ASCENDING TO THE HOUSE OF GOD

(Our Contentment - Psalm 131)

Pastor Don Fortner
Grace Baptist Church of Danville
2734 Old Stanford Road
Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438


In Psalm 131 the pilgrim sings of humility and contentment, as he moves toward God’s house. This short, sweet psalm speaks of the humility produced in the soul by the experience of God’s boundless, free grace in Christ, the humility of confident faith.

Humility

All who ascend to the house of God to worship him in the Spirit and in truth come before the throne of grace in utter humility, with confident faith and hope.

In spiritual matters nothing, absolutely nothing, is the way men think it is, ought to be, and must be. In the world the way up is up. In the kingdom of God the way up is down. In the world the man with the greatest knowledge is the one who knows the most about the most. In the Church of Christ the person who knows the most is the one who knows nothing. In material things the person who has the most is the richest. In spiritual things the person who has the least is the richest. In natural things he who has the most strength is the strongest. In spiritual things he who is weakest is strongest.

And in the world humility and confidence are considered mutually exclusive. Nothing could be further from the truth. He who is most humbled before God is most confident in God. The person who has the lowest esteem of himself has the highest esteem of Christ. In a word, those sinners who have learned the first lesson in the school of grace, being humbled by the Holy Spirit’s conviction of sin, are most bold in pleading the blood and righteousness of Christ, being convinced of righteousness in him by the same Spirit. Being emptied of self, the heaven born soul comes to Christ with nothing, receiving all from him. Faith in Christ gives the confident hope and expectation of all grace.

A Weaned Child

The psalmist was inspired to use the figure of a weaned child to set before us the meaning of such humility, just as our Savior did (Matt. 18:3). Except we be weaned and become as little children, we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Heaven born children need and desire to be taught everything, because we know nothing. We must have everything provided for us, because we have nothing and can provide nothing for ourselves. We need constant protection and care, because we cannot protect and care for ourselves. And, just as children are confident that the mother who nursed them will do all these things for them, God’s children are confident that he who has borne us from the womb of eternity (Psa. 110:3; 139:13) and nursed us as infants at the breasts of consolation (Isa. 66:11) will provide and care for us.

The weaned child neither thinks great things of himself nor seeks great things for himself, but simply takes what is given him, resting in its mother’s wisdom and love. Oh, that we might be given such grace! Let that mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Phil. 2:1-8). May God the Holy Spirit cause the “meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:1) to so rule our hearts and lives that every faculty is both humbled in the dust before him and utterly content with him, to the everlasting praise of his glory!