Humility of Soul

Thank you, worship team.

I sure enjoyed our worship together this morning.

I wonder if it's because we're all in one place and we're full instead of being scattered among two services.

There's a couple of ways we could resolve that.

But I'll kind of leave that up to you.

Well, this morning, I have forgotten to turn on my remote.

This morning, I have chosen us to spend some time looking at Psalm 131.

It is a psalm which speaks directly and practically and with incredibly powerful word pictures about a subject that you and I have problems with.

Humility.

I know you have a problem with it.

I know I have a problem with it.

You know I have, you know, that this is not simple, folks.

Humility.

So follow along as I read a psalm which is intended to reveal the heart of a humble person.

It describes the experience of a humble soul, and it encourages us to learn from it.

So, Psalm 131, a song of ascents of David.

Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up.

My eyes are not raised too high.

I do not occupy myself with things too great or too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul.

Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, O people of God, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

My heart's not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high.

I don't occupy myself with things that are too marvelous for me.

I've calmed my soul.

Like a weaned child with its mother, I have calmed my soul within me.

This portrays for us in a vivid, practical way what a humble heart is like.

I was first drawn to this psalm way back in my seminary days, and I was drawn to it for all of the wrong reasons.

As a young seminarian, together with the other seminarians, we were required to take Greek and Hebrew, and I took four years of Greek and three years of Hebrew, figuring I would never teach that to myself.

And in the Hebrew class, at one point, the professor assigned each one of us, or gave each one of us, a simple assignment.

It was to select one psalm and do a detailed, scholarly, exegetically sound exposition of the Hebrew text.

So I chose the shortest psalm I could find.

Actually, I didn't look correctly because Psalm 119 or 119, no, it's not the shortest.

Psalm 100.

I checked that one out and I wasn't going to do that one.

Psalm 117 is actually the shortest, just two verses.

But this, along with Psalm 133 and Psalm 134, is one of the briefest.

So we in that class may not have been great Hebrew scholars, but we were not dumb.

Kind of reminds me of if any of you have ever taught a Sunday school class to uh say squirrely sixth or seventh graders, and you give them an assignment to memorize a Bible verse and come back next week, I guarantee you that one of those clever rascals will come up with John 11, 35, the shortest verse in the Bible, two words, Jesus wept.

Jesus wept.

See, you can memorize scripture.

Well, I may have been looking for a brief psalm that I could quickly check off the list.

But what I found was a psalm I have spent the last 50 years trying to live out.

Humility.

So how are you doing with that?

I know how I'm doing with that.

How are you doing with humility?

Humility.

Humility is an incredibly frustrating thing to talk about or to teach on.

The really tough thing about humility, somebody says, is that you can't brag about it.

When we become aware of our humility, we have lost it.

Another person said, humility is like underwear.

It's necessary but indecent if it shows.

Most of us don't have to be embarrassed.

Humility.

The only person who would have the audacity to write a book on parenting is someone who has no kids.

And I will not write a book on humility.

Several years back, someone, a close friend, recommended a particular book on humility to me and kept talking about it and talking about it.

And the last thing I wanted to do was to read some arrogant person who's trying to teach me all about humility.

I finally dealt with my sinful attitude there enough to pick up the book, and I opened the book to the introduction, and I was hooked.

This is C.J.

Mahaney's book on humility, and in his introduction, he writes, writing about humility is a humbling experience.

Who wants to volunteer to write on this subject?

Not me.

There have been countless times when completing this book, I've been inspired to think, you idiot, why did you agree to do this?

I could entertain you for hours relating the comments and facial expressions of those who discovered I was authoring a work on this title.

I understand their reaction, the author says.

If I met someone presuming to have something to say about humility, automatically I'd think him unqualified to speak on the subject.

And this is what then got me, because I was saying, Amen.

Why am I reading your silly book?

So let me make this clear at the outset.

I am a proud man pursuing humility with the grace of God.

I don't write as an authority on humility, I write as a fellow pilgrim walking with you on the path set before us by our humble Savior.

I can only address you with confidence in the great and gracious God who has promised to give grace to the humble, and that promise is for every one of us who turns from his or her sins to the Savior.

We are proud people.

And we have a Savior who is gentle and humble of heart, and he can teach us humility.

Jesus said in Matthew 29, uh Matthew 11, 29, 28, 29, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take your yoke upon me and learn for me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.

Who can get away with calling themselves humble?

One man, our Savior.

And that one man can help us be proud people who pursue by God's grace humility.

This particular psalm is part of a gathering of Psalms, a little book of Psalms within the book of Psalms, called the Psalms of Ascent.

Psalms 120 to 134, a series of psalms, most of them short psalms, that were sung by the faithful in Israel as they would journey from their village together with some of their friends and family up to the high country, the hill country in Judea, up to Mount Zion, where ultimately the temple would stand.

As they were going up to Jerusalem, they sang a series of songs, and no doubt they talked about these things.

They were just a simple band of people on a spiritual journey, and they had other people to talk with, and they had God's word to guide them.

And this was written to people on a journey, a spiritual journey, seeking to follow in the path that Christ lays out for us, a path of humility.

And he gave them a band, a company of pilgrims who talk to each other about that.

I hope you have some people like that in your lives.

I hope you're not trying to go on this journey of the spiritual life alone.

It's not a solo venture.

I hope you have some friends, and I like to call them spiritual friends, not because they're so spiritual or you're so spiritual, because they're not and you're not, but spiritual friends who talk about with one another what God is doing in my life and what God is doing in your life.

Do you have some friends like that?

Where the friendship is something broader and more powerful than just the Vikings winning or losing, or the fighting sue, and you can't say that out loud anymore.

I say it out loud because I'm getting out of here in a while.

Do you have some friendships where the reality of your relationship with Christ is part and parcel of that friendship?

I sure hope so.

We all so desperately need it.

I've read it once in the in uh the ESV.

I'd like to read it once in a paraphrase.

I don't often read out of paraphrases, but this one is, in this case, very worth doing.

This is from the message, Eugene Peterson's very living for me, powerful, simple uh portrayal.

And this is the way, this is this is not God's word, this is Eugene Peterson's take on God's word, and it helps me get it inside.

God, I'm not trying to rule the roost.

I don't want to try to be king of the mountain.

I haven't meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans.

I've kept my feet on the ground.

I've cultivated a quiet heart.

Like a baby, content in its mother's arms.

My soul is a baby content.

Wait, Israel for God, wait with hope.

Hope now, hope always.

I love the way that is expressed.

And what I'd like to do is just, in very simple ways, my throat.

I'd like us to just kind of walk through this psalm together, and I want to suggest how I'm understanding this, and then at the end, a series of things which I believe a proud person who is seeking and pursuing by grace to be humble, things that we might say.

We might say.

So we're going to look primarily at verses one and two.

Verse one tells us clearly what the opposite of humility is, pride.

And verse two tells us very clearly what the opposite of pride is, humility.

Just real simple.

What does pride look like?

Well, I see it every time I look in the mirror, don't you?

But specifically, what about that?

What does pride look like?

And then what does its glorious opposites look like?

Three aspects of pride that I see in verse one.

Pride has an inflated heart.

I'm sorry, it looks like you're not going to be able to read those very well.

They look big enough type on my computer at home, but you can read it.

At least the four throwback, you can read it.

How about the last?

Three characteristics of pride here: an inflated heart, haughty eyes, and grandiose ambitions.

An inflated heart, haughty eyes, and grandiose ambitions.

So the ESV translates this very accurately.

It says, My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not rated raised too high.

Almost all of the other translations also translate verse 1 accurately by saying, talking about, my heart is not proud, where this says, my heart is not lifted up.

It's the same thing.

My heart is not proud, my heart is not lifted up.

We'll unpack that briefly.

My eyes are not haughty, is the way it's often translated, or in this case, the ESV says, My eyes are not raised too high.

Same idea, just stated differently, and in a very simple way.

This is what pride is.

It is an inflated, overly high and lifted up view of ourselves, a heart that exalts itself, a heart that sees itself as greater than it is, as better than it is, as more important than it is, and at the same time having eyes that with haughtiness look down on other people.

We can do that pretty well, can't we?

We just do it in pleasant Christian ways.

Being a having one's heart lifted up is at the core of what sin is.

At its core, sin is pride, and pride at its core is having an overly inflated view of ourselves.

And we are well schooled in this and we are pre-programmed for this.

Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, don't turn to it, but that's one of the two passages that most Bible scholars believe is a portrayal of what the core of Satan, Lucifer's sin, was.

And it was at its core pride.

Isaiah 14, verses 13 and 14, God says, You said in your heart, so this is what the enemy said, I will ascend.

Isaiah 14:13

I will be lifted up.

I will ascend to heaven above the stars.

I'll set my throne on high.

I'll sit on the Mount of Assembly in the far reaches of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the Most High.

At its core, Satan's sin was to have an overly elevated view of himself.

And actually, Lucifer, before the fall, was the most beautiful, the most lovely, the most exalted of all beings.

He was the highest and most exalted angel.

He had a lot to be proud of, but by lifting himself up, he had nothing to be proud of.

And that then led to ultimately that problem that you and I have of having an overly inflated view of ourselves and a resultant lower view of other people.

When I think of this, I immediately think of Romans 12, verse 3, where it says, By the grace of God given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think.

Romans 12:3

Ouch.

Can you not ouch to that?

Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.

And it goes on and says, um, but to think so as to have sound judgment.

Be sober-minded in the way you think about yourself.

Be realistic.

Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but be realistic about you.

The humble soul learns to be pretty realistic about who we are.

How's it going for you?

Philippians 2, 3 says, do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as inferior to you.

That's obviously not what it says.

Do nothing from selfish ambition and empty conceit, pride, arrogance, self-centeredness, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.

Don't merely look on your own interests, but also the interests of others.

Now, what we find is that this is a problem of our heart.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up.

The heart here is a portrayal of the inner person.

Out of the heart comes all kinds of things, Jesus said.

Out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander, and P-R-I-D-E.

That's what comes out of our hearts.

The heart is just one of many terms that the Bible uses to talk about the inner man.

In the very next verse, he'll be talking about his soul, and it's the same reality.

It's that inner person.

We try to finely distinguish things that God has a rich vocabulary to describe as though we can get man all figured out, much less God all figured out.

He's just talking about the inner you.

We exalt ourselves.

How's it going with your heart?

He then talks about haughty eyes.

Eyes, in the scriptures, give a window into the soul, into the inner being, into the heart.

Haughty eyes.

I've often wondered how these highfalutin fashion models ever get such a surly look on their face.

Do they practice that, I wonder?

I was obviously never a model.

Isn't there something distant, cold, elevated, arrogant?

But they just do what we do all the time.

We just do it in polite Christian ways.

How's it going with your eyes?

The eyes give a view into your soul.

Pride looks down on others from above.

Pride looks down on others instead of doing what our eyes ought to do, and that's to look up to God.

Instead of exalting God, we look down on others and we exalt ourselves.

That's pride.

It's the opposite of humility.

Second part of the verse is really interesting.

It's talking about grandiose ambitions.

And I loved the way this was portrayed in the message.

I don't meddle where I have no business or fantasize grandiose plans.

Or the way the Old Testament actually says it is, I don't occupy myself with things too great or too marvelous for me.

You know, there are things that we could give ourselves to that are simply beyond this.

And the wise and humble person doesn't go there, doesn't try to get everything sorted out, doesn't try to be someone that they're not, doesn't try to accomplish everything, doesn't always try to be number one.

In fact, there's a huge problem with being number one.

Just look at a wide receiver this afternoon, strutting down the field, doing a celebration of what?

Himself.

That's pride.

There are things that we should not aim for.

There are things that God has not destined you for.

There's things that is just not for you.

Why?

We have bought the idea that you can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do, just maximize your potential, and you can be the president of the senior high class, or the president of your company, or you can get promoted to this or that, and somehow or another we have the idea that all of us can be number one in whatever we're trying to do.

I talked last week about how this is one of my pet peeves, sorry about that.

Kids' sports teams, everybody has to be a winner.

Everybody gets an award, a participation award.

Big deal.

Now, if I went out for football, that'd be a big deal, but but you get what I'm saying.

What's the assumption?

Where did we get that from?

That you can do anything you want to do.

I was not helped by this in the family in which I grew up because I heard my father say to me time after time after time after time, Walt, you can do anything you want.

You're a Barret.

That's crushing.

And it's a lie.

There's a whole bunch of things I can't do.

And wisdom and humility helps us to get a sense of who we are.

It doesn't make us not strive or have no ambitions.

That's not what this is saying.

This is saying just there are things that are too great for you.

You used to be able to talk about someone's station in life.

And what that meant is we're not all created equal.

Or we are not all equal in society.

We're all not equal with our upbringing.

We're all not equal with the talents that we have, with the mental capabilities that we have.

We're not in that regard.

Before God, we're all equally rotten sinners who deserve hell.

We're equal.

Beyond that, it's only the Renaissance and humanism that says all men are created equal.

By that meaning, we're all the same and we can all excel in whatever we want to do.

I'm overstating it, but I think you get the point.

Wouldn't it be strange if at high school graduation someone failed to say, don't strive too much because you may not be able to do it.

I'm not suggesting we say that.

I am suggesting that we be sober-minded and we think realistically of ourselves.

There are places with our intellect we must not go.

We can try to make sense of the universe.

Only God can make sense of the universe.

I'm not suggesting we don't study and try and use the God-given abilities, but who are we to correct God, or who are we to think that we can figure out the universe, or that we can be something that we're not designed and capable of being?

That's arrogance.

A humble soul learns to find true satisfaction in God with who we are, who you are.

To me, one of the best examples of this is the contrast between Muhammad Ali and Eric Little.

Some of you have no idea who Muhammad Ali was.

For that, I say, count yourself lucky.

He was one of the most arrogant sports figures in the last generation.

He was a gold medal winner, uh fighter, uh, won all kinds of battles, and he strutted around saying, I'm the greatest, I'm the greatest, I'm the king of the world.

Um in fact, he was best known for defiantly looking at somebody and saying, I'm the greatest, I'm the king of the world.

There's a very modest, uh, humble, godly kind of approach.

Not.

Or Eric Little.

Both of them worked hard.

Both of them were gold medal winners.

Eric Little, the one whose life is accurately portrayed in Chariots of Fire, 1936, I believe, Olympics, part of the British uh Olympic team.

And uh Eric Little won a gold medal, but what a difference.

His statement was correctly portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire.

God made me for a purpose, he also made me fast.

Okay?

There's some things you can do.

God made me for a purpose, he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.

He had figured out who he was, how God had made him, and he took great delight in that.

But he didn't strut around trying to be somebody that he wasn't.

The second verse to me is even better than the first.

It's what humility looks like.

The psalmist makes that abundantly clear, and this is how he portrays it.

He says, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child.

A weaned child.

Some of the translations just say child, but it's actually, this is correct.

It's a weaned child, and there's a difference between a newborn and a weaned child.

So I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Now what a beautiful, beautiful picture.

The reality is he's not talking about a newborn infant.

Newborn infants are hardly humble.

They are the ultimate egotists.

Me, me, me, waah, can control us all by screaming and pooping.

It's just that simple.

The only thing worse than a newborn baby is a puppy.

They're just about as bad.

No, they're beautiful.

And don't get me wrong.

We had three wonderful children, and we have eight and a half wonderful grandchildren.

But a newborn infant is not a picture of humility.

A newborn infant is a creature who knows how to manipulate the world around it and the people around it to get its needs met.

Feed me, feed me, feed me, keep me clean.

Oh, don't make a loud noise like that.

Keep me warm, do this for me, me, me, me, me, me.

Now, it's actually necessary for a newborn.

But that is not the picture of maturity.

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

A weaned child is something different.

A newborn infant is a picture of demanding self-centeredness.

You and I have that down pretty well.

We're pretty trained in that.

We're not quite as obnoxious as a newborn who's screaming in the middle of the night asking for its mother's breast.

But a wean child?

Weaning, in case you don't know, is a process whereby an infant learns to find satisfaction and nourishment from a source other than its mother's breast milk.

Okay, that's what weaning is.

A child learns to go beyond milk and needs to become accustomed to solid food.

In the biblical times, particularly in the Old Testament, this happened somewhat later in life than what we in our current family customs.

Oftentimes it would be three or four years old before a child would be weaned.

The longer you put off the weaning process, the harder it becomes.

Because the child simply wants what it wants when it wants it, and demands to get it.

The book of Hebrews talks about the fact that we are not to be little infants.

Says that the time is past for you to be demanding like an unweaned infant.

You are to not stick with milk, you're to grow up a little bit to solid food.

This doesn't mean you're a PhD in theology, it just means you're not a spiritual infant anymore.

Developing maturity is the characteristic of a weaned child.

The weaning process is difficult, especially if the child is three or four years old.

It's typically accompanied by tears, complaining, temper tantrums.

You see, from the child's perspective, something that they need is being taken away from them.

Imagine that.

Something would be taken away from us.

He gives and he takes away, and still my heart will say, Blessed be the name of the Lord.

And some things have to be taken away if we're ever going to grow.

And so a child that is going through the weaning process is profoundly upset and probably angry.

I thought you loved me.

What are you doing?

I need this.

Don't you know you gave this to me in the past?

Give it to me some more.

I need it.

I want it.

Of course, a parent is not mistreating a child when the child is weaned.

Quite the contrary.

Quite the contrary.

And God is not mistreating us when He takes things away from us that need to be taken away.

Now, the interesting thing is that the picture, listen to what it says.

I've calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Now just picture this.

Here you have this not newborn, but but still immature, maturing, but still immature child, just simply content to be with its mother.

No longer sees its mother as a way of getting what it wants, but has learned just to be content and value mom for who she is, not what I get from her.

That I believe is the picture here in this psalm.

The newborn considers its mother only a means of satisfying its desired desires.

The wean child has learned to value the mother for who she is.

How are we doing with God?

Do we approach God for what we get from him as though that's why he is there?

That's exactly what a child who is in the process of being weaned has to wrestle with.

And we do too.

Can we be content and satisfied with God even when he doesn't give us what we want?

There's a whole bunch of things in your life that you want and you don't have.

And many of those are not wrong.

Some of you would like to be married and you're not.

Some of you have lost a spouse or a child.

Some of you aren't as smart as other people around you.

Some of you aren't able to do uh an impressive job.

Oh?

Is it not possible?

Some of you are not the president of the class.

Some of you are not the captain of the team.

Some of you are not Olympic gold medal winners.

I have calmed and quieted my soul like a child with its mother.

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Warren Wersby makes the comment, and it's correct.

The problem with many of us is that we've grown old without growing up.

Maybe God lovingly doesn't give you everything you want and everything you think you need because he loves you too much for you to stay with that view of him.

Is it not possible that God just wants us to worship him for who he is, not for what we get?

That's the ween child.

Content just to be with its mother, even though things aren't the way they necessarily want it to be.

Learning to be content with God for who he is.

All right, uh just a few thoughts of what it might look like for us to pursue humility as proud people pursuing humility through the grace of God.

Here are a number of ambitions that are not grandiose, but are incredibly godly.

Things to desire that if our souls would desire them, we might be able to begin to call ourselves by God's grace humble.

Just a couple of examples.

I deeply desire to not be compelled to run my own life and the lives of others.

Can't we let God be God?

Can't we let the one who we say every week is on the throne do it his way instead of my way or your way?

I I I won't ask for a show of hands.

I just know that we wrestle with this.

I do.

I deeply desire to not be compelled to run my own life or the lives of others.

That's God's business, folks.

Can't we just allow Him to rule the universe?

Oh, it's real easy when it's the universe.

It's not so easy when it's my job or my family or my finances.

But can't, doesn't the same thing apply?

A desire for that, progress in that, is a desire and progress for humility.

A second thing.

I deeply desire to be free of the arrogant, unhealthy need to get God and his ways all figured out.

I need to limit myself to what God has revealed.

I have a thousand questions about God, and my seminary training has not helped me.

It's helped sharpen the questions and demand the answers and to use logic to try to put God in the appropriate box.

That's what we do with theology.

We get God all figured out, we put them in these boxes, and then when they don't fit, we get frustrated, so we look for something else.

God is not intended to reveal everything to you about who he is and what he does, why he does what he does.

That's just too much for us.

That's just too much for us.

That's not.

We don't need that.

I'm not saying we don't try to understand the scriptures.

I'm not saying that at all.

I'm just saying that sometimes we're so intent on getting it all right and getting the outline right and getting the boxes filled in and getting our theology right, and I'm all for right theology.

But I'm not for being driven to make sense out of God and his ways.

The older I get, the less I feel like I understand about God.

Not because I believe less, but because I believe more about who God is.

I had it all figured out.

Right out of seminary.

Now there's a need for us, it seems like, to get it right, get it straight.

And I would say, just be careful.

A humble soul takes God as he is and rejoices in the God who is, and isn't upset with the things they don't completely understand about him.

Thirdly, I deeply desire to not demand that I be treated as the center of my little world.

Don't you want to be the center of your world, have everything revolve around you?

But rather, I deeply desire to find satisfaction in knowing my little place.

Isn't that a strange thought?

To be content with my little place?

Or do we have to have grandiose places?

Finally, I deeply desire to not demand from God that what I want and what I think I need is what I ought to get.

To not hold on to that which God takes away and to welcome God's weaning.

He gives and he takes away.

He gives and he takes away.

And still my heart will say, Blessed be the name of the Lord.

If that is the psalm of our soul, we're learning as proud people to be a little bit humble.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, if any of this happens, that's because you are gracious and you teach us and you wean us and you develop us and you enable us to take joy in who you are.

And Father, I pray that you would continue to have your way in my life.

That I would be a proud man who is pursuing humility by the grace of God.

And I pray for my dear brothers and sisters, that very thing.

I pray for us as a church.

Can we not just be content?

Do we always have to be bigger and better?

Have the sharpest, the most exciting?

Do I have to be bigger and better?

Do I have to win?

Or can I just find delight in you, O Lord?

I pray.

I pray that we might be humble people, proud, yet pursuing humility by the grace of God.

And if that happens, we will give you great praise.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me ask you to stand for the benediction.

And now, my friends, now my friends, go into the world in peace.

Have courage, hold on to that which is good, and honor all men.

Strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, restore the wandering, and share the gospel.

Love and serve the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And may the grace and the peace and the humble Spirit of Christ be ours.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You're dismissed.