Psalm 131 | Subversive Spirituality

Listen to this week’s sermon, Subversive Spirituality preached by RUF Campus Minister, Pastor Hardy Reynolds from Psalm 131.

Transcript

Welcome And Scripture Reading<br>

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Gina Fickett 0:23

Please stand and join me in the prayer of illumination. Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see the glory of the Father and the love of the Son through the reading and preaching of your word. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. Today's scripture reading is Psalm 131. 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. But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. This is God's word.

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 1:18

Thanks be to God.

Gina Fickett 1:19

Please be seated.

The Algorithm’s Version Of Good Life<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 1:22

Well, good morning, New City. My name is Hardy. I am the campus minister with a ministry called Reformed University Fellowship out at University of Central Florida. Yeah, and so while I'm not a pastor on staff at New City, I have the privilege of being uh one of the kingdom partners with New City, ministering and serving college students out at campus at UCF. Um, one of the questions that I've found increasingly important to ask the students that I meet with is what is the good life according to your YouTube feed? Or fill in the blank with whatever social media they find themselves on Instagram, uh, TikTok, whatever it might be. But the question is essentially, what's the good life according to your algorithm? And as I listen to the answers so often, there are a number of good life trajectories being loudly proclaimed over students. And while the destinations might be different, the way to get there is often the same through self-fulfillment, self-seeking, self-optimizing behaviors, that if they would just submit to this practice, this routine, that they would be able to have the good life. Uh it's been known now as the trend of maxing from the cautiously helpful to the absolutely absurd. There is looks maxing, there's money maxing, there's calendar maxing, there is gym maxing, there is fill-in-the-blank maxing that you can submit yourself to. And while the destinations are different, they all hold out. If you would just submit to this routine, this uh this uh development process, you can be free from a life of insignificance, of being unimpressive, a life of mediocrity. But the definition of maxing is to max out, to constantly be going, to constantly giving all of your effort. And so this is an exhausting path. And so whether or not you're in college, I think we all can fall susceptible to believing that if I just maximize my calendar, if I just maximize my time, if I just maximize my income streams and hit this amount in my portfolio, then I will be free. But it's exhausting. And the hope of our passage that Psalm 131 holds out to us is there's good news available, relieving, calming news, that the good life is actually found not in ascending to greatness, but in going low and embracing contentment, the calm and quiet life.

The Good Life Goes Low<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 4:15

And this good life is actually filled with hope. And so that's gonna be our three points for this morning. We're gonna see this through the good life goes low, the good life embraces contentment or the calm and quiet life, and the good life is full of hope. So you see in the passage we just read, it has a title there. It says, A song of ascents of David. Now, the song of ascent is given to 15 Psalms in the Psalter, Psalms 120 to 134, and many commentators will note that these are the psalms that the people of God likely sang as they gathered and went up to Jerusalem for any of the three major feasts in prep in preparation to worship and celebrate God. So this song of a sense kind of has a oxymoronic lesson. David is in saying, in one sense, people of God, as you go up, have you gone low? Have you, in other words, humbled yourself? The good life doesn't have humility as this destination purely for the spiritual elite or those that can maybe one day attain it through effort. The path of humility is Christianity 101. It is the path that all of us are called to walk. All of us are called to go the low road. This is for everyone. Jesus says it in this way in Matthew 18. Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Again, this is the not only the starting point, it is the path we walk, it is the destination. All of the Christian life is to be a life of humility. Saint Augustine, in uh teaching and instructing a student, he said, This I wish you to prepare yourself, no other way of seizing and holding the truth than that which has been prepared by God. In that way, the first part is humility, the second, humility, the third, humility. So it leads us to ask an important question, then how? How then do we go low? How do we go the humble path? Well, I think verse one gives us a couple of hints as to the ways in which we need to go low in humility. The first is the audience of David's prayer. David is addressing his prayer to the Lord. It's the great I am, Yahweh, the self-existing one, the holy one. David knows whose he is. He knows who he is addressing, and therefore, in light of who he's addressing, in light of whose he is, he knows who he is. He knows the greatness of the one he's addressing, and therefore, his only option is to go low in humility before the Lord. And David is addressing the Lord in private prayer, but the Lord has chosen to take David's prayer and actually make it public, to teach the people of God what it is to go low. This is by far and away not David being self-congratulatory in his humility, or by any means saying that he is sinless. That would be actually the height of pride to claim that he is without sin. Jesus told the Pharisees, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. So, in other words, David knows what we must know: that we have to admit that we're sick in order to have any share in relationship with God. We must go low. Isaiah the prophet gives just a brutally vivid image of the cost of the condition of pride. Isaiah 1, 6 shows this man walking around with wounds from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, unbandaged, bleeding, ugly, and it's as if he's just whistling on his way to work, saying, nothing's wrong, all is well. It's like, have you seen yourself? And that is the condition that pride leaves us in. It blinds us to the true uh heart, our true hearts and our true selves. And so David has known to go low is to know who he is, who he's coming before, and in light of that, who he is. To reiterate the danger of pride, uh Augustine, in talking about the first sin, puts it this way: there would have been no evil act unless there had first been an evil will. And what could have been the beginning of their evil will except pride? For pride is the beginning of all sin. Theologian Herman Bavink says it maybe more succinctly, that the relational rupture that's caused in a heart of pride is a turning away from God, yes, but also a turning to self. It is a life lived for self. In other words, we we all have our own version of the theme song of the arrogant striker for the Richmond Greyhounds. Jamie Tart, do, do, do, do, do, do, Jamie, tart. Yeah, some of y'all know that. We all have our own version that the life is lived out of self, the prideful life. And so we must learn to go low, is what David is saying. He's saying, I've done that, I've gone low before the Lord. And the way he phrases it is he

Fighting Pride With Confession And Service<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 10:06

references that his heart is not lifted up. Heart in the biblical sense is not just emotions or mood. He's not saying that he is low emotionally before the Lord. He is saying in the heart, the command center, the control center of all of his life, he is taking that into the place of humility before the Lord. He is not lifted up, he is not prideful. He embodies this lesson of commentator John Stott has said, at every age and stage of our Christian development, and in every sphere of Christian discipleship, pride is our greatest enemy, and humility is our greatest friend. So, therefore, to go low, to humble ourselves means that we must fight pride. We must befriend humility. We must live out the lesson of Proverbs 4, 23 that says, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. To go low, to go humble is to refuse to have a high opinion of yourself. To go low is to refuse to think of yourself as more than you are or greater than others. David, in essence, is saying that he has given up applying for the job of king of his life. He is no longer looking for that role. He is saying, You are God, I am not. You are Lord, I am not. I have taken my heart low before you. I have no notes, I have no critiques on how you are running my life. That's different than laments. He is saying, You are God, I am not, and I am low and humble before you. And because David has a proper heart posture before God here, his perspective is clear. The way that he views others and circumstances is clear. We see this in the second half of the verse. My eyes are not raised too high. Do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. That phrase, my eyes are not raised too high, it's it's likely a paraphrase or referring to what Proverbs would say is one of the things that the Lord hates, which is haughty eyes, a prideful looking down upon others, contempt for other words for others. And so David, he's saying, I don't have contempt for others. And it's important to remember the context of this psalm. In praying it, in the Song of Ascents, David is addressing the people of God as they go up, as they prepare for worship. Yes, they need to have a proper posture before God in humility and a proper view and perspective of others. Not being contemptuous, not being prideful, not thinking of themselves as greater or above others. Pride must be fought not only in our relationship with God, but also in our relationship to others. So then how? How do we go low? How do we follow David in these things? Well, I think it's at least two things. First, confession, admission of who God is, of who you are before him. He's God. I'm not. I'm a sinner in need of his grace. All my striving for the good life, all my self-efforts actually lead to emptiness. I must be filled by his gracious gift. It's the only way that I'm going to receive the good life. Second, if our pride clouds our perspective of others, we also need to take the posture not only of a mission and confession to God, but of service, of moving towards others, counting others in um better, counting others' needs as the great as our own, and moving towards them. Imagine that for a moment, New City, if that's what our church was characterized by. A quickness to confession, a quickness to admission of who God is, a quickness to serve one another. Imagine what marriages would look like, parenting might look like, co-working roommate spaces, what that might look like if you're not fighting over who has slacked on the job, but you're actually fighting to see who can serve more. Not fighting over who has failed to repent or to apologize most fully, but who can who can beat the other to repentance more quickly? Imagine if that is what we fight over. As one writer said, we fight for the tau. We go low, we go where Jesus has gone for us, and we follow him there to that place of service. This is what it means to go low. And I think we think about humility and we're like, yes, of course, that's that's Christianity 101. It should be easy. But if you think about the areas of your life that you're called to humility, it's not just a broad, downhill, open gravity just has the inertia of taking you down the path of humility. No, the path of humility often looks like a highway with immediate brake lights, tire shrapnel flying everywhere. It's like if I go that way, I'm gonna be exposed. I'm gonna be uh, you know, exposed to danger, I'm gonna be exposed to my character. That is dangerous. I am not going that path. That often is the experience of how we view the path of humility. Go low anyway. Humble yourselves. In his book, Pastoral Confessions, uh, author Goggins puts it this way: the fear of our heart is built on sin's great lie, that the place of healing is the place of harm, that the chalice of confession is filled with poison, that the medicine God has provided cannot be trusted. We believe confession, repentance, humility, service is not the place where we'll experience the good life, but actually death. And like all good lies, it is a bit of truth to it. It will entail death. But this is a necessary death. It's how we experience the life of Christ. John Webster, theologian, late theologian, put it this way: the regenerative life in Christ is not simply a received and completed condition, but it's a summons to actively to reiterate the death of the old nature and to perform the new, to die and to rise again, not only once for all, but also continually. This is a practice of going low over and over and over again. And until we do that, until we humble ourselves and go low before the Lord and others, we won't be able to experience what's on offer in verse two, the calm and quiet life, the contented life.

Calming And Quieting A Noisy Soul<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 17:14

And that's what David speaks to the good life, embracing contentment. He says, I've calmed and quieted my soul. And I take comfort knowing the author of the psalm. We don't know exactly when David wrote it, but it's helpful and encouraging because we know from his life that his soul was not always calm and quiet, that he was actually full of fear, he often had doubts, he was often full of lust, uncertainty. And yet he says, I have calmed and I've quieted my soul. This is something he has learned to do. Paul says it in a similar way in Philippians when he says, I've learned. In whatever situation I am to be content, I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him that strengthens me. David, he's he's learned and he's embraced this lesson of contentment, not because of changed circumstances or things are just going well for him in this particular season of life. I think we can we can know that. But he's learned to be able to turn down the volume of the noise of his soul. There are seasons where he was restless, that his soul was proclaiming loud messages over him, and he's saying, I've actually learned to turn down the volume on all those messages to the point where he gives the image, I can be calm with myself. Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. It's this picture of the unweaned child, the one that is still breastfeeding when it's in its mother's presence, it's got one thing on its mind. What can I get from your presence? Milk. I'm hungry. I want it now. What David is saying is he's learned to actually turn down the volume on what his soul tells him he wants to be able to receive what he most needs. David has learned this lesson. Like any mother who's gone through that weaning process knows it's not because of a lack of love for the child that she withholds the milk. It's actually so that the child can grow and mature and to receive what is better, to ultimately grow up into maturity. And so David is saying he's learned to control the messages and the noise of his soul to the point where he can actually say no to the messages. And any of us in here that have had good mothers know that good mothers know how to say no to their children. One of my professors when I was in seminary said, every child is basically asking two questions constantly. And both of these questions must be answered with an emphatic yes. First question, do you love me? Yes. I love you, I delight in you, I see you, I enjoy you. Yes, I love you. Second question, will you say no to me? Yes, I will say no to you. You cannot have ice cream for breakfast. You cannot stay up till 3 a.m. You must go to sleep. I will say no to you because I know what is best for you. There's even pictures in in nature of this. I've heard that that birds, you know, when they're trying to teach their uh their young to fly, if they're slow or if if they're not ready, they'll kind of start flapping their wings and taking up more space in the nest, trying to move them to the edge. And even if they don't take off then, they'll start dismantling the nest. They'll just start taking it out from under them. Why? Because they know what's best is if their bird flies. And what David is saying he's learned is that he has been able to say no to the message of his soul, been able to calm and quiet it. The question is, how? Well, he's able to offer himself what he has first received. He has been calmed, he has been quieted by the Lord, and therefore he can offer it to his own soul. Mr. Rogers' famous television personality was giving a commencement speech, and in addressing the graduates as to how they had gotten to this place, he said, He said, This in fact, from the time you were very little, you've had people who have smiled you into smiling. People who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving. And this is what David has learned that he can calm and quiet. Soul, because he has found the source of calm and quiet in the presence of the Lord. That that is what he needs. That he is able to draw from the presence of God. It's not a change of circumstances that his soul most needs, it's the presence of the Lord. And if he has that, he can be calm and quiet. We're in a stage of parenting where bedtime has been constantly extended through every excuse that my four-year-old can think of. It's always one more cuddle, one more back scratch, one more story. And we have this story box that can tell different stories or actually has the ability to like record our voice. And, you know, we thought maybe we could just like record our voice telling stories and like just set it and leave. But inevitably, that might work for a night, but inevitably our daughter is gonna say, but the Tony box doesn't hold me. It doesn't have presence with me. And that's essentially what David has learned is what he most needs is presence of the Lord. This has brought his soul peace. It's said in a beautiful way in Isaiah, can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even if these may forget, yet I will not forget you, says the Lord. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, meaning it is impossible for the Lord to forget his children. It is impossible for he has engraven you on his hands, meaning anything he does, he does with you and your good in mind. He cannot forsake you, he cannot forget you. Psalm 27, 10 says, For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. The Lord has drawn his people into the presence. And David has learned this, and he is so excited that he has to extend it to the people of God. And so before we turn to that final point, what does that mean then for us? How do we calm and quiet our soul? We gotta calm down. Now, that's a risky application in that I've never had success telling my wife, my kids, my students to calm down. But typically, if and when I'm saying that, it's because whatever they're concerned with, I'm not as concerned about. And so it's like, chill. That is not what David is doing to his own soul, that is not what God does to our concerns. When David is saying that we're called to calm and quiet our soul, is to remember whose presence we're in,

Hope That Starts Now And Lasts<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 24:52

not to forget our circumstances, but remember who is in those circumstances with us. So we can calm down, we can breathe, we can rest, we can be at ease. And because David has experienced this peaceful presence of God, that he's so near and he's so faithful to bring that calm, to bring that peace, he essentially, in the third verse, is like, people of God, you'll have to get in on this. Come and taste this. He says, Oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth, forevermore. Hope in the biblical sense is not David saying, like, hey, people of God, just wish and hope that the future will be better than the present. No, hope in the biblical sense is a joyful anticipation of God's sure and certain promises. That's what hope is in Scripture. And so, David, after addressing the Lord in prayer, after addressing his own heart, he's saying, This hope is on offer to you, people of God. From this time forth, today, and forever. You can experience this today. And so, what that means for us, church, is that if you're coming in this morning with a loud and noisy soul, this is on offer for you today. For you to be able to receive, for you to be able to receive the peaceful presence of God if you take the path of going low, humility. There's a way in which our souls can actually turn this into just something else we need to do. A weird soul maxing, if you will, of how, how, okay, I just need to be more humble, I just need to be more quiet, be more calm, and then I'll have hope. Is that what David's getting at? I don't think so. David knows the sure and certain hope of God is rooted in the character of God and what he's done and what he promises to do. And so our hearts need to practice that hope, to work it in to our very places that we doubt in the today of does he have my best interest or heart? Will he care for me here? We need to remember his character, his faithfulness. This is the the call that David is holding out saying, This is on offer for you, people of God. I was reminded of the importance of hope this past week in my second minivan viewing of Finding Nemo. I was my first minivan viewing of finding Nemo was when I was nine or 10, and it was memorable because my dad was driving, and it's the most I've ever heard my dad laugh, I think. And he is a dentist, and he thought that the scene where the pelican flies into the window and gets distracted by what instrument the dentist was favoring for extractions was the funniest thing that he had ever heard. And he goes on to say the pelican that is Nigel is flying there to tell Nemo, who has been taken by this dentist off the coral reef to be a fish in his fish tank in his office to ultimately be given to his dangerous Darla that his father has come after him. That is, has come to find him. And as he's telling the details of this rescue story, Nemo is saying, No, that's not my dad. He would never take on a shark, go to the depths of the ocean. He would never swim through an army of jellyfish. That's not my dad. And as Nigel convinces Nemo, no, this truly is your father, Marlin from the reef, you see Nemo have hope wash over him. The producers of the movie intentionally cut out all the sound. Nigel's voice of announcing this news goes quiet, and the only thing you see is hope wash over Nemo. Because what's gone from just being an impressive story that has caused the other fish and the birds who have heard it say, Wow, that's one dedicated father, if you ask me. For Nemo, that is his salvation, that is his story. And so, church, the hope for us this morning is not for us to simply try harder, to try to be more humble, to try and calm and quiet our souls that we might have hope.

Jesus Secures Peace For Troubled Souls<br>

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 29:31

It's to receive that there is good news that God has actually provided one greater than David who has gone low for you, who, though was equal with God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, humbling himself even to the point of death on the cross. The hope of this passage is not that we just need to get better at calming and quieting our soul, but that there is a greater David who lived in perfect peace and relationship with God, saying it was his very will, his very bread to do the will of the Father, never once deviating from that. And yet, when he entered Jerusalem and he's in the shadow of his death, in the shadow of the cross, he says in John 12, now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, but for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Jesus endured a troubled soul in the wrath of God for sinners that our souls might have peace, and we might never have to know God's absence. We might never have to know his wrath, and we can experience his peaceful presence. There's one greater than David that doesn't just instruct the people of God to hope, but he has secured your and my hope. Through his death, through his resurrection, he has taken the end of all of our stories that would have inevitably been death, the sting of death, and he's taken it away that we might experience hope now and forever. That is the good life that is on offer for us to be received this morning. That's the good life to be lived following the one who's gone low, who has endured a troubled soul for us, and has secured our hope. That's an invitation.

Prayer And Closing

Pastor Hardy Reynolds 31:31

Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are indeed a dedicated Father that would give your only Son that you might secure us to yourself, that we might never know your wrath, that we might never know your judgment, that if we receive the life you, Christ, secured for us, we might know peace in your presence. We might know a calm soul, a soul that is at rest with you. Lord, would you use this time of prayer now to help us work this in to our hearts, this hope that we so desperately need? We pray in your Son's powerful name. Amen.