THE QUEST FOR
GOD-THE HART APPROACH-MORE OF YOU LORD
Psa 42:1 As the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Psa 42:2 My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
Psa 42:3 My tears have
been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
Psa 42:4 When I
remember these things, I pour out my
soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of
God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
Psa 42:5 Why art thou
cast down, O my soul? and why art thou
disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
Psa 42:6 O my God, my
soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of
Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Psa 42:7 Deep calleth
unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are
gone over me.
Psa 42:8 Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in
the daytime, and in the night his song shall be
with me, and my prayer unto the God of
my life.
Psa 42:9 I will say
unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the
oppression of the enemy?
Psa 42:10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies
reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is
thy God?
Psa 42:11 Why art thou
cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God:
for I shall yet praise him, who is the
health of my countenance, and my God.
Psalms 42:1-11
As the heart panteth after the
water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
The Korachite psalms
The second book of the Psalter,
characterized by the use of the Divine name “Elohim” instead of “Jehovah,”
begins with a cluster of seven psalms (reckoning Psa_43:1-5,
as one), of which the superscription is most probably regarded as ascribing
their authorship to “the sons of Korach.” These were Levites, and (1Ch_9:19, etc.) the office of keepers of the
door of the sanctuary had been hereditary in their family from the time of
Moses. Some of them were among the faithful adherents of David at Ziklag (1Ch_12:6), and in the new model of worship
inaugurated by him the Korachites were doorkeepers and musicians. They retained
the former office in the second Temple (Nell. 11:19). The ascription of
authorship to a group is remarkable, and has led to the suggestion that the
superscription does not specify the authors, but the persons for whose use the
psalms in question were composed. The Hebrew would bear either meaning; but if
the later is adopted, all these psalms are anonymous. The same construction is
found in Book I. in Psa_25:1-22; Psa_26:1-12; Psa_27:1-14;
Psa_28:1-9; Psa_35:1-28;
Psa_37:1-40., where it is obviously the
designation of authorship, and it is naturally taken to have the same force in
these Korachite psahns. It has been conjectured by Delitzsch that the Korachite
Psalms originally formed a separate collection entitled “Songs of the Sons of
Korach,” and that this title afterwards passed over into the superscriptions
when they were incorporated in the Psalter. The supposition is unnecessary. It
was not literary fame which psalmists hungered for. The actual author, as one
of a band of kinsmen who worked and sang together, would, not unnaturally, be
content to sink his individuality and let his songs go forth as that of the
band. Clearly the superscriptions rested upon some tradition or knowledge, else
defective information would not have been acknowledged as it is in this one;
but some name would have been coined to fill the gap. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Over the aqueducts of water
The Hebrew term is apheek; and
in the original the clause reads, al apheekaiyrnayim, which may be
translated, “over the aqueducts of water.” “Aqueducts are, and always must have
been, very common in Palestine, not only for bringing water to waterless towns,
but also for the purpose of irrigating gardens. Ruined remains of these
structures are to be found everywhere throughout the country. It seems certain
that there must have been a familiar technical term for them in Hebrew, and
that the writers of the Bible, who draw their imagery so largely from the
features of garden culture, must have referred to these precious
water-channels. One word in Hebrew, the sense of which seems to have been
entirely overlooked, must plainly have borne this meaning, the word “apheek,”
which occurs eighteen times in the Old Testament, and also in some names of
places, as Aphaik, near Beth-boron. The translators of our Authorized Version
have been able to make but little of it, rendering it by seven different words,
most frequently by “river,” which it cannot possibly mean. The word comes from
“Aphak, restrained,” or “forced,” and this is the main idea of an aqueduct,
which is a structure formed for the purpose of constraining or forcing a stream
of water to flow in a desired direction. So strongly were the Palestine
aqueducts made, that their ruins, probably in some places two thousand years
old, remain to this day. In rare instances (there is one at Jerusalem) they are
fashioned of bored stones. Sometimes for a short distance they are cut as open
grooves in the hard limestone of the hills, or as small channels bored through
their sides. When the level required it, they are built up stone structures
above ground. But the aqueducts of Palestine mostly consist of earthenware
pipes, laid on or underground in a casing of strong cement. “Apheek,” I
contend, in its technical sense stands for an ordinary covered Palestine aqueduct,
but it is also poetically applied to the natural underground channels, which
supply springs and to the gorge-like, rocky beds of some mountain streams which
appear like huge, open aqueducts . . . The psalmist thirsts for God, and longs
to taste again the joy of His house, like the parched and weary hind who comes
to a covered channel conveying the living waters of some far-off spring across
the intervening desert. She scents the precious current in its bed of
adamantine cement, or hears its rippling flow close beneath her feet, or,
perchance, sees it deep down through one of the narrow air holes; and as she
agonises for the inaccessible draught, she “pants over the aqueducts of water.”
(James Nell, M. A.)
The soul compared to a hind
The “soul” is feminine in Hebrew,
and is here compared to the female deer, for “pants” is the feminine form of
the verb, though its noun is masculine. It is better, therefore, to translate
“hind” than “hart.” The “soul” is the seat of emotions and desires. It “pants” and
“thirsts,” is “cast down” and disquieted; it is “poured out”; it can be bidden
to “hope.” Thus tremulous, timid, mobile, it is beautifully compared to a hind.
The true object of its longings is always God, however little it knows for what
it is thirsting. But they are happy in their very yearnings who are conscious
of the true direction of these, and can say that it is God for whom they are
athirst. The correspondence between man’s needs and their true object is
involved in that name “the living God”; for a heart can rest only in one
all-sufficient Person, and must have a heart to throb against. But no finite
being can still them; and after all sweetnesses of human loves and helps of
human strengths, the soul’s thirst remains unslaked, and the Person who is
enough must be the living God. The difference between the devout and the
worldly man is just that the one can only say, “My soul pants and thirsts,” and
the other can add “after Thee, O God.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The religious aspects of a soul
in earnest
I. Intensely thirsting after God.
This craving for “the living God”—
1. Renders
all logical arguments for a Supreme Being unnecessary.
2. Indicates
the only method for elevating the race.
II. Greatly distressed on account of
the wicked.
1. Taunted
on account of his religion.
2. Deprived
of the public privileges of his religion.
III. Anxiously expostulating with self
on account of despondency.
1. He
inquired into the reason.
Religious depression
I. The causes of David’s
despondency.
1. The
thirst for God.
2. The
temporary loss of the sense of God’s personality.
Let us search our own experience.
What we want is, we shall find, not infinitude, but a boundless One; not to
feel that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose name is Love.
For else, if in this world of order there be no One in whose bosom that order
is centred, and of whose Being it is the expression: in this world of manifold
contrivance, no Personal Affection which gave to the skies their trembling
tenderness, and to the snow its purity: then order, affection, contrivance,
wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the dreary universe
alone. Foremost in the declaration of this truth was the Jewish religion. It
proclaimed—not “Let us meditate on the Adorable light, it shall guide our
intellects”—which is the most sacred verse of the Hindoo sacred books: but
“Thus saith the Lord, I am, that I am.” In that word “I am,” is declared
Personality; and it contains, too, in the expression, “Thus saith,” the real
idea of a revelation, viz., the voluntary approach of the Creator to the
creature. Accordingly, these Jewish psalms are remarkable for that personal
tenderness towards God—those outbursts of passionate individual attachment which
are in every page. How different this from the God of the theologian—a God that
was, but scarcely is: and from the God of the philosopher—a mere abstraction, a
law into which all other laws are resolved. Quite differently speaks the Bible
of God. Not as a Law: but as the Life of all that is—the Being who feels and is
felt—is loved and loves again—counts the hairs of my head: feeds the ravens,
and clothes the lilies: hears my prayers, and interprets them through a Spirit
which has affinity with my spirit. It is a dark moment when the sense of that
personality is lost: more terrible than the doubt of immortality. For of the
two—eternity without a personal God, or God for seventy years without
immortality no one after David’s heart would hesitate, “Give me God for life,
to know and be known by Him.” No thought is more hideous than that of an
eternity without Him. “My soul is athirst for God.” The desire for immortality
is second to the desire for God.
3. The
taunts of scoffers. “Where is now thy God?” (Psa_42:3).
This is ever the way in religious perplexity: the unsympathizing world taunts
or misunderstands. In spiritual grief they ask, why is he not like others? In
bereavement they call your deep sorrow unbelief. In misfortune they comfort
you, like Job’s friends, by calling it a visitation. Or like the barbarians at
Melita, when the viper fastened on Paul’s hand: no doubt they call you an
infidel, though your soul be crying after God. Specially in that dark and awful
hour, when He called on God, “Eloi, Eloi:” they said, “Let be: let us see
whether Elias will come to save Him.”
II. David’s consolation.
1. And
first, in hope (verse 5): distinguish between the feelings of faith that God is
present, and the hope of faith that He will be so. There are hours in which
physical derangement darkens the windows of the soul; days in which shattered
nerves make life simply endurance; months and years in which intellectual
difficulties, pressing for solution, shut out God. Then faith must be replaced
by hope. “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”
Clouds and darkness are round about Him: but righteousness and truth are the
habitation of His throne.
2. This
hope was in God. The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in
ourselves: self-contemplation instead of gazing upon God. In other words, we
look for comfort precisely where comfort never can be. For first, it is
impossible to derive consolation from our own feelings, because of their
mutability. Nor can we gain comfort from our own acts, because in a low state
we cannot justly judge them. And we lose time in remorse. In God alone is our
hope. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Living thirst
This language is that of the true
Christian believer. The strength that he feels is not the strength of a transient
passion of the heart, but the thirst of an enlightened, sanctified, and
believing soul. The object of that thirst is God. Its object indicates its
origin; for a thirst that stretches upwards to God originates with the
inspiration of God, and, like true religion, must have had its origin in God.
This thirst is caused by admiration of God; by love of God; by desire after His
holiness and His presence, and His promised restoration of all things. But how
does the Christian reach the element that will satisfy this the thirst of his
soul?
1. First,
by thinking upon Him. A Christian in solitude and in silence can think of God.
The literary man can think of literature, and hold communion with the spirits
of departed “literati” through the medium of the writings they have left behind
them. The statesman can think of great political questions, and his mind can be
absorbed with them. Now, communion with God, thinking of Him, what He is, what
He has done what He has promised to do, what He will give, and what He has
given, is really letting the water pot descend into that better than Jacob’s
well, to bring from its cool depths that which will satisfy our thirst for God,
for the living God.
2. A
Christian will try to satisfy his thirst for God by reading His holy Word. What
is the Bible? Just a description of what God is. It is poetry, and oratory, and
history, and all the resources of human thought, of human genius, inspired by
the Spirit of God, designed to stimulate your thirst for Him, and to bring you
into closer contact with the inexhaustible Fountain out of which you may drink
freely.
3. In
the next place, you gratify this thirst, and you deepen it also while you do
so, in the exercises of public prayer and praise, and public worship.
4. And
we gratify this thirst, as well as excite it, by appearing from time to time at
the table of our blessed Lord. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Thirsting for God
I. The causes of this spiritual
thirst.
1. Admiration
of the Divine attributes.
2. Love
for the Divine Being,
3. A
lively sense of Divine goodness in the dispensation of both temporal and
spiritual benefits.
4. A
deep sense of his wants as a sinner.
5. A
conviction of the inadequacy of his inward sources of happiness, and of the
unsatisfying nature of all sublunary enjoyments.
6. The
afflictions which he is called to endure.
II. The means by which the Christian
seeks to gratify this spiritual thirst.
1. The
studious reading of God’s Word.
2. The
exercise of devout and holy contemplation.
3. Prayer
and praise.
4. Avoidance
of sin.
5. Eye
fixed on heaven. (G. Thacker.)
Panting after God
Genuine piety is the tendency of
the soul towards God; the aspiration of the immortal spirit after the great
Father of spirits, in a desire to know Him and to be like Him.
I. How Is A desire to know God and
to be like him implanted and cherished in the heart of man? All true piety, all
genuine devotion in fallen man, has a near and intimate connection with the
Lord Jesus, and is dependent on Him. It is by His mediation that the devout
soul aspires towards the blessed God; it thirsts for fuller and clearer
discoveries of His glories, as they shine with a mild effulgence in the person
of His incarnate Son; it longs to attain that conformity to Him of which it
sees in Jesus Christ the perfect model.
II. The excellence of this panting of
the soul after God, this vital principle of all genuine piety.
1. It
is a most ennobling principle; it elevates and purifies the soul, and produces
in the character all that is lovely and of good report.
2. It
is a most active principle. From a world groaning under the ruins of the
apostasy, where darkness, and pollution, and misery prevail, and death reigns,
the child of God looks up to that glorious Being whose essence pervades the
universe, and whose perfections and blessedness are immense, unchanging, and
eternal, and he longs to know and resemble Him.
3. It
is a permanent and unfailing principle. Each changing scene of his earthly
pilgrimage affords the devout man opportunity of growing in the knowledge and
the likeness of God, and the touch of death at which his material frame returns
to its native dust, does but release his spirit from every clog, that she may
rise unencumbered to see Him as He is and know even as she is known. (Bishop
Armstrong.)
The panting hart
In this state of mind there is
something sad. But something commendable also. For the next best thing to
having close communion with God is to be wretched until we find Him.
I. The object of the desire which is
here described. It was for God. Probably this psalm belongs to the time of the
revolt of Absalom. But David’s desire is not for lost royalties, wealth,
palaces, children: no, nor the temple, nor his country, but God. He longed to
appear again before God, so that—
1. He
might unite in the worship of the people.
2. Gain
restored confidence as to his interest in the love of God, and to have it shed
abroad in his heart. May such desires be ours.
II. The characteristics of this
desire.
1. Directness.
The hart panteth, there can be no doubt what for. So with David, he goes
straight to the point. He knew what he needed.
2. Unity.
As the hart longs for nothing but the water brooks, so David for God only. Have
you ever seen a little child that has lost its way crying in the streets for
“mother”? Now, you shall give that child what you will, but it will not stay
crying for “mother.” I know it is thus with all the family of God in regard to
an absent God.
3. The
intensity of this desire. How awful is thirst. In a long and weary march
soldiers have been able to endure much want of solid food, but—as in the
marches of Alexander—they have died by hundreds from thirst.
4. Its
vitality. Thirst is connected with the very springs of life. Men must drink or
die.
5. And
it is an expressive desire. The Scotch version reads—“Like as the hart for
water brooks, In thirst doth pant and bray.” And in the margin of our Bibles it
reads, “As the hart brayeth,” etc. The hart, usually so silent, now begins to
bray in its agony. So the believer hath a desire which forceth itself into
expression. It may be inarticulate, “groanings which cannot be uttered,” but
they are all the more sincere and deep. In all ways will he express before God
his great desire.
III. Its exciting causes.
1. Something
inward, the secret life within. A camel does not pant after water brooks,
because it carries its own supplies of water within it; but the hart does
because it has no such resources.
2. But
also something outward. The hart because of the heat, the distance, the dogs.
So the believer. The source of David’s longings lay partly in the past. We
remember delightful seasons gone by. Also from the present, lie was at that
moment in eminent distress. And the future. “Hope thou in God,” saith he, “for
I shall yet praise Him.”
IV. Comfortable encouragements. There
is no thirst like the thirst of the man who has once known what the sweetness
of the wine of heaven is. A poor king must be poor indeed. Yet out of our
strong desires after God there come these comforts.
1. The
thought—whence come they? This desire is a gift from God.
2. If
He has given it me, will He not fulfil it?
3. And
if I have wandered from my God, tie is willing to forgive. Let us return to
Him, then, and let us recollect that when we return we shall soon be uplifted
into the light. It does not take long for the Lord to make summer-time in the
wintry heart. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Thirsting for God
I. The object of the psalmist’s
desire—God. By which he means—
1. A
sense of God’s favour.
2. A
sight of God’s glory, so that he might not merely know that God was glorious,
but that he might feel it.
3. The
enjoyment of God’s presence. Hence it was that he longed after God’s house, for
it was there that so often God had met him and had satisfied this thirst of his
soul.
II. The strength of his desire. “My
soul panteth, yea,” etc. This was his soul’s deep yearning. Hence we learn—
1. That
a soul really desiring God can be satisfied with nothing else. Nor—
2. With
but a little of Him. It is not a drop or a taste of the water brook that quiets
the panting deer. He plunges into it and drinks eagerly of it. And so with our
souls. The more these blessed waters are drunk the more they are relished and
desired.
3. The
cause which made David thus earnestly desire God. It was his affliction, and
his inward distress and darkness. And this is God’s gracious purpose in letting
such things come upon us. Do not be dismayed if you can only say, “I wish I did
thus thirst.” We are saved not for our thirst, but for Christ’s sake. (C.
Bradley, M. A.)
The longing for God
I. What this longing of David was.
It was not, observe, his lost crown that he most longed for; nor the broken
peace of his kingdom; nor even Absalom his son; he had deeper longings than
these; he had a deeper need than they could supply. What he did long for was
God Himself; for God, he knew, was the strength of his heart, and the only
portion which could satisfy him for ever.
II. This longing is common to God’s
saints (2Co_5:4; 2Ti_4:8; Tit_2:13;
2Pe_3:12; Rev_22:20).
A great part of our nature is made for feeling; a great portion of our life is
made up of it; every moment is full of love, and hope, and desire, and fear;
and Christ who claims the whole man will not pass over these levers of action,
these moving powers of the whole man, as of no importance. Let us give them
their proper place; and if David, and Paul, and Peter, and John, mark out a
longing after God as the healthy state of the soul, let us not be satisfied if
we are strangers to such a longing.
III. How the presence of this longing
is an earnest of complete blessedness. God’s Holy Spirit is Himself the water
brook for man’s consolation; and He comes, as the Nile when it overflows its
banks, and wherever there is a channel, or an aperture, or even a crack in the
dry and thirsty soil, there He pours in the life-giving streams of comfort and
of love, as one who knows not how to give and to bless enough. Your mourning
heart is opened by its very grief, and He is come to bless it. Doubt Him not.
Doubt not but that the same Spirit will restore you to peace and joy; will fill
you with the assurance of fresh hope; will strengthen you to bear meekly the
yoke which He shall lay upon you; will make you to overflow with love, and give
you even upon earth a foretaste of heaven. (Canon Morse.)
Desire after God
I. Divine in its source. Desires are
the pulses of the soul. We are that in the sight of God which we habitually
desire and aim to be. Archbishop Leighton said, “I should utterly despair of my
own religion, were it not for that text, ‘Blessed are they that do hunger and
thirst after righteousness.’”
II. Intense in its degree. Thirst is
the strongest feeling we know. It is the established order of nature, and an
original law in the constitution of the mind, that love should create love; and
if this obtain in the measures and intercourse of human kindness, much more
might we expect it to prevail in the sacred converse which is held between
earth and heaven—“spirits are not thus finely touched, but to fine issues.”
III. Practical in its tendency, and
ennobling in its influence. A pure affection towards an earthly object exalts
the soul in which it dwells, by associating another’s happiness with our own;
according to Wordsworth’s fine line—“Love betters that is best,” by
strengthening those fine ties which ally us to the side of virtue. How much
more must this be the case with our religious emotions, where the object is
infinite and the benefactor is Divine.
IV. Prophetic of its own fulfilment.
Panting after God
I. The believing pant after the
favour of God. The most luxurious pasture, or the securest shade and retreat of
the forest has no attraction for the hart panting in the agony of thirst for
the water brook; and what were honour, power, or wealth to trembling sinners,
if that which alone can meet their necessities be withheld?
II. The believing pant after
resemblance to God. This is a part of salvation as well as the former, and the
two are inseparably connected. No man has the favour of God that does not
aspire to be like Him, and no man who is like God is without His favour and
complacential regard.
III. The believing pant after
spiritual intercourse and communion with God.
IV. The believing pant after the
presence and enjoyment of God in heaven. This is the final and glorious issue
to which their hopes and desires are habitually directed; all that they pant
after in God on earth shall in that better country be possessed fully and for
ever. (J. Kirkwood.)
The soul’s thirst for God
Such psalms as this and the
sixty-third are as important items in the history of man as the hieroglyphics
of Egypt, or the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, or the stone implements of
prehistoric times: if you are to have a complete system of anthropology, to
investigate and know what man really is, it is manifest that you must take
account of the aspirations of his soul, as well as of the power of his
intellect or the skill of his hands. Conceive an investigation as to the nature
of man being made by some one quite fresh to the subject—say an inhabitant of
Jupiter or Saturn: conceive such an investigator to have examined our ships and
our steam engines and our agriculture, our books of science, our treatises on
law and medicine and what not: and suppose that when all this was done, and our
distant visitor was forming his opinion about man, he suddenly stumbled upon a
book containing such words as these. “My soul is athirst for God,” etc.;
suppose this, and what would be the result? “Certainly this at least,” our
investigator would say, “this is quite a new view of man: ‘thirst for the
living God’ And that is something very different in kind from agriculture and
commerce and steam engines and law and medicine—all these things might exist,
and be the things upon which the mind of man fully occupied itself—but a soul
thirsting for the living God—that is something totally different in kind from
what I had hitherto imagined man to be: I must begin my examination of man all
over again.” And surely, if we consider the manner in which the different parts
of this wonderful universe fit one into another, and exhibit consistency and
order and unity, the thirst of the human soul for God is a good argument that
there is a God to be thirsted for. When the hart seeks the water brooks, it is
no speculative voyage of discovery upon which the poor creature goes. The
living creature and the water are close akin to each other: if you analyze the
animal’s substance you will find that water constitutes a large proportion of
it: and though this does not prove that every hart that is thirsty will at once
be fortunate enough to find a water brook, it is a good proof that water is
what the animal must find if it is not to die, and it gives a strong reason to
believe that the water brooks will somehow be found. And this gives us a rough
suggestion of the argument for the Being of God, arising from the thirst for
God which the human soul is undoubtedly capable of feeling: men would not
thirst for that with which their own nature has no affinity: it is the unseen
presence of the Spirit of God—that Spirit which was breathed into man when he
became a living soul it is this presence which makes him thirst for God
Himself, and which assures him that there is a God without whom he cannot live,
“in whose presence there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand there is pleasure
for evermore.” One might have fancied or even hoped that the truth of God’s
being, which was evidently the support of human souls three thousand years ago,
would not have been questioned now, but as there were persons in those days who
were ready at once to turn upon a believer in trouble and ask him scornfully,
Where is thy God now? and as there were others who were prepared to assert
dogmatically, There is no God, so it has been true ever since that the being of
God has been liable to be denied. Of course that which you cannot see it is
always easy to deny. Who can contradict you? Is not one man’s No as good as
another man’s Aye? (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)
Man’s craving for God
Both these psalms are by “the
Sons of Koraeh,” a family of Levites whose inheritance lay on the eastern side
of Jordan. They were appointed doorkeepers of the Tabernacle. They possessed
the Hebrew faculty for music in a high degree; and some of them possessed the
closely allied faculty of poetical conception and utterance, and became
“singers” in both senses of that word, composing the psalms which they
afterwards set to music and chanted in the Temple. Dwelling on the other side
of Jordan, it was often impossible for them to reach Jerusalem. Many of the
Korachite psalms were composed when they were thus kept from their loved work.
They abound in expressions of intense passionate desire to appear before the
Lord. If we ask, Why this intense craving for the Temple and its services, the
sons of Koraeh reply: “It is because we want Him, the Living God.” Do these
words express one of the primitive intuitions, one of the profoundest yearnings
and desires of every human heart, a yearning which no words can adequately
utter, much more over-state? Is this the secret of the restlessness which
underlies all our rest—that we want God, and cannot be at peace until He lift
up upon us the light of His countenance? We are denizens of two worlds, the
natural and the spiritual, and these two, opposed as they may seem, are really
one, since the natural world is but the “body,” the complex phenomenon and
organ of the spiritual. So manifold are the ways in which the sense of a Divine
Presence is quickened within us, and our need of that Presence, that it is hard
to select those which are most suggestive and impressive Only as we trust, love
and reverence God, can the cry of our heart be stilled, and the infinite hunger
of the soul be satisfied. (Samuel Cox, D. D.)
Religious affections attended
with increase of spiritual longing
The higher the gracious affections
are raised, observes Edwards, the more is a spiritual appetite after spiritual
attainments increased; but the false affections rest satisfied in themselves.
I. Marks of the true affection.
1. The
more a true Christian loves God, the more he desires to love Him.
2. The
greatest eminency has no tendency to satiety.
3. Spiritual
enjoyments are soul-satisfying.
II. Marks of the false affections.
1. As
the false affections arise, the desire for more grace is abated.
2. As
soon as the soul is convinced that its title to heaven is sure, all its desires
are satisfied.
III. If hypocrites profess to have the
true affections, all their desires are for by-ends.
1. They
long after clearer discoveries, but it is that they may be the better satisfied
with themselves.
2. Or
their longings are forced, because they think they must have them.
IV. Good signs of grace.
1. A
longing after a more holy heart.
2. A
longing after a more holy life. (Lewis O. Thompson.)
Thirsting for God
I. Man needs God.
1. Think
how helpless we are in the presence of all the mysteries of life without God.
2. Think
of the far greater mysteries of a moral and spiritual kind by which we are
surrounded; how the wicked appear to triumph over the righteous, how the
kingdom of darkness seems likely to gain the victory over the kingdom of light;
and then ask what rest we can find, unless we believe and know that God ruleth
over all, and that He will yet bring all things into subjection unto Him.
3. Think
of the awful power of sin, how it enslaves the soul and oppresses the heart and
troubles the conscience; how it spreads like fire and like pestilence, carrying
death and desolation wherever it goes; and then ask how we are to be delivered
from this terrible destroyer, except by the power of the living God.
4. Think
how we need God in all the temptations and trials, the perplexities and cares,
the business and toil and responsibility.
II. God gives himself to man. Just as
He gives light and beauty for the eye, sound and music for the ear, bread for
the hunger and water for the thirst of the body, so He gives Himself, for the
satisfaction of the soul. It remains for us to abide in fellowship with Him, to
walk all the day in the light of His countenance, and to make our life on earth
a pledge and earnest of the nobler and diviner life of heaven. (G.
Hunsworth, M. A.)
God
I. As A personality.
1. That
He is as distinct from the universe as the architect from the building, the
author from his book, admits of no rational doubt.
2. We
believe in His personality
(1)
Because we have it. Could He give what He has not?
(2)
Because we instinctively believe it, and
(3)Because
the Bible declares it.
II. As a living personality. “The
living God.” The world abounds with dead gods, but the God is living,
consciously, independently, actively, ubiquitously. The God of modern
Christendom is rather the God that was living in Old Testament times, and in
the days of Christ, than the God that is living here, and with every man.
III. As a living personality craved
after by the human soul. “My soul thirsteth for the living God.”
1. The
soul is constitutionally theistic. It believes in God.
2. The
soul is immensely great. Nothing but God can satisfy it. It will not be
satisfied with His works, however vast and lovely, it must have Him Himself. (Homilist.)
Thirsting for God
As the hunted hart; as the hart
flying from the enemy, more dead than living; as the overrun, overborne,
imperilled hart pants and cries for the water brooks, so . . . then we fill in
our human experience; for if we are living any life at all we are hunted,
persecuted, threatened. Until we are sensible of being hunted we cannot pray
much. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so . . . ” The “so” is
balanced by the “as.” These words of manner must be equal the one to the other;
the hart will be ashamed of them if it should ever come to know that so quiet,
tame speech addressed to heaven is supposed to represent its earnestness when
it is hunted by furious hounds. “As the hart . . . ” Then this soul-panting after
God is natural. Whatever is natural admits of legitimate satisfaction; whatever
is acquired grows by what it feeds on until it works out the ruin of its
devotee. No hart ever panted after wine; no bird in the air ever fluttered
because of a desire to be intoxicated. When we lose or leave the line of nature
we become weak, infatuated, lost. Tertullian says the natural response of the
human heart is Christian. “So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” Yea, for
nothing less. Man needs all God. Every sinner needs the whole Cross. Every
flower needs the whole solar system. Herein is the mystery of Divine passion
and love, that we can all have a whole—a mystery, mayhap a contradiction in
words, but a sweet reality in experience. “For Thee, O God.” Then for nothing
strange. As the water brooks were made for the chased or panting hart, so God
lives to satisfy the soul of man. Herein see the greatness of the soul of man.
What does that soul need to fill it and satisfy it, and quiet it, and give it
all it’s possible consciousness of glory? It needs the living God. Atheists
themselves are intermittently religious. Even God-deniers are in some degree in
an unconscious sense God-seekers. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The feelings and sentiments of a
renewed soul
I. From whence does this vehement
breathing after God arise? It evidently arises from a deep sense of our own
insufficiency, and the insufficiency of any creature, however accomplished or
perfect, to render the soul happy. The soul, brought to feel its own indigence,
is encouraged to look forward with hope, and made to thirst after God, the
living God,
II. What is implied in this thirsting
for God?
1. An
experimental feeling of the love of God.
2. Delight
in every means, in every duty, in every ordinance of Divine appointment, where
He hath promised to meet with His humble worshippers, and to bless them.
3. A
heart disposed to wrestle with every difficulty that obstructs our access to
God, and stands in the way of the full enjoyment of Him, as reconciled to us,
and at peace with us.
4. This
thirsting for God never fails to be accompanied with longing desires to be with
the Lord, and to behold His glory. Sooner may iron cease to be attracted by the
lodestone, or the sparks cease to fly upwards, or the rivers to roll towards the
ocean, than a soul thirsting for God should sit down satisfied with any
attainments at which it can arrive in this mixed and imperfect state. (T.
Gordon.)
The soul of man has no resource
independent of God
A camel does not pant after water
brooks, because it carries its own water within it; but the hart does, because
it has no inward resources. After being hunted on a hot day, it has no inward
supplies; it is drained of its moisture. So are we. We do not carry a store of
grace within of our own upon which we can rely; we need to come again, and
again, and again, to the Divine fountain, and drink again from the eternal
spring. Hence it is because we have a new life, and that life is dependent upon
God, and has all its fresh springs in Him, that therefore we pant and thirst
after Him. O Christian, if you had a sacred life which could be maintained by
its own energies within, you might do without your God, but since you are
naked, and poor, and miserable, apart from Him, you must come and drink day by
day of the living springs, or else you faint and die. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Psalms 42:2
My soul thirsteth for God, for
the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
Thirst satisfied
Let us, that we may realize this
thirst of the soul, dwell upon the contrast. There are at least four forms of
attraction presented to the soul.
I. That of natural beauty. You find
a delight as you gaze upon nature. But you are not satisfied.
II. Nor are you, either, with all the
forms of men’s ceaseless activity, in which art, genius, or political
achievement have expressed themselves—none of these things will ever, can ever,
satisfy the soul.
III. Pure intellect, also,
notwithstanding the power of delight there is in it, has its limits in this
respect. It does not satisfy. Then there is—
IV. The region of the affections,
where suns are always glorious, and sunsets only speak of brighter dawn. We
have all known it in friend, sweetheart, wife, child, which have called forth
the dear expressions of that strong heart that beats in Englishmen. But these
dear ones pass away, and we find, as life goes on, that after all in the world
of the affections, that old, strange law that pervades one branch of the
contrast prevails: affection can stimulate, it can support, it can console, it
can delight, it can lead to delirium at moments, but it does not satisfy. And
because we are born for eternity, not for a moment, therefore, never, only by
the satisfaction of the moral instincts, can this thirst be assuaged. The Ten
Commandments, and especially the Gospel, are for this end. Accept a personal
Christ, God in Christ, and so may you quench your otherwise unquenchable
thirst. (Canon Knox Little.)
God the object of religion
There is scarcely in the Psalter
a more touching psalm than this. The writer is probably an exile of the early
Assyrian period. He thinks of the blessed past when he worshipped in the
Temple, and had his share in “the voice of joy and praise.” But now the cruel
heathen taunt him with the insulting question, “Where is thy God?” Hence, he
yearns for the presence of God. He is like the thirsty stag panting after the
distant water brooks; his inmost being is “athirst for God; yea, even for the
living God.” What a strange phrase, the living God. It points to deities who
are not alive. The Hebrews thus distinguish the true God from the false gods of
the heathen (Psa_96:5). Heathenism,
according to Scripture, is a lie, and the psalmist’s soul thirsted for the
living God. And still the soul of man is restless for God. Again and again the
human heart has protested against all endeavours to crush the noblest of its
aspirations. It wants net pleasures which may degrade, nor philosophies which
may disappoint, but “the living God.” And now let us see how this thirst has
been dealt with by the great speculative systems which more particularly
challenge attention in the present day. And—
I. Materialism. This stands high in
the world of thought. It bids us believe only what we can see and smell and
taste and touch. It does not concern itself with the origin of the universe,
“if it ever had one,” or with what happens to living beings after death.
Chemistry can account for all things. Man’s intelligence is as the mass of his
brain: this thought is “but the expression of molecular changes in the physical
matter of his life, and is impossible without phosphorus; his consciousness is
only a property of matter: his virtue, the result of a current of electricity,
and it and vice are “products in the same sense as are sugar and vitriol.”
Science, it is said, does not need such an hypothesis as God, who does not
exist apart from the mind and imagination of man.
2. But
where is there anything in all this to satisfy the thirst for God of which in
his highest moments man is so conscious? How can that which is purely physical
touch the sense which appreciates a moral world? It is a merit of Auguste Comte
to have recognized the necessity of some answer; and he tells us that it is our
privilege and our business to love, reverence, and worship “a Being, immense and
eternal—Humanity.” Not, mark you, a sinless and Divine representative of the
race, such as we Christians adore Jesus. Not even an idealized abstraction,
which, in the pure realms of thought, might conceivably be separated from the
weaknesses inseparable from humanity. But men know man too well to worship him.
All history shows that materialism cannot silence the religious yearnings of
the soul of man. Robespierre tried, but failed, as all such endeavours must. A
nation of Atheists is yet to be discovered. Man is ever feeling after God.
II. Deism: this likewise fails
because it reduces God to a mere force: and—
III. Pantheism also, because if God be
in everything He is in human crimes as well as in human virtues. To assert
God’s presence in His works is one thing; to identify Him with them is another.
His omnipresence is a necessary attribute of His Deity; while if He could be
identified with nature He would cease to be. If the mystery of life, which
attests God’s presence in the natural world, was ever felt in all its awe and
its beauty by any human soul, it was felt by the great Augustine. Witness the
often quoted passage of the Confessions in which he tells us why nature was in
his eyes so beautiful, by telling us how nature had led him up to God. “I asked
the earth, and it said: ‘I am not He’; and all that is upon it made the same
confession. I asked the sea and the depths, and the creeping things that have
life, and they answered: ‘We are not thy God; look thou above us.’ I asked the
breezes and the gales; and the whole air, with its inhabitants, said to me:
‘Anaximenes is in error, I am not God.’ I asked the heaven, the sun, the moon,
the stars: ‘We too,’ said they, ‘are not the God whom thou seekest.’ And I said
to all the creatures that surrounded the doors of my fleshly senses, ‘Ye have
said to me of my God that ye are not He; tell me somewhat of Him.’ And with a
great voice, they exclaimed, ‘He made us.’ . . . God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son.” What could He do more in order to convince us that
He is not merely a Force or an Intelligence, but a Heart? At the feet of Him
who could say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” we understand, and
rest upon the certainty, that God is moral as well as intellectual “light, and
that in Him is no darkness at all.” When a man’s hold upon this creed is gone,
his thoughts fall back, at best, upon the more rudimentary and less adequate
ideas of the Godhead; the darker mysteries of the world’s history present
themselves with more painful force; and the mind tends inevitably, in the last
resort, either to Deism or to Pantheism; to a Deism which just permits God to
create, and then dismisses Him from His creation; or to a Pantheism which
identifies Him with all the moral evil in the universe, and ends by propagating
the worship of new Baals and Ashteroths. But God being really alive, His
existence is a fact with which no other fact that the human mind can come to
recognize will possibly compare. For nothing that can occupy our thoughts can really
compare with it in point of absorbing and momentous-import. Beyond everything
else, it must have imperious claims upon the time and thought and working power
of every human being who has ever felt, in any serious degree, the unspeakable
solemnity of life and death. (Canon Liddon.)
The thirst after God
It has been often said that the
Psalms are out of place in our common daily service. Numbers come to church, at
least on Sundays, whose minds cannot be especially devout. Yet language is
provided for their use which expressed the most fervent longings of the most
devout men. Such language may meet, now and then, the aspirations of the
private suppliant. Even he must often find the Psalms far above the measure of
his thoughts, so high that he cannot attain to them. How, then, can we offer
them month after month to an ordinary English congregation, as if they could
possibly speak what it was feeling? Complaints of this kind are never to be
lightly dismissed. They indicate a sense of the sacredness of words, which we
should honour in others and Cry by all means to cultivate in ourselves. Others
will say that only believers should use such words: they are false of all
others. The unbeliever will only thirst for some portion that will make him
forget God. But do not those who call themselves believers know that that
estrangement from God, which they know so well how to describe, was once their
own experience, and they are liable to its repetition? The feeling, the thirst
after God, may then co-exist with another feeling of the very opposite kind.
Then deadly enemies dwell very near to each other, and carry on their conflict
within him. Do they give themselves credit for anything but being aware of the
strife, and knowing where the strength is which may make the better side
victorious? If they are calling themselves believers upon some other ground, in
some other sense than this, I should wholly dispute the claim which they put
forward to be in sympathy with those who trusted in God and thirsted for Him in
other days. But if this is the nature and character of their belief, then I do
not see how they can possibly exclude any from participation in these prayers
and hymns; how they can find fault with the Church for adopting them Into her
worship, and giving them, with the most utter indiscrimination, to all her
children. In so far as we are occupied with our own special interests, in so
far the psalm is alien to us. But where the minister is in union with his
congregation, and the members feel that they have relations with each other; it
is then that David’s harp gives out its music, and we in this distant land and
age can accompany it. It has been the solace of many on sick-beds, because they
are longing for fellowship with the Church of God.
I. When he says, as here, “My soul
is athirst,” he describes no rare or peculiar state of feeling. It is as common
as the thirst of the body. All men have it because they are men. For all seek
happiness, though they know not what they mean.
II. The psalmist said, “My soul is
athirst for God.” He knew that all men in the nations round him were pursuing
gods. Pleasure was a god, wealth was a god, fame was a god. Just what the Jew
had been taught was that the Lord his God was one Lord. He was not to pursue a
god of pleasure or wealth or fame, nor any work of his own hands or conception
of his own mind. For he was made in the image of the God, who was not far from
him. Often it seemed as if there were no such God, and the Israelite was met
with the taunt, “Where is thy God?” He does not pretend that he is not
disturbed by these taunts. All he can do is to ask that if He is, He will
reveal Himself. And that he does ask courageously. “I will say unto the God of
my strength, Why hast Thou forgotten me? Why go I thus heavily, while the enemy
oppresseth me?” And then he was able to say to his vexed soul, “O put thy trust
in ,God, for I will yet thank Him, which is the help of my countenance and my
God.” What a baptism of fire was this! What a loss of all the privileges of an
Israelite, that he might find the ground upon which Israel was standing! For
thus he learnt that the thirst for God is the thirst of man. The thirst for
happiness means this, ends in this. The thirst of his soul could not be
satisfied with anything but Him who both kindles and satisfies the thirst of
all human souls.
III. “even for the living God”—so the
psalmist goes on. It is no idle addition to the former words. The gods of the
heathen were dead gods. They were unable to perform any of the acts of men;
could neither see nor feel nor walk. There is a thirst of the soul to create
something in its likeness; but the first and deepest thirst is to find in what
likeness it is itself created: whence all its living powers are derived. Here,
too, the psalmist is, in the strictest sense, the man. The heart and flesh of
all human beings, whether they know it or not, are crying out for the living
God. And they do give a thousand indications everywhere, that they cannot be
contented with dead gods, or with any religious notions and forms which try to
put themselves in the place of a living God.
IV. “when shall I come and appear
before God?”—so the psalmist ends. It is a bold petition. Should it not rather
have been, “O God, prepare me for the day when I must appear before Thee”? So
we modify such words. But they uttered them in their plain and simple meaning.
It meant, not that they thought there was less need than we think there is, of
preparation for meeting God, but that they felt they could not prepare
themselves, and that God Himself was preparing them. They held that He prepared
them for His appearing by teaching them to hope for it. Oh! why not say to the
cities of England, as the prophets of old said to the cities of Judah, “Behold
your God”? Why not answer the calumny that we worship a tyrant on the throne of
heaven by saying: “This Jesus, the deliverer of captives, the opener of sight
to the blind, the friend of the poor, is He in whom we see the Father. For such
a Being we know that there is an infinite thirst in your souls, because we have
it in our own, and we are even such as you are. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
The religious faculty
I. Its reality. “My soul thirsteth
for God.” Do human beings desire God in that intense way? We are all acquainted
with some physical sensations of that intensity. We have all felt thirst, or at
least we can imagine thirst, which is almost delirious in its desire for water.
But is there anything in the human mind in connection with God that is as
intense as that? I dare say most of us have had feelings to some
fellow-creature that this would hardly be too strong to describe. The absence
or the loss of somebody has made us sick with desire, almost sick unto death,
whereas the return or the presence of the same person has made us indescribably
happy. But are there any feelings in the human heart towards God comparable to
these? Is there in human nature a thirst for God to be compared with the thirst
for knowledge or the thirst for beauty? Open a book like St. Augustine’s
“Confessions,” or “The Imitation of Christ,” and on every page you will find
it.
II. Its universality. Wherever men
are found they are religious beings. Religion is an element of human life
everywhere, and everywhere it is an ideal and a refining element. In fact it is
now generally acknowledged that the blossom and flower of every civilization is
its religion, and even the most sceptical of men will now sometimes allow that
the rational satisfaction of man’s religious nature is, and always will be, the
greatest desideratum of the human race.
III. Its manifestations.
1. It
is often an intellectual thirst, a thirst for an explanation of the tangle and
mystery of existence. You have a classical illustration of that in the Book of
Job, where the hero, blinded with the whirl and confusion of things, cries out
for a sight of Him who rides upon the storm.
2. Still
oftener, perhaps, the thirst for God is a thirst of the heart. All men,
especially all women, know in some degree what it is to wish to be loved, to be
thought about and cared for. These sentiments, as a rule, find their
satisfaction in the domestic affections, and sometimes these are so satisfying
as to fill up the whole desire. But this satisfaction is not conceded to all;
and from some who have had it, it is taken away; and I rather think that all
sometimes feel that they require love larger, more sympathetic, more
intelligent and enduring than any human love. In fact it is only the love of
God that can thoroughly satisfy the heart.
3. The
thirst for God is still oftener, and more conspicuously, a thirst of the
conscience. The conscience, although generally a very quiet element in our
nature, may become a very clamorous one. It cries out for deliverance from
guilt. It cries out for deliverance from temptation and sin. And the reason why
Christianity has been such a consolation to mankind is because it has so
thoroughly answered. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from
all sin.” Under the lashes of conscience, man cries out, “O wretched man that I
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But Christianity
answers, “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
IV. Its culture. The religions
faculty requires constant exercise, if there is to be any comprehensiveness and
certainty of religious experience. Are you cultivating your religious faculty,
or are you neglecting it, and allowing it to atrophy?
1. The
first thing that is needed for the culture of the religious faculty is the
careful observance of the Sabbath. The cessation from toil, the preaching of the
Gospel, the atmosphere of peace, the influence of united worship, tend to call
the religious nature out, encouraging it to revel in its native element.
2. The
other opportunity for this kind of culture is prayer. That brings the religious
nature nearer to its object than anything else. I remember, when a boy, hearing
some one say, “backsliding always begins at the closet door.” (J. Stalker,
D. D.)
Wanting God
This psalm is one of those said
to be composed for, or by, the Sons of Korach. They are known to have been a
family of Levites, whose inheritance lay in the wild country, on the eastern
side of Jordan.
I. What did this Levite find that he
wanted? Man is a composite being, body, mind, and soul. Presently we discover
that body and mind are but the agents of the soul, which is the real self; and
the soul’s cry is for God, the living God. This Levite thought that he wanted
Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the sacrifices, and the feasts, and the music.
But a self-revealing time came, and he found that his soul was really craving
for God. His love was athirst for God. Its natural dependence was athirst for
God. But the point of the self-discovery is put into the expression, “for the
living God.” It was no mere rain-pool, still and stagnant, round which he saw
those gazelles gathering. It was the fresh, living stream. As they drank, it
flowed fast, cool and refreshing. They were living waters. He found he could
satisfy his cravings with no mere knowledge of God, no mere teachings about
God. He craved for personal contact. He wanted personal relations. To be sure
that God lived, in the sense of being active, interested, really concerned in
his concerns.
II. When did this Levite find out
that he wanted God? It was not brought home to him while engaged in the Temple
services. In some sense God’s service stood in front of God. It came to him
when he was away from his usual scones, and when he was placed in unusual
circumstances. Everything around him was suggestive of peaceful, religious
meditation. It was all so wild, so free, so open. It was all so quiet. The
routine of life prevents our troubling about the thirsting of the soul, but the
routine of life never allays the thirst.
III. How this Levite responded to the
awakened thirst for God. That thirst drove him to the hill-top. It always urges
a man to seek loneliness, privacy, the silences of nature. The quenchings of
the thirst come in the soul-communion with God, in openness to God, in
conscious kindness with God, in holy joy in Him. And then awakens a new and intenser
interest in all the means of peace. God waits to meet our thirst. “He
satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with good.” (Robert
Tuck, B. A.)
Thirsting for God
Taken in its original sense, the
words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call religious
depression. But I venture to take them in a wider sense than that. It is not
only Christian men who are east down, whoso souls “thirst for God.” It is not
only men upon earth whose souls thirst for God. All men, everywhere, may take
this text for theirs.
I. There is in every man an
unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God, and that is the state of nature.
Experience is the test of that principle. And the most superficial examination
of the facts of daily life, as well as the questioning of our own souls, will
tell us that this is the leading feature of them—a state of unrest.
II. There is A conscious longing,
imperfect, but answered; and that is the state of grace—the beginning of
religion in a man’s soul. If it be true that there are, as part of the
universal human experience, however overlaid and stifled, these necessities,
the very existence of the necessities affords a presumption, before all
evidence, that, somehow and somewhere, they shall be supplied. If I, made by
God who knew what He was doing when He made me, am formed with these deep
necessities, with these passionate longings,—then it cannot but be that it is
intended that they should be to me a means of leading me to Him, and that there
they should be satisfied.
III. There is a perfect longing
perfectly satisfied; and that is heaven. We shall not there be independent, of
course, of constant supplies from the great central Fulness, any more than we
are here. Thirst, as longing, is eternal; thirst, as aspiration after God, is
the glory of heaven; thirst, as desire for more of Him, is the very condition
of the celestial world, and the element of all its blessedness. Let me put two
sayings of Scripture side by side, “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living
God”—“Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in
water, and cool my tongue.” There be two thirsts, one, the longing for God,
which, satisfied, is heaven; one, the longing for cessation of the self-lit
fires, and for one drop of the lost delights of earth to cool the thirsty
throat, which, unsatisfied, is hell. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The soul’s need and God’s nature
Men like Homer and Dante in
secular literature, men like the psalmists in the Bible, take a single image,
choose a forcible metaphor, and by their use of these, teach some bold scheme
of human life and character, or unveil some hidden fact of human destiny. Now
such a scheme of human character, involving at least a hint of human destiny,
with abundant and fruitful consequences, is to be found in the text.
I. A characteristic need of the
soul. We all sufficiently know what is meant by “the soul.” What, then,
are its necessities?
1. The
desire to know. See the curiosity of the child, so keen, so active, so simple,
that you and I, in the enervating languor of later life, might well wish we had
it back again. What is that desire to know concerned about? Surely the enigma
of our being, of the world, of that which is around us, in us, so beautiful, so
strange, so startling, yet so real; surely the meaning of this extraordinary,
this self-contradictory life—the explanation of this changing scene. It is a
clamorous cry which comes from, which proclaims abroad, a need of man.
2. But
close upon the heels of curiosity there treads an eager thrilling sense of
aspiration, not unmixed with awe. Who has not stood upon the hills at sunset
and longed with a vague, wild, passionate longing to pass beyond the bounding
clouds.
3. And
how, as years go on, we are conscious of the passion of regret which rises as
we gaze behind, athwart the receding years? Why is it that, in spite of all our
reasoning, we still persist in clothing those early days of earliest childhood
with a life which is not all their own? That field, that flower, that corner of
the street, that dear old house, that well-known room—how much gladder,
sweeter, better, as we say, than such things, such places howl Why is it, this
sweet, this sad regret? You will agree with me, whatever else it may be, at
least it is a clamorous cry. And all these cries of the creature—this
curiosity, so strong, so keen—this awful aspiration, soaring beyond the
stars—and this regret so deep, so passionate—they gather up in one wild wail of
need. Oh, cynic though you be, careless though you be—nay, indifferent or
hostile though you be to serious thought—tell me what need finds utterance in
their voices? Is it not the same, the world-wide, world-old thought of the poor
Judaean exile on the wild Abarim hills?—“My soul is athirst for God, for the
living God.” Ah! this eager, unsatisfied humanity, what cries it for but Him!
II. Can that cry be answered? IS it
heard? does any answer come? I am told in Revelation that there is a God,
supreme in power, of essential spotless holiness, the Absolute of Perfection,
the Changeless in Beauty, comprehending thus in Himself, it would seem, all
imagined or imaginable objects of the desiring mind. Is not that enough?
Strange creatures that we are, it is not. You and I want to know, nearer, more
precisely His nature and His character. For you and I are each possessors of a
mysterious gift. We want to know, and till we know we cannot rest. That gift is
the mystery of life, and it makes the little lad whom you and I met wandering
half-clothed and ill-fed and uncared-for an object of more arresting interest
than the savage mystery of the wild Atlantic. “Is there a further cry?” I think
there is. If there be one thing with which you surely must be, with which I
certainly am impressed, it is our own, our astonishing individuality. To each,
every truth of the Christian creed has its own abiding import thence. “What
matters it to me”—so every one of you may say—“if though all in this
congregation each find the satisfaction of his wants, I yet miss mine?”
Whatever be the special facts of your life and mine, we are all met, the paths
of all are traversed, by one ghastly spectre, and that spectre is our
individual sin. Sin! You have your own, not mine, not another’s. Does one sin
hold me down? Then the longing of my better self is to be delivered. Who can do
it? Who? I ask who? I open the pages of the Gospel story, and straight I come
across Jesus Christ. A startling figure! An unrivalled picture! None other like
that in history. Julius Caesar? They wrote a powerful monograph about him the
other day, and at the close drew a parallel between him and Christ. It is
difficult surely for any one to avoid disliking in it the bad taste, even
should he not shrink from it as a kind of blasphemy. The conqueror of Gaul was
indeed a striking figure. But how unlike that other! “Athirst for God.” If so,
thank God the Father for His love, for indeed He loves you; honour the bleeding
wounds whence flowed the precious blood; praise the eternal Spirit, through
whom the sacrifice was offered, and by whom you are sanctified. Yes, glory be
to the God who was, and is, and is to come, who hath loved us with eternal
love, who gives us—the way-worn, the weary—peace in believing. (Canon Knox
Little.)
From man to God
Contrast this with a passage in
Miss Martineau’s autobiography, where she tells us that, having got rid of the
last remnants of her old beliefs, she felt as if a weight were removed: to use
her own figure, as the faded rose recovers its freshness when relieved of the
pressure of the atmosphere by being placed under the bell glass of an air-pump,
so did her spirits open out when no longer oppressed by the overshadowing
presence of a higher Power. With all thought of God gone, she could breathe
freely, and find herself at home in the vast universe. The contrast is
striking, suggestive, affecting. In the one case, yearning for God; in the
other, relief through being able to say, “There is no God.” Can it be, then,
that the modern Atheists are shaking off a nightmare, and that the psalmist’s
thirst for God was simply a disease incidental to the childhood of the human
race? Our answer is that whatever difficulties may lie on the Theistic side,
those on the Atheistic are immeasurably greater. Let us begin with a
definition. We mean by God, no misty abstraction, no attenuated personality,
but the Will which purposes and performs, the Fountain and Administrator of
law; also the Love within which all life is embraced. He is the God with whom
Enoch walked, of whom David sang, before whom Elijah stood. Now we remark—
I. Moments of atheism are known by
most men. Who has not neared that bottomless gulf and breathed the malaria
which hangs over it? But this was temporary, a passing phase, which we met and
mastered. The clouds broke, the light of morning dawned. Now, which condition
was the state of health? That of Atheism or Faith? In the one did we feel as
she did whose sad words we have quoted; or was it in the other that we felt
that soundness and sanity were come to us again? Can, then, that which acts
thus healthfully be nothing but a baneful poison? The Truth which seems so
essential to the soul’s health, has it no basis in reality? Is it a lie? And,
if so, are lies so medicable? Who can believe it?
II. Moments of moral weakness—these,
too, we all have known. But experience says that, in the very greatest
emergency, let the thought of God come in, and virtue in her utmost peril is
secure. Can that thought, then, be false? Or it may be duty distresses us.
Failure takes the heart out of us. But the assurance, “My grace is sufficient
for thee,” heartens us again. But if there be no God, this belief is a
falsehood. True, we are greatly blessed by this belief in mind, in heart, in
spirit, and yet, on the Atheistic creed, we owe all to a cheat. And we may ask,
What is virtue when it is not fed from this root? How apt it is to degenerate
into a cold calculation of profit and loss, and to have for soul Pride instead
of Self-surrender. Only belief in the living God can give to it its real beauty
and charm. Whence, without such belief, could come the light and warmth under
whose quickening influence its blossoms open, and its fruit grows mellow? Does
virtue, indeed, owe all her choicest comeliness to the arctic darkness of a
lie? And what would become of duty to our fellows were faith in the living God
gone? What would become of charity and all her tender ministries? who will
promise her continuance in well-doing in spite of ingratitude, and scorn and
persecution? Is, then, that which does preserve her and make her such a blessing
due to some strange delusion only?
III. Moments of inspiration. For there
are times when we are uplifted beyond ourselves, and reverence and trust and
love kindle into a consuming fire. Would that such moments were oftener and
more abiding. But whenever they come they are always associated with God. Are
we, then, duped during these seasons of exalted enjoyment? Are we believing a
lie? A harmonious life, also, such as those live “with whom abide the melodies
of the everlasting chimes,” seems impossible without vigorous belief in God.
The just live by faith. But what if that be false?
IV. There are moments of trial and
calamity. At such times have we not been saved by trust in Him who is “a very
present help in trouble”? Is this, too, a dream? Was there no heart to respond,
no hand to bind up?” Nothing”—so says one” but the infinite Pity is sufficient
for the infinite Pathos of human life.” But is there no such Pity? It is the
age of Pessimism, and men are asking, “Is life worth living?” But who are they
who ask? Not the poor, decent, hard-working, God-fearing man, but lounging
cynics at West End Clubs. No, we believe in God the Father. If that be dream,
let me dream. (Thomas G. Rose.)
When shall I come and appear
before God?—
Appearing before God. Appearance
before God here and hereafter
These words express—
I. Firm belief in the especial
presence of god in the ordinances of public worship. We are always in God’s
sight, but He is especially near in the sanctuary. These ordinances have this
for their great end, to bring us near God. And Christians have found it so.
Therefore—
1. Guard
against hypocrisy in worship. God is there. We are careful how we appear there
to our fellow-men. Be so in regard to God.
2. Our
hope of good in worship must have the presence of God with us. Of. 2Sa_14:32.
3. What
thanks are due to the Lord Jesus Christ who hath made way for our appearance
before God.
4. What
a blessing to have many houses of God in one nation.
II. An earnest longing after divine
ordinances.
1. How
little of this there is amongst man.
2. How
well it is to have such desire.
3. What
unhappy clogs these fleshly, sinful bodies are to the mind. But there is a
blessed assembly of better worshippers above. Awake our faith and desire to
join them. (Isaac Watts, D. D.)
Appearance before God hereafter
There are two such appearances.
I. At the judgment. At the moment of
death our souls appear before God for judgment.
1. Let
the sinner therefore consider that, though he may be willing to come to the
sanctuary now, then it is under terrible constraint.
2. Here
they appear in disguise, as saints; there openly as sinners.
3. They
must take notice of God then, though they do not now.
4. There
God will be on the throne of judgment; here He is on the throne of grace.
5. Here
is frequent appearance, there but once, and is for ever driven from His
presence. Let the sinner then examine himself as to his state now.
II. In glory in heaven. What a
difference for the Christian between then and now.
1. Now
he is one of a mixed assembly, then all will be holy.
2. Now
he is among a few who worship God, but then amongst millions.
3. Now
we worship for preparation, there for enjoyment.
4. Now,
imperfectly; there, with complete worship.
5. Now,
with many discouragements; then, with everlasting consolations. May we never be
missing there. (Isaac Watte, D. D.)
Psalms 42:1-3
I. The Christian must often share
feelings such as these. The iron fetters of his oppressors—namely, the sins
which are ever besetting him—are sore and heavy. These fearful foes which he
bears within his own bosom—sins of unrestrained appetite, sins that spring of
past habits, sins of criminal weakness and cowardice—they triumph over him
sometimes; and when he falls, they seem to say, "Where is thy God?"
But it is not his fall only and God’s absence that afflict him. It is that he
knows how these enemies are carrying him away—carrying him into captivity; and
he knows not how or when he shall again return to appear in the presence of his
God. When apathy has silently crept over our souls till we begin, not exactly
to disobey, but to be careless about obedience; when we have wandered away from
Christ and from the Cross, not indeed on purpose, but simply from not heeding
our steps, what shall startle us and bring us back better than to have our
hearts touched and our feelings stirred by the return of a festival or a fast
unlike common days?
II. But there are dangers, it may
be said, in such observances; and the observances themselves are more like
Jewish discipline than Christian liberty. Both these things are true. We may
say that we will not have a special season for penitence, and will make our
penitence extend over our whole life, and as we are always sinning, so always
be repenting. But if we try it, we find that the result is that if we are much
engaged, as many of us ought to be, in the work which God has given us to do in
the world, the penitent spirit, instead of being spread over our lives,
threatens to disappear altogether, and our characters sink down to a lower
level; less spiritual, less pure, less lofty, less self-denying. We need such
seasons in order to keep alive in our minds the high standard by which the pure
conscience ought to judge.
III. The natural expression of
our feelings at such seasons is that expressed in the verse of the Psalms,
"To commune with our own hearts and in our chambers." Real, earnest
self-examination has taken the place of all other penitential expressions.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,
p. 254.
I. The figure of intense thirst
is current coin in the figurative language of all ages; and with this thirst,
says the Psalmist, "My soul longeth for the living God." There is
something more here than mere intellectual conviction. To believe in God is
much; to be athirst and to long for Him is much more.
II. The language of the text not
only transcends mere belief in God as the great Creator and Governor of the
world; it also surpasses any language which could be adopted by the belief in
God as the Benefactor and Preserver of the man who used the language. It is
just when David seems to be deserted, when his enemies are triumphing over him,
when his whole prospect is as black as night, that his soul is thirsting for
God, even for the living God.
III. This language by no means
stands alone. It is no exaggeration to say that the connection between the
human soul and the living God and the consequent appetite of the pure soul for
God’s presence constitutes the very first principle of the book of Psalms.
IV. The thirst of the human soul
after God is a great argument that there is a God to be thirsted for. Men would
not thirst for that for which they have no affinity. The human soul longs for
the sympathy of some being higher than, and yet like, itself. The presence of
God can only be imagined as, in some sense, a human presence. The practical
proof of the being of God—not of God as a mere power, or a mere synonym for
nature, or a mere hypothesis, but of God Who has created man, and Who loves him
with the love of a Father, and desires a return of love for love—is to be found
in the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Christian
World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 289.
References:
Psa_42:1.—R. M. McCheyne, Additional
Remains, p. 410. Psa_42:1-3.—F. W.
Robertson, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 106.
Psalms 42:2
I. When the Psalmist says,
"My soul is athirst," he certainly describes no rare or peculiar
state of feeling. The thirst of the soul is as generic as the thirst of the
body.
II. The Psalmist said, "My
soul is athirst for God." He knew that all men in the nations round him
were pursuing gods. Pleasure was a god; wealth was a god; fame was a god. What
the Jew had been taught was that the Lord his God was one Lord. He was not to
pursue a god of pleasure, a god of wealth, a god of fame. He was made in the
image of the God. The God was not far from him. The thirst for
happiness means and ends in the thirst for God.
III. The Psalmist goes on,
"Even for the living God." It is no idle addition to the former
words. The gods which the Israelites had been taught they were not to worship
were dead gods. There is a thirst of the soul to create something in its own
likeness, but the first and deepest thirst is to find in what likeness it is
itself created, whence all its living powers are derived, who has fixed their
ends, who can direct them to their ends.
IV. Finally, the Psalmist says,
"When shall I come and appear before God?" A bold petition! Ought he
not rather to have prayed, "O God, prepare me for the day when I must
appear before Thee"? This is the modification which we who live under the
New Testament generally give to words which those who lived before the
incarnation and epiphany of Jesus Christ could utter in simple fulness. What
they held was that God prepared them for His appearing by teaching them to hope
for it. If they did not expect it, did not hope for it, they would be startled
and confounded by it; if they did, every step in their history, every struggle,
every joy, was an education for it.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,
vol. iii., p. 129.
Psalms 42:2
This verse expresses the attitude
and mission of the Christian Church. The attitude. For what are the struggles
of Christian souls except, in the midst of a world that is quite complicated
with difficulties, in the midst of a world that is overwhelmed with sorrow, in
the midst of a time of severe temptation, to constantly rise and gaze high
above the thought of evil, and gaze towards the sun of brightness, and cry for
God? And what is the mission of the Christian Church? Is it not to help men and
women in their struggle and their sorrow to forget, at least at times, their
pettinesses and degradation, to rise to better standards and loftier ideals,
and to cry for God?
I. In such a verse as this we are
face to face with one of those great governed contrasts that are found
throughout Scripture and throughout human life. There are at least four forms
of attraction which are presented to our souls. There is (1) the attraction of
natural beauty; (2) the attraction of activity; (3) the attraction of the
intellect; (4) the attraction of the affections. There are many things given;
there are many attractions to draw: they will stimulate; they will help; they
will console; they will give pleasure: there is one thing that satisfies the
immortal; there is one life that meets your need. "My soul is athirst for
God." There is something deeper in man than his aesthetic desire or his
active practice, something deeper beneath us all than anything that finds
expression, certainly than anything that finds satisfaction. You yourself, the
foundation of your life, must be satisfied; and being infinite and immortal,
you can know but one satisfaction.
II. What is meant by the thirst
for God? (1) It means thirsting for and desiring moral truth. The thirst for
God means the thirst within us to fulfil His moral law. (2) The thirst of the
soul for God is the thirst to love goodness because it is right.
III. It is our privilege, beyond
the privilege of the Psalmist, to know in the Gospel, to know in the Church, Christ,
God expressed in humanity. Is your soul athirst for the Highest? You may find
it if you come in repentance, if you come in desire, if you come in quiet
determination to do your duty—you may find it satisfied in Christ.
J. Knox-Little, Anglican Pulpit
of To-Day, p. 267 (see also Manchester Sermons, p. 193).
I. Let us learn from these words
a great law of our being. God made us that He might love us. God has given us
the capacity of loving Himself, and He has made it a law of our being that we
must love Him if we are ever to be happy, that there is no happiness for us but
in fulfilling that law of our being which requires us to love the living God.
II. Again, we learn when we look
at the text and think of the longing that filled the heart of the Psalmist how
wonderfully little our lives and our hearts correspond to this purpose of God’s
love. How little of this longing there is in our hearts, this thirst for God,
the living God; and all the while God, looking down upon us in His infinite
mercy, is longing for our hearts, the hearts of His children. We may say it
with reverence that the heart of God is athirst for our love, and longs that
our hearts should be athirst for Him.
III. This expression of the
Psalmist may be the expression of a soul that has known what it is to love God
and to enjoy God’s love, who is mourning under the hidings of God’s
countenance, the sunshine of whose love has been clouded, who is walking in
darkness and having no light. Never did a soul thirst for God, cry out for God,
the living God, but God sooner or later, in His own good time, filled that soul
with all His fulness, flooded that soul with all the sunshine of His love. It
is for the Holy Spirit’s help that we must pray; it is on His help we must
lean; it is He from whom we must ask the power to thirst for God, the living
God.
Bishop Maclagan, Penny Pulpit,
No. 731
Taken in their original sense,
the words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call
religious depression. But I have ventured to take them in a wider sense than
that. It is not only Christian men who are cast down, whose souls "thirst
for God." All men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs.
I. There is in every man an
unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God, and that is the state of nature.
Experience is the test of that principle. (1) We are not independent. None of
us can stand by himself. No man carries within him the fountain from which he
can draw. (2) We are made to need, not things, but living persons. Hearts want
hearts. A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the
midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly
delights is running all around him. (3) We need one Being who shall be
all-sufficient. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source where he can
go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls may find the many, but
until he has bartered them all for the one there is something lacking.
II. There is a conscious longing,
imperfect, though fully supplied; and that is the state of grace, the beginning
of religion in a man’s soul. There can be no deeper truth than this—God is a
faithful Creator; and where He makes men with longings, it is a prophecy that
these longings are going to be supplied. "He knoweth our frame," and
He remembereth what He has implanted within us. The perfecting of your
character may be got in the Lamb of God, and without Him it can never be
possessed. Christ is everything, and "out of His fulness all we receive
grace for grace." Not only in Christ is there the perfect supply of all
these necessities, but also the fulness becomes ours on the simple
condition of desiring it. In the Divine region the principle of the giving is
this—to desire is to have; to long is to possess.
III. Lastly, there is a perfect
longing perfectly satisfied; and that is heaven. We shall not then be
independent, of course, of constant supplies from the great central fulness,
any more than we are here. Thirst as longing is eternal; thirst as aspiration
after God is the glory of heaven; thirst as desire for more of Him is the very
condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its blessedness.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached
in Manchester, 1863, p. 135.
References:
Psa_42:2.—S. Macnaughton, Real
Religion and Real Life, p. 13; T. G. Rose, Christian World Pulpit,
vol. xxiii., p. 261; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 36.
Psalms 42:1-11
Psalm 42
This Psalm contains a
prescription for a downcast soul, consisting of three ingredients.
I. The first is inquiry: "Why
art thou cast down?" Religious despondency must have a cause; and if we
can discover it in any case, the old proverb holds good that a knowledge of the
disease is half its cure.
II. The second ingredient of the
prescription is remembrance: (1) the Psalmist’s remembrance of his own
experience and (2) his remembrance of God’s gracious dealings with others.
III. The third ingredient is
hope: "Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him." (1) The hope is
to be in God. (2) The downcast soul must hope in God, and not in change
of circumstance. (3) Hope is a different thing from faith, while the operations
of the two are nevertheless closely allied.
M. R. Vincent, Gates into the
Psalm Country, p. 145.
Psalms 42:2
thirsteth: Psa_36:8-9,
Psa_63:1; Joh_7:37;
Rev_22:1
living: Job_23:3;
Jer_2:13, Jer_10:10;
Joh_5:26; 1Th_1:9
when: Psa_27:4,
Psa_84:4, Psa_84:10
Psalms 42:1
am 2983, bc 1021 (Title), Maschil, or a Psalm giving instruction, of the sons,
etc. Or, "An instructive Psalm," or didactic ode, "for the sons
of Korah." It is generally supposed to have been written by David when
driven from Jerusalem and beyond Jordan, by Absalom's rebellion.
the sons: Psa_44:1,
Psa_45:1, Psa_46:1,
Psa_47:1, Psa_48:1,
Psa_49:1, Psa_84:1,
Psa_85:1 *titles Num_16:1, Num_16:32,
Num_26:11; 1Ch_6:33-37,
1Ch_25:1-5
panteth: Heb. brayeth
so panteth: Psa_63:1-2,
Psa_84:2, Psa_143:6-7;
Isa_26:8-9
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