51822412 psalm-42-commentary

TARY
Edited EEEdddiiittteeeddd bbbbyyyy GGGGlllleeeennnnnnnn PPPPeeeeaaaasssseeee
PREFACE
I quote many authors both old and new, and if any I quote do not want their
wisdom shared in this way, they can let me know and I will remove it. My e-mail is
glenn_p86@yahoo.com I have included some of the best messages on this Psalm,
and sometimes have only included a portion of them. You can Google the names of
the authors and find all of their wisdom on their individual sites.
I

1. Spurgeon, “Title. To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.
Dedicated to the Master of Music, this Psalm is worthy of his office; he who can sing
best can have nothing better to sing. It is called, Maschil, or an instructive ode; and
full as it is of deep experimental expressions, it is eminently calculated to instruct
those pilgrims whose road to heaven is of the same trying kind as David's was. It is
always edifying to listen to the experience of a thoroughly gracious and much
afflicted saint.
That choice band of singers, the sons of Korah, are bidden to make this delightful
Psalm one of their peculiars. They had been spared when their father and all his
company, and all the children of his associates were swallowed up alive in their sin.

u 27:11. They were the spared ones of sovereign grace. Preserved, we know not
why, by the distinguishing favour of God, it may be surmised that after their
remarkable election to mercy, they became so filled with gratitude that they
addicted themselves to sacred music in order that their spared lives might be
consecrated to the glory of God. At any rate, we who have been rescued as they were
from going down into the pit, out of the mere good pleasure of Jehovah, can heartily
join in this Psalm, and indeed in all the songs which show forth the praises of our
God and the pantings of our hearts after him. Although David is not mentioned as
the author, this Psalm must be the offspring of his pen; it is so Davidic, it smells of
the son of Jesse, it bears the marks of his style and experience in every letter. We

could sooner doubt the authorship of the second part of Pilgrim's Progress than
question David's title to be the composer of this Psalm.
Subject. It is the cry of a man far removed from the outward ordinances and
worship of God, sighing for the long loved house of his God; and at the same time it
is the voice of a spiritual believer, under depressions, longing for the renewal of the
divine presence, struggling with doubts and fears, but yet holding his ground by
faith in the living God. Most of the Lord's family have sailed on the sea which is
here so graphically described. It is probable that David's flight from Absalom may
have been the occasion for composing this Maschil.
Division. The structure of the song directs us to consider it in two parts which end
with the same refrain; Psalms 42:1-5 and then Psalms 42:6-11.
2. Treasury of David, “Title. "Sons of Korah." Who were the sons of Korah? These
opinions have more or less prevailed. One is that they sprang from some one of that
name in the days of David. Mudge and others think that the sons of Korah were a
society of musicians, founded or presided over by Korah. Others think that the sons
of Korah were the surviving descendants of that miserable man who, together with
two hundred and fifty of his adherents, who were princes, perished when "the earth
opened her mouth and swallowed them up, together with Korah." In

otwithstanding the children of Korah died not." They had taken
the warning given, and had departed from the tents of these wicked men.

umbers
16:24,26. It must be admitted that the name Korah and the patronymic Korahite
are found in the Scriptures in a way that creates considerable doubt respecting the
particular man from whom the Korahites are named. See 1 Chronicles 1:35 2:43
6:22,54 9:19 26:1 2 Chronicles 20:19 . Yet the more common belief is that they
descended from him who perished in his gainsaying. This view is taken by
Ainsworth with entire confidence, by Gill, and others. Korah, who perished, was a
Levite. Whatever may have been their origin, it is clear the sons of Korah were a
Levitical family of singers.

othing, then, could be more appropriate than the
dedication of a sacred song to these very people. William S. Plumer.
Title. "Sons of Korah." The "Korah" whose "sons" are here spoken of, is the Levite
who headed the insurrection against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

umbers
16:1-50. We find his descendants existing as a powerful Levitical family in the time
of David, at least, if they are to be identified, as is probable, with the Korahites
mentioned in 1 Chronicles 12:6 , who, like our own warlike bishops of former times,
seem to have known how to doff the priestly vestment for the soldier's armour, and
whose hand could wield the sword as well as strike the harp. The Korahites were a
part of the band who acknowledged David as their chief, at Ziklag; warriors "whose
faces," it is said, "were like the faces of lions, and who were (for speed) like gazelles
upon the mountains." According to 1 Chronicles 9:17-19 , the Korahites were in
David's time, keepers of the threshold of the tabernacle; and still earlier, in the time
of Moses, watchmen at the entrance of the camp of the Levites. In 1 Chronicles 26:1-
19, we find two branches of this family associated with that of Merari, as guardians

of the doors of the Temple. There is probably an allusion to this their office, in
Psalms 84:10. But the Korahites were also celebrated musicians and singers; see
1 Chronicles 6:16-33 , where Heman, one of the three famous musicians of the time,
is said to be a Korahite (compare 1 Chronicles 25:1-31 ). The musical reputation of
the family continued in the time of Jehoshaphat 2 Chronicles 20:19 , where we have
the peculiar doubly plural form (~yxrqhynb), "Sons of the Korahites." J. J. Stewart
Perowne.
Title. "Sons of Korah." Medieval writers remark how here, as so often, it was the
will of God to raise up saints where they could have been least looked for. Who
should imagine that from the posterity of him who said, "Ye take too much upon
you, ye sons of Aaron," should have risen those whose sweet Psalms would be the
heritage of the church of God to the end of time? J. M.

eale.
3. Ray Stedman, “If you refer to the inscription with which this psalm opens, you
will find that it is addressed to the Choirmaster, and is called a Maskil of the Sons of
Korah. These inscriptions are part of the inspired record; they belong with the
psalm and indicate something vital about it. Maskil is the Hebrew word for
teaching. This Psalm is intended to teach something to us. What? Judging by the
repeated refrain, it is intended to teach us how to handle our blue moods, the times
when we get up in the morning and say, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and
why are you disquieted within me?"
We all know that there are some mornings when we spring out of bed, bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed, and say, "Good morning, God." There are other mornings when
we only manage to pry open our eyelids, sit dejectedly on the side of the bed and say,
"Good God, it's morning."
Just a word further on the inscriptions. The Sons of Korah were a family of singers
in Israel who passed along their musical office from generation to generation, and
were noted as an outstanding family of musicians. Several of the Psalms come from
them. The experience which this psalm reflects was unquestionably David's, but it
was put to music by the Korah Family Singers, and dedicated to the Chief Musician,
or the Royal Choirmaster. Most of us believe that the blues songs began with The St.
Louis Blues, but actually they began in Jerusalem with The King David Blues. Here
is one of The King David Blues. It is designed to teach us a very important lesson:
How to handle our blue moods, those times when you say to yourself, "Why are you
cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" Some scholars feel
that the occasion which is reflected in this psalm was when David was excluded
from the temple at the time of Absalom's rebellion. Late in David's reign Absalom
took over the kingdom temporarily and David was driven into exile outside
Jerusalem. It was probably on this occasion that he wrote this psalm. There is no
mention of this in the psalm, but it clearly reflects a time of depression and
frustration. But David does not accept that blue mood, that depression of spirit, as
inevitable. He does something about it. The whole purpose of this psalm is to help us
learn how to handle these times in our own lives.

one of us need think that because

we are Christians we shall escape times of depression; they will come. But when they
come, we need to do something about them.
Lest you think that some of the great saints have never had this kind of trouble, let
me share with you a quotation from an outstanding theologian and preacher of the
l9th century, Dr. John Henry Jowett. He once wrote to a friend,
I wish you wouldn't think I'm such a saint. You seem to imagine that I
have no ups-and-downs but just a level and lofty stretch of spiritual
attainment with unbroken joy and equanimity. By no means. I am often
perfectly wretched, and everything appears most murky. I often feel as
though my religious life had only just begun and that I am in the
kindergarten age. But I can usually trace these miserable seasons to some
personal cause, and the first thing to do is to attend to that cause and get
it into the sunshine again.
That is what this Psalm attempts to teach us: how to get into the sunshine again.”
4. Calvin, “In the first place, David shows that when he was forced to flee by reason
of the cruelty of Saul, and was living in a state of exile, what most of all grieved him
was, that he was deprived of the opportunity of access to the sanctuary; for he
preferred the service of God to every earthly advantage. In the second place, he
shows that being tempted with despair, he had in this respect a very difficult contest
to sustain. In order to strengthen his hope, he also introduces prayer and meditation
on the grace of God. Last of all, he again makes mention of the inward conflict
which he had with the sorrow which he experienced.
To the chief musician. A lesson of instruction to the sons of Korah.
The name of David is not expressly mentioned in the inscription of this psalm. Many
conjecture that the sons of Korah were the authors of it. This, I think, is not at all
probable. As it is composed in the person of David, who, it is well known, was
endued above all others with the spirit of prophecy, who will believe that it was
written and composed for him by another person? He was the teacher generally of
the whole Church, and a distinguished instrument of the Spirit. He had already
delivered to the company of the Levites, of whom the sons of Korah formed a part,
other psalms to be sung by them. What need, then, had he to borrow their help, or
to have recourse to their assistance in a matter which he was much better able of
himself to execute than they were? To me, therefore, it seems more probable, that
the sons of Korah are here mentioned because this psalm was committed as a
precious treasure to be preserved by them, as we know that out of the number of the
singers, some were chosen and appointed to be keepers of the psalms. That there is
no mention made of David’s name does not of itself involve any difficulty, since we
see the same omission in other psalms, of which there is, notwithstanding, the
strongest grounds for concluding that he was the author. משכיל, As to the word

maskil, I have already made some remarks upon it in the thirty-second psalm. This
word, it is true, is sometimes found in the inscription of other psalms besides those
in which David declares that he had been subjected to the chastening rod of God. It
is, however, to be observed, that it is properly applied to chastisements, since the
design of them is to instruct the children of God, when they do not sufficiently profit
from doctrine. As to the particular time of the composition of this psalm, expositors
are not altogether agreed. Some suppose that David here complains of his calamity,
when he was expelled from the throne by his son Absalom. But I am rather disposed
to entertain a different opinion, founded, if I mistake not, upon good reasons. The
rebellion of Absalom was very soon suppressed, so that it did not long prevent David
from approaching the sanctuary. And yet, the lamentation which he here makes
refers expressly to a long state of exile, under which he had languished, and, as it
were, pined away with grief. It is not the sorrow merely of a few days which he
describes in the third verse; nay, the scope of the entire composition will clearly
show that he had languished for a long time in the wretched condition of which he
speaks. It has been alleged as an argument against referring this psalm to the reign
of Saul, that the ark of the covenant was neglected during his reign, so that it is not
very likely that David at that time conducted the stated choral services in the
sanctuary; but this argument is not very conclusive: for although Saul only
worshipped God as a mere matter of form, yet he was unwilling to be regarded in
any other light than as a devout man. And as to David, he has shown in other parts
of his writings with what diligence he frequented the holy assemblies, and more
especially on festival days. Certainly, these words which we shall meet with in Psalm
55:14, “We walked unto the house of God in company,” relate . to the time of Saul
For the director of music. A maskil[c] of the Sons
of Korah.
1. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my
soul pants for you, my God.
1. The panting deer is panting because it is dying of thirst, and it desperately has to
find water for its survival. Such is the strong desire of the person who wants to
possess the water of life, which is fellowship with God. Those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness are those who are given the promise that they will be filled.

Anyone who desires to be near God with the intensity of one who is hungry and
thirsty is one who is very serious about his or her relationship with God, and God
will honor that strong desire with fulfillment by being near to them. That is, unless
he is testing them and the reality of their thirst, and that seems to be what is going
on in this psalm.
2. Barnes says the Hebrew implies a female deer, a gazelle, and he comments,
“These are so timid, so gentle, so delicate in their structure, so much the natural
objects of love and compassion, that our feelings are drawn toward them as to all
other animals in similar circumstances. We sympathize with them; we pity them; we
love them; we feel deeply for them when they are pursued, when they fly away in
fear, when they are in want. The following engraving will help us more to appreciate
the comparison employed by the psalmist.

othing could more beautifully or
appropriately describe the earnest longing of a soul after God, in the circumstances
of the psalmist, than this image.”
So panteth my soul after thee, O God - So earnest a desire have I to come before
thee, and to enjoy thy presence and thy favor. So sensible am I of want; so much
does my soul need something that can satisfy its desires. This was at first applied to
the case of one who was cut off from the privileges of public worship, and who was
driven into exile far from the place where he had been accustomed to unite with
others in that service Psa_42:4; but it will also express the deep and earnest feelings
of the heart of piety at all times, and in all circumstances, in regard to God. There is
no desire of the soul more intense than that which the pious heart has for God; there
is no want more deeply felt than that which is experienced when one who loves God
is cut off by any cause from communion with him.
3. Clarke, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks - The hart is not only fond of
feeding near some water for the benefit of drinking, “but when he is hard hunted,
and nearly spent, he will take to some river or brook, in which,” says Tuberville, “he
will keep as long as his breath will suffer him. Understand that when a hart is spent
and sore run, his last refuge is to the water; and he will commonly descend down the
streame and swimme in the very middest thereof; for he will take as good heede as
he can to touch no boughes or twygges that grow upon the sides of the river, for
feare lest the hounds should there take sent of him. And sometimes the hart will lye
under the water, all but his very nose; and I have seene divers lye so until the
hounds have been upon them, before they would rise; for they are constrayned to
take the water as their last refuge.” - Tuberville’s Art of Venerie, chapter 40: Lond.
4th., 1611.
The above extracts will give a fine illustration of this passage. The hart feels
himself almost entirely spent; he is nearly hunted down; the dogs are in full pursuit;
he is parched with thirst; and in a burning heat pants after the water, and when he
comes to the river, plunges in as his last refuge. Thus pursued, spent, and nearly
ready to give up the ghost, the psalmist pants for God, for the living God! for him
who can give life, and save from death.

4. Gill, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks,.... Either through a natural
thirst that creature is said to have; or through the heat of the summer season; and
especially when hunted by dogs, it betakes itself to rivers of water, partly to make its
escape, and partly to extinguish its thirst, and refresh itself. The word here used
denotes the cry of the hart, when in distress for water, and pants after it, and is
peculiar to it; and the verb being of the feminine gender, hence the Septuagint
render it the "hind"; and Kimchi conjectures that the reason of it may be, because
the voice of the female may be stronger than that of the male; but the contrary is
asserted by the philosopher (c), who says, that the male harts cry much stronger
than the females; and that the voice of the female is short, but that of the male is
long, or protracted. Schindler (d) gives three reasons why these creatures are so
desirous of water; because they were in desert places, where water was wanting; and
another, that being heated by destroying and eating serpents, they coveted water to
refresh themselves; and the third, when followed by dogs, they betake themselves
into the water, and go into that for safety;
so panteth my soul after thee, O God; being persecuted by men, and deprived of the
word and worship of God, which occasioned a vehement desire after communion
with him in his house and ordinances: some render the words, "as the field", or
"meadow, desires the shower", &c. (e); or thirsts after it when parched with
drought; see Isa_35:7; and by these metaphors, one or the other, is expressed the
psalmist's violent and eager thirst after the enjoyment of God in public worship.
5. Henry, “Holy love to God as the chief good and our felicity is the power of
godliness, the very life and soul of religion, without which all external professions
and performances are but a shell and carcase: now here we have some of the
expressions of that love. Here is,
I. Holy love thirsting, love upon the wing, soaring upwards in holy desires towards
the Lord and towards the remembrance of his name (Psa_42:1, Psa_42:2): “My soul
panteth, thirsteth, for God, for nothing more than God, but still for more and more of
him.”

ow observe,
1. When it was that David thus expressed his vehement desire towards God. It was,
(1.) When he was debarred from his outward opportunities of waiting on God, when
he was banished to the land of Jordan, a great way off from the courts of God's
house.

ote, Sometimes God teaches us effectually to know the worth of mercies by
the want of them, and whets our appetite for the means of grace by cutting us short
in those means. We are apt to loathe that manna, when we have plenty of it, which
will be very precious to us if ever we come to know the scarcity of it. (2.) When he
was deprived, in a great measure, of the inward comfort he used to have in God. He
now went mourning, but he went on panting.

ote, If God, by his grace, has

wrought in us sincere and earnest desires towards him, we may take comfort from
these when we want those ravishing delights we have sometimes had in God,
because lamenting after God is as sure an evidence that we love him as rejoicing in
God. Before the psalmist records his doubts, and fears, and griefs, which had sorely
shaken him, he premises this, That he looked upon the living God as his chief good,
and had set his heart upon him accordingly, and was resolved to live and die by
him; and, casting anchor thus at first, he rides out the storm.
What is the degree of this desire. It is very importunate; it is his soul that pants, his
soul that thirsts, which denotes not only the sincerity, but the strength, of his desire.
His longing for the water of the well of Bethlehem was nothing to this. He compares
it to the panting of a hart, or deer, which is naturally hot and dry, especially of a
hunted buck, after the water-brooks. Thus earnestly does a gracious soul desire
communion with God, thus impatient is it in the want of that communion, so
impossible does it find it to be satisfied with any thing short of that communion, and
so insatiable is it in taking the pleasures of that communion when the opportunity of
it returns, still thirsting after the full enjoyment of him in the heavenly kingdom.”
6. Spurgeon, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after
the, O God. As after a long drought the poor fainting hind longs for the streams, or
rather as the hunted hart instinctively seeks after the river to lave its smoking flanks
and to escape the dogs, even so my weary, persecuted soul pants after the Lord my
God. Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek,
honor he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent
need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an
absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveler in the wilderness,
whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die -- he
must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for
a sense of the divine presence. As the hart brays so his soul prays. Give him his God
and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly
happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole
frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear
reader, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet
bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord's love is to be
unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it -- hourly, did I say? thirst is a
perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continual is the heart's
longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to
thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings. We may learn from this
verse that the eagerness of our desires may be pleaded with God, and the more so,
because there are special promises for the importunate and fervent.
6B. Calvin, “As the hart crieth for the fountains of water, etc The meaning of these
two verses simply is, that David preferred to all the enjoyments, riches, pleasures,
and honors of this world, the opportunity of access to the sanctuary, that in this way
he might cherish and strengthen his faith and piety by the exercises prescribed in

the Law. When he says that he cried for the living God, we are not to understand it
merely in the sense of a burning love and desire towards God: but we ought to
remember in what manner it is that, God allures us to himself, and by what means
he raises our minds upwards. He does not enjoin us to ascend forthwith into heaven,
but, consulting our weakness, he descends to us. David, then, considering that the
way of access was shut against him, cried to God, because he was excluded from the
outward service of the sanctuary, which is the sacred bond of intercourse with God.
I do not mean to say that the observance of external ceremonies can of itself bring us
into favor with God, but they are religious exercises which we cannot bear to want
by reason of our infirmity. David, therefore, being excluded from the sanctuary, is
no less grieved than if he had been separated from God himself. He did not, it is
true, cease in the meantime to direct his prayers towards heaven, and even to the
sanctuary itself; but conscious of his own infirmity, he was specially grieved that the
way by which the faithful obtained access to God was shut against him. This is an
example which may well suffice to put to shame the arrogance of those who without
concern can bear to be deprived of those means, 113 113 “Qui ne soucient pas
beaucoup d’estre privez de ces moyens.” — Fr. or rather, who proudly despise
them, as if it were in their power to ascend to heaven in a moment’s flight; nay, as if
they surpassed David in zeal and alacrity of mind. We must not, however, imagine
that the prophet suffered himself to rest in earthly elements, 114 114 “C’est
assavoir, es ceremonies externes commandees en la Loy.” — Fr. marg. “That is to
say, in the external ceremonies commanded by the Law.” but only that he made use
of them as a ladder, by which he might ascend to God, finding that he had not wings
with which to fly thither. The similitude which he takes from a hart is designed to
express the extreme ardor of his desire. The sense in which some explain this is, that
the waters are eagerly sought by the harts, that they may recover from fatigue; but
this, perhaps, is too limited. I admit that if the hunter pursue the stag, and the dogs
also follow hard after it, when it comes to a river it gathers new strength by
plunging into it. But we know also that at certain seasons of the year, harts, with an
almost incredible desire, and more intensely than could proceed from mere thirst,
seek after water; and although I would not contend for it, yet I think this is referred
to by the prophet here.
7. Treasury of David, “Verse 1. The hart panteth after the water brooks. And here we
have started up, and have sent leaping over the plain another of Solomon's
favourites. What elegant creatures these gazelles are, and how gracefully they
bound! ... The sacred writers frequently mention gazelles under the various names
of harts, roes, and hinds ... I have seen large flocks of these panting harts gather
round the water brooks in the great deserts of Central Syria, so subdued by thirst
that you could approach quite near them before they fled. W. M. Thomson.
Verse 1. Little do the drunkards think that take so much pleasure in frequenting the
houses of Bacchus, that the godly take a great deal more, and have a great deal
more joy in frequenting the houses of God. But it is a thing that God promised long
ago by the prophet: "Then will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful
in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted

upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people."
Isaiah 56:7. And I think, I hear the willing people of God's power, merrily calling
one to another in the words of Micah 4:2, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain
of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways,
and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem." How is a godly man ravished with "the beauty of holiness,"
when he is at such meetings! How was holy David taken with being in the house of
God at Jerusalem! insomuch, that if he were kept from it but a little while, his soul
panted for it, and longed after it, and fainted for lack of it, as a thirsty hart would
do for lack of water! As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul
after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come
and appear before God? The poor disconsolate captives preferred it to the best
place in their memory. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning." Psalms 137:5; nay, they preferred it to their chiefest joy: "If I do not
remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not
Jerusalem above my chief joy," Psalms 42:6. There was no place in the world that
David regarded or cared to be in in comparison of it. "A day in thy courts is better
than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell
in the tents of wickedness" Psalms 84:10, insomuch, that he could find it in his
heart, nay, and would choose, if he might have his desire, to spend all his days in
that house. Psalms 27:4. Zachary Bogan.
Verse 1. The soul strongly desires acquaintance with God here in his ordinances.
Chrysostom's very rhetorical upon the text, and tells us how that David, like a lover
in absence, must express his affection; as they have their dainty sighs, and
passionate complaints, their loving exclamations, and sundry discoveries of
affection; they can meet with never a tree, but in the bark of it they must engrave
the name of their darling, Denfos d o erws d kittos auton ek paaes anadeoai
profaoews; it will twine upon every opportunity, as the Moralist speaks. And the
true lovers of God, they are always thinking upon him, sighing for him, panting
after him, talking of him, and (if it were possible) would engrave the name of the
Lord Jesus upon the breasts of all the men in the world. Look upon David, now a
banished man, and fled from the presence of Saul, and see how he behaves himself:
not like Themistocles or Camillus, or some of those brave banished worthies. He
does not complain of the ungratefulness of his country, the malice of his adversaries,
and his own unhappy success.

o, instead of murmuring, he falls a panting, and that
only after his God. He is banished from the sanctuary, the palace of God's nearest
presence, and chiefest residence; he cannot enjoy the beauty of holiness, and all
other places seem to him but as the tents of Kedar. He is banished from the temple,
and he thinks himself banished from his God, as it is in the following words, When
shall I come and appear before God? The whole stream of expositors run this way,
that it is meant of his strong longing to visit the Temple, and those amiable courts of
his God, with which his soul was so much taken.

athanael Culverwel's "Panting
Soul," 1652.
Verse 1-3. are an illustration of the frequent use of the word Elohim in the second
book of Psalms. We give Fry's translation of the first three verses. --

As the hart looketh for the springs of water,
So my soul looketh for thee, O Elohim.
My soul is athirst for Elohim for the living El:
When shall I go and see the face of Elohim?
My tears have been my meat day and night,
While they say to me continually, Where is thy Elohim?
8. The Baptist Digest, “Sloth’s Solutions December 2009
I have been writing a series of articles that have to do with many of the major
wrong thought patterns that lead to wrong or evil actions. Historically, the Church
called these the seven deadly sins. They are deadly because they tend to destroy our
character. These patterns have been given the names of pride, envy, greed, wrath,
lust, sloth, and gluttony. In previous articles I dealt with pride and envy and their
counterparts humility and contentment. Today I respond with the solution to sloth,
which I wrote about in last month’s article. You can access all of these at
http://www.baptistdigest.com/archive/article.
The solution I present to sloth (indifference toward our souls, toward God) is to
become the kind of person who routinely hungers and thirsts after righteousness.
We live in a world that is broken but has been put on a path of restoration by King
Jesus. By hungering and thirsting for personal righteousness we cultivate the life in
the kingdom of God among us. Hungering and thirsting after putting the world to
rights is a good place to start. But first, here’s what I am not advocating.
I am not advocating here a busy life of doing more activities, or taking on more
responsibilities in the church. Busyness will not work to overcome indifference to
hungering for God. In fact, busyness is counterproductive. You’ve heard well
meaning people state: “I want to burn out, not rust out.” Well now, are burn and
rust the only options?
Doing more of the same to overcome sloth is madness when doing too much
probably landed us in the lap of sloth in the first place. Do you share the angst in
this testimony? “My mind is full and my hands are busy, but my heart is empty and
emotionally distant from God. Life moves so fast that God has become a blur.”
Perhaps this connects with you? “I have been doing ministry on a virtually empty
tank, masking my immaturity and or/inferiority by doing great things for the
kingdom of God. I find myself on the west bank of the Jordan unable to cross over
to the Promised Land.”
A performance driven life will not get us at wrestling with sloth. A friend and fellow
pilgrim on the Way testifies: “My journey with Christ until now has been based on
performance. I know that Jesus saved me, and I say all the right things at church,
just like everyone else, but I really don’t know Him well. It frustrates me but I keep
up with the show.” We worked out a way for him to move from faking it to grace as
way of life, of panting for God.

Well, if we would conquer sloth, it won’t be by busyness or performance. We’re not
going to conquer sloth by consuming our way into righteousness either. Buy this
program, get this book, attend this conference, or speed up your technology. The
turbo boost does not sell on Wall Street.
What will work, then? Here I share personal experience that has proven helpful to
me in resolving my bouts of indifference to life that is truly life in God.
I make it my daily business to know God. A while back I took the challenge of D.A.
Carson seriously when he said: “The greatest need in the church today is for
Christians to come to know God.”

ot just to know about God, but to experience
God in relationship. Practically, I take time to delight or to enthrall my mind with
God. “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”,
says the psalmist (37:4). I bring my mind to dwell on the beauty of God in his
creation (from nature to babies to a beautiful veggie burger!). I place the object of
my love before my mind (Thomas Aquinas). Emily Dickinson got it: “the soul selects
her own society, then shuts the door.” Spot on! When God becomes the company we
keep, we are in the presence of creation’s creator.
We enthrall our minds with God when we set our minds on things above: from the
heaving of the seas to the flight of the bumblebees, from a baby’s first smile to his
first step to her first word to his first love. Epictetus says that there is no end to
enthralling our minds with God; “Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to
demonstrate a providence to a modest and grateful mind.” Do this daily and you
will be well on your way to conquering sloth.
I also make it my daily business to overcome sloth by listening to the past. God
created and loved a people for his own pleasure (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). He loved us to
the point he became one of us, to serve us, to suffer and die for us, to leave the Holy
Spirit, to come back again, to restore his world to its original design. There is a life
of enthrallment here. Listen to the past and present and future.
Finally, I make it my daily business to reflect on my experience of him and that of
others around me. A word that is said in kindness becomes the voice of God. A
gesture on my part that strangely warms another’s heart. A nagging problem or
doubt lift. Love overwhelms. A disease that kills. A God-message in a song. A bird’s
chirp. The world is alive with God. Sloth can only be overcome by an intentional
process of living for God. Those who walk with the Master just do it.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

1. When the soul has a thirst for God, then only God can quench that thirst. There is
no substitute that will work. You can't fool a thirst for God by offering religion, or
an idol, or ritual, or any other imitation of the real thing, which is God alone. He is
panting, seeking, thirsting for God because he desperately needed him, and he could
not sense his presence. All he sensed was his absence, and it was driving him to
despair. He is thirsty because he is dry. He is dying of thirst, and so his craving for
God is like a man in the desert who is dying without a drop of water, and he needs
to find it soon or it is the end of the line for him.
2. Barnes, “My soul thirsteth for God - That is, as the hind thirsts for the running
stream. For the living God - God, not merely as God, without anything more
definitely specified, but God considered as living, as himself possessing life, and as
having the power of imparting that life to the soul.
When shall I come and appear before God? - That is, as I have been accustomed to
do in the sanctuary. When shall I be restored to the privilege of again uniting with
his people in public prayer and praise? The psalmist evidently expected that this
would be; but to one who loves public worship the time seems long when he is
prevented from enjoying that privilege.”
3. Clarke, “When shall I come - When, when shall I have the privilege of appearing
in his courts before God? In the mouth of a Christian these words would import:
“When shall I see my heavenly country? When shall I come to God, the Judge of all,
and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant?” He who is a stranger and a
pilgrim here below, and feels a heart full of piety to God, may use these words in
this sense; but he who feels himself here at home, whose soul is not spiritual, wishes
the earth to be eternal, and himself eternal on it - feels no panting after the living
God.
4. Gill, “ My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God,.... Who is so called, in
opposition to the idols of the Gentiles, which were lifeless statues; and who is the
author, giver, and maintainer of natural life; and who has promised and provided
eternal life in his Son; and is himself the fountain of life, and the fountain of living
waters, and a place of broad rivers and streams: particularly his lovingkindness,
which is better than life, is a pure river of water of life, the streams where make glad
the saints; and hence it is that the psalmist thirsted after God, and the discoveries of
his love: saying, when shall I come and appear before God? meaning, not in heaven,
as desiring the beatific vision; but in the tabernacle, where were the worship of God,
and the ark, the symbol of the divine Presence, and where the Israelites appeared
before him, even in Zion; see Psa_84:7.

5. Henry, “What is the object of his desire and what it is he thus thirsts after. (1.) He
pants after God, he thirsts for God, not the ordinances themselves, but the God of
the ordinances. A gracious soul can take little satisfaction in God's courts if it do not
meet with God himself there: “O that I knew where I might find him! that I might
have more of the tokens of his favour, the graces and comforts of his Spirit, and the
earnests of his glory.” (2.) He has, herein, an eye to God as the living God, that has
life in himself, and is the fountain of life and all happiness to those that are his, the
living God, not only in opposition to dead idols, the works of men's hands, but to all
the dying comforts of this world, which perish in the using. Living souls can never
take up their rest any where short of a living God. (3.) He longs to come and appear
before God, - to make himself known to him, as being conscious to himself of his own
sincerity, - to attend on him, as a servant appears before his master, to pay his
respects to him and receive his commands, - to give an account to him, as one from
whom our judgment proceeds. To appear before God is as much the desire of the
upright as it is the dread of the hypocrite. The psalmist knew he could not come into
God's courts without incurring expense, for so was the law, that none should appear
before God empty; yet he longs to come, and will not grudge the charges.
6. Spurgeon, “My soul. All my nature, my inmost self. Thirsteth. Which is more
than hungering; hunger you can palliate, but thirst is awful, insatiable, clamorous,
deadly. O to have the most intense craving after the highest good! this is no
questionable mark of grace. For God.

ot merely for the temple and the ordinances,
but for fellowship with God himself.

one but spiritual men can sympathise with
this thirst. For the living God. Because he lives, and gives to men the living water;
therefore we, with greater eagerness, desire him. A dead God is a mere mockery; we
loathe such a monstrous deity; but the ever living God, the perennial fountain of life
and light and love, is our soul's desire. What are gold, honour, pleasure, but dead
idols? May we never pant for these. When shall I come and appear before God? He
who loves the Lord loves also the assemblies wherein his name is adored. Vain are
all pretences to religion where the outward means of grace have no attraction. David
was never so much at home as in the house of the Lord; he was not content with
private worship; he did not forsake the place where saints assemble, as the manner
of some is. See how pathetically he questions as to the prospect of his again uniting
in the joyous gathering! How he repeats and reiterates his desire! After his God, his
Elohim (his God to be worshipped, who had entered into covenant with him), he
pined even as the drooping flowers for the dew, or the moaning turtle for her mate.
It were well if all our resortings to public worship were viewed as appearances
before God, it would then be a sure mark of grace to delight in them. Alas, how
many appear before the minister, or their fellow men, and think that enough! "To
see the face of God" is a nearer translation of the Hebrew; but the two ideas may be
combined -- he would see his God and be seen of him: this is worth thirsting after!
6B. Calvin, “The second verse illustrates more clearly what I have already said, that
David does not simply speak of the presence of God, but of the presence of God in

connection with certain symbols; for he sets before himself the tabernacle, the altar,
the sacrifices, and other ceremonies by which God had testified that he would be
near his people; and that it behoved the faithful, in seeking to approach God, to
begin by those things.

ot that they should continue attached to them, but that they
should, by the help of these signs and outward means, seek to behold the glory of
God, which of itself is hidden from the sight. Accordingly, when we see the marks of
the divine presence engraven on the word, or on external symbols, we can say with
David that there is the face of God, provided we come with pure hearts to seek him
in a spiritual manner. But when we imagine God to be present otherwise than he
has revealed himself in his word, and the sacred institutions of his worship, or when
we form any gross or earthly conception of his heavenly majesty, we are only
inventing for ourselves visionary representations, which disfigure the glory of God,
and turn his truth into a lie.
7. Treasury of David, “Verse 1-3. are an illustration of the frequent use of the word
Elohim in the second book of Psalms. We give Fry's translation of the first three
verses. --
Verse 2. My soul thirsteth for God, etc. See that your heart rest not short of Christ in
any duty. Let go your hold of no duty until you find something of Christ in it; and
until you get not only an handful, but an armful (with old Simeon, Luke 2:28); yea,
a heartful of the blessed and beautiful babe of Bethlehem therein. Indeed you should
have commerce with heaven, and communion with Christ in duty, which is
therefore called the presence of God, or your appearing before him. Exodus 23:17
Psalms 42:2. Your duties then must be as a bridge to give you passage, or as a boat
to carry you over into the bosom of Christ. Holy Mr. Bradford, Martyr, said he
could not leave confession till he found his heart touched and broken for sin; nor
supplication, till his heart was affected with the beauty of the blessings desired; nor
thanksgiving, till his soul was quickened in return of praises; nor any duty, until his
heart was brought into a duty frame, and something of Christ was found therein.
Accordingly Bernard speaks,

unquam abs te absque te recedam Domine: I will
never depart (in duty) from thee without thee, Lord. Augustine said he loved not
Tully's elegant orations (as formerly) because he could not find Christ in them: nor
doth a gracious soul love empty duties. Rhetorical flowers and flourishes,
expressions without impressions in praying or preaching, are not true bread, but a
tinkling cymbal to it, and it cannot be put off with the empty spoon of aery notions,
or lovely (that are not also lively) songs: if Christ talk with you in the way (of duty)

your heart will burn within you. Lu 24:16,32. Christopher

ess's "Crystal Mirror,"
1679.
Verse 2. The living God. There are three respects especially in which our God is said
to be the living God. First, originally, because he only hath life in himself, and of
himself, and all creatures have it from him. Secondly, operatively, because he is the
only giver of life unto man. Our life, in the threefold extent and capacity of it,
whether we take it for natural, or spiritual, or eternal, flows to us from God.
Thirdly, God is said to be the living God by way of distinction, and in opposition to
all false gods. Thomas Horton.
Verse 2. (last clause). A wicked man can never say in good earnest, When shall I
come and appear before God? because he shall do so too soon, and before he would,
as the devils that said Christ came "to torment them before their time." Ask a thief
and a malefactor whether he would willingly appear before the judge.

o, I warrant
you, not he; he had rather there were no judge at all to appear before. And so is it
with worldly men in regard of God, they desire rather to be hidden from him.
Thomas Horton.
Verse 2. Come and appear before God. When any of us have been at church, and
waited in the sanctuary, let us examine what did we go thither to see: a shadow of
religion? An outside of Christian form? A graceful orator? The figures and shapes
of devotion? Surely then we might with as much wisdom, and more innocence, have
gone to the wilderness "to see a reed shaken with the wind." Can we say as the
Greeks at the feast John 12:21, "We would see Jesus?" Or, as Absalom 2 Samuel
14:32, "It is to little purpose I am come to Jerusalem if I may not see the King's
face." To little purpose we go to church, or attend on ordinances, if we seek not, if
we see not God there. Isaac Watts, D.D., 1674-1748.
Verse 2. If you attempt to put a little child off with toys and fine things, it will not be
pleased long, it will cry for its mother's breast; so, let a man come into the pulpit
with pretty Latin and Greek sentences, and fine stories, these will not content a
hungry soul, he must have the sincere milk of the word to feed upon. Oliver
Heywood.
Verse 2. When shall I come and appear before God? --
While I am banished from thy house
I mourn in secret, Lord;
"When shall I come and pay my vows,
And hear thy holy word?"
So while I dwell in bonds of clay,
Methinks my soul shall groan,
"When shall I wing my heavenly way
And stand before thy throne?"
I love to see my Lord below,
His church displays his grace;

But upper worlds his glory know
And view him face to face.
I love to worship at his feet,
Though sin attack me there,
But saints exalted near his seat
Have no assaults to fear.
I am pleased to meet him in his court,
And taste his heavenly love,
But still I think his visits short,
Or I too soon remove.
He shines, and I am all delight,
He hides and all is pain;
When will he fix me in his sight,
And never depart again?
Isaac Watts, from his Sermons.
8. Donald S. Whitney, “THREE KI

DS OF SPIRITUAL THIRST
“Though it is not every moment felt, in some sense there is a thirst in every soul.
God did not make us to be content in our natural condition. In one way or another,
to one degree or another, everyone wants more than he has now. The difference
between people is the kind of thirsty longing in their soul.
Thirst of the Empty Soul
The natural, that is, unconverted man or woman has an empty soul. Devoid of God,
he is constantly in pursuit of that which will fill his emptiness. The range of his mad
scramble may include money, sex, power, houses, lands, sports, hobbies,
entertainment, transcendence, significance, education, etc., while basically
"fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind" (Ephesians 2:3). But as
Augustine attested, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in Thee." Always searching and never resting, the empty
soul turns from one pursuit to another, unable to find anything that will fill the
God-shaped vacuum in his heart.
Thirsting and searching, the empty soul is blinded to his real need.

othing or no
one on earth fully and lastingly satisfies, but he doesn't know where to turn except
to someone or something else "under the sun" (as opposed to the One beyond the
sun). Like Solomon, he discovers that no matter who or what he at first finds
exciting, ultimately "all is vanity and grasping for the wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
A Christian observes the man with the empty soul and knows that what he is
looking for can be found only in the One who said, "whoever drinks of the water

that I shall give him will never thirst" (John 4:14). Occasionally an empty soul
searches in more serious-minded or spiritual ways that lead some Christians to
think that he is thirsting for God. But the world has no such thirst. "There is none
who understand," God inspired both King David and the Apostle Paul to write,
"there is none who seeks for God" (Psalm 14:2 and Romans 3:11). Until and unless
the Holy Spirit of God touches the spiritual tongue of the empty soul, he will never
want to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). Just because a man longs
for something that can be found in God alone doesn't mean he's looking for God. A
man may pine for peace and have no interest in the Prince of Peace. Many who
claim they are questing for God are not thirsting for God as He has revealed
Himself in Scripture, but only for God as they want Him to be, or a God who will
give them what they want.
The irony of the empty soul is that while he is perpetually dissatisfied in so many
areas of his life, he is so easily satisfied in regard to the pursuit of God. His attitude
toward spiritual matters is like that of the man who said to his complacent soul in
Luke 12:19, "Soul, you have many goods for many years; take your ease; eat, drink,
and be merry." Whatever the empty soul may desire in life, he never has what the
eighteenth century pastor and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, called "holy desire,
exercised in longings, hungerings and thirstings after God and holiness"1 as the
Christian does. The eternal tragedy is that if the empty soul never properly thirsts
on earth, he will thirst in Hell as did the rich man who pled in vain for even the tip
of a moist finger to be touched to his tongue (Luke 16:24).
Thirst of the Dry Soul
The difference between the empty soul and the dry soul is that one has never
experienced "rivers of living water" (John 7:38) while the other has and knows
what he is missing. That is not to say that the dry soul can lose the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit, indeed Jesus said that "the water that I shall give him
will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life [John 4:14,
emphasis added].
How is it then that a true believer in Christ can become a dry soul when Jesus
promised that "whoever drinks of the water I shall give him will never thirst" (John
4:14)?
Pastor/author John Piper was reading this verse one Monday morning and cried
out, "What do you mean? I am so thirsty! My church is thirsty! The pastors whom I
pray with are thirsty! O Jesus, what did you mean?"
As he meditated on the text, the illumination which seemed to come from the Lord
upon His Word was perceived by Piper this way:
When you drink my water, your thirst is not destroyed forever. If it did
that, would you feel any need of my water afterward? That is not my
goal. I do not want self-sufficient saints. When you drink my water, it
makes a spring in you. A spring satisfies thirst, not by removing the need
you have for water, but by being there to give you water whenever you

get thirsty. Again and again and again. Like this morning. So drink,
John. Drink."2
A Christian soul becomes arid in one of three ways. The most common is by
drinking too much from the desiccating fountains of the world and too little from
"the river of God" (Psalm 65:9). If you drink the wrong thing it can make you even
more thirsty. In particularly hot weather, my high school football coach would give
us salt tablets to help us minimize the loss of fluids. During one game he
experimented with stirring salt into our drinking water, hoping the diluted form
would expedite the benefits of the salt. Bad idea. At halftime I drank until my
stomach swelled and I was too heavy to run well, yet I was still thirsty.
Similarly, perhaps it was because the psalmist had drunk too much of the world's
briny spiritual water that he wrote twice in one chapter about longing for God with
all his heart while closely asserting his resolve not to wander from the Lord's Word
(see Psalm 119:10, 145). Too much attention to a particular sin or sins, and/or too
little attention to communion with God (two things which often occur in tandem)
inevitably shrivel the soul of a Christian.
Another cause of spiritual dryness in the child of God is what the Puritans used to
call "God's desertions." While there are times God floods our souls with a sense of
His presence, at other times we dehydrate by a sense of His absence. Let me quickly
say that His desertion of us is merely our perception, for the
reality is just as Jesus promised: "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Hebrews
13:5). When feeling deserted by God, however, the Christian believes himself to be
in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4), or somewhat like Jesus when He
cried from the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew
27:46). The words of David in Psalm 143:6-7 describe the emotions of those who try
to pray from such a spiritual desert: "I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs
for You like a thirsty land. Answer me speedily, O Lord; my spirit fails! Do not hide
Your face from me, . . ." (Psalm 143:6-7).
For reasons not always made clear to us, the Lord does sometimes withdraw a
conscious sense of His nearness. Since this is not the place for a lengthy treatment of
the subject3, the best concise counsel I could offer is that of William Gurnall: "The
Christian must trust in a withdrawing God."4 When the sun goes behind a cloud it
is no less near than when its rays are felt. However, for the specific purposes of this
book and chapter, remember that it is a good thing that you are able to discern the
seclusion of God's presence. Such spiritual sensitivity characterizes spiritual health.
A third cause of spiritual aridity in a Christian is prolonged mental or physical
fatigue. Both cause and cure are usually obvious enough, so I won't elaborate on
them. What I do want to emphasize is that a believer may not sense spiritual growth
when fatigued or burned-out, but instead brood under shadowy thoughts about the
reality of his relationship with Christ. And yet, much may have been learned in the
very battle that caused the fatigue, things which, when the sunlight returns to the
soul, will be seen as significant spiritual turning points. Again, don't forget that the
longing for fresh water is itself a sign of progress.

Regardless of the cause, the dry Christian soul is like the believer of Psalm 42:1-2,
thirsting for God "As a deer pants for the water brooks." When you are in this
condition, nothing else but the living water of God Himself will do. My daughter
was three when she separated herself from me while we were in a child-oriented
restaurant. She wanted to play with some of the game machines instead of eating.
Though she had run to the far side of the restaurant, I could see her and was
following to return her to the table. Suddenly she realized she didn't know where
she was or where I was. Panic-stricken, she began crying and calling for me. The
store manager could have offered her unlimited play on every machine and given
her every toy prize in the place, but nothing would have appealed to her without my
presence. Everything else was meaningless to her without me. Once we were
reunited, for a few moments she was content just for me to hold her, just to have me
back. That's the cry of the dry soul. Other things may have distracted you, but now
the only thing that matters is a return of the sense of your Father's presence.
Thirst of the Satisfied Soul
Unlike the dry soul, and as self-contradictory as it may sound at the moment, the
satisfied soul thirsts for God precisely because he is satisfied with God. He has
"taste[d] and see[n] that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8), and the taste is so uniquely
satisfying that he craves more.
The Apostle Paul personifies this in his famous exclamation, "that I may know
Him" (Philippians 3:10). In the preceding lines he has been exulting in his present
knowledge of and relationship with Jesus. He announces, "But what things were
gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things
loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ"
(3:7-8). Then, just one verse later, the apostle cries out, "that I may know Him."
Paul was soul-satisfied with Jesus Christ, yet thirsty for Him still.
Thomas Shepard, founder of Harvard University and an influential

ew England
minister, explained the cycle of satisfaction and thirst this way: "There is in true
grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for
more."5 Knowing Christ well is so spiritually thirst quenching because no person,
possession, or experience can produce the spiritual pleasure we can find in Him.
Communion with Christ is incomparably satisfying also because there is no
disappointment in what you find in Him. Moreover, the spiritual gratification you
find in Him initially is never ending. On top of these, the Lord in whom this
satisfaction is found is an infinite universe of satisfaction in which one may immerse
himself to explore and enjoy without limitation. So there is no lack of satisfaction in
knowing Christ, but neither has God designed us so that one experience with Christ
satiates all future desire for Him.
Here's how Jonathan Edwards described the relationship between the spiritual good
enjoyed in fellowship with Christ and the thirst for more that it produces:
Spiritual good is of a satisfying nature; and for that very reason, the soul
that tastes, and knows its nature, will thirst after it, and a fullness of it,

that it may be satisfied. And the more he experiences, and the more he
knows this excellent, unparalleled, exquisite, and satisfying sweetness,
the more earnestly he will hunger and thirst for more, . . .6
Has your worship and/or devotional experience lately provided you with ravishing
tastes of what A. W. Tozer called the "piercing sweetness"7 of Christ, only to leave
you with a divine discontent for more? Would the following prayer of Tozer reflect
your own aspirations?
O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and
made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for
further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune
God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be
made thirsty still.8
Such desires, Christian brother or sister, are marks of a growing soul.
THE BLESSI

G OF SPIRITUAL THIRST
"How blessed are all those who long for Him," declared the prophet Isaiah (in
30:18,

ASB). "Blessed are those," reiterated Jesus, "who hunger and thirst for
righteousness" (Matthew 5:6). A thirsting desire for the Lord and His righteousness
is a blessing. How so?
God Initiates Spiritual Thirst
The reason a person thirsts for God is because the Holy Spirit is at work within him.
If you are a Christian, two people live in your body, you and the Holy Spirit. As 1
Corinthians 6:19 explains, "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the
Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" And
the Holy Spirit is not passive within you.
For example, just as you can choose to put thoughts in your consciousness, so can
He, and He does. For instance, as you can decide to think for a few moments about
what you should do this evening, so He can plant thoughts in your mind about God
and the things of God. Such work is part of how He causes a Christian to be
"spiritually minded" (Romans 8:5).9 Another part of that ministry is to cause you
to have Godward thirsts and longings (such as "Abba, Father;" see Romans 8:15),
as well as other signs of spiritual vitality.
Charles Spurgeon, the peerless British Baptist preacher of the 1800s, elaborated on
the blessing of thirsting:
When a man pants after God, it is a secret life within which makes him
do it: he would not long after God by nature.

o man thirsts for God
while he is left in his carnal [i.e., unconverted] state. The unrenewed man
pants after anything sooner than God: . . . It proves a renewed nature
when you long after God; it is a work of grace in your soul, and you may
be thankful for it.10

God Initiates Spiritual Thirst in Order to Satisfy It
God does not fire a thirst for Himself in order to mock us or frustrate us. He
Himself declared, "I did not say to the seed of Jacob, 'Seek Me in vain'" (Isaiah
45:19). What's true for the physical lineage of Jacob (Israel) is also true for his
spiritual descendants, i.e., those who believe in Israel's Messiah, Jesus. God creates a
thirst for Himself so that He can satisfy it with Himself. "For He satisfies the longing
soul," is the promise of Psalm 107:9, "and fills the hungry soul with goodness."
Jesus assured, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they
shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6, emphasis added).
Jonathan Edwards argued that Scripture plainly teaches that "The godly are
designed for unknown and inconceivable happiness."11 And, "

o doubt but God
will obtain his end in a glorious perfection."12 If God has indeed made us for an
unimaginable fullness of joy, and has implanted longings for it, then surely
God has made man capable of exceeding great happiness, which he
doubtless did not in vain. . . . To create man with a capacity that he never
intended to fill, . . would have been to have created a large capacity when
there was need but of a smaller; yea, it makes man less happy, to be
capable of more happiness than he shall ever obtain. . . . [C]an any think
that man, . . was intended in his creation to be left in this respect
imperfect, and as a vessel both partly empty and never to be filled? . . . It
appears that man was intended for very great blessedness, inasmuch as
God has created man with a craving and desire that can be filled with
nothing but a very great happiness. . . . God did not create in man so
earnest a desire, when at the same time he did not create for so much as
he should desire. . . . [A] desire that could never be satisfied would be an
eternal torment.13
Edwards maintained, of course, that this "craving and desire" was a Christian's
thirst for God, a longing which can be thoroughly and finally satisfied only in the
eternal, undiminished, and face-to-face enjoyment of the Lord Himself in Heaven.
Therefore, writes Edwards,
Seeing that reason does so undeniably evidence that saints shall, some
time or other, enjoy so great glory, hence we learn that there is
undoubtedly a future state after death, because we see they do not enjoy
so great glory in this world. . . . [A]ll the spiritual pleasure they enjoy in
this life does but enflame their desire and thirst for more enjoyment of
God; and if they knew that there was no future life, [it] would but
increase their misery, to consider that after this life was ended they were
never to enjoy God anymore at all. How good is God, that he has created
man for this very end, to make him happy in the enjoyment of himself,
the Almighty.14
Once beholding His glory, believers will testify that "They are abundantly satisfied
with the fullness of Your house, and You give them drink from the river of Your
pleasures" (Psalm 36:8).

Do you thirst for God? Thirst is a God-planned part of the growth of a soul toward
its Heavenly home.
PRACTICAL STEPS FOR THIRSTI

G AFTER THE THIRST-SLAKER
If you possess a true thirst for God, you will long to long even more. As Edwards
insisted, "true and gracious longings after holiness, are no idle ineffectual
desires."15
Meditate on Scripture.

ote "meditate," not merely read. Many languishing souls are assiduous Bible
readers. Without the addition of meditation, warned the great man of prayer and
faith, George Muller, "the simple reading of the Word of God" can become
information that "only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a
pipe."16
Think of the incessant flow of information through your mind on a daily basis-all
that you see, read, and hear. Most of us struggle with "information overload,"
unable to keep up with the constant input of data. If we are not careful, the words of
the Bible can become just another gallon of words in the ever-increasing current
through our thought. As soon as it passes by, pushed on by the pressure of the flow
in the pipe, we remember little (if anything) of what we've just read, for now we
must immediately shift our focus to what's now before us. So much processes
through our brains, if we don't absorb some of it we will be affected by none of it.
And surely if we should absorb anything that courses through our thinking, it
should be the inspired words from Heaven. Without absorption of the water of
God's Word, there's no quench of our spiritual thirst. Meditation is the means of
absorption.
Spend twenty-five to fifty percent of your Bible intake time meditating on some
verse, phrase, or word from your reading. Ask questions of it. Pray about it. Take
your pen and scribble and doodle on a pad about it. Look for at least one way you
should apply it or live it. Linger over it. Soak your soul slowly in the water of the
Word, and you'll find it not only refreshing you, but prompting a satisfying thirst
for more.17
Pray through Scripture.
After you read through a section of Scripture, pray through part of that same
passage. Whether you read one chapter of the Bible per day or many, afterward
choose a portion of your reading and, verse by verse, let the words of God become
the wings of your words to Him.
While it is possible to pray through any part of Scripture, I particularly
recommend, regardless of where in the Bible you have done your reading, that you
turn to one of the Psalms and pray your way through as much of it as you can. The
book of Psalms was the God-inspired hymnbook of Israel. In addition, twice in the

ew Testament (see Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16) Christians are

commanded to sing Psalms. Unlike any other book of the Bible, the Psalms were
inspired by God for the expressed purpose of being reflected to God.
Say, for example, you begin praying your way through Psalm 63. The first verse is:
"O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh
longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." You could enter
into prayer by confessing that the Lord is your God, thanking Him for being your
God and gracious, then simply exulting in God as God.

ext you could express your
soul's thirsts and longings for Him, acknowledging what a blessing it is to have a
God-given thirst for God, etc. Perhaps then you would ask the Lord to plant a thirst
for Himself in your children, or in someone with whom you've been sharing the
Gospel. On you would go through the psalm, praying about whatever the text said
and whatever occurs to you as you read it. If nothing comes to mind while pausing
over a verse or verses, go on to the next.
The poetic, visceral, and spiritually transparent elements of the Psalms often
combine in ways that send the soul soaring and that inflame passion for God. They
deal realistically with the full range of human emotions, and can take you from
wherever you are spiritually and lift your spirit Heavenward.

othing so
consistently renews my longings for God and catapults me into experiential
communion with Him as praying through a Psalm.
Read thirst-making writers.
After the God-breathed words of the Bible, read the time-tested works of those
Christian writers with a thirst-making pen. If you can find the collection of Puritan
prayers and devotions called The Valley of Vision18 you will be blessed by reading
it meditatively. Don't neglect John Bunyan's classic, Pilgrim's Progress. Read the
more devotional pieces of Puritan writers such as John Owen, Richard Sibbes,
Thomas Brooks, John Flavel, and Thomas Watson. Enjoy the books and sermons of
Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon, for they will be treasured as long as the
church is on the earth. For more recent publications, A.W. Tozer's small books are
both convicting and exhilarating; John Piper's writings are a burning blend of spirit
and truth.
As He has with my friend T.W., may the Lord bless you with a great, lifelong thirst
for Himself, for surely He intends to satisfy it with Himself.
9. Maclaren, “THIRSTI

G FOR GOD
‘My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.’—PSALM xiii. 2.
This whole psalm reads like the sob of a wounded heart. The writer of it is shut out
from the Temple of his God, from the holy soil of his native land. One can see him
sitting solitary yonder in the lonely wilderness (for the geographical details that
occur in one part of the psalm point to his situation as being on the other side of the
Jordan, in the mountains of Moab)—can see him sitting there with long wistful gaze
yearning across the narrow valley and the rushing stream that lay between him and

the land of God’s chosen people, and his eye resting perhaps on the mountaintop
that looked down upon Jerusalem. He felt shut out from the presence of God. We
need not suppose that he believed all the rest of the world to be profane and God-forsaken,
except only the Temple.

or need we wonder, on the other hand, that his
faith did cling to form, and that he thought the sparrows beneath the eaves of the
Temple blessed birds! He was depressed, because he was shut out from the tokens of
God’s presence; and because he was depressed, he shut himself out from the reality
of the presence. And so he cried with a cry which never is in vain, ‘My soul thirsteth
for God, for the living God!’ Taken, then, in its 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.’ It is not only men upon earth
whose souls thirst for God. All men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs. Every
human heart may breathe it out, if it understands itself. The longing for ‘the living
God’ belongs to all men. Thwarted, stifled, it still survives. Unconscious, it is our
deepest misery. Recognised, yielded to, accepted, it is the foundation of our highest
blessings. Filled to the full, it still survives unsatiated and expectant. For all men
upon earth, Christian or not Christian, for Christians here below, whether in times
of depression or in times of gladness, and for the blessed and calm spirits that in
ecstasy of longing, full of fruition, stand around God’s throne—it is equally true
that their souls ‘thirst for God, for the living God.’ Only with this difference, that to
some the desire is misery and death, and to some the desire is life and perfect
blessedness. So that the first thought I would suggest to you now is, that there is an
unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God, which is what we call the state of
nature; secondly, that there is an imperfect longing after God, fully satisfied, which
is what we call the state of grace; and lastly, that there is a perfect longing, perfectly
satisfied, which is what we call the state of glory.

ature; religion upon earth;
blessedness in heaven—my text is the expression, in divers senses, of them all.
I. In the first place, then, 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 assertion. 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. What is it that one of those deistic
poets of our own land says, about ‘Man never is, but always to be blest’? What is the
meaning of the fact that all round about us, and we partaking of it, there is
ceaseless, gigantic activity going on? The very fact that men work, the very fact of
activity in the mind and life, noble as it is, and root of all that is good, and beautiful
as it is, is still the testimony of nature to this fact that I by myself am full of
passionate longings, of earnest desires, of unsupplied wants. ‘I thirst,’ is the voice of
the whole world.

o man is made to be satisfied from himself. For the stilling of our own hearts, for
the satisfying of our own nature, for the strengthening and joy of our being, we need
to go beyond ourselves, and to fix upon something external to ourselves. We are not
independent.

one of us can stand by himself.

o man carries within him the
fountain from which he can draw. If a heart is to be blessed, it must go out of the

narrow circle of its own individuality; and if a man’s life is to be strong and happy,
he must get the foundation of his strength somewhere else than in his own soul. And,
my friends! especially you young men, all that modern doctrine of self-reliance,
though it has a true side to it, has also a frightfully false side. Though it may he
quite true that a man ought to be, in one sense, sufficient for himself, and that there
is no real blessedness of which the root does not lie within the nature and heart of
the man; though all that be quite true, yet, if the doctrine means (as on the lips of
many a modern eloquent and powerful teacher of it, it does mean) that we can do
without God, that we may be self-reliant and self-sufficient, and proudly neglectful
of all the divine forces that come down into life to brighten and gladden it, it is a lie,
false and fatal; and of all the falsehoods that are going about this world at present, I
know not one that is varnished over with more apparent truth, that is smeared over
with more of the honey that catches young, ardent, ingenuous hearts, than that half-truth,
and therefore most deceptive error, which preaches independence, and self-reliance,
and which means—a man’s soul does not ‘thirst for the living God.’ Take
care of it! We are made not to be independent.
We are made, next, to need, not things, but living beings. ‘My soul thirsteth’—for
what? An abstraction, a possession, riches, a thing?

o! ‘my soul thirsteth for God,
for the living God.’ Yes, hearts want hearts. The converse of Christ’s saying is
equally true; He said, ‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship
Him in spirit’; man has a spirit, and man must have Spirit to worship, to lean upon,
to live by, or all will be inefficient and unsatisfactory. Oh, lay this to heart, my
brother!—no things can satisfy a living soul.

o accumulation of dead matter can
become the life of an immortal being. The two classes are separated by the whole
diameter of the universe—matter and spirit, thing and person; and you cannot feed
yourself upon the dead husks that lie there round about you—wealth, position,
honour. Books, thoughts, though they are nobler than these other, are still
inefficient. Principles, ‘causes,’ emotions springing from truth, these are not enough.
I want more than that, I want something to love, something to lay a hand upon, that
shall return the grasp of the hand. 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. We are made to need persons, not things.
Then again, we need one Being who shall be all-sufficient. There is no greater
misery than that which may ensue from the attempt to satisfy our souls by the
accumulation of objects, each of them imperfect and finite, which yet we fancy,
woven together, will make an adequate whole. When a heart is diverted from its one
central purpose, when a life is split up in a hundred different directions and into a
hundred different emotions, it is like a beam of light passed through some broken
surface where it is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision,
there is no perfect light. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source to which
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.

ot only
does the understanding require to pass through the manifold, up and up in ever
higher generalisations, till it reaches the One from whom all things come; but the
heart requires to soar, if it would be at rest, through all the diverse regions where its
love may legitimately tarry for a while, until it reaches the sole and central throne of

the universe, and there it may cease its flight, and fold its weary wings, and sleep
like a bird within its nest. We want a Being, and we want one Being in whom shall
be sphered all perfection, in whom shall abide all power and blessedness; beyond
whom thought cannot pass, out of whose infinite circumference love does not need
to wander; besides whose boundless treasures no other riches can be required; who
is light for the understanding, power for the will, authority for the practical life,
purpose for the efforts, motive for the doings, end and object for the feelings, home
of the affections, light of our seeing, life of our life, the love of our heart, the one
living God, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth; who is
all in all, and without whom everything else is misery. ‘My soul thirsteth for God,
for the living God.’
Brother! let me ask you the question, before I pass on—the question for the sake of
which I am preaching this sermon: Do you know that Father? I know this much,
that every heart here now answers an ‘Amen’ (if it will be honest) to what I have
been saying. Unrest; panting, desperate thirst, deceiving itself as to where it should
go; slaking itself ‘at the gilded puddles that the beasts would cough at,’ instead of
coming to the water of life!—that is the state of man without God. That is nature.
That is irreligion. The condition in which every man is that is not trusting in Jesus
Christ, is this—thirsting for God, and not knowing whom he is thirsting for, and so
not getting the supply that he wants.
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 of which I have been speaking, the very
existence of the necessities affords a presumption, before all evidence, that, somehow
and somewhere, they shall be supplied. There can be no deeper truth—none, I
think, that ought to have more power in shaping some parts of our Christian creed,
than this, that God is a faithful Creator; and where He makes men with longings, it
is a prophecy that those longings are going to be supplied. The same ground which
avails to defend doctrines that cannot be so well defended by any other argument—
the same ground on which we say that there is an immortality, because men long for
it and believe in it; that there is a God because men cannot get rid of the instinctive
conviction that there is; that there is a retribution, because men’s consciences do ask
for it, and cry out for it—the very same process which may be applied to the
buttressing and defending of all the grandest truths of the Gospel, applies also in
this practical matter. 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. For He is ‘the faithful Creator,’
and He remembers the conditions under which His making of us has placed us. ‘He
knoweth our frame,’ and He remembereth what He has implanted within us. And
the presumption is, of course, turned into an actual certainty when we let in the light
of the Gospel upon the thing. Then we can say to every man that thus is yearning
after a goodness dimly perceived, and does not know what it is that he wants, and
we say to you now, Brother! betake yourself to the cross of Christ go with those

wants of yours to ‘the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world’: He will
interpret them to you. He will explain to you, as you do not now know, what they
mean; and, better than that, He will supply them all. Your souls are thirsting; and
you look about, here and there, and everywhere, for springs of water. There is the
fountain—go to Christ. Your souls are thirsting for God. The unfathomed ocean of
the Godhead lies far beyond my lip; but here is the channel through which there
flows that river of water of life. Here is the manifested God, here is the granted God,
here is the Godhead coming into connection and union with man, his wants and his
sins—the ‘living God’ and His living Son, His everlasting Word. ‘He that believeth
upon Him shall never hunger, and he that cometh unto Him shall never thirst.’ God
is the divine and unfathomable ocean; Christ the Son is the stream that brings
salvation to every man’s lips. All wants are supplied there. Take it as a piece of the
simplest prose, with no rhetorical exaggeration about it, that Christ is everything,
everything that a man can want. We are made to require, and to be restless until we
possess, perfect truth—there it is! We are made to want, and to be restless until we
get, perfect, infinite unchangeable love—there it is! We must have, or the burden of
our own self-will will be a misery to us, a hand laid upon the springs of our conduct,
authoritative and purifying, and have the blessedness of some voice to say to us, ‘I
bid thee, and that is enough’—there it is! We must have rest, purity, hope, gladness,
life in our souls—there they all are! Whatever form of human nature and character
be yours, my brother!—whatever exigencies of life you may be lying under the
pressure of—man or woman, adult or child, father or son, man of business or man
of thought, struggling with difficulties or bright with joy—Oh! believe us, the
perfecting of your character may be got in the Lamb of God, and without Him it
never can be possessed. Christ is everything, and ‘out of His fulness all we receive
grace for grace.’

ot only in Christ is there the perfect supply of all these necessities, but also that
fulness becomes ours on the simple condition of desiring it. The thirst for the living
God in a man who has faith in Christ Jesus, is not a thirst which amounts to pain, or
arises from a sense of non-possession. But in this divine region the principle of the
giving is this—to desire is to have; to long for is to possess. There is no wide interval
between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but
ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to
receive the limpid and life-giving waters.

o one ever desired the grace of God,
really and truly desired it; but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it—just in
proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied. Therefore we have to preach that grand
gospel that faith, simple, conscious longing, turned to Christ, avails to bring down
the full and perfect supply.
But some Christian people here may reply, ‘Ah! I wish it were so: what was that you
were saying at the beginning of your sermon, about men having religious
depression, about Christians longing and not possessing?’ Well, I have only this to
say about that matter. Wherever in a heart that really believes on God in Christ,
there is a thirst that amounts to pain, and that has with it a sense of non-possession,
that is not because Christ’s fulness has become shrunken; that is not because there
is a change in God’s law, that the measure of the desire is the measure of the
reception; but it is only because, for some reason or other that belongs to the man

alone, the desire is not deep, genuine, simple, but is troubled and darkened. What
we ask, we get. If I am a Christian, however feeble I may be, the feebleness of my
faith and the feebleness of my desire may make my supplies of grace feeble; but if I
am a Christian, there is no such thing as an earnest longing unsatisfied, no such
thing as a thirst accompanied with a pain and sense of want, except in consequence
of my own transgression.
And thus there is a longing imperfect in this life, but fully supplied according to the
measure of its intensity, a longing after ‘the living God’; and that is the state of a
Christian man. And O my friend! that is a widely different desire from the other
that I have been speaking about. It is blessed thus to say, ‘My soul thirsteth for
God.’ It is blessed to feel the passionate wish for more light, more grace, more
peace, more wisdom, more of God. That is joy, that is peace! Is that your experience
in this present life?
III. Lastly, 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. One may see in one aspect, that just as
the Christian life here on earth is in a very true sense a state of never thirsting any
more, because we have Christ, and yet in another sense is a state of continual
longing and desire—so the Christian and glorified life in heaven, in one view of it, is
the removal of all that thirst which marked the condition of man upon earth, and in
another is the perfecting of all those aspirations and desires. 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.
That future life gives us two elements, an infinite God, and an indefinitely
expansible human spirit: an infinite God to fill, and a soul to be filled, the measure
and the capacity of which has no limit set to it that we can see. What will be the
consequence of the contact of these two? Why this, for the first thing, that always, at
every moment of that blessed life, there shall be a perpetual fruition, a perpetual
satisfaction, a deep and full fountain filling the whole soul with the refreshment of
its waves and the music of its flow. And yet, and yet—though at every moment in
heaven we shall be satisfied, filled full of God, full to overflowing in all our powers—
yet the very fact that the God who dwells in us, and fills our whole natures with
unsullied and perfect blessedness, is an infinite God; and that we in whom the
infinite Father dwells, are men with souls that can grow, and can grow for ever—
will result in this, that at every moment our capacities will expand; that at every
moment, therefore, the desire will grow and spring afresh; that at every moment
God will be seen unveiling undreamed-of beauties, and revealing hitherto unknown
heights of blessedness before us; and that the sight of that transcendent,
unapproached, unapproachable, and yet attracting and transforming glory, will
draw us onward as by an impulse from above, and the possession of some portion of
it will bear us upward as by a power from within; and so, nearer, nearer, ever
nearer to the throne of light, the centre of blessedness, the growing, and glorifying,
and greatening souls of the perfectly and increasingly blessed shall ‘mount up with

wings as eagles.’ Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition—a
longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life!
My brother! 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 quenching of self-lit fires, and
for one drop of the lost delights of earth to cool the thirsty throat, which,
unsatisfied, is hell. Then hearken to the final vision on the page of Scripture, ‘He
showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne
of God and of the Lamb.’ To us it is showed, and to us the whole revelation of God
converges to that last mighty call, ‘Let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely!’
10. From Xanga.com - The Blogging Community:
“If you look at Psalm 42 and the first couple verses of Psalm 43, you see that the
Psalmist is depressed and despairing and really struggling. (It's believed that the
two psalms were originally one Psalm, which makes sense as you look at the
repetition throughout the two psalms.) I would encourage you to read through them
and meditate on them both. You can see the psalmist struggling and fighting to
regain hope and rejoice again. He likens his current state to a panting deer. His
supplies are all but depleted.
The psalmist is thirsty, consumed by his tears and his thoughts. Whenever he
manages to get up, it seems he continues to be knocked over by the waves and
storms of life. He's unable to praise and rejoice. He's looking back at the past
longingly; he's missing his friends and his time he'd worshiped along with them. His
current state is not what he expected. He's famished. He's feeling broken and
wounded, a reproach. He's in turmoil and disquieted. He's suffered injustice and
wants vindication. He's mourning. And he feels no relief at all from any of this. It
keeps piling on. There's a continual stress and strain with no end in sight. He feels
God has forgotten him. (And yet, even in midst of all his struggles, the psalmist still
keeps telling himself to hope in God (42:5, 11, 43:5). He's still seeking to get to God.)
Have you ever felt like the psalmist? Do you feel like the psalmist today? Does the
psalmist's experience describe your current state? This is what is so wonderful
about the Bible. It's timeless. We can see that we suffer the same afflictions like
these men of old. Our trials and temptations are no different. This is why I
particularly see the great wisdom in how the Holy Spirit inspired the psalmists to
write because for the most part, we don't see too many specifics there. Therefore,
even 21st century men and women can sit down with these psalms today and we can
see ourselves in them just like the Old Testament believers as well as those in the
early church. Despite all our technological advances over Bible times, our souls all
have the same need: to know the true and living God through His Son Jesus Christ
and to drink deeply of Him.

Where is your desperation taking you? One thing that's apparent is that the
psalmist clearly knows where the real true and lasting thirst-quenching supplies of
water lie – in, with and through God alone.
1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before
God?

otice where he's being driven:As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my
soul for you, O GOD. My soul thirsts for GOD, My soul thirsts for GOD, for the
living GOD. When shall I come and appear before GOD?
I think you get the idea...
Do you know that there is no other true thirst-quenching supply of water apart
from drinking of God Himself? Are you following the promptings of the Holy Spirit
to seek the Lord – or are you obeying your flesh and seeking elsewhere? Where are
you tempted to go and drink instead of going to God Himself? How can you expect
to be filled and satisfied unless you are seeking God alone? What lesser things do
you pant after in a vain attempt to fill yourself: your spouse and family,
boyfriend/girlfriend, marriage and children, pornography, sex, food, alcohol, drugs,
money, social status, academic credentials, popularity, praise of men, possessions?
The psalmist knows God is his salvation and he knows there is no other hope and no
other remedy, no other real life apart from going to GOD. So we see then that the
psalmist's ultimate goal is to get to God, to know God. As much as he's distraught
and despairing in his current circumstances, the grace of God has propelled him on
to keep panting for and thirsting for God, the living God – although we can see he's
stumbling a bit along the way as he does so (as do we all).
Is your ultimate goal to get to God? How are you settling for lesser things rather
than seeking the face of the living God so you might drink of Him and be filled?
John 4:13-15 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty
again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty
forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling
up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will
not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Are you asking Jesus for to give you that water, or do you continue to drink from
broken cisterns?
When the psalmist talks about the flowing streams, God's holy hill, His dwelling, the
altar of God, my exceeding joy (Psalm 43:3-4), he's talking about a deeper intimacy

with the living God, he's seeking to gain a true and living sense of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
[Jonathan_Edwards_Writing] In his sermon, "A Divine and Supernatural Light,"
Jonathan Edwards, one of the most brilliant thinkers and theologians of all time, not
to mention an unabashed Calvinist, explained the difference between our knowing
about God and our knowing God.
Thus there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious,
and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a
difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a
sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey
tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in
his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and
having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter
only by seeing the countenance. There is a wide difference between mere speculative
rational judging any thing to be excellent, and having a sense of its sweetness and
beauty. The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but
the heart is concerned in the latter. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and
amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. It is implied
in a person's being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is
sweet and pleasant to his soul; which is a far different thing from having a rational
opinion that it is excellent.
We can see the psalmist already had the sure opinion and a rational judgment and
belief in his head that indeed God was sweet and lovely and beautiful (we can see
that in his continued pursuit of God and his affirmations about God as his salvation
and his hope and so on), but he was to the point where he needed a greater sense of
God. He desperately needed to taste God's sweetness and to gaze upon the Lord's
loveliness and beauty. He was looking, no, even more than that – for we know he
was panting after God, without shame, all so he might gain a greater sense of the
living God, to experientially know the Lord in greater measure.
You see the psalmist already knows about the Lord and he knows the Lord to some
extent, and yet here we see he's seeking to know Him even more, seeking to go
deeper. He's really pressing into the Kingdom of God now. He's like the
importunate woman or the woman who had the issue of blood or blind Bartimaeus
or the men born blind who kept crying out to Jesus. Jesus always commended that
type of faith. Those souls knew they had no other recourse but to cry to Jesus, and
so too with the psalmist. There's a continuing pursuit of God, a thirst and panting
for God – even in the midst of his depression and discouragement.
Is that your attitude toward God? Do you press into the Kingdom? Are you
violently taking the Kingdom of God by force? Do you pant and thirst for God? Do
you continue to pursue God and seek greater intimacy with Him? We have to

observe that such unashamed and bold and desperate crying out to the living God is
often met with judgment and disdain and derision. For example:
Matthew 20:30 And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and
when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us,
Son of David!” 31 The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried
out all the more, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”
Mark 10:46 And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his
disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was
sitting by the roadside. 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of

azareth, he
began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 And many
rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David,
have mercy on me!”
These men had nowhere else to turn, they had come to the end of their own
resources, so nothing would deter them from seeking Jesus Christ. As you continue
reading those accounts, you will see how Jesus shows compassion to these men; He
hears their cries and beautifully meets them in their need and supplies fully for
them. And in the same way, our Lord will meet us in our need as well as we come to
Him. The psalmist felt cast out and cast down, and we may feel cast out and cast
down, but the Lord Jesus has promised to never cast out any who comes to Him,
and because He cares for His own, He invites us to cast all our cares on Him. Our
God is a God who warmly welcomes those who've been cast out in the cold, lavishes
his riches on the poor in spirit and fills those who hunger and thirst after
righteousness.
Have you come to the end of your resources? Will you turn to Jesus Christ and cry
out to Him and keep doing so until he shows mercy to you?
The psalmist knew there was more to be had, and he kept pressing on. Much like
Jacob who wrestled with the angel all night until he was blessed, or Moses who
persevered in prayer and ended up asking God for the ultimate: "Show me Your
glory!" The psalmist had already drunk, but now he's thirsty and needing to go and
draw from deeper now. He's panting and thirsting. And yet he knows the promises
of Jesus Christ: whoever drinks of me will thirst no more. So there he goes, running
hard after God.

o one or nothing else but God will do! He's seeking to meet with
the living God. Living God. He's drying up and withering and he knows there's no
other life except by coming to the living God for living water. He's known the
promises and studied the truths about God, he's put them into his heart, but right
now he is praying and desperately needing those promises to become a living reality
to him, that the words of Scripture would be put into his mind and written on his
heart in a new and living sense by the Holy Spirit. He desires that God's words and
truth would no longer be merely external to him, but that he would truly eat and
drink of them, or rather to eat and drink of Christ Himself, to have real communion
with the living God, or, as Edwards put it, that he would become heartily sensible of

God's sweetness, loveliness and beauty. Yes, it's mystical...yet it's doctrinal...It's the
way God seeks to impart His truth in greater measure to His own, the Spirit bearing
witness with our spirits, that internal witness of the truths we already find written in
the Scripture.
As we look at the lives of some of the saints, including the psalmists, we see how they
followed hard after God, how they sought to press on, to gain Christ. Their faith
was not stagnant or tepid, it was advancing and bright and hot.

o, it's wasn't
perfect, but overall we see their relentless pursuit of God, that continuing thirst for
God. We see the importunate prayers of these saints and their longings for revival
and for the church to be reformed and always be reforming. They took hold of the
promises and would not cease to cry out for God to come and rend the heavens and
come down in glory for the sake of His

ame. We can settle for no less. Woe to us if
we are content with the first wine and we do not seek the best wine. Woe to us if we
have forgotten our first Love and do not seek to know in greater measure His love
for us. We know what Jesus does with lukewarm believers.
How would God describe your thirst for Him: hot, lukewarm or cold?
We know that our God is infinite and His love for us is infinite. That is why the
apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians to know the breadth and length and height
and depth of God's love for them in Jesus Christ. The psalmist here called God his
exceeding joy, and David wrote that in God's presence is fullness of life and
pleasures forevermore. Do you believe that? We are only really scratching the
surface of what God has to offer us. Let us follow hard after Him so we might begin
to know more and more what are the riches of His inheritance for us beginning this
very day. May we pant after Him and then pursue Him and drink deeply of Him.
We have not only because we ask not.
Revelation 22:17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who is
thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
Are you thirsty? Are you panting? Is your soul panting for God? May God give you
grace to go to Him and drink so you might be fully satisfied and know Him as your
exceeding joy!”
3. My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me all day long, “Where is
your God?”

1. This is not a happy man, for he is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He
is a weeper, and all day long he sheds tears of frustration because God seems to have
hidden himself, and he cannot find him. He thirst for God, but he is like a man in
the desert who is dying of thirst, but there is no water in sight. So he is desperate for
God to be near him, and all he experiences is God's absence. People mock him for
his faithfulness in thirsting for God, for he never shows up for him. They tease him
and torment him by asking over and over, just where is this God you are so hung up
on. He never seems to come to your relief, so why do you bother being so faithful in
your quest to get to him. It is a strong temptation in these circumstances to feel like
maybe there is some other god who will meet my need. It is a time when doubt can
be very strong and lead you to backslide in your commitment to God.
2. Barnes, “My tears have been my meat - The word rendered tears in this place is
in the singular number, and means literally weeping. Compare Psa_39:12. The word
meat here means literally bread, and is used in the general signification of food, as
the word meat is always used in the English version of the Bible. The English word
meat, which originally signified food, has been changed gradually in its signification,
until it now denotes in common usage animal food, or flesh. The idea here is, that
instead of eating, he had wept. The state described is that which occurs so often
when excessive sorrow takes away the appetite, or destroys the relish for food, and
occasions fasting. This was the foundation of the whole idea of fasting - that sorrow,
and especially sorrow for sin, takes away the desire for food for the time, and leads
to involuntary abstinence. Hence arose the correlative idea of abstaining from food
with a view to promote that deep sense of sin, or to produce a condition of the body
which would be favorable to a proper recollection of guilt.
Day and night - Constantly; without intermission. See the notes at Psa_1:2.
“While they continually say unto me.” While it is constantly said to me; that is, by
mine enemies. See Psa_42:10.
Where is thy God? - See Psa_3:2; Psa_22:8. The meaning here is, “He seems to be
utterly forsaken or abandoned by God. He trusted in God. He professed to be his
friend. He looked to him as his protector. But he is now forsaken, as if he had no
God; and God is treating him as if he were none of his; as if he had no love for him,
and no concern about his welfare.”
3. Clarke, “My tears have been my meat day and night - My longing has been so
intense after spiritual blessings, that I have forgotten to take my necessary food; and
my sorrow has been so great, that I have had no appetite for any. I feel more for the
honor of my God and his truth than for myself, when the idolaters, who have thy
people in captivity, insultingly cry, Where is thy God?

4. Gill, “My tears have been my meat day and night,.... That is, he could not eat for
sorrow, like Hannah,
1Sa 1:7,8; or while he was eating tears fell in plenty, and they were as common, day
and night, as his food, and mixed with it (f); see Psa_80:5;
while they continually say unto me, his enemies the Philistines,
where is thy God? theirs were to be seen and pointed at, as the host of heaven, the
sun, moon, and stars, and idols of gold, silver, brass, wood, and stone; wherefore
they ask, where was his? but David's God was invisible; he is in the heavens, and
does what he pleases, Psa_115:2; or the sense is, that if there was such a God he
believed in and professed, and he was his servant, surely he would never have
suffered him to fall into so much distress and calamity, but would have appeared for
his relief and deliverance; and therefore tauntingly, and by way of reproach, ask
where he was.
5. Henry, “ Holy love mourning for God's present withdrawings and the want of the
benefit of solemn ordinances (Psa_42:3): “My tears have been my meat day and night
during this forced absence from God's house.” His circumstances were sorrowful,
and he accommodated himself to them, received the impressions and returned the
signs of sorrow. Even the royal prophet was a weeping prophet when he wanted the
comforts of God's house. His tears were mingled with his meat; nay, they were his
meat day and night; he fed, he feasted, upon his own tears, when there was such just
cause for them; and it was a satisfaction to him that he found his heart so much
affected with a grievance of this nature. Observe, He did not think it enough to shed
a tear or two at parting from the sanctuary, to weep a farewell-prayer when he took
his leave, but, as long as he continued under a forced absence from that place of his
delight, he never looked up, but wept day and night.

ote, Those that are deprived
of the benefit of public ordinances constantly miss them, and therefore should
constantly mourn for the want of them, till they are restored to them again. Two
things aggravated his grief: -
1. The reproaches with which his enemies teased him: They continually say unto
me, Where is thy God? (1.) Because he was absent from the ark, the token of God's
presence. Judging of the God of Israel by the gods of the heathen, they concluded he
had lost his God.

ote, Those are mistaken who think that when they have robbed
us of our Bibles, and our ministers, and our solemn assemblies, they have robbed us
of our God; for, though God has tied us to them when they are to be had, he has not
tied himself to them. We know where our God is, and where to find him, when we
know not where his ark is, nor where to find that. Wherever we are there is a way
open heaven-ward. (2.) Because God did not immediately appear for his deliverance
they concluded that he had abandoned him; but herein also they were deceived: it
does not follow that the saints have lost their God because they have lost all their

other friends. However, by this base reflection on God and his people, they added
affliction to the afflicted, and that was what they aimed at.

othing is more grievous
to a gracious soul than that which is intended to shake its hope and confidence in
God.”
6. Steven J. Cole, “Mild or severe, depression affects more people in our culture
than any other emotional disorder,” says Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand

icholi
II. According to a 1ewsweek article (5/4/87, p. 48), an estimated 30-40 million
Americans, twice as many women as men, will experience depressive illness at least
once. The disorder is so common that it is called “the common cold of mental
illness.” It should not be surprising that the Bible has much to say about depression.
A thorough study would consume many sermons, but Psalms 42 & 43 give us some
solid counsel. In some ancient Hebrew manuscripts these companion psalms are a
single psalm. Whether two psalms or one, the subject is obviously similar and they
are united with the common refrain of 42:5, 11, and 43:5.
Many reputable scholars think that David was the author, in which case the title,
“of the sons of Korah” indicates a group of Levites in charge of temple worship to
whom he presented the psalm. We cannot say for sure who wrote it, but we do know
that the author found himself exiled from Israel and from the worship festivals of
God’s people. He was being taunted by enemies who said, “Where is your God?”
(42:3, 10). Their oppression (42:9; 43:2) had plunged the psalmist into deep
depression. But he doesn’t stay depressed. He grabs himself by the shoulders, takes
stock of his situation, confronts his depression, and seeks God with renewed
intensity. He shows us how to pull ourselves out of the nosedive of depression: When
you’re depressed, rouse yourself to seek God as your hope and help, no matter how
despairing your circumstances.
I see three steps in these psalms for dealing with depression:
1. When you’re depressed, recognize it and begin to confront yourself as to why
you’re depressed.
2. If your depression stems from overwhelming circumstances, think biblically
about those circumstances.
3. When you’re depressed, your main need is to seek God Himself, not just relief.
7. Calvin, “My tears have been my bread Here the Psalmist mentions another sharp
piercing shaft with which the wicked and malevolent grievously wounded his heart.
There can be no doubt that Satan made use of such means as these to fan the flame
that consumed him with grief. “What,” we may suppose that adversary to say,
“wouldst thou have? Seest thou not that God hath cast thee off? For certainly he

desires to be worshiped in the tabernacle, to which you have now no opportunity of
access, and from which you are as it were banished.” These were violent assaults,
and enough to have overturned the faith of this holy man, unless, supported by the
power of the Spirit in a more than ordinary degree, he had made a strong and
vigorous resistance. It is evident that his feelings had been really and strongly
affected. We may be often agitated, and yet not to such an extent as to abstain from
eating and drinking; but when a man voluntarily abstains from food, and indulges
so much in weeping, that he daily neglects his ordinary meals, and is continually
overwhelmed in sorrow, it is obvious that he is troubled in no light degree; but that
he is wounded severely, and even to the heart. 115 115 “Mais qu’il est naure a bon
escient et jusques au bout.” — Fr.

ow, David says, that he did not experience
greater relief in any thing whatever than from weeping; and, therefore, he gave
himself up to it, just in the same manner as men take pleasure and enjoyment in
eating; and this he says had been the case every day, and not only for a short time.
Let us, therefore, whenever the ungodly triumph over us in our miseries, and
spitefully taunt us that God is against us, never forget that it is Satan who moves
them to speak in this manner, in order to overthrow our faith; and that, therefore, it
is not time for us to take our ease, or to yield to indifference, when a war so
dangerous is waged against us. There is still another reason which ought to inspire
us with such feelings, and it is this, that the name of God is held up to scorn by the
ungodly; for they cannot scoff at our faith without greatly reproaching him. If, then,
we are not altogether insensible, we must in such circumstances be affected with the
deepest sorrow.
8. Spurgeon, “My tears have been my meat day and night. Salt meats, but healthful
to the soul. When a man comes to tears, constant tears, plenteous tears, tears that
fill his cup and trencher, he is in earnest indeed. As the big tears stand in the stag's
eyes in her distress, so did the salt drops glitter in the eyes of David. His appetite
was gone, his tears not only seasoned his meat, but became his only meat, he had no
mind for other diet. Perhaps it was well for him that the heart could open the safety
valves; there is a dry grief far more terrible than showery sorrows. His tears, since
they were shed because God was blasphemed, were "honourable dew," drops of
holy water, such as Jehovah putteth into his bottle. While they continually say unto
me, Where is thy God? Cruel taunts come naturally from coward minds. Surely
they might have left the mourner alone; he could weep no more than he did -- it was
a supererogation of malice to pump more tears from a heart which already
overflowed.

ote how incessant was their jeer, and how artfully they framed it! It
cut the good man to the bone to have the faithfulness of his God impugned. They
had better have thrust needles into his eyes than have darted insinuations against
his God. Shimei may here be alluded to who after this fashion mocked David as he
fled from Absalom. He roundly asserted that David was a bloody man, and that God
was punishing him for supplanting Saul and his house; his wish was father to his
thought. The wicked know that our worst misfortune would be to lose God's favour,
hence their diabolical malice leads them to declare that such is the case. Glory be to
God, they lie in their throats, for our God is in the heavens, aye, and in the furnace
too, succouring his people.

9. Treasury of David, “Verse 1-3. are an illustration of the frequent use of the word
Elohim in the second book of Psalms. We give Fry's translation of the first three
verses. --
Verse 3. My tears have been my meat day and night. The psalmist could eat nothing
because of his extreme grief. John Gadsby.
Verse 3. They say unto me. It is not only of me, but to me; they spake it to his very
face, as those who were ready to justify it and make it good, that God had forsaken
him. Backbiting argues more baseness, but open reproach carries more boldness,
and shamelessness, and impudence in it; and this is that which David's enemies were
guilty of here in this place. Thomas Horton.
Verse 3. Where is thy God? God's children are impatient, as far as they are men, of
reproaches; but so far as they are Christian men, they are impatient of reproaches
in religion; Where is now thy God? They were not such desperate Atheists as to
think there was no God, to call in question whether there were a God or no, though,
indeed, they were little better; but they rather reproach and upbraid him with his
singularity, where is thy God? You are one of God's darlings; you are one that
thought nobody served God but you; you are one that will go alone -- your God! So
this is an ordinary reproach, an ordinary part for wicked men to cast at the best
people, especially when they are in misery. What it become of your profession now?
What is become of your forwardness and strictness now? What is become of your
God that you bragged so of, and thought yourselves so happy in, as if he had been
nobody's God but yours? We may learn hence the disposition of wicked men. It is a
character of a full of poison, cursed disposition to upbraid a man with his religion.
But what is the scope? The scope is worse than the words Where is thy God? The
scope is to shake his faith and his confidence in God, and this is that which touched
him so nearly while they upbraided him. For the devil knows well enough that as
long as God and the soul join together, it is in vain to trouble any man, therefore he
labours to put jealousies, to accuse God to man, and man to God. He knows there is
nothing in the world can stand against God. As long as we make God our
confidence, all his enterprises are in vain. His scope is, therefore, to shake our
affiance in God. Where is thy God? So he dealt with the head of the church, our
blessed Saviour himself, when he came to tempt him. "If thou be the Son of God,
command these stones to be made bread." Matthew 4:3. He comes with an "if," he
laboured to shake him in his Sonship. The devil, since he was divided from God
himself eternally, is become a spirit of division; he labours to divide even God the
Father from his own Son; "If thou be the Son of God?" So he labours to sever
Christians from their head Christ. Where is thy God? There was his scope, to breed

division if he could, between his heart and God, that he might call God into jealousy,
as if he had not regarded him: thou hast taken a great deal of pains in serving thy
God; thou seest how he regards thee now; Where is thy God? Richard Sibbes.
Verse 3. How powerfully do the scoffs and reproaches of the ungodly tend to shake the
faith of a mind already dejected! How peculiarly afflictive to the soul that loves God, is
the dishonour cast upon him by his enemies! Henry March, in "Sabbaths at Home,"
1823.
Verse 3. Where is thy God?
"Where is now thy God!" Oh, sorrow!
Hourly thus to hear him say,
Finding thus the longed for morrow,
Mournful as the dark to day.
Yet not thus my soul would languish,
Would not thus be grieved and shamed,
But for that severer anguish,
When I hear the Lord defamed.
"Where is now thy God!" Oh, aid me,
Lord of mercy, to reply --
"He is HERE -- though foes invade me,
Know his outstretched arm is nigh."
Help me thus to be victorious,
While the shield of faith I take;
Lord, appear, and make thee glorious:
Help me for thy honour's sake. Henry March.
10. This is an excerpt from *God Knows What It's Like to be a Teenager * by Mark
Marshall. “Do you ever have times when you wonder where God is? When you feel
like your prayers are just bouncing off the walls of your room and not going
anywhere? Have you even felt like God has forgotten you? Have you ever wanted to
be close to God, but He seems so far away, and your life is so dry?* * * *Or maybe
you feel you're the one who's gotten far away from God. * *Even the most faithful,
God-centered people feel that way at times in their lives. That God has Psalm 42 in
His word backs that up. * *These times definitely happen for teenagers. Life
probably is not as simple and easy as it used to be before you were teen. Your faith
and thoughts about God aren't as simple as they used to be. Your emotions
probably are more complex, too. So it's to be expected that you'll have times when
you feel God is distant, when you wonder where He is and whether He cares about
you.
Being a new Christian can be tough, too. Yeah, it's great at first -- the emotions of
becoming a Christian can make you high as a kite. But you don't stay high forever.
You have to come down from the mountain top. You find out life still has problems.

And you still have to struggle with your actions and attitudes and with sin. And
maybe you don't feel as close to God as you did at the beginning. * *Well, if you ever
feel this way -- and who doesn't? -- you have a lot of good company.

ot only the
psalmists but other giants of faith like Paul and Elijah struggled with spiritual down
times. (I Kings 19: 1-14; Romans 7: 7-25 for starters) But still, these dry times might
make you think you're not good enough for God, that He doesn't really care about
you or want to be around you. So you feel bad about yourself, making things worse.
Two things about that -- first, nobody is worthy of God's presence. Jesus comes into
our lives not because we're so good, but because He is good and loves us. * *Second,
if you are thirsty for God, that is a good sign about your relationship with Him.
"Huh?", you say. That's right. If you are desiring and seeking God's presence, you
are probably His child or are on the way to becoming His child. It's kinda like a
little kid away at camp. When he gets homesick, does he miss his Aunt Gertrude, or
his Uncle Hubert?

o, he misses his mom and dad and his home. If you're missing
God, probably one reason is that He's your Father and your home is with Him; you
belong to Him. * *And if you think about it, the ones who never miss God aren't
godly people, but the ungodly. They don't care if God's around. In fact, they'd
rather He'd not be around. That would make it easier for them to do wrong. * *But
even if you know you're His child, these dry times are rough. Your life and your
faith feel like they're in a rut, or worse. And you don't know how long you're going
to be stuck there. You may not even know why you're stuck there.
Life is difficult enough without God seeming distant. The waves of life can break
over you like a stormy ocean, wave after wave overwhelming you (verse 7). In
dispair, you cry inside -- and out (verse 3). Even remembering past times when
you've felt close to God can be tough (verse 4). You wonder why you and God aren't
close that way now. And there are no easy answers.* * * image by ryan *So what do
you do when you're down and God seems far away? Keep on praying. And I don't
mean pretty prayers of put-on piety. I mean honest prayers. In case you haven't
noticed by now, the Psalms are full of prayers by people who were down and even
frustrated with God and who were open and honest with Him about it. Being down
and talking straight with God about it is not ungodly. Instead, God honors that kind
of openness in the Psalms. You, too, honestly talk to God about where you are at
and how you're feeling. Maybe as you're drifting to sleep at night with wet eyes, talk
to Him (verse 8). He can handle it. * *And remind yourself that no matter how
down you get, you can still hope in God (verses 5, 8, 11). Hope in God does not
disappoint in the end. Like the guys who wrote this psalm, you'll probably have to
remind yourself of this more than once.
Maybe the most important thing about God to remind yourself of is that "He is a
rewarder of those who seek Him." (Hebrews 11: 6) Verse 8 in this psalm says it in a
different way -- God "commands His lovingkindness" out to help His people. Jesus
said if you'll keep on seeking God, you'll find Him (Matthew 7: 7-8). Because if you
seek to get close to Him, He'll get close to you (James 4: 8). Best of all, Jesus said He
will never reject the one who sincerely comes to Him (John 6:37). * *Keep seeking

Jesus, and the dry times will come to an end. For He will satisfy your inner thirst
(John 4:14).
4 These things I remember as I pour out my
soul:how I used to go to the house of God under
the protection of the Mighty One[d]with shouts of
joy and praise among the festive throng.
1. He remembers the good old days when he was free to go to the house of God and
join in the joyful worship with others. Those good old days are gone now, and his
pleasant memories are painful, for he cannot do what he once did. He has lost
something that was precious, and when this happens there is a spirit of grief that
tends to take over the mind, and this can lead to depression. Good things taken
away lead even children to mourn and grieve, for their toys are now out of reach,
and they feel lost without those things that gave them such pleasure. Just
remembering how much fun they had with them makes them so sad, and they long
for getting them back. Age does not change this experience, for no matter how old
we get, we experience grief when we lose something we treasure.
2. Barnes, “When I remember these things - These sorrows; this banishment from
the house of God; these reproaches of my enemies. The verb used here is in the
future tense, and would be appropriately rendered “I will remember these things,
and I will pour out my soul within me.” That is, it is not a mere recollection of the
past, but it indicates a state or purpose of mind - a solemn resolution to bear these
things ever in remembrance, and to allow them to produce a proper impression on
his mind and heart that would not be effaced by time. Though the future tense is
used as denoting what the state of his mind would be, the immediate reference is to
the past. The sorrows and afflictions which had overwhelmed him were the things
he would remember.
I pour out my soul in me - Hebrew, upon me. See the notes at Job_30:16. The idea
is derived from the fact that the soul in grief seems to be dissolved, or to lose all
firmness, consistency, or power, and to be like water. We speak now of the soul as
being melted, tender, dissolved, with sympathy or grief, or as overflowing with joy.
For I had gone with the multitude - The word here rendered “multitude” - סך sâk
- occurs nowhere else in the Scriptures. It is supposed to denote properly a thicket of
trees; a thick wood; and then, a crowd of men. The Septuagint renders it, “I will
pass on to the place of the wonderful tabernacle,” σκηνῆς θαυμαστῆς skēnēs

51822412 psalm-42-commentary

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to 51822412 psalm-42-commentary

More from GLENN PEASE

Recently uploaded

51822412 psalm-42-commentary