Psalms | Psalm 131

Want to first off. Extend my welcome to anybody.

That's visiting this morning. Thank you for being here with

us. My name is Steve Atkinson.

I'm an elder candidate here and I thank you for the opportunity

to be able to stand before you this morning.

Kyle's mention of the major change in our country.

This week is a super wind story but when I began this journey of

being an elder candidate, One of the things that I wanted to do

was to be open and honest and share with you what I was going

through, what changes God was making in my life what God was

doing. And and I want to share

something from with you, that should me is one of the biggest

wind stories in my life that's ever been that happened last

Sunday, Father's Day. I have shared with you all that.

I have two sons. Who are prodigals?

Who have one son in jail? I have one son.

That is still making bad decisions but praise the Lord.

Last Sunday for the first time in probably close to 15 years.

I heard from all three of my children.

And it was it was an amazing day and thank God for for his grace,

thank God for his answered prayers so I have I have

communication with them. Now, let's Megan's heart.

She's my bonus daughter. I get to see her and talk with

her all the time, but but the boys live in Georgia and I don't

get to see them and talk to them.

So at least God has now opened up.

Up communication with them. And I am just so incredibly

thankful and I wanted to share that with you my family this

morning. So we're into summer.

How many have been to Florida already?

Can I ask you, why? It's, it's 200 degrees here in

the Magnolia and you go to Florida and lay out on the sand.

That is 200 degrees and you get in the water with things that

eat you that bites you that sting you, waves, that drag you

out into the ocean. I just I go for my grandkids.

I do My perfect vacation would be in the middle of the Arctic

Circle in a, in a log, cabin with a fireplace with a cup of

coffee endless, cup of coffee, and a stack of books and read

that would be my perfect vacation.

But that is one thing that God made totally different between

Sondra and I Is that just does that's not going to work and I

do not ever see me being able to fulfill my perfect vacation.

So anyway, thank y'all for letting me share that with you

bless each. One of you that have to work out

in the heat every day. Y'all take care of yourselves to

make sure you drink a lot of water, do all those things that

you're supposed to. So enough of all All that.

We're going to continue this morning in our series that we've

entitled aligning ourselves with God's heart and you would turn

with me to Psalms 131. Psalms 131.

And if you are able, I'd ask that you stand with me as we

read God's word. 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 and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with

his mother. Like a weaned child is my soul

Within Me. Oh Israel.

Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

Let me pray for us real quick. Father, I thank you for this

time. We have to gather this morning.

I thank you for your presence here with us this morning.

I pray father that your word today would be real.

And that we would be able to internalize this teaching.

Father, I pray that you take. The words that that I have

written and use them for your glory.

Father, I pray that they come out is words of your wisdom and

not of anything that I've done. I pray now, father is, as we get

into this that you you give me calmness.

Give me breath to be able to speak boldly for you.

Father, we ask that all these things in Jesus name, amen.

The title of our lesson. This morning, our scripture,

this morning is calm trust in the Lord.

I think if you look over those three verses that we just read

is pretty obvious that these verses are filled with feelings

of Tranquility of symbolism of peacefulness and serenity.

But there's a statement that comes before verse 1 that I want

us to take a look at when I sat down and started, pray it over

how I was going to preach this. I kept coming back to this.

Introduction. This this sentence before verse

1, a song of ascents of David, you know, every word every

statement, Every jot, every Tittle.

And our Bible has a purpose and that purpose is the word of God.

We miss a lot. When we, when we skip over

things, when we're reading a lot of times we get in a hurry and

and I specially, I'll admit this, I do this when I'm reading

reading, something that was written by Paul, Paul tends to

be extremely wordy in. His introductions is

introductions, can be 10 or 12 verses long and I kind of tend

to go and get down to the meat and then when I get to the end

of that book, he starts talking about until Bob, hello and tell

so-and-so that I said this and so and so that I said they had

in and so I just kind of skip through all that you start your

Bible reading plan in January. You've got these great plans.

I'm going to read this read the Bible through this year.

You start off in January and read these awesome stories about

what God has done. You read these stories about his

power and him creating the world and him read about the

Israelites in Egypt. You read about how he has how he

brings them out of Egypt. and then you get to Leviticus and

it's like, oh boy. So then you've got to kind of

power through. Also, what about when you get to

those times when you're reading in your Bible of those

genealogies? Page after page of words that

you can understand, you can't pronounce, you have no idea what

they mean, but they're there. You know, why they're there.

Because God put them there, God, put them there for a reason.

So, when I started to try to put this together this morning, And

I looked at those three verses and I kept coming back to the

idea that those are pretty plain.

Those are pretty well, understandable, just as they

are. But what about this sentence up

here? I kept coming back to this.

A song of a sense of David, So we're going to camp out there

for a little bit and and this is coming from my heart.

I'm kind of a feast of Israel nerd.

I love to study the feasts of Israel.

I love to study the customs of the Israelites of the Jews

because I think it has a huge impact on what we read in our

Bibles. I think we misunderstand a lot

of things because we don't understand or we don't we don't

take the time to study what they mean.

So we're going to go over a few of these.

I want to try not to take too long but but I do have to start

Receive this. the statement, a song of ascents of David a

sense, Is Jerusalem set up on a hill.

So three times a year, the Israelites were required to go

to Jerusalem and so they were required.

To walk up this hill to Jerusalem.

These songs of a sense were written for the Israelites to

sing those songs as they walked up the hill as they enter

Jerusalem. There's 15 of them and they're

all between Psalms 120 in Psalms 134.

The authorship of these. Four of these are attributed to

David. One of them is attributed to

Solomon and did the the rest of them are anonymous.

There are a total of seven feasts that God gave to the

Israelites at at Mount Sinai. And for those of you who are

born and bred Magnolia ins these feasts, do not include the

Blossom Festival. Okay, exact does not nor does it

include. I found this out yesterday nor

does it include the purple. Hull peas, purple, Hull, peas,

Festival, get in trouble saying that but there are, as I said,

there's seven Feasts. There are four feasts that were

in the spring and there were three in the fall.

The force Feast from the spring, all point to the coming of

Jesus. The three feasts in the fall.

All point to his second coming. Okay.

So we've got the three feasts that we are going to look at

today. That are the reason that the

Israelites were going to Jerusalem are the Feast of

unleavened bread. Which is actually a part of the

week-long feast. We know is Passover, the Feast

of Weeks. The Feast of Weeks.

We know that as Pentecost And then the Feast of booths or

Tabernacles, which is a fall feast.

Now, before we get into this, I want to, I want to just quickly

explain types and shadows and and topology.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but typology is a

Christian form of biblical interpretation that proceeds on

the assumption that God placed, anticipations of Christ, in the

laws of events, and people of the Old Testament, Basically.

All that means, is that what God put in the Old Testament points

to Jesus? Okay, an easy example of this

that we can all understand. Everybody's heard of Jonah,

Jonah, spent three days in the belly of the whale.

What else do we know that happened in three days?

Jesus rose from the grave and three days.

So Jonah was a type of Christ that the shadow was fulfilled.

In Jesus is resurrection from the grave and three days.

There's a lot of these types and shadows that happened in the Old

Testament, New Testament. But, and some of these are just

absolutely amazing. And as I said earlier, I think

we miss a great deal if we don't understand these these Feast,

because if you if, when you're reading your Bible, if you'll

look, you'll see that that feasts are mentioned constantly

or something around the feast or the Jews are required to To do

this sacrifice, or they're required to do this.

All of this comes from the Old Testament in every bit of that

points to Jesus. And what I'm going to try to do

this morning is show you how we can take this.

That we're going to look at and how these three verses that

we've looked at points directly to Jesus.

Let's take a few minutes and we're going to chase a couple of

rabbit Trails. I want to look at first off the

Feast of unleavened bread. Which is part of what we know as

Passover. This Feast we know that it

commemorates the passing over of the Death Angel and the freeing

of the Israelites from bondage, you remember on the appointed

evening, the Israelites sacrificed a lamb, they place

the blood above the doorposts and on the side post of their

their doors so that the death angel would pass over them,

Sperry death in their family. You know the story Pharaoh,

finally changes its mind, and let's the Israelites of go after

this. And then in Exodus 12, the Lord

gives the instructions for the Passover Festival, while the

Israelites are still in Egypt. The festival is referred to or

as part of it as the Feast of unleavened bread because

Israelites were told to make bread without leaven so that the

bread because the bread would not have time to rise quickly

enough before they left. No, we talked about that.

Let me, let's talk about the Fulfillment of Passover.

The land that was to be sacrificed was brought into the

house and inspected for a week to ensure that it was

unblemished. Remember Jesus, the ultimate

Passover Lamb came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday a week

before his crucifixion teaching and Performing miracles to

prove. He was the Passover Lamb and

Eddie would be sacrificed for the Redemption of God's people.

Exodus 12 46 says, it shall be eaten referring to the Passover

Lamb in one house. You shall not take any of the

flesh outside the house. You shall not break any of its

bones. We know that during all of

Jesus's passion the beatings the crucifixion.

No bone was broken. The unleavened bread Levin is

used many times in the Bible, symbolically is sin.

If Levin is put into a lump of dough, it will permeate the

entire loaf. Just as Sin will spread in a

person in a church or a nation of each really overwhelming and

bringing its participants into its bondage and eventually

death. During the celebration of this

Festival of the years after the Exodus of of Egypt, the

Israelites were required to remove every single remnant of

Levin from their houses and remembrance of The Exodus But

this task is impossible because Levin is a powder and it becomes

airborne and becomes impossible to remove from the house.

This process symbolizes the the process of us attempting to

remove all Sin from our lives. It's an impossible task without

the intervention of Jesus Christ.

Now, even though I was surprised to see this, but even though

there are Scholars, that have differing opinions, I believe

that Jesus used unleavened bread at the institution of The Last

Supper. In Matthew, 26, Matthew 14.

Luke 22. And First Corinthians is

recorded that Jesus says, this is my body.

It was Passover a time where Levin was not to be used.

So why would he use bread with leaven and more importantly?

If Levin was used in the bread that he used, he said this is my

body. Why would he say that?

This is my body if there was Levin there, that was

representative of sin because we know that there was no sin in

him. Let's look at the feast Feast of

Weeks and Pentecost. We know that Pentecost was 50

days after Passover. Jesus Is God, God's spirit

descended on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 offering Israel to be

his treasured possession. Now if you'll carefully listen

to me and keep my Covenant, you will be my own possession out of

all the temples, although the holy Earth is mine.

So the Israelites are camped at Mount Sinai.

Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and meets God.

So, his presence is there of Mount Sinai?

God gives Moses the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.

And he comes down and he finds his rear lights worshipping the

calf, so he breaks them and then he gets them again in chapter

34. There's a spiritual significance

to this Festival of weeks. There are two loaves that are of

leavened bread that are used as a wave offering as the

foreshadowing of the time, when the Messiah would make both Jew

and Gentile to be as one. As I mentioned before, Levin and

scripture is often used symbolically of sin.

And the leaven bread used in the Feast of Weeks is thought to be

a representative of the fact that there was still sin within

the church and will be until Christ returns again. so in the

original Feast of Weeks or Pentecost God was God's presence

was there on Mount Sinai, but in the New Testament, 50 days after

the resurrection of Our Lord, The first fruits of the church

were gathered by Christ as some 3,000 people heard Peter

preached, the gospel after the Holy Spirit had empowered and

into wealth the disciples as promised with a promised

indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the first fruits of God's spirit

spiritual Harvest under the New Testament began.

So in the Old Testament, we have God's holy spirit.

Coming down on Mount Sinai and the Fulfillment of that being

the the giving of the Holy Spirit, the comforter 50 days

after Jesus's. Resurrection, the Temple of our

excuse me, the Feast of the Tabernacles, that's a week-long

feast that begins with a collection of palm and Willow

branches to be used as a symbol of rejoicing before the law.

The purpose of the Feast of booths was to remember the

giving of the law and to renew the covenant made between Israel

in the Lord during the days of the feast all Native.

Israelites work to do well in actual booths and they made

those Boos from those palm branches that they gathered.

And that reminded them of their deliverance from the land of

Egypt and look to look forward to the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus Christ, who would deliver his people from the bondage of

sin. This Feast, like all the feasts

of Israel, consistently reminded the Jews and should remind

Christians as well, that God has promised to deliver his people

from the bondage of sin and deliver them from their enemies.

Now, the Fulfillment of the Feast of booths.

First off, we have Palm Sunday. As I mentioned, one of the

things they did to build their booths was to gather palm

branches. So what did they do?

When Jesus was coming into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they

laid those palm branches down as he came in on the back of a

donkey. Here's Anna.

This is to me was an amazing thing that I had never heard

before. As part of the Feast of

Tabernacles, they had a ceremony that they called the

illumination of the temple. There were four seventy five

foot tall. Clint candelabras that stood in

what is known as the court of women.

Each candelabra had four branches.

And at the top of each branch was a 10 gallon Bowl, they had

young men that had bowls, that would climb these candelabras,

and fill those bowls with oil. And after those were filled,

they would like those oils, those bowls.

So, you had 16 of these, huge bowls on top of this 75.

A foot candelabra there were that was lighting up the temple.

Jesus was referring to this ceremony.

When he declared in John 8, verse 12, I am the light of the

John 8:12

world whosoever follows. Me will not walk in darkness,

but will have the light of life. And lastly, the water ceremony.

During this ceremony, the priest would gather water from the pool

of Siloam and carry it to the temple where they would pour it

out with water mixed with wine. This was acted out.

This was an acted out prayer to God to bless the altar.

There are two examples of types and shadows here in this water

ceremony in John 7, beginning in verse 37 it says on the last day

of the feast the great day. Jesus stood up and cried out.

If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink, whoever

believes in me, as the scripture has said out of his heart will

flow, rivers of Living Water. So, the priests were taking

water from the pool of Siloam thinking it was a holy water,

thinking it would save them. But Jesus was there and say, I

am the Living Water. John 19:34 also says, but one of

John 19:34

the soldiers who pierced his side with a spear and at once

there came out blood and water. The priest used wine and water.

But in actuality on the cross came out blooded water.

Charles Spurgeon says that of Psalm 131, that it is one of the

shortest of the Psalms. But it takes the longest to

learn. We've taken this long and we

haven't even gotten to verse 1. So I told Sandra this this

morning, you're kind of laughing but I'm serious and I'll kind of

try to tie all this together within the next hour or two

because it might take that long. But seriously again of of Psalm

131 John Piper says, It is about a kind of commitment sentiment,

excuse me, contentment or Stillness, or quietness of soul

that is rooted, not in circumstances, but in God, a God

who never changes in his utter commitment to us in Christ.

Now, let's quickly will go over these three verses that we read

verse 10 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, it's General.

There are two kinds of Pride, the pride of having and the

pride of wanting The pride of having is the pride of those who

think they have superiority. And it expresses itself that

boasting. The pride of wanting is the

pride of those who don't have superiority but wish they did

and continually crave others, attention and approval.

You might call it the pride of the strong and the pride of the

Tenon Pride can be very subtle cloaking itself with some

remarkably week looking form so that you will feel sorry for it

and see how much it's suffering and how unrecognized this virtue

is. But be careful.

You don't just see pride of the arrogant.

Cuz it's very often that that product exists in those who have

nothing to be prideful about. Craving only the attention and

approval of others to the point of stretching, the truth to make

themselves appear in their minds to be on the same level.

Many people term, this people-pleasing.

Prideful souls are the strong and noisy.

Distressed. Pride manifested in people

Pleasers can be manifested in anxiety.

And harshness in Despair and in frustration.

Haughtiness. My eyes are not haughty.

As a CSV says, are raised too high, as the ESV says.

Why did you do it that way? If you had just done it my way,

we wouldn't be having this problem.

Hot. It is doesn't need any advice

from anyone. They don't want.

All, haughty is proud, arrogant, conceited and self-important.

Remember remember how David had been anointed by Samuel?

He's been anointed as the next King when he was still a

Shepherd boy. Usually we see New Kings Ascend

to the throne, through the death of the raining key.

We see a lot of times that the throne is taken by force but

David waited David waited because he view that God had a

time for him to take the throne. I do not occupy myself with

things too great, and too marvelous for me, David refused

to be preoccupied with the things we do.

Not understand Spurgeon said of this, let us consider a while.

Is it not good for us to be puzzled and so forced to

exercise faith. David is committed to kill pride

in his life, from his heart, to his appearance.

To his actions pride is a great evil and David is determined to

renounce it at every level of his being verse to hear David

says, but I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned

child with his mother. Like a weaned child, is my soul

Within Me. So why does David use this

example? It would seem that a child would

be more calm and quiet before being renamed.

Then after though, I'm not an expert in this, by any means,

during the weaning process, the child is frustrated that he can

immediately get what he wants. He kicks, he screams he fusses,

but eventually he calms down and becomes used to the fact that

his world has now changed. Just as the child has become

content. So as David, But how the world

has set as set aside but how in the world has he set aside the

cares of the world and reached a point where he is calm in the

Lord? For most of us doing this is one

of the most difficult Journeys in our Christian Life.

We may not see adults, actually Kicking and Screaming as the

child to us. We do see these emotions

manifest themselves as worried as despair as anger and

confusion. But how did David reach this

point of calm and quiet rest in the Lord?

Here's a quote by Pastor from Alabama, is name is John English

Lee. And he says, the short answer is

that you can't. You can't resolve yourself into

humility. You can't beat on your chest

enough times. You can't cry enough tears.

Say enough chance, read enough, books.

Listened to enough sermons to self, will yourself into a

quieted soul? Can the leopard change his

spots? God asked us in his word.

No more can the leopard change itself?

Then we can change our hearts. You can only and will only

produce lasting change in your heart.

By the work of God himself. God Is The Answer God, working

through his holy spirit, to replace that hottie Heart of

Stone and put in its place. A quiet at heart.

And the last verse o Israel hope in the Lord from this time forth

and forevermore. This is David's wish for Israel.

How can we rid ourselves of our soul of the noise clutter and

Chaos in this life? How can we calm and quiet?

Our souls hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore

Now I'm going to try to put all this together and see if I can

help you understand what I've been trying to say this morning.

Our discussion. This morning began with the type

shown in the three major feasts glorifying God for saving the

nation of Israel from Egyptian bondage.

Then we see David as he writes of his Souls Tranquility.

In Psalm 131, if we look at the Chronological Bible, and we know

that the Chronological Bible is close to being as accurate as we

know that it is. But it was interesting to me

that when I looked at that and where I saw Psalm 131, excuse

me. Psalm 131, is placed right

before, Psalm 138 and 139, where David is writing Psalms to God

for thankfulness, he is praising God.

He is thanking God for Everything that is going on in

his life. Both of these are showing a

peacefulness in his heart. But then according again,

according to the Chronological Bible, which we know is, I want

to stress. We just this is working in my

example, so, it's where I wanted, it is to go, but after

Jesus, after David wrote those two songs, he then writes Psalm

143, Which is another cry to God for a time of Crisis and

affliction because of God because of David's many animals

and we know that they've had many enemies in many wars in his

in his reign. David's life was full of ups and

downs, peace and War. So we can know that the

remainder of his life was not calm and quiet.

The god of the Old Testament is the same God of the New

Testament. Just plans laid out and

celebrated in the Old Testament, in the Feast of Passover

Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles culminated in the

birth Life. Death burial and resurrection of

Our Savior Jesus Christ. David only had temporary

Serenity of his soul. Just as our Serenity is only

fleeting without Christ. But we can have internal

calmness and quietness in our souls due to the Shadows of the

Old Testament Feasts. And which are the sacrifice of

the unblemished Passover Lamb of God, the gift of the helper of

the comforter, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the words of

Jesus at the Feast of the Boost. I am the light of the world

whosoever follows, me will not walk in darkness, but will have

the light of life. He also says, if anyone thirsts

let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me, as the

scripture has said out of his fault, heart will flow rivers of

Living Water. Worship team.

You guys can come on up. Are you looking for peace and

comfort at your soul? Jesus is put it into the

sacrificial system by offering himself up as the ultimate

unblemished final sacrifice. Putting it into the bead for the

Feast of the Passover. The father has provided a helper

in the form of the Holy Spirit. John 14:26 tells us, but the

John 14:26

helper the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name.

He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all

that I said to you putting an end to the Deep for the Feast of

Pentecost. Jesus offers to be your light,

to keep you from darkness and your living water to keep you

from thirst. Putting an end to the need for

the Feast of booths. Once you accept Jesus offer of

Salvation today, the offer of a calm and quiet soul.

If you've got any questions or would like to talk Kyle, Jasper

Allen, James myself, we're available to talk with you

Anytime Anyplace. Thank you.