Sunday 06 • 24 • 18

Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord. From this time forth and forevermore. — Psalm 131

The word of the Lord.

Alright, good morning. My name is Elliot. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to be with you here this morning. Before we look at Psalm 131, let's pray one more time.

Father, we thank you for the opportunity this morning to look at and consider the wonderful things in your word. And so we ask now that you, Lord, by your Spirit would give us understanding into these wonderful things and that your Spirit would bring about the change in our hearts that you desire. Would leave here people deeper in love with you and deeper in love with one another. It's in your name Jesus that we ask these things. Amen.

Well, you may have seen it—last year, The Rock partnered with Apple and made a commercial for the iPhone 7. And if you saw the commercial, you know that it started with him watching a newscast or news story about himself, where the newscaster said, "It seems like Dwayne Johnson can't possibly take on anymore." And he responded, "That sounds like a challenge." And then he and Siri partnered together and dominated the day.

And the first time I watched it, I thought, man, I'm clearly not using Siri to its full potential. And then I thought, I don't really want to do much more than I'm already doing. Life is already busy enough. I'm already overwhelmed by everything that I have to do and between you and me, Siri isn't helping me a whole lot.

Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is a word that I often use to describe how I feel. I don't know—is that just me or you too?

And my task list doesn't have to be at its limit. My inbox doesn't have to be overfilled for me to feel that way. I can pull out my phone in a matter of seconds. I can see the events I didn't get invited to, discover the stuff that people want me to do, find the things I should do, the things I should know. I find more problems that I feel some obligation to solve and hear about all the stuff I must read, I must watch, and comment on—and that's just from the friends in my social media feeds.

And if I open a news app, I'll discover all the things I should fear, learn about the ways I'm failing as a father, as a husband, as a man, or as an employee, and also find out about all the evil and mess in the world. And while I'm reading that stuff, my phone will often make a sound, meaning that either I receive a text message, an email, or because I'm 40 and I have friends that are over 40, I may actually get a voice mail—which usually means that there's something more that I should do.

And if I listen to that noise for too long, I wind up spiraling all over myself and then trying to deal with the shame that follows by either over or under functioning, depending on how competent I feel in that area.

And that's just the stuff that's out there. It doesn't touch the stuff that's in my head. The over-analysis, the over-introspection, the trying to make sense of it all—it's simply too much.

As Jason Isbell sings, "Mama says God won't give you too much to bear. That might be true in Arkansas, but I'm a long, long way from there."

Again, overwhelmed is a word I often use to describe how I feel and I hate it. And yet I keep going. There's actually something that's kind of appealing to the overwhelming information. It makes me feel a little bit god-like. I can be more places, know more stuff, and do more things than ever before.

And if I'm honest though, it's appealing, I can't handle it. Something needs to change, and that change has to be something other than get off the grid. Though taking a break might not be a bad idea for a while.

Again, is it just me? Or does anyone else feel this way?

You know, it's been said that the difference between God and us is that God never thinks that he's us. We have limits. God doesn't. There's a limit to what we can know, what we can do, what we can be, what we can handle, what we can understand.

That means there are things I'm not made to do. There are things I'm not made to know. There are things I don't think will ever really make sense this side of eternity. There are things that I'll probably never be able to understand.

As David writes in Psalm 131:

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

And though it's tempting and Siri may make it seem like it's possible, you aren't either.

Instead of giving all our thoughts to those things, allowing them to occupy ourselves, David invites us to join him in coming to God in prayer.

Through Psalm 131, we're invited to trade our overwhelmed and anxious for contentment and peace. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good trade.

Three things we need to do to make that trade we see in the Psalm. Each one follows one of the three verses there. Number one, verse one, we're to own our limits. Number two, verse two, we're supposed to pursue dependence. And then number three, verse three, we're supposed to wait. Limits, dependence, waiting. Maybe not the most fun things or most appealing things to do, but maybe also the most helpful things to do.

So let's look at Psalm 131 as part of our extended look this summer through a number of Psalms. How do we trade overwhelmed and anxious for contentment and peace? Well, again, Psalm 131 gives us that three-step process. Number one, own your limits.

David starts the Psalm with:

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. — Psalm 131:1

David starts his prayer to God by saying, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. He rejects in that prayer the sins of pride—that's the heart not lifted up—and presumption, eyes not raised too high. And those are basically two sides of the same coin. Pride undervalues others and presumption overvalues yourself, and together, they create a double-edged sword that winds up actually harming us. It leaves us overwhelmed and anxious.

Pride and presumption show themselves in the fear that others won't get it right and the confidence that if it's going to be, it's up to me. And when you start to give pride and presumption a place in your life, you wind up well, like Alexander Hamilton. If you're familiar with Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, you know Hamilton wasn't exactly known for his humility. Aaron Burr describes in the musical like this: "Man, the man is nonstop." And then Burr asks, "Why do you assume you're the smartest in the room? Soon that attitude may be your doom. Why do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like you're running out of time."

Or he recasts the interaction between Hamilton and his wife, Eliza. Eliza says, "Run away with us for the summer. Let's go upstate." Hamilton responds, "Eliza, I've got so much on my plate." And later, Eliza says to her sister Angelica, "Tell this man John Adams spends the summer with his family." And Hamilton responds, "Angelica, tell my wife, John Adams doesn't have a real job anyway. He's only the vice president."

And the song ends with his wife pleading, "Take a break." And Hamilton says, "I have to get my plan through Congress. I can't stop till I get the plan through Congress." His fear that others can't and his belief that he must.

Well, if you know anything about Hamilton, you know his pride and presumption eroded all kinds of moral boundaries and that let him do things that harmed himself, his family, his career, and the reputation he gave his life to create. And as Lin-Manuel Miranda explained, his musical doesn't attempt to cover up Hamilton's story, but instead shows how Hamilton kept his eyes on his work and really messed up at home.

You know, if you drill deeper into your pride and presumption, you'll find that your problem isn't really with others—it's really with God. Pride is the fear that God isn't going to get it right, and presumption is the belief that if it's going to happen, it's all up to me.

A couple of years ago, I found myself pretty overwhelmed and filled with anxiety. I was working too much, taking on too much. I occupied myself—to use the words of Psalm 131—I lingered over, thought about, lived in things too great and too marvelous for me. Those great and marvelous things weren't massive things like, am I going to change the world? But smaller things, internal questions that occupied my thoughts like, will I ever get my inbox to zero? Or when will I get a break? Does anyone appreciate the work that I do? Or how can I be sure I'm going to make enough money? How can I be absolutely sure that I'm going to make enough money to provide for my family? And I couldn't get my mind to shut off. It was exhausting. And the quieter it got, like just before bed, the more noisy the thoughts in my mind got. The more I occupied myself—again, to use the words of David—with those things.

So I took a day off. I went on a prayer retreat, and as I was talking with God about my situation, I blurted out, "God, I'm exhausting myself so Casey and Hannah, my wife and daughter, won't want me." The minute I said that, I stopped. I thought about Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. — Psalm 23:1

And I realized that I didn't think God was going to come through for my family. I thought that if it was going to be, it's up to me. And so I over-functioned in my role as a husband and a father and a worker. I had to be the shepherd.

So I wasn't sure God was going to do it. You know the difference between God and me? God never thinks that he's me. And if we're going to trade overwhelmed and anxious for contentment and peace, we need to join David in praying verse one.

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.

We need to join David in praying that—not committing to that, but praying that to God. And here's the good news: if you find yourself overwhelmed and exhausted, well, it's what Paul Miller writes in his wonderful little book, A Praying Life. He says the criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. Come as you are. Let God know what you want to be.

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.

When we join David in that prayer, it flows easily into a conversation with God about the things we tend to categorize as my problem. And when we pray that way, we tend to give them to him. Moving them from my problem to God's problem, so to speak—realizing that it's not up to us, but ultimately up to him. Nothing is too great or too marvelous for him. He loves to meet us in our desperation. He loves to listen to what we have to say, and he loves to act on our behalf.

Look, when we do that, it doesn't mean we're not going to do anything. Who knows what God will have us do? I don't. But that prayer of humility puts us in the right place. It puts us in a place of dependence on God.

Dependence on God

Depending on God is the second step that's offered in Psalm 131. And look, I know dependence is not necessarily a virtue that you all aspire to. It can sound demeaning. It can sound weak. It can even sound juvenile. I mean, imagine you're at lunch today and you overhear the thirty-year-old in the booth next to you say, "I can't do anything on my own. I can only do what I see my dad doing." You might chuckle to yourself. You might think about the guy in Upstate New York whose parents had to get a court-ordered eviction to get him out of the house. You might think, wow, that guy really needs to grow up.

Or you might think about John 5. Jesus said to them:

Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

Jesus was the most dependent person who ever lived. He just picked the right place of dependence. Dependence isn't juvenile, demeaning, or weak, as long as you pick the right place of dependence. Living life dependent on God is living life like the greatest, most complete person that ever lived.

Dependence, though, isn't a passive reality. It doesn't just happen. It requires active pursuit. In verse one, David details what he doesn't do. In verse two, he details what he does do. He says:

But I have calmed and quieted my soul.

Even then, he makes it clear that it's something that he's active in doing. I have calmed and quieted my soul. That means a calm and quiet soul—one that's content and dependent—is not something that just happens. It requires work.

Here are some things I found helpful as I've pursued a calm and quiet soul. Number one, I talk to God about what's overwhelming me and I say something like, "I can't handle this. It's really getting to me." And step two gets even more complicated. I follow with something like, "God, I need you." I put myself in a position of dependence. Not because I'm not dependent on God up to that moment—I'm dependent on God every moment of the day—but because I need to remind myself of that reality. I really need him every moment of every day.

And it's at this point I'm often reminded what I often forget: God knows I can't handle this. And he loves to step up and meet my needs. He's like a good parent with a child that he loves.

I think it's one of the reasons David starts his prayer with the words "Oh Lord" in verse one. The Hebrew word for "Lord" there is the word that often gets transliterated in English as Yahweh. It's God's self-given name. It's the name of relationship. It's meant to remind you that God wants to be your God and he wants you to be his child. Your relationship with him was his idea long before it was your idea. You didn't force a relationship. You didn't manipulate your way into it. You couldn't do a thing to make it happen. God did everything.

In eternity past, he called you his own and lavished his love upon you. He sent his Son Jesus to pay the penalty you deserve for disobeying him, which is to say he sent his Son Jesus to die in your place. If you've trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, then God calls you his child forever. There's nothing you can do. Nothing you can do to take that designation away.

Look, the relationship between God and Jesus is a relationship between a perfect father who takes great delight in lavishing perfect gifts on his perfect son, giving him everything he needs at the moment that he needs it. And if you're a believer in Jesus, God treats you like he treats Jesus. You're his beloved child. He takes great delight in lavishing gifts on you, giving you everything that you need the moment that you need it.

Because of this relationship, you can come to God saying, "I can't handle this. It's really getting to me. I need you." And find that he responds in love. He knows you can't handle it. He knows it's getting to you. He knows you need him. He never tires of you asking. He invites you to ask. He loves to respond to those who are dependent on him.

And as he responds, you find that you're encouraged to ask more. His response builds your faith. You come with a need. He responds with grace. And it builds an even greater dependency on God, one that's marked by prayer. Again, Paul Miller explained, "A needy heart is a praying heart. Dependency is the heartbeat of prayer."

And I think all of that helps us understand the way David describes himself as a dependent but content child in verse two.

I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. — Psalm 131:2

I can't handle this. It's really getting to me. I need you. And then the final step is to remind myself of what I know is true. So I turn to the scriptures. I turn to the Bible to reset my reality.

I don't know about you, but most of my neurosis, they're not rational. What that means is, I can't reason my way out of them and you can't reason me out of them. But I can allow the truth of scripture to reset my reality.

The place I most often turn in the scriptures is the collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascents—Psalm 120 through 134. Psalm 131 is right there in the middle of them. They're the songs that God's people have sung most often in their journey through life. They're the pages in my Bible that are the most worn, the most thin, the most stained with coffee and dotted with tears. Because I've found that on these three pages of Psalms, I usually have at least a verse or two that really helps—no matter the situation—reset my reality.

So I start to calm and quiet my soul. The way I know my soul is at rest is found in the second half of the verse. Look at how David describes his soul in verse two.

I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. — Psalm 131:2

What words would you use to describe a weaned child with its mother? Quiet. Calm. Peaceful. At rest. Patient. Content. Trusting. Dependent. And all of this because up to this point in its life, all the child has known is nourishment.

Let's be honest: the weaned child is a picture of peace. The process of weaning, at least I've heard, is anything but. It takes work—hard work. Part of what it means to be an anxious soul is to have a certain degree of comfort with the chaos anxiety brings. So work at it. I have calmed and quieted my soul. Don't trust the process. Trust the God who up to this point has provided you with what you need.

The process may not be what you desire, but the end result will be. Fight to believe in God. Work to take him at his word. Work to take him up on the trade that he offers. He will take willingly, with great pleasure: your overwhelmed and anxious self, and in return, give you contentment and peace.

O God, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and wonderful or 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. — Psalm 131:1-2

For David, this is like the best thing that he's experienced. And so he doesn't want to keep it to himself. He wants all of God's children to experience this, so he invites us to it. That's what he does in verse three.

O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. — Psalm 131:3

As we sang earlier, "O saints of God." Own your limits. Pursue dependence. And then wait.

Wait's a funny word. It can make you think of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite—who was the high school quarterback that never quite got the break that he desired, and so he keeps himself in shape, makes a couple videos, and waits forever for the call from the NFL to come. That's not what David is calling us to in verse three.

It's waiting with hope. Not, "I hope the NFL will call," or "I hope I'll be able to get in a time machine and go back to my high school football game and win the state championship." But hope in God himself.

What does it mean to hope in God?

It means to go all in with him, to bet everything—your life, your career, your family, your reputation, your future—to bet it all on him. And that can mean sometimes you might wonder if you made a mistake. When you're exhibiting faith, you are admitting that you aren't God. You have limits. It might seem like you don't have reason for hope, but you also realize that you don't have the full picture. Only God does. And so you can wait with hope, content to be dependent on him.

One way to test if you're really waiting with hope or really hoping in God is found in another one of David's prayers—an honest prayer in Psalm 25. Let me read a couple verses the way Eugene Peterson translated it in the Message:

I've thrown my lot in with you. You won't embarrass me, will you? Or let my enemies get the best of me. Don't embarrass any of us who went out on a limb for you. — Psalm 25 (The Message)

If you find your prayers are similar to those—God, I've bet everything on you and it seems like everything is falling apart—it's a good sign actually that you may be hoping in God. However, if when things start to go downhill, your first response is instead to turn to yourself—what can I do? What can I bring?—and then what follows is some form of fretful work rather than prayer, you probably aren't hoping in God or depending on him.

So the invitation in verse three, "Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore," actually should kick you back to verse one and encourage you to pray verse one:

Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and marvelous for me. — Psalm 131:1

And pray that over and over and over again until you find that you're able to wait with a little bit more hope. And look, since the hope is from this time forth and forevermore, it means you'll need to wait with hope again and again and again. Or to put it another way, it means that Psalm 131 is not a one-and-done prayer. It's a prayer you return to again and again and again. At least that's been the case for me.

A Personal Story

The first four years that I preached here at this church were tremendously painful, at least for me and probably for a number of you that were here thirteen years ago. I was terribly insecure. I was full of fear. First time I'd ever preached on a regular basis. There wasn't a Sunday that I came to church feeling good about my sermon. It was rare that I left Sunday feeling any better. Sunday nights and Monday mornings were often shame-filled times where I beat myself up for not preparing as well as I should have and promising to do better the next week. And then Saturday came, and I spent most of the day and most of the night and much of early Sunday morning preparing the sermon I was about to preach.

I fought like crazy and often refused to give my overwhelmed and anxious feelings to God. I thought it's safer to keep them and solve the problem on my own. During the week, I didn't turn to God in prayer, but instead to myself, trying to solve as much as I could through my work. And then I showed up at church, and more often than not, God met me before I preached. And even though I'd screwed it up all week, even though I didn't open up to Him like I should have, even though He would be right to give me over to my anxiety and let me fail, He invited me many times by reminding me of Psalm 131 and invited me to pray it. Most Sundays I did. Often before I just got up to preach:

Oh Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high to myself. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. I've calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. — Psalm 131:1-2

And more often than not, He allowed me to preach with a calm and quiet soul, which was a gift of grace—something far beyond what I deserved.

An Invitation to Hope

And I don't know. Maybe you're at verse three. Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. And if you are, praise the Lord. Keep waiting with hope in God Himself. And even if it seems foolish or it seems like God's not showing up, don't give up hope. Join David like he prayed in Psalm 25: God, I bet everything on You. Don't put me to shame. Don't let me be put to shame.

And maybe some of you are more like I was and still often am on the Saturdays before I preach. All week long, your heart was lifted up. Your eyes raised too high. You've occupied yourself with things too great and too marvelous for you. You've discovered again that the difference between God and you is that God never thinks that He's you.

If that's you, start by confessing your sin of self-dependency, and then take God up on the invitation in verse three:

Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. — Psalm 131:3

Give expression to that hope by praying the first two verses of Psalm 131 over and over and over again until they come from an honest place at the core of your being.

And as you do, find that God is kind. He is merciful. He is patient. You can't outsend his forgiveness. You'll never be beyond your need for grace. I know. I experience that just about every Sunday. I experience that just about every day, and you can too.

Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

So, in summary, what does it look like to own your limits, pursue dependence, and wait on God? Well, in a word: prayer.

Years ago, I took a small group of pastors to spend the day with my friend Paul Miller, again the author of that book, A Praying Life. And as our conversation turned to prayer, one of the pastors asked Paul, "Why don't I pray more?" Without pause, Paul looked at him and responded, "You are far too confident in yourself and your abilities."

And look, you don't have to be a pastor for that to be true. The invitation in Psalm 131 is an invitation to prayer. If you don't know what to pray, use the words of the Psalm until God gives you more words to pray. To paraphrase, though it's the shortest Psalm to pray, it may be the longest to learn. But it's worth it.

Chances are life is not going to slow down a whole lot. You can't control most of the chaos that surrounds you. So you need to pray like David did in this Psalm.

First, Paul Miller writes, "Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life. It offers us a less busy heart."

Let me pray. So we ask that you would now meet us and you would calm our hearts as we now feast with you.