Good morning. We are finishing off this series on The Psalms of Ascents. If you have been here since the beginning, you know we have been talking about how The Psalms of Ascents were believed to be psalms that were sung on the road trips that the pilgrim would make as they ascended up the road to Jerusalem for the three major feasts of the year. If you have been here for a while, you also know that we have been talking about how The Psalms of Ascents are really more than just songs. They have become somewhat of a spiritual metaphor for the spiritual life. So we know, as disciples of Christ, people who are learning to live everyday life like Jesus, these psalms can be helpful for our own spiritual journey. Today’s psalm, Psalm 131, seems to be especially suited for that. It gives us an idea of when we are getting off track in that walk with God and how we might get it back. What we want to do here is do what we have been doing for the last few weeks, which is reading through the psalm together. It is only three verses. There are no big words. (Scripture read here.)
We see here that this is a psalm that is very easy to read, a little bit more difficult to interpret and very difficult to apply because it might require some adjustments. It might require an honest look at where you are and really where you want to be or where God wants you to be. In order to do that, it is helpful to go all the way back to the book of Genesis. Go back to the garden to begin to get an idea of what it is that God wants us to be, especially how we were created. Genesis 1:27 says “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” This passage, if you ever thought about it, really highlights the value of man and woman. To be created in the image of God, that is a big thing. As a side note, when we think of the word image, a lot of scholars debate what it means to be made in the image of God. There is a lot of discussion about it. Somebody suggested it is kind of like a blurred picture. If you take a picture with your smartphone and you don’t hold it really steady, it gets a little blurry. That is kind of the idea of an image where the likeness is more in tune to the very original. We have the image of God, although it might be a little bit blurred, we still know it is quite valuable because God has imparted on us some phenomenal attributes also known as his communicable attributes (those He freely graces to us which are sometimes referred to as his "moral attributes).
He has given us the ability to be creative as he was creative. He gives us the ability to love as he loved, to have intellect and to have reason. He has given us a unique personality. Obviously, he has given us things like the ability to see, hear, speak, and to touch. That is a short list of the many communicable attributes that God has freely imparted on his creation.
But one of the most important things that he did and that we have contained within us is the very breath of God. We read in Genesis 2:7 that it says “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The first man, the first woman breathed in the very breath of God. It is an amazing thing to think about. This word we translate breath can also be translated spirit. Some have suggested that Adam and Eve would be considered from the very first day an inspired people, which basically means in spirited by God. Filled up with the very spirit of God. Some of you know that there are certain religious denominations sometimes called Charismatics or Pentecostals where they talk about the spirit-filled life. They talk about being spirit-filled, which often has connected with it this idea of some sort of experience. Some sort of an ecstatic-type experience where you feel totally in touch with God. You feel this sense of overwhelming joy. You feel bathed in the very presence of God. Those experiences, as some of you may know, can last any time from a few seconds to a few minutes. For Adam and Eve that experience was meant to be for all eternity. They were meant to live constantly filled up with the spirit of God. Living in constant harmony. Communing with God. Totally bathed in the presence of God. That was a very, very special thing. Someone said that Adam and Eve were considered lower than angels, but at the same time they were above all the other creation by virtue of what God imparted in them. We read on where it says “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” They were given dominion over all of God’s creation. Everything that God said was good. Because God said it was good, they believed it was good, so they would care for the creation with respect. They would not abuse it. It is because God called man and woman not just good, but very good that the first man and first woman had a high sense of their personal worth and personal identity. They were very secure and safe in who they were. These are the people that were placed in the garden. The only requirement was to continue to worship and submission to God. That was the life of Adam and Eve and that is the life that has really been imparted to all of us since the very beginning. That is God’s desire for us. As we know, as the story goes, that ugly thing called sin kind of found its way into the world. Adam and Eve had everything they wanted, everything they could possibly need, except they were tempted by Satan with the thing they didn’t have: to be like God. When they were tempted to eat of the tree of good and evil, they went for it. Kicking off a chain of sinful and horrific events all through history that has impacted every single dimension of the world ever since. It is very difficult in a short sermon to be able to isolate all the consequences of sin. So what I would like to do in the remaining minutes is just highlight a couple results of sin.
The first being that we have people who, because of sin, have a little bit too high of a view of themselves, too lofty of a view of self. On the other hand, we have people who have too low of a view of themselves. People who allow others to treat them as a doormat. In order to see this, we have to go back and visit the original passage here, Psalm 131. The first line says “My heart is not proud, O Lord. My eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.” This passage has the sense as though the psalmist may have at one time struggled with some of these negative traits. He has since gotten over them. One time he struggled with things like pride, haughtiness, and being preoccupied with things beyond his ability. We are all familiar with pride. It is not necessarily a bad word. It is not necessarily bad to feel pride for your children. It is not bad to feel pride for your accomplishments. It is not even bad to feel pride for the United States of America. It is just when that pride becomes something that preoccupies us. When it gets centered on self and the need to exalt self. When we have an excessively high opinion of self. So much so that we do whatever we can to preserve it and protect it. It often results in us looking down on other people, which is the idea of haughtiness or snobbery. I think most of you know when somebody looks down on you like if you are at a restaurant and somebody looks down on you because you can’t pronounce the item on the menu. I experienced it at McDonald’s last week. Haughtiness we are familiar with. Pride we are familiar with. But this idea of “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me” is really up for debate. I can’t seem to find a consistent idea in the commentaries about this. Some people suggest that basically it means that you are operating outside of your divine capacity. The capacity that God has gifted you with. More modern terminology would be you are operating outside of your wheelhouse. In case you are not familiar with that phrase, wheelhouse is a term thrown around. It either comes from a nautical term or some suggest it is a baseball term. In nautical terms, a wheelhouse is basically the pilot house. The place where the captain goes and steers the ship but also has everything else he or she needs to make sure that the ship stays on course. Everything is covered there. He or she is operating within the capacity of the ship. On the other hand, some suggest that it is actually a baseball phrase. It is the idea of a pitch. Not a pitch that goes necessarily in the strike zone but a pitch that is delivered where the batter has the best chance of smacking a homerun. It would be said that is in his wheelhouse. We are talking about capacity. We are talking about operating within the God-given capacity. When you operate outside of that capacity you often find yourself in trouble. So we are familiar with the words pride and haughtiness and you are in touch with what we mean by capacity. We know that these types of things are not held in very high regard by the Bible. We see it in passages like Proverbs 16:18 that says “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall.” Or Proverbs 21:4 “Haughty eyes and a pride heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin.” It doesn’t take a lot to know that God does not view pride and haughtiness very highly. But that is a problem because our culture does. Our culture tends to reward pride and haughtiness. We exalt it. All we have to do is look at the news and our current political environment and specifically our two candidates that seem to be running for President to see that pride is not far from us. I think it is safe to say that any one of us in this room can make a case that both of those candidates are prideful. We can make a case that probably both of them are haughty because they look down on other people, including their other supporters. Also that, if either one becomes president, I think most of us know they are probably operating outside of their wheelhouse. They are operating outside of their capacity. To think they can do it by themselves is nothing but pure arrogance. We see that in the center of politics right now.
It is not limited to politics. Obviously, the idea of pride and haughtiness moves over into all sorts of realms, especially in the business world where we are all constantly challenged and encouraged to continue to strive up the ladder of success even though we are operating outside of our wheelhouse. I think it was Peter Drucker who said something like ‘People will rise to their level of incompetence.’ We will keep going up and up until we find ourselves totally incompetent wondering how did we ever get here and not feeling very comfortable when we are there. It doesn’t just limit itself to career. It doesn’t just limit itself to white-collar people. It doesn’t limit itself to blue-collar people. It is all people who have this sense of dissatisfaction. The stirring in their heart that something just doesn’t feel right. My soul is not at ease. It can extend into the technology realm. It is the people who feel that they have to have the latest and greatest version of a smartphone even though they haven’t figured out how to use the last version of the smartphone, which is like me. Isn’t that funny? Or we see it in the way people dress. We see it in the way men dress, but I think we see it really in the way a lot of woman dress. In fact, there is a passage back in the book of Isaiah, 3,000 years ago, that pretty much is a fit description for some of the females today. It says “The Lord says ‘The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles.’” All we have to do is add a few tattoos and we are right in line with the women today. Those are things that are really manifestations of pride.
Also something like the idea that we have to be involved in every event nowadays. Some would call it the fear of missing out. If you are not part of that event, then you are just not part of the in-crowd. Or the need to show every single picture of your kid or your grandkid or your vacation on Facebook. Now you can stream through Facebook live. You can put your whole life out there and show people how wonderful your life is and that means how bad their life is. That is pride. It could have to do with the jeopardy syndrome. The idea that you have to have an answer for everything. Whether it is a parenting question, a sports question, a Bible question. It is the idea that you have to be up to date on everything and be able to give an answer for anything because you want to appear smarter than you probably actually are. A lot of this manifests itself in haughtiness. An idea that you are better than other people. You look down on other people. Your opinion is the only one that matters. You don’t even notice the other opinions in the room because the only opinion you are concerned with is yourself. We all deal with this to a certain degree. If we are all honest, to a certain degree we can resonate with this. But for some people they actually become the center of their entire universe. Their intent is to preserve that status, that self. Whatever they can do. Even if it means bullying. Even if it means lying. Even if it means stealing. Whatever it means to preserve that high sense of self. They are going to do what it takes. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying it is bad to want to pursue a career. It is not bad to post pictures on Facebook. It is not bad to want to educate yourself. Those are not bad things. But as Christians, we have to be sensitive to how the devil just wants to mess with us in very subtle ways. He wants us to fill up with pride because it is pride that got Adam kicked out of the garden. It is pride that is going to keep us from getting back there. He is constantly going to be feeding us stuff. If we are not paying attention, little by little we will find that we are getting our own sense of value from ourselves. We are creating within us not a true self that is in line with God’s design for us, but we are fabricating a false self that is fueled entirely by pride. There was a guy named Thomas Merton who says it best when he says “Pride is a stubborn insistence on being what we are not and never intended to be. Pride is a deep, insatiable need for unreality, an exorbitant demand that others believe the lie we have made ourselves believe about ourselves.” I know it is deep thoughts for today, but it sure makes sense. He is saying pride puts you in the land of make believe. That is all you are doing. You are creating something that really doesn’t exist. You are just fabricating something that you think you need. But at the same time, you are never happy because you know as high as you try to go up that ladder in whatever way you go up it, you are never going to create a self that is anything like the self that God has already placed inside you. That is one result of the fall.
The other result is the other extreme. I am going to keep this a little shorter, but I think it applies to many people, even in this room today. On one extreme you think too highly of yourself. On the other extreme you think too low of yourself. You allow yourself to be a doormat. You are beaten down by life. You are battered and bruised by life. You have no sense of dignity other than the little morsels of dignity that people are willing to feed you when they are willing to feed you. And you are dependent on that. You don’t have to worry about those people running for President of the United States. You don’t have to worry about them running for president of the local PTA or anything. They can hardly get out of bed let alone climb any sort of ladder of success. You don’t have to worry about them operating beyond their wheelhouse because most of them never even entered the wheelhouse that was created by God. Most of them have not even gotten near the capacity, mental, physical, and emotional capacity, that God created for them. You are not going to find people like this trying to push their ideas on you because they don’t think their ideas have any value. Not at all. They don’t think their opinion matters. Because of that, they are subject to be harassed, abused, and bullied until every last ounce of dignity is finally taken from them. You have two extremes here as a result of sin. You have people who are thinking too highly of themselves and people who are thinking too low of themselves, but the problem is basically the same. It is basically a discontented soul. A soul that is not happy. A soul that is living outside the blueprint of God.
So what is the answer? The answer is really found in verse 2. It involves what we would call weaning. It says “But I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” If you have been here for a while, you know we have a bunch of babies. In the middle of kind of a baby boom. If you don’t believe me, go by the nursery during the service and see all the babies in there. See how we are having so many babies around here that we can’t even handle them. I have been instructed by the elders to let all you young people know that whatever you are doing, stop it. Until you are willing to recruit or work in the nursery, stop it. You have too much time on your hands. Some of you know and you can tell right now, when a baby is not getting what he or she wants, the baby gets a little fussy. So the idea is to give the baby what he or she wants. After the baby is done feeding, they look so content. This is a picture of our grandchild, Oliver, about a week or two old. He just got done feeding. The look of contentment. Some would suggest he is in a milk coma. But I know that when the baby wakes up, he or she is going to get a little fussy again. They are going to go back to the same thing over and over again. So the aim, I hope, for most adults, is eventually to wean the child and to get the child less dependent on the mother’s milk. That is really what weaning means. But a second meaning for weaning is to withdraw one’s dependency from some person, object, habit, or form of enjoyment. The idea of dependency is very important as we wind this down. With somebody who is too highly elevated, somebody who thinks a little bit too much of themselves, they have to be weaned from being dependent on themselves for their self-worth, for their self-esteem, from climbing up the ladder of success. They have to understand that they are not in control. Consequently, they should stay within their wheelhouse so to speak. It doesn’t mean that they are going to deny the gifts that God has given them. It just means he or she is going to use their gifts in the appropriate environment, in an appropriate range so that he or she will not become overly stressed. So their soul will not be discontent.
For the people who don’t ever think highly of themselves, they also have to release dependency. Really dependency on others. When I say dependency on others, I am not talking about a physical thing. I am talking about an emotional dependency on other people so they might be able to glean or get their self-worth, their self-image, which means that they may have to accept the boundaries that other people are putting on them. And not be like a whiny, crying baby because someone has set up those boundaries. And not think that those boundaries are set up to deny them from getting what they want. Rather it is helping them become what God wants. Someone who is productively, emotionally living within their wheelhouse. It also means that you don’t use other people to fill up your bucket of emotional needs. Needs that you felt were deprived from you when you were a child or deprived from a spouse. They are not responsible to fill up your bucket of worth. That is God’s job. You have to cut off that dependency from others. So for one it is curbing that rebellious spirit who feels that he or she has to do everything to exalt themselves. The other one is cutting off the dependent ties from other people. If they do that, the result for both will be somehow coming back to that place in the garden. Beginning to step back into that place in the garden. Beginning to step back into that peace and joy and feeling that you are in the presence of God and just feeling a sense of contentment of your very soul.
In closing, the good news is, and there is always good news, there should be good news in every sermon, this is something that we don’t have to manufacture on ourselves. We don’t have to figure it all out. How does this work? We just have to do what we have been talking about doing since last fall, which was simply being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ. An ordinary person who is learning to live everyday life like Jesus. If you read just a little bit about Jesus, you know that Jesus was not someone who had to claw his way up to the top. He wasn’t a spineless human being. He didn’t have to go out and brand himself to be somebody. He didn’t allow people to walk over him like a doormat. He was operating totally within the wheelhouse given to him by the Father, which meant that he had a totally good relationship with the Father, with the people around him, and himself. Totally secure in all that. Which means he was able to do exactly what he was meant to do whenever he was called to do it. I have to think that everybody in this room falls somewhere within thinking too high of themselves or too low of themselves. Very few are on either extreme, but I have a feeling a lot of you are in the middle. A lot of you get too caught up in trying to build your own status. Other people get caught up in total dependency on others and have no ounce of self-worth. The answer is learning to wean yourself. More importantly, it is learning to be a follower of Jesus Christ. The good news is that if you follow Jesus, he is not going to lead you backwards to the garden where you are going to be made in the image of Adam. He is going to lead you forward until you begin to actually resemble Christ. Best said in 1 Corinthians 15:49 “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” In close, people we were created by God. We were breathed the very breath of God into us. God breathed his very breath into us. We were imparted with all sorts of gifts, all sorts of God’s attributes, given domain over all of his creation. We allowed Satan to come in and snatch that away from us and mess us up. To get us too preoccupied with self too much or not enough. But again, he provided the solution through Jesus Christ. Follow Jesus Christ and he will lead you not backwards, but forward, again, that we would be made in the very likeness of him. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
