O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.
The greatest things of the soul
I. The greatest hunger of the soul (Psalms 63:1). The soul wants God, as the thirsty land the refreshing showers, as the opening flower the sunbeam.
II. The greatest faith of the soul (Psalms 63:3). Lovingkindness is indeed better than life; it is independent, it is the cause of life, the redemption of life: It is lovingkindness that supplies the wants, gratifies the desires, develops the powers of life. All the elements of soul-joy,--gratitude, admiration, moral esteem, benevolence,--are awakened by lovingkindness. Lovlngkindness is heaven. Faith in this lovingkindness is the greatest faith--greatest because it is the most soul-sustaining, soul-inspiring, soul-ennobling.
III. The greatest exercise of the soul--praise. It is not a service, but a life. It is not that which merely “goeth forth “ in sacred music and on sacred occasions; but, as a sap in the trunk of the tree runs through all its branches and leaves and blossoms, so true praise runs through all the activities of human life.
IV. The greatest satisfaction of the soul, David’s great desire was, “To see Thy power and glory as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary.” The blessedness of such a soul is ever with it. “The pleasure of the religous man,” says Dr. South, “is an easy and portable pleasure, such a one as he carries about in his bosom, without alarming either the rage or the envy of the world. A man putting all his pleasures into this one is like a traveller putting all his goods into one jewel; the value is the same, and the convenience greater.”
V. The greatest study of the soul (Psalms 63:6).
1. Man can think upon God--not merely on what He has done, but on what He is, Himself.
2. Man, can think upon God on his bed. When all other objects are shut out from him, when the beautiful earth and the star-spangled heavens are excluded, God cart be brought into the soul as the subject of thought. No study so quickening. The thought of God vivifies the faculties and stirs the heart. None so humbling, With God before the eye of thought, all egotism wanes and dies. None so spiritualizing. With God before the mind’s eye, fleets, armies, markets, governments, the solemn globe itself and all it contains, dwindle into insignificance. None so enlightening. The study of God lightens up all the fields truth. All the branches have their root in God.
VI. The greatest trust of the soul (Psalms 63:7). (Homilist.)
Ancient piety
This psalm was composed in the wilderness of Judaea, where the privations he sustained lent language to devotion, and ardours to piety. It shows David as he really was, resting On the promises of God, and supported by earnests and pledges of his future hope. It is a more luminous display of ancient piety.
I. Ancient piety is founded on filial confidence: “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” A culprit cannot have this confidence in his judge, because he comes clothed with power to punish his crimes. But here the psalmist says, “Thou art my God”; mine by covenant; mine by promises; mine by innumerable blessings and answers to prayer; yea, thou art mine by full consent of heart, and by daily acts of faith, and devotion to all Thy holy will.
II. Piety is supreme in its aspirations and desires after God: “My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh,” etc. A prince whose heart was less impressed with piety than David’s might have said, “These sands and deserts, which afford neither bread nor water, are not places for religion. Restore me to the throne, and then I will be religious; put the sceptre into my hand, and then I will defend the saint; give me the means, and then I will make all my people happy.” Ah! promises of future piety do not gain much credence in heaven. The bosom-sin which seduces the heart in the desert would seduce it on the throne. Not so David: he would bring burning coals to the altar, that its ardours might glow the more when allowed to tread the hallowed courts. He asks for God alone.
III. There is a reality in the consolations of religion; and a reality which surpasses all terrestrial enjoyments (Psalms 63:8).
IV. Piety: it abstracts the soul from the world; diverts it from the keen sensations of adversity; and so unites it to God, as to communicate a plenitude of Divine felicity (Psalms 63:5-6). Devotion elevates the soul to the true source of felicity, to drink of streams which are never dry. The mind, contemplating its God in the wide unfoldings of revelation, spontaneously kindles with the fire of the altar, and with grateful utterance of the heart.
V. The enjoyments of piety are inseparably connected with the exercises of devotion (Psalms 63:5). While the psalmist was musing on all the ways of providence and grace, the fire kindled in his heart.
VI. It was by these exercises, and by experience, that the ancient saints became decided in character, and attained the full assurance of faith and comfort (Psalms 63:7). Those who waver in the faith, and are inconstant in duty, and whose religion is only like a winter’s sun, find a failure in bringing the plants of grace to perfection.
VII. The brightest trait of piety is yet to come: she holds fast her assurance and joy in the times of affliction, and foresees deliverance before the arm of salvation can actually appear. In all her troubles, the voice of despair is never heard. She lays hold on the promises, and embraces the sure mercies of David. Hear the psalmist’s words in the wilderness, when all his enemies account him as lost and undone (Psalms 63:9-10). You who may be tried in various ways, and with the long-continued strokes of affliction, take to yourselves the full cup of comfort from the Word of the Lord. David’s God is your God, and He will deliver you in His own time, and in His own way, out of all your troubles. (James Sutcliffe, M. A.)
David’s owning of, and application to, God
I. His owning of God. “O God, thou art my God.” This was a good beginning, and a very fair preface to that which follows after. And it is that, indeed, which lays a foundation to all the rest. It is that which must be necessarily premised in all our addresses to God, and petitions for anything from Him.
1. It is an expression of faith. David calls God his God, as having taken Him so to be to him. God is in a common and general sense the God of all men, as He is said to be the Saviour of all men (1 Timothy 4:10). Namely, in regard of common and general blessings which He bestows upon them, of Creation and Providence. But for believers, and those which are His children, as the prophet David here was, He is their God more especially, in a more peculiar manner, above any besides; He is to them a God in covenant, engaging Himself to them, to do them good, and to provide graciously for them. And they call Him their God thus, and with this emphasis upon it.
(1) The benefit of it is very great; yea, in effect all things else. To say, God is ours, is to say, The whole world is ours, and a great deal more; it is to give us title to everything which may be requisite or convenient for us. Whatever we can desire or stand in need of, it is all wrapt up in this, “Thou art my God.”
(2) It is an hard thing, too, it is a matter of difficulty. There are two states and conditions in which it is very difficult to say, “O God, thou art my God”; the one is the state of nature and unregeneracy; and the other is the state of desertion, and the hiding of God’s face from the soul.
2. It is an expression also of obedience and self-resignation. Those whom God is a God to, He does bestow special favours upon them; and those to whom God is a God, they do return special services to Him; which is here now considerable of us. And so we shall find it to be all along in Scripture (Psalms 118:28).
II. His application to Him.
1. His resolution, what he would do, “Early will I seek Thee.” He promises to seek after God, and to do it betimes, which is an enlargement of it; where, while he signifies his own purpose, he does likewise signify our duty; while he tells us what shall be done by him, he tells us also what is to be done by us, namely, to seek the Lord early; not only to seek Him, but to be forward in our seeking of Him.
(1) Early as to the time of the day. Early, that is, in the morning. We should give God the first of our thoughts every day.
(2) Early, as to the time of our life, in the morning of our age. For men to defer their repentance and reformation to their old age, and when they have spent all their time before in the pursuit of their lusts, to think to seek God then, and that will be time enough;--that’s but a vain conceit and imagination in them.
(3) Early as to the time of God’s judgments, and providential dispensations. We must seek Him early, that is, before He fetches us to Him, and compels us, as it were, to the seeking of Him. It is better in regard of piety, and it is better in regard of safety. It is more ingenuity in us in respect of God, and it is more wisdom in us in respect of ourselves. For hereby we save both Him and ourselves a great deal of labour, which otherwise He is put unto with us; and we may escape a great deal of smart which otherwise through our own wilful-nose and neglect happens unto us.
2. His intimation of the state and temper which he was now in, or the ground and reason of his resolution.
(1) The object of his desire was God Himself. As he is in a state of darkness, so he longs for God in the clearer evidence and more comfortable assurance of His favour and good-will towards him. As he is in a state of weakness, so he thirsts for God in She impartment of more of His grace, and strength, and assistance to him. As he is in a state of strangeness, some kind of distance and alienation from God; so he does also long for Him in the intercourse of communion with Him.
(2) The intention of his desire. His own necessities, and the sense and apprehension of them. This puts him upon this desire. A good Christian hath so much need of God, as that he cannot be well satisfied without Him. The amiableness of the object does provoke and excite the desire. God being so exceedingly lovely and admirable, as indeed He is in His own nature, it cannot but draw on those which do discern it, very much to desire it; and there’s experience also in it which does promote it, and help it on.
3. The subject of the desire, which is here signified to be the soul and the flesh; hit soul properly, his flesh by way of sympathy with it; they are both of them in it.
(1) In the midst of any outward and temporal deficiencies, we should consider and reflect upon our spiritual.
(2) The best way to correct and qualify our desires as to temporals, is to fasten them upon spirituals. When we would restrain any inordinate longing for some outward or earthly accommodation, or suppress any grief, either of the like nature, we cannot better do it, than by provoking ourselves to the desire of spiritual comforts. This helps, first, by way of diversion, and turning the stream of the affections another way, and so breaking off the violence of it, that it prevails not upon us. And then further, there is that also in spirituals which does supply and make amends to us for any temporal deficiency. (T. Horton, D. D.)
The saint claiming God as his God
I. Concerning the Deity whom faith claims. There can be no claiming or believing till He be known. It is therefore proper to begin with a display of His glory.
1. Every perfection in His glory. Had we the tongue and the voice of the seraphim, we could not declare it all. Paper broader than the earth, ink deeper than the sea, pens stronger than iron, and hands readier than the quickest scribe, could not write the thousandth part of it.
2. God is the Creator and Preserver of all (Isaiah 42:5).
3. God is the spring and fountain of our reconciliation by the death of His Son.
4. God is the promiser and the lawgiver. Without the promise, we could not observe the law, and without the law, we would abuse the promise.
5. Our blessedness is in God (Psalms 62:1-12).
II. Concerning the claiming of property in God.
1. The Word is the ground of our claiming property in God.
2. Believing in God through our Lord Jesus Christ is the exercise of our claim. Christ and God are not divided and separated, in our believing and claiming. God was, and is, and will be in Christ. Christ was, and is, and will be in God.
3. The promises of the covenant encourage our claiming interest and property in God through Christ Jesus the Lord.
4. The exercise of the heart which believes and claims interest and property in God is recommended by the example of Christ. In the anguish and bitterness of distress He cried, “My Father,” and “My God.” And no sooner was He delivered from the power of death by a glorious resurrection, than He said, “I ascend to My Fatter and your Father, and to My God and your God.” Follow His example.
5. The Spirit of adoption constrains to this exercise of the heart. Without His presence and operation, no man believes and claims interest and property in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
6. No law condemns this exercise of the heart. Believing and claiming interest and property in God through Jesus Christ is against no law. Is the law against the promises of God, or the promises against the law of God? God forbid.
III. The manner in which interest and property in God should be claimed in believing.
1. In Christ. Christ is the true, and living, and only way to God. “No man,” said He, “cometh to the Father but by Me.” In claiming interest and relation in one, we claim interest and relation and property in both. The guilty and polluted cannot approach the holiness of the Lord but through, and by, and in a Mediator, whom He hath made unto them wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
2. In humility. When we venture into the presence of the high and holy One, and say, “O God, Thou art my God,” humility of mind is our adorning. Our unworthiness as creatures, and our pollution as sinners, should produce in us the deepest debasement before Him.
3. With reverence. “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.” When the humble spirit is before Him, saying, “O God, Thou art my God,” it doth not allow itself to forget and disregard these instructions.
4. With confidence (Psalms 48:14).
IV. Concerning the seasons in our exercise of believing and claiming relation, interest, and property in God through Christ.
1. The season of labouring. God is the glory of our strength; and believing and claiming Him in Christ, what service may we not undertake boldly, and what labour may we not endure joyfully.
2. The season of suffering. We need to abound in the believing exercises of the heart to God-ward through Christ, in order to draw in strength from the promises to endure it, and encourage and confirm hope of deliverance out of it.
3. The season of trouble and vexation of spirit.
4. The season of heaviness and grief.
5. The season of temptation. By steadfast believing, and continuance in well-doing, ye will, through the grace, and Spirit, and word of Christ, defeat every attempt to invalidate a claim, standing on His own My God and your God, My Father and your Father.
6. The season of dying. Steadfast believing in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement, will make us smile in the face of an enemy at whose appearance our heart would otherwise be alarmed and dismayed. (A. Shanks.)
God and the soul
The text might form a motto for what is termed, in the modern phrase, “personal religion.” No religion, of course, can deserve its name if it be not personal at bottom, if it do not recognize as its basis the case of the personal soul face to face with the personal God. But, even with a view to the perfection of the individual himself, religion may, nay, it must, embrace other interests besides his own. Each time that, in the earliest creed, we formally profess our belief in God, we also profess our belief in the Catholic Church and the Communion of Saints. But at least in David we have a notable example of a sensitive, tender, self-analyzing soul, living in sustained communion with God, while yet deeply sensible of the claims of the civil and religious polity of Israel. “My God.” The word does not represent a human impression, or desire, or conceit, but an aspect, a truth, a necessity of the Divine Nature. Man can, indeed, give himself by halves; he can bestow a little of his thought, of his heart, of his endeavour, upon his brother man. In other words, man can be imperfect in his acts, as he is imperfect and finite in his nature. But when God, the Perfect Being, loves the creature of His Hand, He cannot thus divide His love. He must give Himself to the single soul with as absolute a completeness as if there were no other being besides the soul which He loves. And, on his side, man knows that this gift of Himself by God is thus entire; and in no narrow spirit of ambitious egotism, but as grasping and representing the literal fact, he cries, “My God.” Therefore does this single word enter so largely into the composition of Hebrew names. Men loved to dwell upon that wondrous relation of She Creator to their personal life which it so vividly expressed. Therefore we find St. Paul writing to the Galatians as if his own soul, in its solitary anguish, had alone been redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary: “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” But hero let us observe that there are two causes within the soul which might indispose us for looking more truly and closely at the truth before us. Of these causes, the first is moral: it is the state of unrepented wilful sin. It is hostile to the assertion no less of the love than of the rights of God. It is averse from Him. It has other ends in view which are so many denials of His supreme claims upon created life. It cowers with involuntary dread at the sound of His voice among the trees of the garden. If the depraved and sinful will, still clinging to its sin, could conceivably attain to a spiritual embrace of the All-Holy God, so intimate, so endearing as is that of the psalmist, such nearness would be to it nothing less than repulsive; it would be scarcely less than an agony. The other cause is intellectual. It may, without offence, be described as the subjective spirit, which is so characteristic and predominant an influence in the thought of our day. In plain English this spirit is an intellectual selfishness, which makes man, and not God, the monarch and centre of the world of thought. Man is again to be, as of old with the Greek sophist, the measure of all things. God is as but a point on the extreme circumference of His creature’s thought. Nay, more, in its more developed form, this temper makes God Himself a pure creation of the thought of His creature; and, by doing so, it at length denies His real existence. An educated man of the present day who would look God really in the face has perhaps no greater intellectual difficulty to contend with than the trammels and false points of view which strictly subjective habits of thought have imposed upon his understanding. While these habits are dominant in a man, God may be a portion, nay, the most considerable portion, of his thought; but God will not be in any true sense the man’s God, before whom his soul bows, Among the many truths which the Supreme Being has disclosed to us men about Himself, there are two which, beyond others, are peculiarly calculated to enable us to realize our real relation towards Him. The first, the truth that God is our Creator. The second, the truth that He has made us for Himself, and is Himself the end and the explanation of our existence. The most simple and obvious truths are, as a rule, the most profound; and no apology is needed for asking each one of you to reflect steadily on the answer to this question, Where was I one short century ago? The lowest and vilest creatures were more than we; in that to them a being had been given, while as yet we were without one. Rut at this moment we are in possession of that blessed and awful gift which we name “life.” We find ourselves endowed with an understanding capable of knowledge, and with a heart formed for love. We cannot but ask how we came to be here, and we cannot worship God unless we believe that it was He who made us. Yet, though we witness around us the wreck of serious convictions, and the despair of true and noble hearts, and the triumph of false theories, and the additional difficulties of our daily struggle with unseen foes, and (it may be) with the results of our own past unfaithfulness to light and grace, we have but to look within ourselves to trace without doubt or misgiving the true law of that life which our God has given us. By gathering up the scattered fragments of the shattered statue, we can recover, if not the perfect work itself, at least the ideal which was before the Eye of the Artist. In this place we are sufficiently familiar with the presumption that there must be a correspondence and proportion between a faculty and its object. Why, then, does the human intellect crave perpetually for new fields of knowledge? It was made to apprehend an Infinite Being; it was made for God. Why does the human heart disclose, when we probe it, such inexhaustible capacities for love, and tenderness, and self-sacrifice? It was made to correspond to a love that had neither stint nor limit; it was made for God. Why does no employment, no success, no scene or field of thought, no culture of power or faculty, no love of friend or relative, arrest definitely and for all time the onward, craving, restless impulse of our inner being? No other explanation is so simple as that we were made for the Infinite and Unchangeable God, compared with whom all else is imperfect, fragile, transient, and unsatisfying. (Canon Liddon.)
The saint resolving to seek his God
I. Concerning seeking God. This includes--
1. Our belief of His existence and attributes.
2. His relation to us in Christ, created by sovereign goodness, and set in an everlasting covenant.
3. Our blessedness in Him. In lively piety the belief of this is firm and operative.
4. Our duty to worship and glorify Him in the way appointed by Himself. Hearing the Word, receiving the sacraments, singing of psalms, with humiliation, thanksgiving, and prayer, are ordinances of worship; and observing them in their seasons is seeking God in convocations and assemblies. Reading, and prayer, and praise, and instruction, are duties of piety; and performing them is seeking Him in households and families. Reading, meditation, and prayer, are holy services; and doing them is seeking Him in closets and secret places.
II. Concerning seeking God early.
1. Early in respect of life. As soon as we awake into being, capable of exercising ourselves unto godliness, it should be distinguished by seeking the knowledge of Him who gave us our spirit and our breath. Before the world seize the heart and fill it with vanity and care, it will be your wisdom who are young to seek after God; for He is your life and the length of your days.
2. Early in respect of fervour. O that all our heart, and all our soul, and all our strength, and all our mind, were in the exercises of our piety toward the Lord our God!
3. Incessantly in respect of time or continuance in well-doing. Whatever hour it be in the day of life, it is early with the pious mind. Early in the morning of youth, early in the noon of manhood, early in the evening of old age.
III. Concerning the resolution or determination of the pious man to seek God early.
1. Inclination is in a resolution or determination of mind for the exercise of piety.
2. In the resolution of the heart there is complacency in the exercise of piety.
3. Ardour in the resolution for piety. Coldness in seeking God is an infirmity of which pious men are ashamed. It quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit, who is the principle of their life and ardour.
4. Contention with the enemies of piety in the heart and in the world. Resolution to seek God early is lifting up a standard of opposition in the presence of a deceitful enemy, which hath made a settlement for itself in our heart. (A. Shanks.)
Seeking God
I. How should we seek God?
1. Intelligently.
2. Earnestly.
3. Constantly.
4. Hopefully.
II. Where should we seek Him? In the closet. In His Word. In the ordinances.
III. When should we seek Him? Early in life. In advance of temporal things.
IV. Why should we seek Him? He is the soul’s life--“God.” His nature is communicative--“My God.” (W. W. Wythe.)
My soul thirsteth for Thee.--
The soul’s thirst and satisfaction
(with Psalms 63:5; Psalms 63:8):--
1. The soul thirsting for God. (Psalms 63:1). Now, the psalmist is a poet, and has a poet’s sensitiveness to the external aspects of nature, and the imagination that delights in seeing in these the reflection of his own moods. So, very beautifully, he looks upon the dreary scene around, and sees in it symbols of the yet drearier experience within. He beholds the grey monotony of the waterless wilderness, where the earth is cracked with clefts that look like mouths gaping for the rain that does not come, and he recognizes the likeness of his own yearning spirit. He feels the pangs of bodily weariness and thirst, and these seem to him to be but feeble symbols of the deeper-seated pains of desire which touch his spirit. All men thirst after God. The unrest, the deep yearnings, the longings and desires of our natures--what are they all except cries for the living God, the tendrils which are put forth, seeking after the great prop which alone is fit to lift us from the mud of this lower world? But the misery is that we do not know what we want, that we misinterpret the meaning of our desires, that we go to the wrong sources for our need; that when our souls are crying out for God we fling them worldly good and say, “There, satisfy yourselves on that!” At man that has a wild thing in a cage, and does not know what its food is, when he hears it yelping, will cast to it what he thinks may fit it, on which it eagerly springs, and then turns from it in disgust. So, men seek to feed their souls on the things of earth, and, all the while, what they are crying for is, not earth, but God. Shipwrecked sailors drink salt water in their wild thirst, and it makes them mad. Travellers in the desert are drawn by the mirage to seemingly shimmering lakes, fringed with palm trees; and it is nothing but sand. “My soul thirsteth for Thee.”
II. The seeking soul satisfied (Psalms 63:5). The imagery of a feast naturally follows upon the previous metaphor of the soul’s thirst. Now, it is to be observed here with what beautiful and yet singular swiftness the whole mood of the psalmist changes. People may say that that is unnatural, but it is true to the deepest experiences, and it unveils for us one of the surest and most precious blessings of a true Christian life--vim that fruition is ever attendant upon desire. God’s gifts are never delayed, in the highest Of all regions. In the lower there often are long delays--the lingerings of love for our good--but in the loftiest, fruition grows side by side with longing. The same moment witnesses the petition flashed to Heaven, as with the speed of lightning, and the answer coming back to the waiting heart; as in tropical lands when the rain comes, what was barren baked earth in a day or two is rich meadow, all ablaze with flowers, and the dry torrent beds, where the stones lay white and glistening ghastly in the hot sunshine, are foaming with rushing streams and fringed with budding oleanders. This verse also tells us that the soul thus answered will be satisfied. If it be true that God is the real object of all human desire, then the contact of the seeking soul with that perfect aim of all its seeking will bring rest to every appetite, its desired food to every wish, strength for every weakness, fulness for all emptiness. Like two of the notched sticks that used to be used as tallies, the seeking soul and the giving God fit into one another, and there is nothing that we need that we cannot get in Him. Further, as our psalm tells us, the satisfied soul breaks into music. For it goes on to say, “My mouth shall praise Him with joyful lips.” Of course, the psalmist had still many occasions for sorrow, and doubt, and fear. Nothing had changed in his outward circumstances. The desert was still round him. The foe was still pursuing murderous in heart as before. But this had changed--God was felt to be as close as ever He had been in the sanctuary. And that consciousness altered everything, and turned all the psalmist’s lamentations into jubilant anthems. It transposed his music from the minor key, and his lips broke into songs of gladness. Translate these particulars into general thoughts, and they are just this:--No sorrow, nor anxiety, nor care, nor need for vigilance against danger ought to check the praise that may come, and should come, from a heart in touch with God, and a soul satisfied in Him. It is a hard lesson for some of us to learn; but it is a lesson the learning of which will be full of blessedness. There is a bird common in our northern districts which people call the storm-cock, because his note always rings out cheeriest in tempestuous weather. That is the kind of music that the Christian’s heart should make, responding, like an AEolian harp, to the tempest’s breath by music, and filling the night with praise. It is possible for us, even before sorrow and sighing have fled away, to be pilgrims on the road, “with songs and everlasting joy upon our heads.”
III. The satisfied soul presses closer to God (Psalms 63:8). Literally translated, though, of course, much too clumsily for an English version, the words run--“My soul cleaveth after Thee,” expressing, in one pregnant phrase, two attitudes usually felt to be incompatible, that of calm repose and that of eager pursuit. But these two, unlike each other as they are, may be, and should be, harmoniously blended in the experience of a Christian life. On the one hand there is the clinging of satisfaction, and, on the other hand, the ever-satisfied stimulus to a closer approach. The soul that is satisfied will, and ought to, adhere with tenacity to the source that satisfies it. The dove folds its pinions when it reaches the ark, and needs no more to wing its weary way over sullen waters, vainly searching for a resting-place. Nomad tribes, when they find themselves in some rich valley, unload their camels, and pitch their tents, and say, “Here will we dwell, for the land is good.” And so we, if we have made experience, as we may, of God and His sweet sufficiency, and sufficient sweetness, should be delivered from temptation to go further and fare worse. And then this clinging, resulting from satisfaction, is accompanied with earnest seeking after still more of the infinite good. In other regions, and when directed to other objects, satisfaction is apt to pass into satiety, because the creature that satisfies us is limited. But when we turn ourselves to God, and seek for all that we need in Him, there can be no satiety in us, because there can be no exhaustion of that which is in Him. The blessedness of search that is sure of finding, and the blessedness of finding which is calm repose, are united in the Christian experience. And we may, at every moment, have all that we want given to us, and by the very gift our capacity, and therefore our longings, be increased. Thus, in wondrous alternation, satisfaction and thirst beget each other, and each possesses some of the other’s sweetness. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The saint thirsting for God
I. Concerning the fountain of living waters.
1. Where is the fountain of living waters? It is everywhere.
2. What is in the fountain of life? The incomprehensible Being with whom it is speaks of Himself in this sovereign exclusive style, “I live.”
3. What comes out of the fountain of life? “Every good and every perfect gift.” Particularly the Mediator and His fulness. The reconciliation of the world. The forgiveness of sins. The justification of the ungodly: The sanctification of the unholy. Grace and glory.
4. Which is the way of a thirsty man to get a drink of the fountain of life? “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” ere,
II. Concerning thirsting and longing for God, with whom is the fountain of life. The rise, the tendency, the strength, the operation, and energies of these holy affections, may be observed in the following particulars--
1. The thirst for God is the desire or longing of the new heart.
2. The thirsting and longing of the renewed mind for God are influenced by the knowledge and taste of His favour in Christ Jesus. Before we thirst for God, or long for him, we must know that He is, and taste that He is gracious.
3. The thirst or longing for God is attended with crying and tears. This mourning and crying among the sons of regeneration is not the noise and din of peevishness and discontent. It is the crying of the spirit of adoption in their heart, for the nourishing and strengthening of their life, with those pleasures and joys which they believe are in its fountain.
4. Thirsting for God, the fountain of living waters, increases with indulgence. The more freely and abundantly the thirsty soul is indulged in drinking at the fountain, the keener and more vehement is its thirst.
5. In thirsting and longing for God, there are strong mixtures of faith, and love, and hope, and joy, and the other graces of the Spirit.
6. Providential occurrences give the new heart a keener sensibility in thirsting and longing for God.
III. How thirsting and longing for God, the fountain of living waters, contribute aid to the sustaining of the liveliness and vigour of piety, when cut off from the rivers and streams of the sanctuary.
1. These energies of the new heart in a dry and thirsty land, keep its intercourse with the fountain lively night and day.
2. Assurances of favour through the offices of the Mediator are sent down from the fountain to the thirsting and longing soul.
3. In thirsting and longing for God in a dry and thirsty land, experience shoots up and rises be a great height.
4. In thirsting and longing for God in a dry and thirsty land, the fruit of righteousness sown in the new heart springs, and grows, and ripens, and comes to maturity.
5. In a dry and thirsty land, piety is removed from the fat places of the earth which are full of things unfavourable to its growth.
In conclusion, observe--
1. The difference between animal and spiritual thirsting.
2. Intercourse with the Deity through the Mediator is not confined to courts, altars, and tabernacles. The whole wilderness of Judah, dry and thirsty as it might be, was a chamber of audience, into which David had access to the Deity day and night, to complain, to petition, and consult; and all around was court, altar, tabernacle, and holy of holies. He longed notwithstanding to be restored, and no wonder. Institutions for the multitude that kept holyday in the city were more desirable than the chamber opened in the field to an individual,
3. The Lord is not harsh and unkind, in schooling His chosen in a wilderness, and trying them with hunger and thirst. Their education in the science and exercises of piety requires it, and His intention is to do them good at the latter end. (A. Shanks.)
The Christian’s longing
All mankind are athirst. The human soul is made capacious; so capacious that nothing else can fill it, but that immortality for which man is created, and the favour and enjoyment of that God whoso creature he is. There is a relationship between the Capacity of the soul and Him who ought to fill it, such that its happiness depends on its union with Him, and is derived entirely from Him; and man, even when ignorant of God and alienated from Him, finds no real satisfaction from any other source.
I. Acceptance. This is the first stage of the desire after God, for it is the desire of the heart-stricken sinner (Psalms 27:9; Psalms 31:16; Psalms 35:8).
II. Acquaintance with God. The desire for this must be a feature of the advanding Christian. Love begets love, and hence--“we love Him (God) because He first loved us,” Now, in proportion as we love any one, we desire better acquaintance, in order that we may appreciate his excellences.
III. The believer longs for communion with God. The more we love and reverence any one, the more must we long to be admitted to the privilege of intimacy, and the more highly shall we value that privilege, and fear its loss if we possess it.
IV. The Christian’s earnest desire is for conformity to the will and to the image of God. The faculty of imitation is instinctive. Hence the contagion of evil example; hence the instinctive imitation by children of their parents. This faculty is not destroyed in the believer, but, through grace, receives a new bias, his love and reverence for God naturally creating the desire to imitate His perfections, and thus to attain a growing conformity to His likeness. (R. J. Rowton, M. A.)
David’s desire for God’s presence
I. The prayer. With David life would lose its light, its worth, its meaning, all its delight and all its joy without God. Ask him whether man could do without God, and he would toll you that without God this world is lodgings; but with Him it is Homo--Homo--a very different thing. He would tell you that without God there is no sunlight on the world, no meaning in history, no hope for humanity, no prospect. That without God there is nothing to enfranchise the soul, to emancipate it, to enlarge it. But with God’s presence it has dignity, it develops its forces, and with Him it is secure. He would tell you that without Him the soul has no model on which to mould its life, no motive with which to animate itself in conflict, no quiet resting-place. David, above all things, wants God. He wants God--in the sense of wanting the Presence, Love, Protection, and Vindication of God. There are few people in the world that have not, in some direction or other, a conflict going on, a cause to be maintained; and one of life’s keenest pains is, when doing one’s best, to be left to think that after all God does not care, and will not espouse the right, but will leave it to sink or swim, and let the wrong come off defeated or victorious, as chance may have it. David desired otherwise, and believed it. He wanted God; he expected and desired that God would plead the causes of his soul, and wherein he was right, would take his part and give him his heart’s desire. Thus, in the last place of all, there comes in the wish which would have been first, second, third, fourth, and everything probably in our ease.
II. The lessons of this prayer.
1. Do not tightly part with your belief in God. It is a very comforting thing that in the long run, all religions questions resolve themselves into the great question as to whether there is or is not a God to trust. Come with the believers, and live not in the God-forsaken world, without any light loft in it, and no Rock of Ages on which to rest. Don’t live in such a world as that, but live in the world whose canopy is the wing of God, and whose centre is the pierced heart of Calvary. You will find your blessedness in such a life. Men don’t gather blessedness off briars, and joys off thistles.
2. Pray more fervently. The fault of our prayers is their littleness, we ask and distress God by the smallness of our asking. Ask for Himself, His glory, His beauty, His love, to rest upon you, the shadow of His wing, the whisper of His love; not small mercies, but great ones. And in order to be able to pray, do as David tells you he did, “follow hard after God.” (R. Glover.)
The paramount need
What thirst means in a tropical wilderness none but those who have passed through it can tell. It is an overpowering and a paralyzing need. All this the psalmist had felt. As in the long marches through the desert sands, in the awful blaze of an Eastern noon, he had sighed for the pasture lands and the springs, so life seemed but a dry and weary waste until his soul was satisfied with the sight of God. It is a parable of the life, not of the psalmist only, but of the world; it is a picture of God’s education of our race. Just as He did not teach our forefathers the arts of life--the use of iron and of fire--by an immediate inspiration, but let them find them out by slow and gradual processes, as the need of them was felt; just as He has not put intellectual truths into our minds at our birth, but lets us work them out as the satisfaction of a felt desire, so it is with religion. He does not all at once satisfy our mouths with good things. He teaches us through the discipline of thirst and want. He lets each age tread its own path, work out its own problems, cope with its own difficulties, and be brought to Him at last by the constraining force of an unsatisfied desire. I might show that the parable is true of many ages, but I will take only two--the first ages of Christianity and our own. If we look at the first ages of our faith we see that it did not all at once convince men of its truth, as the sun that rose this morning told all who had eyes to see that a light was shining. Men came to it by many paths, and the greatest of all those paths led them through the splendid scenery of philosophy; for it was an age of culture; education was general in almost all the cities of the Roman Empire, and the basis of education was philosophy. Men were as familiar with some of the technical terms of metaphysics as they are now with some of the technical terms of chemistry or of physiology. To the better sort of men at the time, philosophy was a passion; it absorbed all the other interests of life. They not only lived for their beliefs, but were sometimes ready to die for them. And they were beliefs for which a man might be content to die. I should be the last to attempt to disparage the work which philosophy then actually accomplished; but it was no substitute for religion. It failed, and that on so large a scale, and among so many types of character, that the experiment need never be tried again; there was the demonstration for all time that the soul had a thirst which philosophy could not satisfy; it was the need of God, of a God whom men could love, of a God err whom they could lean, of a God to whom they could cry out in their despair, and their failure, and their sin: “My soul longeth for Thee.” Side by side with philosophy was superstition. There were fantastic forms of worship, new divinities, and new modes of approaching them; but all these were various expressions of one overpowering thirst; and in the discipline of God the thirst was for a long time unsatisfied. It was not until all other waters had been found to be bitter that the masses of educated men came to drink of that living water which the Christian faith supplied--the water of the knowledge of God in Christ, which is, in the believer’s soul, “a well of water springing up unto ever-lashing life.” That was one fulfilment of the parable. It is being fulfilled again before our eyes in our own time; we, too, are passing through another kind of scenery, a scenery so new and vast that we must be ready, as I doubt not that God is ready, to forgive those who, in their wonder at the newness and vastness of it all, have come to think that this at last is a satisfaction for the soul, and that in this crown of all the ages we have found in nature a substitute for God. Alike from the mountain-tops and the ravines and the far-off stare and from the depths of the deep seas, there shine out splendours upon splendours of new knowledge, and new possibilities of knowledge, which seem to lift us into a higher sphere of living than that which to our forefathers was possible. It is splendid scenery--the world, has never seen its like--but, splendid as it is, there are needs, the deepest needs, of the soul which it does not, which it cannot, satisfy. In time there comes to all men the sense of thirst. There are few who rise at all times, there are none who rise uniformly at all times, to the heroic height of doing good for goodness’ sake, and of furthering justice for justice’s sake. The baffled efforts of the struggle for righteousness, the defects of truth, the relapse from self-control, make men weary before the day is spent; and across the evening of life, if not across its morning, there rises the sharp and sudden cry, a thirst which God alone can satisfy. And, on the other hand, in the rebound from the superabundant talk about religion which characterizes our age, from the battles of the Churches and the unsubstantial theories which claim the place of Divine verities, there are those who substitute for the whole of religion that part of it which consists, in active philanthropy. For this, again, I have no word but that of praise. Without this religion can hardly be said to exist, but it is not religion; for though religion must move about the world with the busy feet of an angel of benevolence, benevolence does net of itself satisfy the soul’s thirst for God. The soul comes back hungry from its errands of mercy--it needs a Diviner motive and a Diviner satisfaction. The beginning of it is neither the love of righteousness nor the practice of benevolence, but the thirst for God. Where that thirst exists there is religion; where that thirst is absent, there, in spite of all that a man may profess, religion is absent also. And that thirst is satisfied. I will speak for a moment of its satisfaction not in society at large, but in the individual soul. The satisfaction is as real as the need, and He has placed it within our own power. To the simpleminded psalmist, living as he did before the age of philosophy--I had almost said before the age of theology--the satisfaction was to appear before the visible symbol of God’s presence at Jerusalem. That, too, brethren, is part of the parable. It is true for all time. The soul’s satisfaction is to realize the presence of God. The other name for it is faith. It is the seeing of Him who is invisible. (Edwin Hatch, D. D.)
Passionate devotion
It is not every one who can sympathize with the intensity of devout feeling here expressed. One must have seen the power and the glory in bygone days, to thirst and long for God like this. All, however, can understand something about it; all, at least, can stand apart and admire the man with thoughts so elevated, affections so pure, a soul so predominant over sense, that his very sensuous nature longs, not for the objects of sense, but for God! In all ages we find instances of this passionate devotion, which appropriates to itself the language Of human affection, and applies it to the Infinite One. Now, what estimate are we to form of the devotion which assumes this character? Shall we condemn it as enthusiasm, or commend it as the pure and natural development of the affections towards God? Shall we cherish it in ourselves? or restrain such assimilations to human loves? I think we shall better be able to answer when we have examined a little into the conditions under which it arises. First, then, it is quite evident, those rising to this intensely passionate longing after God must have a great power of giving a reality to their ideas--I mean, of realizing their ideas as substantive, present existences. For God being known to us only in thought, must be represented by this realizing faculty of the mind as personally present with us, or no deep emotion can be awakened towards Him. You may contemplate His works, you may take the Bible and draw out a history of all He has done for man’s salvation, you may reason most correctly upon the relations He sustains to your soul, you may ascribe to Him all goodness, truth, and holy beauty, all imaginable perfections; but unless you have the power of believing in the substantial reality of your ideas, no passionate love or desire (which can cling only to persons as known) can be excited within you. There may be trust, there may be reverence, there may be the deliberate surrender of the will to the great and glorious Being conceived in thought; but there can be for a merely logical, intellectual abstraction no passionate love. This, then, being undoubtedly the case, a second condition arises, namely, God, in order to be thus loved and desired, must be brought within the compass of human imagination, idealization--that is, being thought of and realized as personally present, the mind must form of Him some representation to itself, some conceivable and embraceable idea. Passionate love and desire cannot embrace the infinitely vague. Hence the fact that, within the Christian Church our Saviour and the Virgin have been made more frequently the objects of this passionate devotion than the Infinite Father. Well, then, if these be the conditions of this passionate love and desire for God, it already is evident there must be some element in it which needs toning down or modifying in some way or the other. For, whatever brings the glory and infinitude of the Creator down to the limitation and level of the creature must have an element of evil in it. We may take it as an axiom that, Whatever tends to exalt our notions of His perfections and glory, whatever tends to fill us with deep and humble reverence and awe, with adoration and lowly worship, that is leading us on the right road to a knowledge of God; and whatever limits, circumscribes, defines our image of Him, reduces Him within the narrow outlines of our delineations, that falsifies and corrupts our knowledge. False devotion pretends to know. It has come face to face with God, it says, and loves. Vain dream! It has rather created an image, out of its sanctified fancy, and for that burns with passionate desire. And yet, we must be just. There is a truth in this imaging of God in the mind. It is not altogether a false representation of Him which the mind creates for itself. The elements Out of which the representation is made are true, so far as they go. Have you ever seen the canvas intended for a great picture, after the artist has worked two or three days only upon it? That is like our sanctified imagings of God. All the right colours laid on, all the lines in the right direction, but what resemblance, nevertheless, is there to the perfected work? The sun is imaged in a clew-drop; but who could learn by looking in the dew-drop what are the majesty and glory of the sun? They are, then, divine properties which the soul loves in its image of God, but divine properties limited and reduced to created patterns. Those who know God and think of Him as the omnipresent Spirit, the all-efficient power whose operations extend through, and whose nature is manifested in, all creation, cannot but adore and love as they contemplate His nature in these created manifestations. To them He necessarily is the one, all-sufficing, all-efficient God, the one joy and blessedness of all creatures. And, knowing Him thus, they cannot but desire to know Him more fully, to share more largely in the communications of His nature, to come into closer union with Him. For, to put it in another form, this is nothing more than desiring to share in, and partake more and more of, whatever is true, beautiful, and good in the world, to enter more and more into the blessedness of all true, beautiful, and good thoughts and feelings, For, not in His inmost being is God known or can He be enjoyed; but in these manifestations of Him,--in all His glorious and beautiful works, in all the glorious and beautiful thoughts He creates within us. And it is in keeping with this that the psalmist tells us in the text that his soul and flesh long for God, to see His power and glory so as he had seen them in the sanctuary. He did not dream that he, the finite, could appropriate to himself all the glory and power of the Infinite One. There is, therefore, no extravagance of language, transferring the passionate feelings awakened by human love to the Creator; but, what he prays for, longs, thirsts for, is to see more of God in His manifestations--more of that power and glory which he had already discerned as he heard the Levites chant His holy praise, and had joined in the sacrifices, the prayers, the worship of the temple. Whatever brought to him truer and more beautiful thoughts, purer and more ennobling feelings, that would fulfil the desire and satisfy the longing of his soul. (J. Cranbrook.)
Soul-thirst
I need not remind you how true it is that a man is but a bundle of appetites, desires, often tyrannous, often painful, always active. But the misery of it--the reason why man’s misery is great upon him--is mainly, I suppose, that he does not know what it is that he wants; that he thirsts, but does not understand what the thirst means, nor what it is that will slake it, His animal appetites make no mistakes; he and the beasts know that when they are thirsty they have to drink, and when they are hungry they have to eat, and when they are drowsy they have to sleep. But the poor instinct of the animal that teaches it what to choose and what to avoid fails us in the higher reaches; and we are conscious of a craving, and do not find that the craving reveals to us the source from whence its satisfaction can be derived. Therefore, “broken cisterns that can hold no water” are at a premium, and “the fountain of living waters” is turned away from, though it could slake so many thirsts. Like ignorant explorers in an enemy’s country, we see a stream, and we do not stop to ask whether there is poison in it or not before we glue our thirsty lips to it. There is a great old promise in one of the prophets which puts this notion of the misinterpretation of our thirsts, and the mistakes as to the sources from which they can be slaked, into one beautiful metaphor which is obscured in our English version. The prophet Isaiah says, “the mirage shall become a pool,” the romance shall turn into a reality, and the mistakes shall be rectified, and men shall know what it is that they want, and shall get it when they know. Brethren, unless we have listened to the teaching from above, unless we have consulted far more wisely and far more profoundly than many of us have ever done the meaning of our own hearts when they cry out, we, too, shall only be able to take for ours the plaintive cry of the half of this first utterance of the psalmist, and say, despairingly, “My soul thirsteth.” Blessed are they who know where the fountain is, who know the meaning of the highest unrests in their own souls, and can go on with clear and true self-revelation, “My soul thirsteth for God.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
In a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.--
A wilderness cry
Chrysostom tells us that amongst the primitive Christians it was ordained that this psalm should be sung every day. If we do not follow that Custom, it is not because it is unsuitable. The psalm may be said or sung all the year round. In all the seasons of the soul, its spring, summer, autumn and winter. By day and by night. But the psalm especially belongs to those who, through any cause, feel themselves to dwell in a desert land, The stages of Israel in all their history, in Egypt and out of it, and onwards, are gone over in our spiritual history. And even when we are in Canaan, we may, like David, be driven, out of our home, and find ourselves in the wilderness again.
I. True saints are sometimes in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. For--
1. All things are changeable, and living things most of all. A man of stone changes not, but the living man must sorrow and suffer as well as laugh and rejoice.
2. And in some senses, to a Christian, this world must always be a dry and thirsty land, We are not carrion crows, or else might we float and feed upon the carcases which abound in the waters around our ark. We are doves, and when we leave the hand of our Noah we find nought to rest upon. Even when the world is at its best, it is but a dry land for saints.
3. And we carry an evil within us which would cause a drought in Paradise itself if it could come there (Romans 7:1-25.), We may have been so unwatchful as to have brought ourselves into this condition by actual faults of life and conduct.
5. Sometimes it is brought about by our being banished from the means of grace. Poor as our ministry may be, there are some Christians who would miss it more than their daily food if it were taken from them. It is a sore trial to such to be kept sway from sanctuary privileges. 6, And by denial of the sweets of Christian intercourse. David had poor company when he was in the wilderness, in the days of Saul; his friends were not much better than freebooters and runaways. And sometimes God’s people are shut up to similar company.
6. Sometimes a man may be treated with gross injustice, and endure much hardship as the result. David did; so may we.
7. Domestic conditions, and health, and physical conditions, may grievously depress the soul. Thus, there are many reasons why the best of saints are sometimes in a dry and thirsty land.
II. But God is their God still. “O God, Thou art my God.” Yes, he is as much our God in the dry land as if we sat by Siloa’s softly flowing brook. God is the God of the wilderness. Was He not with His people there?
III. When we are in a dry and thirsty land, our wisest course is to cry to Him at once. When you feel least like praying, then pray to Him the more, for you need it the more. Do not, any of you, practise the sinner’s folly: he declares that he will tarry till he is better, and then he never comes at all. Seek the Lord at once, Practise the Gospel principle of “Just as I am.” Say, “I must have a sense of His love, and I must have it now.” Make a dash for it, and you shall have it. Therefore, do not be afraid to cry out to God. Our heavenly Father loves to hear His children cry all the day long. Rutherford says, “The bairn in Christ’s house that is most troublesome is the most welcome. He that makes the most din for his meat is the best bairn that Christ has.” You may not quite agree with that as to your own children, but it is certainly so with our Lord. Desire, then, and let those desires be vehement. Jesus will joyfully hear you. Only be thou careful that thou be not content to be in a dry and thirsty land, away from God. Do not get into such a state, and certainly do not stay there. (C. H. Spurgeon.)