Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to Psalm 131 as we look at one more of these Pilgrim songs, these songs of a sense. This one about resting in God. This little psalm is one of the little jewels of the Old Testament. It's the fourth shortest psalm in the Psalter, only its sister psalms 133 and 134 in the songs of a sense, and the little psalm of two verses in Psalm 117 are shorter than this psalm. C.H. Berzen says it may be one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn. It's a song about hope and contentment and humility. It's written by David, one of the four psalms of the Pilgrim songs written by him, and it seems that when the temple leaveites of the second temple decided to organize the Psalter, to edit and arrange it, they decided to include four psalms of David written four or five hundred years earlier in these songs of pilgrimage that were assembled after the exile. It's a song about humility. We're not sure when David wrote it. Many scholars believe it was when he had brought the ark of the covenant up to the city of Jerusalem. You remember that he put on the linen ephod or robe of a priest and he danced before the ark and celebrated and worshiped before the Lord as he brought the ark of the covenant into the city. And his wife, Michael, was scandalized by that. She was offended by it. She said that you have been vulgar and embarrassed yourself by shamelessly uncovering yourself in the eyes of all my young servants and the women of Israel. And David answered her in a direct way. He said, the Lord anointed me, a shepherd to be prince over Israel, and I will celebrate before the Lord. And I will make myself yet more humble than even this and I will be a based only in your eyes. But these young female servants of whom you are so concerned by them, I shall be held in honor. It was believed that when David said I will become more humble than even this in your eyes. He might have then penned these words. O Lord, my heart has 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 ween child with its mother. Like a ween child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. It appears that maybe the priests who put these Psalms together connected Psalm 130 and 131 because they both have the refrain. Psalm 130 and verse 7 says, O Israel, hope in the Lord. And Psalm 131 says in verse 3, O Israel, hope in the Lord. Here is a logical progression in a spiritual journey of grace. That once a person reads Psalm 130 and they discover the forgiveness and grace of Almighty God, then the logical step beyond that is to be humble and content and full of hope. The forgiveness and grace of God necessarily leads us to a humble reliance upon God. It seems as if David is saying, it really is impossible to come into the presence of God in worship with a proud heart. But oh, how we do that, it appears every Sunday. It is amazing how pride is so deeply rooted in our souls. We shouldn't be surprised at that. Isaiah 14 tells us that it was pride that led to Lucifer's fall in him being cast out of heaven. And if we read Genesis chapter 3, we find that it was pride that led Adam and eat to sin and to be cast out of the garden. The Proverbs warn us time and again that pride precedes the fall. Proverbs 3 says toward the proud he is scornful but to the humble he gives grace. Verse that is quoted in the New Testament by Peter that God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. John Calvin says in this Psalm, David teaches us a very useful lesson and one by which we should be ruled in life. To be contended with the lot which God has marked out for us, to consider what he calls us to do, and not to aim at fashioning our own lot, but to be moderate in our desires, to avoid entering upon a rash undertaking, and to confine our shares cheerfully with our own sphere instead of attempting always to do greater and greater things. This Psalm, I must say brothers and sisters, is a very un-American Psalm because what it speaks against is ambition. And America is a most ambitious country. Ambition drives everything we do. We are never satisfied it seems. With anything we have, we always want bigger, and better, and best, and off the time more. Eugene Peterson in commenting upon this Psalm says, our culture encourages and rewards ambition without qualification. We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more. To be on top, no matter what it is they're on top of, is what is most admired. There is nothing recent about this temptation. It's the oldest sin in the book and the one that got Adam thrown out of the garden, loose or tossed out of heaven. What is fairly new about this thing called ambition, at least in America, is the general admiration and widespread approval it receives from everyone. In fact, we would say that if a person is not ambitious, there's something wrong with him. And I would say to you that that is false, that ambition is, as Peterson says, aspiration gone crazy. There is a difference between ambition and aspiration. The Bible is full of great aspirations. And in fact, as we enter into these last five songs of these songs of the pilgrims, these songs of a sense, we find great aspirations expressed. We aspire to be forgiven and to have God's grace. And we inspire, should inspire, to be humble, to live contentedly and hopefully in the presence of God. It's as if this is a twelfth step in the process of discipleship in the worshiping community after forgiveness and grace comes resting in God. Look at this little song again, 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 wien child with its mother, like a wien child is my soul within me. O Israel, O Church, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Three verses, three great aspirations, one, that the Christian should be a person called to humility in the presence of God. 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. David was a shepherd boy whom God made a king. The shepherd of sheep who became the shepherd of Israel. And God tells us why? It was because of David's heart. You remember the story when Samuel was told to go to the house of Jesse because he had seven sons and one of those boys was going to be the king of Israel. Well, Jesse had seven sons. All of them were tall, they were manly, they were handsome, except for the runt of the litter. He was a cute little red-headed boy. He was. He says that. He was reddish in one of his homes. Or else he blushed a lot. I don't know which it is. And so when the first one came, God said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or the height of a stature because I've rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. For man looks only at the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart. God would say later on in the book of Acts, I have found David my servant, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all my holy will. You know, David never lost this recognition that he had been greatly favored to be elevated from shepherding sheep to leading a nation. One of his famous alms is about, oh Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth? And he says in that song, what is man that you're mindful of him in the son of man that you care for him? I would like to say that David was consistently a humble man but you know as well as I do, he was not. He had a season in which he faltered greatly, where he got too big for his bridges and overstepped the limits of his office and his power in privilege. And he took another man's wife and committed adultery and had that man killed. He paid a terrible price for that. His family was plundered. It lost his throne for a season and his favorite son was killed just like he killed your eye of the headtight, his favorite soldier. Most importantly, David lost favor with all of the people who once held him in heroic high esteem but David was never proud again. He recalled his inner sins, the loftiness of his heart at that time. He remembered that his eyes were looking at things they should not have been looking at, another man's wife. And that he aspired to bigger and bigger things and was not content on what God had given him in his holy domain called Israel. You and I, brothers and sisters, would be much better off and much humbler people if every day we reminded ourselves of what we really are, wretched and filthy sinners, cleansed by the grace of Jesus Christ and forgiven by the mercy of God. That we are not to look upon the things that we don't have but to be contented with what we have got and that life is bigger than we can understand and many of the things that we aspire to, we couldn't handle if God gave them to us. I have a friend, he's a friend of mine has been a friend for years but he's an unhappy fellow, I hate to say this. And the reason he's unhappy is he lives in his own case system. He lives in the strata of what he considers the important people and he relegates others to second and third and fourth level tears in his worldview. And he's always, always on the journey for people to recognize him as in the important group while he recognizes no one else as his equal. He's let me know on numerous occasions that I belong in the secondary category and I've said, Brother, you're gracious, I belong on the bottom, he has a cold and unhappy wife. I don't know if I've ever seen her smile, he's alienated from his children, he hasn't had an intimate friend, he's fear for all the time about his image, I'd love to help him. If he'd let me into his sacred strata for just a moment, maybe I could help him see how God sees him, how the rest of us love him regardless of his accomplishments. And now the thing that is making him so unhappy is his unfulfilled ambitions. There is great freedom, great freedom in the humble man who learns to see himself the way God does, who is liberated from the cruel taskmaster of ambition and who is contended with all that God has given him which is more than he deserves in every single occasion. That's the first thing David tells us, I've learned the hard way, not to have the heart lifted up the eyes roaming about in discontent and aspiring to things that are too marvelous and too difficult beyond the power of my skills, beyond the imagination of my success. But he also talks about something that comes along with humility, in fact it's the Siamese twin of humility and that is contentment. He says the Christians not only call to be humble before God, but he's called to be content in Christ. He says in verse two, but I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a wing child with its mother, like a wing child is my soul within me. David likens himself to a baby who no longer is a suckling, but he sits quietly, head against his mother's breast, contend in her lap, cooling and smiling, there's no other place he'd rather be. You know, there's nothing more obnoxious, no creature more irritating on all of the earth than a nursing child who's hungry. They ball like a calf. Everybody has to enter into their misery at the moment, nobody can be happy because they're not happy. They demand their feeding times irrespective of other people's conveniences and all they want to do is drink milk and have other people deal with the consequences. That's all they're concerned about. Milk for them, diapers for you and me. You know, two years ago, I was hunting in Mississippi and I was in a shooting house and about maybe 80 yards down this fairway, there was this eight point buck who was teasing. He'd put his head around the trees and he knew something was down there, probably could smell me. And he was looking and then he'd run across this thing and then he'd run across this way and I figured, you know, if I'm just quiet, he'll forget I'm here. Well, without that time, he walked out and he looked and he put his head down and it was what we call a perfect profile shot. And about that time, I saw a little movement out of my peripheral left eye vision and here was a little yearling, a fawn without spots who came out and began to ball for his mother. Sounded like a little goat bleeding. And the more he did this, the more agitated the buck got. And I kept saying, well, he kept it up until the buck and I said, I've had enough of this. So the buck left, the day was ruined. I just loaded one and I raised that thing on that fawn and all of a sudden, out came his mother. And she nussled up close to him and he rubbed his head up against her and was quiet and I figured, what a picture of contentment. I lowered the rifle and thought about this song. There's nothing more contented than a child and the safety and security and warmth of its mama. And that, David says, is what we should be like. We are God's children. We belong to Jesus Christ, our older brother. We've been taken into the family of God. We have everything Peter says given to us through Jesus Christ pertaining to life, this world, and Godliness, the world yet to come. We should learn Paul says the secret of a contentment because my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory and Christ Jesus. In the last year, I took my little five-year-old grandson to Ohio Stating for the first time. And he had a day of days. He got the tour of the campus and we got to eat pizza together and he played on the oval. Brutus the Buckeye, the mascot, was driving down the road. Did he you turn and came back and shook his hand? Some cheerleaders were walking by. They had people take their picture with him. I'm thinking, what is this kid? Is this celebrity? We went to McDonald's for lunch and the highway patrolman there visited with him, introduced himself to him, showed him all of his gear, his guns, his mace and all that kind of stuff. I went to the stadium, got hot dogs, popcorn, a coke, a Buckeye cap and a miniature scarlet and gray football. Watch the band perform the incomparable script Ohio sat down and they're about to kick off and he says, Pam Paul, I want to go home, I miss my mommy. I leaned down and I said, son, I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear what you said. I miss my mommy. I said, your mommy would love to be here with us. Well he did bless us hard, he lasted till half time. We left the stadium, he shook the hands of six highway patrolman going out, say goodbye to everybody. I took him to dairy cream on the way home, he missed his mommy but not that much when we got home. But when he got home, he ran up to her and she said, Harris, did you have a good day? He said, I had a great day, but I'm sure glad to be home with you. I said to myself, this is what it's like to be a Christian. To go through life and say when we get to heaven, father, I had a great life, but sure, good to be home with you. That is the guarantee we have in Jesus Christ. That is why we ought to be contented at him. He has given us the gift of eternal life and sealed it with his own blood. So that leads us to a third dimension of this humility and contentment and that is hope. The Christian is called to hope in the Holy Spirit. So Israel, hope in the Lord from this time, fourth and forevermore. This life of humble, contentiveness brings with it great hope, a living hope, the authors of both old and New Testament call it. David, in all of his earthly ambitions and all of his spiritual aspirations and all of his accomplishments and failures, if you read his songs, you find what his true aspiration was. My cup overfloweth. Surely goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It was his hope of heaven that was the driving force of both his humility and his contentment. He realized that God was doing even when he failed miserably and was disciplined severely by God. God was doing a great work in his life to prepare him for that which last forevermore, his life with God in heaven. And that is the source of our hope. I am confident of this very thing that he who began a good work in you, that is the Holy Spirit, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. There are absolutely convinced and confident Paul says that because Jesus Christ has died for our sins and brought us to himself, because he saved us, he has given to us a down payment of eternal life called the indwelling Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit will continue to do his work in us until we reach heaven. It's hope that Paul says will not disappoint us and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom he has given to us. It is this Holy Spirit in us that will give us all that we aspire to, not all that is our ambition, but all that is our great in holy aspiration. He will give us greatness someday in glory, goodness and riches and honor and joy and on ending life and an unimaginable bliss, not because of our worldly ambitions, not because we were counted among the strata of the top people of the world, not because we achieved a measure of success and wealth which brought us some kind of fleeting contentment, but rather because we humbled ourselves every day before God is a sinner and saw ourselves where we fit in the human race as part of the redeemed and because of Jesus Christ who saved us and enfolds us in himself with the divine, impregnable security of salvation and because the Holy Spirit has done a lifetime of work in our hearts, preparing us for heaven, even despite ourselves. Calvin is right. Those who yield themselves to the influence of ambition will soon lose themselves in the labrenth of discontent. I've had a chance this year, folks, to practice this song. It's been an interesting 12 months. Last summer a brother asked me if he could submit my name to be President of Covenant College and I said, brother, what are you thinking? You want this institution to be destroyed in a short period of time or prosper? I said, thank you, but thanks for the honor, but no. And then somebody approached me within a few weeks to be the coordinator of Christian education publications because the coordinator of our ministry in Atlanta was retiring and I said, I don't think I'd be good for that. I think you need a guy who knows about internet technology and can deliver education and resources to new generation the way I can't even do emails, but well. So I said no, thank you. And I'm on the advisory alumni advisory council for Columbia International University and they asked me if I would be president of that council and I said, well, I don't have the time, thanks. My friend asked me if I would be willing to become president of a seminary and I said, well, I don't think that I'd be the best guy for that. Probably better in the classroom, but not leading the faculty. I think dealing with a lot of PhD people who were 10 times smarter than I would be kind of difficult. And somebody said, well, we'd like to nominate you to be moderate at the PCA and I said, well, no, I don't want to do that. Well, they did that anyway. He's now an ex-friend. And then they finally said, well, can we at least put you on the board of trustees for Governor College and I said, yeah, you can do that because it only has a four-year term. I turned all these things down for two reasons. Number one, I'm contented here. I love you people and I love doing life with you. I love the pastors here and our staff and our officers. I like Charlotte. It's not heaven or Columbus, Ohio, but it's my home now. And I believe that God is at work both in me and hopefully he will work through me right here right now in this church. And I'm also aware of what I can and I cannot do. I would be a disaster. At all those other jobs, I barely do a decent job as a pastor. But I've learned that worldly ambitions are dangerous and that spiritual aspirations are usually honored by the Lord. I want to grow as a man and a husband, a father and as a pastor. I need you to help me grow. I want to develop a godly congregation here at Christ's Covenant that has multi-generations who love and serve the Lord and is attractive to other people. And I want to do what David did. I want to serve the purposes of God and my own generation. And then I'll be ready to go asleep. I know myself. And I trust my Savior. I love you. I'm happy with what I am, where I am, what I'm doing. And I would commend the same to you. If you come to this table, here's evidence that everything we ever wanted and really all that we ever needed. It's right here. Right here in Jesus Christ, who humbly, contentedly, with great hope gave Himself to us. Let's pray. Father, it is a great honor that we owe you to be grateful for who we are and where you've placed us and what you've given us to do. You do not make mistakes. You have no stratas of humanity where you rank people from important to those that are to be discarded. But you invest in and take a personal interest in every single human life. Lives that you call to humble themselves under you as their creator, as their God. Lives that you call to contentment and rest in Jesus Christ as they surrender to Him in repentance and faith. Lives so which you offer a living hope through the indwelling Holy Spirit to continue to perfect them and mature them and complete them until the day that Jesus Christ comes back and helps us enter into a time called forevermore. As we go to this table, humble our hearts, settle our minds and give us joy in our spirits and help us to appropriate Jesus Christ and a personal way and sup upon Him so that we grow in our ability like a wing child to rest in the lap of grace. And to be contented with who you are and who we are and that we belong to you through Christ. We would ask you this great blessing and this favor and Jesus name. Amen.