Psalm 131

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0:00 This summer we took a trip to Colorado and there was a couple really great moments there but there was one when we were out there with Matt and Barrett and the rest of the family and you can ride on paved bike paths from the Vale Pass down to Frisco and you're like in beautiful valley coasting down and in the back I had in the little trailer behind me

0:32 I had four-year-old Hazel and she just kept saying we go faster dad go faster and that was pretty great that's what comes to mind I have our call to worship for this morning remember that the next 45 minutes or so is set aside as time that's different than the rest of your time when you set apart something for a specific purpose you make it holy and so we can make these next 45 minutes holy by setting them apart from our week before and our week after and part of the way we do that

1:04 is we acknowledge that we put away the concerns we know that God can handle those concerns and and then for the next 45 minutes we're present to hear from God to receive love from God to to encounter conviction from God we're present and our call to worship is our line of demarcation that says we're moving into a time that's different and for our call to worship this morning I have Psalm 133

1:34 Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity it's like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard on the beard of Aaron running down on the collar of his robes it's like the dew of Herman which falls on the mountains of Zion for there the Lord has commanded the blessing life forevermore it's telling me I'm on I'm on now sweet I'm Aaron let's pray

2:10 Lord thank you that we get to that we get to pull away for a little bit on a Sunday morning and be with each other and ultimately be with you and so I wish I said your spirit would be with us that you would yeah that you would give us some contentment and some peace to end our last week and to begin our next one in your name we ask amen yeah so I get to share with you all this morning which is cool I've been looking forward to that so we're gonna we're still in the Psalms of the

2:41 sense and we've been in those for I don't know how many weeks but a little bit and so we're actually gonna spend some time in Psalm 131 but the question is born and does anybody else have like a really good moment where you really felt like content like God was in control I had like I had one this summer and I and when Ben was saying that actually it wasn't the summer it was like two weeks ago I got to go to I got to go to Calgary Canada to speak a little bit for a conference two weekends ago and I feel like every like moment of like peace and

3:14 contentment for people from Florida has to do with when they were in the mountains and so I wonder if like for people who live there they're like oh it was at the beach and it was amazing but so it was funny that Ben told that story but I was up there and we were teaching north of Calgary and I was flying up with a friend and if you've never been up there BAMF National Park is like 45 minutes away and it's legit and I never I've been to Calgary but never managed to get to the National Park and so my friend that was with me we flew in like one day early and we had like 24

3:48 hours and and most of you all know like in terms of like work and like kid and like family world 24 hours can be a pretty legit vacation I mean you can feel like you like kick butt in 24 hours and it's 24 hours ever it feels like a week and so I was like man we have 24 hours this could be really good and so we got to BAMF and went to this restaurant and we and we had like all these hikes mapped out we probably had like I'd probably saved like 20 different hikes you know on my phone on this app but then we were like overwhelmed with information so we asked this girl we're like okay

4:21 we need a good short hike tonight and we need a good long hike tomorrow and she came through like put us on two different hikes that were amazing and so the next day we end up up at Lake Louise and and we set off hiking and and at the beginning if you ever if you ever google a picture of BAMF the picture that pops up is Lake Louise and it's gorgeous and what you don't see are like the 150 tourists that just got off a bus that are standing behind you also taking Instagram pictures and so we started off kind of in that and you're like okay I don't and we were I think both of us

4:53 were kind of not acknowledging that we were wondering if we were about to be really disappointed because we're like there are just people everywhere and the longer we went up this trail the more and more you know like people just kind of weren't going that far and and we did our best as like Florida guys like we probably wore every Patagonia clothing that we had and like packs and food and stuff and finally like the last like couple miles of this hike came around this back kind of corner of this little mountain and you get on this exposed peak and behind you are all these glaciers

5:25 and ahead of you it drops all the way down to the valley and the lakes and the last pry hundred yards you're walking on this completely exposed rock out to this point and it was amazing I mean we got out there and and I and I felt that kind of like what Ben is describing I felt that just overwhelming I felt like I was staring at something so incredibly big and I experienced I don't know if you ever felt this but I experienced that moment where you feel so incredibly small and it's so incredibly comforting

5:58 you know something about just in the like the kind of greatness and the splendor of this like beautiful landscape and just realizing these mountains are huge and and it really I mean I had this moment where I was just really feeling like it's really felt really felt like God was kind of you know there and blessed and it was really it was really powerful as I was thinking about that the past couple days just that place of kind of contentment especially a contentment in something of that scale which I think is hard for us right maybe that's why we find it in places

6:28 like mountains or the ocean or whatever the funny thing is we're sitting there and we're I'm like having this like I'm like this is amazing this is the best moment ever and there's only two other people on this peak and one guy's like not talkative at all and then the other dude's like really talkative and he's like fully geared out he lives in Calgary he's like I'm up here every weekend you gotta you know and I just make a remark I'm like yeah I see you got like kind of like your bear spray on your backpack he looks at me and he's like well yeah I'm like you don't really need that do you really need that up here and it just goes quiet and he just looks amazing well yeah so we're like oh cool yeah I've figured what time are you walking down we're

7:05 gonna walk like we'll roll with you it's gonna be cool if you've got it if you got a passage just if you got a copy of the scriptures if you don't there's some more around scattered around but let's look at Psalm 131 So let's tip if anybody ever asks you if like your friend comes to you and says hey can you preach on one of the Psalms of ascent pick the one that's three verses that's what I did all right let's look into it Psalm 131 and remember the the Psalms of

7:42 ascent where they were sung by God's people as they came and approached the temple and they were they were very kind of symbolic of of us kind of moving into the presence of God and and I loved where where Ben kind of ended and left us last week and thinking about and he was talking about this Psalm that he just read where the blessings of God were like the oil kind of on Aaron's beer that was kind of pointed to that the blessings of God are not earned they're not earned by us in any way that they are things that flow downwards to us basically completely on the goodness of God

8:19 so Psalm 131 a song of ascent of David says my heart is not proud of Lord my eyes are not haughty I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me but I've stilled and quieted my soul like a ween child with its mother like a ween child is my soul within me oh Israel put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore when I started looking into that the past couple days it's interesting because

8:50 honestly like when I first read it my first inclination you know and I remember this from Lorena you know over the years when I first read it you read that that first kind of section right and it says my heart is not proud my eyes are not haughty I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me and as I started thinking through that I was kind of wrestling with it and my first inclination I was like okay what what what the heck is he talking about okay what is why why would the psalmist you know as he's kind of moving towards the presence of God as God's people are moving towards the presence of God what does it mean when he says

9:21 well I don't think about two things they're too wonderful for me and I kind of wear a flash back in my head you know was just this idea I'm like okay is this psalmist like kind of claiming ignorance in some ways you know I think we're sometimes like we kind of think about it and it's like oh no no no that's like I don't know about all your fancy book learning um you know I don't know about this like fancy stuff I like that's just too much and I think probably because I you know I kind of grew up in some circles that I think that's often how we approached some things uh you know when we talked about difficult you know theological things or difficult things of God

9:54 or just this place of going man there there's things in life I don't understand you know I grew up in circles we were like well I guess that's just God that that's not me I have no idea and it was almost like this kind of like free pass into what I realize now was kind of passivity almost like this free pass to go well that's too big for me that's too great for me I just can't do anything about it so I don't know I'll just leave that up to God and as I was wrestling with this passage

10:24 this week it kind of hit me at a different level and it's kind of what I want us to look at when when the psalmist starts off he says my heart is not my heart is not proud my eyes are not haughty I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me so if we think about it and I'm kind of going off the premise that we're gonna assume that psalmist is not gonna play dumb that he's not gonna kind of choose to be passive that he's not gonna say hey well that's out of my hands there's nothing I can do so I'll just not worry about it I don't think that's what he's saying I think when he starts off the heart when you think about the heart when they talk

10:58 about the heart a lot in the Old Testament when you hear the heart so much of the heart refers to kind of our sense of self like our sense of pride like how we see ourselves how we see ourselves in the world and and right off the bat the psalmist kind of starts off and says okay my heart is not proud nobody's talking about it he's just talking about how he views himself he's talking about the attitude of his own heart and then he goes on he talks about you know my eyes do not my eyes are not haughty I don't remember the last time I've ever said haughty when I wasn't reading something

11:29 in the Bible but he's basically saying my eyes my perspective my perspective is not one of pride my perspective is not one of arrogance and really what he's saying is my perspective is not one where I think I know everything about everything when he says my heart is not proud my eyes are not haughty the psalmist is starting off and he's going okay I've come to this place where I realize that I don't fully understand everything that's happening I don't fully understand why

12:03 this happens here and why this doesn't happen here I don't understand why God does this here and this over here I don't understand why all this is the way it is and the third step he takes is he says I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me so if you think about it and in terms of kind of how you read the psalm as a song

12:34 and he basically goes three places he goes okay my heart which is kind of this attitude my my inner attitude which my inner attitude is not one of pride and then my eyes my perspective how I view myself how I view the world is not one where I think I know everything it's not one where I think I understand why this happens and why that happens it's not one where I think that I actually have it all together and then he kind of doubles down on that in a third step and he goes to action and he says that I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me

13:07 I think when we read that we can hear him saying I do not become obsessed with things that are beyond my control I do not allow myself to become inundated and overtaken with things that are beyond my ability to understand beyond my ability to affect the things that are beyond my control okay so take a second take us some stuff that's outside of your control

13:39 and maybe y'all don't do this maybe I'm because I'm a counselor and so I live way too much in my head all the freaking time you know I can give you a list of like 20 things that are outside of my control and I could give you a long list of things that have fell outside of my control this past week I told Ben this morning we walked in and he said how are you and I said that was probably like one of the hardest weeks I've had in like a couple years you know and I said so maybe I can preach this morning and not like you know maybe like not get into tears or whatever

14:10 but it was just so hard because I came I was kind of like face to face honestly I was like face to face but there are just things so outside of my control and many of them live in my house and and and they have names and apparently they are my children you know and we had a tough week because apparently apparently we have given our kids voices and we have welcomed their opinions and now they have them so I don't know if that was a bad idea but but just realizing man like

14:44 all week I have sat and all week as I've sat with this psalm I have sat simultaneously in this place I've gone oh my gosh okay I like what it was it looked like for us to like trust the Lord and what does it look like that the fact that oh my gosh what am I going to do with this situation with my kid because this feels out of control it feels overwhelming as I sat with this I kind of came to this place I was in here and you know where the psalmist starts

15:14 off and as he's approaching God he says my heart's not proud I don't think I have it all together I don't pretend that I understand everything that I am supposed to do with my life I realize that that what he's speaking to you is actually this like really powerful invitation to humility because he's not just saying oh I don't consider myself important what he's saying is I've realized that I live in this world and the other most powerful thing that I've realized is that as I live in

15:47 God's world I am not God I don't know if you deal with when think I don't know what you do when things feel out of control for you I know for me that I've realized over the years that when things feel out of control like when there's something weighing on me or just you know a really heavy situation and sometimes that is just you know us struggling you know with friends or kids or work and sometimes it's like watching the news right and sometimes it's like you know sometimes I think you know I've had conversations with friends where it's like if you actually start having

16:20 like environmental conversations and then you're like oh my gosh I'm like you know you're just like well this started off fine and it went dark really fast right it just feels overwhelming and out of control I had a mentor once tell me years ago he's like man he's like I think like when and I feel he's just so proven true in the past 20 years of my life he said when things feel out of control most of us really want to double down on things that we feel like we can control

16:52 I mowed my yard yesterday not gonna lie it felt awesome I was like you know what I'm just gonna put headphones in we'll listen to a podcast about like a hunter being attacked by a bear and I'm gonna mow my yard and I came in I was like oh my gosh that was amazing right but I don't know if I don't know what you do I don't know where you go I think for many of us like we do have places and often they're not great places where when things feel out of control we tend to hyper focus on what helps us feel in control I mean for many of us that's where we get like our kind of most

17:26 destructive bad habits right you know I mean for many of us that's where I mean that might be a place where we you know we return to unhealthy stuff like alcohol or something else that might just be a place where we're going oh my gosh like this area in my life feels so out of control but you know what when I go to work I feel really powerful and in control so I'll try and live my life there I'll try and live my life in these areas where I feel more put together and where I feel more in control and maybe if I if I look there if I stay there then I won't kind of feel these feelings of things being out of control back here

17:58 with the psalmist is getting that I think in this in this first piece is this invitation to humility and I don't know if you've ever thought about humility this way right but humility is like incredibly dangerous like do you feel ever caught that like humility is an incredibly incredibly vulnerable place to be I mean and I know like we I mean thanks to like Brené Brown we talk about vulnerability all the time and I love Brené Brown you can go watch it if you never

18:31 seen her watch her TED talk on vulnerability if you're like me you want to like go hang out with her and get a hug after if you know her and she can hang out with me please let me know but we talk about vulnerability a lot and maybe I talk about it more because I'm a pretty therapist but we talk about vulnerability all the time but vulnerability I mean at its core like the word is to kind of be open to being wounded right humility is a very vulnerable place to be so the psalmist says you know my heart's not proud my eyes are not haughty I am not obsessing

19:05 myself with things beyond my control that is an incredibly vulnerable place to be because he's basically saying I've realized that I am not in control and I'm really hoping that God is a vulnerable vulnerable vulnerable place to be for us to hope and trust that God ultimately is in control especially when we realize the depths to which we're not so he goes on from there

19:39 and I am like I'm like man we're gonna like seriously unpack like three versus my like super like ex- Charitical Southern Baptist heritage is like stoked right now so you got this invitation to humility you got this invitation that the psalmist is going hey as I approach God I'm approaching God and we as God's people are approaching God from this place of humility going hey we realize we are not God and we cannot pretend to be and we're not even going to pretend to assume that we understand and know everything we're going to assume that there is

20:11 so much beyond what we see and know that is so far beyond us and then he takes us a step farther so we got that kind of invitation to us and then he's gonna he's gonna kind of give us an invitation on how to do it but I've stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child and by and by weaned child if you don't know what that means you know often I think we kind of misunderstand that a weaned child is actually a young kid who is no longer breastfed like a young kid who is kind of a toddler on up to a young kid who's

20:46 kind of running around we have many of them here we have many like running around this building right so he gives us that picture I've stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother like a weaned child is my soul within me okay so have you seen a young kid Wes is like yes I know some they do not look still and quiet to me maybe I did it wrong

21:22 but still and quiet and and if you went in that room of course this morning that room is like the quietest has ever been right but like if you think about if you go in that room right there's probably not a ton of stillness and quietness going on those of you all that have young kids you're like yeah stillness stillness and quiet moments are like gold right like those moments but the stillness and quiet moments that are like gold they're usually what they're asleep

21:53 there's like those beautiful moments where you're like oh my gosh I love this this is so great this is so peaceful and then they're asleep right but the psalmist gives a weird kind of juxtaposition of these two so that that I went after this stillness and quietness and where it kind of took me thinking about this week is because I was like man you know what does that mean and I and I and we've got to spend some time in Washington state this summer for some other work stuff and and we're fortunate to you know kind of go man we haven't done like

22:26 a full like all four of us family vacation in a long time and never one that was like an extended period of time and so Michelle and the kids came out with me and we like did the full we did like we went like full like vacation mode we like went on like whale boats and like did everything it was it was awesome and so exhausting and and it was amazing like it was it was so great yeah it was just really really special time but it was not still and quiet in a lot of aspects

22:56 right and that how many of you guys watch the office like back in the day you remember the park core episode if you've never seen this episode just google like office park core episode okay parkour being like what was like really popular in like 2003 where everybody like jumps from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing that was being on vacation with my son we're like you'd walk in the hotel room and as you walk in he would fly past you from the bed to

23:27 the chair you know and and I mean it was just like I'm just all boy all the time and it was awesome and it was great until we were like on this hike up the side of Mount Rainier and I'm walking along and all of a sudden he launches off a rock and like the side of the trail is like like way down and so I'm like ah you know I'm like freaking out but I'm also trying to like you know I like Brandon and I've talked about this stuff for years where I'm like trying to balance I'm like I don't want to be like oh my gosh you'll get hurt but also I'm gonna be like yeah dude that's cool just make

23:59 sure you don't go off the side of the mountain and die like like try to balance this right um but it's not typically what I think of when I think of still and quiet and that really stuck with me as I was wrestling with this passage man because it's like okay so what in the heck is God and the psalmist kind of saying that we're invited into in this like he's saying hey there's this invitation to trust in humility and realizing that God is in

24:29 control this incredible invitation to trust that God's in control so I don't have to be how does that connect to this idea of being a small kid and and obviously it kind of echoes like even Jesus in Matthew 18 where Jesus talks about that you know that we need to welcome that the disciples needed to welcome the little children to come to him and that is how we're called to enter the kingdom is his little kids right when we hear the stillness and quietness

25:01 what I really felt like he was getting at was this place that our kids I've realized one of the things about them is that they actually really trust that we're gonna like take care of them but that might sound ridiculous but hear me out they have this thing where they just assume that we are going to give them dinner they assume that they're that we were that we are going to

25:32 feed them a meal they assume that we are going to provide them with these things and and part of it is you know like I mean I mean I have to remind myself I'm like oh wait they're supposed to assume this because like well we had them so kind of responsible for them at this point right but but they assume this stuff they assume that these things will be given to them by Michelle and I and thank you they haven't been wrong yet you know there's there's some food in the fridge it is not always what they want apparently and I know from talking to most of y'all that is common

26:08 but but they have this assumption in our relationship that we will provide those things they have this assumption in our relationship that when we were on that vacation they had this like crazy assumption that I knew where we were going on that trail I did know where we were going on that trail I didn't know how how long it was going to take didn't know it was going to be like 50 degrees and super foggy didn't know that it was you know didn't know a lot of things didn't need

26:39 bear spray on that one apparently it's cool but but they assumed that I knew where we were going when we turned around they assumed that I knew the way back you know they assumed that Michelle and I knew what we were going to do the next day they they had all this crazy assumptions and I realized that there is an incredible stillness and quietness in that I don't want my kids to have to be concerned about where their meals are going to come from tomorrow

27:17 I don't want my kids to have to be concerned with the bills that Michelle and I need to pay I don't want my kids to have to be concerned with things that are far too great and awesome for them to understand what God has invited us into is this really what I think I actually feel like it's a it's a difficult vulnerable place because the end of the day most of us would rather try and be in control feel safer to try and be in control and kids do not have the ability to be

27:49 in control and so in the Psalmist gives us this picture that we get to be like a small child that we get to be like a ween child he's not saying that we get to be like a baby a baby is actually kind of demanding at times right a baby doesn't know much all they know it is kind of the comfort of presence but if you think about it kids are different I don't feel I've ever heard the old GK Chester 10 quote where he was talking about fairy tales

28:24 Chester 10 he was like kind of in that same school was like token and all those guys right and that quote from Chester 10 that I always love he's talked about that fairy tales don't exist to teach kids that dragons are real we've heard that he said fairy tales don't exist to teach kids that dragons are real fairy tales exist to teach children that dragons can be killed because what happens as we become small children is we begin to kind of understand

28:57 that pain is really possible see in this picture the scripture gives us kids kids kind of know that things can go bad kids intuitively know that bad things can happen they know that pain is possible they know that loss in some way that maybe they don't even have words for they know that it is possible

29:28 but yet somehow there's still this place of kind of stillness and quietness that this all ness kind of points back to you the image that he's given us that I feel like it is what I really feel like it's what God invites us into y'all it is this place where we know like often I mean you're like me you've even inundated all the time with stories of like tragedy and trauma right I read a powerful you know kind of article

30:00 last year just talking about just the I just this idea that even even just for us today in our world the amount of information that you take in every day we are so not built to handle the amount of stories of pain and loss that you take in around the world full of images and depth and story I don't believe we as humans are built to be able to handle the breadth of that right

30:31 I mean in some ways like no other time in history have we been able to in one day you know assimilate stories of tragedy and trauma from every you know corner of the globe but somehow in the Psalm we can assume that the Psalmist knew that life was pretty hard we can assume that the Psalmist knew that death was a very real thing we can assume that the Psalmist knew that pain and loss

31:05 and struggle and life not working the way we want it to work was a very real ever-present possibility the invitation that we see in this idea that like a ween child with its mother like a ween child is my soul within me but somehow the Psalmist found this way to not well psalmist found a way to be impacted by the pain we can assume of their own life of the world and have it not

31:41 draw them away from God but they were impacted by the pain whether in their life in the world and it actually became this place that drew them back to God this place that in fear and things being overwhelming in those places where we realize that some things are out of control that we don't know how to fix this work situation fix this relationship fix this whatever it is somehow the Psalmist

32:11 came back to this place that there's this crazy invitation that that's where we get to be like these little kids with our father when I was like I think I want to say I was like 20 years old I remember and it's always stuck with me remember watching watching my one of my oldest nephews with my brother-in-law we were sitting on the beach down in my hometown and my nephew is real little

32:43 and and we were on the Gulf so there wasn't really a lot of waves there are waves sometimes on the Gulf okay as a surfer I have to defend it but it was really calm that day but he kept kind of going deeper and deeper and as a 20 year old I didn't see I don't know I just haven't really picked up on it but I remember really just watching for like a half hour Cain and my nephew I watched him he would go out and he'd get like about knee-deep and then he'd kind of run back up and he'd kind of walk up to my brother-in-law

33:15 and my brother-in-law and I were talking brother-in-law's name's Drew and Drew's sitting there and Cain would kind of walk up and he wouldn't kind of do anything he would walk up and he'd kind of put his hand on Drew's knee or on his shoulder and he'd just kind of listen to us and look around the beach we kept talking and I'd watch and then Cain would kind of like go back out get a little deeper get thigh-deep and then here he comes how did you just silently walk it up walk up kind of touch your dad go back down get's waist-eat comes up because we're my sister kind of touch mom

33:45 it's cool look around always good go back out now eventually he didn't get any deeper right but but it was this powerful image that has always stuck with me I feel like God has kind of played in my mind over and over that when we hear scripture and it talks about coming like a child I feel like I watched it because the psalmist doesn't come back and say hey the world's a really big scary place try not to get hurt don't do anything build a bunker get some supplies don't talk to people just hunker down and hope you make it through it

34:19 it's what he says right this psalmist says man I found stillness and quietness and trusting that God was in control and that God was worth trusting in some crazy way I know my son felt safe to launch himself off a rock on the side of a mountain because he felt like I was in control now his thinking wasn't completely clear on that point

34:49 but the metaphor still works right that I feel like that is what God invites us into oh Israel put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore I don't know what that looks like for you today I don't know what places in your life feel out of control I don't know what places in your life just feel really hard to understand I don't know

35:23 what places of pain there are rattling around I don't know the places where you're like going no this week kicked ass and it was awesome you know but I feel like we have this incredible invitation to trust God in all those pieces and it becomes an invitation not to where we kind of just hunker down because the world's unsafe it becomes an invitation to where we get to kind of launch off rocks on the sides of mountains and do risky things and love people in risky ways and take really amazing bold steps in how

35:55 we interact and engage in our world because we believe ultimately God's in control and so we don't have to be that could be really cool let's pray Lord above all things Jesus we thank you that you really are you really are in control that you really do love us that you invite us to trust you as little kids knowing that you will provide for us that you will be there for us and it is out of that that we get to venture

36:28 into the world and that we get to step into risk and adventure and loss and pain and all that whole spectrum of life and so as you would give us and give us the courage to do that the courage to to hear that invitation from you that we find this place of stillness and quietness realizing that we do not have to we do not have to concern ourselves with things that you are in control of and whether we can trust you in it we ask this in your name amen