A Word in Season: Satisfied in God (Psalm 63:1-2)

Media Gratiae

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Most of us don't really know what it's like to be really thirsty. For most of us we probably take pains to avoid even a hint of dehydration by ensuring that we take on plenty of fluids, we drink especially plenty of water.

00:16

And yet perhaps there have been times when we've known what it is to have a raging thirst that we need to slake.

00:23

But how much do we take notice of the thirst of our souls? How concerned are we to keep our spirits properly hydrated in that sense?

00:34

Psalm 63 is the cry of a man who wants the satisfaction of God, who wants his soul to be satisfied.

00:43

He begins, Oh God, you are my God. Early will I seek you. My soul thirsts for you.

00:51

My flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

00:56

So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. Now it's quite possible that when he wrote this psalm

01:04

David was physically in the wilderness and perhaps suffering from deprivations including water which would have given him a physical thirst.

01:15

But David moves from the literal to the metaphorical and he understands that it's not just his body which is deprived, it is his soul which is deprived.

01:24

His whole humanity longs not just for physical refreshment but for spiritual refreshment.

01:31

And it's so easy for us to be concerned for our bodies and to neglect our souls.

01:37

We forget perhaps that this world is a wilderness. It's a dry and thirsty land in which there is no water.

01:45

There's nothing here ultimately that can satisfy our thirst. Perhaps you are seeking something that will.

01:54

Perhaps you're looking in a thousand thousand different places and you're trying to find something that will satisfy your raging spiritual thirst, your desire for something that is substantial and sweet, something that will truly satisfy you, something that will stop you always moving on to the next experience, pursuing the next desire that you might at last find some kind of peace and say at last

02:23

I found something meaningful, purposeful, truly satisfying, something that takes up and properly employs all the faculties that I have as a creature and though you may not know it as a creature made in the image of God.

02:40

And you'll not find anything in this world that will do that. The great African Christian Augustine said that his heart would be restless until it found its rest in God and what he said for himself is true of every human being.

02:57

There is, if you will, a God -shaped void in the heart of someone who does not know

03:03

God. We've been made for communion with him and without him we must always remain unsatisfied and that's why if you're not a

03:13

Christian you will be always looking for something that does satisfy and you'll never find it outside of God himself.

03:22

But even as a believer there are seasons and experiences where we, perhaps because of what happens to us, what happens in us, what we ourselves do, when we may feel at a distance from God.

03:37

And too easily we also go looking for the satisfaction that we need in another place.

03:44

But David knows where to look. He's learned by happy experience where God is to be found.

03:52

He knows once what it was, now though he is in exile, to have worshipped

03:58

God in the sanctuary. For David that would have been the tabernacle, it would have been the place where God made himself known, the place where the power and the glory of God was revealed and symbolized in some of the external surroundings.

04:15

And David is in effect saying that though he may not be able to find it there because of his circumstances, yet it is the

04:22

God who satisfies his power and his glory that David still desires.

04:29

And that should be our desire. And so he says, early will I seek you.

04:35

And that should be our declaration too, that quickly, diligently and fervently, with the first and best of our energies and expectations, we should go to God.

04:47

To God as he makes himself known in glorious power in his beloved son Jesus Christ, to go by the quickest, shortest, sweetest, surest route, to have our souls satisfied by the power and the glory of God.

05:03

So let us seek him today. And when we find him, let us praise him and satisfy ourselves in all that he is in himself and for us.