The Heart of Humility and Simplicity

Series: How To Have a Quiet Heart (Psalm 131)

“Find Psalm 131. Go home and read it. Read it in every translation you can find. Pick one that you especially like and memorize it. And then start quoting that psalm, and quote it over and over and over and over again until it becomes a part of you.”

If you could describe most of our lives as women, you would not describe most of us as having a quiet heart. We tend to be frazzled, frenetic, frantic, frustrated, fragile, and maybe a few other adjectives thrown in there that you can think of.

But a quiet heart? I mean, we’re so stinking busy! How can you have a quiet heart with the pace that most of us keep? And then there’s pain and suffering and problems and these things that get us in turmoil inside. So this passage directs us to some qualities that need to be true if we’re to have a quiet heart in responding to life as it is on this fallen planet.

One of the translations that I’ve referred to gives a title to this psalm that is: “Simple Trust in the Lord.” This psalm takes us back to that simple trust in the Lord. So we’re going to see in the first verse the heart attitude of humility.

We’ll see also in the first verse the heart attitude of simplicity. Then we’ll see how humility and simplicity lead to quietness, and that will be the focus of verse 2.

The focus of verse 3 is trust. Trust in the Lord, and that is the bottom line. We tend to think in the middle of life’s storms and problems, “Okay, I know I need to trust in the Lord, but I need something else. I need something more. That’s not enough.”

I want to tell you ladies: It is enough because He is enough. There is not a storm you can go through that ultimately the answer for you is not, “Trust in the Lord.”

The first quality of humility we see beginning in verse 1: “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty.” This psalm, this prayer, is addressed to the Lord.

David says in this open, transparent, outpouring of his heart to the Lord, “Lord, as You already know—and if I’m not seeing it correctly, I know that You’ll show me—Lord, my heart is not haughty nor mine eyes lofty.”

I see in there a humility that goes two directions: First, a heart that is humble toward God, and then a heart that is humble toward others. David says to God, “My heart is not haughty.” That’s my heart attitude toward God. That word haughty means “to soar; to be lofty; to mount up; to be proud; to raise up to great heights.”

David is saying:

• God, I know who I am compared to You, and I know I’m nothing compared to You.
• I don’t esteem myself more highly than I should. I have a proper estimation of my worth and my value.
• I’m not self-absorbed.
• I’m not easily offended.
• I don’t get depressed when I get overlooked or mistreated.
• I don’t get elated when others pat me on the back or approve of me.
• My happiness, my well being, is not dependent on others’ view of me.
• My heart is not haughty toward You.
• I’m not weighed down with selfish ambition or self-seeking or aspiring.

"Lord, I have a humble heart toward You.”

And then “my eyes are not lofty.” I think that has to do with the way we see others. You know the passage in Proverbs 6:17 where it talks about six, yea seven things the Lord hates? One of those things is a proud look. It’s the same phrase used here as “lofty eyes.” A proud look—lofty eyes—it’s an abomination to the Lord.

The Psalmist is saying here, “I don’t look down on others.” What are some of the ways we do that?

• belittling
• judging
• envy
• bitterness
• anger
• a competitive spirit
• domineering
• quick to find fault and point out the mistakes of your mate or your children or your pastor 

“My eyes are not lofty.” Quick to assume negatively on others? That’s lofty eyes.

I love this quote by Charles Spurgeon that I found while I was studying this passage. He said,

After all, Brothers and Sisters, we are nobodies and we have come from a long line of nobodies! . . . We all trace our line [up] to a gardener who lost his place through stealing his Master’s fruit—and that is the farthest we can possibly go.

So what do we have to be proud of? Look where we’ve come from! Look who we are compared to God. We are nothing. So for us to esteem ourselves better than others is so foolish. You’ll never have a quiet heart if you don’t have a humble heart. We need our pride, which comes naturally to all of us, to be subdued and conquered by Christ.

But a humble spirit is the basis for a peaceful spirit. If your heart is humble, then you can be quiet and composed within, even as the Psalmist was. You can have a peaceful spirit. You won’t be easily disturbed.

But if your heart is proud toward God or your eyes are lofty toward others, if you have an exalted, elevated opinion of yourself, then you’re going to be devastated by the storms. You’re going to live in turmoil within.

You’re going to get wounded when someone violates your rights or doesn’t treat you as they should. When someone gets in your space, you’re not going to have a quiet heart. You’re going to rush to defend yourself or rush to retaliate because your heart is proud and your eyes are lifted up.

So David starts by saying, “Lord, I’m approaching You from a position of humility. My heart is not haughty. My eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.”

This is one phrase that has become like a mantra to me. I find myself in so many situations of life now where I just have to step back and say, “This is too high for me. This is too great for me, so I am not going to let my heart get exercised over this thing that is too high for me.”

There are a lot of things like that. You see, we want to be able to manage everything. We want to be able to control everything. We want to be able to figure everything out. We want to know why everything is happening. We want to be able to put all the puzzle pieces together. But because God is God and we are not, there are “bajillions” of puzzle pieces that you and I will never, ever be able to put together this side of heaven.

We’re talking in this psalm about how to have a quiet heart, and one of things you need, as we said, is the heart of humility. But now we see that something you need is a heart of simplicity, the simple heart that says, “It’s okay not to be able to figure everything out. I don’t have to know it all. I don’t have to understand it all. I don’t have to figure it all out.”

“Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me.” I’ve quieted my heart. I don’t concern myself. I don’t “exercise myself,” the King James says there, “in great matters, or in things too high for me.”

This phrase “things too profound for me,” “things too high for me”—it’s a word that means “things that are extraordinary; things that are miraculous or astonishing; things that are beyond the bounds of human powers or understanding; inaccessible wonders; things we can’t possibly figure out.”

David says, “I’m not going to expend needless energy trying to figure out things that can’t be figured out.” Remember that passage in Proverbs 30 where the writer says, “Three things are too wonderful for me”—too amazing for me? It’s the same word.

Four [things that] I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin (vv.18-19).

There are some things that are just mysteries. I can’t figure them out. I can’t fathom them. Sometimes we spend a lot of needless emotional and mental energy and time and frustration trying to plumb the depths of something we can never understand.

It may be in the way of our trying to have personal ambition, trying to concern ourselves with things that are too high for us. Jeremiah in the Old Testament said to Baruch, “Are you seeking great things for yourself? Don’t seek them.”

• Don’t try to be lifted up.
• Don’t try to be exalted yourself.
• Don’t strive.
• Don’t be ambitious for great position or prominence, for great accomplishments.

“If only I could do something really valuable for the Lord. If only I could really have a lot of wealth or possessions. If only I could have lots of human approval or recognition.”

Those are things that are higher than what we should be grasping for. Charles Spurgeon, if I can quote him again, said,

Fill your sphere, Brother, and be content with it. If God shall move you to another, be glad to be moved. If He moves you to a smaller, be as willing to go to a less prominent place as to one that is more so. Have no will about it. Be a weaned child that has given up fretting, crying, worrying and leaves its mother to do just what seems good in her sight. When we are thoroughly weaned it is well with us—pride is gone and ambition is gone, too.

So you say, “This company just doesn’t value me the way they should. I have no place on this organizational chart. There’s a glass ceiling here, and they’re not letting me accomplish what I could in this organization.” Maybe you feel that way in your home. “I’m just not being allowed to use my gifts.”

Are you seeking great things for yourself? You’ll never have a quiet heart as long as you are. Don’t seek them. Let God be God. Let God place you where He wants to use you and have you serving in a way that’s pleasing to Him and doing what would be His will for your life.

You have to come to the place in your life where you are content to live with mystery. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t ask God what His purposes are, that you don’t ask God for light and understanding. If God shows you, great!

But He may not show you. You may never see and understand all the purposes. You will never see or understand all the purposes that God has for what He does in your life.

Spurgeon again said,

[It’s] foolish to try to know all the reasons of Divine Providence—why this affliction was sent and why that? . . . When we begin asking, "Why? Why? Why?" what an endless task we have before us! If we become like a weaned child we shall not ask, "why?" but just believe that in our heavenly Father’s dispensations there is a wisdom too deep for us to fathom.

That’s what the Scripture says in Deuteronomy 29:29. “The secret things belong to the Lord.” Let Him have them. Let there be some things that God knows that you don’t.

This little booklet that I read on Psalm 131 said, “Most of the noise in our souls is generated by our attempts to control the uncontrollable.” Isn’t that true? We try to manage something. We try to fix somebody. We try to change somebody. We try to control somebody. And we end up with this noise in our soul; not a quiet heart, but in turmoil.

When it comes down to it, we go back to Psalm 46:10-11.

“Be still [cease striving], and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Listen, if God is with you, if He is around you, if He is your fortress, if you have His presence in your life, you don’t have to understand everything. You can be still. You can have a quiet heart. You don’t have to live in turmoil because He is God. He is with you, and He is your fortress.