February 23, 2020
As you know, we have been working through the book of 1 Peter this year. Peter has been teaching the persecuted church how to live a beautiful life in a hostile world. This was a skill that early Christians needed to learn, and it’s a skill that we need to learn. But this morning, instead of continuing the discussion, I want to step back for a moment and think about how interesting it is that God would want us to learn this skill.
Think about everything that Peter had witnessed by the time that picked up his pen to write the suffering churches. He had seen the power of God. He watched Jesus calm a storm & cast out demons. He had seen the transfiguration & the brutal crucifixion. He had walked into the empty tomb and put his hands in Jesus’ scars. He had been filled with the Spirit of God on Pentecost, preached a message and baptized 3,000 people. He had healed a lame beggar at the temple. He saw the Spirit take the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. The very fact that he was writing a letter to the churches in Asia was proof that Christ was alive and that the Spirit had unleashed an unstoppable movement.
But just as these churches were planted and established throughout the civilized world, everything changed. You know the story. The unstoppable force of the church ran into the brick wall of the Roman Empire. The church was upsetting the balance of power, so the Romans responded. At first, Christians were treated with suspicion, but that didn’t change anything, so the treatment turned into contempt. By the time Peter wrote his letter, Christians were being mocked and derided for their moral positions, so much so that Peter could call it a fiery trial. In just a few years, the mentally unstable Nero would take the throne and unleash a season of widespread persecution. He would murder and torture Christians for his sick entertainment.
The church ultimately triumphed, just as Jesus predicted. But it is confusing. How could the triumphant God of the resurrection & Pentecost allow his saints to burn on a pole for the entertainment of a perverted Emperor? It doesn’t make any sense. What do we do when the facts of our lives don’t line up with the facts of our faith? A lot of people in the early church felt that tension and determined that the personal cost wasn’t worth it, so they walked away. It was a major problem in the 1st Century, so the apostles wrote letters to address it. This is why the NT is filled with stories of God’s power, but also letters like 1 Peter & Hebrews that exhort Christians to persevere when they didn’t feel God’s power.
But it wasn’t just a 1st Century problem. Christians have been wrestling with this for 2,000 years. I would imagine that this room is filled with people asking similar questions.
*God, I’ve prayed for healing! I read about healings in the Bible. So why am I still sick?
*God, I pray and do my devotions and go to church! Why can’t I feel you? Why does it feel like my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling?
*God I’ve tried to be patient with my husband like 1 Peter 3 tells me. But it’s not working. My marriage continues to unravel.
Some of you are trying to have faith in God, but your faith doesn’t seem to be working. Add to the fact that your faith is beginning to cost you. Your position on homosexuality and abortion and the role of women in marriage are making you look weird. And so some of you are paying the cost for owning faith, but you’re not getting any benefit. How much longer can you keep it up? People are asking hard questions. I’ve been crushed over the past few months to watch public figures and close friends leave the faith, or “deconstruct” their faith. A growing number of people are concluding that it’s just not worth it.
I’d like to wrestle with that this morning. The Bible invites us to have faith in a powerful and living God. But it also teaches us how to hold onto that faith when we don’t feel his power. And so, if you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 131. This is one of the smallest chapters in the Bible – only 3 verses – but I can’t think of a passage of Scripture that has made a bigger impact in my life over the past 13 years than this psalm. God did not use this text to create faith in my life, but he did use it to preserve my faith. That’s quite a statement, so let me explain as you make your way to the text.
I was first introduced to this psalm in late February 2007 – almost exactly 13 years to the day. A friend of mine had sent me a link to a sermon on Psalm 131 that was preached at Moody’s Founder Week in Chicago by a guy named Haddon Robinson. I pulled it up on the desktop computer in my parent’s kitchen in Buies Creek. That sermon shook me to the core and those three little verses in the Psalm transformed the nature of my faith. It had come at a perfect time in my life. Just a few weeks earlier, I had gotten a call from my father in the middle of the night. You never want to get a call from your dad at 2am. He let me know that my mother had passed out at their weekly Barnes & Noble date earlier that night. They took her to the ER and found a massive tumor in her head. I was 23. That sent my life into a tailspin and for the first time in my life, I was confronted with some major questions. What will I do when the facts of my life don’t add up with my faith? I feel like God dropped Psalm 131 in my lap like a gift. It became a guide for me in that chaotic season. Now, for the record, none of my questions about faith were answered in that sermon. And the journey got much, much harder over the next few years. But I knew what to do. There was a path for me that did not include walking away from God when I didn’t know what he was up to. And so with that, let me read the text. Ps. 131
[1] O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
[2] But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.
[3] O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
If anyone could write a biography on how the facts of life don’t always add up with what we know to be true about God, it would be King David. Think about his early years. God called him out of a life of obscurity. He wasn’t just an obscure figure in the nation – he was an obscure figure in his own family. When they prophet came to anoint a new king, he literally had ask: are you sure there isn’t anyone else living here? Oh yeah, I guess you could talk to David. He was forgotten in his own home, and yet, God chose him to lead the nation. In the very next chapter, David walked onto the battlefield and destroyed the Philistine warrior with a little stone. He immediately won the hearts of the people. He married the king’s daughter and befriended the king’s son. David knew the power of God. Everything was perfect & smooth, right? Well, at least until King Saul threw a spear at his head. It was fine until Saul made it his primary goal to kill David. David would spend ten years hiding in caves and running to enemy territories before he took the throne.
David always found himself in these frustrating, confusing situations. What he knew to be true about God’s purpose in his life didn’t always add up with the facts. But here’s the great thing about David: he never gave up. When Saul got in a jam, he chose the shortcut, but David knew how to rest in God. Ps 131 shows us how. Look at verse 1.
[1] O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
When David was placed in these impossible situations, he looked inside to remember who he was. He was just a human. The crowds were making up songs about the legend of David – he’s killed his 10,000s! David knew better.
*His heart wasn’t lifted up. He wasn’t swollen with pride.
*His eyes weren’t raised high – the Hebrew literally means that he wasn’t looking down on anyone else. This happens when we become arrogant and entitled; we begin to look down on others. David knew how tall he stood.
*He was not grasping for things that were out of his reach. In other words, he didn’t worry about things that were clearly out of his control.
David sang this song to remind himself how small he was. This was the secret to his greatness: he knew how small he was. He lived within the limits of his humanity.
(Michal illustration?)
If we want a mature faith, this is the first step: we must give up our pride. Pride is the enemy of faith. It will always lead you away from God. It will never let you rest. Pride will puff you up and cause you to look down on other people. It will make you entitled and arrogant. Pride disorients us. We’re like Alice in Wonderland who was always blowing way out of proportion. It is a miserable way to live, but many of us don’t know another way.
This has been the condition of our heart since Adam & Eve rebelled in the garden, but it is extremely difficult in our current context. We live in a world that celebrates and encourages pride. We work hard to hide the fact that we’re small and fragile and needy.
Let me try to illustrate this. We used to be confronted with our smallness every time we ate. Think about it: for most of human history, people only ate after a very long and fragile process. You plowed the ground and planted seed and prayed for rain. And if God blessed, you feasted. This is why we stop and pray before we eat. Every meal was a reminder of how small and fragile we are. But that’s not how we think about food anymore. Food is no longer a gift; food is assumed, and so we have become very entitled. If the grocery store doesn’t have our brand of almond milk, we let the manager know how disappointed we are. Instead of pausing to thank God for his provision at a restaurant, we blow up on the college freshman waitress who is working her way through school because we clearly said NO MUSHROOMS! We have forgotten how small we are.
Or what about this: There used to be a time, not too long ago, where we were constantly reminded how fragile and forgetful our brains were. You would be in a conversation with a friend and someone would say: “who was that actor in that movie?” That would send you on a three-day journey. It would always end at 2am – you would pop your head off your pillow: “Gregory Peck!” We don’t do that anymore. Not because we’re smarter, but because we have smart phones. Our phones have changed our experience in the world. Do you remember how small and human you felt walking into a truck stop to ask what city you were in? We don’t get lost anymore. We don’t even have to sit in traffic jams anymore.
These are minor examples, but they illustrate a major problem. We are in danger of forgetting how small we are. My generation has not lived through a global war or a widespread depression to humble us. We have lived through unprecedented affluence. Technology has improved our lives in every way. As wonderful as this is, we have become entitled. And unless we check the condition of our hearts regularly, like David, we will become swollen with pride. We will venture into realms that are too awesome for us.
This is so dangerous. Here’s why: the puffed-up soul isn’t ready for disaster. It’s not prepared for failure. If you never experience pain or hunger or forgetfulness, how will you respond when something truly horrible happens to you? Will you demand an answer from God? What will you do when God feels distant and your prayers bounce off the ceiling? Will you give up and walk away?
I need to be careful here, because I want you to know that it is appropriate to ask hard questions to God. In fact, the Bible invites you to cry out to God. David did it all the time. In Psalm 22 he cried out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is OK to ask God hard and honest questions when your life falls apart. Listen to Haddon Robinson: Sometimes the question why is the sob of a broken heart. Sometimes the question why is like a pained sigh. The difficulty comes when the question mark becomes a dagger and that dagger is pointed at the heart of God.
That’s the essence of pride. David didn’t go there. He refused to sit in judgment over God. There were things too marvelous and wonderful for him.
Look at the 2nd verse. Because David renounced his pride and remembered his humanity, he is in a position to trust God.
[2] But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.
The proud heart cannot trust God. But the humble heart leans in like a child with its mother. This is a very intimate image. I imagine there are a lot of adults & self-sufficient people in the room that feel uncomfortable with relating to God like this. For a lot of you, this verse confirms your suspicions: Christianity is a weak religion for weak people, but it doesn’t help you when life gets tough. That’s not what David is saying. Remember who wrote the psalm – David was the warrior king of Israel.
The faith that David articulates in the verse is extremely mature. The key word in this verse is weaned. There is a dramatic difference between a breastfed baby and a weaned child. We’ve gone through this a few times in my house, so I know the drill. The breastfed baby is cute, but don’t be fooled. It’s a time bomb. Every 2 hours they start to stir in their crib, and they make that face. Then they start flailing their arms around. When they start grunting, you have about 5 seconds to get them to mama before they produce an ungodly noise that shouldn’t come out of a human that size.
David didn’t say: Calm me down God! I’m restless and hungry and I need you to calm me down. That’s not the image of discipleship in the Bible, but that’s how many of us relate to God. We’re stuck in a perpetual infancy. I came across an article from David Powlison that helped illustrate this. Powlison is known for composing anti-psalms that contrast a godless existence with a life of faith. Look at the anti-Psalm 131:
O Lord, I can’t stop thinking about my problems;
Nobody else understands what I’m going through.
I demand an answer for every problem I face.
So naturally I am noisy and restless inside.
Like a hungry infant, fussing on his mothers lap,
Like a hungry infant, I am restless with my demands and worries.
I scatter my hopes onto anything and everybody all the time.
That’s not a life of faith, but it’s the only faith that many of us know. God desires to move us beyond that stage, but that is a painful process. It looks a lot like a mother weaning her child. She says to the baby: no more milk; come to me instead. There will most likely come a time in your life when God will deny you something that you really want to give you something far greater. (What is the nature of your prayers? Do you go to God for milk, or do you go to God for God?) This is a transition, and many people walk away, but there is an amazing blessing if you learn to trust in God, even when you don’t get what you want. Listen to Spurgeon: “It is a blessed mark of growth out of spiritual infancy when we can forgo the joys which once appeared to be essential, and can find our solace in him who denies them to us.”
This is the great message of Psalm 131. God may not give you an answer or take away your pain, but he will give you something greater: he will give you himself. Some of you are hung up on the question why this morning. But that’s a question that God doesn’t promise to answer. He denied Job and he denied Paul 3 times. God may never reveal why you are going through what you are going through. But can I suggest a deeper question for you to ponder this morning? Instead of asking: God, why is this happening, can you ask: God, are you for me? Do you even care? I can confidently answer that question. Yes, God is for you.
[35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? [36] As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” [37] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. [38] For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, [39] nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He may not give you answers, but he will give you himself. Take comfort in Christ this morning.
David has one more thought.
[3] O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.
This is an unexpected conclusion. I can’t think of a more intimate and personal psalm than Psalm 131. David is talking about crawling up into the lap of God like a weaned child. If I were him, I would have thought about keeping this one in a private journal, and not one to be sung by God’s people for the next 3,000 years. But that’s not how David thought. He wanted his faith to be embraced by the nation he led. He was a good king.
Earlier this week a friend asked me how long I had been preparing for this message. I told him about 12 or 13 years. And I mean that. As I’ve said, this psalm is very meaningful to me, and it has shaped my faith. But I haven’t been able to share it. I couldn’t even write some of the paragraphs this week without getting emotional. But this final verse compels me to preach. Church, we need a strong & mature faith. I’m crushed to see my friends walk away from Jesus. I know that some of you in this room are on the brink. You’ve drifted. You don’t know if God exists. You’re ready to walk away. The journey back to faith seems impossibly difficult. I want you to know that the journey back to God is not as hard as you think it is. It’s not a long, rigorous journey filled with penance and good deeds. It’s about as simple as a little kid crawling up into the lap of his loving mother. Will you rest in God this morning? Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore!
[1] At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” [2] And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them [3] and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. [4] Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.