Worshipping God In Life’s Wilderness
Psalm 63
For the person who follows Jesus, life is idyllic. As you embrace Christ, your problems become opportunities, heartaches turn into joys, and bad times fade into the past. Your career succeeds as it never has. Your relationship with those around you is enhanced. Unkind words once directed toward you no longer make their way to your ears. Temptation runs against you, then retreats in dismay. Money is no longer a problem, for you’ll have more than enough. Lovely flowers moving in the fresh breeze send their fragrance your way as the warming rays of the sun fill your body with the feeling of health and beautiful harmony with God and nature. You are God’s special person. He spares you from pain, problems, and poverty.
Of course you know, that’s a huge pile of baloney, right? Unmitigated hogwash, as one pastor puts it – more like heresy. If this really is what it’s like when you turn your life over to Christ, then all of us have to be wondering whether we really do follow Jesus. Although our walk with Jesus brings us many blessings, Satan doesn’t roll over and play dead when we follow Jesus. No! He continues to dog us as we make our way through life. On top of that, following Jesus brings with it a degree of suffering as our selfishness is lost to service and discipleship. And as we struggle to be what we are, children of God, it is often hard and painful. Christ suffered, his followers suffered, we too will have the privilege of suffering.
Those of us who try to follow Jesus in a society that doesn’t follow Jesus (and no society does or ever has), we know the suffering that sometimes accompanies our uniqueness. Others look at us in disbelief when we stand for something because it’s right rather than because it’s expedient. To them we come across as losers. But for us to do less is to march to a different drum than the one Jesus is playing. Jesus puts it this way, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” To really follow Jesus, our selfishness and self-centeredness must be replaced with selflessness.
Our journey through life doesn’t end at the grave. It moves beyond. Our vision is both present and future, in this world and the next. Courageously we meet the world, proclaiming the glory of the Lord in word and deed and we find strength through him to handle whatever resistance our faith might encounter. Leaning on him we seek his Spirit’s power to help us deny ourselves, to bear his cross, and to even suffer for the Gospel’s sake. With Christ, our desire is that everyone might become his children through faith and join him and us at the Father’s house in eternity.
When we arrive, God will look us over – not for medals, or awards, or degrees, but for scars. Finding them, he will declare, “Ah, a wise person who understood that winning meant losing.”[i]
But in the moment in which we are suffering, or dealing with opposition, or the mess that our own sin creates – in those moments when we feel abandoned by God, what do we do? How do we keep going when giving up, quitting, going in a different direction would be so much easier. More profitable. More comfortable.
This summer, we’re looking at the life of David, Israel’s poet-musician-warrior king. The thing I like about David is that his life is so real, so broken. We see his faithfulness AND his failure, and the Bible tells the story of both. His is a messy life, and the Bible doesn’t gloss over the mess. But in the midst of the mess is his desire to know God, to please God, to follow God. And God’s righteousness and holiness, and also God’s grace and mercy, come shining through.
Today, we’re looking at Psalm 63, one of the Psalms David wrote while he was out in the wilderness. David had to flee to the wilderness twice: once for several years while Saul still sat on Israel’s throne and wanted David dead, pursuing him across the countryside, and once when he was forced to flee Jerusalem after his son Absalom rebelled and tried to depose his father, trying to take the throne by force. We don’t know during which of those wilderness times in David’s life he wrote this Psalm, but his time in the wilderness fleeing from Saul was much, much longer. Many scholars place it during that time period. Either way, the circumstances were the same. He was fleeing for his life. So turn in your Bibles, or open the Bible app on your phone or tablet to Psalm 63:1.
David would have had to flee further into the wilderness after his encounter with Saul in the caves near the En-Gedi oasis. Up into the high desert in Judea, a desolate wasteland above the cliffs that descend to En-Gedi, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. If you Google “Judean desert” or “Judean wilderness” and pull up one of the maps and zoom out, you’ll see a lot of terrain with no roads, even today. Look at the images and you’ll swear you are looking at images of the desert planet Tatooine from the first and third Star Wars movies. It’s a lot of sand and rock, a lot of yellow and brown.
It is a barren, thirsty land full of rock, dirt, and sand. It is a dangerous place. And not just because of the temperature extremes and lack of water. Many of the animals that survive there – hyenas, jackals, wolves, and leopards – eat what they can find, and if they find you, they’re going to try to eat you. And David sits there, in the darkness of a cave, or out on a rock taking his turn at the watch with his men, trying to eke out an existence – survival – for himself and the 600 or so people with him. Hot, hungry, tired … and thirsty. So very thirsty.
Even today, residents in Israel and Palestine carry water bottles with them wherever they go to make sure they stay hydrated. And if you visit the area on a tour, one of the first things you’ll be taught is to always have water with you and also how to recognize the earliest signs of dehydration so that you don’t wind up sick, or worse, during your time there.
And not having access to water makes your thirst worse. If you are out on a run and don’t have water with you, you know that when you’re done you’ll have access to water, and so you keep going. In a long race you know there will be refresher stations where you can grab a cup of water as you run by. But if you don’t have access to water? Your thirst gets worse very fast, doesn’t it? Your mouth gets dryer and dryer and you start to obsess about getting a drink of water.
David sits there hot, hungry, tired, and thirsty, he compares his physical thirst to a spiritual thirst. “Yes God, I’m thirsty for water. But what I’m even more thirsty for is you. People are chasing me. Hunting me down. Trying to kill me. They want me gone. They want me dead. And my soul feels like my body – thirsting for you, just as my body thirsts for water.
The only way thirst is created is to NOT get the thing that satisfies the thirst. We aren’t thirsty if we have enough water. Our souls aren’t thirsty if we have a sense of God close by, active in our lives, loving us and filling us and strengthening us. And David doesn’t sense that right now. He’s wondering where God is.
But notice the words he opens the Psalm with. “I’m thirsty for you” isn’t the second sentiment, but it isn’t the first. The first is, “Oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you.” The first thing David does in the pain and confusion of his wilderness is to reaffirm, to God, and also to his own soul, his faithfulness to God. “YOU are my God.” And right now, because I feel abandoned and in danger, my soul is as thirsty for you as my body is for water in this deserted wasteland. And so I am EARNESTLY, desperately seeking you. God I am seeking you just as desperately as I am seeking water for myself and the people with me.
But David doesn’t just sit there fearfully stewing in his desperation. Oh, there are times when he does that, but he doesn’t do that here. Look at Vv. 2-4. He forces his mind to go back to the times when he HAS sensed God’s presence in his life. He remembers the power of God that was at work in his life when he encountered bears and mountain lions in the wilderness as he tended his father’s sheep in days now long gone.
Killing bears and lions barehanded seems like a lot, but remember, it was par for the course for rough, tough shepherds who protected their vulnerable flocks – unprotected by fences and barns – with their lives. He remembers the power of God at work in the mundane details of his life as a shepherd and later as a warrior for Saul, and also in the extraordinary times in his life like his encounter with Goliath.
He meditates on the glory of God seen in the stories passed down through the generations of his ancestors – stories of God’s faithfulness in Israel’s history. And he sees running through it all the strand of God’s unfailing, sticks-with-you-no-matter-what love, and he knows that love is still present with him, EVEN THOUGH HE CAN’T FEEL IT and his soul is thirsty.
Now, look at what he confesses in V. 3. “Your steadfast love is better than life.” Even if I die here, your unending, steadfast love is better than anything I stand to lose in dying. Losing you would be far worse than losing my life, and even though I don’t see you, experience tells me that you are still here with me. Even in the darkest Psalm of Lament, even in David’s darkest moments, when he isn’t able to think back and remember God’s goodness in his past, he still talks, complains, to God. Why talk to someone who isn’t in the room? Even in his darkest moment, when he felt abandoned by everyone, including God, there was still a part of David that cried out to God in despair. He never stopped talking to God, even when a part of him felt abandoned, left alone by God.
So what does David’s memory of God’s power and glory and love do to David’s heart? It leads him to praise. When our hearts are discouraged. When hopelessness knocks at the door of our hearts and minds. When our souls thirst for a touch from God more than a woman or a man lost in a desert thirsts for water, we have to force ourselves to remember God’s presence in our lives in the past, and we hold on to the truth proclaimed in Hebrews 13:8, that Jesus, God incarnate, “is the same yesterday and today and forever.” God was with me in the past, and because of that, I can KNOW, in faith, that God is with me right now, even though I can’t sense him.
It is by remembering that our hearts are led into praise. Look at Vv. 4-8. In remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, and trusting that God us just as with me know as he was then, hopelessness gives way to hope. And our hearts are lifted to God in praise. And this kind of praise isn’t hidden or silent. David’s words of praise leap from the page. The Psalms were meant to be spoken, not just read, that’s why we SPEAK our call to worship from the Psalms together every Sunday morning. This isn’t just David’s written testimony of God’s faithfulness and his hope, this is spoken testimony.
Praise isn’t just something that happens in our minds. It needs to come out of our lips. Our ears need to hear what our mouths are saying as we proclaim God’s power and glory and love together during worship. And as we hear ourselves saying and singing the words. And it also includes physical expression. David says “I will lift up my hands” (V. 4), and “I will sing for joy” (V. 7). The whole body is involved, not just the mind and the mouth. We can clap. We can raise our hands. We can kneel. Now, we don’t HAVE to, but we GET to.
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was present at the Vienna Music Hall, where his oratorio The Creation was being performed. Weakened by age, the great composer was confined to a wheelchair. As the majestic work moved along, the audience was caught up with tremendous emotion. When the passage “And there was light!” was reached, the chorus and orchestra burst forth in such power that the crowd could no longer restrain its enthusiasm.
The vast assembly rose in spontaneous applause. Haydn struggled to stand and motioned for silence. With his hand pointed toward heaven, he said, “No, no, not from me, but from thence comes all!” Having given the glory and praise to the Creator, he fell back into his chair exhausted. It took everything he had, but the great composer made sure that the enthusiastic praise went where it was due, and ONLY where it was due.
Some people worry that if they become too expressive in worship, they’ll look undignified. The problem is, they have no problem standing and clapping and shouting after an incredible vocal or dance performance, or when your team scores a touchdown to win the game as time expires in the Big House, or Spartan Stadium, or Notre Dame Stadium, or even Ohio Stadium.
You say, well, it’s not my personality to be that expressive. Okay, well, if you’re in the Big House and Michigan scores a touchdown on an 80-yard pass as time expires to beat my Buckeyes, and you just stand there with your hands in your pockets and a sour look on your face while your team wins, then that’s your personality and you can just stand there during worship. Or if you go to an incredible play or dance or musical performance and everyone gives the performers a standing ovation because the performance was so good, and you just sit there and don’t clap because it’s undignified, then that’s your personality and you can just sit there during worship.
The problem is I’ve never actually seen any of that happen. Even people who don’t understand sports tend to get caught up in the moment and cheer along if you’re there in person. We come in here and dare to stand before the creator God of the universe, a God whose power and glory are so great that the description of the angels who attend him given by Isaiah the prophet brings to mind pictures of fiery dragons, not fat little naked cherubs with tiny little wings.
And that God of power and glory LOVES you so much that he became like you in the person of Jesus, and he allowed humanity to nail him to a cross, and he died on that cross in our place so that justice is done and we can be united with him again. No musical or dance performance, no home run or touchdown, no record-breaking Olympic performance can even begin to match that. We have no problem cheering and clapping for those things. And we dare to stand in the presence of a God who is attended by dragon-like angels with our hands in our pockets because we’re worried that we’ll be undignified?
Now, I’m not saying you HAVE to be expressive in worship. I’m just saying it’s kind of weird if you aren’t when you have no trouble wildly cheering for a touchdown. So if you’d like to try something new, we have a little video introduction on how to become a little more expressive in worship. [Play video.]
David has a parched, dry, thirsty soul, and he longs for God’s presence. But he’s forced himself to remember God’s power and glory and love in his life in the past, so he knows that God is with him now, even though he can’t sense him. And that gives him hope for the future. Look at Vv. 9-11. David knows that the same God who was present in the past is present now even though he doesn’t feel him, and he will be present tomorrow. God wins. His justice will be brought forth. His goodness will shine for all to see. His glory and power will be made visible.
St. Paul, in Philippians 2:10-11 proclaims that, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” God’s glory will shine. He will not stand for his presence and his glory and his love to be ignored forever. And when it is made plain for all to see, EVERY SINGLE KNEE that has ever trod this earth will bow before his glory and his majesty.
So, when you are in life’s wilderness, and your soul thirsts for God’s presence and you can’t seem to find him anywhere, force yourself to remember. REMEMBER God’s power and glory and love in your life in the past. Because of that, KNOW that God’s power and glory and love are present in our life right now, even as you thirst and can’t find seem to wrap your mind around what is happening. God is there sustaining you even as your soul thirsts. And ANTICIPATE in hope God’s work in your life tomorrow, for God is already there. Wherever you find yourself in this life, God is already there. He is already there tomorrow, and in all of your tomorrows. Allow your heart to be lifted from thirst and despair to hope, and lift your voice, your hands, and your heart in praise to him. Let us pray.
[i] Seasonings For Sermons, Vol. III, by John H. Krahn