We read together this morning Psalm 63. Psalm 63. The heading of the psalm is significant. A psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Psalm 63. This is the word of the Lord. O God, Thou art my God. Early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee. My flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is, to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after thee. Thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword. They shall be a portion for foxes. but the king shall rejoice in God. Everyone that sweareth by him shall glory, but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped. Thus ends our reading in sacred scripture. The text for the sermon is the first two verses. Oh God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is to see thy power and thy glory. So as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. People of God, the text for this sermon confronts us with a question this morning. For what are you thirsting today? Children, don't misunderstand. I'm not asking you what you're thirsty for, what drink you would like me to bring you, whether that's water or apple juice or something else. When you read in these verses about thirst, don't be thinking so much about thirst with your mouth and your tongue. The question is not about that. It is instead, what are we thirsting for with our minds? with our hearts, with our souls. We are always thirsting for something. That's how God made us. And that makes the question of this text a very important one for us to consider. People give a variety of answers to that question. Some people thirst for personal gain. And so they might try to fill their need by accumulating a great deal of wealth and stockpiling things or they might seek power and so they might be willing to run over anybody who stands in their way as they strive always to reach the top so that in that way they can have the personal gain for which they thirst. Others might seek personal gain through the praises of men, and so they might go after other religions where salvation is based on works, and so they accumulate all sorts of supposedly good deeds in order to attract people's attention and praises. Others thirst for pleasure, and so they might seek autonomy, the ability to decide for themselves what is and what is not good. Or they might seek their pleasure by sleeping around with whomever they desire. Or they might seek their pleasure by traveling and seeing the world. But what is your answer? And what is my answer this morning? What is the believers answer? It goes without saying that all of those answers that we just looked at a moment ago are improper. None of them is the right answer. Our text gives to us the proper answer. It is the believer's answer. In a word, God. We long and we thirst not for the things of this life, but for God. Call your attention then to the text with that theme, my longing and thirsting for God. First, the object of my longing. Second, the intensity of my longing. And finally, the possibility of my longing. The object of my longing, as our text states it, is God my God. David confesses, and we confess with him, a longing and a thirsting for God. He addresses God using the common name when he says, O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. O God. He uses the common name. The one that denotes that God is God alone. He is the Creator. He is the Ruler. He is the Lord. All are subject to Him and there is none beside Him. None of the gods of the heathen can compare to this God. But then he addresses that God. He says, O God, thou art my God. And now the emphasis changes just a little bit. This time, the word emphasizes that God is strong. He is the God of power, the God of might. Especially, of course, God reveals himself as that God of power. in the person of Jesus Christ with all the miracles and the mighty work of salvation that Christ has wrought. So David is saying this, the sovereign ruler of all that is, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the great and glorious God, that God is my strength. He is my power source. He is my might. He is my God. And that puts on the foreground immediately in this sermon the doctrine of the covenant. The covenant is the relationship of friendship that God establishes between Himself and us. It's first clear that there is a relationship going on here. The psalmist says that God is his God, and that's a personal confession. My God, David says, and we say it with him, obviously implying that David is also God's child, so that there's a familial tie or relationship there. That's always the language of the covenant in Scripture, isn't it? God says, I will be your God. You will be my people. There is a relationship and a connection. We'll say more about this later, but note also the reflection of the relationship in David's longing in verse 1. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee. That's the language of someone who loves another being. He thirsts and he longs for him. He has a relationship with this God. And second, the text brings out that God is the one who establishes this covenant relationship. The fact that God is my God presupposes that that is the case because I never chose Him. I never chose to become His. It's only on account of His pure love and mercy that I am His and He is mine. And the names for God bring that out as well, don't they? How could the God who is the sovereign ruler of all that is, the Creator, the Lord, how could that God ever be indebted to me? How could the God who is the strong and the mighty One, all-powerful, how could He need to wait upon me to act first, to choose Him, to move first in salvation? It could not be. Because God is who He says He is, only He can establish the covenant of grace. What a blessed reality. David knows himself to be God's child. and he knows God to be his God, which is to say he confesses, and we confess with him, the knowledge of a relationship between himself and God. We, too, are the friends of this Most High Creator, Sovereign Lord God. Children and young people If you ever feel as though you don't have very many friends in the church or in the school or in general in life, then remember that you are the friend of God. That is the highest and the most blessed relationship that anyone could ever possibly have. Why God? It might seem as though David should, or at least could, long for any number of other things. First, understanding the context is very important here. David is on the run. If the heading for the psalm is accurate, and we don't have any reason to think that it isn't, then David writes this psalm while he has fled out into the wilderness of Judah. It's very likely that he was running away from Saul or from Absalom at this time. But in either case, he's fleeing from those who are seeking to take his life. You can read that history in Scripture in 1 Samuel and in 2 Samuel. 1 Samuel 23, for example, records David fleeing away from King Saul into the wilderness of Ziph. And in that chapter, verse 14 indicates that he was forced to remain there for quite some time. And that, or at least if not that, then a very similar set of circumstances in David's life, was what prompted him to write down the words of Psalm 63. He probably felt alone, cast off by all of his friends and his family. It's true that in 1 Samuel 23 specifically, he was joined by some 600 others who were loyal to him as he fled from Saul, but the reality is that he was a hunted man. So regardless of how many people were with him, he would have felt a sense of being alone in the world, hunted, hated, rejected, and he was in the wilderness. No doubt, he is running out of food and running out of drink for himself and for his supporters. And given all of these realities, wouldn't it make sense for David to say that he longs for something else first? Clearly, he has great needs from a physical and an earthly point of view. He needs food. He needs water. He needs shelter. He needs clothing. He has physical needs. And then on top of all of that, he of course would have loved to have more popular support, to have more men fighting with him. He would have loved to even just have his family by his side. So why long for God in his circumstances? That's a reflection and it is an outworking of the covenant relationship that he had with God. That is why he longed for God. The Lord was David's friend. He was the one who had established that relationship with him and who promised to give to David a deeper knowledge of him. And that is the highest and the most blessed relationship that anyone could ever have. How then could David want and long for his earthly family and friends more How could he long for, thirst for food and drink and shelter, the things to sustain this present life, more than he longed and thirsted for his God, the ruler, the sovereign, the Lord? David knew. that knowing God and having a relationship with God is in fact life itself. That's why he says right after the text in verse three, thy loving kindness is better than life. Better even than life itself is the loving kindness, the mercy of God. And therefore, he says, my lips shall praise thee. On a related note, we can also say that David longed for God because he knew his need. He would die without food or water just like anybody else. David was a real man. And just like us real men and women and children, he would die apart from food and drink. That was a very real possibility for him out there in the lonely wilderness. But he also knew that far more important than his physical sustenance was his spiritual sustenance. Without God, David would also die, and it would not be a quick death by starvation or an even quicker death by thirst. It would be eternal death in hell. He knew that. Apart from God, that is the fate of all people. And so David was concerned not just about his physical body, but he was concerned about his soul. There are many different things for which people long in this life, as we've already seen. And we need to reject the approach of the world that makes these things to be idols. But it might appear as though, like David, we have any number of other needs that are more pressing, all manner of needs that are of such a character that we really, really need to be longing for those things so that you might have great financial trouble right now. You might be having a great difficulty just making ends meet from week to week, living paycheck to paycheck, as we say. And is not money a great need in that situation? You or a loved one might find yourself or themselves lying sick unto death on a hospital bed. And is not health a very important need in that situation? Or perhaps you want desperately to be married and so your tendency is to long for a spouse. And is that not a good desire? Well, of course it is. Of course these things are needs. And of course they are good desires. So why long for God? By God's grace, like David, we have friendship with God. He is our covenant friend. How then shall we say that we need a spouse more than we need and long for God? And then we can also say this, just like David, so too for us, by God's grace, we also know our need. Our greatest need is not anything physical. It is salvation from our sin. So how shall we say that we need, that we long more for healing from our illness or for healing for our loved one more than we long for God. How shall we say that we need money for our financial difficulty more than we need and long for God? We can't say that. And by the grace of God, we don't say that. By the grace of God, we long and we thirst for Him. and we long with intensity. The meaning of longing in this text is love. David's longing is an expression of his love. The believer's love for God is his or her deep desire to know God and to serve God in response to God's love. A deep desire to know God and to serve God in response to his love. Because God's love is always first. It's the love of God that sets our love in motion toward him. Which, again, is implied in the text because David's expression of longing for God only comes after he says, Oh God, thou art my God. And as we saw, that indicates God has made him to be his child. It's necessary that it be that way. Apart from God's loving us and His love coming to us first, none of us would ever love God so that His love for us produces in us love for Him. So that our love is only a response to His. But in response, we do genuinely love Him. We genuinely desire, deeply desire to know him and to serve him. And that comes out in the text in multiple ways. David expresses his deep knowledge or his deep desire to know God and his deep desire to serve God. In the first place, when he says in verse one, early will I seek thee. The word here really has two separate ideas. One of them is to seek early. This word is actually related to the word for the dawn, so that it might even be translated more strongly than what it is. Something like, I will seek thee at dawn, or I will seek thee at first light, perhaps. From the moment of the rising of the sun, David says, I will be seeking my God, which underscores the sincerity of his longing. The same word, though, can also be used to mean to seek intently, and that really is the focus here. David searches God out. He's not content just to know a little bit about God, but he wants always to know him more. And then second, we see a reflection of David's longing for God in what he says after that in verse one. My soul thirsteth for thee. One of the biblical words for love really has this as its meaning. It is to pant after and so to long for the object of one's love. To thirst for them, that's longing. That's a great, great desire. just as your body needs water in order to survive, and your body shows you that you need a drink by way of thirst, so David's soul needs spiritual water to survive. And so his soul thirsts. Psalm 42 was probably written either at the same time as Psalm 63, or in a very similar set of circumstances in David's life. And in Psalm 42, David expresses this same idea. Psalm 42 verse 2 says, My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? And then also, we see a reflection of David's longing, his love for God, in the remainder of verse one. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Obviously, that's similar to the last phrase we were just looking at, but this does add a couple of noteworthy points. One being that he says his flesh longs for God as well, not just his soul, but his flesh too, his body. The point then is that the whole person of the believer longs for God. David says that in every part of his being, he pines after the Lord. And then, his circumstances also underscore his longing even more. He says, My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. The imagery there is very important. He is in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Remember the context. David has fled into the wilderness of Judah. He's in a desert landscape, a land of drought and sun and sun and more sun and very little rain. This is a land where there is no water, more literally, where there is failure of water. Water has failed here. All the springs have run dry. All the wells have run dry. All the streams have run dry. The ground is baked and cracked. The plants are dying. There is no rain. Looking out, At an actual desert landscape before him, David makes that the imagery for his own soul's state in his present circumstances. My soul longs as a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. We can apply all of these things to ourselves, first by saying that God's love is always first. We may never get the idea that our love comes before God's, that we choose Him before He acts toward us, which rules out any form of Arminianism or any semi-Pelagian theology which would teach that the sinner cooperates with God in salvation. That denies the words of David here. who only expresses his longing for God after having expressed that he is God's child and God is his. But then, more to the point, as far as application goes, seeking God early and seeking him at dawn, in fact, is the believer's routine. Seeking him intently, morning breaks, and we begin the day With God, we commune with him through the reading of his word, through meditation on his word, and we do that on a daily basis. The child of God loves to seek after God, even in the early hours of being awake. And what a good thing it is, isn't it? To begin our day that way. To have private devotions before we get into all the busyness of life. Doing that sets the tone for the whole day. And what a good thing it is to be genuinely applying ourselves to it as we do that, so that we're truly focused on what we're doing, meditating on the Word of God, and in that way, mining the Scripture's depths for ourselves. When we do that, we seek God. Intently, like David, we should not be satisfied with knowing God just a little bit and nothing more. Remember, longing for God is love for God, and when you truly love someone, that's not what it looks like. You're not content to just know a tiny bit about them. What husband that genuinely loves his wife is content to know only the bare minimum that there is to know about her, just a surface level sort of knowledge. That's not a loving husband. A loving husband wants always to know his wife more. Truly to love someone means knowing them deeply. and wanting always to come to a fuller knowledge of them, and neither do we stop at knowing God only a little bit. When we truly love God, we want to know Him more, and always to know Him more deeply, more fully. Maybe that idea brings some of us to shame today. Shame, as we recognize how far short we fall in this area, how often we have neglected personal devotions, or how often we have done them only in a superficial sort of way, just checking off a box to say we did it, and then moving on without another thought. We always have to fight our old man from the moment that we wake in the morning if we're going to begin our day this way, exactly because the old man knows that this sets the tone for the whole day, and he doesn't want that. But if that's the case for us today, if we feel that shame and that discouragement because we've neglected devotions or we've done them only superficially, just going through the motions, then Let's be encouraged. Let's not be beaten down by this text and filled with shame and led to despair, but let's be encouraged. Encouraged to start anew. Encouraged to rededicate ourselves to doing devotions daily or to seeking God intently as we do those devotions. Our souls, just like David's soul, thirst for God. And again, water quenches physical thirst. Apart from water, humans only can survive for a few days at the most. And our souls, apart from God, are dry. They're in need of spiritual refreshment. And the only beverage that can satisfy that can slake that burning thirst is the living water of the Lord Jesus Christ and of His gracious gospel, He of whom when we drink, we thirst no more and we long no more. Without that life-giving water, Christ, we die. Have you ever seen what happens, children, to your lawn when it doesn't rain for a long time? The grass gets all brown and shriveled up and it dies. That's what happens to our hearts. That's what happens to our souls when we don't get the living water of Jesus Christ and of His gospel, when we don't get spiritual refreshment from God. Without Him, our souls shrivel up and they start to die. And we turn to other things in order to find our needed relief and refreshment. We've already taken note of some of the things that a person might turn to. Power, autonomy, wealth, and all the rest. But we all know that none of those things can actually ultimately satisfy us. We know that. It's foolishness. Remember those words. of the church, Father Augustine, the well-known words, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. No matter what beverage you might sip on for a while, you'll never find relief for your burning thirst anywhere but in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is God who satisfies. The context brings that out. Verse 5, my soul shall be satisfied, verse 6, when I remember thee upon my bed. It's when we think on God and on the things of God that we have satisfaction for our hungry and thirsty souls. And like David, we also live in a desert wilderness, a land of spiritual drought where no water is. Remember what we just said, children, about our lawns, what happens to them when it doesn't rain for a long time? They get all brown and they shrivel up. That's what this world is like, spiritually. There's nothing here for us. in the world's solutions to our soul thirst. It's a sin-cursed earth, a land of drought, where there is failure of water. All the streams have run dry. All the reservoirs are empty. There is nothing there. Our whole being longs for something more. And so, like David, cry out to God to fill us, to satisfy our hunger and our thirst. Again, that's what personal devotions are. They are us crying out to God and asking him to fill our hearts, to give us that which we need for the day that is before us. As the only one who can provide water in a world that's overcome by spiritual drought. We also find satisfaction though in other ways in the preaching and in the sacraments, the means of grace. We say in the Lord's Supper form that Christ satisfies our hungry and thirsty souls through the Lord's Supper as surely as we eat the bread and drink the wine. Our longing, remember, love, For God is a deep longing to know God and to serve God. Both of those things we see in the means of grace. We get both of those things. Knowledge of God and knowledge about how to serve Him. In the means of grace we, through the preaching, come to know God more and even through the sacraments in measure. And then we see a knowledge of how we should express our gratitude to God for the great love that He has shown to us. And then the Word of God quenches our thirst also when others bring it to us, not just when we read it for ourselves, not just when we sit under the preaching, but also when someone brings that Word in our circumstances. That could be the pastor or the elders bringing God's Word in a time of trouble. It could be a friend who knows what we are experiencing. David had that in 1 Samuel 23. You read of Jonathan, his good friend, coming to him in the wilderness to comfort him and build him up. And how did he do it? He did it with God's Word. 1 Samuel 23, 16 says that he strengthened his hand in God. The purpose of this is to see God's power and glory. That's how the wording of the text goes. And that, too, is part of the intensity of longing. David's purpose brings out the intensity of his longing. He longs to see God's power and glory, verse 2 says. God's power first. God's power is his omnipotence. It is his ability to do whatever he pleases. If he is God, he must be able to do as he pleases. If he can't, then he is no longer God. But why did David want to see that? Why does he say this here? I long and I thirst for God as in a dry and thirsty land where there's no water to see God's power. Why? Why the power of God? Remember the context again. He's in the wilderness, fleeing from people who are seeking to take his life. And in the face of those troubles, he seeks and he thirsts for God in order to see God's power. That's how the end of the Psalm fits in. We read there of David's confident expectation, his hope, and it is that, verse nine, His foes would go to the lower parts of the earth. Verse 10, they would fall by the sword. Verse 11, their mouths would be stopped. All of those things are part of his hope so that God showing his power will mean, at least in part, God defeating David's foes. But more than that, More importantly, David wants to see God's power because that means defeat of his greatest foe, his sin. Verse 3, David speaks of God's loving kindness or his mercy as better than life. God has mercy on poor sinners. And that too, David has seen in the sanctuary, in the holy place. And now he longs to see it again. Much the same is true for all of us. To be sure, we do see God's power in his defeat of the foes of the church. The church's foes are always opposing her, and so they do all manner of different things to silence her and to afflict God's people. And when those assaults come, we thirst all the more for God. And seeing his power will be partially, at least, his defeat of those foes, but it's especially In the other respect, too, more importantly, we see the power of God in His Son. What's your greatest foe, and what's mine? It's your sin, and it's my sin. It's your sinfulness and it's my sinfulness so that we need deliverance just like David did. The spiritual enemy of our sin and sinfulness makes us guilty before God and we don't have the power to do anything about it. We don't have the power to deliver ourselves from death but Christ does and he did it by his death. He delivered us from death so that our longing for God in order to see his power is our cry to him that he would powerfully save. He does that. And so in thanksgiving, we strive all the more to serve him, which comes out in the context as well. David said, verse four, thus will I bless thee while I live. And in verse eight, my soul followeth hard after thee. But then he also says that his purpose is to see God's glory. God's glory is all of His infinite perfections radiating out from Him. That's the glory of God, which comes out again in verse 3 when he speaks of God's loving kindness or mercy, which is an attribute of God, as better than life. How glorious. Have you ever seen The sun shining down through a cloud where you can pick out the individual rays of light penetrating down through the gaps in the cloud cover and there's this brilliant contrast between the gray of the cloud and the brightness of the light. in a very dim way that illustrates what we're talking about here with the glory of God, all of his infinite perfections radiating out from him. They shine forth like the rays of the sun in our darkness, proceeding from him in all of his outgoing works. But now why? Why would David want to see that? Again, remember the context. To see God's glory is to know Him, which is part of what we desire in our longing for God, to know Him and to serve Him. And that's true because His glory is His perfections or His attributes radiating from Him. And as we say in theology, God is His attributes. They are who He is. So that when Moses said to God, show me Thy glory, God went past him saying His own name. He said, I will show you my name. And his name was a list of his attributes, merciful, and gracious, and so forth. That was God's name. That's who he is. So to see God's glory is to see him as he is. And what a comfort to David in the wilderness. To see God's glory meant to see him for who he really is, merciful, just, sovereign, glorious, powerful, and all the rest. In the midst of all his doubts and troubles, how comforting to be reminded of those things, and so too for us. In all our troubles and all of our trials, we want to see God's glory. We want to see Him as He really is. All of His perfections shining out to encourage us. and to comfort us. And just as with God's power, we see that glory most clearly in the person of God's Son, Jesus Christ. He is the King of glory, the one who is highly exalted at God's right hand and who will one day come again to judge all men. And on that day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Seeing God's glory, all we can say is what David said in verse 3. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall pray. So what's the possibility? How could it be that we long for God? How could it be that David longed for God? In the first place, it's prompted by prior experience. That's what David is saying in verse 2 when he says, to see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. On the one hand, he's making a comparison here. He's saying, just as I've seen before, now I want to see it again. But he's also making a contrast. He's saying, I've seen before in a more limited sort of way. That's what that word means. And now I want to see in full. That's the meaning of the other word for seeing. I've seen before, only in part. I want to see now the fullness. And he says he's seen it in the sanctuary. It was especially in public worship, the holy place. that David saw God's glory and his power. And in light of the historical context, David has been absent from corporate worship probably for many, many weeks. He has been unable to go to God's house with God's people. He feels the weight of that and he longs to be back there. We might say that he's homesick for the church. And again, there are applications. We've seen God's glory and power in the past, and now we long to see again. But now, we long to see in full, so that our hope in all our trials is not ultimately in this life, it's in the next. When we will see in full, much more fully, much better than we do at present in this life. And then too, We see this power and glory of God more than anywhere else right here, right here in the holy place, in the sanctuary, in God's house. It's here that we have the preaching and that we have the sacraments, the means of grace, where more clearly than anywhere else, we see and we hear the power and the glory of God and of the gospel of his son, Jesus Christ. When we are away from the church for a time, like David was, we feel the weight of that. Have you ever missed a Sunday of church, whether because you were out of town, maybe on a vacation, or because you were sick all day, or maybe you just sinfully skipped, and then afterward felt spiritually thirsty, and maybe even sort of felt gross. We long to be there. We're homesick for our church and our church family. And the reason for that is past experience. We know that it's in the church, in the house of God, that we more clearly than anywhere else see the power and glory of the Lord. Ultimately, though, the possibility is God's grace, and that, in closing, it must be the grace of God, because we would never long for Him of ourselves. We could not otherwise be His people. Man is sinful. He does not long after God. Like the wicked world, if left to ourselves, we would long after all manner of other things, because my old man hates God. My old man would never long for Him. But we've been changed by the gospel. so that we're not just the old man anymore. We have the new man, too. And by God's grace, that new man longs for the Lord. My strength is not in those things, the things of this life. The old man thinks so, but the new man knows that's not where I find strength. That's not where I find satisfaction. I find those things only in God, so that I seek Him. I thirst for Him. He satisfies my longings in the spiritual wasteland that is this life. Having been changed by the gospel, God is our God, and we are His people. And so we return to where we began, the covenant of grace. He is mine. I am His. Friends. Friends love each other, and so they long for each other. And so we long and thirst for God in this land of drought. And when God fills us with the knowledge of himself, he satisfies our thirst, even already in this life. But that just makes us long even more for the next. where the reality will be this. Revelation 7, 16 and 17. Listen. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them and shall lead them onto living fountains of waters. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Amen. Father, we long for thee. We pray, fill us with thyself. Fill us with the gospel of grace and satisfy our hungry and thirsty hearts. Do that today by thy word that we have heard and do that all our days for Jesus' sake. Amen. Psalter 163. All three stanzas. ♪ We adore Him, yes, we do ♪ Is quiet night to me. is mine, my darkness fades to light. When joyful mem'rations end, the harvest is open wide. I shall repeat, my soul devised to follow. Still closer to thy side my prayers are near. ♪ I, I am ♪ ♪ My people shall rejoice in God ♪ ♪ My saints in glory stand ♪ ♪ Learn for me wondrous things ♪ ♪ Ask me this great and glorious thing ♪ ♪ Forevermore, amen ♪ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.