Psalm 131 — Mack Tomlinson

Well, it is good to be back. Philip Neely and his wife Christa will be here, Lord willing, in three weeks. And they send their greetings and they're looking forward to time with different ones and to worship with you.

Pride’s Consequences and the Call to Humility

I want to read a couple of passages. You can turn with me to them. One's in Proverbs 16 and then Psalm 131. Proverbs 16. You know, Proverbs always has these contrasts. The righteous and the wicked, the fool and the wise.

And here's one, Proverbs 16, 18 and 19. I want you to hear this this morning because what I'm going to speak about today 100 applies to you. And if you don't know who you is, it's you. It's the least among us, though they're not going to hear yet, to the young people, to the oldest among us.

And I guess, sadly, that's me. Seriously, that's me probably. But this 100 applies to you. So I want you to hear as if God is speaking specifically to you because everything I'm going to say does apply to us individually.

Proverbs 16, 18 and 19. Pride goes before destruction. And a haughty spirit, a prideful spirit, before a fall. Now, destruction there doesn't mean just sudden death. It means failure. It means defeat.

It means bad consequences because pride led a person to act in such a way and then it was not good, the outcome. A broken relationship, real consequences of wrong choices. So pride goes before destruction.

And a haughty spirit, an arrogant, prideful spirit, before a fall. Better to be of a what? Humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud. And then Psalm 131, which is really our text today.

David’s Autobiographical Psalm of Humility

Psalm 131, the second shortest chapter in the Bible. Who remembers what the shortest chapter is? Anybody? 117. Well, Psalm 131, three verses, 61 words, depending on your translation probably. Psalm 131, this is an autobiography of David.

Now, what's an autobiography? First of all, what's a biography? Before we adults answer it, I want all the young people at least have a chance to think if they get it right. A biography is something written about somebody else.

What's an autobiography? It's when you're writing about yourself. Okay? So this is an autobiographical psalm that David's writing about himself. But it's also a prayer. So let's read it. Psalm 131, Lord, my heart is not haughty, same thing as proud, nor are my eyes lofty.

What would be lofty eyes? It's somebody thinking in their mind, look what I could become. I see greatness. I envision fame, fortune, my eyes being lofty. David says, My heart is not haughty, nor are my eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great manners, or in things too high for me.

So the first half of the verse is what he was. He's not proud and arrogant, and his eyes aren't lofty. The second half is how he acted. I'm not exercising myself in great matters or things too high for me.

Surely, I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned from its mother. My soul is even like a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever. I want to speak to us this morning on attaining, cultivating and attaining humility, and killing pride.

Pride as a Spiritual Danger

It was pride that got Satan kicked out of heaven. And it is pride that will keep us out of heaven. And it is pride that will put a person ultimately in hell. They can be a good citizen. They can be outwardly honest.

They can be a church member. They can be a lot of things. But pride, when it rules in a person's life, will send them to hell. So, picture yourself saying to someone, my heart's not proud. Well, doesn't that make you proud automatically?

Can you say before the Lord, my heart is not proud? See, every one of us are either basically controlled by pride, or we're controlled by humility. We're either dominated by pride, or we're dominated basically by humility, by God's grace.

If someone had to characterize you, would they say, well, he's a humble person. She's a humble lady. She's a humble girl. Or he's a proud, arrogant person. She's a proud woman. Beside this psalm, I recently wrote in the margin of my Bible these words.

It takes real grace to have what's in this psalm. Short psalm that, as Spurgeon said, reaches great heights. He said this psalm is a short letter that reaches great heights. A person who comes to the place that they really are a humble person, they're not acting.

You know, you can't fake humility very long, because faking it means you're a proud person, and you're trying to act what is not really true. Imagine James Boyce, James Montgomery Boyce, who pastored in Philadelphia for so long.

He said, imagine living with Jesus for three years, the disciples, right? Imagine living with Jesus for three years, and still wanting to be important yourself, instead of just letting Jesus be important.

Remember at the end of three years though, he's heading toward Jerusalem, and what are they conversing about? Who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom? They even get mad at each other. So, see, it's astounding that they were so clueless, and not at all on the same page, even after three years of walking with the Lord, being with Him.

Our being self-important or significant is of zero importance. I had a guy criticize my book on Leonard Ravenhill, and he said that it didn't talk near enough about the Holy Spirit. Well, my mind started going, did you really read it?

You want to talk about it? And then I realized my thoughts and my responses were being driven by what? Pride. Temptation to pride. So I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I hope the book somehow helped him.

Pride controls and drives and motivates so much more in our lives than we realize. And we are increasingly either, only a true Christian has true humility. If you're not a Christian, you're controlled by pride.

And that pride will certainly, for sure, put you in hell unless you come to Jesus Christ. Our being significant and important is of zero importance, but Christ being significantly important is of supreme importance.

So that's what this psalm is about. Three verses, 61 words. If you are a reader of the psalms, have you ever read this psalm and it struck you what he's actually saying here? He's saying, I don't have a proud heart.

And he's writing under the inspiration of the Spirit. It wasn't false humility. It was actually true. David had been brought to the place by God's grace and by the Holy Spirit that whatever problems he had, he had some, didn't he?

Lust, anger. He was up and down emotionally. He was quick to react at times. But whatever problems he had, the more he grew in the years past, he wasn't controlled by pride. So we're going to think about that a little more as we go.

But I want you today and me to see ourselves in this psalm and to honestly face the reality, Lord, what do I take pride in? And I need to be honest about it. And I need to repent of that. Pride is blinding and it's binding.

If pride in areas blinds us, it will bind us. It'll put us in bondage in those areas and we'll deceive ourselves and we won't even realize what's happening. This psalm is easy to read, but it has very deep reality to experience.

While it's one of the simplest of all psalms, it's almost insignificant. You can read it and you're done quickly. And the power of what's really there hasn't affected you. It is an intimate, personal, present tense testimony of David.

No psalm is more personal and deep as far as inward Christian experience. Because you might not be in a public ministry. You might not be in a position of power or influence. You might not be well known.

You might not have outward gifts where people say, man, they really are good at this or that. There might not be anything outward that marks a person's life as being something to be proud of. But if they have in their hearts a humble spirit and they just walk with God, that's in the sight of God most precious.

That's the most important thing. So let's kind of stroll through this psalm briefly. Stay with me and let's let it minister to us. David is giving us a glimpse into the state of his heart. He's doing open heart surgery on himself and letting us look and see actually what's in there.

This is a deep experience that David has cultivated by God's grace where he's walking in freedom from pride as a pattern of his life. Now, does that mean he never battled pride anymore? No. Does that mean he didn't have hiccups and speed bumps?

Where pride, obviously it did. But sometimes we think, even as a Christian, you know, we have this picture of Christians, pride being the prevailing thing and they're always being overcome by it. And then they have these moments of humility and then it's a pattern of pride again.

It ought to be the other way around. Our life ought to be marked by humility and we have these moments of pride that we repent of and then we're on the path of humility again. And only the Holy Spirit can produce this in you.

We can't work it up. We can't fake it. And we're in great need of it. So, that's what's here, a truly humble believer. Now, you look at the psalm before it, Psalm 130, that's a psalm of forgiveness. But Psalm 131 is a psalm of humility.

And think about this when you compare Old and New Testament. Psalm 131 is a perfect commentary on Matthew 5, 6, which says, blessed are the poor in spirit. This psalm is a commentary on what Jesus said, the blessedness of the true Christian is one who is poor in spirit.

Humility as the Normative Christian Life

Now, I want you to picture this. What if the truth of Psalm 131 was truly in your life? Regularly. Do you have this in your heart in life? A humble spirit, a humble heart. You don't glory in what you've accomplished.

You don't glory and take pride in what you know. You don't glory in who you know. I had somebody recently somewhere I met and they started talking about Lynn or Ravenhill. They didn't know me. And well, I could have made them be impressed with me.

I said, yeah, I wrote the book. But I wasn't going to do that. So, I let it pass. There's so much opportunity for us to give into pride. And so, what do we glory in? Do we take pride in accomplishments?

Do we take pride in our children? Do we take pride in who we know, who we've met, what we've done, what we've accomplished? We sing the song in Christ alone and one stanza in it is, no guilt in life, no fear in death.

How about no pride controlling me? That'd be a good thing to add to it. I don't think it'd work with the music. But humility is rare. It's important. It's essential. It's attractive. And it's fragrant.

What's in these three brief verses? It's marked by a tone of simplicity and even childlikeness. David says, I am like a weaned child. When's the last time you ever saw yourself that way? We don't. I'm strong.

I'm mature. I'm knowledgeable. I'm intelligent. I'm this, I'm that. We don't say, I'm like a weaned child. I've been weaned and I'm content and I'm satisfied. So, when did you and I last say, I am like a child spiritually and I don't have a proud heart?

Here's David saying he has a consistent humble heart that's not proud and eyes, what he sees, that aren't ego driven. So, let's think about this. This Psalm, I want you to notice, have it before you, says there are three things that were not representative of David's life as a rule or pattern.

In other words, whatever he was, he's not like this now. Number one, a proud man, dominated by pride. Number two, an ambitious man, dominated by carnal ambition, lofty eyes. Number three, an intellectually high-minded, arrogant person, dominated by high thoughts, strong opinions, not thinking we're a know-it-all, but sometimes having that spirit about us and we want to one-up everybody that we think is wrong in what they're saying.

He was not a proud man. He was not an ambitious man. He was not an intellectually high-minded, arrogant man. Meaning, David wasn't trying to be a big shot or trying to be important. That's what was in his heart.

Remarkably, the greatest king in Israel's history could say this. That's unbelievable. He didn't think he was right all the time. Do you? Do I? He was not dogmatically opinionated about everything. Am I?

Are you? There are three things in verse one. Look at it there. Three things in verse one. My heart's not haughty, my eyes aren't lofty, and I don't exercise myself in great matters or things too lofty.

Three things in verse one. There's one thing in verse two. I have behaved and quieted myself like a weaned child. And there's one exhortation and application in verse three. Let Israel, let the child of God, hope in the Lord.

In the context of pride and humility, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Let him who has any glory or pride, let it be in the cross. Let it be alien outside of themselves. Let Israel hope in the Lord from this moment and forever.

Humility Begins in the Heart

Number one, humility is what David was inwardly. Verse one. My heart is not lifted up, my eyes aren't raised too high. This is completely inward in the heart, unseen, invisible, except to God. But it manifests itself outwardly in his life and conduct.

Pride makes a person speak and act in a certain way. You can see pride. In fact, scripture says the wicked pride is around their life like a necklace. Remember sometimes it says that? So is humility. Be clothed with what?

Humility. So it's completely in the heart. As Psalm 51 says, wisdom in the secret heart. This is an inner heart change. What David is actually claiming here and affirms by the Holy Spirit is amazing. I'm not a proud person anymore.

If pride ever dominated in my life, that has been overcome by the work of God's Spirit and God's grace. Pride doesn't rule or control or drive my heart anymore. Deuteronomy 8 says this, God said to Israel, So he humbled you that he might make known to you that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

God humbles us. He brings us through hard things. He brings us through humiliating experiences. He lets us stump our toe, spiritually speaking. And we realize we're not what we thought. And others realize we're not how we presented ourselves to be.

Now, it's normal to think if you think you're humble, if a person thinks they're humble, that means they're not. But not according to this Psalm, if it's real. One time Muhammad Ali was flying on an airplane.

You may have heard this. I think it's a true story. And the flight attendant comes by and says, Sir, would you please buckle your seat belt? And he said, Superman don't need no seat belt. She said, Superman doesn't need an airplane.

Buckle your seat belt. So if you think you're great, you're probably not. But if God has worked humility in your heart, by God's grace, we should recognize it and be thankful for it and ask for more. But to say it out loud, like David said here, isn't that prideful?

It seemed like it. I mean, would you write a book, Humility and How I Attained It? And it's a bestseller, so you write another one, The Ten Most Humble People in the World and How I Trained the Other Nine.

I mean, if you brag about humility, or you even state it, or you think God's working humility in me, is that pride? No, not according to this psalm. If a man is truly humble, can he recognize it? Can he acknowledge it?

Well, David did here. He said, my heart is, present tense, not being dominated by pride. He didn't say, I'm sinlessly perfect and I never battle pride. But he said, pride is not the dominant factor in my life anymore.

If pride has dominated me in the past, it's not doing so now. If it has filled my eyes and my heart and driven my heart to ambition for self, it's not doing that now. Humility was cultivated by David.

And it's to be cultivated by you and I. You and I as believers can progressively move into becoming more and more of a humble person. Cultivating humility, living that way. It can become a mark of our life the way it was David's life.

David was not, he was an unpretentious man. What does unpretentious mean? Alexander, do you know what that means? Yeah, he was not pretentious. What does it mean to be pretentious? It's okay if you don't have it.

I had to look it up too when I was meditating on this a while back. Unpretentious means you're not attempting to impress others with the appearance of importance or being smart or being spiritual. You're not trying to impress others.

Free from motives to impress others, to be great or to be known. A close reading of David's life. Now, track with me here because I'm not going to speak long, but I want this to settle in on us. A close reading of David's life.

When you read 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles. Is that the right chronology of David? Samuel. Samuel. You read his life and you see he wasn't dominated by self-importance and pride. As I said, passionate times, anger at times, impulsiveness.

Yeah, but not predominantly by pride. In Scripture, this is quite significant. I studied this out one time. In Scripture, every time someone who was proud humbled themselves, God acted in mercy toward them.

But every time a person would not stop their pride and would not repent, God judged them every single time. Even Ahab and Nebuchadnezzar, and I think it was either Jeroboam or Rehoboam. Wicked kings, when they humbled themselves, God extended mercy to them.

He didn't do to them what He was going to do to them. Evidence of David's active humility. Just canvas this with me. Remember, he was a warring king, but he did not greedily aspire to greatness by attacking other nations.

All of his wars were defensive in nature to protect Israel. He was being a shepherd as the king of Israel. All of his wars were to protect Israel when they were attacked. Remember, he did not kill Saul and seize the throne when he could have.

He waited how many years? Twenty years. Even after Samuel anointed him, he waited for God to fulfill his promise to make him king. And for ten years, he had to run from Saul and didn't raise his hand against him when he could have killed him twice.

Remember, he wouldn't do it. When Shimei, little pipsqueak Shimei, comes out throwing dirt at him and cursing him, and one of David's guys wants to take his head off, David said, no, let him alone. God's letting him do it.

When David fled before Absalom's young gang who was chasing him, David cared more for his son than his insulted authority. When David in anger was coming to wipe out wicked Nabal in his house, he gained self-control through Abigail's intercession.

He stopped himself from doing what he would have done. And he humbled himself not to do it. When religious Michal, his wife, got angry about David dancing before the Lord with all his might, David said, I think I'll do it some more.

Now, he showed a noble humility and did not quench the Spirit rather than preserving his royal dignity. She was embarrassed because he was the king. And she said, you should not act like that. You're the king.

Well, he could have chosen his royal dignity for his reputation or to worship God. And he chose to worship God. He showed a noble humility. Now, he had his faults, but those faults were not primarily self-centeredness, egotism, and ambition.

Who among us can say, Lord, my heart is not proud? David could, and it was true. Secondly, not only humility, he says, no carnal ambition beyond what I'm truly supposed to be. In the text, he says, my eyes are not lofty, I'm not exercising myself in great matters, but things to eye for me.

Rejecting Carnal Ambition

My parents died by the time I was eight, and my father owned a ranch, and it was sold, and it was saved for my sister and I, our future education. So I was blessed to go to college. And so I've often thought, I should have gone to Yale.

I could have come out east. No, I wasn't smart enough. I went to a Baptist university in Texas, barely made it through. Flunked college algebra one and had to take it over. I saw a t-shirt in the Yale bookstore this week, it said, math is hard, so is life, get over it.

Well, David did not have carnal ambition. To be great. First, no proud heart. He came to a place where he did really have walk in humility, and he was not dominated by pride. Secondly, he was not motivated and dominated by carnal ambition.

I want to be great. I can become great. I'll make myself great. I'll step over people, I'll climb the ladder, and I'll become great. It doesn't matter who I hurt, it doesn't matter who I manipulate. This has to do with high-minded conceit.

I think I'm great. As somebody said about one arrogant person, he's a legend in his own mind. You've heard that, right? It's true. Self-importance in our own mind. Scripture says, I think of Jeremiah, seekest thou great things for thyself?

Seek them not. Now, David didn't seek a high position. God put him in a high position, and that's a completely different thing. But here's the current view. Let no one ever tell you you can't accomplish all your dreams.

You can be a famous person. Go for fame. Run for the governor of Maine and then the presidency. The sky's the limit. Nothing can ever hold you back from what you can envision and you can work for and you can accomplish it.

Well, no. We can accomplish and become within the realm of our giftings what God has gifted us for. And we can become what God wants us to become. And nothing else. Nothing beyond that. Lofty eyes. David said, I don't have them anymore.

My eyes, what I envision, what I want, what I want to pursue, have been mortified, have been changed, have been sanctified. I'm not now trying to be anybody important. I'm content with who I am. It took me 20 years to become satisfied in the ministry, to become content with me and not wanting to preach like someone else.

And when God did that for me and He set me free of comparing myself with others, trying to be like others, it brought me into liberty and freedom. Now that's applicable in life to anything. Not trying to be anybody important.

Human high-minded intellectual self-ambition, being something great, accomplishing something big, having position so you get your identity from that position or that title or that job. H .C. Leupold, L-E-U-P-O-L-D, wrote the best commentary there is on the Psalms.

It's big, but it's the best in my opinion. He said this about David, there may have been a time when great plans and ambitions surged through David's heart and drove him down the road of ambition, but he exited that road.

And he never got on it again. He came to see it was wrong to seek great things for himself. David stopped aiming for fame. And this whole world is insane with aiming for fame. What do you want to do? I want to be a successful blogger.

I want to be an actor. I want to be a singer. I want to get on The Voice. I want to get on American Idol. Aiming for fame rather than letting God make you into what He wants you to be. Therein is real purpose and peace and joy and fulfillment.

You and I don't have to be somebody God hadn't made us to be. Now consider the second half of verse 1. Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or things too high for me. You think anyone does that on social media?

Ever? In the 1980s, soon after we moved to Denton, I decided I would take a graduate level history of philosophy course. And I thought, I can get through this. Well, there are 80 in the class and after a week, there were eight in the class I think.

It was tough going. I said, I'm not quitting. I'm going to make it through this course. I mean, you know, the professor would say, tomorrow I want you all to be able, if I call on you, to stand up and summarize Spinoza's philosophy of God.

Oh boy, I don't know if I can do this. I said, I'm going to learn. I'm going to stick in this class. Well, what? The professor was a very gracious humanist. And he said one time, as he was going through the medieval times, he said, Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation was the greatest tragedy in all of history.

So he's lecturing along, you know. So, well, what if that professor had said to me, Mr. Tomlinson, listen, I've had a death in the family and all my graders are filling in classes. I don't have anyone to do tomorrow's lecture.

And I've got to look, you're older than these other kids. So would you lecture tomorrow on Aquinas's philosophy? Think that'd be a smart thing for me to do? No. It would have been foolish. Several weeks ago, a friend of mine called me.

He said, Mac, he wasn't in our church. He said, could I come by and let you teach me Revelation 8? And I said, why? He said, because our Sunday school teacher asked me to fill in and I've got to teach Revelation 8.

And I said, no, I won't do it. And we're real close. We've been friends 35 years. And he said, huh, why? I said, because you don't need to do that. You don't have a clue what Revelation's about. And if you're wanting me to come by and give you the cliff notes, you'll make a fool of yourself.

You'll be embarrassed and you'll be discouraged. They shouldn't have done that to you. Don't do it. And he listened to me. He turned them down. When we're not ready or equipped or have what it takes to do something, we should not have lofty ambitions.

David wasn't ready to be king when Samuel anointed him, was he? He had to be prepared. He would have been trying to do what was beyond his experience, beyond his ability, beyond his calling and his giftedness.

Now this is profound when he says, I don't exercise myself in things too high for me. He had a real view of himself and he was saying, I'm not going to try to do what's beyond my experience, beyond my ability, beyond my calling and my giftedness.

Proverbs 16, Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be with the lowly than to even gain the riches and the spoils with the proud. Well, let me hurry on. I don't exercise myself in things too lofty.

What are things that are really lofty to the Lord that we ought to exercise ourselves in? Loving our wives and our children as men, loving the brethren, being faithful, cultivating faithfulness, staying in the Scriptures, walking with God, being a humble, faithful servant in our church.

That's the big stuff in God's eyes that He wants us to cultivate and be about. Now, it's not sinful to hold a position in ministry or public service, but God should put a person there and a person not seek it themselves.

Let each of us beware of carnal ambition. Self-control and self-humility are great attainments and must be sought diligently and earnestly. Blessed is the one who has become a weaned child. Somebody said, great men never think they're great and small men never think they're small.

What do we think of ourselves? Elisha Cole said, it's one of the hardest matters under the sun to become truly nothing in our eyes. I'm not talking about putting yourself down and I'm only a wretched person, that's all I am and I can't do anything.

No, I'm not talking about carnal putting oneself down, but accurate recognition that we are what we are by the grace of God. Now, let's hurry on. Verse 2, how did this happen to David? How did he get from being a proud, ambitious man possibly?

Quieting the Soul and Mortifying Pride

How did he get from A to B? How did he get from being proud to humble? Verse 2 is the process. Notice the language. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself. This is language of him taking himself in his mind and his heart by the collar and saying, stop it, fool.

Calm down, boy. You're not who you think you are. Quit. Stop doing that. I calmed myself. Literally, I settled myself down. He said things in his mind like, relax, let's just think about this more. You're really not as great as your ambition is driving you.

This reflects a possible long conflict and a process of his having to mortify his thoughts about self-greatness. I'm not going to pursue that. Verse 2 is how he grew to possess this reality and achieve this humility.

He said, I have behaved myself. I've quieted myself. He stilled his soul. And he hushed himself. Well, I could do this. I could be that. No. Not going to go there. He put to death selfish ambition. It was a weaning process.

That's why he uses this picture of a mother with a baby. You know, when a baby starts getting weaned, some of them will throw a fit, right? And it's hard for them to stop nursing. But once they get weaned, they're contented then with their presence.

They're not throwing fits. They're not always... No, they become more controlled. I've weaned myself. So, we have to wean our hearts from self-centeredness and desires for greatness. Verse 3 then, the humble man's exhortation.

Look at this. He says, let Israel hope in the Lord. In the context of pride and ambition and accomplishment or humility, there's only one thing to hope in. That's the Lord Himself. Not anything about us.

Our hope is alien outside of ourselves. It's in Christ alone. We sang that Christ is sure and steady anchor. He's not only the anchor. He's the ship. He's the sails. He's the wind in the sails. He's the water that carries us.

He's everything. And so, we must hope in Him. Regardless of our view of ourselves, our ambitions, our desires, the battle with pride, we must focus on Him. Looking away to Him. This is an all-inclusive exhortation.

Pride, not before God. Let all your glory be in Him. He gets the credit for everything. Without Him, we can do nothing. Lofty self-ambitions. Let our goals and our gifts and our ministry and our future and our longings all be from Him, of Him, through Him, for Him, to Him, by Him.

Hope in the Lord. Now, let's apply this as we close. Think of the ambitious pride and desire. This world pushes people to be heard and noticed. And what if every Christian, every preacher, teacher, every apologist, every blogger, every Facebook friend, every opinion expresser on social media would take this psalm to heart and live it?

Humility in Speech, Relationships, and Church Culture

Be a lot less things posted. A lot less things said. Prideful words, not mortified, has destroyed relationships, destroyed families. I've seen Facebook stuff happen. I'm not on Facebook, but Linda is, and she'll say, I can't believe this person posted this.

And then there's a family fight between them. And then they're alienated. The words of our mouth, snared by the words of our mouth. One of the most fearful verses in the Bible to me is, I've said this here before I think, every one of us will give account for every idle word we've spoken.

Makes me shudder. The internet would be far less war of words if Christians would just believe and apply Psalm 131. Far less war of words, far less contentious dialogue, disagreements, relationships damaged.

Solomon says, the fool utters all his heart. If you have even the passing thought, I probably shouldn't say this, don't. We must learn to control and stand down with our drive to express our views, correct everybody, get angry at people we've never met.

Alistair Begg told a story last summer, this past summer when I heard him preach, about how our words affect people around us, and we don't even realize it. So he preaches, his family is going home, and his children are in the back seat, and this guy cuts him off on the road.

And Alistair has a harsh word for him, idiot. And then the guy keeps driving bad. They're still driving down the freeway together. And so he keeps commenting on the guy's driving, and it gets stronger.

And finally, the person exits, and Alistair has one final, strong criticism of the driver. And then he hears a voice in the back seat, and there's another kind word from our pastor. And he probably hung his head over the steering wheel, out of the mouth of babes.

Thou hast perfected praise and wisdom. Our words do more damage because of a prideful heart than anything else in our lives. If we're marked by anything, we ought to be marked by humility, and the ability to control our words, and not say everything that comes to our mind.

Christ as the Supreme Example of Humility

Final thought. Humility, like with David, must be cultivated by daily choices. Regularly, quietly, with wisdom in our hearts. Say no to prideful thoughts. Say no to lofty eyes, high ambitions. Stop calling attention to ourselves.

Stop having self-exalting goals. Learn to hush our hearts regularly. Humility is not to be a momentary victory at times, in a life governed normally by pride. Humility is to be the normative way we live.