This Sunday we begin a series of sermons on the biblical image of us as little children and God as our loving parent. This week, we will look at Psalm 131. In this psalm, David compares himself to “a weaned child with its mother” – that is, like a child fully satisfied and fully at rest, content and secure on its mother’s breast. That is to be our attitude before our heavenly Father. To whet your appetite for the topic and to help you to begin to ponder these important truths, here is an excerpt from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on this psalm. – Coty

[David] tells us that he was not ambitious—“Neither do I exercise myself in great matters.” He was a shepherd. He did not need to go and fight Goliath, but when he did do it, it was because his nation needed him. He said, “Is there not a cause?” Otherwise he had stayed in the background. When he went into the cave of Adullam, he never lifted a hand to become king. He might have struck his enemy several times—and with one stroke have ended the warfare and seized the throne—but he would not lift a hand against the Lord’s Anointed, for, like a weaned child, he was not ambitious. He was willing to go where God would put him, but he was not seeking after great things.

Now, dear Brethren, we shall never be as a weaned child if we have high notions of what we ought to be and large desires for self. If we are great men in our own esteem, of course we ought to have great things for ourselves. But . . . the more hungry a man is after this world, the less he pines after the treasures of the world to come. We shall not be covetous if we are like a weaned child. Neither shall we sigh for position and influence—whoever heard of a weaned child doing that? Let it lie in its parent’s bosom and it is content—and so shall we be in the bosom of our God.

Yet some Christian men seem as if they . . . cannot work with others, but must have the chief place. . . . Blessed is that servant who is quite content with that position which his master appoints him—glad to unloose the laces of his Lord’s shoes—glad to wash the saints’ feet. . . . Let us do anything for Jesus, counting it the highest honor, even, to be a doormat inside the Church of God, . . . so long as we may but be of some use to [others] and bring some glory to God. You remember the word of Jeremiah to Baruch? Baruch had been writing the roll for the Prophet and straightway Baruch thought he was somebody. He had been writing the Word of the Lord, had he not? But the Prophet said to him, “Seek you great things for yourself? Seek them not.” And so says the mind of the Spirit to us all. Do not desire to occupy positions of eminence and prominence, but let your soul be as a weaned child—not exercising itself in great matters.

Very often we seek after great approbation. We want to do great deeds that people will talk about and especially some famous work which everybody will admire. This is human nature, for the love of approbation is rooted in us. . . . But that man has arrived at the right position who . . . judges what is right before God and does it caring neither for public nor private opinion in the matter—to whom it is no more concern what people may say of an action which his conscience commends than what tune the north wind whistles as it blows over the Alps! He who is the slave of man’s opinions is a slave, indeed. . . . He who fears God needs fear no one else! . . .

Frequently, too, we exercise ourselves in great matters by having a high ambition to do something very wonderful in the Church. This is why so very little is done! The great destroyer of good works is the ambition to do great works! . . . The Brother who says, “Here is a district which nobody visits. I will do what I can in it”—he is probably the man who will get another to help him and another, and the work will be done! The young man who is quite content to begin with preaching in a little room in a village to a dozen, is the man who will win souls! The other Brother, who does not begin preaching till he can preach to 5,000 will never do anything—he never can. . . . O, dear Brother, if your soul ever gets to be as it ought, you will feel, “The least thing that I can do, I shall be glad to do. The very poorest and meanest form of Christian service, as men think it, is better than I deserve.” It is a great honor to be allowed to unloose the laces of my Lord’s shoes! . . . When we are thoroughly weaned it is well with us—pride is gone and ambition is gone, too. We shall need much nursing by One who is wiser and gentler than the best mother before we shall be quite weaned of these two dearly beloved sins.