Dennis Tuuri

# Psalm 131

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty. Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever.

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Okay, we are actually continuing today with our series of talks going through the book of 1 Thessalonians.

In 1 Thessalonians, we’ve been really spending a lot of time on verse three, where Paul in his opening salutation to the Thessalonians says that he is remembering without ceasing their work of faith, their labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he adds the phrase at the end of that verse in the sight of God and our father. In the sight of God and our father, and my topic this morning—or this afternoon—based upon that verse is the presence of God. That’s what the verse indicates there.

And the sight of God is before God, and there’s some discussion in various commentaries whether this particular phrase “in the sight of God and our father” refers to Paul’s remembering them—Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy—remembering them in prayer before God, or whether it refers to the Thessalonians’ works—work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope—all performed in the sight of God and our father, or if it modifies specifically the last of those, the patience of hope, which many commentators think that the phrase “in our Lord Jesus Christ” modifies. Well, I think that probably it is too far removed from the first reference to remembering, and probably indicates all of the activities of the Thessalonians here cited, which is their work, their labor, and their patience based upon faith, love, and hope.

But it is true that whether we’re referring to our prayers before God or our works, our labors, and our patience before God, these things are performed in the sight of God and our father—in his presence. So I decided to take that phrase rather than doing kind of a topical study, which we’ve done on faith, love, and hope. Instead, I want to turn to one Old Testament psalm that has been a great comfort to me over the last few years, and hopefully to some of you as well.

And in some of the counseling work I’ve done, I’ve recommended that people memorize this psalm and repeat it at night, for instance, when thoughts of distress or anxiety afflict people. That they meditate upon this psalm in the evening, and particularly upon their bed as they go to sleep, resting in the presence of God. And so the presence of God is really identified in Psalm 131. The one who lives in the presence of God is bounded about—as it were—by the references to the Lord, the covenant God. That’s what the term “Lord” means in verse one and at the end of verse three of Psalm 131. He begins by saying “Lord,” and then he gives a description of who he is. It ends with an admonition to Israel to trust in that same Lord from this time forward and forever. And so the picture of the one living in the presence of God is put before and after with the person of God.

Now many commentators think that our Savior refers to or has this particular psalm in mind in Matthew 18, when he told the disciples—who asked him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”—he brought before him a little child and said, “Except you become converted and become as this child, you won’t see the kingdom of heaven.” And so the child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven—the one who has childlike faith and humility before God.

Now we use that verse a lot in paedobaptism, but you know, it wasn’t an infant that he brought forward. It was a child. It’s appropriate to apply the promises to our infant children. But I think that it correlates well with the weaned child that is talked about here in Psalm 131. So our Savior, I think, has reference to the same idea: that if we’re to live in the kingdom of God—which means in the presence of God—we’re to become as the child who is described in Psalm 131.

He is humble, as in verse one. He is self-controlled and mature. He’s not a nursing child. He’s not still at his mother’s breast. He’s been brought to maturation, as in verse two. And he hopes in God and trusts in him as well. So I suppose that in a way, with Jesus and the young child, we see the child seen as the example, but the child is before Jesus. And so he’s living in the presence of Jesus and hoping in him.

And that is really the point of what our Savior points us to in that particular illustration. And that’s what this psalm is about—life in the presence of God. As I’ve said, this is a wonderful psalm for meditating upon and remembering in times of anxiety and distress in our lives. And it’s certainly one that would be good to begin our series of talks, our sermons in 1991, with as well. As we look forward with hopefulness to the year before us, we do so because of the presence of God who promises to be with us as we go into that year.

Spurgeon, speaking of Psalm 131, said it speaks to a sanctified heart, a will subdued to the mind of God, and a hope looking to the Lord alone. Verses 1, 2, and 3. My outline is perhaps somewhat similar to that, although I have more detail. My prayer as I prepared this was that my outline and my talk now based upon that outline would not somehow become so detailed as to muck up the simplicity, which is the beauty of this psalm.

So we’ll see how well that happens. We see in verse one a description of humility. Verse one of Psalm 131 says, “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.” Simply put, we have here the picture of a person that has become humbled before God and is in the presence of God. But I think that these specific phrases that are used here, although in parallel fashion (and hence what’s being stressed is the whole picture of humility), the individual elements are important to us as well.

You see here two couplets, I believe, of a picture of humility. The first couplet is the first half of that verse, where he says that his heart is not haughty, nor his eyes lofty. And then the second couplet is “I don’t exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.” And so while I have four subpoints under point number one (humility), they’re really two couplets: humility of heart and of eyes being linked together in the first half of the verse, and humility of ambition and of intellect in the second half of verse one. So I’ll begin with the first phrase.

“My heart is not haughty.” Haughty in that verse—the Hebrew word means to soar or to be lofty, to be high up, sometimes actually in the physical sense. Saul, for instance, when he was chosen to be king of Israel, was loftier, haughtier, higher physically—that is, taller—than the rest of the Israelites. This was a precursor, of course, to Saul, who had become arrogant in his heart and lifted up against God. But it first referred specifically to the physical sense.

So “my heart is not physically raised up,” as it were, and it is not haughty or prideful in that sense as well. And the term refers then to pride—pride of position, relative to God primarily—when it’s used throughout the scriptures. Now there is a proper sense of this being lifted up. It’s interesting that in 2 Chronicles 17:6, Jehoshaphat “soared” (was lifted up) in the ways of the Lord, the text tells us.

So it is proper to be lifted up or to be exalted in thinking of the ways of the Lord. The improper thing that the psalmist here—and David specifically, the title of the psalm tells us—writes about is his own haughtiness of heart. His heart is not lifted up within him. The heart refers to his essence. And so I think we have here a picture of humility in relationship to God. The one whose heart is lifted up is the one who is prideful toward God.

Primarily—remember, we said that the essence of all sin is pride, and that pride is the exaltation of self and the corresponding debasement of God. And so the one whose heart is haughty or lifted up—in and of itself believing that it is to be lifted up or is great somehow—is the one who lifts himself up against God. And it’s interesting that in Ezekiel 28, and the verses I referenced there, as well as other places in scripture, frequently it is the blessings of God that lead us to that haughtiness of position.

In Ezekiel, we have the picture of one who’s being made rich by God and mighty by God, but he becomes haughty in his heart. And so this first reference to God is a great caution against us, particularly as God pours his blessings out upon us. As we’ve been blessed by God and as we shall be, it’s very important that we guard against haughtiness of heart—pride, as it were, in relationship to God.

But secondly, this first verse talks about how “my eyes are not lofty.” In other words, I don’t go around looking down upon other people. The eye is not derisive toward other men, nor do I see other people in a debasing way, lifting ourselves up. Humility before God is also to be accompanied by—in the scriptures—humility toward men. And so we’re to humble ourselves in relationship to men as well. Lofty—again, here the sense of being lifted up physically.

I thought of this last night when I, just before I went to bed, I turned on the television and saw a contemporary rock singer, I guess you would call it. And if you want a picture of somebody whose eyes are lofty, many modern musicians—whether they’re in the country field, the rock and roll field, or any other field—many musicians today are pictures of ones whose eyes are lofty. Proverbs 30 says, “There’s a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes, and their eyelids are lifted up.” And this is the generation that rejects mother and father and their counsel and disdains them.

And this is the generation that is judged by God. And so the one who lives in the presence of God lives humbly in relationship to God, but he also lives humbly in relationship to his fellow man. Matthew Henry said that this person “is not a scornful nor an aspiring look. He neither looks with envy at those above us nor with disdain at those below us.” Spurgeon said that “one should be neither proud in his opinion of himself nor contemptuous to others, nor self-righteous before the Lord.” And so all those things are signs of pride before God and before man.

Now we talked about the seven deadly sins as indicators in our own lives. How do we evaluate ourselves? Frequently the prideful man is not aware of his pride. And so it’s important that we look to the word of God repeatedly, trying to root out pride in our lives. We said that really an attempt to demonstrate to our children and root out of our own lives as well the seven deadly sins is an attempt to root out evidences of pride hidden in ourselves. Envy comes from too high a position of ourselves and a debasement of other people and God. Anger comes from the same thing. All the seven deadly sins spring out from the root sin, which is pride.

And so we gave some practical ways to evaluate ourselves: things, for instance, such as our speech. If we’re anxious to talk and not quick to listen to other people, well then we may well have haughty eyes, as it were, toward our fellow man. If we have an air of judgmentalness about us, this also is an indicator of pride, or haughtiness of eyes, as we look toward our fellow man.

But I think that the next half of this verse gives us a good picture of how this pride toward God and men works itself out. This next couplet—pride of ambition and pride of intellect. Verse one goes on to say, “Neither do I exercise myself in great matters.” The person who lives in the presence of God and is aware of what that means does not exercise himself in great matters.

What does that mean? The word “exercise” means to walk around in, to go to and from, to be involved in. And the word “great matters” is really a single word in the Hebrew, and it refers to things that are great—positions specifically that are great. This never really refers to the intellect so much as it does to the ambition of a man. The Lord himself is the one who is seen as great and exalted. In Matthew 5:4, it tells us that Jesus shall be made great unto the ends of the earth.

In other places of scripture, this word “great” or “great matters” is used in a comparative sense. For instance, when God puts the sun and the moon in the skies, these are two great lights. They’re great in relationship to the lesser lights. In Genesis 1:21, God created great whales—animals that are larger or greater than other animals. The word “great” is frequently translated as “elder.” Sometimes the word “elder” in the scriptures really has the same Hebrew word of greatness—great in relationship, of position amongst the siblings in a familial group.

While greatness doesn’t always necessarily speak in respect of persons, it does speak in respect of rank or position. And so when the psalmist here writes that the one who lives in the presence of God humbly does not aspire, does not exercise himself in great matters, I think what he’s repeating here is that we do not aspire to positions that are beyond what God has called us to do. We don’t have exalted views of ourselves that say we should be involved in greater positions than God has placed us in.

We don’t want to be the greater light if he has made us a lesser light. We don’t want to be the elder if he’s made us the second or third born, for instance. Spurgeon, in commenting on this verse, said that “many through wishing to be great have failed to be good. Not content to adorn the lowly stations which the Lord appointed them to, they seek for positions he has not called us to do.” Such is the vanity of many men that work in our day and age who refuse to work within their own range, their own calling, their own limitations, and instead want to be president of the company or president of the United States, and not content to work in a subordinate position.

Indeed, many people in their rejection of the particular callings God has given to them end up despising these positions and think these positions are somehow beneath them. Pride of ambition is something that the presence of God roots out of our lives. And living in the presence of God means that we live without pride of ambition. We don’t aspire to office that we have not been yet called to.

In relationship to this, many of us have discussed over the last few years the reference in 1 Timothy 3 to those who aspire to the office of the elder. And while this doesn’t settle the issue, I think there’s something to be said for the exegesis that says that we must, when we see somebody really wanting and desiring the particular office, we must be very cautious and then look through that qualification list.

Mark McConnell has suggested a correct interpretation of that verse is to see those qualifications as different things that will cause men to aspire to the office in an incorrect fashion, in an ungodly fashion. And I think that this pride of ambition can frequently see itself in an aspiration to office, whether it be in the civic arena, in the church arena, or even in the family setting, that one has not called one to do.

Now, God may well call us to high office, but it isn’t for us to promote ourselves to that office. It is for us to faithfully man the stations that God has given to us. And as a result of that faithful manning of those offices, then he ends up exalting us to the position. After all, the psalm is written by David. And he was the one who was anointed as king, knew that the position was his from God. And yet he very patiently and humbly waited until God exalted him to that position, refusing to strive for it himself, refusing to strike out at Saul, even when it would have been to his advantage and he could have achieved the kingdom in an earlier fashion.

So David was a picture of avoiding the potential failure of pride of ambition. I think that in our family callings there’s an order to those things, and when we are in a position of functional inferiority—whether it’s as the son to the father, the father to his father, or the wife to the husband—to seek to aspire to take over that position from the other person is to fall into the opposite of humility. Rather, it is pride before God and men, and so to fall into condemnation from God and to move away from his presence.

The presence of God brings with us a humility that results in satisfaction and contentment with the calling God has given to us. And then secondly, the verse goes on to talk about the other half of this couplet—humility in terms of intellect. He says, “I don’t engage in things too high for me.” And here the particular word that is translated “too high” in the scriptures frequently refers to things that are wondrous, beyond one’s capability, and hence insoluble for a particular person.

There are things that we cannot do—not positions we shouldn’t aspire to, but things that we are too limited in, whatever abilities God has given us, to perform. The wondrous works of God that are recited in the scriptures use this same word here. The high works of God are wondrous because only he can accomplish them. Now, there are other works that are wonders because they’re out of our capability but within the capability of somebody else.

And so the one who is content and humble before God doesn’t seek to strive to know things which are beyond the limits that God has given us in terms of knowledge, or actually in terms of other abilities as well. Proverbs 30:18 says, “There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not.” Referring there to intellectual inability to understand various things that God has created in the physical universe.

It is a humility toward God to recognize that he has greater intellect and greater knowledge than we do, and then to stop our thought processes at a particular place without venturing into things that are hidden and secret from us. Psalm 119:18, the psalmist prays, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” There are things that are too high for the natural man, but which, to the man who reads the scriptures with the eyes of faith and the help of the Holy Spirit, become ours.

So some wondrous things which are at one time unknowable to us do become ours as we meditate upon God’s law. It reveals those things to us in terms of what is necessary to obey his will. Spurgeon, speaking on this verse, says that “as a thoughtful man he does not pry into things unrevealed. He is not speculative, self-conceited, or opinionated.” J. Alexander said that “the great and wonderful things meant here are God’s secret purposes and sovereign means for the accomplishment in which man is not called to cooperate but rather to acquiesce.”

Isaiah 55:8 of course reads, “God says, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. As far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” Matthew Henry says that “the man here does not amuse himself with matters of vain or nice speculations or doubtful disputations. He does not covet to be wise above what is written in the scriptures.”

To know God and our duty is learning sufficiently high for us. Calvin, of course, we’ve mentioned his quote before: “When God shuts his mouth, we dare not open ours.” And when God shuts his source of revelation in the scriptures, that’s the place where our mind should stop as well. We don’t want to aspire to things that are beyond us.

Job, chapters 41 and 42—we won’t read the whole section. It would be worth it. It would be a good thing to do at the balance of the Sabbath day when you leave church today to look at Job chapters 41 and 42. Really the conclusion of the matter between God and Job. God addresses Job in chapter 41. He tells him of all the great things that he has done, referring to Leviathan. He says, “Can you wrestle with him? Can you do these great things?” He really gives Job a picture of his greatness, his awesomeness, his transcendence for man.

And Job then understands. And in chapter 42, Job finally answers the Lord after God speaks to him and says, “I know that thou canst do everything and that no thought can be withheld from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered but I understood not things too wonderful for me which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak. I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job says, “I spoke about things I didn’t know. I went too far. I wasn’t this man who was humbled by the presence of God.” And when God’s presence comes to Job, he reveals the fullness of his majesty and power. Job is humbled and then becomes the man described for us in Psalm 131 who doesn’t exercise himself in things that are too wondrous for him.

Job didn’t understand why he was being tormented, why he was being plagued, as it were, and why his children were taken away. And really, we never really get an answer from God as to why all that happens. What we get is that it did happen. That God is sovereign. God is good toward Job and toward Job’s children—they’re believers—and God is who he is. And that’s enough for us. And to continue to speculate beyond that can be very damaging to our faith and is really rebellion against God because it again results in a raised-up heart and the raised-up intellect that says “I can aspire to know everything God knows.”

We’re not God. We’ll never know everything God knows. We wouldn’t, and as a result we should never aspire to that. Anselm, living in the 11th century, wrote, “I do not seek, oh Lord, to penetrate thy depths. I by no means think my intellect equal to them, but I long to understand in some degree thy truth which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.”

That’s what the humble man says. He believes that he might understand God. He doesn’t ask for proof for things that are beyond his capability of understanding to exercise belief. He believes first. Now, there are things that we are called to believe and understand. God tells us in Deuteronomy 30:11, “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.”

The commandments of God, the laws of God, are not too wondrous for us. He gives us enough knowledge in the law to obey him. It is not too far removed. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God. But those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

And so the man who doesn’t engage in speculation is the man who understands that God has revealed certain things, and those things must be obeyed, and those things are found in his revealed word, and specifically in his law, to bring us to obedience. Now, it’s interesting—in Deuteronomy 17:8, talking about the judges that were to be set up—we read, “If there’s a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gate, then shalt thou arise and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.”

So he says to judges that there will come a time in your judgments when you will come across a situation that is too hard for you. It is too intellectually tasking, as it were, for you to make a determination. There’ll be an end to your knowledge in this particular thing. And he tells them that, with a specific reason, to tell him that then I will set up another court, another source of knowledge you can turn to, and then you can receive instruction from them. That demands humility of judges. It’s interesting that in another place in scripture—let me see. Having trouble finding the quote.

Well, when God tells Moses to set up the courts of tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands, he tells them: if there is a matter that is too difficult for them, and they use the word that refers back to ambition or greatness—if there’s a matter that’s too great for you, then you’re to refer it to the judge up the line. And so judges were called to exercise humility both in terms of intellect. There’s going to be things you can’t understand in your evaluation. You’ll need counsel from somebody in those matters. And judges were also called to exercise humility in terms of stature of cases—great cases, cases that would have a large impact on the nation and would form precedents. The lower level judges were not to decide. They were to kick those cases up as well.

And so it required of judges—and each of us are judges in our homes, of course, and we each evaluate decisions throughout our lives—it called of judges a humility of ambition and a humility of intellect, and a requirement then to go to for counsel to other men that God had raised up. So this couplet of humility of intellect and ambition are seen in the last half of verse one as a result of the man who lives in the presence of God.

The man who is humble lives not above his station, nor does he study things too high. He does not intrude into things which he has not seen, nor does he meddle with things which do not belong to him. One other interesting fact on these two specific Hebrew words is that in Daniel 11, Antichrist is described as one who will be humble neither in ambition nor in intellect. Antichrist aspires to great things and great stature in opposition to Jesus Christ, of course. And the spirit of Antichrist throughout the age also aspires to great knowledge and intellect.

And so the very opposite of what David portrays here—a pride in terms of intellect and ambition—are the very characteristics of the spirit of Antichrist through about the age according to Daniel 11. Now we live in a day and age when these are marks of our generation, in our world and our society today as well. Having declared that God is dead for us, irrelevant for modern society, modern man speaks to every issue. He sees no end to his own ability, to his own intellect, to search out the hidden things of the world. You see frequently on talk shows men who have achieved some sort of degree of stature in physical sports, for instance, going on about international politics. It’s incredible. There’s no humility of intellect shown in our culture, and there’s no humility of ambition.

Each of us thinks we can do a better job as president than President Bush, and we all would be very happy to get into that position and make it so. There’s a rebellion against God’s ordained authorities and a rebellion against the limitations of mind that God has placed upon us. Now these things are important to us because they melt over into the church. And if we want to live a life characterized as living in the presence of God, we have to root out such pride of ambition and intellect in our own minds.

And then David, in verse one, essentially says that living in the presence of God is living without pride and with the presence of true humility. Pride undervalues others. Kuyper and Delitzsch of the first half of verse one say that we have recited there pride of countenance and bearing, and in the second half pride of endeavor and mode of action. Another way of saying essentially the same way we’ve broken it out. Again, quoting from Kuyper, they say that “pride has its seat in the heart, in the eyes especially, and it finds its expression in great things. Its sphere in which it diligently exercises itself.”

The opposition of great things is not that which is mean or little but that which is small. And the opposite of things too wonderful is not that which is trivial but that which is attainable. So if we’re to live a life characterized with the presence of God, we should want what God provides for us in terms of intellect and abilities. Understand our limitations of intellect and abilities. Understand the limitations of position that God puts us in. Rejoice in the particular callings God gives to us. And we then find ourselves content in his providence and his will.

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But secondly, Psalm 131 goes on to talk about the life characterized as living in the presence of God as being one of maturity and self-government. And here again, we have really a couple of couplets, although I’ve made it five points on this particular subpoint number two. The man who lives in the presence of God is self-governed.

He is, in the words of the first half of verse two, “behaved and quieted.” David says, “Surely I have behaved and quieted myself.” And then he says he is as a weaned child on his mother—”even as a weaned child.” So the first couplet is this idea of behaving and quieting.

“Behaving” in this word means to be stilled, or to be leveled, as it were—to be leveled out—”even natured” is how I put it on your outline. Even natured. Now the word “surely” there in verse two indicates a strong form of affirmation, and we have it there, and it’s like a short form leading to an oath statement. And so what we see there is that David has purposed to achieve this. Surely—in terms of a covenant oath—”I have behaved and quieted myself.” He has taken control of himself. He has exercised self-government. And he has done it first by behaving himself, by quieting himself—by leveling himself out, by taking out the big emotional ups and downs out of his life, by leveling his spirit out before God.

Psalm 37:7 we read, “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Keep yourselves level and calm in spite of wicked men in your vicinity.” Psalm 62:5, “My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved.” The presence of God brings us calmness, an evenness to our personalities and to our lives.

Proverbs 17:17, “The merciful man does good to his own soul, but he that is cruel troubled his own flesh.” Now, I quote that verse because you should be thinking about how to do good to your own soul. The scripture says we take a hold of ourselves. We exercise self-government by doing something in relationship to our soul. “I have behaved and quieted myself.” Cotton Mather, in his book “Bonifacius”—how to do good—talking about the very spheres of people that we do good toward, begins that book with a chapter on how to do good to oneself, to one’s soul.

It certainly involves preparation, devotions, as it were, prayer with God, reading his scriptures, and then looking for ways in which to exercise the thing that David exercises here: self-government, self-control, a level temper, and a level nature to our lives. This is the thing that living in the presence of God indicates—the self-government of the man who levels out his nature.

And secondly, he is quiet in spirit. “I have behaved and quieted myself. I have leveled and made myself silent before God. Quieting himself means simply to move away from idle chatter and the internal dialogues that frequently plague us, at night, for instance, when we’re laying there. We have internal conversations with ourselves. Our spirits worry. We go up and down on our bed. We have great problems confronting us: problems of money, problems of health, problems of personal relationships with other people, within our family perhaps, within our immediate family with our husbands or our wives.

And at night as we’re trying to go to bed, we can find ourselves restless, tossed about as it were, anything but level, with internal conversations going on, trying to sort things out—anything but quiet before God. And when we find ourselves like that, we should recognize we’ve moved away from the presence of God. And we should return and recognize that we are to take control of that soul that’s troubling us and to behave ourselves and quiet ourselves upon our bed.

Now, it’s no easy thing to quiet oneself. It’s a difficult thing that requires hard work. Our souls are of themselves clamorous, uneasy, petulant, and nothing but God’s grace can make us quiet amid afflictions, irritations, and disappointments. But that grace is available to us. But it also requires work. It requires self-government to take a hold of ourselves, to remind ourselves of the promises of this psalm relative to the presence of God, that this is what he brings to pass in our lives. To recognize his presence upon our bed is to behave ourselves and quiet ourselves.

He goes on. The second couplet really is a double statement of the same thing. In the second half of verse two, he says that he is as a child that is weaned of his mother: “my soul even is as a wean child.” So we’ve got a weaned child repeated twice. And I put three designations there: maturity, trust, and contentment—all really rolled up in this idea of the weaned child.

It’s important that you realize that there are some translations, the RSV, that have done a terrible job of this verse, implying that we’re talking about a child who is nursing at his mother’s breast. That is not what’s said here. The word “weaned” here has the idea to bring to fruition or maturation. It means to have something that is ripened, that it’s come to its end, as it were. And the weaned child is the one who has been brought to a degree of maturation by being removed from the necessity of feeding at his mother’s breast.

So we have here the picture of a mature child—a child who is fully weaned but also a child who is weaned at his mother. And here the King James is not particularly good, but it says “weaned of his mother.” The picture is not a child who is weaned and away from his mother. It’s a picture of a child who is weaned at his mother, as it were, who still rests in the mother’s bosom, as it were, but is there now enjoying the presence of his mother and no longer dependent on what she gives him in terms of food and what he desires.

And so this double phrase—I’ve put as “mature self-government”—again, is the basic idea here. You are to strive, then, according to this particular psalm, at maturity. Again, it talks about doing good to our soul by bringing us to a position of maturity and self-government before God. Matthew Henry says that we should be “as indifferent to the wealth and honor of this world as a child is to the breast when it is thoroughly weaned.” That is what we aim at doing here.

Another writer said that “our hearts are as naturally desirous of worldly things as the babe is of the breast. We relish them, cry for them, we are fond of them, we play with them and cannot live without them.” Our desire for material things in the world—and I think that’s right. But I think that’s proper in a sense. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is: if you remember the talks we gave on gluttony and greed, God gives us good foods. He gives us prosperous material prosperity. He gives us things of beauty and glory around us. And as we go, as we begin our walk in life in the presence of God, we delight in those things much the way the babe delights in the milk that feeds the hungry stomach.

But if you remember, the problem with men as they grow up is they become idolatrous because they begin to think of those things only in and of themselves and not pointing back to God himself—who is the source of all value and goodness. And so it’s as the child who never is weaned and always looks at the mother simply as providing his needs for his belly. He has become twisted in his relationship to his mother. He doesn’t appreciate her essence, and instead only looks for what she can give him.

And so the one who lives in the presence of God recognizes that it is good that God gives us things that originally are the focal point of our lives. But as we mature and as we grow up and are no longer children—as we come to a position of self-government—we recognize that all those material blessings are simply pointers back to God himself, to the value to be found in the throne room behind the gold, to the value of Jesus Christ, the one who is pictured on that altar, the food that’s portrayed there. See, all these things really come forward from the person of God.

As God told Abraham, “I am your exceeding great reward.” And as we go into this new year, we cannot be assured of a number of possessions or of a great deal of nice things around us or even personal relationships. But what we can be assured of is the presence of God who is the source of value for all these other things. And so if we exercise self-government, we recognize these things. We recognize that God himself is our reward. And that if we have him, then we have the mother, as it were, and no longer worry and cry for the milk of the breast.

Spurgeon said, “It is a blessed mark of growth out of spiritual infancy when we can forego the joys which once appeared to be essential and can find our solace in him who denies them to us.” See, the mother denies the milk to the babe. We find delight, as it were. We find true delight in giving up delighting in the things that are pictured simply as the value of the goodness of God.

William J., extrapolating on this weaning process and how it is accomplished, said, “How does this happen? He says, first, it happens by bittering the member to his lips, by the removal of the object in the absence and concealment of the mother, by the substitution of other food, by the influence of time.” So it is with us. We love the world and it deceives us. We depend on creatures and they fail us and pierce us through with many sorrows. We enter forbidden paths and follow after our lovers, and our way is hedged up with thorns.

Spurgeon said, “Blessed are those afflictions which subdue us from our affections, which wean us from self-sufficiency, which educate us into Christian manliness, which teach us to love God not merely when he comforts us but even when he tries us. Blessed are those afflictions—blessed is the denial of prosperity—that teaches us that behind material blessings is the person of God himself.”

Many times God removes health from us because he doesn’t want us worshiping health. He wants us worshiping the God of health. Sometimes that’s why he removes health. That’s why he removes prosperity. That’s why he can remove relationships. Perhaps we’ve made idols out of the relationships—the friends or the loved ones that we have. And it is a gracious and loving God who gets us to say no to those things by removing them from us and weaning us, as it were, that we might find our delight and pleasure in him. Then we can accept back proper food, as it were, proper relationship, recognizing that the love that we have is to be directed toward God himself and not to what he provides.

One poet wrote, “My soul does lie like a weanling rest. I cease to weep, so mother’s lap, though dried her breast, can lull to sleep.” And so at night when we’re worried about possessions or relationships we may not have, those things, but we’re in the lap, as it were, the bosom of God, and if we exercise self-government over our soul and draw our soul to ourselves to solace it and to quiet and level it, we recognize that all that is based upon our being in God’s presence itself.

And so then sleep comes to us. Then we can rest knowing that we’re in his hands. The Numerical Bible says that we have pictured here “a master of himself who, while conscious of the impulses within, he stills and quiets these impulses.” And I would say add to that quote that we’re not talking about a master of stoicism. We’re rather talking about one lying in the presence and being surrounded by the gracious God of the scriptures who has revealed himself through his judgments, through his provisions, through his blessings, through his tribulations that he brings into our lives, through his steadfastness, and through the promises of his word.

This produces trust. The child that is weaned of his mother trusts his mother now. He no longer thinks she’s mean somehow by no longer feeding him milk. He has come to a position of trust. Kidner says he comes to “a freedom from the hanging on with self-seeking.” Verse three, the verse referring to hope, adds, “From the bondage of delusive fears and threats.” Psalm 116:8, “I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”

A recognition of the presence of God brings that stability and self-government and trust, contentment that we have, and maturity we have in recognizing our position to God as being the wellspring of our well-being. This man is well reconciled with every condition. He is content. No, the scriptures tell us in Philippians 4:11, Paul says, “I have learned, in whatever state I am in, to be content.” Hebrews 13:5, “Let your conversation be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have.”

Why can we do that? How can we do that? Because we worship a God who is behind these things and above them, as it were, who has given us these things only as a picture of his presence with us. And that presence we can never be removed from. When writer said, “When our condition is not to our mind, then we must bring our mind to our condition.” And we don’t do that through some sort of false leap of faith. We do that from recognizing the God who brings these conditions to pass in his providence.

So the self-governed man is the one whose soul has been quieted and stilled. He doesn’t long anymore after earthly enjoyment than earthly good. But he now finds himself being satisfied in his relationship and in his fellowship with God itself. And he finds in that relationship satisfaction in all that his soul desires.

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And this leads then to the final verse. “Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth even forever.” This is the same word “hope” that we talked about last week. And so this brings Israel to the position of hoping in the Lord. And notice that as David exercises self-government over his own person and his soul, by being humble in terms of God and man and intellect and ambition, and also being then self-governed—a mature, self-governing individual trusting and depending upon God—David then turns to an exhortation to all of Israel.

He turns away from himself, and he’s now able to minister to the rest of the congregation, and he gives this encouragement, as it were, for the purpose of bringing Israel to conformance to this as well. To hope in God is to become this maturing person who is under control and in correct relationship to God and man. Now, we said last week that hope is a joyful expectation that brings differences in our present life of the blessings of the covenant that come forward to us.

And I’ve got to say something very important right here. It is quite frequent for us to talk about blessings and cursings in relationship to obedience and disobedience, and such are the terms of the covenant. But it is all too easy for us to somehow think that it is our obedience—that it is our ability to obey God’s law—now, that is the basis for God’s blessings to us in the future.

And see, there’s two problems with that. One, it isn’t true. The blessings of the covenant come to us who are in covenant because we are in whom? Jesus Christ. He is the one who kept the terms of the covenant. He is the one to whom all the blessings flow. And as we are in him, we receive those blessings. Yes, there’s a requirement for obedience. Yes, disobedience in the temporal sense brings judgments and curses from God. And yes, obedience in some sense brings rewards from him. But ultimately, the basis for all that is the work of our Savior Jesus Christ, not ourselves.

We don’t get blessed because we earn it, even after salvation, okay? The blessings of the covenant are poured out to those who are in relationship to Jesus Christ. They evidence by their works that they are in him. And because…