I love the poetry of the Bible and especially the Psalms. And I thought it would be good for us to turn to the book of Psalms this afternoon to a precious little song, Psalm 131. So I would invite you to turn there with me. As we look this afternoon at the 12th of 15 songs of ascent. Psalm 131. This psalm, as many of them were, was written by David. He's a great king in Israel, the greatest of them. He was also called the sweet psalmist of Israel. And this psalm has been compared to a gem, and being compared to a gem, it's been called small but brilliant, just like a little diamond. It's also been compared to a pearl, in these words by Charles Spurgeon, how beautifully it would adorn the neck of patients. It is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn. It speaks of a young child, but it contains the experience of a man in Christ. Let's read Psalm 131, a song of a sense of David. Lord, my heart is not haughty, it's not proud, nor my eyes lofty, neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever. It's a rare and remarkable thing to see a great person, a great man or woman, walking in a lowly manner, walking in humility. But this is the case with King David, who is arguably one of the greatest men to ever live, a great king. And he was a great leader whose influence is still felt today, 3,000 years later, through his inspired writings and through the records of his life that we have in the word of God. So David was truly a great man. And yet we see that he walked in humility. It wasn't his habit to strut around in arrogance and in pride, showing off how great he was. He didn't walk around with lofty eyes as our text says. He didn't seek either to overstep the bounds that God had appointed for him. Nor, as we would say, did he take himself too seriously, though he was the king in Israel. But he spoke of himself as a child. and even here, remarkably, as a weaned child with his mother, verse 2. So what we have here in Psalm 131, we have a picture of a great man who, by God's grace, humbled himself as a little child, as we all are called to do. Now, David, in his meekness and humility, points us to Christ. He serves here as a type of Christ. This isn't a messianic psalm per se, but it does point us to Christ because it points us to David's greater son, the King of Kings, who being unimaginably great, as we saw not long ago in Philippians 2, humbled himself. and who also said that he was gentle and lowly of heart. So as we spend a few moments looking at this psalm, we wanna learn from David's example of humility and his childlike spirit, and then also join in his hope that he has, which he expresses at the end of the psalm, his hope in the Lord. So I want us first to consider the humility of David. the humility of King David. And the lesson here, just to put it simply, is that we ought not to be proud or presumptuous. So the first thing we see in this little Psalm is that David rejects the sin of pride. So look again, the first verse, Lord, my heart is not haughty. It is not proud. This is an amazing statement, knowing who David is. Such an amazing man, and yet he says, I do not have a proud heart. And he's not self-deceived. These are true words. His heart is not proud. And he also goes on to say, nor are my eyes lofty, lifted eyes. It's another expression of pride. You probably know this, I think it's more the case with young men in particular, but a lot of people walk around with lofty eyes. You just see them and you can tell that they seem to think very highly of themselves. And a lot of times, those who walk with lofty eyes really don't have a lot, humanly speaking, to brag about. But if we look at David, again, just humanly speaking, he had a lot that he could have bragged about. His power, his wisdom, his skill, not just as a poet and musician, but as a warrior and as a leader, his wealth, of course, and yet David was not proud. He didn't walk around with lofty eyes. And there's a lesson for us because far, far too often, we concern ourselves too much with being great. It's like the disciples of Jesus. You remember the disciples of Jesus. On more than one occasion, they're walking and they're talking and reasoning amongst themselves about who is gonna be the greatest or who is the greatest. And Jesus confronts them about this on more than one occasion and really the sum of his lesson there in teaching them about true greatness is that it's not what you would think and not what the world says. But true greatness is actually a matter of humility. Again, what we heard in Philippians 2. True greatness is about humbling yourself and serving others and being childlike. in a certain sense. You know what I mean though? That Jesus is even one time pulling a child in their midst and using that child as an example saying in Matthew 18 four, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Well God has helped this great man, King David, to humble himself as a little child. And God will help us all to humble ourselves as little children. And so we need God's help to do what David does here in rejecting the sin of pride. So have you rejected that sin of pride? This sin lurks in all of us, and this is part of working out our own salvation with fear and with trembling, that we reject the sin of pride even daily by God's grace and seeking His face in prayer that we might reject it, and not just the obvious manifestations of pride. We ought to reject those, but also the less obvious, because our eyes may not be lofty, we may not carry ourselves in a way that communicates that we think highly of ourselves, but it might be the case, as in this psalm, that our heart is haughty, that inwardly we're proud. We might How do I want to put this? We might, in our hearts, think ourselves better than others, as we read this morning. We might look around and maybe we're just considering ourselves. and not thinking about others. Pride is sneaky. It's often very subtle. And what I mean by that is it's sometimes difficult to pinpoint pride. Sometimes it's easy. We see pride, whether it's in ourselves or whether it's in others, and we say, there's an obvious manifestation of pride. But pride has many forms, and we have to be aware of this and know that pride can take the form of self-pity. Pride can take the form of a critical spirit. We're overly critical about others. We could be overly defensive. If somebody says something about something we're doing and they're a little bit critical, we could be overly defensive, and that's a form of pride. We can also I believe, be proud in our perfectionism. This is something that I struggle with in particular. And perfectionism is a self-centered pursuit of excellence. And sometimes it's hard to know the line because we ought to pursue excellence. But sometimes it's more about us than the glory of God. So pride has all of these sneaky manifestations that are hard to pinpoint. And we, by God's grace, need to be done with all of them and put them all to death. What's the common denominator in all of these and any other form of pride? The common denominator is self, a focus upon self, even a focus upon self that would want to elevate self above others and even at times elevate self above God. So pride is ultimately anti-God and anti-neighbor. So that pride is actually against the two great commandments that we're to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. Well, pride is anti-God and anti-neighbor. So it's no wonder that pride is identified in the Bible as one of those sins that God has a special hatred for. In the book of Proverbs, we find Proverbs 16.5, everyone proud or haughty in heart, that's the same language as in our text, is an abomination to the Lord. It's a very strong language. In Proverbs chapter six, a proud look or lofty eyes, again, the language of our text, that's listed as something that the Lord hates and even abominates. So God hates the sin of pride. And this is precisely what David rejects, saying, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. So I bring this before us that we might learn from David, from this little psalm, and how this great man rejected the sin of pride, that God would help us do the same daily in all of the many manifestations of pride, and as a church even, that we would reject pride, that you all would, and that our church back in Louisville, that we would reject pride, and that that would show in the care that we have for one another, the concern, the thinking about others, and not just about ourselves, and so on. Pride is a sin that if we're not killing it, using the language of John Owen, that it will be killing us. If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live, we need to be killing by the spirit of God the sin of pride in our lives. And I want to speak very briefly to anyone here who might not know the Lord. Again, I don't know you, but consider. Might it be, if you don't know the Lord, that what could be keeping you from coming to Christ is pride? From coming to the one who alone can save you is your pride, like Naaman. I won't read that story, but you know the story. He was too proud to do what God had told him, at least at first, to wash in the Jordan. So could pride be keeping somebody here? from humbling themselves before God and coming to Christ and saying, you are my only hope. There's nothing in me. that is good in your sight. I need the Lord Jesus. So we must reject the sin of pride. But further, I want us to see that David rejects not just pride, but its twin, we could say, the sin of presumption. This stems from pride. So he goes on to say, still in verse one, doesn't have a proud heart or lofty eyes, but he goes on to say, neither do I concern myself with great matters. nor with things too profound for me. He's rejecting the sin of presumption, and by that, presumption, that word literally means taking something to ourselves in advance. That's where you get the pre from, presumption. We take something to ourselves in advance. We take it before and without warrant. in advance. So for example, a child might presume, we might say even dare to take a cookie from the cookie platter before lunch. Mom and dad hasn't said you can have a cookie whenever you want. So it is presumptuous to go and grab the cookie before it's time to do that. They have taken something to themselves before the proper time or before there's any warrant to do so. So that is the idea of presumption. And from that basic idea, we get a definition like this, a dictionary definition, the taking upon oneself of more than is warranted by one's position, right, or ability. David rejects pride and he rejects this sin of presumption. One man says, by the first of these sins, pride, one undervalues other people. Say, they're beneath me. But by this second sin, presumption, one overestimates and overreaches oneself. So King David in rejecting presumption is saying, I do not concern myself with great matters. Or I do not walk about in great things. Now just think about this. Who is David? This is a pretty amazing thing for David to say, the king of Israel, God's chosen king, this great man, saying, I do not concern myself with matters too great for me. It's remarkable that he would say that. He's the man raised up on high, as we read in 2 Samuel. The anointed of the God of Jacob. He's the sweet psalmist of Israel. So by definition of his calling, David was involved in great things. So how do we make sense of this? David's saying, well, I don't concern myself with matters that are too great. I think the point is that David did not think of himself as a great man engaged in great things. He was, but that's not how he thought of himself. I'm a great man. I'm engaged in great things. He didn't think of that. He saw himself as the servant of the Lord, as the anointed of the Lord, doing what God had called him to do, in the position God had put him in. So he saw himself only concerning himself with the matters that were warranted by his calling as the King of Israel. A better translation of the text might be, I do not concern myself with matters too great for me. The ESV and other translations puts it that way. So that the great matters that David was concerned with or occupied with were not too great for him. Why? Because God had appointed him to be concerned with those great matters. So they weren't too great for him. He wasn't overstepping. He wasn't overreaching. He wasn't being presumptuous. He was doing what God had called him to do in the place and position God had called him to be. So he walked in humility before God and men and did not presume to take upon himself anything beyond his calling. Calvin puts it this way very well. He did not think himself at liberty to move one step unless called to it by God. Remember as a young man, David was accused by one of his brothers of pride, of presumption, a jealous brother, Eliab. But we read the story and we find David was not seeking great things for himself. David was not doing that at all, seeking his own glory and being presumptuous and putting himself forward and seeking to elevate himself to king. That's not what he was doing. Again, as the word of God says in 2 Samuel, verse 23, one, he was the man raised up by God on high. He didn't elevate himself. And again, is there not a valuable lesson for us in this as we look at the example of David? We have to beware of not just being proud, but also presumptuous of overestimating ourselves, thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to rather than soberly of overreaching ourselves in a variety of different ways. It is presumptuous when we make it our ambition to elevate ourselves above others. When our great desire is to be great and to climb the ladder and to step on others, we are being presumptuous. And that's one of the reasons I wanted us to sing the hymn that we sang. When we're thinking all about ourselves and being great, rather than making it our aim to be faithful, with whatever God's given us, to walk humbly before God, to do the next thing in faithfulness to God. If we're going beyond that and seeking to be great, chances are we are being presumptuous. I'm not saying we shouldn't be ambitious, that you shouldn't just, you're in a condition and you should never avail yourself of opportunities to maybe do something better, have a better job. That's not what I'm saying. But it's this proud spirit that wants to overreach and has this great ambition to be great. And I'm not picking on young men, but I'm a young man and I see this, I've seen it in my own life and seen it in others. But this is a particular sin for young men, wanting to be great. They have ambition, but it can be misdirected. All about self, all about the image and how others view them and of being great. And perhaps even famous. being whether it's a famous YouTuber or somebody that is followed by thousands and thousands, even millions of people. It's this pool, this strong pool upon young people especially to be great and make a name for themselves. And I've seen it amongst men who want to be in the ministry. And there was even a time in my own life where I had to battle this sin, where I saw the man up there preaching, and my response was not, oh, I want to be a servant of God and proclaim the word, but I want to be like that guy on the stage. And so we have quote-unquote famous pastors, celebrity pastors, and I see it all the time, that there are young men who are too enamored with this, and they want to be great, and that's why they want to go in the ministry, and that needs to be rejected. and God will help us, he will give us grace to do that. We need to be, as we sung, content to fill a little space if God be glorified. So some of you here, you might be discouraged. You say, I just have a little space that I fill. If that's the space God has given you to fill, then fill it to his glory. And if some of you have a bigger space to fill, then fill that to his glory. Let us be content to fill a little space if God be glorified. It goes on to say, I would not have the restless will that hurries to and fro, seeking for some great thing to do or secret thing to know. I would be treated as a child and guided where I go. That was the disposition of David's heart, as we see here in this song. But now, quickly, I want you to notice the second part here, still in verse one. So, I do not concern myself with matters too great, that's what we just looked at, but he goes on to say, nor with things too profound for me. Things too wonderful is what this means. Things too mysterious, things that are shut up for him. David says, I don't concern myself with those matters. Again, remarkable because God used David as a prophet to be a penman of the scriptures. But he says, I don't concern myself with things shut up, things that are too wonderful and mysterious for me. He wasn't reaching for hidden knowledge. But David contented himself with what God was pleased to reveal to man. He was content with that. He didn't delight in speculation about the law of God, but it was the law of God itself as God had revealed it that he was content with. He was content to leave the secret things with the Lord and to focus, as we have in Deuteronomy 29, 29, the things that belong to us and to our children forever are the things that are revealed, not the secret things. And so we're to learn that from this as well, that our focus ought to be on what God has revealed and we ought not to concern ourselves with things too mysterious that he has not revealed. And I think this is especially difficult when we go through adversity and we might be asking the why's and the what's and that's okay usually to a certain point, but God may not tell us all of the why's and the what's. We may not be able to see exactly what God is doing, though we can preach to ourselves and say, I know it's good, God has told me he's working all things for my good. I know he wants to make me more patient, he wants to humble me, he wants to make me more like Jesus, but we can't always see behind the veil, so to speak, and to see the secret things that we might long to see. So in this, we should follow the example of David and submit ourselves to the revealed will of God. And in all of his providential dealings with us, not trying to look behind those dealings for the secret things that God in his wisdom has shut up, closed off from us. So in David's humility here, we see that he rejects the sin of pride and presumption. That's the first point. And the second and the final thing that I want us to look at is the childlike spirit of David. So we've seen his pride, but let's look at his childlike spirit here in this Psalm. And the lesson for us here is to be content and confident in the Lord. And those two things go together. Be content and confident in the Lord." So the first lesson was to reject pride and presumption and now be content and confident in the Lord. David emphatically declares that he has subdued himself. Look at verse 2. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. His soul was restless. His soul was irritated, but he has now composed himself. He has silenced himself. And there's a connection with the first point and this point. He is inwardly at rest. because he has rejected the sin of pride and presumption. Because pride and presumption, trying to make a name for ourselves and so on, these things make us restless. That's why so many people in the world are restless, seeking for something great, and they're not seeking the Lord. They're restless. So when he has rejected pride and presumption, in doing that, he's calmed and quieted himself. So it's another sign of his humility that he speaks of this calming of himself, this subduing of himself. And it's amazing and quite a humble thing that this mighty man compares himself not to a tamed stallion. If we were writing this poetry and saying, you know, God, you have calmed me, especially if we are a man like David, a mighty man of valor. I have calmed myself like a tame stallion that's now domesticated." He doesn't say that. He says, I'm like a little child with its mother. So it's a very lowly picture. I'm like a little child with his mommy, says David. Like a weaned child upon his mother, in his mother's arms, calmly and quietly resting. David, by the Holy Spirit, wants us to call to mind a picture here, and I would say even the sound. So there's a picture that he's trying to paint. It's of a hungry infant, hungry for its mother's milk. You all probably all know what this is like. The child is restless, irritated, crying, all it can think about, it wants milk. And so he's drawing an analogy here between the child then that no longer, as one man says, frets for what it used to find indispensable. So no longer is it like that child fretting for milk, but it's now calm and quieted. Now what has David weaned himself, so to speak, off of? What was once indispensable to David that he has now weaned himself from and he doesn't fret over? And I would say one way we could answer that is himself. He's weaned from self and all of these desires for greatness and to elevate himself. He's weaned from self-importance and fretting about his condition, whether or not he's watching sheep or whether or not he's a king or whatever. He's not preoccupied with all of these things. In a word, as a child is weaned from his mother's milk, David has been weaned from himself. Weaned from self to rest in God, and that is the key here. He's resting in God with a quiet soul, a calm soul, like a weaned child is my soul within me. So it's not just a picture of tranquility, but what we have here is a picture of trust in God. He's calm because he's trusting in God. It's a quiet submission to the will of God. Spurgeon says that if pride is gone, submission will be sure to follow. I don't have to tell you that we're born proud, and we are born rebellious and self-centered. is on the throne by nature and self by God's grace and power needs to be dethroned. And God needs to be upon the throne of our hearts, so to speak. So we all need God to do this so that we might submit to God patiently and with humility to his will, whatever he has ordained, satisfied and confident in God. even if he calls us to just a little bit of space. So we have David's humility and his childlike spirit here in this psalm. Verses one and two. He's rejected pride, he has rejected presumption, and he's calmed and quieted his soul. He's content, he's resting in God, confident in God. And this is simple trust. It's simple trust. The title of this message I've given is Simple Trust and Solid Hope. Because he now rises from this, so this simple trust produces a solid hope in David. And I want you to notice at the end here how what was a private psalm, so to speak, even though it was always given to God's people, he now is speaking collectively, oh Israel, So he was speaking about himself, but now, O Israel, he's calling them with him to hope in God. So he's calling us today, the people of God, to hope in God with him. So it ends on this corporate note. He says, O Israel, hope in God from this time forth and forever. And look up to the end of the preceding Psalm, so Psalm 130. Very similar, but there he adds some reasons why we ought to hope in the Lord. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, for because with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is abundant redemption. He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. So there we see the grounds of hope. So David's hope, David's hope of mercy, that God would be merciful to him. David's hope of redemption, that he would be set free from his bondage. David's hope of salvation was in the Lord alone. He looked to the Lord. who is merciful and gracious. And you know, David knew this by experience. Psalm 51, after his great sin, his horrible sin, he's crying out to God, have mercy on me, have mercy. He looks to him and hopes in God for his mercy and his salvation. And he hopes in God alone. Now, David's hope was a hope that looked forward to the coming of Christ. So that David had this great hope and yet he didn't see things as clearly as we have the privilege of seeing. So now we don't only look, David looked forward to Christ's coming and to even beyond that, but we look back to how God has been faithful to sin Christ. And so we, our hope does look backward and focuses on the one that this Psalm ultimately points us to. And we remember that there is one who paid a mighty price to set us free from our bondage, that we might be forgiven, that we might have life with God forever and peace with God. So we look back, but we also have the great privilege of looking forward. So our hope looks backward to Christ and his finished work upon the cross. And it looks forward to the day when he will return in great power and glory, and we shall be raised, and our souls perfected in holiness will be joined to our resurrected bodies, the completion of our salvation. So this is our hope. So when we're reading the Psalms, We actually have to go beyond what the psalmist is and their experience because we have the full revelation of God given to us because we have the New Testament. And so you have to read this and see our great hope as Christians, our hope that is in Christ alone. So again, I would end on this note of reminding you of our great hope. that we have hope beyond this life because we have a great savior and he has accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished for our salvation. And God by his spirit has applied it and is applying that salvation until it is complete. Is this your hope? Is there someone here who doesn't have hope? Cry out to God. He loves to hear when people humble themselves and cry out to him for salvation, and then you will have a hope, a solid hope beyond this life. So our hope is solid. It's built, again, on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. So I wanna leave us with that note. Hope in the Lord. Hope in Christ. Hope in God. hope in the future life when all is made right and we shall be with the Lord forever, amen. Our God, we thank you for this precious little psalm which you have given to us to meditate upon, to be challenged and to be encouraged. Help us all like David to reject the sin of pride which so easily rises up in our hearts. Help us to reject presumption and be content with our calling in life. And we pray, Lord, especially as brothers and sisters, as we walk together, that we would do so humbly in love toward one another, thinking of one another, considering each other better. And we ask, O God, that we would be like David, that we would not be anxious, but that our souls would be quieted, and that we truly would trust in you through all things, all of the ups and downs of life, and that we would hope in you from this time forth, even forever. Amen.