PSALM 63 - A Craving Soul

INTRODUCTION

A couple of weeks back Jodee and I went out for our anniversary. We got reservations down at the Thunderbird and got to spend a couple of hours together over a nice meal, and then went on a drive together—we wound up going to Tractor Supply! (After 27 years the bar for a nice night out gets lower, I guess!)

But imagine that we set the bar really high, and I really went all out—fancy dinner, flowers, a weekend getaway to the mountains—really put together a terrific anniversary celebration. And Jodee says to me, “This is wonderful! What a great weekend, this is so sweet!” And I answer, “Well, I kind of had to do something, otherwise you’d be mad at me for forgetting!” How do you suppose the rest of that weekend would go? She wants to know that I’m spending this time with her because I want to, not because I have to! My relationship with my wife is not driven by duty, it is driven by delight.

I have to wonder, though, if we don’t fall into the trap of approaching our relationship with God that way sometimes? That we think more in terms of our obligations to God than anything else. Think about it for a moment—did you come here this morning because you felt it was expected of you, somehow? That you come here to worship because “that’s what a Christian does, and I’m a Christian, so here I am!” You have set aside this morning for your spiritual pursuits because that’s what you do on Sunday mornings, but you have “everything else” in your life starting tomorrow (or this afternoon).

You came here today because your schedule opened up and allowed it (or you’re listening to the recording online because you had other obligations.) You are “powering through” your Bible reading on the days you get to it because you want to make sure you can get through the whole thing in a year. To one extent or another, every one of us falls into the pattern of treating our relationship with God like an obligation or a duty.

Contrast that attitude toward God with David’s here in Psalm 63:

Psalm 63:1 (ESV)

1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

A relationship with God surely involves faithfulness to Him, obeying His commands:

John 14:15 (ESV)

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

But it is also far more than mere obedience, mere intellectual acknowledgement of His existence—the Apostle James says

James 2:19 (ESV)

19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

What we consistently see through the Scriptures is that saving faith is marked by a heart that delights in God. Peter writes in his first epistle:

1 Peter 1:8–9 (ESV)

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Did you catch that? You “believe” in Him AND “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory”, obtaining your salvation. Saving faith in God is marked by a deep and powerful and abiding love for God.

As we saw earlier this year in our study of 1 John:

1 John 5:1 (ESV)

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

Everyone who believes in Jesus is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father has been born of God. Both are present in saving faith—belief and love, obedience and delight, trust in God and desire for God. The way I want to say it this morning for us is

The faith that SAVES is marked by a soul that CRAVES

One of the characteristics of saving faith in God is a deep and abiding delight for Him. Or to come at it from the other direction, if you have a deep delight and joy in God and treasure Him like nothing else and want more of Him more than you want more of anything else, that is an indication that you have believed on Him for salvation.

And so what I want to do this morning is walk through Psalm 63 so that you can evaluate the state of your soul this morning, to see if you find the signs of this kind of delight in God in your life. I want to do this so that you may have that assurance that you really are believing in Him for your salvation.

This psalm is another one that was probably written while David was on the run from his son Absalom (2 Samuel 15)—another song he sings when he is driven into the wilderness away from God and His sanctuary, away from God’s people and the worshipping community there.

But even in the wilderness, even with all of the trauma and heartbreak and turmoil of his condition, David still exhibits the characteristic of a soul that craves God:

I. Your LOVE for God is not an “ADD-ON”, it’s an ADDICTION

Psalm 63:1 (ESV)

1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 63:8 (ESV)

8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

Now, it’s not to make light of addictions that people struggle with, but there really is something here that demonstrates the way David’s soul craves God—like an addict needing a fix,

You can’t FUNCTION without Him (v. 1, v. 8)

Does the description of David’s physical state when he is apart from God’s presence—desperate thirst, weak and fainting—sound like the way your soul craves God?

For many people, worship of God, time in His presence through His Word and prayer, is a nice “add-on” to their lives. If they go a few days without reading the Scriptures, if their prayers are occasional and brief a couple times a week, if they get around to worship two Sundays out of the month, it’s really no big deal. Is your love for God an “add-on” to an otherwise functioning life, or is your love for God an addiction that leaves you weakened and gasping without it?

Saving faith is characterized by a love for God that isn’t a mere “add-on”; you can’t function without Him. And not only so,

You can’t stop THINKING about Him (v. 4, v. 6)

Psalm 63:4 (ESV)

4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.

David doesn’t just “set aside time” to bless God, to praise His Name—he says “as long as I live” he will bless and praise God. He doesn’t say, “Well, Sunday mornings from 9:45 to 12:30 is my time for thinking about God and spiritual things. Starting on Monday morning, though, I need to ‘get back to reality’”. It’s easy for us to separate our lives into our “spiritual” or “Christian” life and “the rest of my life”; but David says “There is no part of my life, no moment of my life that I live from here to the end of my days when I am not blessing God and rejoicing in Him and exalting Him...” In verse 6 he goes on to say

Psalm 63:6 (ESV)

6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

Even in the middle of the night, David can’t get his mind of his craving for his God! His love and delight in God was so pervasive that even when David was laying awake in the middle of the night, his thoughts didn’t dwell on the danger he was in, the threat to his kingdom—even the terrible rift between him and Absalom did not dominate his meditations there on his bed.

What fills your mind when you wake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling through the darkness? Is it your anxieties, your frustrations, your lusts, your loneliness? There in the silence and privacy of your mind in that hour, your thoughts can turn anywhere at all, and no one ever knows.

Where do your thoughts turn in the middle of the night? Psalm 63 says that a soul that craves God—a heart that loves God not just as an “add-on” but as an addiction—can’t stop thinking about Him even when all of those other anxieties and sins and stresses clamor for attention. It is God that “giveth me songs in the night” (Job 35:10).

The faith that saves is marked by a soul that craves—your love for God is not an “add-on”, it is an addiction. And David goes on to demonstrate here that

II. Your WORSHIP of God is not a DUTY, it’s a DELIGHT

Psalm 63:2 (ESV)

2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

David is gasping in the wilderness because he has been separated from his source of life and joy—the presence and power and glory of God revealed in worship. He has come to the sanctuary in the past, but now he is on the run from Absalom, unable to be in God’s presence with His people in worship. And so he remembers back to those times when he was able to enter God’s presence in worship. A soul that craves God like this means that

You come to BEHOLD His GLORY (v. 2)

Why have you come to worship this morning? Because it is expected of you? Because you like to socialize? Because you want to be seen as pious? Because it’s important for your kids to be here? Or have you come here this morning like David, desperate for another encounter with the power and glory of the God of the Universe who loves you and gave Himself for you? Is your worship a mere duty, or is that duty suffused with overwhelming delight in the power and glory of your God?

David is desperate for a return to the delight of worshipping God in His sanctuary—a soul that craves God drives you to come to worship to behold his glory, and

His MERCY makes you SING (v. 7)

Psalm 63:7 (ESV)

7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

Once again, David is writing in the context of the worship with God’s people in His sanctuary—the reference to God’s “wings” reminds us of the wings of the cherubim that covered the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. David says that being found in the midst of the mercy of God makes him sing—recognizing what God has done for him, the pity that he shows to David in his misery, the compassion and faithful love that He shows David (even in the middle of the strife he is experiencing in his exile) causes David to burst into song.

A soul that craves God is a soul that sings of His mercy! When we sing together after we consider God’s forgiveness for us in Christ, we are singing out of our joy over His mercy to us. We sing when we gather for worship because we are a people who are sheltered under the wings of God’s mercy to us in Christ! We sing because there is no other response that will do when we consider again how much He has done for us in taking us out of the wretchedness of our sin and rebellion and making us new creatures in Christ!

Faith that saves is marked by a soul that craves—Loving God is not an add-on, it’s an addiction. Worship is not a duty, it’s a delight. And looking further at David’s song here in Psalm 63 shows us one more characteristic of this craving for God:

III. Your DESIRE for God is not for His GIFTS but for HIMSELF

Psalm 63:3 (ESV)

3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

There are a lot of people—and it is a hard thing to say, but it’s true—that only come to God because they want Him to somehow give them something that they want in their life. A good job, a good spouse, good health for them or their loved ones, a sense of purpose, the ability to handle stress our trauma, freedom from guilt or shame, and so on. And indeed, God is able to (and often does) give all of these things to people who come to him.

But David does not desire God because God can make his life better somehow—David loves God more than he loves life itself. A soul that craves God means

You want His LOVE more than you want LIFE - (v. 3, v. 5)

When David says in verse 5

Psalm 63:5 (ESV)

5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,

He isn’t saying that he worships God because He fills David’s belly—he is saying that his satisfaction in God fills him even if his belly is empty! As the Apostle Paul would put it centuries later in Philippians 3:8:

Philippians 3:8 (ESV)

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Paul says that even if he loses everything—his wealth, his work, his home, his family, his life—he still has a treasure of surpassing value: he has Christ Himself!

David doesn’t come to God in order to get something from Him that will make his life better; David is coming to God because God is his life! Charles Spurgeon tells about “...some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, What! all this, and Christ too?”

A soul that craves God desires God not for His gifts, but for Himself. You want His love more than you want life. There is nothing this world can do to you, nothing that can be taken from you, nothing that you can suffer, nothing that can afflict you that will take away this treasure. And when you know God like that, then

Your WILDERNESS becomes a place of WORSHIP (vv. 9-11)

David ends his song turning his attention back to the enemies that were pursuing him, full of lies and slander against him:

Psalm 63:9–11 (ESV)

9 But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth; 10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword; they shall be a portion for jackals. 11 But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Their pursuit of David, their threats against him and their hatred of him doesn’t cause him the slightest concern here. In other psalms we hear David calling out with a sense of urgency and anxiety for God to rescue him; here we see him supremely confident in God’s protection—he knows nothing can touch him; no matter how dark the wilderness his enemies drive him to there is nothing that can separate him from God.

Look carefully and you will see something remarkable here: In verses 1-2, David is expressing his longing to be out of the wilderness and back in the sanctuary worshipping God. In verses 9-11 David is worshipping God in the wilderness! His enemies have driven him away from the sanctuary and into the wilderness, but even there he is able to worship because God’s love for him is better than life itself!

In Corrie Ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place, she tells about the worship services she and her sister Betsie held with the other prisoners in the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany:

“They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28… With each moment the crowd around us would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed. At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text, we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the lightbulb… And I would know again that in darkness God’s truth shines most clear.” (Boom, Corrie Ten; Elizabeth Sherrill; John Sherrill. The Hiding Place (pp. 212-213). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Even in a concentration camp, surrounded by some of the most evil forces in all of human history, in the midst of the dehumanizing horrors of a prison camp that was nicknamed “Hitler’s Hell for Women”--all Corrie could see was previews of heaven as they worshipped the God whose steadfast love was better than life!

This is what saving faith looks like, beloved! This is how a soul that craves God responds to pain, suffering, grief, loss, isolation—not with a Stoic denial of the wilderness, but with a delight in God’s presence and unfailing love that transforms any wilderness into a place of worship!

Faith that saves is marked by a soul that craves. What does David’s song here reveal about your heart today? Is your love for God an addiction that you can’t live without, or a mere “add-on” that you can take or leave as you please? Did you come here this morning because it happened to be convenient this week, or did you come here because you need to meet God in worship today? Does your desire to worship God rise and fall with the way He answers your prayers? You are happier with Him when He gives you the kind of life that you want, and your interest in Him wanes when your life doesn’t turn out the way you want it to? Or does your love for Him outshine anything in your life?

If you hear God’s Word here in this psalm and you realize that you have no experience of treasuring God this way, then the first question you need to ask yourself is, do you belong to Him? This entire psalm hangs on the first six words of verse 1:

Psalm 63:1 (ESV)

1 O God, you are my God...

David’s description of his intimate delight in the excellencies of God all stem from the fact that he belongs to God through faith. If you have never come in repentance and faith to God through Jesus Christ for salvation, then there is no way that you can call God “your God”. He may be your parent’s God, your spouse’s God, your children’s God, your friend’s God—but if you have never come to Jesus Christ to repent of your sin and ask for salvation from Him, then He is not your God.

God’s Word says in John 1:12-13:

John 1:12–13 (ESV)

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Come to God through Jesus Christ, believe that He died in your place on that Cross so that you could be forgiven for your sin against Him, and you will become a child of God. And God will be “your God”. And all of this delight and joy and satisfaction that David describes in this psalm will be yours in God as well. If you want to talk to me more about this after the service, I’ll be right down front; and I will be beyond honored to help you know for sure that God is your God, and you are His child.

And if you do belong to God through faith in Jesus Christ, if you have walked with Him as a believer for some time and you recognize here in Psalm 63 that your love for Him has begun to feel like an “add-on”, that you have started to fall into the trap of wanting God for His gifts and not for Himself, that you don’t desire Him or crave Him the way that you know that you should, then the Word of God instructs you this morning to repent of that sin. Like the psalmist who had begun to doubt God’s justice in Psalm 73:21-22:

Psalm 73:21–22 (ESV)

21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, 22 I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

Confess to God that you have become dull and ignorant, that you have allowed your love toward Him to grow cold through inattention or through pursuing the deceitful promises of sin in your life. Listen to the words of Jesus Christ as He called the church in Ephesus back to Himself in Revelation 2:4-5:

Revelation 2:4–5 (ESV)

4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Come before Him today and confess that your heart has grown cold towards Him; that you are not delighting in Him or treasuring Him the way that a redeemed soul does. And listen carefully: This is not a sermon that is telling you to go and gin up more happy feelings about God, that you need to manufacture more delight and more joy in God or else you’re a rotten Christian.

This is a sermon that is telling you that you can only have this kind of delight in God when He gives it to you as a gift of His gracious mercy! So come to Him in repentance, lay all of your boredom and indifference and drudgery and dry duty before Him and confess it to Him. Call on Him to give you the heart that you cannot give yourself—a heart that craves Him above all things, that treasures Him beyond anything in your life (or even life itself), a soul that draws its entire life from His excellencies, so that you will know that you have eternal life in your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Hebrews 13:20–21 (ESV)

20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

How would you answer someone who says, “The Bible says that we must believe in Jesus. Whether we love Him or not is not that important”? What verses would you turn to in your answer?

What are some things in your life that have the potential to take priority over your relationship with God? How does Psalm 63 put those things into perspective?

Are duty to God and delight in God mutually exclusive? In other words, does our delight in God mean that we should never feel a sense of duty to Him? Read 1 John 5:2 to help think through your answer.

The reality of God’s love does not mean we will never suffer. But how does our delight in God as better than life change our perspective on the “wilderness” of sufferings we encounter?

Take some time this week to pray the words of Psalm 63 back to God in your prayer time. Take a few verses each day until you have prayed through the entire psalm—ask God to give you the kind of delight in Him that helps you know that you belong to Him!