get over the struggle, and you don't feel it anymore.
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That the Christian story expects that you will probably have to keep on struggling. I don't think
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I'm over -reading the metaphor here. If I talk again about that weaned child with its mother, the child's fed and happy, which is great.
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And then you recognize that on my reading or my understanding of what that means, the weaned child, the child's fed and happy, but truth is, it's also a cyclical maintenance thing.
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Because in another three hours, we're going to do this thing again. And I would suggest here, the
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Christian story is not a one and done. As if, let's say, your hope would be, okay,
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I hear a sermon on Psalm 131. Okay, good. I dealt with the anxiety thing.
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And so here at 42 years old, I solved anxiety, and then we can just go forward, and we can move on to higher things.
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But the Christian story or the Christian journey or the Christian pilgrimage is the cyclical return back to the things that you know, and the things that you know again.
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And now, oh, I'm back out. Nope, push that down again. It's the constant maintenance of returning again and again and again back.
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The infant goes back again to its mother again. It's the relationship. It's not a one and done.
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It's a relationship. And that would take me to the fourth bit of practical advice.
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Maintain and believe that there really is hope. That the hope is that the world ends beautifully.
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That you will be made like Jesus Christ. God is already doing in you right now a beautiful and awesome thing through this trial, making you more like his son.
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Because at the center of all of this, number five, is relationship. You will not solve the struggle that I've talked about here this afternoon, the struggle of worry, anxiety, angst, pain.
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You won't get there without proximity to the one that loves you.
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Again, I hope I don't think I'm over -reading the metaphor. I mean, the language in here, I've calmed the quiet of my soul like a weaned child with its mother.
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And it's not that metaphors or it's not that language is intended to be a one for one. This represents that.
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That represents that. But the notion of the child's answer is proximity to this person that loves them.
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Is there something in that? It says the answer, the deepest answer to the
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Christian's struggle is not going to be, well, I can give you some tricks or I'll give you a new mindfulness routine.
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I'll give you some ideas. Even, as much as I love theology, even that I'll just give you like a theological scaffolding and a grid.
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Let me give you some concepts. Let me give you some abstracts. At the core of it, the
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Christian answer to this will not happen apart from proximity to a person.
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That person is God himself. I think Job here, right? The answer at the end of the story is not a theodicy.
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It's not that it gets to the end and God says, let me talk this through and I'm going to give you like a philosophical reason for why evil exists.
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The end of the story in Job is he sees God. And in the face of God, it makes sense.
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It makes sense, though the struggle still continues. And that's then,
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I want to conclude by looking at the last verse. Verse three, O Israel, hope in the
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Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Just observe a couple of things.
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I would observe here that the questions aren't necessarily answered nor the problems resolved.
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Like the presenting issues, whatever they were, and we don't know. The presenting issues haven't gone away.
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I get that partly because I'm connecting it back to Psalm 130 where his confession is that he's still waiting like the watchman for the morning or just within our
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Psalm. I mean, it's the affirmation not, okay, I can be okay now because God fixed my problem.
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The answer, rather, was it was not a problem in the external circumstance. It was a, or sorry, it was not a change in the external circumstance.
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It was a change in me. It's still there. Rather, it's an orientation of hope.
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Do you notice that there is a pivot in even like the structure of the Psalm? So verses one and two are expressed as a prayer.
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O Lord, it's addressed to God. Verses one and two are a prayer. Verse three, it's like he turns from prayer.
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If you want to imagine him, it's like he's praying. He's speaking to God. You don't even know that there's an audience present.
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He's praying. He's speaking. He finishes his prayer. He stops. He opens his eyes and he says to everyone,
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O Israel, hope in the Lord. There's a shift. There's a pivot. It's moved from a prayer to a sermon.
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Something has happened in his heart that helped him and he now wants to help others to do the same.
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You can see this pattern. It's not just here. Multiple Psalms, Psalm 4, 22, 30, 32. Multiple Psalms will do this where you'll start out with a prayer or a situation and somewhere in there, it switches and it switches from the personal struggle which is all like this person before God and it suddenly switches to a sermon and it addresses the people around.
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And a bit of encouragement here for you if you're in the middle of one of these challenges. Take God's work in your own heart and anticipate that he's already working in you as a preparation for blessing for others.
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This could express multiple ways. You might be in the middle of one of these crises. You might be in the middle of one of these unanswerable questions.
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You're walking through something. Take hope. God is not only at work in you.
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He's preparing you, 2 Corinthians, so that the comfort by which you have been comforted could be a comfort to others.
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Could I also enjoin within a body of believers like this, you've got people that are at all kinds of different points in this journey.
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You've got people that just came out of something, people that are just going into something, people are in the middle of something.
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Part of the body and part of the ministry within the body is that you have the opportunity to speak across that.
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There are people in the middle of something that could use the encouragement. You're able to say to them, you know what,
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I remember deep times. I remember deep waters.
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God brought me through and it didn't feel like it was going to ever end. God brought me through. I'm praying for you.
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I'm with you. Can you do this for yourself? I mean, I've done this in the last six months. I've faced something that felt irresolvable and then
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I'm just running back in my mind through history and God answered there, there, there, there, there.
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Okay, so can he, John Newton's words, can he have brought me through all these things in order to abandon me now?
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Is that how he works? Did he really take me through all of those crises? And in each case, use them to conform me to the image of his son.
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And then we got here and here's like the one exception in the history of the universe where he's going to drop me.
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Is that how this works? Can he have brought me through all of those things to forget me now?
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And that's the hope of the last phrase from this time forth and forever more probably would come into English something like starting now and forever after.
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You hear it. It's both, it's both a present reality and an ongoing. It probably is a hint to the believer that we're in for a bit of a wait.
01:00:02
It's not like, it's again, the Christian story is not God solves all your problems. He makes you healthy.
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He makes you rich and he fixes all your relationships. But it is rather the Christian response that there's hope and that hope is future oriented.
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I'm going to have to wait. There's an eschatology dimension to this. You will struggle. You will carry the weight of this.
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You will feel it and there's also hope. And that hope is the biblical framework of hope.
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I mean, I can't do a theology of hope but just the confident expectation, the assurance that God is at work and that he's not forgotten about me.
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So I'll just trace it in one book, Romans 4. In hope, Abraham believed against hope and God answered that hope when he grew strong in his faith and gave glory to God.
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That's chapter 4. So that chapter 5, we also can have access by faith and rejoice in hope of the glory of God which allows us to rejoice in our sufferings because sufferings produce endurance, endurance produce character, character produces hope.
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And hope does not put to shame, said differently. Hope does not disappoint. Because God is at work.
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So that that hope extends Romans 8 to everything. The creation will be set free in hope from its bondage to corruption.
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The whole creation has been groaning. Not only the creation but we ourselves. But in the coming time, the redemption of our bodies, we have hope.
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In this hope we were saved and that hope is not seen but it's still coming. We hope for what we do not see.
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We wait for it with patience. And the patience and the confidence we have is that God has told us for sure, if God is for us, who can be against us?
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Who will bring any charge against God's elect? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will distress, tribulation, persecution, famine?
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No. Nakedness, danger, sword? No. In all these things we are more than conquerors.
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I am persuaded that neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus our
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Lord. There's hope. God has not forgotten you. The hope we have is the confidence not that we can solve the issues by figuring out the puzzles or fixing the mysteries or working down the contingency trees or railing against God himself.
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But to hope in the Lord then is to stop hoping in myself and to believe that he is the highest and the greatest one, that there are some things too high for me and that he alone can answer my sorrow.
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I'm just going to end with an example of what this looks like. I could reach for David.
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David is the psalmist. David is the one who wrote this. And it starts out with this notion of I've not lifted up my eyes.
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I've not exalted myself. I mean, that's striking. David was a king. He could have exalted himself. And yet, even in a long, protracted period of his life while he's waiting for God to remove
01:03:10
Saul in fulfillment of what God had all but made clear and promised to him.
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I mean, it was evident. David is going to be the king. And instead of going on the rampage pulling together,
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I don't know, some kind of militia, going up and attacking, he's got multiple opportunities when
01:03:30
Saul is right there in his grasp, right? And David, the whole way through, puts his hope in the Lord. He's not going to raise himself up.
01:03:37
God's going to have to do this. And so even as king, there's a kind of a vulnerability, a humility, all the way to the end.
01:03:45
I mean, you know David's story. He's sinned terribly. But then the penitential psalms. And you watch him as he leaves
01:03:51
Jerusalem when Absalom, his son, has created a coup. And David's trust in the
01:03:57
Lord. Well, if God's going to deliver me, he'll bring me back in. There's a humble trust in that.
01:04:03
It's not really the example I want to go for though. David's a great example. The ultimate expression and fulfillment and example of what
01:04:14
Psalm 131 looks like. A person who did this. How about the person who did not consider equality with God but a thing to be grasped.
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Meek, lowly, humble, gentle. The one who knew everything and yet learned.
01:04:34
The one who really could go down through the entire contingency tree and tell you all of the outcomes and yet still submitted himself to the
01:04:43
Father. You notice in Matthew 26, 30, on the way to Gethsemane, it says they sang a hymn.
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Probably would have been taken from the Halal Psalms, which come just before this section.
01:04:57
But it supports the fact that on his way into the feasts, and we don't have hard exegetical data for this, but we would expect as Jesus himself ascended up to Jerusalem, on the way to his crucifixion as recorded in the
01:05:13
Gospels, he's walking up and what would he have been singing? The songs of ascent? There's every bit of expectation, likeliness.
01:05:24
Jesus probably sang these words on the way to the cross. And you just watch the contrast at Gethsemane when knowing what's about to happen to him, he entrusts himself to the
01:05:39
Father and he waits. He quiets and calms his heart before the Father.
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And you get these kinds of windows into this. Isaiah 53, he was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, he opened not his mouth.
01:05:56
He quieted himself in the face of horrendous torment that was about to fall on him, knowing full well what it would be.
01:06:06
You get this language in 1 Peter 2, Christ called us, giving us an example of suffering that we would follow in his steps.
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When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
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And he did this so that your wounds would be healed. And if you go back to those three application points
01:06:29
I gave earlier, the expressions, the theological angst, the grief angst, the worry angst, when you hear the agony of paradox on the cross, my
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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Has there ever been a higher paradox than that? Hear the agony of grief.
01:06:46
If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, he cries. And he carries this. You could suggest that Jesus didn't face worry or struggle with worry the way that we do because he already knew everything so he didn't have to worry about like the contingency tree and trace it all out.
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I would argue on the contrary. When you and I are chasing that contingency tree, we're worrying that maybe the worst possible outcome would be realized, right?
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And so we're gonna explore all the possibilities to make sure that that bad outcome doesn't happen. Jesus knew exactly and for certainty his outcome.
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He knew that the worst possible outcome was his. The sins of the world laid on him, crushed under the just wrath of the father.
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He knew it would happen. Rather than worry, he just knows there can be no worse tragedy and it's his.
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And Jesus embraces that. Jesus entrusts himself to the care of the father.
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Remember Jesus' last words? Jesus called out with a loud voice, father into your hands
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I commit my spirit having said this he breathed this last. He calmed, he quieted his heart and he gave himself over to the righteous wrath and the deliverance of the father.
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Jesus the Christ, the eternal son of God humbled himself to the depths. He entrusted himself to the father,
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Philippians 2. God raised him up, gave him a name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that he is
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Lord to the glory of God the father. And then Jesus turns to us his little children. And he doesn't exactly promise that he will take away the struggle or make our lives nice without any problems in them.
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He does the opposite actually. He calls us to be like him. Take up your cross and follow me. In good faithful Christianity you'll feel that struggle.
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When your soul cries out and you feel like a hungry baby with face scrunched up and every passing second feels like an agony
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Jesus says to them let the children come to me. Whoever comes like a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven
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Jesus says. You feel, if you could look into your own face haha
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I'm the hungry child. Yeah, come like that. And to those who come with that humility
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Jesus says come to me all who labor and are heavy laden I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you learn from me
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I am gentle lowly in heart you will find rest for your souls. Rest for a weary soul calmed and quieted like a weaned child with its mother.
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My yoke is easy Jesus said. My burden is light. Come to Jesus. Come to the one who himself exemplifies this kind of trust.
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Wait on him. And in Jesus alone you can find rest. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.
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If you would like to keep up with us you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our
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Instagram at Grace Church Y -E -G all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca