Dennis Tuuri

# Psalm 131 Sermon Transcript

Pastor Tuuri, Reformation Covenant Church

Psalm 131, which is the sermon text for today. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word, which is a grace word and a law word at the same time to us.

Psalm 131, a song of degrees of David. 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. 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.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord God, for the wonderful blessing it is to us that is a light to our path. It is our food—well, our food. Food and gold are nothing compared, Lord God, to this word of yours. May we highly value it now and may your spirit illumine our hearts and in our understanding that we might see this text correctly.

We might take great comfort and hope in it as well as be challenged by it to renewed actions of piety and self-government under the control of the Holy Spirit. Father, we pray Lord God that we would leave this text transformed by it and continuing to be transformed throughout the rest of our lives. But his steady reliance upon the rest hope we have in our savior in his name we pray. Amen.

Study of his scriptures of course is the primary preparation. But this particular week I had occasion to meditate on this psalm and try to put it to good use in my own life in both small things as well as great things. I’ve had a lot of little irritations lately which are fairly insignificant in the affairs of life but they’re real little things you know—car breaks, coffee maker breaks, things don’t work out, you trip a little, whatever it is. Little things in life can be frustrations to us and can get us kind of riled up.

Then there are big things in life, too. Very trying moments, you know, particular doors we go through, particularly trying times that are not repeated all that often in our lives. Perhaps, you know, half a dozen, a dozen times of great difficulties. And I have been in the context, let’s put it that way, of both of these sorts of things this very week in the providence of God. So my prayer is that this ministers grace to you and it ministers grace to myself and that we leave this sermon as I said transformed by it.

I don’t think that’ll happen though. Well, let’s put it this way. I think it’ll happen in a better sense if you sort of summon up some of your worries, cares, anxieties, irritations, problems in life. You know, we come to church and we tend to put on a facade at times which is—there’s a good sense to that. We want to be different here. We want to be on our best as we appear before God to worship him, and that’s good. But it’s real easy to forget, you know, what happened last week and then we go right back to it tomorrow morning.

And if we haven’t really let God’s word deal with us in terms of our sins and the shortcomings of our past week, then really, you know, we’re not going to be as helped as we move into this next week by the nourishment of God’s word as we would be otherwise. So, you know, I’d ask you to think about—I’m going to talk about some problems here that we typically have in life. And I think if we understand the context for this psalm that there is difficulty in the life of the psalmist as he prays this and says these things to God, I think it’ll help us to see that the context for our use of this psalm is an understanding that when we have times of trouble, anxiety, worry, irritation, this psalm is exceedingly important.

I’ve used this psalm probably more than any other piece of scripture in counseling with people over the last decade or so. I think it is a very useful psalm to memorize, to meditate upon, and particularly in times of difficulty.

What are those times of difficulty for you? I asked a couple of the young men earlier, what are you worried about this morning? Concerned about anything? Well, I don’t know. How was your week? Well, I don’t know. Well, think about it a little bit. Think about the times you got angry in an unbiblical sense, got irritated, perhaps the times you despaired a bit, you got worried, you’re anxious.

Lots of things cause that. From little things in life, as I said earlier, to the big things of life. A stupid example, but an example nonetheless. As I was meditating on this psalm for the last week, watched a little bit of the Grammys the other night and saw Celine Dion, I think that’s her name, the Canadian tall gal, sing a song and it was interesting. She had on a strapless gown or outfit, whatever you call it, dress.

And twice the camera was sort of, you know, panning around the room showing different responses from people. And twice she’s tugging this thing up, you know, and I thought to myself, you know, I bet that—you know, here you are national TV, millions of people watching you, make lots of money by the time you’re in an artist position like that, great deal of fame now because of the movie Titanic she sang the songs in, or something I guess I don’t know. But you know, everything going for you and you’re there and the dress doesn’t fit right, you know, and those are irritations and there are things that can kind of trouble us, you know, and get us upset. So that’s kind of on the absurd small end of the scale but they’re real things. And there’s no sense pretending that they’re not.

You know, if we struggle with the small disappointments of life, we best confess that to God and figure out a way to get it fixed. Otherwise, it’s going to grow in terms of its difficulty in our relationship with God and others.

Then there are big things in life. You know, the Brookses are going through a big thing in life now with the potential death of a loved one. And this church as we gray, as we get a little older, it’s something that we’re going to face more and more. And indeed, there are a number of people at the church in the last year or so that have had to struggle with the death of loved ones. Ones that you know we know are Christians and that’s a certain kind of struggle for us. Ones that maybe weren’t Christians when they died and we don’t know and that’s a different kind of struggle but it’s a struggle nonetheless. Deep water that God can put you through the death of a loved one.

So you know in between there are all kinds of other things that concern us. Relationships I suppose is one big category as I’m trying to sum it up. You know I want to be careful about this—I don’t get a sin. But I do want to summon up your worries and anxieties that you’ve got going on in your life and your irritations: relationships. You know, a lot of people, and I think probably most people in different times in their life are worried and anxious about whether or not they’re loved.

You know, whether they’re loved by their spouses, their children, their parents, their friends, if they have any friends. Why don’t I have more friends? We have this concern. We have a need to be loved. And, ultimately, that’s only filled by the love of God. But of course, God works through these secondary means. We have these concerns: Does anybody like me? Maybe they love me in the Lord because they got to, but do they really like me? Am I such a turkey that they don’t like me? Do I have friends? Why don’t I have more friends? I feel alone in life. These are real things that we struggle with.

Spouses—you know, a husband and wife relationship is a difficult one. I mean, it’s a blessed one. It’s a very blessed one, but it’s difficult. God wants it difficult for us. He draws us to love someone other than ourselves and not just somebody other than ourselves, a different sex, different person made up differently. Somebody told me, I don’t remember who mentioned it last week, we’re different down to every gene of our body—it’s different, men and women. So that could be a problem.

And maybe some of you are worried about your marriage relationship. Maybe some of you are worried about friends. Maybe some of you are worried, anxious, and even depressed about your children. And how are they growing up? Are they doing okay? Are they not doing okay? How’s their education? Can they compete in the kind of work world we have today? And how’s their socialization? Do they have the social graces that we’d like to have them as they enter into adulthood?

As children get older, the decisions become more difficult. It’s maybe not more difficult, but certainly a different set of issues begins to occur. And some of us are going through that now with teenagers and with children that are reaching the age and involved actually in different courting relationships. And you know, you can worry about that. Are my children going to get married at all? Who are they going to marry? Are they going to have a good marriage, a bad marriage? These are difficult things. What should I do? What direction do I give to my teenage or older child as they seek counsel from us? What counsel do we give them? Glad they’re coming to us for counsel, but that means we got to figure out answers. At least the best ones we have. These can be difficult. They can try us.

Our relationship to God, of course, is another area of great difficulty for us. How are we doing? See, sin in our life, abiding sin, and sin is a concern. It’s an anxiety to us.

There are other things in life as well. Of course, health, you know, the older you get, the more health difficulties begin to confront you and you get concerned about that. Am I healthy? Am I not healthy? Some of us have struggled this—these past—this past year. Do I have particularly difficult health problems? It may mean that I’m involved in a terminal illness that will take me early. You people struggle with these things. People in this church struggle with every one of these things. We’re not a big church, but even in a body this size, all these things are kind of going on at various levels.

Now, I probably know, you know, more about that, maybe some more about that than some of you know, but this stuff is real and this stuff has to be dealt with. Our souls get troubled. Health difficulties. Our neighbors is another problem. How do we evangelize our neighbors? How do we get along with them? How do we avoid lawsuits with them? Difficulties, trials, and tribulations. And you know, some we have those sort of situations going on here.

And some of them have longstanding difficulty with neighbors. You know, the Youngers have had a long problem with this business next to them and it wears you down and you get anxious about it. It’s easy to get concerned and troubled and stirred up.

You know, I want you to think about these things. I want you to bring them up before the Lord and lay them at his feet and look at what Psalm 131 would tell us to do with these things.

Money. You know, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t have some degree of money concerns. Be handling it well. You might not be. Debt. People that incur debt and cannot get out of it. It’s a nagging concern and anxiety, or it can be. Searching out homes, selling homes. Some of us are involved in those kind of things. Need wisdom from God. We need to rely upon God. And it’s hard to know the balance between our works and our effort and a patient rest in what God is and what he is providing.

So there’s all kinds of problems, all kinds of minor things, minor irritations going up to the big things of life, death and the implications of death for our families and extended families as well. And then there are things like the state of the country. You know, some people are concerned about various conspiracies or various people trying to move things and there are always people trying to move history. There are always men who want to use power and influence to change the flow of nations. It’s true. And what do we—how do we respond to those things?

How do we respond to the sort of situation been going on in our country for the last couple of months? It can produce a great deal of irritation and upset. Yet just can’t do much about it, can you? What do we do with Iraq, you know, should we bomb it, should we not bomb it, what is going to happen with President Clinton?

So, all these things are problems. And I don’t know it—well, I do know probably with many of you, but I don’t know all of them. But I want you to think about them. I want you to think about what’s troubled you and caused you perhaps to sin either through an anxiousness, worry, that isn’t a reliance upon God. And think about those things. And think about Psalm 131 in the context of those things.

So, having summoned up perhaps some of those concerns and worries you have. Let’s see now how the scriptures have deal with them. You can come to church and see it as an intellectual exercise and go away with a little bit more knowledge of the Bible and that’s okay. I suppose it’s okay. But I think what worship is about as I’ve said throughout the Revelation series is transformation. And we come and we’ve got to admit our nakedness or our blindness in order to be seeing with God’s sight and clothed with Christ’s righteousness.

And we got to recognize our problems in these areas. And the word of God is a powerful tool that God uses in our transformation and the Holy Spirit and corporate worship through the preaching of God’s word does things and he calms our heart. I think that’s what his intention is to do is to calm our heart into restful hope before him about these matters.

Now a caveat before we begin with the actual exposition of the text. Derek Kidner, who I highly recommend is a commentary person who comments on the Psalms—his two volume commentary, small but very useful. Derek Kidner warns at the beginning of in the context of his commentary that you know we don’t want to look at this text as an excuse for inaction. Let me just read from Derek Kidner here. Kidner says it would be easy to make this verse, these verses an excuse to avoid the challenges of life, particularly verse one. But the sin rejected in it is pride, while the sin of the sin rejected in the first part of verse one is pride. Second part of verse one is presumption.

By the first of these, one undervalues other people unless they seem worth cultivating. By the second, one overestimates and overreaches oneself, forgetting the various requirements of God’s word for humility. In Philippians 2, we are shown the constructive answer to the first of these temptations in the honor of being a servant. And in Philippians 3 and 1 Corinthians 2, the answer to the second, not by stifling adventurousness, but by rightly directing it.

So, what I want to say at the get-go here is this psalm is not just about forgetting and letting going letting God. There is a degree of that, but it’s about your active involvement in how you handle these difficulties. So, I don’t want anybody here to see what I say today as an excuse for the sin of inactivity, sloth, which is not having your heart tuned to how God would have you respond to the difficulties and anxieties.

We’re not Greeks here. We don’t just abstract our problems away, put them in a corner of our mind somehow and leave them out there. No, the word of God takes them and moves them through you and his word and he transforms them so you respond correctly. Doesn’t lead to inactivity. It leads to proper controlled activity. Meekness is being under God’s harness as we work through these problems.

Now, J. Alexander describes this psalm as one of childlike royalty. Here we have you know David who becomes king. We don’t not sure when this was written, but it involves childlike royalty. A king behaves himself as a weaned child. It’s an amazing kind of a thing.

Now, before we get into the actual each individual item, look at the flow of the outline, if you will. And if you have your scriptures there, look at the flow of how the psalm works. And I think this is somewhat important. It’s why I bring it up. It’s not just a neat thing, but there is to I think to a degree here another chiastic structure. You—well, hopefully you know what those are by now and you’ll see that the psalm begins and ends by speaking of the Lord. Lord is how the psalm begins, an address to God. And so the first element of the outline is the psalmist speaks to and focuses on God.

He begins by saying Lord and he ends it by saying let Israel hope in the Lord. So the psalmist has come to a position of hoping in the Lord and he talks about that and he ends it by exhorting us and Israel to hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever. Okay. And then going in from that, he says, “My heart isn’t haughty, nor my eyes lofty.” So it seems to me he’s talking then about in his observation of his self about a state of being in a negative sense. I’m not this in myself. Okay? And as he concludes before he gives the admonition to let Israel hope in the Lord, he says, “A child that is weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child.” That’s the positive state statement. Okay, so those kind of go together. They talk about the state of the person, what his being is like. He’s not these things, but he is resting. He’s not prideful, but he’s resting as a weaned child, hoping in the Lord. Okay?

And then the center of it, the two sets of verses in the two sets of phrases in the center, he goes on to talk about his self, his observations of himself in terms of his actions. Neither do I exercise myself, walk about, engage in great matters or in things too high for me. So, we have the negative construction again. I don’t do this. But surely by way of a covenant vow here, I’ll get to that at the end of the sermon. I have behaved and quieted myself. So, now he’s not talking about his being. He’s talking about what he did to achieve that state of being. Okay? So, I didn’t exercise myself in great matters with things too high, but I did involve myself positively taking hold of and disciplining myself to be as a weaned child on his mother. And my soul has become—I’ve quieted and calmed and straighten myself out. I’ve leveled myself out is what the text means. Okay.

Now, I think it’s important because I’m going to say at the beginning here that it is important that we consider pride as we evaluate who we are. But I think it’s not quite right to say we start with humility before God and then we achieve this state of quietness that’s in the center of the psalm. I think that the center is kind of the focus here and that is our response to God must be one in difficult circumstances of quieting ourselves and leveling ourselves out.

You know what I mean? You get highs and lows and you get thrown all about in the context of difficulties. But the psalmist says, “I level myself out and I quiet myself before the Lord. I become as a self-governed child.” And in the context of that, see, he’s not doing these things about thinking too much, working in great matters, things beyond him, but he’s doing this self-control stuff. And as a result, I think he has become humbled and absence of pride is going on in his heart because he’s let God’s providence do its work in his life combining it with his word to make himself of a humble mindset before God. Okay.

So in general you have this chiastic structure which helps us to understand how the text flows and the text flows at the very center. The application point for us is certainly to be humble but by humble by means of letting the spirit exercise control that we come under self government and quiet ourselves in whether it’s the tugging of the dress and the pro, you know, the attire that doesn’t fit us or whether it’s the death of a loved one that we’re very concerned about and everything in between.

Our responsibility is to level ourselves, quiet ourselves before the Lord, and be as a weaned child on his mother. I guess that’s discernment. Could just walk away. But let’s go at it a little bit deeper.

Let’s go at it a little bit deeper then. First of all, the psalmist speaks to and focuses on God, “Lord.” And it’s significant. He doesn’t just start in and by way of—okay, the Lord there in capital letters in the King James version is Yahweh. It’s the covenant God of Israel. It’s the one that he has covenant relationship to and that God will provide all these covenantal mercies. That’s what he’s talking to here at the beginning and end.

The word Lord at beginning and end refers to the covenant God of Israel. It’s also Christ’s name. Talked about this a couple of times like—but Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua which means Yahweh saves. And he is that Yahweh who saves. So we have this union and communion, the centrality of Christ again pictured to us at the beginning and end of this psalm. And you don’t want to just fly by that.

And by way of application, you don’t want to fly by that in times of trouble. What we typically do when things are going real bad or when a big problem presents itself is we talk to each other, you know, or we have internal conversations with ourselves. Now, that’s proper to do that, but only after we consult with the Lord first. Physicians are good, remember, but to consult the physician without consulting God, wrong, improper idea here. God works through secondary means sometimes. But that’s what they are, secondary means. And we can talk too much. We can get ourselves worked up. We can think too much.

We want to go to the Lord in prayer. That’s the first step by way of what we actually do in these difficult times that bring troubling irritating sort of things to us or depression, a focus on God. Obvious, but it needs to be said and we need to work hard at applying it in our lives.

And I would ask you as you come forward in the offering today to commit yourselves to seeing the importance and centrality of Christ. And when difficult times happen to you today or this week, you’ll focus on discussing things with the covenant God, Jesus Christ, who has brought all things to you by way of blessing.

Second, there’s an observation of self here by the psalmist. First, in his state of being negatively, he has a lack of pride. “My heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty.”

As Spurgeon said of this, that he begins with the heart for it’s the center of our of our nature. If pride is there, it defiles everything just as mud in the spring causes mud in all the streams.

Now, it’s interesting too to meditate on this that the psalmist knows his heart. That’s significant, isn’t it? Because we’re so proud. I am at least, you know, citing the verse that the heart is deceitful above all things. Who can know it? Well, there’s an answer to that question: the spirit guided and governed man can know his heart. David knows his heart. Now, ultimately, this is talking of Jesus, I think, but David the psalmist knew his heart. And you as a Christian and as a mature Christian, which this is a picture of a very mature Christian man. It’s a high mark to attain to. But you as a high in maturity as a Christian can know your heart that it is not prideful and it is not exalted of itself.

So it’s interesting the spirit taught man can know his heart.

Now the words haughty and lofty are words that basically mean high—just like they sound, you know, high things to exalt oneself and as one’s opinion of himself in terms of his heart the center of his being or his eyes and frequently in scripture the heart is pictured with the eyes, you know, the haughty look, the upturned nose, the arrogant countenance, you know, this has this kind of disdain toward people and even kind of an affront pride to God.

And the scriptures warn us repeatedly of the dangers of this thing. I’ve given you a couple of verses. Proverbs 18:12, “Before destruction, the heart of a man is before honor is humility.” Psalm 18:27, “You will save the humble people, but you will bring down haughty looks.” Okay, so the heart of man that exalts himself up thinks too highly of himself. He’s prideful before God easily headed toward destruction.

And God will save humble people, but he’ll bring down haughty looks indicated by the eyes and the countenance.

There are negative examples in the scriptures, many of them, a few that I’ve listed here for you. Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26:16, we read there that—and he was strong. That’s King Uzziah. His heart was lifted up to his destruction. For he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense. He was a king, wasn’t a priest. So the priests get in there and the Levites come in. Hey, whoa, you can’t do this. King cannot do this burning incense stuff. You’re usurping office here. You’re transgressing in terms of moving from one office to the other improperly. And he didn’t like that idea. So he continued to move toward the burning of the incense. And as he began to do that, the text tells us that leprosy broke out on his forehead.

Right as he’s talking to the Levites there saying, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” And he gets a censer in his hand and boom, leprosy on his forehead. Forehead’s an important place of scripture. Center of our thinking and of our being. The law of God is supposed to be there that restrains us in terms of our callings or vocations. Now, it restrains the king from acting like the priest. Remember Saul, same thing. Acted like the priest. Law of God says, “Don’t do that.” So, the leprosy breaks out where the law of God is to be showing his sin against the law of God and it’s there till the day he dies forever. Uzziah is marked by this rebellious—his heart is lifted up to destruction.

The scriptures say Hezekiah, even though he’s a good king most of the time he too tells us in 2 Chronicles 32, “In those days Hezekiah was sick to the death prayed unto the Lord and he spake unto him and he gave him a sign. God answered his prayer but Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him, for his heart was lifted up. Therefore, there was wrath upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.”

These are significant examples because these are men with great blessings attached to them. God made both of them king and in Hezekiah’s case, a good king who loved God, did a lot of good things. But, you know, pride is on that side of the equation, too. The pride lifts itself up sometimes after the result of God’s blessing and deliverance of us. We can become very prideful then. So, Hezekiah is another example that the text specifically tells us that he his heart was lifted up prideful to God.

And then the daughters of Zion in Isaiah 3:16, “Moreover, the Lord saith because the daughters of Zion are haughty. They walk with stretched forth necks and wanting eyes, walking and mincing as they go and making a tinkling with their feet. Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.”

Very illustrative picture of pride. But that’s the same kind of thing the Uzziah and Hezekiah are doing. They’re like that haughty daughter and sister of Zion, the daughters of Zion who in spite of the blessings of God. And maybe because of those blessings to some degree, they misused improper response to the blessings of God, they get prideful. Aren’t we a wonderful people? Aren’t we a great church and a blessed people of God? And their noses start to go up and they start to reach out the necks, you know, and their pride of who they are. Isn’t this great? God says, “No, it’s not great. And in fact, you’re going to have scabs on the crown there of your head like Uzziah had leprosy. You’re going to have scabs. So, knock it off.”

Now, there is a proper exaltation of us. These same words are used in a proper sense in Psalm 37:34. “Wait on the Lord. Keep his way. He shall exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it.” There’s a proper exaltation, but it’s not out of self. It waits for God’s promotion of us. You see, he does indeed lift us up, but it’s not a prideful lifting up that it’s him doing it.

And again in Psalm 89:17, “You are the glory. This is you, God are the glory of their strength and in your favor our horn is exalted or lifted up—again highness.” And then Proverbs 4:7 and 8, “Wisdom is the principle thing. Therefore, get wisdom and in all you’re getting get understanding. Exalt her and she will promote you. She’ll lift you up. See, she’ll bring you honor when you embrace her.”

Side comment, wisdom is a woman. I remember years ago, first time we ever had David Shelton up here, maybe the only time we had him up and he kept saying throughout his lectures on Revelation, wisdom is a woman. And he wouldn’t say anything more about it. Wisdom is a woman. You know, I thought, well, that’s really interesting. What’s he talking about?

Well, there are some implications for this in terms of the church. Proverbs are about, and we’ll talk about this more in two weeks when I talk about the law of kindness from Proverbs 31. Proverbs is about getting a bride for the king. So, it fits with these Revelation talks we’ve been doing. And so, it talks about the church and wisdom is found in the context of the church.

But I don’t think we want to ignore another major application, husbands, that our wives are given to us as a source of wisdom to us. Now, take with that what you want, but I believe it. And I believe that all too often we fail like Abraham was about to fail when God told them listen to the woman. Okay, wives are exceedingly important not just because you know they’re weak and we need to guard them. They have things to bring to us, wisdom to bring to us I believe that will indeed lead to our promotion as men. Okay.

So there’s a proper exaltation that’s the counterbalance to the prideful exultation of oneself.

And there are positive examples of this. Jehoshaphat, his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord. Now, here’s a different king. And this guy is lifted up. His heart’s lifted up, but it’s lifted up in the ways of the Lord. You see, he’s not prideful himself. He loves God and he’s lifted up in the way of the Lord. He’s exalted because of that.

Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ described in Isaiah 52, “Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high.” Now, we’re not Jesus, but we are in Jesus. And so, we’re to seek for that proper exaltation. Cast yourself to the Lord. Lord, humble yourself before him and he shall lift you up. There’s a proper sense of exaltation, but it’s not through pride.

Now, this is a—I’ve stressed this for a little while here. We’ve talked about it for a little bit in this sermon. And one reason for that is because this sin is so prevalent in our country, in our culture today.

When I preached on the seven deadly sins a number of years ago, one of the things that I made reference to throughout that series was that what every school child knew in the Middle Ages were these terrible deadly sins. These seven things to avoid. Most of them today are taught as positive virtues in the schools of today, in the families of today, through the media of today, television sets, into our homes, through our neighbors, through our communities. And it’s worse now than it was 5, 6, 7 years ago when I preached on the seven deadly sins.

Self-esteem is a big deal today. Now, there’s a proper estimation of oneself in Christ, but that’s not what’s being said. It—everybody is seen as an individual and every individual is supposed to live up to their full potential as an individual. All the covenantal links are broken—to husband to wife to children to church, whatever it is, you’re seen as the naked individual. And you’re seen as one who’s supposed to grab for as much as you can. You can be anything you want to be. You’re positively encouraged to be prideful.

You know, I am somebody and to lift yourself up in the way that the scriptures say leads to your destruction. So, this culture, as every pagan culture does, it’s absolutely opposed to God’s word. And we need to know that because it soaks into the church. If you go to 90% of so-called Christian counselors today, this is one of the first things they will work on is building up your self-esteem. Not your esteem in Christ ultimately, but your self-esteem, not giving you hope based upon your humbling yourself before God, but giving you hope because you can exalt yourself in spite of the problem.

Now, this is consistent with Proverbs 30:11-14. There are times—the outline says when, or maybe it doesn’t say it, but there are times when pride is particularly evident. Proverbs 30:11-14. Listen to this now. Turn to it. Yeah, good idea. Turn to this text. Proverbs 30:11-14. “There’s a generation, okay? There’s an age. A generation is a group of people in a particular time. There’s a generation, an age that curses his father, does not bless its mother.

There’s a generation that is pure in its own eyes, yet it does not walk washed from its filthiness. There’s a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes. See, those are those lifted up eyes that the psalmist says he does not have. But this generation has it. Their eyelids are lifted up. They’re really exalted in their own heart. They are filled with self-esteem. They’ve been taught it from the grave—from the womb, rather. They’ll continue on to their grave. There’s a generation whose teeth are like swords and whose fangs are like knives to devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men.”

And you see the end result of that kind of self-exultation is destruction, terrible problems in the earth. That’s the generation that is governing this nation. I’m convinced of it. It’s my generation. I grew up in the counterculture. We were prideful. We wanted nothing of the parents. We wanted to examine everything. Subvert the dominant paradigm, no matter what it is. Rebel against authority. Question all authority. Don’t submit to anybody or anything.

Now, there was a—you know, there was a—it was accompanied by a great deal of criticism of things that were really sinful on the part of the previous generation. That generation had forsaken God in many ways too. But this generation that comes along they are—they are matured and fully evolved in their pride against God. And that’s what the rebellion the youth rebellion of the 60s was all about. I lived through it. Got the t-shirt, got some other things from that experience that I would not care to have in terms of memories, thoughts, etc.

Well, that’s the context. So, we must be exceedingly careful. Children, don’t treat this as a light topic for you. You must ask God to keep you lowly before him, to keep you lowly before your parents, keep you submissive to them, to keep your heart from becoming proud and lifted up. You know, not in a debased a self-abasing way. That’s pride, too. It’s a different kind of pride that says, “Oh, poor me.” And, you know, pride focuses on oneself.

But a proper sense of submission to God’s order in the world, not overlooking all the problems, but seeking ways to honor the authority begins with the cursing of the father and despising the mother. We must do all we can to root this out in the context of our homes.

As the Proverbs tell us in Proverbs 6 that Pride heads the list of God’s great hatreds. “These six things the Lord hates. Yay, seven, are an abomination to him.” An abomination. Not a little thing he wants to work with you about. It is an abomination to God. When you find yourself with prideful, haughty looks and attitudes in your heart. Children and parents ends in destruction. Ends in ripping down all authority.

What is the list of six and seven? First thing: A proud look. A proud look begins with the heart demonstrated by the countenance. Lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to run to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren. Those are the wicked fruit. Those six things of the ultimate head of the list, pride.

And that’s the same that Proverbs 30 tells us. Begin with that prideful assertion of yourself against authority and against God ultimately and you end up shedding blood. You end up with teeth like swords and fangs like knives. And we wonder how it was that all those people in the 60s who talk peace, hope, and love and all that stuff when they’re given civil authority and reign are as quick to send armies here and there to destroy people are as quick to go ahead and cut other people to ribbons.

And this is why—because of the pride of man results in this sort of eschatological problem. Okay.

Well, so after he examines his state, the psalmist goes on to consider his actions. And as I said, this is kind of the center of this psalm.

First of all, he has a lack of presumption. “Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.”

Okay, great matters. What does it mean? Great matters. The word great is never used in terms of great numbers of things, but rather in stature, size, and importance. In Proverbs 18:16, we read this. “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.” Same word, great matters, great men. Proverbs 25:6, “Do not exalt yourself in the presence of the king. Do not stand in the place of the great rulers,” in other words. So on your outline, I’ve listed a status size, importance, not number, but things belonging to a different station than our station. Okay? Things that belong to the great man, the king, not me.

I shouldn’t be exercising myself in things that I’m not called to do. It’s outside as of my sphere. It’s a matter that I want to attain to this great position of power and authority, but God has put me here. And what you want to do is man your station. Man your station. Don’t seek to become a great man. Now, God may make you a great man. Nothing wrong with that. We want great Christian men. But man your station.

Let him promote you as we said earlier and based on the pride. I want to quote from Charles Spurgeon. Here is treasury of David. He’s talking about David. Now, see, David is the example of this because David was anointed king. But he didn’t take it into his own hands to become king, did he? He waited. He did what this psalm describes. He quieted himself and leveled himself out trusting in the God of Israel who certainly will bring his ordination to pass. He’s going to be king. He doesn’t need to have plots and conspiracies to get rid of Saul. And he is very, you know, he is marked in his determination to be a man of integrity relative to not bringing down Saul too early and to get mad at those who wanted to do it so that he ends up executing the man that executes Saul. He had that high of an opinion not of Saul but of the authority of God in submission to the governing authorities.

So David’s the mark of this. Spurgeon says this: “As a private man he that is David did not usurp the power of the king nor devise a plot against him. As a thoughtful man he did not pry into things unrevealed. He was not speculative, self-conceited, or opinionated. As a secular person, he did not thrust himself into the priesthood as Saul had done or Uzziah after him.” You see, he stayed in his station when it was before he received the kingdom. He stayed there until God brought him into the fullness of the ordination of king. And when he was king, he didn’t—he stayed his station. He didn’t insert himself into the priesthood. And in his mind, he didn’t insert himself in things that were too outside of his sphere of influence or control.

And then Spurgeon goes on to say, “It is well to exercise ourselves unto godliness that we know our true sphere and diligently keep to it. Many through wishing to be great have failed to be good. Through wishing to be great, men have failed to be good. They were not content to man the lowly stations which the Lord appointed to them. And though they have rushed at grandeur and power and found destruction when they were looking for honor.”

See, if you don’t man your station, the Lord God is going to chastise you. And when you reach out for high office, he’s going to bring you to dishonor and disrespect. Seen it. I’ve seen this time after time in the political arena, in other arenas as well, vocationally, etc. These are such important words for us to recognize. Don’t move outside of your sphere.

This is tough today. You know, we—Again, we’re taught just the reverse. You know, I remember this comment years ago from R.J. Rushdoony that bonehead English students in college, kids or English students taking bonehead English, you know, rudimentary, making up for what they didn’t learn in high school are regularly taught to critique Shakespeare. Critique Shakespeare. And I was at a planning session for curriculum a couple years back. Throw a bone to the homeschoolers. They had me and another person there. And they were proposing that in terms of this outcome-based education that kids at the very earliest of grades, I don’t remember, third grade, fourth grade, something like that. Critique the current modern theories of photosynthesis. Not just understand them, critique them. What’s right about them? What’s wrong about them?

Do you see how ridiculous that is? And that’s what we’ve been taught to do. And we do it all the time. Should we bomb Iraq? It’s it’s we don’t have any way of knowing. Now, we may cite the opinions of men that do and maybe some of us probably was due no more than others. You know, there are people here who have been in the military and understand that kind of stuff and are trained in military history. I’m not. And yet, we’re regularly, you know, regularly, daily, the news polls people on the great issues of the day and what we should think and that tells us we should be thinking about these things. We should have our own distinctive opinion. We should move outside of our sphere of activity and begin to act as if we were the president. What should we do?

I’m not criticizing a proper critiquing of actions, but I am saying that—You understand what’s going on here, right? It’s our pride again that reaches beyond our station. And then we don’t—we aren’t good because we seek to be great. We’re doing things that are way out of sync with what we know or are called to do in the context of our vocation, our political citizenry, whatever it is.

You know, it’s kind of a perversion of the doctrine of liberty of conscience. You know, at the Protestant Reformation, authority was taken away from the priesthood. I mean the—the pope and the bishops etc properly. The people of God are supposed to know the word of God and understand it. But that kind of led to this Baptist idea of liberty of conscience where everybody has his own opinion of the verse and it’s just as good as anybody else’s. And that’s you know there’s a denial of the of the means that God has chosen to teach his people through teachers and pastors and other ways and through the historic creeds and confessions. We don’t want them anymore. They’re no good to us because we’re you know we’re all have liberty of conscience and freedom of conscience. We can do whatever we want to do as long as we think the scriptures say it’s okay.

It’s kind of a perversion of a secular perversion of that. But I think we’ve kind of led the world into this through the church. But it’s a bad thing. Man your station is the idea.

Now he goes on to think he says he doesn’t exercise himself in great matters. Things outside of his station is how I want you to think about that. The scriptures talk about that. He also doesn’t exercise himself in things that are too high. Matters beyond our intellectual capacity or requiring more wisdom than we have.

Now this word too high is frequently used as the wonders, the miraculous things that God does. For instance, in Psalm 72:18, “Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things.” We sing that at the end of our worship service, right? He only does wondrous things. And he does wondrous things, things too high for us. They’re that kind of exemplary wondrous things that God does.

In the Proverbs—or Psalm 72 rather, Psalm 72 says—there are three things which are too wonderful. Is it Proverbs? Proverbs 30. “There are three things which are too wonderful for—wonderful for me. Yay, four which I do not understand.” Another list. “Way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a—with a virgin or a woman.” And I’m not going to tell you what they mean. I’m not sure what they mean. And the whole point of this says that they’re too wonderful for us. You know, we want to delve into all this stuff. But there are things that are too high for us intellectually or in terms of wisdom or capacity. Okay. And we want to avoid those things.

Now, there’s something that is not too high for us. That’s the law of God.

This same word wondrous translated mysterious in the version I have—we read in Deuteronomy—well actually one more I should back up just a minute. Another negative example is Deuteronomy 17:8 which is an important one. “If a matter arises which is too hard for you to judge, between degrees of guilt for bloodshed, between one judgment and another, between one punishment or another, matters of controversy within your gates. Then you shall arise and go up to the place where the Lord your God chooses, and you consult the priest and the ruler, the head judge.”

And what this is talking about is that it’s like that heads of tens, 50s, hundreds, thousands. You know, you’re an elder at this level or you’re a judge or you’re a priest, but you can’t figure out how to do it. How the law applies to this situation. It’s too hard. It’s too wondrous. It’s too difficult for your intellectual capacity or your state of wisdom and you’re supposed to go to the guy who knows more than you say. So in the court, you know, the Supreme Court has to figure out whether this is constitutional or not. We don’t know. Lower court judges aren’t trusted with those decisions. So things are too high or things that are beyond our intellectual capacity or wisdom.

Now, as I was saying, there is something that is not beyond our capacity or wisdom, and that is the law of God. We read in the scriptures that “This commandment which I command to you today. It is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far out, nor is it far away.” Okay, so the positive example here is Deuteronomy 30:1 that says the things that we are supposed to do by way of implication.

Now, the things that are not too hard for us is to know what the law of God generally says about our lives. It’s not too far away from us. Okay? So, we restrict ourselves to what we understand and know about the law of God.