A Song for Pilgrims

Today we'll be looking at a passage from the Psalms.

So if you brought a Bible and you want to make your way to the book of Psalms in the Old Testament, and if you'd like a sermon outline, our ushers would be happy to give you one.

Just raise your hand.

Happy Mother's Day again to all of our mothers who are here today.

You know, maybe you have often wondered whether or not you are a mother.

Someone put together a helpful checklist to tell if you're a mother or not.

You know if you're a mother if you automatically double knot everything you tie.

You know you're a mother.

If you hear a baby crying in the grocery store and start swaying back and forth however, your children are not with you.

You know you're a mother if you actually get to like the smell of strained carrots mixed with applesauce.

And you know your mother if you get so into crafts that you consider writing a book called 101 Fun Crafts to Do with Dryer Lint and Eggshells.

And finally, you know your mother if you are out for a nice meal with your husband enjoying some adult conversation and suddenly you realize you reached over and cut your husband's steak for him.

Well, today, whether or not you're a mother, the Psalms are there to help you, help us all, on our journey through life with the Lord.

The psalms are songs that express the worshippers' praise to the Lord, their laments in life and their hope in God's sovereign reign.

The psalms are placed in the scripture that express very deep feelings to the Lord and cover the gambit, really, of all of our emotions, our doubts, good and bad circumstances we face, the cover of beliefs about God, how he works in the world and a lot of other very, very deep, important things that we need to know.

But whatever you're going through, on a certain day you may want to go to the Psalms and you'll probably find yourself there.

Today I'm looking at a Psalm that can help us if we feel a bit overwhelmed.

I'd like you to turn to Psalm 131.

We'll be talking about this psalm this morning.

Psalm 131.

A song of a sense of David.

O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty, nor do I involve myself in great concerns or in things too wonderful for me.

Surely I have composed and quieted.

My soul, like a weaned child, rests against his mother.

My soul is like a weaned child within me.

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

Today we're going to look at three things in this psalm the context of the psalm, the content of the psalm and the climax of the psalm.

Right away we're told the context of the psalm in the superscription there, under Psalm 131.

It's called a p a Psalm of Ascent.

Now, if you're not familiar with that term, the Psalms of Ascent were sung by pilgrims all over Israel who were journeying to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the three feasts they were required to every year.

The Feast of the Passover was the first one, celebrated in the spring of the year to commemorate their deliverance from Egypt.

Then they celebrated the Feast of Weeks See it in Exodus 19.

It was celebrated 50 days after Passover, commemorating their journey to Mount Sinai receiving the law, and the Greek translation is called Pentecost, 50 days, which, by the way, this year is next Sunday.

Then the third feast was the Feast of Tabernacles.

That celebrated God's provision for them.

They left Egypt, went to Sinai and then traveled in the wilderness for 40 years and celebrated God's provision for them.

Pilgrims from all over Israel would travel to Jerusalem, situated on Mount Zion near the center of the country.

Mount Zion rises in elevation some 2,500 feet above sea level, to approximately 3,800 feet.

So wherever people were coming from all over Israel, the whole journey involved constantly going up to Jerusalem.

That's why it's called a psalm of ascent.

That's why it's called a psalm of ascent.

On their journey to Jerusalem, the pilgrims would often travel in groups and families for one of these feasts, like 12-year-old Jesus did with his parents for the Passover.

As they traveled together, they would sing the psalms of ascent Psalm 120 to 134.

Why would they do that?

To prepare themselves to worship the Lord All the way up.

Psalm 131 is one of the 15 pilgrim songs that Hebrew worshipers would sing on their way up to Jerusalem.

That's the context of Psalm 131.

Now let's look at the content, which is very important for them.

For us, this is how they prepared to worship Yahweh when they got to Jerusalem, when they went into the temple.

Psalm 131 is only three verses, but it's absolutely packed with valuable insights about our relationship with the Lord.

It was originally written to help Israel's worshipers prepare to meet God when they worshiped him in the temple, but I'm convinced Psalm 131 can help us prepare to worship the Lord when we come together as a church.

You'll find it very relevant.

From the content of this psalm.

This is what we learn, lord, when we come together as a church.

You'll find it very relevant.

From the content of this psalm, this is what we learn.

We will not be ready to worship the Lord, we will not be ready if our hearts and minds are overwhelmed with pressing concerns.

With pressing concerns and, in sense, psalm 131, david gives us a step-by-step meditation to work through to those who feel overwhelmed with life so they can worship the Lord without this burden and distraction of these pressing concerns.

If you've come in today and your mind is all tangled up with some huge burden or big concern, I'm sorry, but your spirit is not in a place where you can genuinely worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.

That's why this psalm is here to help us.

You can tell King David, who wrote this psalm, had some pressing concerns.

As he's walking up to Jerusalem, he's trying to deal with them so he can worship.

In the psalm he mentions things like great matters and concerns things too difficult for him.

I can only imagine the stresses that King David must have been under, and many of you know his story.

He had marital problems, he had parenting issues, he had to deal with leaders who were against him.

Nothing personal, dennis, by the way, I'm just kidding.

He had to deal with enemies who plotted against his life.

Can you imagine?

Now he's walking up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord and all these things are buzzing around and it's consuming him.

What does he do?

All this suggests to me, when David joined the throng and the ascent to the temple, he was overwhelmed by what was going on in his life.

Now, while we may not be as overwhelmed in life as David was, if you haven't already, you will be overwhelmed at some point with situations and concerns.

I would venture a guess.

Actually, I'm taking a long shot here, but there's one particular group of people who may relate to being overwhelmed most of the time Mothers of young children.

You saw it in the video, kind of.

While we honor our mothers today and hope that this can encourage you, this psalm can help anybody who feels overwhelmed and want to really come into the Lord's presence undistracted.

I memorized this psalm years and years ago.

I memorized this psalm years and years ago and I keep coming back to it again and again when I feel overwhelmed.

Keep in mind that this is a psalm.

It's not a lecture and it's not a sermon.

It's a song and it's poetry put to music, it has rhyme, it has rhythm.

And because of that, what's happening?

David helps us deal with our overwhelming concerns by using analogies, metaphors, word, pictures that are intended to speak to our hearts, that are intended to speak to our hearts.

David helps us identify the things that may cause us to feel overwhelmed and shows us what we can do about them.

And he uses really four word pictures Heart, eyes, walk, soul.

To prepare to worship the Lord and help us when we're feeling overwhelmed involves humbling our heart, lowering our eyes, walking with carefree and satisfying our souls with the Lord.

First, to prepare for worship, david says that we need to humble our heart.

He says oh Lord, my heart is not proud.

As king he had every reason to be very proud, but he realized you come into worship like that, it's going nowhere.

Oh Lord, I am not proud.

Pride indicates a heart problem.

Pride's focus is always on our own self-interest.

Pride is not good for our soul and when we are overly focused on self or things related to self, it can lead very quickly to feeling overwhelmed.

So David says my heart, lord, is not proud.

But he goes a step further.

Second, he says we also must lower our eyes.

David says he doesn't have haughty eyes either, david's eyes.

You see that he mentions it's a metaphor, referring to another way he senses he's been proud.

Pride conservatives use the metaphor of the eye how we look at ourselves and how we look at others pridefully.

Don't come into worship like that.

Pride, I'm telling you in either of these cases, is a killer for worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth it's a killer.

It says God is opposed to the proud.

David knows that and he's coming in and says Lord, I'm down, my heart is humble and my eyes are down.

I'm not thinking too highly of myself and I'm not thinking bad of others.

Then to Then, to help us prepare for worship, david says we must loosen our cares.

Now, this is one place in this psalm where it's a little bit difficult to translate.

But David mentions two things about our walk.

He says I don't involve myself.

In other words, I don't get myself caught up in great concerns or great matters or in things too difficult or wonderful for me.

Basically, we come to church.

When we come to church, when we come to worship the Lord, we can't help it.

We come in with all of our troubles.

They're just following us right along.

Here we are, we're in the Lord's presence now, but we still got all these problems, still got all these concerns and cares.

And those problems and concerns we're walking through are going to distract us from a pure and simple devotion to the Lord, full attention for what the Lord wants to say to us or do in us.

We're distracted.

He says first, he's walking through some great matters.

I don't involve myself, I'm not getting tangled up in great concerns.

He uses the word great.

Here's what we do.

He uses the word great referring to problems in his life and ours that we've literally enlarged in our minds and made them bigger than God.

They're that big, huge, great matter and we're not equipped to deal with them and we will feel overwhelmed.

So we need to remember God is bigger than we tend to enlarge things far beyond the capacity of God to handle.

Second, david says he's walking through things too wonderful or difficult for him.

This is an interesting word because it can mean good things, but I don't think he's overwhelmed by good things.

I think it's the other expression that the word is used for Problems that are so big, so big we absolutely can't even deal with them.

We can't even hardly get them out of their head.

They're so big, they're difficult and only God can deal with them, but they're consuming us and that concern, I think he's saying I need a miracle.

This is way beyond me.

Finally, as he moves through this, he's trying to help us as he records this encounter with himself and the Lord.

He's trying to help us see how we may deal with these things so when we come to worship, we're freed from these mental heart distractions that really distract us from what the Lord wants to do in our lives when we do come to worship.

So, finally, to stop feeling so overwhelmed, david turns to his soul.

Really, that's the centerpiece of this psalm.

That's where it all has to be dealt with when our pressing concerns begin to overwhelm our souls.

That's what's happening here in verse 2, in verse 1 and 2.

What that means is the problems have so consumed us we're no longer sensing God's presence with us.

We're even questioning where's God?

And the reason for that probably is we've been thinking you know what I got all these concerns.

If I could just figure out a way to deal with these concerns, then I'll be okay, I'll feel better, I'll feel happy, it'll be enough.

If I just didn't have these, then things would be okay.

I'd be satisfied.

No, because when we look to those things to be met, what are we doing?

We're looking away from the Lord himself.

And when we look to those things or other things other than God, to satisfy our souls, we're going to always feel overwhelmed.

Our souls, we're going to always feel overwhelmed.

So I love this because he moves quickly to help us understand what he's saying in the word pictures.

When he feels like that, this, like a mother with her weaned child sitting on her lap, david shows us that only the Lord can really satisfy us deeply, our soul.

David said our relationship to the Lord needs to be like a child sitting on his mother's lap, being comforted by her presence and love.

Do you sense that that's what David's getting at?

If it is, if it is, david comes to this point.

Now we're ready to worship him.

Now we're ready.

He walks through.

He looks at his concerns First of all.

He deals with his sin, his pride, arrogance, his judgment of others, the way he looks at people, looks at himself.

Then he takes us to his soul.

He knows those things have affected him deeply and he turns to the Lord and just wants to crawl in the Lord's lap.

That's it.

Problems haven't been solved, they're still there.

But I'm with the Lord on his lap.

Things are going to be okay.

Now I'm ready to worship.

Things are going to be okay.

Now I'm ready to worship.

Well, how do we get to that point?

Follow the psalm.

Follow the psalm.

David shows us how.

Verse 1.

When we feel overwhelmed and we're wanting to come into his presence, we begin with a heartfelt prayer.

David says right out of his mouth oh Lord, that starts his walk.

Oh Lord.

And then he begins praying with a sincere humility.

My heart's not proud, my eyes aren't haughty.

I know I think too high of myself.

I know I judge others.

I lower my eyes, humble my heart.

And then what he?

What's happening here is he's praying in a spirit of surrender to the lord, to his sovereignty in his life.

He doesn't understand what's going on.

Those are things too difficult.

He doesn't know what to do about those stuff.

It's a sense of surrender.

God, only you can help me.

And then, second day, it says we need to compose and quiet our soul.

There it is.

And then, second day, it says we need to compose and quiet our soul.

There it is.

Here's the core of how David can help us.

He says surely I have composed and quieted my soul.

Notice, this is something he's doing.

I've done this.

How do you do that?

Well, to compose the word means to set in order to bring something into balance, and when we're overwhelmed, we need to get some things in our head and heart straightened out and balanced Right.

Compose your soul and quiet.

It begins with, I think, our theology.

We get our mind and heart right with the truth of who God is.

It seems to be less unable to help us in our problems.

How do we do that From the Scripture?

Not unable to help us in our problems?

How do we do that?

From the scripture?

We return to these truths God is almighty, he is sovereign and nothing is too difficult for him.

He hears us when we call.

He's sufficient for us completely.

I mean, let's go on and on, but we're going to make our thinking right here.

We're going to put things into balance with the truth coming from God's Word.

David is showing us that we need to balance our concerns with who God is.

Balance it, because when we come in, when we started, here are the concerns.

Here's God.

No, no, no, no, no.

Compose your soul.

To quiet our soul means, once we've composed it, we rest our head and our heart in those truths of God, balanced, like a weaned child rests his head against his mother.

Now we come to verse 3, the climax of the psalm.

Here's where David's been leading to those who feel overwhelmed If we walk through this in preparation, our psalm of ascent, going up to worship the Lord.

He's gone through this and now he calls out to anyone listening oh Israel, hope in the Lord.

That's what David was doing as he walked through this psalm.

He's putting his hope in the Lord, not in solving the problems, not in getting this done, not in doing that Hope in him, this done, not in doing that Hope in Him alone.

That doesn't mean we hope in solving our concerns.

It's not putting our hope in the removal of all of our problems.

When we come into worship, we're still going to have problems.

We need to deal with them by putting our hope in the Lord, resting in Him, in the truths about Him.

By the way, this is a principle, a lesson, a teaching that every single believer needs to learn.

It doesn't come naturally.

We will be overwhelmed by concerns.

Here's one way God uses those concerns.

Here's one way God uses those concerns.

We have to learn to compose and quiet our soul.

We have to learn to drop our pride, lower our eyes.

We have to learn to pray in a sincere heart and mind.

This is what the apostle Paul actually said.

This is something the Apostle Paul actually said.

This is something he had to learn.

It didn't come naturally.

Philippians 4, 11 to 13,.

Paul says to the Philippians who gave him a great gift, he said look, I don't speak from want.

He said look, I don't speak from want.

I've learned to be content in whatever circumstances I'm in.

I know how to get along in humble means.

I also know how to live in prosperity In any and every circumstances.

I've learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, of having abundance and suffering need.

I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

Don't miss this.

This is something he had to learn.

And just how did he learn it?

By facing circumstances that probably were overwhelming.

And the Lord said here, get on my lap, rest your head there and watch what I can do.

Don't think in your pride you're going to figure this out.

You're going to figure it all out and people will give you all kinds of accolades.

No, get on my lap, rest in who I am.

That's why he says you know what I can do, all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

I know he's with me, I know he's in me.

Paul had problems and you know that there's a litany of the problems he faced and concerns, but he put his hope in the Lord.

When our soul is troubled, it means that our concerns start to appear to us greater than God, overwhelmed, greater than the Almighty, greater than the Almighty, greater than the creator of the heavens and the earth, greater than the one who loved us, redeemed us from our sin and death and eternal wrath by sacrificing himself for us.

And when we start to feel overwhelmed, take David's counsel go to the Lord in prayer, compose and quiet our soul, setting it right by balancing those concerns with who God is.

Then get in his lap, rest your head peacefully as he works in and through your life and you will learn.

You will learn to put your hope in the Lord.

But the truth is really that our soul will never be satisfied until we find our rest in Jesus.

That's why Jesus invited us to come to him.

That's what Paul experienced.

That's what every believer needs to do.

Who knows Jesus has come to him.

Jesus invited us to come to him and find rest for our souls.

A rest for our souls is not in solving this problem or that problem, it's not in getting this need or that need, abundance or want.

It isn't that.

It's Jesus alone filling our soul.

Matthew 11,.

Jesus said come to me all who are weary, heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you.

Learn from me.

I'm gentle, humble in heart.

You'll find rest for your souls.

How do we come to Jesus?

Well, first, in the pattern of the psalm, even realize that we are sinners, we're troubled and in our sin, apart from him, but because he died for our sins, we can be forgiven.

Just by asking, just by confessing to him and acknowledging him as our Savior and Lord.

When you believe in him, he not only forgives you your sin, he gives you eternal life, a personal, intimate relationship with him, so that anytime you want, just crawl on his lap and rest your head.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for the truths we find in your word about you, especially that no one is beyond your reach and when life overwhelms us, you're there with us and can give us rest.

We confess, though many times we do enlarge our problems and concerns and magnify them so they appear greater than you.

Would you help us to know that nothing's greater than you, nothing's too hard for you, and whatever situation we find ourselves in, we can do all things.

Through Christ, who strengthens us.

And, lord, I pray and ask you to bless every mother here today, that they may find rest in the presence and hope of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.