"Are You Satisfied?"

Introduction: The insatiable appetites we have for certain things, when nothing else will do. For example, if you know me, you will know that I love mexican cuisine. And sometimes I can scratch that itch with certain types of mexican like burritos from Moes. But then there are times when nothing else but New Mexican food will suffice. Yes, you can call me a snob when it comes to Mexican, but I’ll just tell you right now, and this is no knock on them or on those that enjoy it, but for me...Mamasitas aint gonna cut it when I want New Mexican food. Only authentic hatch green chile and true New Mexican style foods will meet that need. So imagine with me, I don’t get that often. Very rarely at all. I can get close, but never the fullness of it unless someone can get the ingredients and make it here. Last time I was in New Mexico was in Fall of 2020.

Now can you imagine with me not finding satisfaction in something for almost two years?

And once we get past the silliness of food cravings here, I want us to ask the question about our lives. What is it that brings us satisfaction? Is it family? Is it friends? Wealth? Possessions? Sex? Hobbies? What satisfies your soul? And if the answer is any of those things, are you ever truly satisfied?

Let me tell you today…those things were never made for your satisfaction. Those things cannot quench the satisfaction we need, the thirstiness we feel. David shows us the alternative, the strong desire for what we truly satisfy us. God himself.

READ PSALM 63.

CTS: Earnestly seek the all-encompassing satisfaction that can only be found in relationship with God.

I. Thirst for God (1-2)

The Psalm as introduced as a Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness. This gives us some context to the passage, though we don’t know exactly this might have been. Two possibilities are when he was running from Saul or when he was running from his son Absalom. Either way, the situation remains the same. He is out in the wilderness, not in his palace, and is crying to God, giving great context to the phrasing he uses throughout this Psalm.

A. Our souls thirst

O God, you are my God: God, the one whom David has personal relationship with…my God. Yahweh remember is not distant. He is other, holy, but he is not distant. David acknowledges and states clearly that whom He is addressing is the God he calls his own.

And from the get-go, we see clearly that the establishment of a relationship is key to the longing of our souls. This isn’t knowing facts about God, it is knowing God himself. This is to be the cry of every human being, but can only be fulfilled by true relationship with God, which David has, and for us here today that know our Lord through Jesus Christ by faith, this is to be the cry of each one of us.

Earnestly seek, thirst, and faint for God: In the midst of the wilderness, where he is living in caves, not in the comfy palace of a king, David uses the metaphor of the desert to show his longing, to describe it. David uses it to show what the Scriptures so often tell us about knowing God.

Isaiah 26:9 ESV

9 My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

Lamentations 2:19 ESV

19 “Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.”

I think you can imagine a desert, some of you may have visited one, and maybe even some of you have lived there. I know firsthand what David speaks about. The thirst of the desert is very real. Dry and arid. On the mind of anyone living there is the word “drought.” The drought has been going for years. Fire danger is real at any moment. One cigarette ash could send forests up in flames.

Our souls need quenched. God quenches that need. And David shows us what he did when he sought that quenching...

B. Our souls quenching

David no doubt looks to the past experiences of his life, when he wasn’t in the desert, but in the sanctuary. It was there that he came to worship the Lord, where he could behold his power and glory. The act of setting his eyes upon God through worship is what quenches his thirst. He did it in the past, and he does it now. David knew that even in the wilderness, the same God he beheld in the tabernacle or temple wasn’t confined to those places. He could behold God where he was at and see His power and glory. He saw it in his deliverance, he saw it in his provision, and he saw it the peace that came from knowing He was in hands of his God.

God, the one who has all power and all glory, is the only One who can satisfy our souls. He is the only one powerful enough to quench it. It is only His glory that doesn’t fade. It reminds us that our glory and strength fade, the things of this world perceived “power and glory” fade and fail. These things cannot stop the famine in our hearts, the drought of our thirsty souls. Only God is enough for you and for me today, and for us as the church.

Application: The danger of an unfed and unquenched soul is the same. We will be set ablaze, destruction when it is not God who sustains us and who fulfills us, but other things. If our lives are not defined by a satisfaction with God, we face the wrath of God. But even Christians, when we seek alternatives to satisfy us, to quench our thirst, it won’t do. It won’t help.

C.S. Lewis says this:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

What satisfies your soul today? What are we pleased with? Is God enough for us today, or do you need other things in your life to give you meaning? The right image, the right friends, the perfectly currated social media, the perfect family, the pleasures of the world, money, wealth, sex, power?

II. Satisfaction of God (3-5)

That satisfaction is seen clearly in God. This powerful and glorious God is enough for us. Why?

His steadfast love is better than life (3): Steadfast love here is the Hebrew word hesed. In essence, it means God’s covenant loyalty, that he will not give up on His own. That we can bank on God being enough for us. And here’s the really interesting thing about this. David says that this love is better than life itself.

But in a salvation religion there is always the danger for all believers to take the value of their own lives as the primary reason to trust God. This verse leads us in prayer to the point of devotion to God alone that must be the goal of all true faith. - James Mays

We must remember that we don’t worship God because of the value of our lives, but the value of God alone. This is what drove the apostles, the disciples, the early Christians, and Christian throughout history. We don’t worship God because he does things for us. We worship God because He is God. He is worthy of it. He loves us with a steadfast love, and it causes me to not fret if my life is on the line. Why? Because Jesus, God’s Son himself gave his life for me. The life I have is nothing in comparison to knowing God. That love is worthy more than my comforts, my possessions, and everything else of this world.

Paul says it like this in Philippians.

Philippians 3:8–14 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 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

His steadfast love drives us to praise (3b-4): Because of this incredible love, David then says I will praise you, worship you, as long as I live. Salvation doesn’t leave you to quiet and to continue inaction, but rather, it causes us and drives us to proclaim the God of our salvation and the God of this steadfast love through our praises, and lifting of our hands in prayer and worship.

In other words, because of the quenching of God, because He is enough, we will worship Him with all the days we have. Whether that is only a few hours left or for 50 more years, we can worship Him and never exhaust his greatness.

Is your life defined by your worship of the Lord in all that you do? How you work? How you study? How you play? How you love your spouse? How you love your children? Your regular gathering with the body of Christ? Your singing with great joy and praise to the One who paid our debt and saved us for Himself, that loved us with a steadfast love through the giving of His own Son to save us from our sins and to give us eternal life in Him?

His steadfast love brings ultimate satisfaction (5):

Because here is the truth. Jesus is enough for you. Our souls are satisfied in him. That New Mexican food, as good as it is, the satisfaction eventually wears off. The satisfaction of Jesus never fades. Like rich and full food, our souls are satisfied, and we are reminded that our souls are never thirsty again. When we feast upon God, he is our ultimate satisfaction that our souls need, and we need nothing else.

We choose what we want, seek what we love, and praise what we enjoy. For David, his experience of God convinces him that he must have God: he longs for him above all else. And the incomparable love of God has David’s lips doing what they should. - James Hamilton Jr.

III. Help from God (6-8)

David in the midst of his hiding in the wilderness had ample time, especially at night to think and to meditate. I imagine it would have been hard for him to sleep, having to be aware at all times of the pursuit of Saul or Abasalom. It reminds us that the most difficult times are often when God does his greatest work on our souls. It causes us to rely on Him, and to cry out to him for help.

Remember what God has done: What we meditate on is on what God has done. Where do we know in greatest form what God has done? Through His Word, the Scriptures. We read and testify of the goodness and the grace of God, rooted in the work of God and what He has done. He has helped us. He has saved us. He has delivered us from our greatest enemies, sin, death, and Satan.

Isaiah 41:10 ESV

10 fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

He is our protector: In the shadow of the wings we reside, in God, as an eagle takes care of its eaglettes. He has been our help. He has been our refuge.

Isaiah 32:2 ESV

2 Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.

He upholds us: We cling to God, for it is in his right hand that we are upheld. Right hand is the hand of power. I can’t help but think of who sits at the right hand of Father. The Son Jesus Christ, has finished his work of salvation, intercedes on our behalf. We cling to Jesus, who is at the right hand of God. He is the only one who can truly help us, truly satisfy us. The faithfulness of our Savior, the strength of our God, will never fail us.

Deuteronomy 10:20 ESV

20 You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.

Dane Ortlund says this:

“How do you know that God will never give up on you? Because He sent His Son to prove it.”

Remember the Gospel. Remember the Word. Remember what He has done in your own life, how He has carried you, sustained you, delivered you. Remember his faithfulness, even in the hardest and most difficult of times.

IV. Justice of God (9-11)

The contrast couldn’t be any clearer. Those that seek to destroy our lives, those wicked from Psalms 1 and 2, what we once were ourselves, will face the justice of God. It is a reminder that those wicked put their trust in themselves, their own power, their own idols. The power of the sword, the ability to oppress and to get what they want. The rebel who fights tooth and nail to fulfill their every desire outside of God will face the justice of God.

This is all rooted in the original rebel himself, Satan. It was his doing and desire to take the glory from God. It was his desire to tempt Adam and Eve to rely on themselves rather than God for their every need, to look for other things to satisfy them. That is the lie from the very beginning, that the things of this world will be able to satisfy you. The lie that the things that God has told you not to do is God withholding something from you that you deserve. It is the lie that we can become like God himself.

And yet God, in HIs grace and mercy, has come to destroy that enemy, to destroy that lie, to destroy the sin that has broken us and severed our relationship with Him. It is the beautiful Good News that the ultimate King Jesus has come, obeyed when we couldn’t, died for what we deserved, and stopped the liars in his tracks. The King exulted in His Father, and the King came to obey and to die for us.

Contemplate the Scriptures and your mouth will be full of praise for God. Contemplate how you will overthrow the God of the Bible and rebel against his king and your mouth will be stopped.

Know the Lord as God, look to him to meet your needs, and you will experience his love, which is better than life, satisfying your soul and sheltering your from harm, upholding you with a righteous right arm. Put some idol in his place and look to it for satisfaction, and you will be left empty and alone, with the wrath of God remaining on you.

- James Hamilton, Jr.

Look to Jesus, the Son of David, who satisfied our need of a Savior, to the point of death for us, and He is the one who quenches our thirst and fills our belly with his righteousness. He is the one satisfies us to the utmost. He is our help, and in his wings we sing. He upholds us, sustains us, intercedes for us, advocates for us. He is the just one, who will bring justice to the nations, and all his enemies will be put to death.

He is faithful. He is enough.

If my sports teams all lose every game for the rest of my life…Jesus is enough

If I get to fish, hunt, or any hobby again…Jesus is enough

If this country I live in falls apart and goes away…Jesus is enough

If I lose all my possessions…Jesus is enough

If I lose my job…Jesus is enough

If I lose all my friends…Jesus is enough

If I lose my family…Jesus is enough

If I lose my looks and my body falls apart....Jesus is enough

If I lose everything…Jesus is enough

If I lose my life…Jesus is enough.