The God Who Satisfies Souls
Notes
Transcript
Everyone knows it is hot in Texas during the summer. Unfortunately, that’s when the grass likes to grow. Yardwork stinks, but it has to be done. For those of you that do your own yardwork, you might sweat from head to toe, and if you are anything like me, you have a cold glass of something waiting for you when you finish. I’m always super grateful that I’m done, and for that ice cold drink that brings life back into my body.
Another year has gone by. Another Thanksgiving has come. This season puts in the forefront of our minds the need to pause and remember to be thankful. But the interesting thing about thankfulness, is there is always something or someone in which to be thankful toward. Thankfulness without someone to anchor that to is foreign. We are always thankful for something, but we also must be thankful to someone. That someone is God. He provides everything we have.
Psalm 107 is a song of thanksgiving. The psalm presents four situations in which the audience should give thanks to God for deliverance from trouble. We are going to examine the first nine verses today.
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary
And gathered from the lands,
From the east and from the west,
From the north and from the south.
They wandered in the wilderness in a desert region;
They did not find a way to an inhabited city.
They were hungry and thirsty;
Their soul fainted within them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble;
He delivered them out of their distresses.
He led them also by a straight way,
To go to an inhabited city.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.
That last verse is my favorite. God is deserving of our thanks because he has satisfied our souls. This morning we are going to take a look at three ways God has satisfied our souls, and let that be the fuel for our expressions of gratitude to him over the next week.
In your notes section on the back of the bulletin, We are going to start with a simple truth statement: God has satisfied my soul by… The points to follow are ways in which he satisfies our souls, thus completing the sentence.
So the first way God satisfies our souls is:
...rescuing me from my adversary.
...rescuing me from my adversary.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so...This is a call to remember and boast in our own salvation.
There is a war going on in the background of all human history. Since the garden of Eden, when the serpent, who is depicted as the main antagonist of the Biblical narrative, convinced Eve then Adam to distrust God and break his law, the enemy we know as the Devil has been in charge of much of the world’s influence. 2 Cor. 4:4 calls him the god of this world. Eph. 2:2 calls him the prince of the power of the air. In John 12:31, he is called the ruler of this world. Anybody who does not belong to Christ belongs to him.
In numerous places we are called prisoners or slaves to sin. Paul says in Rom. 5:10 that we were enemies of God. In Rom. 6:16-18, he explains that we were all slaves to sin, but now we have been made slaves to righteousness. There are two sides to this cosmic battle and you can only be on one of them.
Imagine you went to a sporting event in town. The Three Rivers Bulldogs are facing off against the Refugio Bobcats. You get to the game and you know it’s going to be bad because it is every year. But you go to support your team. Maybe this year will be the year. But when the players take the field, you notice something odd. There’s a player on the opposing team that looks an awful lot like your good friend’s son. In fact, it is your friend’s son! Did they move? Did they switch schools? What’s going on? Somehow, the kid is confused and showed up to the wrong locker room and suited up in the wrong jersey! How could this be?
You and I showed up to the fight in the wrong jersey. We chose our own way instead of God’s way, but the Bible teaches us that while we were wearing the wrong jersey, Christ came to free us from the old jersey so we could put on a new jersey and play for the winning side. But God has rescued us through Christ from playing for the other side. Playing for the other side leads to death. But accepting Jesus’ invitation to change jerseys leads to life...life more abundant, and life everlasting.
The game will end. The final score will show that team Jesus is the winner. Only those wearing his jersey get to join the winner’s circle and lay hands on the trophy. The other team cast out. They are brought under judgment for breaking God’s rules. They are separated from him forever. Those who play on the devil’s team will meet the devil’s fate: cast into a lake of fire for which there is no redemption. Give thanks to the Lord for rescuing you from judgment, from separation, and the devil’s control.
Secondly, God has satisfied my soul by...
...giving me a forever home.
...giving me a forever home.
This is the core of our mission statement. What do we do as a church? We help people find forever family through Christ-centered relationships. Yes, they have a family already. Yes, they will forever be related to the people within their families. But there is a family in which God is the Father and he has invited us to become members of it. The gathering of these members of God’s eternal family is the church. Galatians 4:4-5 says,
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Before we become members of the family of God, we are wanderers on the earth. We have no real ultimate direction or purpose. The Bible uses the term lost to describe this state. Luke 15 illustrates this concept through the stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. Each of them have a place to belong, and they are sought after. Look at verse 4 again,
They wandered in the wilderness in a desert region;
They did not find a way to an inhabited city.
You and I were wanderers. But Christ has given us a place to belong that transcends time, geography, bloodlines, or any other manmade barrier. Look at verse 7.
He led them also by a straight way,
To go to an inhabited city.
God has led us to this forever home. First Baptist Three Rivers isn’t your forever home. Christ’s kingdom is, of which this is an outpost. His kingdom can’t be seen and has no borders. You and I are travelers in a foreign land until we are brought home.
I enjoy traveling. I enjoy seeing other places. But no matter how comfortable they try to make hotel rooms, and no matter how amazing a trip to some other destination is, there’s just no place like home. This is especially true if you have to drive or fly for a significant amount of time. Driving to Oklahoma and back for us is a long trip. The last time we took that trip, the return home was eleven hours. I was sick of driving. I was elated when I reached the Live Oak county line! I knew I was going to make it! The sleep I go that night was amazing. There’s no comfort like m own bed.
God has given us a place to call home. We find our rest in him now, but we also find our rest in him in the home he is preparing for us. On the night he was going to be betrayed, Jesus told his disciples his departure was imminent. But he offered some assurances. Take a look at what he said in John 14:2-3:
“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
A place is being prepared for us. A new forever home. Revelation 21 calls it the new Jerusalem. This is a city where we will be with Christ forever. We belong in God’s house, and in his house, we will be.
Give thanks to the Lord for your forever home. Look around. You are among brothers and sisters. You are among family. A man came by the office this week to get food from the food bank. It was his first time. He had been living here for a few months. We got to talking, and he mentioned that this Thanksgiving would be the first Thanksgiving he would spend alone. I thought if I was going to be here Thanksgiving day, he would have an invitation at my table. Well, we went out to the activity center and the ladies from Good Hope were waiting on the delivery truck. They mentioned something about a Thanksgiving meal at the church. I told her what this gentleman told me, and he left with an invitation to their table for Thanksgiving. That is the gift of a forever family. Give thanks to the Lord that he has given you a place to belong, not just here, but in eternity.
Thirdly, Go has satisfied my soul by...
...quenching my spiritual appetite.
...quenching my spiritual appetite.
The Bible teaches us that we are made in the image of God. While that means a multitude of things, it certainly means that we are more than just physical beings. We have a body, a soul, and a spirit. The Bible also teaches us that mankind’s fundamental problem is that we are spiritually dead as a result of sin as a condition of the world, but also through our own actions against God. But in order for us to relate to a spiritual being, the spirit in us needs to be made alive again.
While Jesus has made a way for us to be spiritually reborn, there is an innate desire in all of us, a longing for the eternal. Until God shines light on that reality, we are wandering and grasping for something beyond ourselves. We are hungry for something more. The problem is we turn to physical means to satisfy the hunger and thirst, but we can’t satisfy spiritual appetite through physical means, so we continue to go hungry.
The psalm says in verse 5,
They were hungry and thirsty;
Their soul fainted within them.
This identifies the problem. We are hungry and thirsty. But also look at verse 9.
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.
God satisfied the hungry and the thirsty. The spiritual being provided the right nourishment to satisfy the right hunger. Now, depending on the context, the psalm could be speaking to a physical hunger and thirst but I want you to see there is another type of hunger and thirst only God can quench.
Jesus had fed 5000 people on the side of a mountain outside the sea of Galilee. The next day, the people who received the food woke up and sought out Jesus to do it again. Jesus used this opportunity to go deeper and tell them about a deeper problem. He refers to himself as the bread of life.
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.
Jesus doesn’t mean physical hunger and thirst. He means that the deepest yearnings of one’s soul, the eternal that they long for is him. Spiritual appetite can only be satisfied through spiritual sources.
When he met the woman at the well in John 4, Jesus used physical water to build a bridge to her spiritual need.
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
She wants the water that would put an end to her having to come to this well every day. But Jesus has something better. A kind of water that will quench her spiritual thirst. But of course the water is not physical water. The water is Christ himself.
You see, when you know Jesus, and you are walking with Jesus, and you have a daily rhythm of investing in Jesus, the less you want from the rest of the world. I am very satisfied. Not because I got saved or because I drank from the well of Christ once and it solved all my problems, but every day I return to the well where I find the water of life and I am satisfied. I don’t look for satisfaction for my soul anymore because I already found it.
I wonder, do you know Jesus like that? If not, you need to know that the deepest longings of your soul can be satisfied, but you have not found the right source. Jesus is that source. The only way to have satisfaction like that is to let him satisfy you. You must stop looking to everything this world can offer to satisfy your longing for the spiritual. But it is through a relationship with Christ that our enjoyment of the physical takes on a whole new dimension.
