The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Spurgeon called Psalm 131 a short ladder leading to a great height. Its message is simple but difficult, easy to read but hard to put into practice.

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

In three short verses, David acknowledges his pride, his arrogance, and his ambition and surrenders his will to the Lord, putting his trust in God and God alone. Join Dr. Boice as he looks at David's comparison of his trust and contentment in the Lord to that of a child at rest in his mother's arms.

Dr. James Boice: This is a short little psalm, and it's a psalm in which David describes himself as a weaned child. It only has nine lines; it's in three verses. It's one of the easiest of all the psalms to read, but its lesson is one of the hardest to learn. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said of this psalm, it's a short ladder, but he added it rises to a great height.

Now, the heading of the psalm tells us it's by David. There are four of David's psalms among these Psalms of Ascent that we're studying: Psalm 122, 124, 131, 133. This is the third of the four. Many of the modern scholars, including even evangelical scholars, don't want to acknowledge David as the author of the psalm because they think these psalms were written later by those who were providing material for the pilgrims who were going up to Jerusalem following the return from Babylon and the exile; that was considerably after David's period.

But yet, of all the psalms in this collection, there's no psalm that fits better what we know of the character of David, either in its content or its tone. Because David really was, or at least had become, a very humble man. The same writer who described himself as a sheep under the care of the good shepherd in the 23rd Psalm, which we all know very well, here describes himself as a contented child in its mother's arms. That sounds very much like David.

Franz Delitzsch is one of the great old commentators on the Psalms. He doesn't think that David wrote it, but he recognizes that it's so much like David he explains the naturalness of the psalm by saying it must be a later writer trying to write something to commemorate something that had happened in David's life. And what he thinks it was is this: you recall that in 2nd Samuel 6, David brings the ark of the covenant up to the city of Jerusalem because he wants to make it the religious as well as the political capital of the nation.

And he is so overjoyed that that is finally happening that he dances before the ark in the presence of all the people, clothed only in one of the linen ephods of the priest, not in his regal kingly garments. His wife Michal is looking on, and she despises him for it. She thinks he's debasing himself acting below his kingly dignity. And David replies to her by saying, "I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes."

Delitzsch thinks that this little psalm was written to take note of that earlier event. David wasn't a person to stand upon his own honor. On the contrary, he was willing to humble himself, and he did humble himself because he knew that he was nothing over against the greatness of Almighty God whom he desired above all things to serve.

Now, if that's true, if it actually is by David, which is what I think—I think you have to take these titles at face value—then you have to ask the question: why is it here among these Psalms of Ascent, especially since it doesn't say anything about Jerusalem and there's nothing in it that seems to indicate that those who would sing this are on a pilgrimage? Well, there are a couple answers.

One is that it has an obvious connection to the psalm that went before. The previous psalm is about salvation. It talks about sin and forgiveness and fellowship and then witnessing to those things. This psalm is about trust, humble trust in God. And so it's what should follow upon that. If God has acted toward us in Christ to provide for our salvation, the natural response is that we should believe him and trust what he has done. So there's a natural sequence there in the mood and the tone and the content of the psalms.

There's also a connection in their style and their message. I wonder if you noticed how an unusual poetic form in Psalm 130 is repeated in Psalm 131. You've got that little repetition of a line there in verse 6 of the previous psalm. It reads, "My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning." And then in this psalm in verse 2, you have something just like that: "I have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me." So the two really go together, not only in the content but they also go together in the style.

Now, this is a very personal psalm. It's really a testimony, David's testimony as I said earlier. And one part of it is David's acknowledgment of what he was like before God changed him. That's what verse 1 is all about. He mentions a number of things that must have in some way have been characteristic of his life at one time. We don't think of David this way, but this is his own testimony. He says that God has weaned him away from pride and arrogance and ambition.

Pride is the clearest one of all. "My heart is not proud," he says. O Lord, it must have been, but now it's not because you have taught me to be different. So we ask the question: was David inclined to pride? We don't have much in the writing of the Old Testament about David that would lead us to think that he was prideful, and so he at least learned to master it at a young age. But probably he was inclined to that somewhat, at least as a young man.

And there is an incident in the account of David's early life that would maybe throw some light upon it. It has to do with when Goliath was taunting the armies of Israel. David's brothers had been sent off to be part of the army. And then David's father, Jesse, sent David to go and bring some food and other things to his brothers who were at the front. And he came up, he realized that Goliath was taunting the army, and he began to say, "Why is this Philistine able to do this? Why doesn't somebody go out and defeat him?"

And he was ready to do it. And his brother, his oldest brother, Eliab, didn't like what David was saying, he didn't like the fact that he was there, and he reproved him this way. He said, "Why did you come down here, and with whom did you leave those few little sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is. You came down here only to watch the battle."

Now, that wasn't true, of course. That isn't why David had come. David was there because his father had sent him. It was probably also envy on his brother's part because Eliab was afraid of Goliath and obviously David was not. But there just may be a little touch of truth in it. Family members do know our weaknesses. They're very apt and able to bring them out. And so when an Eliab says, "I know how conceited you are," it just may be that a man of David's extraordinary ability, certainly which was coming through at an early age, had somewhat within the family said things or done things that would indicate a measure of pride.

At any rate, if that's the case, David certainly had overcome it. He had not been defeated by pride, but actually had learned humility. Now, that's something we have to do as well. The Bible has an awful lot to say about humility. Just a little bit after this in the 138th Psalm, you read, "The Lord is on high, he looks down upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar." It means God regards the humble, but he sets himself against those who are filled with pride.

You go to Proverbs and you read, "He mocks proud mockers but gives grace to the humble." And then that's picked up in the New Testament. James quotes it in the 4th chapter. This is what the scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." And Peter does it in 1st Peter 5: "All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble."

And later on in James, James says the same thing all over again: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." Why do they do it? Because they are well aware that we carry that strong measure of pride around within ourselves. James realized you had to change. You say, where did he learn it? Well, he learned you had to change from his association with the apostles and from his knowledge of the things that Jesus said.

Jesus said on one occasion, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you shall have grace for your souls." I remember some years ago when the American film star John Wayne had just come out of the hospital after his first treatment for cancer. And I saw a little news clip on the television where he emerged saying in a hopeful way, "I have licked the big C."

Well, he meant cancer. He hadn't, of course; he died from cancer later. But if I could use that phrase, let me say in applying it to us, we need to lick the big P. The big P is pride, and it's far more harmful and devastating, even deadly, than cancer. It'll take people to hell if they won't humble themselves and receive Jesus Christ as Savior. It will destroy families, it will destroy relationships and churches too.

How do you do it? Well, you do it by getting close to Jesus. You do it by taking up his cross and following him, learning humility from him. The closer we are to Jesus Christ, the less pride we'll have because we'll be like him. Now, the second thing that David said he had learned to overcome is arrogance, and that's what he's talking about in that next line when he says, "My eyes are not haughty."

Arrogance is an expression of pride; it's not the same thing. The proud are arrogant often, but arrogance is pride over against other people where we express ourselves at their cost and put them down. This word "haughty" means high, of course, and it refers to the way in which somebody exalts himself so that his eyes are up here and he's looking down on other people and scorning them.

It's quite the opposite of what David says in another one of the psalms, Psalm 121, where he says, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence my help comes." You see, in that image, he's down here glancing upward, but in the image of this psalm, the person is up here glancing down. And he's saying that's what has to be overcome. Now, there's nothing in David's life that would indicate he ever acted that way, at least nothing in the Old Testament that I can find.

But if at one time he had a measure of pride, there must have been at least the temptation to arrogance there as well. And at any rate, he had overcome it. And he did it early on in his life. The important thing is that we should do it too. We should not be arrogant. One of the most distasteful things is the arrogance of people in our society today. We almost cultivate it in our day. People have become nasty and mean and arrogant and insulting and abusive and selfish, all in their relationships with other people.

Perhaps no culture in all of history has been more explicitly arrogant than our own. And we who are Christians have to learn to set ourselves against that and behave differently. 1st Peter said, "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may lift you up in due time." And then here's this third thing, also in verse 1: it has to do with ambition. "I don't concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me."

We have to be careful here because there's a right kind of ambition, that is aspiration to do the best you possibly can and bring the largest measure of glory to God that you possibly can. But it's very easy for that kind of proper ambition to pass over into another kind in which we're actually doing what we're doing to exalt ourselves or to build our own little kingdoms rather than being thankful that we've been called to be a co-worker with Jesus Christ in building the kingdom of God.

In the last study when I was looking at Psalm 130, I disagreed with Eugene Peterson's handling of that. All along I've thought that he's done well, and I have commended that particular study of the Psalms of Ascent, but I disagreed with him there because I thought that Psalm 130 is not about the things that Peterson was talking about—suffering and hope and so on—it really has to do with sin and salvation; it's a salvation psalm.

But here, I've got to say that what Peterson says is right on target because when he talks about ambition, he says here that it's aspiration gone crazy. Aspiration is right—aspiring to do well—but aspiration gone crazy becomes this kind of destructive ambition. Let me read you what he says. Peterson writes, "It's difficult to recognize unruly ambition as a sin because it has a kind of superficial relationship to the virtue of aspiration. Impatience with mediocrity, a disposition and dissatisfaction with all things created until we're at home with the Creator, hopeful striving for the best that God has for us—the kind of thing Paul expressed when he said, 'I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.'

But if we take the energies that make for aspiration and remove God from the picture, replacing him with our own crudely sketched self-portrait, we end up with arrogance. Robert Browning's fine line on aspiration, 'A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?' has been distorted to reach for the skies and grab everything that isn't nailed down. Ambition is aspiration gone crazy. Aspiration is the channeled creative energy that moves us to grow in Christ, shaping goals in the Holy Spirit. Ambition takes these same energies for growth and development and uses them to make something tawdry and cheap, knocking together a Tower of Babel when we should be vacationing in Eden."

Well, I think that's well said. And if we're to be the kind of Christians we should be in this area, we have to learn to stand against the way our culture handles ambition, knowing that character is more important than career, that godliness is more important than success, and that helping others is more important than simply making money.

Well, there's one other thing we ought to see about this verse and the way David handles it here because what he is talking about when he talks about mighty deeds and things too wonderful for him is not making money or being successful as the king; he certainly had a lot of that anyway. It's actually peering into the hidden purposes of God. That's what these things too wonderful and too high for him are all about. He's saying that when I think about the future and when I regard what God is trying to do in my life, I realize that I can't see that and I don't know it, and so I really just have to trust God.

Here's a verse every one of us should know. It's Deuteronomy 29:29, and it reads like this: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may follow all the words of this law." That verse distinguishes between things that are in the eternal counsels of God that we have no way of knowing and will never know until they begin to unfold—and perhaps in heaven when we look back and see them—distinguishes between that and the words that are given to us in the Bible. It says that's what we're given, that's what we need to know, and for the other things, we need to trust God.

You know the name of Anselm? Anselm was the British monk who lived in the 11th century. He was a great man and a deep theologian. He wrote along these lines something that goes like this in translation: "I do not seek, O Lord, to penetrate thy depths. I by no means think my intellect is equal to them. But I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand." Those words, believing that you might understand, in Latin are *fides quaerens intellectum*, and they were a motto of Anselm's life. They're the opposite of aspiration gone crazy, and they are the expression of the ambition of a Christian in his right mind.

Now we go to verse 2. Having spoken of the negatives that at some point and in some way characterized his past life, David now begins to talk about the positive, saying that he had learned to trust God completely like a weaned child that had learned to trust his or her mother. There aren't very many references in the Bible to God as a mother, but there are a few.

The only ones I know aside from this are in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah wrote in one place in the 49th chapter, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she's born? Though she may forget, I will not forget you." There's a comparison there. A few chapters later, Isaiah writes, "As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you."

Now, in those verses from Isaiah, the emphasis is all upon the mother and the comparison between the mother and God. Here, the emphasis is upon the child because David is comparing himself to the child and he's saying that he's just like a weaned child with its mother. Now, the important word there is the word weaned. And that's one reason why I've been talking about the change that David is testifying to here, the change that has come into his life.

When David says that his soul is like a weaned child, he's not saying that he has always been content with God and satisfied with whatever God has done to him. He's saying that that is something he had to learn, just as a child has to learn to do without that close dependence upon the mother for its nourishment. He's reflecting on the weaning process. Weaning is usually accompanied by resistance on the part of the child, sometimes with tears or angry and accusing glances, sometimes with little temper tantrums.

But the child has to be weaned; it's good for the child. And David is saying that that had been his experience. As he had lived with God and God had weaned him, he had come to the point where he had learned, can I put it this way, not to come to God for what he can get from God, but rather to trust God regardless of what God might do with his life.

And so that's the question of the psalm. It goes like this: have you learned that? Have you learned to trust God for who he is in himself and for what he's doing with you, not necessarily knowing where your life is going or finding a full meaning of everything that happens? God's gracious sometimes, he explains things by showing us how they fall out and so on, but we don't have much of a way of knowing what's happening or what's coming, but we need to learn that, you see. And the way we need to learn it is by turning away from those natural instincts that we have toward pride and arrogance and ambition and instead rather rest upon the grace and the knowledge of our God.

Well, there are few psalms in the Psalter that are more personal or more intimate than this one. And yet, when David comes to the end, he wants to make clear that what he's experienced is not something for himself alone, but rather it's something that he wants to share with all the people, with all Israel. What he wants them to do is also trust God. "O Israel," he says, "put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore."

Why does he tell them to do that? Because he knows he has discovered, he has learned it for himself, that only God is worthy of our absolute hope. Everything else is going to disappoint us, but not God. And so he says, learn to trust God. To learn that lesson is to mature. To learn that lesson is to grow up spiritually. It's disappointing that so many Christians are still infants. Let's pray.

Our Father, we're thankful that we had time to study this psalm together and for the way it speaks personally out of the life experience of David to our own hearts across these many centuries. We read the psalm and we understand that we ourselves are prone to the very vices about which David speaks. But you yourself are the one who is able to work in our lives to change us, that those old vices might be laid aside and we might come to trust you deeply, personally, for whatever comes into our lives. For Jesus' sake, amen.