Would you pray with me?

Father, those are really big words to sing. Really big words to sing.

Simple words, but big words. You alone would be enough. Lord, our heart’s desire is that you would remove everything that stands in the way of us treasuring you and treasuring Christ.

And Lord, we could sing from the bottom of our hearts that you’re more than enough. You certainly are that. Lord, even in seasons of wandering, you’re more than enough. So we just pray. We pray you would draw us to that truth. We pray you would speak to us through your word this evening. That we would grow and treasure you more. And Father, we pray you would bless our tithe and our offering as we joyfully, sacrificially give. We love you and we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well good evening. If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 42. Psalm chapter 42. I mean verses 1-5.

I just kind of felt…

I don’t know, drawn to this psalm this week. I don’t know, drawn to this psalm this week. I don’t know, drawn to this psalm this week. I don’t know, drawn to this psalm this week. I wanted to walk through it with you. Psalm chapter 42, verses 1 through 5.

The psalmist says, As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night. While they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude-keeping festival. Why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

Jonathan Edwards, great Puritan writer and pastor,

says in his book, The Religious Affections, Men will trust in God no further than they know him. And they cannot be in the exercise of faith in him, further than they have sight of his fullness and faithfulness in exercise. We only trust God as much as we know God. And it’s in our knowing God that we see how faithful and trustworthy he really is. And David in this psalm, I think, asks us that one statement, a simple question. What is the greatest desire of my soul? What is the greatest desire of my soul? It’s always a kindness, I think, in the Bible, and we’ve said this before, and the Lord uses really simple metaphors in life and in nature to help us grasp spiritual things. And here we have an incredibly simple one. The psalmist speaks of a deer. And this deer is panting for water. Perhaps it’s because of some drought or intense heat. But to say that the animal pants is not to say that it’s just thirsty. You know what it means to be thirsty. It’s something else to be in a state of panting. You could go a long while without food. But in that moment of near dehydration, it’s all consuming, isn’t it? And you’ve been outside in 95 degree weather and you’re cutting the grass or you’re working on some project and you haven’t had something to drink in a long while and you’re soaking wet in sweat. And it’s an all consuming thought. It’s all you’re conscious of. It’s all you’re conscious of is that you need water. And you’ve seen probably not a deer because I don’t think any of us have pet deer, but you’ve seen this with your dogs. When a dog is extremely thirsty, what does it do? It pants, right? And it’s breathing heavy and it needs water.

It’s a point in life where you realize water is life. I’ve got to have water. My body has to have water or I’ll die. It’s just an intense realization of a simple truth. And David finds himself in the same place, but spiritually. And it’s not a cursed state. I want you to understand that. It’s a blessed one. It’s a painful awareness of what he needs so that he’s driven to attain it. The opposite would be terrible. You think about hypothermia. When someone is in the final stages of hypothermia, they become warm. And what happens is their blood vessels dilate to try to flood their body with heat. And it’s a kind of a last attempt effort by your body to keep you warm. And you might feel warm and you might feel okay, but really you’re dying. So a recognition, a deep burning desire for water or for the psalmist, for God is good because he’s being drawn to attain it.

The psalmist says elsewhere, 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. So as the body needs water daily, you need water daily. What does your soul need daily and moment by moment? Your soul needs God. And so the great concern the psalmist presents us with simply is do we recognize that deep need to be satisfied and sold by God? Do I have a great desire for God? And then do I act on that great desire? Our greatest desire can only be fulfilled if we seek God, above all things. Seek God above all things.

Verse two, he says, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. So it’s not that you and I don’t ever have thirst for other things, but maybe you’ve done this like I have before when you’re to the point of dehydration and you choose not to drink water. You drink green tea. I’ve done that. Or you drink some sugary carbonated beverage or even, even Gatorade, even something like that or some juice, you might think it’s going to satisfy, but actually it can end up making you sick and not feeling well because you’re flooding your body with all these other things you don’t need. What do you need? You need water because your body, right, was literally designed to receive water when you’re thirsty. That’s it. And that’s how all living creatures are replenished. How often do we have to admit, though, that we, we suppress that desire for God and in its place we consume a lesser thing and we think it’ll nourish our souls in the way that only God can. Charles Spurgeon has says, the next best thing to living in the light of the Lord’s love is to be unhappy till we have it and to paint hourly after it. So the next best thing to God is not fill in the blank. No, the next best thing to having God is just being unhappy until you have God. There is no second best to God. All things in life aren’t adequate. Nothing is a close substitute for what your soul was made for and that was to know God. In fact, anything we try to replace with God in our hearts for satisfaction is a sort of poison. And it’s a truth that we constantly have to be reminded of. You and I have been made, you and I have been designed for one reason. And that’s to know God. Paul says in Galatians, now that you know God, or rather have been known by God. And you say, well, hold on. I thought the purpose of human life was to glorify God. That sounds like a better churchy answer, right? Glorify God, not know God. But brother or sister, it’s only in your knowing God that you would be drawn to glorify Him. Because if you know God, the only thing you’re going to do in knowing Him is glorify Him and not anything else. Knowing the character of God, knowing His persons that will draw you to glorify Him. And where is it that you and I get such a clear picture of who this wonderful God is that we would be so drawn to Him? We would be so drawn into love and to be satisfied and to glorify. It’s in Jesus, right? Because Jesus shows me a heart of a Father that tenderly loves me and takes care of me and sees to my every need. Jesus shows me that He is a friend above every friend and is with me in every single adversity. And Jesus shows me that He is a Savior and He is an advocate. And He is a protector. When I know God in Christ Jesus, I know how all-satisfying God is. And when I know how satisfying God is for my soul, I’m drawn to do the only thing I can do in that moment, and that is give God glory. So it’s a heart knowledge, you know? It’s a heart knowledge. You and I could say a million things, a million things about God with our heads, and we could come up with lists that we’ve got from doing a Bible study. But at the end of the day, it’s a heart knowledge. It’s something in that still, quiet moment. It’s a certain quenching. It’s a certain sweetness. When you can sit there in a chair or driving down the road or whatever you’re doing, no words can replace it. And you just, in your heart, know this God who is there and who is real. And there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else like it. And David qualifies it. He says, my soul thirsts for God, specific, the living God. Not a God of the Canaanites, not some idol of pagans, not my idea of God, not myself as my own God, not many possessions or longings I could have in my heart. He says it’s specifically, explicitly, my soul can only be satisfied with Yahweh. With the Lord Jesus. To be with Him is to be satisfied in the Father. Because in the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. Jesus told His disciples, remember that? If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father. He said, don’t say anymore. When do we get to see the Father? Jesus says, if you’ve seen Me, what is He communicating? I am the fullness of God. So by definition, friends, if we’re going to say we’re disciples of Jesus and yet we don’t spend incredible amounts of time saturated in His presence, savoring just the very thought of knowing that He is ours and we know Him and He loves us, it would be strange and it would be hypocritical. And I think we have to admit all the time, we find ourselves in that hypocritical place, don’t we? But I think this text, it pleads with us. It pleads with us in those wandering moments. Lift your eyes and lift your heart to that heavenly abode where God is. And though we are worlds away from God, in spirit, in spirit, we have an endless feast. In spirit, we have Christ. In spirit, we have the Father. In spirit, we have the Father. It’s satisfying and it’s enough.

Church, can we say to ourselves, to our own souls, return to your first love? We looked at that in those letters in Revelation. Jesus says, return to your first love.

In Jeremiah, when the people are in great apostasy, it says this in chapter 2, be appalled at the sight of God. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. So Israel has a lot of natural springs. Yet Israel, just like nations that don’t have natural springs, they were in a spiritual sense, digging in the ground, big holes to put these pottery in, these potteried vessels, so they can collect water. And that water would be given to be brackish and to be dirty. And worst of all, cisterns crack. Jeremiah said, these are two evils. They’ve turned from a fountain of living, clean water, and instead they’re trying to collect dirty water, and crack broken cisterns.

Is it any wonder then that Jesus, in his ministry, in his time, surrounded by those same type of people, those Israelites, he says in John 7, he stood up and it says, he cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. And whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, what out of his heart will flow rivers, of living water? Jesus gives us the living water from heaven and only in a true relationship and knowing him can you, can I be satisfied and be satisfied. God has run at us from heaven in his son to give us the satisfaction of our souls. Do we have, do we have the same desire in return to receive it?

I read an account of a British major who during the first world war, they were fighting the Turks and the fight was going on all day and they were out of water in the reservoir and it said their lips were cracked and busted and their tongues were swollen and purple and they were to the point of death and they could see there as they were fighting on the battle, the battlefield wells of water, but they were right there, but they weren’t far enough yet in the battle where they could get them. And he said it was maddening. And I think that’s the perfect way to say it. Friends, you and I, we live, we live so dehydrated spiritually, yet Christ offers the spiritual water we need and he’s right there. Why not in the same sense be maddened by our spiritual dehydration and take hold of Christ rather than making ourselves suffer or try to be satisfied on something else? As C.S. Lewis has famously said, God sees our desires as too weak, not too strong, not too strong.

Church, I want to just invite you this evening to just have a renewal in your heart. For Jesus and be reminded in the rat race of life and juggling work and juggling kids and juggling this, juggling that, God is not just another thing to try to mix into the run of life. God is life and he is owed our very best time. He’s owed our very best attention and he is the one that should saturate the rest of life, not get our extras when we have time for it. How? How do you need to maybe reorder your priorities so that God gets your time daily? What’s your daily routine look like? When is God getting your best thoughts? Is he getting your best time in prayer? Is he getting your best time in the word? How do you need to train your mind to constantly run to him, not run to your schedule or run to that thing you need to order or run to that thing you forgot to do, but is your mind, have that spiritual reflex to constantly go up to the heavenlies where God is and just enjoy his presence and thank him for salvation, be satisfied in the soul?

The second thing that David shows us here is that great desire can only be fulfilled if we seek God in every difficulty. Do we seek God in every difficulty?

In verse two, he goes on to say, when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how it would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. David, if you’re at all familiar with the life of King David, he was someone who knew adversity well. He lived as a fugitive for a long time from King Saul, living in caves, running, hiding. But also when David’s son Absalom grew up, Absalom overthrew David’s kingdom for a short time and David had to leave his own kingdom, his own house. And for David, as for any Israelite in that time,

God’s tabernacle was the place you wanted to be if you love God, right? God’s presence uniquely resided on that tabernacle then. So it would have been a great pain. It would have been a great sourness for David that the God whom he loved, he couldn’t go to God’s house and perform the ordinances and make the sacrifices and worship with God. And God’s people, he was exiled from God’s house when he was on the run. But I want you to see that in David’s adversity, he’s not prevented from giving God still his best thoughts and the affections of his heart. In fact, David’s suffering pushes him even harder to do the very thing. So it’s not out of sight, out of mind. Well, I can’t go to the temple today, so I’m off the hook from worshiping the Lord or thinking about God. I’m not thinking about what honors God, not at all. When it says, when shall I come and appear before God, you could render that, when shall I see the face of God? He longs for God. He wants to see God. He says, my tears are my food. And people mock me. Where is your God? So it’s in this season where nearness to God is not what David wants. It’s when sorrows and grief overwhelm him, done by his enemies. Some of this, the consequence of his own sin for what he did with Bathsheba, for why Absalom has done what Absalom’s done in his older years. He’s in this great grief. Yet he does the thing that only a true saint by grace would do in such adversity. He leans in even harder to the God that he knows, is the answer. He leans in even harder in his adversity to the God who satisfies. And it’s in that place of difficulty that I want to say to you, true faith and true love for God is shown to be differentiated from someone who for them it’s false.

Verse four, he says, these things I remember. What is David doing with his mind? In his great struggle? He sets himself to think about the satisfaction and the joy that he has in salvation when he would go with God’s people to the tabernacle and they would worship God and they would shout to God and they would have festivals for days worshiping, celebrating this God. And it begs the question back to you and I, in my adversity and in your adversity, what things are you thinking about? When you have some great trial, from where do you attempt to draw your strength and your joy? When God takes away your comforts, when God takes away your pleasures and ease, when he strips you of all your pleasant things, friends, you will discover whether it’s true or not for you that God is enough. Such seasons we discover whether, like that song we sang, if I have you and nothing else, I have everything. We discover if those are just words we sing or if it’s actually embedded in my soul. We discover if the sermons we amen are actually worked down into the core of our hearts.

It’s a hard thing. I’m not saying it’s not a hard thing. It’s a very hard thing. But it’s a true thing that truly, trials are a gift because they remove every pretense of our souls. They remove the outward religiosity of our lives and they get down to the quick of who we are really and what our commitment to God is truly. If your money ran out, if the stuff gets repoed, if you lost every friend, if you lost your health, if you’re taunted on every side, what things would you remember? What things would you remember? What would your soul do?

I think we’d all agree, Job gives the best answer, doesn’t he? Job says, he tears his robe, shaves his head, falls on the ground, worships. Naked I came from my mother’s womb. Naked shall I return. The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And in all Job’s adversity, he didn’t sin against God. Now, what we don’t know is if Job’s wife was in a moment of discouragement or if this was kind of revealing of who she was. But his wife says to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? This is a really incredible thing to say. Curse God and die.

But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil? And all this Job did not sin with his lips. So church, such trials that life affords, it drives us to love and enjoy and lean into the reality of that God that satisfies us. It satisfies our souls as never before. Or trials and struggles and adversity will push us further and further away. My pastor growing up would always say it. He’d always say, your praise and worship on the mountain doesn’t mean anything if you can’t give it to God in the valley. God must be our one constant in all of life. Because at the end of it all, knowing God, loving God, is the only thing that satisfies and it’s the only thing that matters.

Samuel Rutherford, the very famous Scottish pastor and theologian, he’s written, if God had told me some time ago that he was about to make me happy as I could be in this world, and then had told me that he should begin by crippling me in arm or limb and removing me from all my joy, my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing his purpose. And yet, how is his wisdom manifest even in this? For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wish to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps and then throwing open the shutter to let in the light of heaven. God is not interested, friends, in making us happy in anything except Jesus. That is God’s only purpose in us, is to make us happy in Jesus.

Let us pray for such seasons that come and go, or come longer than we’d like them to stay, that we wouldn’t miss out on how God is drawing us deeper, deeper into his goodness. Drawing our faith to bless and praise his name, though the whole world would call it foolish. Friends, it is our lot if we follow Jesus. Because what did Jesus say if we are to follow him truly? We’re to carry a cross. Did Jesus say, hey, being a Christian is great. Every day is a pleasure. And you die and it gets even better in heaven. That’s not what he said. Jesus said following him is a cross. But it’s through that instrument of suffering and trial we know God’s goodness and ultimately God’s glory. It’s through that perfecting, sanctifying work.

Lastly, our greatest desire will only be fulfilled if we seek until we are fulfilled. Until we find him. Are you willing to seek until you find? Psalmist says in verse 5, why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

David doesn’t let his soul sink too far down because he’s got hope. And specifically the hope there means I’m patiently awaiting for the arrival of something. Like I know it’s going to come. I have a sureness that this thing is going to show up. David believes God doesn’t disappoint.

God is enough in the waiting so that when he does show up, his salvation will be overwhelming. David has the eye of faith on future praise. David is not just praising God for how great he is now. He’s praising God and looking forward when he’s going to praise God even more when God does the even greater thing he knows that God’s going to do. So he’s enjoying God, but he’s looking forward to enjoying God even more when God shows up and saves. So you and I always have a reason to praise God tomorrow. Even more so than today. And I think that gives every day a bit of joy and a bit of patience for us, a bit of enduring knowing whatever it is now it’s going to be beautiful on the other side because God’s promised it. And God shows himself faithful and God shows himself satisfying.

So church, I just want to encourage us

let us have God let us have the Lord Jesus in the spirit as our greatest desire because he promises in the end salvation and he promises satisfaction and it will all be for his glory. We can seek him above all things. We can seek him in every difficulty and if we seek him we will find him. In Christ we find him and he finds us. And in Christ we find him. And every joy and every pleasure is forevermore at the Father’s right hand for those who are in Christ Jesus. So can you lift your eyes from this passing world and all the things that we think are so important and all the things we allow to stress us out and make us worry and all the things that the world chases after. Can we lift our eyes and lift our hearts to Jesus. Jesus alone who is true happiness who is true life who is true joy forevermore. Let’s pray.

Father like a an unbridled horse we so often bucked and we so often kick God we’re asking you just to reign us in Lord by your love by the power of your word the working of your spirit Father would you steady us would you keep us single minded in the pursuit of your son would you let the things of this world and all the weaknesses within Lord would you let them be overwhelmed the sight and the goodness of your son and the life that you give us in him Lord.

Father we pray that there wouldn’t be another passing moment where we don’t come back and we recommit Lord in our hearts now just to say we love you and you are enough and you are satisfying.

Maybe you just need to take a moment and you just need to take a moment and tell God how much you love him and just be reminded of his goodness to you.

Thank you Father for your grace and that you keep us forever. Your son Jesus. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen.