Auto Generated Transcript
I’m going to invite you to Psalm 63 is where we’re at together today. Psalm 63, as we’re studying in a in a series through the month of July, we’re going through the Book of Psalms, not all of the Psalms. There’s there’s 150 of those. But we’re we’re going through a section of the Psalms. We’re looking at last week we looked at Psalm 27. This week we’re going to look at Psalm 63 next week, Psalm 73, then Psalm 51 and Psalm 19. For those of you that like to anticipate where we’re going, we traditionally as a church over the last few years, we have spent a month in the summer out of the Book of Psalms. One of the reasons we do that is because during the summer we know that you you like to travel. All of us do go on a little bit of a vacation. And so if we jumped into a series that necessarily going through chapter by chapter through a book of the Bible, you might lose a section of that. The book of Psalms is written as such that you can just pick up a chapter and each chapter is oftentimes its own individual chapter. Some of them are connected together, but it’s a great book that reflects on worship to the Lord. One of the things that makes the Book of Psalms unique is that when you when you read the Bible, you have 66 different manuscripts or 66 different books.
65 of those can be categorized as God’s words to man. It’s God sharing something with us. The book of Psalms reverses that order. It’s it’s teaching us how to worship, how how man and responds back to God. A beautiful book that deals with different challenges in life. There’s different types of psalms. There’s Psalms of of Thanksgiving, there’s Psalms of of Lament, there’s Psalms for holidays, there’s songs for gathering in worship, there’s Psalms for Coronation, there’s different Psalms for for different phases or areas of life that you can learn to engage God. And sometimes in life we go through challenging moments and and we often wonder, God, where are you and how do I experience you in the midst of the adversity that I’m facing or when I feel distant? The Book of Psalms is a beautiful book that helps us understand how to connect to the Lord in in those seasons And and Psalm 63 is no different. Psalm 63 is written by King David. Some people speculate as to what was happening in David’s life when this psalm was written. He acknowledges at the very end of the psalm that he is a king as he is writing this, and because of the challenges that he talks about, people either determine David is writing this psalm either when when Saul is is pursuing him. He has been anointed king, though he hasn’t necessarily taken the throne as king or when his son Absalom has tried to overthrow him.
Most, I believe, think it’s Absalom that when David is writing this psalm, he’s going through the experience of his own son, who has betrayed him and tried to overthrow him. And David is on the run. But David writes this Psalm In a difficult moment of his life, seeking after the Lord in worship of him and what we discover in Psalm chapter 63. Verse one is David starts it this way. He says, Oh God, you are my God. And 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. So you see this desperation place in the life of David as he’s seeking after the Lord and the adversity that he’s facing in this world. And the way that David describes himself as he’s pursuing the Lord here, as one of of earnest right. He’s earnestly pursuing after the Lord. In fact, the first blank in your notes is to recognize this about David. He has a desire for God, and David has a specifically an earnest desire for God. This word earnest is a difficult word to translate. It’s the Hebrew word shakhar. And depending on how it’s used in the context, it’s determines how it’s translated. And one of the things that makes it difficult for translators to determine how to how to place this into to English or really any other language is the the confusion of of how David is writing this psalm in terms of this word shakhar this this word can either be a word of a measured quality natively or quantitatively.
It’s a word for time, but it can be expressed in a way that’s quantitative or qualitative. And let me illustrate what I mean. Some translators, when they come to this word and maybe a translation that you have today will say the word early, early. He will seek after the Lord. It’s dealing with the quantity of time early. But but there’s also with it this this desire for this pursuit that’s earnest, which is more of a qualitative. He’s he’s seeking after God with this extreme desire. And so when translators come to this word, you have to translate it. So what are you going to do? This word can be determined either way. Well, they look at the context, right? And the context in verse one deals with the qualitative, the idea of of earnest, Right. He’s he’s saying in verse one, this dry and weary land, he’s thirsty. So you see this earnestness in the way David is pursuing after the Lord. So some translators say, okay, it’s got to be earnest because you see that partially in verse one, but others. Read on in the context of Psalm 63 and see in verse six that David also talks about through verse 6 to 11. David talks about seeking after the Lord at night. And so some translators say, well, he talks about at night half way through the Psalm, so it only makes sense at the beginning of the psalm would deal with the morning and the middle of the psalm on would deal with night.
So some translate it as early and so it covers the gamut of time both in the early and the evening. David continues to pursue after the Lord. When you translate a verse like that, what do you do? You have to translate it right? And let me just tell you what I think the answer is. I think the answer is both. You can’t you can’t really do both in a passage like this when you’re just trying to translate verse by verse through scripture. But but I think the idea of what David’s heart is in this passage is expressed in both ways, that that’s probably why David uses the word shakhar, where he’s coming to this and saying, God, I’m seeking you earnestly, and because I’m seeking you earnestly, I’m starting off my day early, pursuing your face because I want to honor you with my life and because my need is so desperate. I recognize how much my life needs to be filled with you. Now, when you come to a verse like that, the question is, why did I just bore you with with Hebrew, right? Why does this matter in our lives? Well, the reason is, is because as David is pursuing the Lord in this way, he wants to teach us to to do the same thing, to hunger and to thirst after the Lord and to recognize how much our lives are in need of of God on a regular basis, to pursue him in every moment of our lives, to discover who God is and what we’re going through in this world.
And so because of that, David’s going to help us answer three questions this morning. The first is this How do I grow my desire for God? Number two, how do I measure my desire for God? Is it a healthy desire? And number three, how do I feel my desire for God once I have that hunger, how do I find God filling that up? And question one in your notes. If we jump further into this text, how do I grow my desire for God? The answer is very simple and this is the next blink in your notes by feasting on him. How do I grow my desire for God by feasting on Him? David in this passage is dealing with certainly a thirst by verse five. You see, he he transitions from thirst to the idea of being filled with God as as food, this filling up, this hunger that he has for Lord, being satisfied as if God were food, but by by filling yourself up, by feasting on the Lord. That’s what David is saying in this passage. And you see the way David describes it here.
He says verse one, O God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek after you, my soul, thirst for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. David, in this passage, he’s. He’s hungering for God because he has grown a bigger appetite for the Lord by. By feasting on the goodness of who God is. David In this passage, you’ll notice he’s not saying, he’s not saying you are a God or you are God, but rather he’s making this very personal. You are my God, meaning he’s. He’s walked with this God in an experiential way, and he claims this relationship with the Lord that’s very personal to to his identity. David has has grown in his desire for God by feasting on him in a personal way. Now, some of us may look at that and ask the question, well, how does that work? How how does feasting help grow your hunger? Because any time I’ve ever been hungry and then I’ve feasted, I’m not hungry anymore. Right? So it’s the exact opposite of what you might think if you if you want to grow your desire for God, feasting on God wouldn’t grow your desire necessarily, but rather would quench it. And I would say, yes, that’s true, but but only momentarily. Any time you go through life, you start to eat, You grow your appetite or your desire for something by feasting on it, especially if it’s good.
I mean, I’ve tasted some food in my life that is so good that when I go to bed at night, I start dreaming about it. You know, like when I my first trip to India, when I went to India and I and I ate at a we stayed in a five star hotel, but eating, eating at the buffet in India, I came home and I would start thinking about it and my mouth would just quench. They have they have perfected spices in India, you know. And so because of that, even though I ate it and my my desire was filled momentarily, my appetite for it grew and my my desire for more expanded. And I think, God, there’s little India in Lehigh now. But but the same thing is true when when when you eat in your own life, if you taste something that’s good, your life is momentarily quenched. But the depth of that desire, that appetite expands because you know what it is to taste of it. And this is exactly what what David is saying in this passage is that God isn’t just a God to him, but God has become personal. And he has He has tasted He’s feasted upon the richness of who God is. And because of that, it’s expanded the the depth of his appetite, his desire for the Lord, because he knows how good God is.
Have you ever watched those videos on the Internet of people that maybe they were born without the ability to see color? And then all of a sudden someone gifts them with a pair of those sunglasses and they put those sunglasses on for the first time. They’re able to experience what it’s like to look at this world in color. And if you watch those kind of videos on YouTube, you’ll you’ll see grown men bawling over being able to experience for the first time the beauty of what it is to see color in this world. Or have you ever watched the videos of of individuals who maybe were born without the ability to hear and then they get those cochlear implants implanted in their in their ears and all of a sudden it gives them the first opportunity in life to hear the voices of their loved ones. To go through that experience and to just have that that sensory understanding of what it is to either see and color or to hear for the first time people that they love care about things in this world. I have a little video of a of a young lady that for us to understand what it is to experience the goodness, this young lady for the first time is in a room. She’s had that cochlear implant put into her ears to be able to hear her, her friends and family for the first time.
And this is about a 45 second video, but it helps you just understand what it is to to experience the depth of of something and appreciate it for what it is. Oh, really? What does it sound like? What does it sound like that you can hear now? It sounds it sounds deep. It sounds very deep. Yeah. That’s why I just can’t get so different from all your voices. And it just feels this little bit of sound breaking through. Good. It’s so awesome. Yeah. Michael, talk to her. Hello? Danielle, can you hear me? Yes. Oh, wow. Oh, that’s so wonderful. You should. Oh, sweetheart. So. You could just watching someone go through that experience and seeing them have the privilege to appreciate something they hadn’t otherwise had the opportunity in life. It’s a it’s a very emotional thing, even to even if it’s someone you don’t personally know, to watch the joy because you know what it is to hear. You know what it is to hear the voices of those that you care about, talk to you, share their their love with you and appreciation or concern for your life. And this young lady to be able to have this moment, it’s precious. And even for us to have the opportunity to to see her expression on her face and how overwhelming it is, how it brings her to tears, it’s it’s that experience in the Lord that I think David is describing in this moment that he previous in his life maybe had not tasted of the goodness of the Lord.
But now, now that he’s feasted on the richness of Christ, the richness of God in his life, David, is appetite has expanded in in its goodness. Now, we would say for this young lady to go through this experience, it would be foolish then at this moment, now that she has had this desire quenched to hear, to then turn off those implants and never hear again. Why would she do that? How could she do that now that she’s tasted the richness of sound and has the opportunity to experience it? Well, how would she go back to what what what she had before without the ability, But now with the opportunity in that ability, it’s expanded her appetite to want to continue to to hear sound and to understand what it’s about. And and David is saying the the same thing to us in this passage that that the richness of God has been made known in his life by feasting on him. It hasn’t quenched his desire for God forever, but but just simply filled his life up. And it’s expanded his hunger for the goodness of who God is. He goes on in verse three, and he says this Because your steadfast love is better than life. You know, David, in this passage, he’s he’s acknowledging there is good things about life. But more than that, it’s the creator of this life who who who birthed it all for us.
How much greater it is rather than just fixate on the things of life to come to the one who’s created all the goodness that life is, and to rejoice in his presence and to know more about him and to plunge the depths of God. I mean, you’ll be doing this for all of eternity and it will be You’ll never exhaust the depth of who God is. And so the privilege that you have now to begin to explore the richness of Christ and and to know him in a personal way in your life. And and David is saying this sometimes we can even take from this passage that we we in in seeing the good things of God can replace the good things for for God things. We can misappropriate the good things of this world as if it were God himself, create idols and completely miss the goodness of who God is in life. In fact, C.S Lewis and his book The Weight of Glory, he said this way about us and talking about the weight of glory. He’s talking about the glory of God and all that he has created in this world for us to experience. And He said, Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We’re half hearted creatures fooling around when infinite joy offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased. Is your hunger for God. A healthy hunger. We as people often can try to satisfy our hunger with lesser idols. But David’s reminding us in this passage, Your steadfast love is better than life. So it’s popular in our culture today rather than claim Christ, rather than to put your full trust in who Jesus is. It’s popular in our culture today. Just simply say I’m spiritual. I’m spiritual, right? That’s how we like to do it rather than identify Jesus. But. But can I honestly just tell you, if you categorize yourself as spiritual, big deal. Who cares? Everyone born in this world is spiritual, whether they acknowledge it or not. And that’s your default as a human being. Everyone is born with a spiritual being. Everyone is born as a spiritual being. But but whether or not you plunge the depth of God is truly determined. Not if not if you label yourself as spiritual. Whether or not you give your life to Christ because of Jesus created it all. If Jesus gave his life for you, that’s where your true spirituality is discovered, is in your identity in Him. Jesus gave too much for us to to convolute the beauty of who he is and the ambiguity of spirituality. Jesus gave his life for you. And this is what what David is arguing for us is that we can replace the good things of life with the great things of God.
But your steadfast love God is better than life. And so the question is, is your hunger for God a healthy hunger, or do you just simply dilute the beauty of Jesus with the concept of spirituality? Second question for us then is this How do I measure my desire for God? How do I measure my desire for God? And the answer by my sincere praising and praying by my sincere praising and praying. When we talk about being sincere, sincere means you’re praising and praying should be a natural outflow of being filled up by by the Lord. Sincerity means I’m not encouraging you to fabricate, praising and praying to look like you’re you’re a healthy spiritual being. What I’m asking is, is the natural outflow in your relationship with God, one that represents a life of praising and praying? Meaning this morning, you can look back over the last week, the last month, and ask yourself, is there markers in my life that suggest that I was genuinely praising the Lord? Or how was my prayer life? Paul in this next passage, he says in verse three, Because your steadfast love is better than life. Look at this. The outflow. My lips will praise you. So I will bless you. As long as I live in your name, I will lift up my hands. This idea of lifting up my hands is is an expression of prayer before the Lord as you praise His name.
And so David is saying, Look for a life that’s really filled in the satisfaction of the Lord, the the natural outflow of that. If you want to measure your spiritual condition of your life, it should be able to go back and see, especially recently, is there a praising and a praying going on in your world before the Lord? Praising is all about sharing what captivates you, what what stirs you, what changes you and transforms your life, What challenges you you honor or praise that which you value, you seek or you pray towards that which you value. And David is expressing both of these in this passage. He’s he’s, he’s honoring the Lord by seeking his face and he’s praising the Lord because he’s developed this appetite and the goodness of who God is, because he’s tasted and he knows the greatness of the Lord. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this this type of moment, but. Well, I know you have, especially some of you guys. You’ve watched maybe some sports on TV and all of a sudden something spectacular happens and you call your wife into the living room or whatever to to watch this one play take place or some someone’s ability. Athletic ability is something maybe people don’t regularly see or haven’t seen before, and it’s just captivated you. And you call people in and, you know, they don’t even care about the game because they would have been watching it with you if they did.
But you call them in anyway because you want you want to share this with them and you share it. And they probably didn’t even care walking away. But you want them to partake of it because it mattered so much to you. And what are you doing in that moment? You’re praising that activity. It captivated you, it captured you, it maybe challenged you. Maybe you want to go out and try it yourself? I don’t know. My kids do that when they watch sports sometimes. But. But that moment, it captured your attention because of how glorious it was. And sports this past year. I’m a little ashamed to share this, but in sports, this past year, there was one particular thing that took place I think was the greatest moments in all of sports last year. Not something that I watch on TV. It was a clip that that came to me and I thought, man, this was amazing. And I was so captured by the clip, I started sharing it with other people. And I’m thinking the whole time I’m doing this, I’m like, Why am I doing this? But it’s so amazing. I want to share it with other people. I don’t even watch this, this sport, but I want people, people to see it. This is incredible. It was it was a clip from NASCAR.
I don’t watch NASCAR. I can’t watch NASCAR. I am I am left hand turn adverse like I don’t. And they make that’s all that they do in NASCAR. Right? Like I can tell you, out of all the sporting events I’ve been to in my life, at one point, my first job as a kid in high school was in the NASCAR capital of the world in Mooresville, North Carolina. I lived I lived in that area. And and I have gone to different sporting events. My favorite sporting event to actually go to is NASCAR. You give me any ticket in this world, I’ll take NASCAR over at all. It’s it’s weird. I will not watch a second on TV. But at the sporting event, I don’t know what it is. It’s incredible to see. But but but here I am watching these people turn left, left hand. And and the one thing that captured my attention about this particular clip on NASCAR was there was this guy named Ross Chastain. I didn’t even know who that was until I saw this clip, but it was getting to the end of the season and this guy was coming into the last turn. And if he didn’t move up five spots in this race, he was going to be eliminated from the tournament and not be able to compete for the championship. So going into this last turn, this guy decides. I want to show you nine seconds, this clip in just a second.
It’s very fast, but I want to share it with all of you. We’re going to praise it together. But this guy goes into this last turn knowing he’s going to get eliminated unless he passes like 5 or 6 cars. So he flaws it into a turn and slams into the wall on purpose and flies by all of these cars and passes just enough people to make it into the championship to compete for the final race in NASCAR. It’s incredible. Watch this. It’s like a video game this guy. It caution to the wind doesn’t even care about his life. He just slams into that. You can actually I can’t legally show you all the clips of this. I can only show you a few seconds of it. But if you get online, you can see every redneck in the show like filming this final moment. And people have spliced it all together. And you can watch video after video with every redneck screaming at the top of their lungs with beer in their hand about how this guy went through his last life. It was amazing. But he did it. He risked everything, even his life. Right. Just flying into a wall to do this incredible moment that I just might have wasted 10s of your life. Cheering Right. But the point of that is when you experience things that are good. You want to. You want to praise it. Praise is not just.
It’s not just a word. It’s a response to that, which is good. You want to know if you really cherish Christ? You want to know if you really desire God. You can look back at your life and just ask the question Is my heart one of genuine praise? Have I plunged the depth of who God is? Do I experience Him in a way that moves my heart to praise him? Praising is not to be a mundane practice, but an outflow from personal experience of his richness. Now, maybe you don’t connect to NASCAR, but how about this? What if I told you today the best ice cream in all of Utah County is actually only about half a mile from here. If you jump on State Street and drive towards American Fork and you go to the the little plaza where Taco Bell and Starbucks is handles ice cream right there. If you don’t believe me, that handles ice cream is the best ice cream in Utah County. It’s because you haven’t been to Handel’s ice cream. Right. But if you if you go to Handel’s ice cream, I could spend all day long telling you how great Handel’s ice cream is. But. But it doesn’t do justice to actually going in, looking at the menu, ordering your favorite and taking a bite. I could spend all day describing it to you, but the experience of just tasting its richness two seconds with with that ice cream in your mouth will do more than a day of explaining to you how good it is.
And if you mention my name, I get 10% of all your. I’m just kidding. That’s not true. That’s not true. But. But there there are things in life that we can talk about and we should, the Lord you should talk about. But more than you just living your spiritual life off of something I say. To take the time to plunge. God. In your own personal walk with him. This is what David is saying in this passage, right? My lips will praise you because you are my God and I will lift my hands before you because his heart is given over to the Lord. And the last question then, in your notes is this How do I fill my desire for God? Or maybe we could say it like this How do I how do I taste the richness of God? And your answer? By meditating on the character of God fully, sir. To him. Let me repeat that by meditating on the character of God. Fully surrendered to him. This is what David says in verse verse two. He says, So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. Beholding, which is the idea of meditating, meditating on your power and glory because of your steadfast love. So you see the character of God there, the power and the glory and steadfast love. And it’s better than life.
My lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live. That life of surrender, this idea of wanting to bless God, I will. I will surrender. I will bless you. As long as I live in your name, I will lift up my hands. Meditation is beholding the character of God and the power, glory and steadfast, fully surrendered. And he is blessing God as long as he should live. When we carry the idea of fully surrendering to the Lord, you know, for for us to learn about God and give our lives to him the way that we we really start to engage him is to come to his word and we discover God in His word. We see the Bible as an incredible story. I mean, you think about what it took for you to get the Word of God in your hands today. You think the story of the Bible spans 1500 years written by over 40 authors in that 1500 years on three different continents and three different languages. And it has one theme. One theme. It’s an incredible story. I mean, it starts in a garden. It ends in a garden. It starts with a tree. Revelation ends with the tree. And the whole theme is, is God’s desire, desire for a relationship with you? It’s a redemptive story of a relationship with you that God would give his life for you. He would create you in his image. He would promise in Genesis three to give his life for you.
And he and he comes into the story. He becomes flesh. He becomes like us, and he dies on a cross so that you could have that relationship with him. It’s an incredible story. God’s heart for you to walk with him and have relationship. But it’s not just a story. It’s also history, meaning it really happened. It’s incredible. You can go to the Old Testament and see all these prophetic declarations of of the coming of Jesus and when he would live and how he would live and the way that he would die hundreds of years before he came to the place in all of this world where Jesus would exist and and the things that Jesus would do. And then you get to the New Testament and you see Jesus fulfill it and the resurrection of Christ. And you don’t have to just look at the Bible for the evidence of Jesus. I mean, there’s there’s there’s authors and historians from the first and second century that talk about the existence of Christ and the worship of people as they came to know Jesus. People like Suetonius and and Thallus and Tacitus and and Josephus, not even Christians writing about in the first and second century, the existence of Christ and the transformation that Jesus brought into this world. It’s history. And not just history. It’s intended to be personal for you. So much so that when lives were transformed by what Jesus has done, people went out into this world and gave their lives that the Word of God could go forward.
Even into English. People like John Horse and and John Wycliffe and William Tyndale to get the Bible into English for us to be able to read this morning gave their lives so that you could know the Lord. Connect to him personally. Surrender to him completely. I will bless you as long as I have life. And David helps us to understand how do I how do I fill that desire? Not only by coming to the Lord and saying, God, I’m giving I’m giving all that I am for you as you have given all that you are for me by giving your life, I surrender my life in return. And David is saying here, for your heart to be captured by the glory of this God, think about the attributes of this great God. And he identifies three of them here. There’s more to God than this, but he talks about three of him that moves him in this kind of response. He talks about the power of God, the glory of God and the love of God. We certainly need the power of God and the power of God makes the promises of God possible. If you have a God, but the God has no power, it’s no good having just a loving God with no power. It’s just flatter and flatter.
He’s going to get you nowhere and likeness. This idea of steadfast love to have power but no love. That’s tyranny. But but in God, you get both of those power and love and not just love. I appreciate the way that David expresses God’s love as a steadfast love. And that means this, that God’s love is unchanging. It’s always reliable, completely dependable. It’s unending for you because his nature is love. Meaning God. God’s love towards you is not contingent upon what you do because God Himself is love. That’s what First John Chapter four tells you that God is love. Meaning sometimes in our life we struggle with coming to the Lord because some of the things we do in our lives make us feel like failures. And when we feel like failures, our response is to try to prove to God how much he should love us by how how lovable we can make ourselves. But what the gospel actually declares to you is the opposite of that. That you’re sinful and there’s nothing that you can do to take your sin away. But the good news for you is that God’s love is steadfast. Meaning His love is not contingent upon your performance. That he, in his own nature, is love. And so, God, when you come to him in your failures, God is gracious to you, to forgive you and to restore you. Because the reason God created you is for relationship. And the reason Jesus died for you is to cover all of your sins past, present and future.
That you can enjoy that relationship in the Lord to partake of the goodness of who He is. And what does that do for us? It helps us recognize the glory of this God. And just to have power with no glory means you’re not appreciated in that power. But to fill the weightiness of who you are, the glory. Has to say, and we recognize the magnitude of what you represent. You know, a bulldozer has power, but I can pass bulldozers all day long and not care. That’s not glory in it for me. But God. God is glorious. And do you want to know the one place everyone can turn to to see the power, love and glory of God on display? It’s the cross of Christ. That’s what Jesus did for you. His love for you took him to the point of giving his very life that you could have freedom in him. There’s no greater love than someone laying down their life for someone else. God owed you nothing, and yet he willingly gave himself anyway. So that you could know him and have freedom in him all the days of your life. His love is steadfast. But not just his love at the cross, his power. He overcame sin, Satan and death and his resurrection. And it demonstrates to you that as Jesus overcame the grave, so will you and Him.
And that is glorious. It’s personal. At least it should be personal. Jesus did that for you. So that you could know him. How do I fill my desire for God by meditating on the character of this good and powerful and glorious loving God and fully surrendering myself to Him. God as you gave it all for me. So I give all of myself for you. And this is what David says in verse five. The result of that, my soul will be satisfied. As with the fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. God, my heart is overwhelmed and the goodness of who you are that God would care enough about me to not only create me in his image, but come to earth and give his life that I could have freedom. And he gave me his word that I could know him more and intimately and spend time with him. And all the days of my life plunged the depth of who he is. And out of that, rejoice and praise to the goodness of God and seek His face in prayer. I have the privilege of coming to the throne of God. To talk to my creator and my Savior. Any moment of any day. What a gift that is for my soul to be filled in him. All in with this. In the 1850s, there was a man by the name of Allan Gardiner. Allan Gardiner, when he was 14 years old, he joined the British Navy because he had a desire to want to explore the world.
And when he joined the Navy, someone shared with him the gospel. He became he became a Christian. He gave his heart to Christ and God so stirred within his heart that he he desired to go throughout this world and proclaim the gospel. And he decided in 1850 he and six other friends, they were going to go to the furthest point of the world where no one else had gone to share the gospel with people, groups no one else had reached. And so Allan Gardiner decided to go to the very southern tip of South America. In 1850, he went to he went to the very bottom of of Chile and Argentina and Tierra del Fuego. And and after a year being there, they when they landed, they found out they were not welcomed by the natives. They were run off. They were robbed. They were attacked. They spent a year trying to help. They took two boats with them. One of their boats was destroyed. They were down to one boat. And over the course of that year, one by one, they started to die from disease and hunger. And finally, the last entry they discovered from the last man that was alive was Allan Gardiner. And in September, the last entry he wrote in his journal was this He said, By God’s grace, this blessed group was able to sing praises to Christ for eternity.
I am not hungry or thirsty in spite of five days without eating wonderful grace and love to me a sinner. Here he is at the end of his life. Allen was married. He had children. He wanted to go to this island just to share the gospel with the people. He was not welcomed. But he continued to honor the Lord and at the end of his life, rather than complain, rather than talk about the hunger and adversity, having seen all of his friends perish, what is Alan doing? He’s praising the Lord. Last entry of this man’s life is just honoring God. How did he do that? Can I suggest Alan discovered the Lord the same way David did in this passage? And the reason David is writing to us is that in the midst of adversity, we may experience this world just like David is from his son Absalom, that he’s he’s on the run, that he he can still taste the richness of God and in so doing, find his heart satisfied that his desire for God has grown because he he knows the goodness of the Lord, and that his desire for the Lord is being expressed and is praising and praying. And through that His heart is filled with the goodness of who God is, that no matter what happens, no matter what He goes through, he knows his life is surrounded by a powerful God whose love is steadfast, and therefore he can always depend on him.