Psalm 63
We see people come and go at RIC and we get used to this. “Pastoring an international church is like pastoring a parade,” I have often said. But there is a difference between someone choosing to leave and someone being forced to leave.
On Monday morning I drove Uchenna to the Casablanca airport for his flight out of the country. He has been a close friend for the past ten years and I have relied on him for his spiritual insights, his strong faith and his friendship.
I am grieving his loss, as I grieved for the parents at the Village of Hope. At least he can take his children with him.
I was talking with a woman last week who told me she finds it difficult to concentrate. She is tired, spiritually tired. I talked with another couple this week who expressed the same sentiments and talked about their anger. The more people I talk with the more I hear this is a common experience.
We are preaching a series of sermons titled: Water for a Parched Tongue in a Dry Land. So many of us are feeling dry and tired it seemed right for us to address this and our hope is that we will receive from God the refreshment we crave.
Psalm 63 is a psalm David wrote when he was in the desert because his son, Absalom, had led a coup against him. David was feeling dry and tired and he was understandingly upset, but where does the story start?
David had at least eight wives and fourteen children. These are the ones named in the Bible but there were more. With all these wives and children there was a lot of intrigue and politics at work. Multiple wives inevitably leads to conflict and in this case, the problem began nine years before this psalm was written.
Absalom was one of David’s favorite sons. Absalom had charisma and good looks, much like his father. David loved him and so did the people of Israel. Absalom had a sister named Tamar and when his half-brother Amnon, another son of David, raped her, Absalom expected justice to be done. When David did nothing, Absalom pulled back and began plotting revenge. Two years later he had a party and invited his brothers. During the banquet Absalom’s servants murdered Ammon and Absalom fled to get away from his father’s angry reaction.
For three years he stayed away under the protection of his maternal grandmother until finally others in the court of David pleaded his case and he was allowed to come back to Jerusalem. He was not, however, permitted to come into the palace of his father.
His anger at his father for not having done what was right when Tamar was raped and now being denied the privilege of being in the royal palace simmered and finally, two years later, he led a coup against his father and David fled into the desert to escape. This is the setting for this psalm. In 2 Samuel 15:23 we read a description of David’s move to the desert:
The whole countryside wept aloud as all the people passed by. The king also crossed the Kidron Valley, and all the people moved on toward the desert.
David made a lot of mistakes in his life and they came back to cause him pain. This time the pain was enormous. The son he continued to love was leading a rebellion against him. He was forced to flee from his palace in Jerusalem. He was at war with his son whom he loved. He was grieving and anxious and as some of us know from our experience in the past several months, that is a terribly exhausting combination. Our circumstances are different but our emotions are not dissimilar so we can learn from his psalm.
The psalm begins with an affirmation:
O God, you are my God,
This is not a psalm full of doubt, wondering where God is. This is an expression of certain faith. It is an expression of the intimate relationship God has established with his people.
Earlier in his life David wrote (Psalm 23)
The Lord is my shepherd
Zak preached from that psalm last week and it is a wonderfully intimate psalm in which David expressed his experience of having been loved by and cared for by his shepherd.
In Genesis 17:7 God made a covenant with Abram in which he said:
I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
God did not make this promise of an intimate relationship only with Abraham. The writer of Hebrews (8:10) spoke about this promise made to the people of Israel when they set out in the desert from Egypt.
This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Jesus affirmed this relationship: (Matthew 22:31-32)
have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
Throughout history God has moved into history to establish intimate relationships with those he calls to him and who respond. We are among the fortunate who have been called and who answered that call.
That the preexisting creator of the universe loves us in this way and reaches out to us is a great mystery but it is a mystery on which we lean and from which we draw great comfort.
In the midst of tiredness and sadness we can call out to God who is in an intimate relationship with us.
O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
There is a saying in the US that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. How do you make someone thirsty? How do you make yourself thirsty?
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well she asked for water and Jesus answered: (John 4:13–14)
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
When her conversation began with Jesus she was thirsty but she did not know it. Her life choices had led her from one relationship to another but they had not brought satisfaction or contentment. Only after talking with Jesus did she discover her spiritual thirst she had been trying to satisfy in other ways.
The truth is that everyone in the world is thirsty. We are born to enter into an intimate relationship with God but most of the world seeks everything but the water Jesus offers that will satisfy this thirst.
Longing is not something I can work at. It is a recognition of what I am feeling and this takes some reflection. What am I feeling? What do I want? It may be that when I first ask myself this question I will conclude that what I want is a good vacation or a good movie to watch or a good book to read or an excellent meal. I will come to this later but my true need goes much deeper than this. Ultimately what I am longing for is a closer, more intimate relationship with God. That is the only thing that will satisfy.
When you reflect and discover your true thirst, you will know your longing for God in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Sometimes our world seems more dry than other times, but the truth is that this is always our condition. The world, even when we are relaxing in a plush oasis, is a dry and weary land where there is no water. Nothing will truly satisfy except the water that Jesus spoke of. We deceive ourselves into thinking other things will satisfy our thirst but they will never satisfy our deepest thirst.
In Psalm 1 we learned that the way out of dryness and tiredness is to meditate on the word of God. (Psalm 1:2–3)
his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
In Psalm 63 the lesson is that the solution to our problem of being dry and tired is to give praise to God.
O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
As David fled into the desert with the tears of the people surrounding him, fearing for his life, grieving for the rebellion of his son, he remembered better times.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
David was a man who sinned with all his heart and mind and who also worshiped God with all his heart and mind and now his mind went back to his experiences of worship.
We worship each Sunday here at RIC but there are some Sundays that stand out above others when I had a wonderful sense of the presence of God among us. It is not that God decided to visit us that particular Sunday, God is always present with us, but on those Sundays that come to mind I was particularly open to his presence.
In my ten years in Morocco I remember particularly Palm Sunday weekend in Marrakech in 2001. About four hundred followers of Jesus gathered from all over the world to pray and praise. Graham Kendrick came with four other musicians to lead us in our praise of God. In all my years as a follower of Jesus, that might be the most wonderful experience of worship I have had. I thought I would burst with joy as we sang and gave praise. Everyone was dancing. The violin player left the microphone on the stage and danced through the isles, playing his violin in an expression of praise. Graham Kendrick knelt on the stage playing his guitar in his expression of praise.
These are the memories that come back to me and memories of worship and praise as David played his harp or when others led in worship came back to David. Perhaps he remembered dancing with all his might before the Ark of the Covenant as it was brought up into Jerusalem.
Remembering these experiences in our lives encourages us and helps us to have a different perspective.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
The world beats down on us. Our circumstances beat down on us. We are tired and anxious. Remember when you sensed God’s presence in worship and praise and let that encourage you. Because of your experience of God you can realize that the life that is oppressive is not as powerful as the presence of God you experienced.
In those worship experiences when we glimpse just a bit of the heavenly glory of Jesus we realize that this satisfies much more than any of the many other ways we try to satisfy our spiritual thirst. Being loved by God, the joy of worshiping God is far more satisfying than any part of the life we live. We praise because that is what gives us life.
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
I’ve referred to this, let me talk more directly about it.
In the past week I have been grieving the loss of Uchenna and Dolapo and their sons. I have had difficulty focusing, difficulty concentrating. So what have I done? I played a lot of solitaire on the computer. I finished season seven of a TV show called Monk. When my soul was crying out for a seven-course French meal I fed myself cheap snacks that did not and can not satisfy. They distract but do not satisfy.
Eating a cookie or popcorn does not make me less tired or less anxious. It merely fills the time. But praise to God is like a seven-course French meal that deeply satisfies.
What do you do if you try to cook a seven-course French meal but all you can do is burn toast? What do you do if you sit down and sing a song but it does nothing for you? Psalm 63 is telling us that when we feel tired and dry we should give praise to God but what if we do not have musical skills or even if we do, our singing seems meaningless?
We don’t have to do it ourselves. We are fortunate to live in an age when we don’t have to gather musicians to play for us. All we have to do is turn on the CD player or mp3 player or whatever we have and there are the musicians playing for us. (Just think what Mozart or Bach or Beethoven would have thought of this incredible miracle of technology.)
There is a wonderful series of novels written by Susan Howatch that center around Starbridge Cathedral, a fictional setting in England. In each novel a character is having a crisis and a spiritual director helps put him back together. In one of these books, Ultimate Prizes, Charles, an archdeacon in the Anglican Church, is struggling and his spiritual director advises him to limit his ex tempore prayers, his spontaneous prayers, the way we most often pray, and to lean on the written prayers of others. In this book Charles asks:
“But how can I be sure I’ll even hear any word from God, let alone discern the meaning of any message which comes my way? I fell so deaf – so muddled and confused -“
His spiritual director responds:
“That’s exactly why your life of prayer and devotion is now so crucial. You must do all you can to cultivate your receptivity. Try cutting down the ex tempore prayers to the essential intercessions and concentrate on one or two formal prayers which you can say very slowly, thinking hard on each phrase. The Collects are always helpful and no doubt you have your own favorites prayers which you can use …
I have benefitted from this advice in my walk with God. About five years ago I was spiritually depleted and I began reading each morning The Valley of Vision, prayers of the Puritans. I leaned on those prayers and they helped me refill my spiritual reservoir.
In the same way, you can sit and listen to excellent musicians as they lead you in praise and worship. Lean on their praise and allow them to pull you into praise and worship of God. You don’t have to do it yourself and even if you are musically skilled, it may be good for you to sit back and lean on others for awhile.
6 On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
There may be times when you cannot sleep because of the anxiety you feel. So what do you do? This is a great time to put on earphones if you have others in your bedroom and listen to praise music. Let the music inspire you to pray to God. Listen to the words of the songs, pray and allow yourself to relax and fall asleep again.
You have a choice. You can lie in bed and race over and over again in your mind the situation that is making you anxious and preventing you from sleeping. Or you can choose to focus on God, not your situation, and thank him, give him praise, and if you need to, allow others to lead you in prayer with the prayers they have written and in praise with the songs they are singing.
7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
Isn’t that a wonderful image? I sing in the shadow of your wings.
David was fleeing from the army of his son, fearful of the strength of those who supported his son and in this fearful climate he wrote:
7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
You know who else came to my mind when I thought about this? Paul and Silas when they were in Philippi. Those who were economically threatened by the ministry of Paul and Silas complained and had them arrested. They were stripped and beaten. They were severely flogged and then they were placed in a prison cell with their feet fastened in stocks.
Do you understand what this means? They were in pain. They had bloody backs. Bruises, maybe some fractured bones. They were in pain and had no medicine to take to ease their pain. They faced an uncertain future and as they sat in their prison cell, what did they do? (Acts 16:25)
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
7 Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
Whatever you are facing, it is not as grim a situation as that of Paul and Silas. Regardless of your circumstances, regardless of the pain you are experiencing, you can sing praise because you sit in the shadow of God’s protection. Lean on the praise of others and allow their praise to become your praise as they lift you up out of your circumstances into the nurturing worship of God.
It may be that you are facing more pain than you have ever thought you would experience. It may be that the continual anxiety and uncertainty is getting to you. David was experiencing the rebellion of his son as well as fearing for his life and the loss of his kingdom. Whatever your experience is, you need to know you cannot take care of it by yourself.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
Do you need help? Do you need encouragement? Do you need hope? We sang this morning the Graham Kendrick song, Is Anyone Thirsty? Are you thirsty? Is your soul longing for refreshment? How desperate are you? Are you desperate enough to cling to God?
I have shared before the image of Cosette in Les Miserable clinging to the neck of Jean Valjean as he climbed over the walls of Paris to safety. Jean Valjean did the work of climbing but Cosette had to cling to his neck.
God will do the work of saving you and encouraging you and giving you once again hope but you have to cling to Jesus.
8 My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
Cling to God and his right hand will uphold you. In this psalm God is viewed as someone who is right handed and it is his strongest hand that holds you and lifts you up.
The first third of the life of Moses was lived in the household of the Pharaoh of Egypt. When Moses was an adult he had a sense that it was his destiny to rescue Israel from the harsh oppression of the Egyptians. But when he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave and found out that Pharaoh knew about this, he fled into the desert.
The next third of his life was lived as a sheepherder in the middle of nowhere, quite a fall from being a leader in the advanced civilization of Egypt. This part of his life was marked by a sense of failure and self-doubt. He had been given a chance to lead and had failed. Now he would live out his days watching sheep until he died. That was going to be it.
And then Moses came to the burning bush.
Exodus 3:4–6
God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Moses had settled for mediocrity. He doubted his abilities. God had called him to rescue his people and Moses had failed. He lived now with his failure. He was in the desert and his life was a desert. But in this dry ground he discovered God’s presence and out of that experience came the fulfillment of what God had originally called him to do.
In the pain of his desert experience Moses discovered that he was walking on holy ground because God was present with him.
The ground on which you are walking is holy ground. It may seem dry and lifeless to you, but it is holy. It may seem hopeless to you but it is holy ground. It is holy ground because God is present with you.
Meditate on God’s word. Let his word feed you and sustain you. Give praise to God. Sing in the safety of his protection. If you need help, let the prayers of others and the praise and worship of others lift you up until you can pray and sing praise on your own.
As God worked with Moses and lifted him up out of his mediocrity and depression, so will God work with you and lift you up out of your anxiety and fear.
Don’t give up. Cling to Jesus. Meditate on his word. Sing praise. Lean on others to help you do this. God will refill your spiritual reservoir with clear, refreshing water. God will bring healing to your pain. God will bring you to life.
