Dan Rogers August Talk | Psalm 131

Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Welcome

to Crowd Church, a digital space where faith is explored, hearts are inspired, and everyone is welcome to discover the meaningful life Jesus offers. Now, my name is Matt Edmundson. I am the pastor of Crowd Church. It's great to be with you today. Today we're going to hear From Dan Rogers. He's going to dive deep into Psalm 131, offering, well, an antidote to our, to our increasingly anxious and agitated world.

Dan's going to challenge us to examine the root causes of our discontent and provide practical insights on how to cultivate that. So get ready to be both challenged and inspired by Dan, those two things usually come together when Dan Rogers speaks as he's going to unpack the dangers of pride, haughtiness and overreaching ourselves.

You'll discover how [00:01:00] these common pitfalls head to pain and turmoil in our lives. I'm sure most of us know what I'm talking about as we learn the surprising power of humility and self love. Uh, limitation, two things that we just, well, we don't often talk about, do we? So whether you're feeling overwhelmed by the world's problems or simply seeking greater peace in your daily life, I think today's talk is going to offer a refreshing perspective on what it means to find contentment, especially through Hoping in the Lord.

Dan's going to unpick all of this and what it all means. So stay tuned. But before we get into that, if you're a regular to Crowd Church, then you will notice that this live stream is a little bit different. We call it the non live live stream. Uh, normally we have live hosts on the show, um, and all kinds of things going on.

But this August, We take a break. We do this every year. Uh, it's a practice we've got into. We take a break from the live live stream and we go to the non live live stream, if you follow what I'm saying, [00:02:00] uh, because we take a little sabbatical. The members of the crowd team, just like many of you, will be using August to take time off to rec to rest, to recover, and to recharge with our loved ones.

So make sure you pray for us, you know, just as God rested on the seventh day, we believe in the importance of Sabbath, of taking time off to renew our spirits and regain our strength. And we pray for you, we pray that this summer would be a time that you can also do that. Now, During this time, you'll see, uh, the scheduled video.

We put a vid, we still put a talk out, um, but we're not going to do the regular real time responses that we do, something that we call Conversation Street because we don't have live hosts, uh, on the show. Now that said, although we might not be live on the show, uh, we will still be in the comments, hopefully engaging with you.

Uh, and to make this period, uh, Uh, you know, this sort of sabbatical time, make it all work. What we've done is we've invited four fantastic speakers to share their favorite psalm with us today. You're going to hear from Dan [00:03:00] Rogers. As I said, I think it was Psalm 131. Yeah. So looking forward to this whole little mini series.

Now if this is your first time with us, a huge welcome to you. You can find out more information about Crowd Church on our website, which is www. crowd. church. Church, yes, church, sounds a bit weird doesn't it, it's not com, co, do you know, crowd. church, works, trust me, uh, and we hope to see you there, hope to see you on the website, um, and get ready, get ready because Dan is, well, he's going to have some fun.

So here's enough, here's, well, that's, let's just say that's enough from me. Here's Dan Rogers, the legend.

Dan Rogers: You've probably noticed that lots of people these days are becoming increasingly angst driven and agitated and so we're going to have a little bit of a think about how we can stay calm, be content, um, in the midst of that context of our, um, turbulent [00:04:00] culture emotionally.

To help us, we're going to take a look, um, at one of the ancient poems in the Hebrew Bible, which is Psalm 131. So, first of all, let's just read it together from a translation, which is called the English Standard Version. It says this, it's only five verses, Oh 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 wonderful for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaning child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, open the Lord, from this time forth and for evermore. Okay, that's it. That version is a fairly precise sort of word for word translation from the original Hebrew language into English.

It's helpfully accurate. However, accuracy doesn't always connect with us on an emotional level straight away, so I thought we'd read another version as well, a paraphrased version [00:05:00] called The Message, which borrows some more modern words and ideas to better convey its sort of overall meaning. So here we go with that in The Message version.

Same five verses, but just phrased a different way. God, I'm not trying to rule the roost. I don't want to be king of the mountain. I haven't meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans. I've kept my feet on the ground. I've cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother's arms, my soul is a baby content.

Wait, oh Israel, wait for God, wait with hope, hope now, hope always. Okay, let me give you a bit of context on this psalm. It was written by a successful a king from over 3, 000 years ago, and his name was King David. You may have heard of him. He wrote the psalm for Hebrews who were making their way Up a mountain, up into a city which is found in the mountains, Jerusalem, you'll have heard of it, and they [00:06:00] were going on a pilgrimage to worship God.

And like so many of David's psalms, it was both personal to him and instructive to them on their journey, and it's instructive to us on our sort of life journeys now. It begins with David's disclosure of three things which he had stopped doing, or as he says, he weaned himself off in order to calm. And quieten his soul.

Here's his first disclosure. Number one, my heart is not lifted up. What does that mean, do you think? Lifted up heart, I think it means sort of, it got a sense of inflated heart, sort of puffed up, got an unrealistic sense of self-importance. Uh, a different version. The new international version, uh, translation calls it proud, which is a word we are more familiar with.

Now, despite being a king, David says that his heart isn't lifted up. It's not proud. He's not like [00:07:00] that. But in our culture, you often get the feeling that pride is something we just need. It's something to celebrate. It's a good thing. So what's going on? What's what? Is pride helpful, necessary, um, or is it unhelpful and undesirable?

To help us with this I've tried to come up with a few things I think a proudly inclined person might say, someone with a heart lifted up might say these things. Number one, how can I get others attention and admiration? Two, I'm not really interested in other people's ideas. Three, I only work with people who think like me.

Four, I tend to be the exception to the rule. Five, I should be getting the credit for that. Okay, I'll stop there. Sounds a bit like Tony Stark, eh, from the Marvel movies, or a young Tony Stark, perhaps. Um, and what's wrong with it? Well, [00:08:00] I want you to imagine that pride is like a balloon of self on your insides, and as that balloon of self gets more inflated, it's like there's less space for anything else or anyone else.

So you get the phrase full of self, yeah, that's how a pride person is. So other people, new ideas, and the spirit of God just get crowded out. There's no room. No room at the inn, heard that phrase? And the problem with this is that we actually need other people. We need outside input, we need God. Not just to be happy through that feeling of connection and integration, but also to contribute helpfully.

It's just dead practical. Without outside input and the intelligence, as well as the warmth which comes with that, we're intellectually impoverished. In all honesty, we, we lack, we're under resourced. Um, no one on their own is that, I'm sorry to say, well, I'm not that sorry to say, but that is the truth. No, no one who thinks they're the all sufficient one [00:09:00] is actually the efficient, all sufficient one.

They're not, they're not that good. So, um, We lack what we need, therefore, to understand others, to relate well, to see things clearly, to anticipate issues, and to make good decisions when we're operating with a, with a fullness of self, um, with pride. We become basically a bit of a liability, especially when we have decision making powers.

We're in leadership, and you'll be able to think of examples of this, I'm sure, in, in the recent years in the public domain. See, pride always stunts relationships, it squashes and stifles thinking, it, it causes decisions that become foolish, short sighted, um, poorly developed. Pride causes pain. Maybe that's why God, who personifies love, um, and truth.

He's got such a problem with pride. I don't know if you [00:10:00] knew that, but if you go flick forward, um, to the New Testament from the Psalms, you get to the book eventually of James. It's a letter, um, to the churches of the New Testament churches. And in chapter 4, verse 6, James tells us that God opposes the proud.

Can you imagine? God opposing you. He opposes you if you're proud. Scary. But maybe it's not that he hates proud people, which is what you'd assume with the word oppose. Maybe it's more that he, he doesn't hate them. He opposes them because he's simply trying to stop them from wreaking too much havoc. He's trying to limit their sense of liability, limit the pain that they are able to cause by their inadequate engagement in, in the world.

Are there limitations? What do you think? I've got a question for you. Here it goes and um, uh, you might want to think of [00:11:00] Tony Stark as you, as you consider this question is, when has pride led to pain? Or when in your experience, maybe, has pride led to pain and was it avoidable? When has pride led to pain and was it avoidable?

Have a think about that. Let's get back to David. Here's a second disclosure. My eyes are not raised too high. Can I show you what that looks like? What happens then is your nose goes up, doesn't it? So what it means is you, you're basically a bit stuck up, aren't you? In a different version, it's translated as, my eyes are not.

Haughty, I'm not sure that entirely helps, I mean, we don't really use the word haughty much these days, unless you're maybe an English teacher or a poet, um, but I've got some synonyms I found online on thesaurus. com for the word haughty, right, because it's just a useful summary word, so here's some synonyms for it.

Haughty is otherwise called [00:12:00] contemptuous, disdainful, hoity toity, scornful, stuck up,

Uppity. There were more, but those are the best ones. So, haughtiness is basically based on a comparison with other people. It's, in fact, the tendency to view ourselves as better than others, so we're looking down on them. A bit like the Loki character in the early Marvel films, who always sees others as being beneath him in so many ways.

And that's not good. In fact, when King David's son, Solomon, wrote a list of things that God hates, haughty eyes was first on that list of only seven things, right? Check it out in Proverbs chapter 6, verse 16. The other things on the list, like lying and murdering, um, came later on. And maybe that's because doing things like lying to and murdering people is easier if you've already [00:13:00] downgraded them in your mind as less important, the new, less valuable, less.

Human, maybe. If they're less human, we can treat them in a less humane way. You know, like asylum seekers. It doesn't matter if we dot dot dot. That's what some people think, isn't it, which is not that helpful. So no wonder the Lord hates it. It's so out of touch with how he views people whom he made in his image with inherent dignity.

Some theologians say that we are image bearers, miniature versions of himself. We are reflections of God. In Christian songs, there's often a line that says, there's no one like you, Lord, which is obviously true in many ways. Physically, it's not. Physically, there's about seven or eight billion people who literally Look like him, made in his image.

If you had a picture of God and he had a picture of us, we'd be small, small versions of that, you know, with a shrunken down, you know, limited in many ways, but a little bit [00:14:00] like him. There's a similarity. We're made in his image. So that has implications, right? So implications on how we view other people.

Do we have haughty eyes? Do we look down on them? Okay, let's think about that. Are we vaguely disapproving of any particular groups of people? Ever done that? Ever looked down on any groups? You ever scornful of people who behave differently? Just them. They always do that kind of thing. Um, what about a bit snotty about people in certain positions, whether people of low position or people of high position, snotty about, you know, homeless people or traveler communities or people who are less resourced, maybe snotty, you know, look down on them, or maybe look down on people who have high position, bankers, politicians, people who we may, maybe don't trust.

But do we look down on them? It's like an inverted kind of snobbery. [00:15:00] The thing is, if we're happy enough to be like that about anyone or towards anyone, then I think David would diagnose us with having haughty eyes. We may not be that far off harming those people, if we're like that, given the right circumstances, but that's usually in more passive ways, such as through avoidance or neglect, you know, cancelling people.

That's a very haughty thing to do. I cancel you. You know, you're not, you're not, you don't deserve to be here. There's no place for you in, in, in this society. Oh, really? Okay. Well, how does that feel to be on the receiving end of? I would say it's quite harmful and it doesn't give people, treat people with the respect that they're due as image bearers of the creator.

So here's a second question to have a think about, take your time, maybe have a chat about it with some friends if you're watching this with anyone else. [00:16:00] The question is this, when has haughtiness caused harm and was that fair? So that's haughtiness for you, first item on Solomon's list of things God hates, second on the list of things which David weaned himself off.

Now here's the third of David's disclosures, I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me. Sounds pretty straightforward. But don't forget, these are the words of a king, a successful king, a popular king. So what could possibly be too great or too marvellous for, you know, a king?

If you know a little bit about King David's life story, if you read, um, the history in the Old Testament, 1 and 2 Samuel, there were a few events which demonstrate his approach to life in this way quite clearly. There's a few things which he chose not to do. So even as king, he chose not to take vengeance on the family who had [00:17:00] persecuted him.

So, the persecutors, or the person whose, the person whose, the persecutors family, he didn't take vengeance on his persecutors, even when he got the chance to, it was King Saul, and he didn't take it out on King Saul's family. In fact, he chose to be gracious to them. So he limited himself, even as King. He didn't resent God when God let his child die.

He sort of said, that's not my place to do that. And he didn't embark on some sort of religious legacy building project that would sort of give him a bit of kudos. He wanted to. And I think he probably wanted to do it for good reasons, but God told him actually that wasn't his gig, and he accepted that and he didn't do it.

So even as a king, he discerned what was beyond him, what was outside of his remit, and he didn't occupy himself with those two great things. He declined to get involved in them. He refused to fix or react to them. Jesus, later on, was pretty similar to this. Listen to some of his words [00:18:00] in the New Testament.

I see him speaking to his mother in John chapter 2. What does this have to do with me? My time hasn't yet come. Or in Matthew chapter 15, he was talking to someone, um, who, who wasn't a Jew, and he said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Complicated passage, but he's recognizing his limitations of his mission in the three years that he's got there.

And similar to that, in John chapter 15, he says, the son can do only what he sees the father doing. So he admits his dependence. He is not someone of ultimate initiative. He's not a self defined being, self determining. He, he, he works in collaboration with the father. That's, he does what the father does. He doesn't do his own thing.

That's what he's saying there. Even as the king of kings, which is clearly how Jesus sees himself and did see himself, Jesus in his life on earth was mindful of his remit. He didn't occupy himself with things which would have distracted him from [00:19:00] what he had to do and which only he could do in the time that only he had to do them in.

We recognize these limitations, but we're not so good at this nowadays, are we? We get sort of bombarded by other people's concerns, the things that they get outraged about and we get expected to get outraged about them as well. We're encouraged, um, to sort of take things on board and become campaigners against certain things.

We sort of, it's sort of praiseworthy to go Hulk on people in our attempts to fix things which are wrong. Um. But often those things we're trying to fix, we don't have any influence over. Things which are international and complicated and economic and outside of our intelligence, let alone our influence.

But why do we make these social media posts, comments, why do we get into arguments with people about it? Why do we [00:20:00] try and enforce our worldview on other people? Does it make us feel powerful, um, or do we just feel obliged to because so many people tell us that that's what we're supposed to do, we're supposed to campaign against injustice and get very angry about everything.

Why can't we limit ourselves to engaging in what the Lord is asking of us to engage in and allow him to deal with other stuff? Because the thing is, he does actually ask us to carry some responsibilities and to carry some burdens, but the things he asks of us are always a good fit. They're not crushing in any way, and it's actually healthy for us to engage and carry those responsibilities, but not Everything.

So what we learn from David is it is okay for us to not get involved in every issue which people are concerned about. It's not always our gig. We can say no. What we can do, and I would say we should do, is pray. And when we're [00:21:00] doing this, we're making a direct appeal to the highest office in the universe.

What better thing can you do? That's much better than trying to, um, Jump in and gag in and meddle in something which is possibly no business of ours directly, even if we might care about it. Let's take our direct appeal as someone who does have remit over everything and that's much more effective often as well.

Here's a third question and think about this in the light of these things. What things are not your concern, but or and what things are your concern? Identify, differentiate, Have a think about that, maybe chat about that with someone else. So, here's how David benefited from being a bit more discerning and how he went about it.

He said, essentially, because I've been a bit more discerning, dot dot dot, my [00:22:00] paraphrase, I have calmed and quieted my soul. Sounds good, eh? It's what we started with at the beginning of our time in this talk. Like a weaning child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. This is the turning point in the psalm.

It uses an illustration which we all understand, weaning, it's when babies come off their mother's milk and go on to solids, right, it's the way David describes how he gradually stopped behaving in proud, vain, presumptuous ways. He was like a weaning child, present continuous tense I think it is, and then he was like a weaned child, which is past tense.

So he's been on this process which he had to work out over time, which was ongoing at one point, and then it was done. So, it wasn't immediate, it wasn't magic, he didn't click his fingers and God didn't deliver him out of pride overnight, he had to work on it, he had to sort of wean himself off it. [00:23:00] And the emphasis here in the psalm is interesting because it's the only line in the psalm that's repeated.

Like a weaning child, like a weaned child, it's emphatically saying this is the process by which you get off this stuff. You have to wean yourself, and the illustration works sort of like this. Babies have to be weaned off what they were feeding off, right, and we need to wean ourselves off the stuff that we have been feeding off.

So babies wean themselves off mother's milk and get onto solids, and we wean ourselves off pride, vanity, and presumption, onto the stuff which we should be feeding on. We'll get onto that. What do we wean off and onto? But the point for now is it's quite hard to wean yourself off some stuff, but it is necessary.

Don't believe me? Well, who wants to marry a 25 year old who hasn't been weaned yet, male or female? Okay, and similarly, who wants to entrust [00:24:00] responsibilities to someone who's angst ridden and agitated? Young or old, why would you do that? Weaning off some stuff, which is ungodly, and ungodly dependencies is, is something we need to do, let's ditch our ungodly dependencies, but What to be replacing with?

What's the solid food? Now this gets interesting because in our culture people will go, oh look, well we need to get into yoga and mindfulness, meditation, reflection, gratitude. There's all sorts of people give you all sorts of advice about things you should do. We should exercise, we should diet, we should, we should look after our families and Um, work on our careers and maybe have a side hustle and get our houses looking good and do some volunteering and, you know, um, et cetera, et cetera.

The only specific instruction in this psalm comes at the end. And none of those things I just said are explicitly mentioned, even though they're not out, they're not forbidden, they're just not mentioned, they're fine in [00:25:00] their rightful place. But here's the thing. Here's what David did tell his people to do, is his words, O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.

What does that mean? The thing is, it doesn't actually say, does it? I'll give you some closing thoughts, but then it's over to you. Again, just gonna have to figure this out for yourself, what this, what this means in today's culture. Here's some closing thoughts. I think hoping in the Lord here is a summary.

All that's previously been said in the psalm. Secondly, I think it's the opposite of those things which David says he weaned himself off. So it's the opposite of pride, humility. It's the opposite of a heart lifted up, it's a heart bowed down. It's the opposite of, um, aughtiness, it's respectfulness. Uh, and thirdly, it's a personal thing.

It's not an abstract ideological thing that's manipulable, like this big [00:26:00] concept we've got in our society at the moment of the It's too abstract, too, too random, okay. It's a personal. Hoping the Lord is hoping in a being. The God man, Jesus, the Lord of the universe, is hoping in a person who has a brain, who has words that he says and makes decisions, and to whom we are accountable.

We hope in him, we trust in him, we don't trust in an idea. And lastly, it's not a one time, one off activity or project, which you do when you're, when you're needy, and you don't do when you've got it all figured out. It's an everlasting way of life, as it says. From this time forth and forevermore, right.

You don't wean yourself off it. You do it for it all, for all eternity. It's a good thing, okay. So, last question then, in the light of what we've covered, have a think and a chat, if you can, about this question. What does it mean [00:27:00] for all of us today to hope in the Lord? What does it mean for all of us today to hope in the Lord?

Where could we make a good start at this? What should we avoid? How would we know if we're doing it well or poorly? Who could we trust to guide and support us on this journey? And why is there a future dimension to David's exhortation? And what happens if we neglect that future dimension in our thinking about hoping in the Lord?

What, Matt, what happens if we don't, if we're just in the here and now, and only in the here and now? Does that help or does that hint of us in any way? So, I hope as you meditate on this psalm, you think it through, you think through these questions, they will help you. And I hope it will help you to wean yourself off some stuff which is ungodly, unhelpful, and is going to drag you down, and that you will develop this sort of calm, quiet soul, which is happy and [00:28:00] content and able to humbly meditate.

Walk with your maker through this journey you're all on called,

Matt Edmundson: all the

Dan Rogers: best.

Matt Edmundson: Well, there you go. I hope you found Dan's talk today, both insightful and inspiring. Every psalm has a really unique message, doesn't it? A distinct voice that speaks to you. To our hearts and soul. And every speaker brings something unique and different.

And Dan is no exception. Love when Dan talks. I genuinely do. He is one of my favorite speakers. Uh, we would love to hear your thoughts, hear what you think about today. Som feel free to share your reflections, your experiences, et cetera in the comments below. Honestly, we really value your perspective. It's why we like people to comment.

It's not just because for the sake of it, we want to hear what people have to say, uh, because I think we can all learn from each other on our journey of faith. Now, if you do wish to reach out to us, you can find more information on the website, www. crowd. church. You can find WhatsApp numbers, you can find emails and forms and all that sort of stuff.

But do get in [00:29:00] touch. We'd love to connect with you further. And don't forget, come September, we're going to get back into our regular live stream services. We're going to get back into. Well, we're going to get into something new, got some really exciting news coming, so make sure you stay connected, and I'll explain more in September.

Has that raised the intrigue? I hope it has, I really hope it has. Uh, now remember, here at Crowd Church, everyone is welcome, everyone is valued, no matter where you are in your spiritual journey, there's definitely a place for you, uh, so do stick with us. Thank you for joining us today, until next time, stay blessed, stay inspired, and keep exploring the beauty of the Christian faith.

See you in the comments, and I'll be back next week. Next week!