This Psalm, with its passion of love and mystic rapture, is a monument for us of how the writer's sorrows had brought to him a closer union with God, as our sorrows may do for us, like some treasure washed to our feet by a stormy sea. The key to the arrangement of the Psalm will be found in the threefold recurrence of an emphatic word. In the first verse we read, "My soul thirsteth for Thee;" in the fifth verse, "My soul shall be satisfied;" in the eighth verse, "My soul followeth hard after Thee." These three points are the turning-points of the Psalm; and they show us the soul longing, the longing soul satisfied, and the satisfied soul still seeking.
I. We have the soul longing for God. (1) This longing is not that of a man who has no possession of God. Rather is it the desire of a heart which is already in union with Him for a closer union; rather is it the tightening of the grasp with which the man already holds his Father in heaven. All begins with the utterance of a personal, appropriating faith. (2) Upon that there are built earnest seeking, expressed in the words "Early" that is to say, "Earnestly" "will I seek Thee," and! the intensest longing, breathing in the pathetic utterance, "My soul thirsteth for Thee," etc. (3) Notice what it is, or rather whom it is, that the Psalmist longs for. "My soul thirsts for Thee."All souls do. Blessed are those who can say, "Thou art my God." (4) Notice when it was that this man thus longed. It was in the midst of his sorrow. (5) This longing, though it be struck out by sorrow, is not forced upon him for the first time by sorrow. The longing that springs in his heart is an old longing: "So have I gazed upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory." (6) This longing is animated by a profound consciousness that God is best: "Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life." (7) This longing is accompanied with a firm resolve of continuance: "Thus will I bless Thee while I live."
II. In the second portion of the Psalm, which is included in the next three verses, we have the longing soul satisfied. (1) The fruition of God is contemporaneous with the desire after God. (2) The soul that possesses God is fed full. (3) The satisfied soul breaks into the music of praise. (4) This satisfaction leads to a triumphant hope. The past of the seeking soul is the certain pledge of its future.
III. The final section of the Psalm gives us the satisfied soul still following after God. The word translated "followeth" here literally means to cleave or to cling. (1) "My soul cleaveth after God." Desire expands the heart; possession expands the heart. More of God comes when we can hold more of Him, and the end of all fruition is the renewed desire after further fruition. (2) There is also very beautifully here the co-operation and reciprocal action of the seeking soul and the sustaining God. We hold, and we are held. (3) The soul thus cleaving and following is gifted with a prophetic certainty. David's certainty of the destruction of his foes is the same triumphant assurance, on a lower spiritual level, as Paul's trumpet-blast of victory, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" etc.
A. Maclaren, Christ in the Heart,p. 243.
References: Psalms 63:2. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 251.Psalms 63:3. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages from the Psalms,pp. 162, 170. Psalms 63:7. H. Allon, Congregationalist,vol. viii., pp. 305, 820; J. Armstrong, Parochial Sermons,p. 76; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 559; W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 214.Psalms 63 A. Maclaren, Life of David,p. 250. Psalms 65:1; Psalms 65:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 1023.