Thirsting For God
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 11/17/2013 PM |
Text: | Psalm 42:1,2 |
Psalters: | 134, 29, 9, 115 |
Confession of Faith, Preparatory |
- Its meaning.
- David likens the spiritually thirsting soul to a panting deer who has been long pursued.
- A doe (feminine gender) and thus the weaker member of the species is likened to our soul (also feminine in Hebrew).
- She escaped immediate danger, but now faces another dangerous condition: thirst.
- It utters a cry, peculiar to the hart, facing imminent death.
- The Holy Spirit uses this figure to express the experience of a soul which thirsts for God.
- It is to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matt. 5:6), i.e., a longing for what is essential to one’s life.
- The object of the thirst is God, the living God, and loving communion with Him.
- Implications.
- The presence of this thirst indicates that we are spiritually alive with the Spirit making us desire God.
- This thirst puts to shame the times we are indifferent to Him or when we are smugly satisfied with the things here below.
- David likens the spiritually thirsting soul to a panting deer who has been long pursued.
- What caused this thirst?
- Negatively and immediately, the cause is a real and constant sense of sin and sinfulness, guilt and shame.
- Positively and deeply, the cause is God’s love.
- The born again David had the Spirit giving him living water so he had a living soul.
- But sometimes the living water seems to cease flowing and is not always plentiful and the child of God suffers.
- When our spiritual life is low or severely tried, then he thirsts for the living God.
- How is this thirst quenched?
- David, in the Old Dispensation, sought the quenching in the “house of God” (4).
- It was in the tabernacle/temple that God revealed Himself with His presence and communion.
- David was far from Jerusalem when he composed this song, so he longed to appear before God in Jerusalem.
- In the New Dispensation we have Jesus, crowned with honor and glory, wherever the pure doctrines are preached.
- We long for Jesus and for communion with God through Him.
- The Word and the Spirit are the means to convey to us the living water of God’s blessed relationship with us.
- No one ever thirsted for God like Jesus did when He took our place.
- Jesus sang Psalm 42 like no one ever did or will: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
- And so do we.
- David, in the Old Dispensation, sought the quenching in the “house of God” (4).