Please turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 131. Last week we looked at Psalm 130. Now just the next one, Psalm 131. Short, but profound, Psalm. Page 519, if you're following along in the Pew Bible, we're in a series called Trusting God. And so we have a picture of someone trusting God. This is what it looks like. Psalm 131. 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. But I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Oh Israel, hoping the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you're the master and king of this whole universe. But you're also the master and king of our souls, the Lord of our souls. You came in this world and you spoke the gospel. You preached the good news, the kingdom. And Lord, we definitely need to hear that good news today. We need to be liberated once again from a sense of shame and guilt. So many of us need to be encouraged with the hope of the gospel and the future of the restoration of all things. Lord, those who are ill or facing great illness or great difficulty in their life or families that are struggling. Lord, I pray that you minister to your people, that you would draw them close to yourself and that they would see your heart for them. And see your plan is perfect. And that all things work together for good for them, for those who know you, who are called according to your purpose and love you. So bless your people now, Lord Jesus. And your name we pray. I'm in. I've meditated on this song more than any other passage of scripture in the last several years, maybe no longer. I'm just so amazed by it. What does it mean to say that your soul is like a child? That's what he's saying. And he says it twice, just like in the song last week, if you remember, when we talked about the watchman waiting for the morning, that it's repeated for emphasis. In other words, this is what this song means. This is what it means. The soul is like a waned child, fascinated by that. That this was King David speaking. The most powerful man in the kingdom, comparing his soul to a waned child. So we're talking about trusting God. We look the first week about what does it mean to trust it? What does that look like? It's not trusting me. We said it means to lean on the God and his promises because of his character, because of his hesed. Now we ask, is God trustworthy? We look at God's sovereignty and his love and his promise. And last week, we looked at the reality of our guilt. Can I trust God with my guilt? All of us that have come to know Jesus. We know that we are guilty and we need forgiveness. Can we really trust that God really accepts us and we talked about the gospel of Jesus? But this week, we get a portrait of someone who trusts, we get two pictures. The first point of our sermon today is trusting in self. And the second point of our sermon is trusting in God. See, the Bible really clears things up for us. And it can just go right to the heart of things. There really are two options in this world. There is the city of man that is built on self and the trust of self and the promotion of self. And dealing with the world based on self. Or there is the city of God. Those who are in the second atom, Jesus Christ, trusting God. There really are two, there are only two different options. So that's what we are going to look at the contrast between those two things. This David has experienced the forgiveness of God in Psalm 130. That clearly, these are two connected Psalms, even though the last one is not attributed to David. They are intended to be connected because of that same refrain. Oh, Israel, hope in the Lord, that same chorus is repeated. So Psalm 130 is about someone who has really blown it. Someone who has realized that they are sinful who cannot stand before God. But with God there is forgiveness. Now he is saying, God has humbled me. And now I don't want to trust in myself. Now I have been humbled and I want to trust in God. So if you are here today and you used to say what it looks like for someone to trust God. Listen to this sermon. Listen to this sermon. Let's look at our first point. Trusting self. Really simple outline. Trusting self. Point one. Trusting God. Point two. And then we'll have the obligatory, so what at the end? Point one. Trusting self. What does that mean? Why do we trust self? You don't have to teach someone how to trust in themselves. It's natural. It's because of pride. Humanity has been turned inward. That's the way Luther defines sin one time. He said that it's man turned in on himself. And so that's the nature of pride or is one scholar said that the essence of sin is autonomy. It's the most natural thing to us. To be self-centered, to be selfish, all those different things. But the essence of sin, to boil sin down, is a heart of autonomy or self-rule. And so what he's describing here in this first verse of this song is where God has taken him from being someone who is self-reliant to someone who is being God reliant. And he describes the self-reliant person. He describes the pride that we all experience. How we are inwardly turned. Look what he says. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things that are too great for me. We know all throughout scripture, even in our call to worship, there is this contrast between the high and holy God and His presence with those who are lowly. We see all throughout scripture too that God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. That God observes the proud from afar off. He has no relationship with the proud. In fact, His justice will come against the proud. But He gives grace to the humble. But here, David is describing who we are by nature. We trust in ourselves. He first says, my heart. My heart, Lord, is not lifted up because a heart lifted up is a heart of pride. That's what it means in Hebrew scriptures. It's a heart of presumption. The heart is the center of the person. You do what you do because your heart wants to. Your heart drives you. Your heart encompasses your will and your mind and your emotions. Your heart explains why you do what you do. And the heart of pride trusting in self is a heart that is high and lifted up. It's a heart in the Bible is also equated with foolishness. A heart that is full of itself is foolish, is wicked and foolish. But He says also, my eyes are not raised too high. So He's gone from a place where his heart had been lifted up. Now, his heart has been humbled and his eyes are not raised too high. What does that mean? The eyes in the Hebrew scriptures and the Old Testament, the eyes were the mirror of the human. In other words, what's going on in your heart is revealed in the way you see things. The way that you look at the world. The eyes were used to express character and attitude and inclination and opinion and passion and response to things. Your eyes reveal what's actually inside of you. That's used figuratively like that. And so here we say, at my core, the human person has a heart that is full of itself that is lifted up towards God and it looks down on others. So your pride not only affects your relationship with God, which is primary, you see yourself as either equal to God or not needing God, but your eyes are affected. The way you see the world is affected. And so you begin to see people as objects. And we see this in David and Meshiba. See, David is describing who he had been. See, our pride makes us see people as a means to our own happiness and fulfillment. That's pride. Rather than seeing people created in God's image that deserve to be loved just like we need love, but it sees people as like he saw David, as David saw Meshiba bathing on the roof. He saw her as an object. His heart and his eyes were lifted up and he says, I want that. We see Peter's heart and his eyes lifted up all throughout the gospels as Jesus is lovingly but persistently pursuing him. Peter did not know who he was. He saw himself as being an equal with Jesus. He saw himself as being better than the other apostles. His eyes were lifted up, his heart was raised too high until Jesus finally revealed just like Psalm 130. He revealed his guilt. He revealed his need and his truth with laid bare. Then our Psalmist says that he does not occupy himself with matters too great because the nature of pride is to occupy the mind and the heart with matters that are beyond our control, that's what he means. And it's a heart that's filled with ambition. Now ambition is, it's good in a lot of ways to be ambitious and to be hard-working. But he's talking about the kind of ambition that seeks to control the world by propping the self up, using success as a way of feeling autonomy. You see, the things that are too marvelous for me, things that are beyond my reach, beyond my capability. Did I just describe you? Did I just describe to me how often I see in my heart is this attempt that I'm so, so set on controlling my world. And that is all about the Sid nature that is so full of autonomy, self-reliance, and control. Do you know why you sin? The reason you sin is because you want to deal with the world that is cold and hard in me. You see, Larry Krab puts it so perfectly. Larry Krab, a counselor, Christian counselor, he wrote a book called Inside Out Years and Years ago. It's a fascinating book. One thing he says, he says, this image bears, we're designed to enjoy God in everything he has made. We are thirsty people who long for what was lost in the fall. As fallen people, we have declared our intention to find life apart from God and we devise foolish, ineffective, immoral strategies to provide for our own satisfaction. We don't trust God. We trust ourselves, and that is what pride means. This world is scary. This world is way beyond our control. This world is mean. Some of you have been mistreated by your family. Some of you experienced abuse in this world. Profound, pain, betrayal. Some of you have lost your mom and your dad too early. Some of you have lost a spouse. Some of you have been betrayed by your spouse. Some of you have wayward children who want nothing to do with Christ or church. Some of you have lost your job. Some of you have been really disappointed. Now, how do I trust God now? Preacher, and here's what pride in autonomy does. I want to deal with a world that hurts me on my own terms. I want to deal with a world that hurts me on my own terms. I want to build a refuge in a place of protection in my job, in maybe my religious performance. I want to build a hedge of protection in my hobbies, in my anything that makes me escape. I want to build a hedge of protection in the way that I pour into and obsess over my children. I want to build a hedge of protection by having the nicest house folks. In other words, your soul is doing something that you're not aware of. It's trying to answer the ultimate eternal questions by filling itself up with stuff in this world that we look as fallen people. We've declared our intention to live life apart from God. And here's simply what I'm asking you as we come to our second point. How are you doing that in your life? How are you dealing with the reality, the inevitability of relational pain? Sorry folks, if you're in this world, you can try to cut yourself off from people relational pain is inevitable. What are you doing in your life? What are those things? Maybe they're great addictions. See where I'm like Presbyterians? Maybe you have good addictions to deal with relational pain, right? What a second. I have four Bible studies. I had someone tell me years ago. I'm in four Bible studies. I said repent. I mean, I've just got these Bible studies. I'm just saying, no, I'm just in a room. That's great. You need to be in a Bible study. If you're not in a Bible study, you need to get in a Bible study. But if you're in four Bible studies, maybe you're just trying to push back the world and live in Lala land. I understand that. Maybe you're doing that. Maybe you have to have a drink at night. Like if you don't have a drink, in other words, in other words, and by the way, we're Presbyterians, wink, wink. But drinks, or you enjoy it. All the wonderful things that God gives, right? But if you have to have it, why? And then we come to point number two. David says, I can't control the world. I can't control pain. I can't fix myself. If King David couldn't fix himself, can you? And so he gives us this picture, this beautiful, this profound, holy spirit-inspired picture of someone, what it means to trust a God in a world you can't control. My soul, like a ween child, he talks about his soul. Why is it important? Language is important, especially in the Bible. You look at language. Why is it important? Words are important. Soul includes the heart. Soul includes the eyes. Soul includes the mind. The soul is the organizer of all those things. He said, my soul. The essence of who I am. Like a ween child. My entirety. Here's what he's saying. I've taken my soul into my hands. My soul into my hands. And I've calmed and quieted. My soul. Is this a God to my... Is this a God to my pain away?
If you're using Christianity to take your pain away, you're going to be really disappointed. So let's look at this image. It's just so amazing. It's just so profound. This image of a soul as a ween child. What is a ween child? I have to really think about that. A ween child. I'm not a mother. I'm a husband. I've seen ween children. I've seen them. But I don't actually think about a baby for a second before the baby is ween. Before he's ween. Here's what you have. When this baby is born, you have this really cute and really mad little creature. Right? And the reason he's mad, she's mad is you've taken them from paradise. What if you've ruined this child's life? From paradise, which is the most amazing experience ever. You think like, you know, your football chair, your couch watching thing with your tea remote is great. Can you imagine having all your food, your place to sleep all right there with this just perfectly, just wonderful little weird environment that you're in. Right? And that's all you know. From your smallest, when you first started form memories, that's all you knew. Just boom, boom, boom. You're just a creature. And then you're out and it's cold. It's loud. Who are these people? It's how they're really mad. It's how you bring a child home. They stay mad at you for months. But there's one thing. There's one thing that that baby has that's a little taste of the old world. And that's his mother's milk. That one little thing. And that one thing, it's all it really, it's kind of, is it not the only thing that makes a baby happy? But did you take that problem? To see what happens? What happens? The process of winning a child, you get another mad child again. To win a child from his mother's milk to begin to give him different food. It's a painful process. But here's what happens. Eventually, this child becomes content to have his mother. Just to have her. It's like the child saying this. I don't know about this place. I don't know about these people. I'm not really thrilled that you've removed this form of feeding. I'm very upset. I don't like that. I don't know about all that. You know what? I have you. I have you. You will take care of me. I trust you. I have a world that I cannot control. A world that dwarfs me. And I have you. Now you see what he means? David had a lot of kids. He wasn't a great dad, by the way. But he had a lot of kids. He saw this play over and over again. And he looked at his life, and he said, that's what you've made my soul to be like. You see, the world is beyond our control. Terrible things happen. But my soul is weaned. My soul is like a weaned child. And the beauty of this picture, it goes along with all of Scripture's teaching, of those who will enter the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 18. Who is the greatest of the kingdom of heaven, the disciples asked Jesus. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a little child, he put them in the midst of them. And he said, truly, I say to you, unless you turn, and become like this little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus is saying something to us. A weaned child having a soul like a weaned child this morning is how we were created to be. And it's begun in our soul. You were created. Folks, this sounds so opposite from the gospel of America. Which is all about independence. And it's about self-reliance. And it's about ambition. And it's about who matters most. And it's about winning. That's the gospel that you and I have heard our entire lives. The gospel of the kingdom is to become weak, and needy, and trusting your father. That's how you were created to be. That is true humanity. How do I know that? How do you know that? So Jesus was like, remember Paul Miller being here said, Jesus was the most childlike man that ever lived. So the best thing that God can do to you and to me. Is to humble our haughty hearts. And our eyes so filled with ambition. So filled with needing to win and to prove ourselves. So filled with trying to self-protect. And to make us like children. So let me, what does that mean? We talk about dependent trust. We're still on our second point. Here's the first thing. We talk about a soul like a weaned child. It means that our souls are not self-sufficient. To compare his soul to a weaned child is to say, I am not self-sufficient. That's a scary thing to say. But to admit, I am not self-sufficient. I live in a world that is painful. I live in a world where I can get cancer. I live in a world where the people I love can be hit by cars. I live in a world where I can lose my job. I am not self-sufficient. But I trust you to take care of my soul like a mother is to a child. You see, all our activity, all of our neurotic ambition trying to make our world's work and trying to prove ourselves, all that does is make it worse. And you come to Psalm 130. I'm in a pit. The reason we're in a pit is because we've dug them. We've dug them through our addictions. We've dug them through our relational carnage. We've dug them through our controlling. We've dug them through our worry. We've dug these pits ourselves. We can do the usual suspects. You see people that are trying to control their lives or deal with the world. They try to strive for autonomy in the way that they have an affair. Do you know why a man has an affair? It's not just because he wants to have sex with another woman. The reason a man has an affair is because he believes this other woman is going to give him something that only his soul can find in Christ. I promise you that's it. But if I can... I will betray my family in pursuit of my restless soul's desire. See, I can find outside of me. That's the reason people have affairs. I promise you that's why people have a affair. That's why we miss you's drugs. That's why we miss you's food and hobbies and everything. Because we're trying to find something outside of ourselves to make ourselves feel self-sufficient. And a Wayne Child says, I'm not. I'm not self-sufficient. I can't control. But just like a child realized, I have you. I hurt. And I have you. And the beautiful thing is that God throws all those wonderful things back onto us. Like marriage. And like food. And like hobbies. But we cannot use them to fill a soul. So a so a Wayne Child soul is not self-sufficient. Where is God? Where is God whispering to your soul right now and where you're trying to find? You're trying to find ultimate answers in the things in the world they've never answered the ultimate question for you. Here's the second thing about a soul like a Wayne Child. It's vulnerable. Since it's not self-sufficient, it's vulnerable. There is no creature more vulnerable than a weaned child, totally dependent without any protection and totally trusting the mother to take care of him. Utterly vulnerable. We are utterly vulnerable. We cannot build a world where we can protect ourselves. I don't care how many new faces you get. I don't care how many new cars you get. I don't care how many degrees that you get. I don't care how many friends that you have. All those things, none of those things will protect you from cancer. None of those things are going to protect you from relational pain. None of them are. But you have him. You see what Jesus is saying? Your soul is so vital. Your soul. Your soul is thirsty. Jesus walked around this world and if he had this spiritual x-ray vision, he saw into your soul. He's seasoned into your soul today. We're ignorant of our souls. He looked around and he saw needy, hungry, restless souls. That's why one day he looked out and he said, all you who are weary and heavy laden come to me. Take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy and my burden is like. I will give you rest for your souls. Your restless soul is a restless soul striving to be autonomous trying to build the garden of Eden. A restless soul trusts God. Why would that be any comfort? Not close with this. Why would that be comforting? Why don't you think about who you're trusting again? Let's go back to our other sermons. You're not just trusting this great corporation in the sky that promises to give you a great retirement when you die. You are trusting a human. A God who is man. Be true God who is truly God and truly man who lived here two thousand years ago who became the most vulnerable person that ever lived. You see Jesus faced the cold wind of reality. He looked at death in the face. All the things that we can't control. He looked at every single bit of it and before we ever had to taste it, before we ever had to experience it, what Jesus Christ did, as Jesus said, give it all to me. Give me all of reality. Give me all of the world that you can't control. Give me all of the pain. Give every single bit of it to me. And so the one you're trusting in has suffered like you, who has suffered like you, who was born into a world just like we're living in. Who took sin upon his own back. And so the one you're being asked to trust in is the one who is ultimately trustworthy. Do you hear God calling out to your soul this morning? Will you trust me more? Will you trust me more? Oh, trust me more. Look how much I love you. So what? Here's the number one so what? God's goal in your life is not to make you happy. God's goal is not your happiness. That's often a byproduct. That's awesome. But it's goal in life. See, that's our goal in life. And that's the reason we're so frustrated. Because happiness is really lasting happiness is not attainable in this life. God's goal in life. When you start realizing what his goal in life is to make you complete to make you his. God's goal for you is home and it starts in your soul. Maybe God is allowing all the different pieces to fall right in on top of you. Maybe you find yourself in this deep, huge pit and you're saying help, help. Maybe God's doing that exact thing so that you might experience real peace. God's goal is not your happiness. If you think God's going your happiness, you need to go find another God because this God's not going to be a very good one, right? You need to go find some other, some other like vending machine God that you can sort of manipulate. You can't manipulate this God. So first, God's goal is not your happiness. And the second thing is it is through suffering that you learn to trust God. I wish it were different. I wish I could tell you it was different. It is through the deepest struggles in your life. It's through your struggles with doubt. It is through your struggles with sin. It is through the darkest moments in your life. It is in the face of your greatest fears that you learn to trust God. I wish I could tell you that there was another way. This is the only way. Why does God keep bringing those disciples right there on that boat? Being on a boat in the middle of a storm was a scariest place that you could possibly be. Why does Jesus bring them back there? Why does he keep bringing them to water? Why does he keep bringing them to their greatest fear? He keeps bringing us there so he could realize my salvation is not outside the suffering. It is through the middle of it. And that is the real deal. The final thing I'll leave you is not always going to be this way people. My job is to tell you the world is not always going to be full of pain and suffering. It is now. And there are a lot of wonderful things to do. But it is an ugly world now. And Jesus Christ has come and his resurrection is the beginning of the end of evil. It is not always going to be this way. So he gives you trust in the midst of your suffering and a hope of a world to come and that when we die we will be with him that it will not always be this way. That is what Peter says in 1 Peter 2 Christians that are suffering immensely. We suffer a little while, a little while. Or we come to you and ask that you would see your words, not my words, but your words from this song upon our heart. Or thank you for humbling us that we might see who you are. Or it hurts to be humbled to have to think of ourselves as needy and as broken. But Lord your word tells us there is no relationship with you apart from that. Because you only dwell in two places. You said you dwell in the high and holy place and with those who are lowly in contract. So Lord even though we complain that we are humbled, thank you for humbling us that we might know what true hope is. It is in your name we pray. Amen. So we go.