Latest / Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self / Psalm 131 - Don’t Take On Omniscience

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Psalm 131 - Don’t Take On Omniscience · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

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  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
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  podcast brought from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
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  I'm your host, Brian Self. We hope this podcast encourages
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  you to know Christ, grow in his word, and show his love to
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  others. Let's dive right in.
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  Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we have a very, very short
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  Psalm. It's all of three verses.
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  And I'll tell you guys kind of a little behind the scenes I went,
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  man, there is just not a lot contained within this one Psalm.
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  I wonder if I could write a song from this Psalm And I did the
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  recording that I did of it with this microphone.
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  If you're watching the the podcast, that one that I did
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  this microphone didn't get the guitar as much.
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  So I'm going to try it one more time a little bit later with
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  just my phone audio and see how that goes for it.
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  But I wrote it's not a long song.
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  It's just a little one for this little Psalm, but I might show
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  it to you guys. But I love that 2500, you know,
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  plus actually, since this is a song with David, about 2900
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  years after this was originally penned, people are still making
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  music about God and about His goodness and His faithfulness
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  and the fact that we can trust Him all this time later.
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  And what a joy that we have the God that is faithful throughout
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  all ages. Psalm 131 is another one of the
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  song of a sense. These are the road trip songs
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  that the children of Israel are singing as they go up to
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  Jerusalem three times a year for the annual feasts as they
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  worship the Lord, give thanks for what He has done, remember
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  his work in the past, and look forward to what God would do in
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  the future. And this particular Psalm is a
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  Psalm of David. He says in verse #1 Yahweh.
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  My heart is not proud. My eyes are not haughty.
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  I do not get involved with things too great or too wondrous
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  for me. Instead, I have calmed and
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  quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother.
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  My soul is like a weaned child. Israel, put your hope in Yahweh
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  both now and forever. Want to look at these and what
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  kind of go because we've got both the time and because this
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  is such a short Psalm, we'll kind of go word by word and look
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  through this Psalm together. So the first thing that he says
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  is my, he says Yahweh, my heart. This is my inner self.
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  This is the inclinations that I have got, what I am leaning
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  towards who I am on the inside here, David says it is not
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  proud, it's not high or exalted, it's not haughty.
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  This word can even mean in some instances like to be cheerful or
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  to be perhaps encouraged. He says, God, I'm not thinking
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  inside of me that I am anything great.
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  I'm not even particularly jazzed, if you will, about
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  myself in this moment. So he says my heart is not
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  proud. And then he says my eyes, where
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  I am looking, says it's not haughty, it's not high above,
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  it's not exalted. A couple other translations have
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  this phrase as my eyes are not raised high, they're not lifted
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  up too far. And I see here, sometimes we can
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  be. Even as I look at the remainder
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  of verse one, sometimes we can believe as we look out at the
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  full landscape of our world. We can go, man, everything is
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  going so terribly. And I can see horrible things
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  happening in Africa, and I can see horrible things being live
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  streamed from the Middle East. And I can here on the news about
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  a terrible thing in Minnesota. Or I can look at, you know,
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  atrocities that are happening in Asia or as I think about South
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  America and what they've been going through.
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  God, it just feels like there is too much evil and wickedness and
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  horrible things happening all around the world and we can lift
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  our eyes up off of what we can actually like, do and be
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  involved with and we can survey the entirety of humanity and we
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  can despair. We can even start to judge God
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  to say, God, why aren't you doing what I think I would do in
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  this scenario? But David here says my eyes are
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  not lifted up too far. God, I recognize the scope of
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  what I can actually influence and handle.
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  Can I encourage you? Just because you or I have a
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  cell phone or have a computer, it does not mean that we should
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  seek omniscience. God knows everything he desires
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  to know, but he can handle it because he's God.
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  You and I cannot handle it. We can't look at all of human
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  evil and human suffering and not be deeply, tragically affected
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  by it. Now I grow up in it's kind of
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  the early stages of what's termed Gen.
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  Z, which was really one of the first totally online generations
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  and Generation Alpha, which I think ends, I think it might end
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  about 20-30 or so. I, I'd have to look back at the,
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  you know, charts of what the various generations are, are
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  named and what those cut offs are.
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  When people in my generation, when they look at the world,
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  there is an assumption that you have to know everything and that
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  you have to have an answer and an opinion and the right opinion
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  on every single issue. And so they say you have to be
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  an expert on the Middle East and the history and every war crime
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  and every atrocity that has happened there.
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  And you have to have the right opinion.
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  And if you ask 5 different people, you're going to get 5
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  different answers on what those solutions are.
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  You hear about, you know, politics in America.
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  There are just countless assumptions about what companies
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  are to blame for a whole variety of things, what politicians are
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  ultimately culpable in different errors in the world.
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  And frankly, I want to tell you as a pastor, as someone that is
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  part of Gen. Z, as someone that has seen what
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  terminal omniscience quote, UN quote has meant for my
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  generation, you cannot handle it.
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  You have to turn off the news. You have to not see everything
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  that happens in our world. I'm not saying that as in just
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  bury your head in the sand and you'll be fine.
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  No, there are some things that we truly probably need to know
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  that will affect our lives day-to-day.
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  As a pastor, there's an element of it where I need to stay a
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  little bit abreast of what is happening so that I can, Lord
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  willing, when people have questions, when they have
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  concerns, when they, you know, want to know what is God's word
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  say? Hopefully I can share from
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  Scripture what Scripture has to say.
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  But none of us were made for omniscience.
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  And so I want to encourage you, don't let here, as David says,
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  don't let your eyes be lifted up too far to where you attempt to
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  take God's throne of omniscience, because here's the
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  difference. God is all powerful.
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  God is sovereign. He's in control.
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  He's the one that can make all things right and we cannot.
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  We are not sovereign. And so as we see all of
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  humanity's evil and as we see the brokenness, it can only
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  cause despair and heartbreak in US.
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  However, God is the one that he's not fazed by it because he
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  has his plan and he is moving all things for his glory and for
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  the good of those that love him. And so I want to encourage you
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  with that. Let God be God.
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  Let God be omniscient. And with your media intake,
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  endeavor to leave omniscience to God if it does not affect your
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  day-to-day. If it does not, if there's
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  nothing that you can do about it, then I want to encourage you
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  hand it off to the Lord and say, God, you take care of this.
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  I can't. And so I can be grieved at sin,
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  I can be grieved at death, I can be maddened at evil, that Jesus
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  will one day come and judge. But I cannot stay in any of
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  those states. The only state that I can choose
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  to be in is to surrender my emotions ultimately to the Lord,
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  to say, God, you see, would you comfort, would you encourage,
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  would you judge and take vengeance on?
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  And that would be a very wise thing for us to pursue here.
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  At the end of verse one, David says I do not get involved with
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  things too great or too wondrous for me.
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  I'm going to look at this word involved here.
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  This is to go to walk, to behave in a specific place.
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  He says, I'm not going to things that here great is Goodall.
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  This is something that's it's like large, it's big.
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  So the word, the the passage of scripture that I know most from
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  this word is the book of Jonah where it's like 13 different
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  times the word great shows up that it was a great fish, a
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  great city, a great storm, a great sin.
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  All of that is within that book. And so here David says there are
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  things that are just frankly, it's too big.
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  It's outside the scope of what I can do.
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  And so I am not going to go there.
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  I'm not going to get involved with it because I realize that
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  I'm not God and he is the only one that can handle that.
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  And then he says there are things even too wonderful for
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  me. I love that in our life stories,
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  God shows himself good time and time and time again.
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  But as God does that we, as we observe from the outside, will
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  not always see all of the good that takes place.
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  We won't see the full happy resolution to each story that we
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  pass on. I'm going to give one example
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  real quick. So I had one of my professors in
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  college was a man named Doctor Jim Shettler.
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  And he had a sermon that he preached essentially on not
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  taking up the offenses of others in a way that was unhealthy or
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  unproductive. So when you know, my friend Jim
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  and my friend Steve are at odds, well, I can be a peacemaker and
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  I can bring Jim and Steve together to go.
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  Listen, you love God, you love God, you love Steve, you love
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  Jim. And so we, I, I believe that you
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  guys, there's a misunderstanding right now, but you guys can
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  restore this friendship. That's a kind of good,
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  productive way to be involved to take up someone's offense that
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  you are working together for reconciliation.
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  There's sometimes though, where people just receive gossip from
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  others and so then they begin to bear the same grudge and hurt
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  towards someone that that the initial person did.
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  So Jim tells me about the bad things that Steve did.
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  And now both Jim and me are kind of have a chip on our shoulder
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  about Steve. We're a little embittered
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  against him while like, come on, Steve, that was a messed up
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  thing you did or you shouldn't have said that.
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  And So what Doctor Shuttler's message entailed was God might
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  have it so that Jim reconciles with Steve and there's grace and
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  there's forgiveness, and God's grace worked in an incredible
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  way. And so now Jim and Steve are
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  good. But if I'm not a part of all of
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  those conversations, then I might still carry a chip on my
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  shoulder against Steve that even the initial person that had the
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  offense, Jim, he's already let go.
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  He's already pardoned because he worked through all of that.
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  And so he had a phrase, don't leave town on someone else's red
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  wagon. He says, you know, leave town on
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  your own red wagon here. There are things that are
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  wonderful in life, great stories that are written that if we
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  attempt to be too involved, because we're not omnipresent,
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  we are not everywhere at all times.
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  God may be working wonderful stories in Africa.
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  He might be working great stories in Minnesota, He might
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  be working some amazing things down in Venezuela.
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  But because we are not omnipresent, we aren't seeing
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  all the wonderful things that God is doing.
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  And so we just see the catastrophe reel online.
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  And so we This is why I would say, let's make sure that we are
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  not spending inordinate amounts of time beholding things that
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  are far beyond the scope of what we can see or understand or deal
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  with, because we're not omniscient.
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  So we don't understand everything that God's doing.
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  And we are not omnipresent. So we don't see all the
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  wonderful ways that God is working and making our world at
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  peace. So here David, I'm going to read
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  now this whole verse as one Yahweh.
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  My heart is not proud. My eyes are not hot either.
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  They're not lifted up. I do not get involved with
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  things too great or too wondrous for me.
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  Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned
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  child with its mother. My soul is like a weaned child
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  that now when B or EV are hungry, they do not cry like
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  they used to cry as babies when they needed milk.
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  Now they might still whine and go, hey, I want Reese's Puffs or
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  whatever, but they do not cry in the way that they used to
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  because they have been weaned. And so here David says, God, I
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  trust in you. Like I hope I have a confident
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  expectation that you will take care of it all.
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  And so I don't have to worry about it.
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  I don't have to survey it all. I don't have to go there and get
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  involved and feel like I have to fix the world.
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  I can just be in my corner of the world doing what I'm
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  supposed to do. And my soul is quieted.
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  It's calmed as a result of the fact that I firmly believe you
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  are in charge. And if you will, Scripture often
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  speaks about both the milk and the meat of the Word of God.
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  And I think that we could draw that parallel here from first
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  Peter 2 and from Hebrews, I think it's Hebrews 6, where the
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  writer there mentions the meat of the word, the real substance,
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  that through relying on the truth of the Word of God, it can
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  bring peace into our crazy 21st century obsession with knowing
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  and having a solution for everything.
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  So what's the verse 3? Israel?
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  Put your hope in Yahweh both now and forever.
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  Put your hope in Yahweh both now and forever.
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  I love that we can have a confident expectation in God
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  because He's trustworthy and so we can tell that to as many
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  people as we want. David went through some terribly
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  hard things and if even his soul could be calmed and quieted
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  through meditating on who God is and what God is capable of, and
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  certainly we can experience that same piece as well.
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  This David that dodged giants and head hunting kings and you
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  know, 1000 different difficulties in his life.
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  He tells us you can have a peace filled soul when you realize God
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  is in control. God is working behind the scenes
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  and so you can just worry about your tiny portion of existence
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  in the universe and know that God is taking care of you and
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  he's taking care of everything. Thanks for tuning in today.
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  I hope you have a wonderful day. Next episode will be in Psalm 2.