Wilderness, Worship, Treason, and God by John Piper
A meditation on Psalm 63
A Psalm Of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
O God, you are my God; earnestly in the morning I seek you; my soul thirst for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a fry and weary land where is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life; in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down in to the depths of the earth; they shall be given the power of the sword; they shall be a portion for jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult for the mouths of liars will be stopped.
The writer is David when he was king (verses 1, 11).
This situation is that someone was seeking to destroy his life (verse 9). This corresponds to the time when Absalom, his own son, drove him out of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 15:23). Put yourself in David’s place. His son is not just alienated, but hostile enough to want to see his father killed. Here is mortal danger mixed with heartbreaking estrangement for his son.
Learn from David to do in this brokenhearted, terrifying moment. He prays. The whole psalm is addressed to God. He asks for one thing- not protection, not victory, but God Himself, satisfying his soul, like water satisfies thirst in a dry and weary land. “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my flesh faints for you, as in a a dry and weary land where there is no water” (verse 1). There are seasons of pain and loss and grief and darkness when nothing is worth asking for but God. Everything else seems trivial, even life.
That why David said in verse 3, “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” David may well be killed during the night by some plotting traitor sold out to Absalom. How do you sleep? You remind yourself that the love of God in the presence of God is better than not being stabbed to death in the night. But this rest in God’s steadfast love is not easy felt. We say the words. But do we feel the reality? David did not feel it as he wanted to feel it. That is why he cried out, “Earnestly I seek you; my soul is thirst for you.” David desperately needed God to answer his cry to come and help him taste-not just know, but feel-that God’s steadfast love is better than life.
Oh, to know God like this! Would this not be everything to us? Would this not be more than all riches and fame and success and health, indeed all the world can offer? God Himself coming near and making our souls drink from His love until all else fades from view, and fear is swallowed up in the unshakable security of everlasting enjoyment at the right hand of God. Oh, that we would come to this place in our walk with God!
When the saving of David own life and the rescue of his own son cease to be his gods, and God alone engulfs him in the sorrows of the night, and even perhaps, if God wills win back his son.
How did God come to David and awaken his spiritual taste, so that he could see God and “be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (verse 5). The answer is that David remembered the days of worship in the house of God: “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory” (verse2). David had been driven from Jerusalem, the place of the corporate worship with God’s people. And in his distress, he remembers what it was like, and what he saw of God in worship.
Here is a great longing I have for the corporate worship in our churches-that when we meet and sing and pray and hear the Word of God, God Himself will be so manifestly present in “power and glory” that in the years to come, when any of you is cut off this immeasurable privilege, the very memory of seeing God in worship will bring Him home to you again.
Would you pray with me that God will meet us like that? Would you pray for your pastors and other worship leaders that God would give them songs and prayers and silence and Scriptures and sermons that are so full of the truth of God and the Spirit of God that will taste and see that the steadfast love of God is better than life- and all that life can give?
And would you pray for yourselves and for all people that Saturday nights and Sunday mornings would become seasons of preparation for meeting, God –vestibules of the holy place of worship? Pray with David, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirst for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” If this were on our lips Saturday night and Sunday morning, would not God open the springs of heaven and show us mightily that His steadfast love is better than life”?
And so, Father, this is the cry of our hearts:
To taste and see that You are good.
Cut away the calluses of our spiritual tongues
And give us taste buds that savor the
reality of Christ in His Word.
Forbid that the rebellion of our
Children would weaken our faith.
May the heartaches and the dangers
Of life drive us to You, our joy and rest.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.