The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Do you remember a time when you loved a person so deeply that it hurt to be away from them? This week on the Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we're studying a love song. But not a love song to another person. Psalm 63 is a love song to God.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. David's separation from Jerusalem and the temple caused him to reflect on how much God really meant to him, that God's love is better than life.

And if God's love is truly better than life, why do we spend so much time trying to find satisfaction in other places? As Dr. Boice points out in today's message, God's love will satisfy us even in the midst of our biggest problems. David learned that lesson as he fled from his own son, Absalom. Let's join Dr. Boice as he explores Psalm 63 and shows us David's thirst for the living God.

Dr. James Boice: A number of years ago I heard a very profound statement that went like this: the entire world can be divided into two categories of people, those who divide the world into two categories of people and those who don't. It's a way of making fun of some of our divisions, but at the risk of oversimplifying, I'd like to do that as I begin our study of Psalm 63.

There are three types of people in any Christian gathering. There are those who are followers of Jesus Christ in name only, which is a way of saying they're Christians in name only. They're not really believers, like the five foolish virgins who thought they were in good standing with the bridegroom, but when he came, discovered they didn't really know him and he didn't know them.

The second category is people who follow after God and Jesus Christ but do so at a distance, like Peter at the occasion of Christ's arrest. He was following, but he was following at a distance and he got in trouble as soon as somebody asked him whether he was really a follower of the Nazarene or not. Suddenly he panicked and he denied that he even knew Jesus. As a matter of fact, he even did it with oaths and cursings.

Then there's the final category and that is the category of those who follow hard after God and do it with all their heart. There's an old Scottish commentator whose name is Murdoch Campbell who has written a very brief study of the Psalms, which is not terribly helpful to me because it's so brief, but from time to time I find things in it, and he does speak of people in this last category in these terms: they are those who in storm and sunshine cleave to God and enjoy daily communion with him.

These people want God and they want him intensely because they have learned, sometimes because of their experience with God, sometimes because of their contrary experience of the vanity of human life, that only God can satisfy. And so they long for God and they want him with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength.

Now David was in the last category. David was not a perfect man, as we well know. He had many failures and some large ones, but he was a man who hungered and thirsted after God. And when we read the Psalms that have his name affixed to them, in most cases we discover that. And we see him doing it even in difficult circumstances.

Now that's the case of Psalm 63. It's identified as a Psalm of David in the title and that title also indicates that it was written when he was in the desert of Judah. Now there are only two periods in David's life when he was in the desert of Judah. The first was when he was running away from King Saul early in his life and career, and then the second was when he was forced to flee Jerusalem from his son Absalom, who was trying to push him out and take over the throne.

Now in this case, the Psalm has to have been written during that latter period, that is when he was fleeing from Absalom, because late in the Psalm in verse 11, David refers to himself as the king. And he wasn't the king in the earlier incident. So right away we get an historical setting for the Psalm that throws a great deal of light on it.

Now the story is told in 2 Samuel, verses 15 to 19. Absalom was only one of David's many sons, and he was estranged from his father because he thought his father had mistreated him. He plotted to take over the kingdom himself. He spent a lot of time doing it. He spent four years, first of all, trying to win the favor of the people.

He did it by sitting in the gate. David was very busy and so he gave off the impression that David really didn't care about the people, because if he did, of course he would take time to hear all their many complaints and settle their disputes. And he, Absalom, took it upon himself to do that instead of his father while he was making it look like his father was a failure.

When he thought he was ready, he gathered his forces in Hebron and he set up a rival kingdom. David had to flee Jerusalem. He was afraid suddenly the capital would be overrun, he and his followers would be killed, and so he left very suddenly, went down into the Kidron Valley and then up over the mountains and into the Judean wilderness.

Now it would have been the part of wisdom for Absalom to have attacked his father right away when David was still disorganized. But David was nevertheless the king, God's anointed, and so God put it into Absalom's mind and those who were close to him to listen to counselors who actually gave him bad advice.

There were two sets of counselors. One said you ought to pursue David right away while he's weak and disorganized and attack him now. If you wait, he's going to gain his strength. The other one said no, David is a great soldier. Those he has with him are experienced soldiers. Wait and collect your own forces. And then when you're ready in your own time, go and attack David.

He listened to that and of course in the interval David did manage to muster his forces and finally when there was a great battle, the army of Absalom was defeated. 20,000 people died in that battle and Absalom was one of them. In the rout he was trying to get away, he was riding quickly through a forest, he got caught in a tree and he couldn't get away and Joab himself, the commander of David's forces, found him there and killed him by thrusting a dart through his heart. And so the story ends.

Now that's the period during which this Psalm was written and it gives interesting background to it and throws light on some of the expressions that are used like "better than life," "as long as I live," "those who seek my life," and so on. And it reminds us that David's life was literally in danger at the hands of his son Absalom.

This is not an ivory tower kind of Psalm. This is not a professor sitting in a quiet living room somewhere composing theological reflections on the nature of God. This is a man in danger of his life. Anyone who is reading the Psalm ought to know that. It also helps us appreciate the emotional passion of the Psalm.

David is separated from the sanctuary in Jerusalem, he's had to flee. He loved Jerusalem, he loved the Temple of God, even the sanctuary there before the final temple was built, and he just rejoiced being there, worshipping God in that site. Now he was far away and he's in the desert and his heart is longing for those earlier days, and above all it's longing for God.

And so what you have expressed in the Psalm is almost a love song for God. Especially when David says things like this: "my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you." Great physical urgency you see in that kind of passion. One of the modern commentators, Derek Kidner, who has done the commentary for InterVarsity, says there may be other songs that equal this outpouring of devotion, but there are few if any that surpass it.

And here's what an older commentator says, J.J. Stewart Perowne, he's so old that Spurgeon quotes him: "this is unquestionably one of the most beautiful and touching songs in the whole psalter." Now it's similar in its longing to God to some other Psalms that might occur to you. There are Psalms that are called the Psalms of Korah, that is the sons of the Korah who was destroyed in the wilderness because of his rebellion against Moses, and they often have a great longing for God. Psalm 42 is an obvious example. Psalm 43 is another. It's not titled, but it's linked closely to 42, and perhaps also Psalm 84.

If you want emotional similarity in the Psalms, if you're looking to study Psalms that fit the kind of one we're studying now, that's what you find. It's also worth pointing out that in tone and in background, Psalm 63, 61, 62 and 64 go together. So you kind of have a little block of Psalms here, and since we know now the historical setting of Psalm 63, this perhaps throws background on the setting of the other Psalms as well.

Now how do we outline it? Well, there are various ways of outlining the various verses of the Psalm and they're found in the various commentators, many of them different, but the New International Version, it seems to me, is probably on the right track, at least in this, that it sets verse 1 off by itself.

That's because that verse expresses the longing of David's soul for God and it sets the emotional tone for the entire Psalm. After this it goes on to show how David's longing for God has been satisfied in the past and is currently being satisfied, even though he's there in the wilderness and almost certainly will be satisfied in the future.

Now that verse is a wonderful expression of the very heart of religion. Just think what he's saying. Here he's in the wilderness of Judah. It's one of the most inhospitable regions on earth. It's a barren land and he uses that physical condition as a poetic background for what he is feeling in his heart being separated from God.

He's saying being separated from God as I seem to be because I'm cut off from Jerusalem is just like being in the desert. When you're in the desert, your body is longing for water that you might not die. And he's saying that's the way I feel. I am longing for the presence of God that I might not die but live spiritually.

This intense longing for God, almost a physical appetite for God, is something that C.S. Lewis noted and wrote about very well in that little book Reflections on the Psalms. He says we don't have much of that today, but the ancients did and certainly the ancient Jews did and you find it in the psalter.

Let me just read you a paragraph from C.S. Lewis. "These poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that he offered them eternal joy, still less that he would die to win it for them. That is, they didn't know yet about Jesus Christ and his coming. Yet they express a longing for him for his mere presence, which comes only to the best Christians or to Christians in their best moments. They long to live all their days in the temple so that they may constantly see the fair beauty of the Lord. Their longing to go up to Jerusalem and appear before the presence of God is like a physical thirst. From Jerusalem, his presence flashes out in perfect beauty." Lacking that encounter with him, their souls are parched like a waterless countryside. And there he refers to Psalm 63, verse 2.

Now that is true, isn't it? You sense it as you read these Psalms. And yet we read it and we have to say how very little of that exists today. Lewis is alluding to it, but we notice it as well. And if you don't notice it in others, you notice it in your own heart. Do many of us have that kind of longing for God, that almost physical longing for his presence?

We desire to be with him. If we did, we'd be in church more often, we'd read our Bible more often, we'd pray more fervently. And if you know your heart, you know we all have difficulties in each of those areas. Isn't it true that that is probably the chief reason for the weakness of the contemporary church? Isn't that what makes even evangelical religion so hollow in our day?

We have money and we think we have influence, we have buildings and we even have numbers. And yet we are spiritually hollow because we really do not long after God and therefore we don't really know God very well. Well, one more comment about verse 1 before we go on to the rest of it. The verb "seek" there is an unusual verb and it's related to the Hebrew noun for the dawn, that is the rising of the sun.

And because of that relationship, it can be translated in two different ways. It can mean to seek early, that is with the dawn or in the dawn's early light, or it can mean to seek earnestly. Now if you have a King James Bible, you know they took the former meaning, "seek ye the Lord early" or "early will I seek thee." And if you have the New International Version, you know that the New International Version prefers the second. I think probably rightly.

The idea is not early but earnestly, but whether you take it one way or the other, you get the idea. This is not passive religion. This is heart religion. A longing after God and the person who seeks God should seek him early and earnestly. Let me suggest if you can't because of your schedule seek God early in the morning, make sure you seek him earnestly. And if you have trouble seeking him earnestly, work on seeking him early. And best of all seek him early and earnestly, which undoubtedly is what David did. The best way of seeking God's face is through personal Bible study and meditation upon what you study and by devout prayer.

Now about a thousand years after David wrote these words, the Lord Jesus Christ, one of David's descendants, the greatest descendant, said this: he said ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened unto you. In other words, it's a promise. And if we apply that to seeking God, the promise is that if we seek him, we'll find him.

Now David didn't know those words specifically. He had no way of knowing them, they weren't spoken until later, but he knew the meaning of the words. He knew what they contained because what you find from this point on in the Psalm is this description of how having sought after God he really did find him.

Now there are different ways you can study these verses. I'm referring now to verses 2 through 8, the middle portion of the Psalm. One way you can look at them is referring to God's past, his present, and his future satisfying of David. In other words, you can look at them temporally. Here's the past, verse 2: "I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your glory." He's looking back to the time he was in Jerusalem. It was a memory of those joyful moments that made his present circumstances so painful.

Or how about the present? Verse 3: "Your love is better than life." That's present tense. Or verse 6: "On my bed I remember you, I think of you through the watches of the night." Or verse 7: "You are my help." Or verse 8: "Your right hand upholds me." What he's saying is that even though he has cut off from God's presence in Jerusalem and the worship there at the temple, God has not cut himself off from David.

Spurgeon had a neat little comment at this point: he said there was no desert in his heart even though there was a desert all around him. Well, that's his present experience of God satisfying him. And then there's the future. Verse 5: "My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods, with singing lips my mouth will praise you." Because God is the same and because God doesn't change, if he satisfied David in the past and was satisfying him present he would satisfy him in the future too. So you can look at it in terms of the past, the present and the future.

Here's another way we can look at it. You can look at it in terms of how David praises God. One of the older commentators, one greatly influenced by the Puritans, Thomas Lebane, sees David doing this in seven ways in these verses. Now he's using the King James translation, so it doesn't exactly parallel to the text most of us have, but here's what he says.

First he extols the loving kindness of God with his lips. Verse 3: "My lips will praise you." Secondly with his tongue, verse 4: "Thus will I bless thee while I live." Thirdly with his hands: "I will lift up my hands in thy name." Fourthly with his will, verse 5: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." Fifthly with his mouth: "And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips." Sixthly with his memory, verse 6: "When I remember thee upon my bed." And seventh and last with his intellect: "And meditate on thee in the night watches."

Now if you handle the verses in that way, they become not a means of exploring the unchangeable character of God, which is what happens if you look at it past, present and future, but rather they become a means of studying how a human being and how all the parts of a human being can be marshaled in God's service and praise. And so they become a study in human psychology, human religious psychology in the best sense. It's no accident, of course, that it's a Puritan who develops it that way because the Puritans were very conscious of the emotions, the spiritual emotions of the child of God, and they spoke to that and so on, and that's what this man is doing.

Now let me suggest another way of looking at it. And what I want to suggest is that we first of all see David's satisfaction in God, which is what these verses are about, that's the general idea, and then two results that flow from it. First of all, he's satisfied with God. Now that is certainly the main point. Verse 1 begins by saying he's longing for God and then the middle portion of the soul says God does not disappoint his longing. He longing for God and so God answers him. God's close to him and he is satisfied in God. It's why he can speak as he does of God's past, present and future satisfaction.

And it's also why he speaks of God's love being better than life in verse 3. That's an interesting verse because it takes two ideas, both of which are important, and it compares them. The one idea is life. Life is important, we value it, we don't want to lose it. People will do almost anything to save their life. It's why when you're mugged on the street, you give up your wallet rather than getting shot. You'd rather give up your money than lose your life.

Or again, if you're sick and you require an operation or some painful medical procedure, you'll go through that, painful as it may be, rather than die. You'd even submit to the amputation of a limb if that's necessary rather than die. We value life, so there's no question about that. Satan even used that argument when he was talking about Job. You know, when when Job suffered the loss of all these things and yet didn't curse God, Satan said, well, the reason he doesn't curse God is that a man will give anything if he can only hang on to his life. He's afraid if he tells you what he really thinks and curses you to your face you'll die, and so he acts good, but really his heart's from you. Now that was a lie, but nevertheless it was an acknowledgment of how precious life is. Your life is precious to you, my life is precious to me.

But what David says here is that there's something even better than that, and that is the love of God. Now the Hebrew word he uses here is *hesed*, which is often translated loving kindness or sometimes covenant love. It stresses the faithful, continuing love of God. The love of God is steady and unchangeable, and that's why it's better than life.

Because you see valuable as life is and valuable as all the many things we may enjoy in life are, all those things are nevertheless perishable. They will go. We will die. But you see the love of God will never die, and those who are loved by God will live forever spiritually even though we die physically. That's why the apostle Paul could write of the love of God and say in Romans 8, "I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Now if that is true, if the love of God is really that great and if when we seek God we are satisfied by that love, isn't it strange that we spend so much time trying to find satisfaction elsewhere? It's not that those other things are wrong. God gives us many things richly to enjoy, but there's a sense in which everything else will ultimately disappoint us, and if it doesn't disappoint us eventually it'll be gone. But you say the love of God is never gone, God never changes, and those upon whom he has fixed his love will be with him and enjoy him forever.

So we ought to think along that way now. You know, I can't help but think of an illustration that comes from Philadelphia. If you go out along the East River Drive, you'll see on your right before you go very far a statue of a pilgrim. It's at the base of a hill that is Sedgley Hill. People don't call it that anymore, but that's what it is. And near the pilgrim there was a stream that flowed into the river.

If you trace that stream back up over the hill, eventually you come to its source. And the source is a fountain up there over which in earlier days the councilmen of the city put a biblical inscription. It was John 4:13 and it said this: "whosoever drinketh of this water will thirst again." Isn't that interesting? It was a testimony that water doesn't satisfy forever and it pointed forward to the fact that nothing in life really satisfies forever. It's the way it is. All things we see, touch, feel, know, pass away except for God.

But you know what was not on that fountain, which should have been, is what Jesus Christ said immediately after that because he himself made a contrast. He said whoever drinks of this water, he was talking about the water of the well of Jacob in Samaria, will thirst again. But he went on to say whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst, indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to everlasting life. Now that's what David had drunk of. He drunk of the covenant love of God and he found it to be eternally satisfying.

Well, I said there are two results. And here's the first of them: as a result of being satisfied by the eternal loving kindness of God, David praises God. Now he was so abundantly satisfied with the love of God, he wanted everybody else to know about the love of God too. This makes me think of a story that's found in the Old Testament, found in 2 Kings.

In the days of Elisha, the armies of Ben-hadad, the king of Aram, were besieging Samaria. Everybody was shut up in the city, there was a great famine, prices were sky high to get even the smallest little bit of something to eat, and God delivered the people by causing the armies of the surrounding forces to hear suddenly a sound as if an army was approaching with chariots and horses and many men. They heard it in the night and it was terrifying. They thought suddenly an army was coming upon them from where they didn't know and so they all fled in a panic, leaving everything behind. All their tents and their food stuffs, their provisions, their arms, their horses, their chariots and all. They simply were fleeing for their lives.

Now at that time there were outside the gates of the city of Samaria a group of about forty lepers. They weren't allowed in, of course, because they were unclean, nobody wanted to have anything to do with lepers. The lepers were starving just like everybody else in the city and they said to themselves, look, why don't we go down to the camp of the besieging army of Ben-hadad and see if they won't give us something to eat. The worst thing that can happen to us is that they'll kill us and if we stay here we're going to die anyway and maybe they'll take pity on us.

So they went down to the camp and they saw there were no soldiers. Just all this stuff left behind. And so they did exactly what you'd expect them to do. They first of all ate everything they could eat. Then there was all the silver and gold and the weapons and they carried them off and hid them and after they did that, they came back and they got more and they carried that off and they hid that and finally they settled down and they came to their senses a little bit and here's what they said: "We are not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight," that is the next day, "punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace."

And so they did and by nightfall sacks of flour and barley and other things were selling for just pennies in the city gates, which is what Elisha had prophesied the day before. Now the point of all of that is that it's natural and right to share good news. And this good news that we have, that God is a God of steadfast love for all who will come to him in Jesus Christ, is news above all other news. And so those who know it, if you really do know it, if you really know God is like that, you need to share it. And isn't it true to say if you're not, we are not doing right. This is a day of good news and we're keeping it to ourselves. Well, David didn't want to do that, he wanted everybody to know God as he did.

There's a connection here. You notice two times it uses the word "because." In verse 3: "Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you." And verse 7 the same thing: "Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings." See the connection? Because of who God is and what he's like, therefore I'll tell other people about it. The question is do you, do I?

And then here's the second result: as a result of being satisfied by this great loving kindness of God, David wants to stay close to God. First he tells others, but then he also wants to stay close to God himself. Verse 8 says, "I stay close to you." Now that word "stay close" is actually "cleave to." It's sort of archaic today and that's why we don't have it in our translations, but it's a term that's used of the attachment between a husband and wife or of other tight relationships, such as Ruth's attachment to her mother-in-law Naomi. You read about it in Ruth 1:14.

So I say if you've been satisfied by God, isn't it true that you'll want to stay close to him too? If you're not cleaving to him, perhaps it's because you've never thought about him enough to be truly and deeply satisfied. And if that's the case, maybe that's the point at which you need to begin.

Now the last three verses of the Psalm look to the future and they express David's confidence that in time his enemies are going to be destroyed. The mouths of those who have been slandering him will be silenced. And there were many, some of the stories are told in the Old Testament. And he will again be openly praising God along with others who also love and seek him.

Now there are a lot of pedantic commentators. If you've ever studied the commentaries you know that and pedantic commentators don't get what's going on here. They think this somehow is a break in the tone. Here we have had this first part that expresses David's longing after God and then we have the middle portion that explains how God really has satisfied his deepest longing. Now we get to the end and he says in the future my enemies are going to be destroyed and we're all going to be back in Jerusalem and we'll be praising God again.

Well, it's not a case of something being stuck on there that doesn't really belong or David somehow missing what he's saying and falling back into a vindictive kind of spirit. That's not it at all. What these last verses do is bring us back to the point at which the Psalm started. In other words, they bring us back to where the title says we are, that is in the wilderness.

In other words, it's a way of saying that this is a real world after all and if we're going to be genuinely satisfied with God's love, it's not going to be in some never-never land of the imagination, but it's going to be right here in the midst of this world's disappointments, frustrations and dangers. In other words, it was at the very time when his son had betrayed him and was seeking to take his life that David was able to say I have found God satisfying.

And what that means of course is that as you go into your life this week, whatever the difficulties may be, whether you find your work frustrating where people have it in for you, and that's often the case, or have relationships where people just hate you, perhaps because of who you are, perhaps more so I hope it's this if it's the case because you're a Christian or because you have to struggle simply to make ends meet or if you're sick and you have a hard time even praying because the pain in your body is so physically distracting, whatever it may be that you're going into this week when you leave here, remember that it is exactly in that situation that's come to you from God, exactly there that you're to find God satisfying.

And if you seek his face, you'll find it to be true and you'll be able to say as Job did even though he slays me, yet will I praise him. Because you see his love really is better than life. G. Campbell Morgan said that this Psalm, especially the ending of it, is an amazing triumph of faith. You see David hounded out of Jerusalem, in danger of his life, satisfied with God, saying nevertheless because of who God is I will be satisfied.

He says it's an amazing triumph of faith, but he says in order for that amazing triumph of faith to take place, two things are necessary. First, there must be a consciousness of one's personal relationship to God. "O God, thou art my God," is what David says. And secondly there must be an earnest seeking after God. "Early will I seek thee" or "I will seek thee earnestly."

You find that your spiritual life is weak and anemic, you find yourself puzzled by the events of life, finding them difficult, here's the solution: seek after God, seek him while he may be found. And know the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you ask, it'll be given. If you seek, you will find. And if you knock, it will be open. God does not withhold his presence for those who seek him in spirit and in truth.

Our Father, we thank you for this Psalm that it's been our privilege to study tonight and we ask you to bless it to our hearts. When we read the Psalms, we tap into the emotion of a person who knew you in a bygone age far away, situation and historical circumstances far removed from our own, and that nevertheless we are coming into contact with one who went through the same kind of things we do and found you to be everything his soul could possibly desire.

So our Father, we commit ourselves to you afresh and we ask that by your grace you will quicken in us that kind of longing after you that is satisfied and which down through all the centuries has been the joy and the repose of your people. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith, and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church.

To learn more about the Alliance, visit AllianceNet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888.

Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, AllianceNet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9.

Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.