Our scripture reading tonight is Psalm 131, Psalm 131, let us give careful attention to the reading of God's own word. A song of the sense of David, 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. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. So far the reading of God's word. Elder Lyle Faber observed that such a short psalm would probably mean a 10-minute sermon. He may be slightly disappointed. I didn't tell him that in the consistory room for fear that he would just go home. This is just a little psalm, isn't it? It's a simple psalm, but it's also a very profound psalm, and I thought one profoundly useful for us at the end of this year, a psalm that is reflective in its character at a time when I think we need to be reflective. You know, it's one of the songs of ascents, as it says right in the title of some 15 psalms that the Lord gave to his people for use as they would travel three times a year from their homes to Jerusalem as they were required to do by the law. to worship the Lord, and to remember what He had done for them. And those three times a year journeys to Jerusalem were intended to give the people time to think, away from their ordinary activities, and to reflect and to remember what God had done for them. And some of the songs of ascents are focused on travel. Some are focused on the blessings of being in Jerusalem. Some are focused on the joy of worship. But this little psalm, almost uniquely in the collection, is an introspective reflection on who the psalmist wants to be and by implication who we ought to be as we live before the Lord. And I liked it that one of the phrases in it is that I have calmed and quieted my soul. Because this last year has not been a calm and quiet year. It's been a noisy year. It's been a frustrating year. It's been a year of turmoil in a variety of ways. And whatever area of life, almost, that we think about, there have been struggles in this year. There have been politics and protests voicing anger and ambition. Some of it appropriate, but a lot of it not. There have been economic worries for people, especially those out of work and the worry that comes with that. There have been the health issues that we have all faced and been fretful about, anxious about. There have been deaths and losses that we have faced. There's been loneliness for many people. And so in a world of so many agitated emotions, I was struck how this psalm calls us away from being agitated. And I just want to reflect, not all that briefly with you, as to what this means for us, how this should encourage us and direct us, especially in the new year. And I think it's very striking that this psalm is written by David. David, who was often involved in all sorts of activities. Some of them very agitated. As he led people to war. As he sought to arrange for the eventual building of the temple. As he spent his time writing psalms in praise to the Lord, David, in all of his activity, now in Jerusalem has to speak to himself, to his own heart, to his own life and say, I have calmed and quieted my soul. And so we want to look what that's all about. How we can do that. How we ought to do that. what that would actually mean and look like in our lives as we seek to live them out. And this psalm begins after the title, the first word of the psalm is Lord. This is David reflecting before the Lord. This is David thinking about how he lives in relationship to the Lord. This is not necessarily how you live all the time in relation to the world. This is not necessarily how you live all the time in your relationship with your job or even with your family. This is how you live preeminently in your relationship to the Lord as you go along. And even though it's a very small psalm, it does have three points. And the first point is David sees that he needs to live humbly before the Lord. Humbly before the Lord. And he expresses that humble, spirit in three negatives. He thinks about being humble in terms of three things he's not going to be. And it's striking in the Hebrew original that each of these three points begins with the word not. Lord not lifted up is my heart. Lord not raised too high are my eyes Lord not occupied am I with things too wondrous for me he realizes that the path of faithful living of humble living before the Lord includes not doing things not feeling certain things and of those elements of humility that he's committing himself to the first is that his heart will not be lifted up. Lifted up is one of the ways Hebrew talks about being proud. I will not be proud. My heart will not be proud. My heart will not be looking at myself. My heart will not be talking all the time about what I've done. Especially in your presence, O Lord. Who is lifted up? The scriptures make clear, don't they? It's the Lord who is lifted up. Isaiah as he went into the temple as it's described for us in Isaiah chapter 6 cried out saw the Lord high and lifted up and you remember Isaiah had that vision in the days of King Uzziah who was the one who became proud, lifted up in his own eyes and in his own mind and was struck down by the Lord and David is saying here O Lord I am not like well he's not saying I'm not like Uzziah because Uzziah came later but he is saying I'm not going to be that proud king that arrogant king that self gratified king but I stand before my God not in pride but in humility recognizing that it is the Lord who has lifted up not me and then he says my eyes are not raised too high I'm not looking after and desiring things beyond me things that I shouldn't have and whether David is thinking about the trouble his own eyes got him into we can't be sure but David when he saw Bathsheba was led astray because he desired the things that were not good for him He desired the things that would satisfy himself and not serve the Lord. And David is calling on us to turn our eyes to the things that are good and true and right in the service of the Lord, that we might be humbled before the Lord. And then David is saying, I'm not going about with things that are too wonderful for me. The wonderful are for God. He is the doer of wonders. And David says, I know my limits. I'm content with what you have given me to do. And the desire of my heart is that I would be humble before you. I don't know if you are fascinated as I am by some of these end-of-the-year lists of the people who've died in this last year, who often end up to be largely lists of politicians and entertainers. And as you go through that list, I've yet to hear someone say, and here is someone who died who was a very humble person. These are all people, not all, I don't know them all, but they tend to be people who've been very self-assertive. Who have very much lived their own lives the way they wanted to live them. And they are not known by a humble spirit. A spirit that is not grasping. Is not self-serving. But stands before the Lord humbly. Psalm 123, another of these psalms of the sense, It says, Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he has mercy on us. The Lord should be the direction of our eyes and of our desires and of our hopes and of our service so that we are humble before him and we are committed to living the lives that he has called us to live. And we see that preeminently, don't we, in our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself to the service of his God who did not live the life that would have been the easiest for him but gave himself to a life of service following the will of his father. That's what God calls us to. That's what we are to be as a people. And then David goes on to say, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child is my soul within me. Now, the versified form of the psalm that we sang is a very nice tune, I think, capturing something of the tone and the spirit of the psalm. But in the versification, you notice that they failed at one point when they said it was like a little child at its mother's breast. But the psalm says, like a weaned child on its mother. And the difference is that an unweaned child is sometimes not quiet, leaning on its mother, but demanding, hungry, wanting to be fed. But a weaned child can be held in its mother's arms, satisfied, contented, quiet, calm. That's the picture that we're given here. That the humble soul before God is a contented soul before God. Contentment, this psalm is teaching us, doesn't come automatically. We are not born contented. Some of us are more contented than others. Some of us are more easygoing than others, aren't we? But for all of us, genuine godly contentment has to be learned. we have to cultivate it within our lives and within our spirits. And we cultivate it, I think preeminently, by cultivating humility. If we do not think more highly than we ought about ourselves, then we can be content in what God has given us and the situations in which God has placed us. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't have plans for the future or desires for the future. It's not even that in certain ways we can have ambitions that we pursue. But it means that we do not let those desires and ambitions so control us that they destroy our lives in the present. It certainly doesn't mean that we become passive and inactive as people. We can think of the Apostle Paul. It's hard to think of someone more active, more hardworking than the Apostle Paul. But it was the Apostle Paul who said that I have learned in whatsoever situation I am therewith to be content. So he said, when I'm prosperous, I'm content. When I'm impoverished, I'm content. When I'm in prison, I'm content. When I'm free to work, I'm content. Contentment is a cultivated inner attitude of the soul that in a profound sense flows out of our doctrine of providence. God is in control of life. God is in control of our lives. And the situations in which we find ourselves are the situations in which God has put us. And therefore, we ought to have a measure of contentment in those situations. This is what the Lord calls us to. We see this again in our Lord Jesus, who was contented with the call that God had placed upon his life. We've seen that over and over again in the Gospel of John as we've been going through it in our worship services. that Jesus says, I have come to do the will of my Father, not my own will. It was not always easy to do the will of his Father, but he was contented in doing that because he was serving the Lord, and he served the Lord with confidence and so contentment. Deuteronomy 33 gives a wonderful expression of this. The eternal God is your dwelling place and underneath are the everlasting arms. It's very much like we are that weaned child. And God is the one who has his arms around us, protecting us, sheltering us, caring for us. Happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help and the sword of your triumph. What a God who is caring for us and carrying us that he is a God who protects us with his shield and fights our battles for us with his sword. What a beautiful picture of the contentment that we ought to be able to enjoy with a God who cares for us like this God. And as we are to be humble and are to be content, And so we are to be hopeful. That's how this psalm ends. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. O Israel, hope in the Lord. We're humble. We're contented. And we look forward to better things to come. We look forward to better things to come. In the previous psalm, Psalm 130, that psalm ended with a good deal about hope. The psalmist there wrote, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord is steadfast love. and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. There's our hope. There's the great foundation of our humility and our contentment, that the Lord is doing a great work of redemption in our lives and in our world. And he will bring it to full and perfect completion. it will not fail. It is as certain as the steadfast love of his character for his people. And so, when the world seems to be spinning out of control, when the world seems completely confused, when the world seems spinning away from our God, we mustn't lose hope. We mustn't lose confidence. We mustn't lose assurance. I seem to have lost page five of the sermon. No, here it is. We mustn't lose our confidence in the Lord. He will not fail us. He will not let us down. That's why we can be so assured. These are, in many ways, difficult days. I have recently been thinking how this whole year in terms of politicians and of the media there's hardly been a single call to prayer. There's hardly been a single public call to turn to the Lord. To appeal to the Lord. It is as if a kind of godless secularism has overwhelmed us as a people. And no one seems to be noticing. And now I'm sounding agitated and angry and anxious, aren't I? And I have those moments. But recently I was watching a show and they said, well, we're going to end the year by asking three faith leaders to speak words of comfort and encouragement in these dark hours. And I thought to myself, see, Bob, you're always so negative. You're always so discouraged. Here we're going to have three faith leaders. So we had a rabbi and an imam and a minister. And not one of them said anything about God. They might as well have been three psychologists. Now, I think psychologists have a usefulness. But their remarks were as godless as the rest of what we're hearing in our society. And I think it's so tragic. I think it's so tragic. Because unless we have God, we cannot have the kind of humility and contentment and hopefulness that we so need. This psalm began with the Lord and it ends with the Lord. O Israel, hope in the Lord. He is the one who will provide for us. He is the one who will care for us. He is the one who will forgive our sins. He is the one who will one day transform this whole world out of the abundance of his steadfast love and plentiful redemption. And that's why we can be hopeful. That's why we can be contented. That's why we can be humble. And so don't be like me, agitated and anxious. But find in the Lord all of those virtues and blessings and encouragements that will help us enter 2021 with a new spirit that is calm and quieted and will be a light to people around us who are struggling. and to whom we may well be able to speak a word of encouragement. The Lord is always with us, and let us be with him in this new year through our Savior. Amen. Let us pray. But Lord, we are thankful that we can have a quiet confidence in you as the world in so many ways seems almost to spin out of control. Help us to cultivate in our lives that strong faith that will lead us to humility and to contentment and to hopefulness. Be with us in the new year. Give us a better year. Give us a year in which many will be turning to Jesus Christ as their hope and Savior. And build us up in the faith, O Lord. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.