Like a Weaned Child Text: Psalm 131
Introduction: The War Against the Ego
We live in an age that has made a god of the self. Our entire culture is a vast, noisy cathedral dedicated to the worship of the imperial ego. From the therapeutic drivel that tells you to "follow your heart" to the corporate slogans that insist you "be true to yourself," the central message is one of radical autonomy and self-exaltation. This is the oldest lie in the book, the primordial hiss of the serpent: "you will be like God." And because this lie is the very marrow in the bones of fallen man, the sin of pride is the most versatile and camouflaged of all our iniquities. It cleans up real nice. It can dress in the robes of piety, it can speak with the accent of orthodoxy, and it can even preach sermons on humility.
Pride is the native language of the fallen heart, and humility is a foreign tongue that can only be learned at the foot of the cross, and with great difficulty. Because God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, this is not a small matter. This is the central battleground of the Christian life. To get this wrong is to set yourself up in opposition to God Himself, and that is a contest you are guaranteed to lose. All grumbling, all discontent, all complaining, all envy, all bitterness is simply murmuring against the providential wisdom of God. It is to look at the way God has ordered your life, your station, your gifts, your trials, and to declare that you could have done a better job.
Into this modern cult of self-worship, Psalm 131 comes as a short, sharp, and glorious corrective. This is a song of ascent, meaning it was sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem, on their way up to worship. And this psalm teaches us that the way up to God is paradoxically the way down. It is the path of humility. David, a king, a warrior, a man of great renown, here gives us the testimony of a soul that has been conquered by grace. He describes a quiet heart, but it is not the quiet of a placid, natural temperament. It is the quiet of a battlefield after the war is over, the quiet of a child who has finally, exhaustedly, surrendered to his mother's will. This is the peace that comes after a fight, and the fight was with his own pride.
The Text
A Song of Ascents. Of David.
O Yahweh, my heart is not exalted, and my eyes are not raised high; And I do not involve myself in great matters, Or in matters too marvelous for me.
Surely I have soothed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother, Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, wait for Yahweh From now until forever.
(Psalm 131 LSB)
The Negative Confession of a Humbled Heart (v. 1)
David begins by telling the Lord what he is not doing. This is a declaration of what has been crucified in him.
"O Yahweh, my heart is not exalted, and my eyes are not raised high; And I do not involve myself in great matters, Or in matters too marvelous for me." (Psalm 131:1)
First, David says his heart is not "exalted," or haughty. The heart is the command center of the man. This is where pride is manufactured. A haughty heart is one that is puffed up, inflated with its own sense of importance. It is a heart that looks down on others and, ultimately, looks down on God's arrangement of the world. Connected to this is the refusal to have "eyes raised high." Lofty eyes are the external indicator of a proud heart. It is the look of disdain, of arrogance, of the man who believes he is the center of his own universe.
But then David gets specific about how this humility works itself out. He does not "involve" himself, or literally "walk" in great matters. He is not meddling in things that are outside his lane. This is a crucial lesson for our age of frantic, opinionated ignorance. We have millions of people who have an opinion on how the global economy should be run but cannot balance their own checkbook. We have people who want to rearrange the cosmos but cannot govern their own tempers. David is confessing that he has learned the limits of his own station. He has accepted his place in God's world.
He doesn't meddle in matters "too marvelous for me." This is not a celebration of ignorance or a refusal to think. This is a refusal to question the secret counsel of God. It is a refusal to demand that God explain Himself. Why was I born in this family and not that one? Why this trial? Why this providence? These are the "great matters" that a proud heart insists on climbing into. It is the sin of trying to get above God, to sit on His throne and audit His decisions. A humble man knows his place. He trusts that God is God, and that he is not. He accepts the vertical dispensations of God without murmuring. God is sovereign, and we are not.
The Agony and Ecstasy of Weaning (v. 2)
In the second verse, David gives us the central metaphor of the psalm. This quiet heart did not come naturally. It was the result of a painful, deliberate process.
"Surely I have soothed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother, Like a weaned child is my soul within me." (Psalm 131:2)
Notice the active language: "I have soothed and quieted my soul." This was not passive. David had to behave himself. He had to take his own soul in hand and force it into submission. Our souls, by nature, are like unweaned babies: demanding, screaming, insistent on getting what they want, right now. The unweaned child only knows the mother as a source of immediate gratification. She is, to him, a cosmic vending machine.
The process of weaning is a rodeo. It is a battle of wills. The child screams, kicks, and throws a fit because he cannot have what he has always had. He thinks the world is ending. The mother, in her wisdom, withholds the breast, not because she has stopped loving the child, but because she loves him too much to let him remain a baby forever. She wants him to grow up, to learn to eat solid food, to be able to sit at the table with the rest of the family.
This is a perfect picture of our sanctification. God, our loving parent, often withholds things from us that we desperately think we need. He denies our frantic prayers. He allows frustrating circumstances. He does this to wean us off of our idols, to wean us off of our self-reliance, to wean us off of the demand for immediate gratification. And we kick and scream. But grace is the process of God winning that fight.
The result is a soul that is "like a weaned child." The fight is over. The child is no longer frantic. He can now lie quietly on his mother's lap, not to get something from her, but simply to be with her. His relationship has matured. He has learned contentment. He has learned to trust her presence, not just her provisions. This is what it means to have a quieted soul. It is the peace of exhausted acquiescence. It is the rest that comes after surrender. The mother won, the child lost, and in that loss, the child found a deeper and more mature love. This is what God is after in our lives.
The Corporate Application (v. 3)
Having described his personal journey into humility and contentment, David now turns and applies this lesson to all of God's people.
"O Israel, wait for Yahweh From now until forever." (Psalm 131:3)
This is not just a lesson for individual piety. It is a lesson for the entire covenant community. The posture of a weaned child is the required posture for all of Israel. What does a weaned child do? He waits. He hopes. He trusts. He is not in a frantic hurry. He is not trying to take matters into his own hands.
To "wait for Yahweh" means to hope in Him, to trust in His timing, His wisdom, and His goodness. It is the opposite of the frantic, self-reliant striving that characterizes the world. The world says, "Grab what you can get." The world says, "Look out for number one." The world says, "If you want something done right, do it yourself." But the people of God are called to a different way. We are called to a life of dependent trust.
This hope is not a short-term strategy. It is "from now until forever." This is the settled, permanent disposition of the people of God. We are to be a people who have been weaned from the world, weaned from our own ambitions, weaned from our pride. And having been weaned, we are now able to rest in the lap of our God, trusting Him for all things, not just in this life, but into eternity.
Conclusion: The Weaned Lord
This psalm finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only man whose heart was never haughty, whose eyes were never lofty. He never once exercised Himself in matters too great for Him, though as God, no matter was too great for Him. Yet in His incarnation, He perfectly modeled this dependent trust.
He said, "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me" (John 5:30). He learned obedience by the things He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). He entrusted Himself to Him who judges righteously (1 Peter 2:23).
And on the cross, He was the ultimate weaned child. He was denied the comfort of His Father's presence. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" This was the agony of weaning, carried out to the nth degree. He was denied what He most desired so that we, His screaming, rebellious, and proud younger siblings, could be brought to the table. He endured the ultimate cosmic weaning so that we could be adopted into the family.
Therefore, the only place where our pride can truly die is at the foot of His cross. All our striving, all our arrogance, all our self-importance was gathered up and nailed to that tree with Him. When we look there, we see the ugliness of our pride judged, and the beauty of His humility exalted. He humbled Himself, and therefore God has highly exalted Him.
The path to a quiet soul is the path of the cross. It is the path of surrendering our will, our ambitions, and our rights to Him. It is a painful process, a rodeo. But the result is peace. It is the quiet, contented rest of a weaned child, safe in the arms of his Father, forever.