Charles Spurgeon said this about Psalm 131, “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.” (Charles Spurgeon)
David’s purpose in writing this Psalm is to exhort and direct God’s people to place all their hopes and confidence in God. When our hope and confidence turn from God to ourselves or other men, we have traded trust and humility for pride.
There is pride in every heart of every person born into this sinful world. Pride sits at the door of our hearts, waiting to be unleashed. Knowing you are not alone, I pray this truth gives you a little relief but immediately takes you to the throne of grace. Let’s look to God and find the loveliness of cultivating humility.
Cultivated Humility
We find David at the throne of YAHWEH, the LORD, the covenant God, lifting up these words,
“My heart is not proud,Lord,my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.”
At first reading, it seems that David approaches the LORD with a prideful heart. However, as we walk through this Psalm with a little observation and study, we see that David has done the work to quiet the pride in his heart, and his soul finds rest.
Cultivated humility leads to a composed, under-control, quieted soul that only comes from God to those who know its importance and cultivate it diligently. The sin of pride in our hearts needs Christ’s pruning so we can abide with Him confidently and, like David, kneel at the throne of God in humble submission.
Cultivating Humility
Our humility matters to God. Multiple verses reveal how God looks at and deals with those who have a proud heart and arrogant, haughty eyes. Psalm 18:27, Isaiah 2:11, Isaiah 5:15, James 4:6, and 1 Peter 5:5 are only a few. Proverbs 16:18 tells us pride comes before the fall. It’s there waiting to exalt itself over God and others and, if not subdued, will eventually stumble and fall, taking us down with it.
In verse 2, we have a glimpse of the results of David’s work in putting to death the sin of pride: But I have calmed and quieted myself; I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child, I am content.
Before the calm and the quiet, there was wrestling and war between the flesh and the Spirit. Galatians 5:17. We know from Scripture the rise and fall of David’s pride. We know our own from experience. Take heart! After the wrestling, there is the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
The work of subduing and cultivating humility is not done in just three verses; it spans a lifetime. It is an intentional, God-sought, God-wrought work that occurs minute by minute, day after day.
Three Ways to Humility
David approached God humbly while learning to be humble. You and I can do the same. Her are three ways to help you cultivate humility:
- Seek God: This one is at the bottom of our list. Instead of going to God first, we run to Him after all of our efforts are exhausted—pride in action! When we first seek God in prayer and ask Him to show us the condition of our hearts, He opens our eyes to see the truth, gives us grace for repentance, and, through His word, lays out the path for obedience and change.
- Trust Him: Peter( 1 Peter 5:5) and James( James 4:6) tell us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We trust Him to save our souls for the future, but we live as if He abandoned us until He returns to take us home. Trust Him to do the good He started until He perfects it!
- Walk in Confident Hope: Psalm 131 ends with David exhorting Israel to hope in the LORD now and forever. We have no reason not to hope and trust in God. If we lack trust, if our hope is diminished, our pride has blinded our hearts.
Humility Redeemed
Christ humbled Himself and became obedient to death to bring an obedient people to God. The sin of pride is redeemed through the precious blood of Christ but cannot be left alone to avoid it taking root and growing out of control.
There is a loveliness and attractiveness to humility. In a world that tries to find beauty in vanity, let’s find our beauty in humility, trust, and hope in the goodness and faithfulness of God.
Learn more about walking in humility and grace from our Inductive BIble Study in James
