Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1427
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, August 4, 1878
“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; to see Your power and Your Glory, so as I have seen You in the sanctuary.” Psalm 63:1,2.
CHRYSOSTOM tells us that among the primitive Christians it was decreed and ordained that no day should pass without the public singing of this Psalm and, certainly, if we do not follow the ancient custom and actually sing the words every day, it is not because they are unsuitable or because their spirit has died out among us. This Psalm may be said or sung all the year round. Have we joyous days? Let us sing of the loving kindness which is better than love! Do the clouds return after the rain? Let us sound forth His praise whose right hand upholds us! Is it summertime with our souls? Then we may express the full assurance of our faith by joyfully crying, “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You!” Have we fallen upon the drought of autumn? Do the long hot days parch our spirits? Then may we chant the desire of our longing heart, “My soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.”
Is it winter with our spirit and does everything tend to chill us? Nevertheless let us not be silenced or rendered sluggish by the cold, but let us say, “I will bless You while I live, I will lift up my hands in Your name.” Has the spring returned with all its wealth of fresh flowers and opening sweets? Then shall our glad voices sing aloud, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.” Is the day ended and has the darkness of night settled down upon our mind? Then in the language of the Psalm we will remember God upon our bed and meditate upon Him in the night watches! And because He has been our help, therefore, in the shadow of His wings we will rejoice!
We may sing this Psalm in the days of battle, when those round about us seek our soul to destroy it, for, “they shall fall by the sword, they shall be a portion for foxes.” And we may chant it with equal appropriateness in the time of victory, when we return from the conflict with banners gleaming in the sunlight of triumph, for, “the king shall rejoice in God: everyone that swears by Him shall glory.” I know of no time and no season in which this Psalm would sound unsuitably from a believing tongue! Let us cultivate its earnestness! Let us endeavor to be baptized into its spirit! Let us live, while we live, after the fashion of holy men like David, the Psalmist, whose assurance of heart even sorrow could not shake—whose fertility of mind the desert could not wither—whose joy of spirit solitude could not destroy!
This Psalm, however, especially belongs to any who, by their circumstances or by their state of heart, feel themselves to dwell in a desert land. There is a stage of Christian experience in which we are in Egypt and we are brought up out of it with a high hand and an outstretched arm. This symbolizes conviction, regeneration and conversion. Then we know the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood—our enemies drowned in the sea and the new song put into our mouth. Happy are they who have come thus far on their life journey!
Then comes the stage of spiritual history which may be well described as wilderness experience wherein we have little rest, much temptation and consequent proving of heart and discovery of inward weakness. Many remain in this condition far longer than is necessary—what might be soon ended is drawn out into 40 years by unbelief! Then comes that blessed stage of experience in which faith begets peace and joy—then we have crossed the Jordan and entered into rest in Christ Jesus, “in whom, also, we have obtained an inheritance.” In the Man who is our peace we obtain an earnest of Heaven and begin to divide the land of promise, “for He has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places.”
Each man claims his lot in Covenant provisions and sits under his own vine and fig tree, nothing scaring him. Yet even after we have been raised up together with Jesus and have obtained citizenship in Zion, we may find ourselves in the wilderness. As David, though king in Israel, had to flee across the Jordan to escape from Absalom, so may the most
assured and the most sanctified of God’s people be driven, for a while, into the dry and thirsty land where there is no water—and there hide himself from the offspring of his own flesh. There are songs for the Lord’s banished ones to sing in a strange land, Psalms with which to arouse the silent land, sonnets to charm the howling wilderness into a fruitful garden and hymns to make the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose!
I purpose to address myself, this morning, to any of my Brothers and Sisters who feel themselves to be just now in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. It may be the Lord will give them deliverance by His Word this morning— or if not delivered out of temporal trouble, they shall at least be made glad by His Holy Spirit and be led to magnify His name while yet in the land of drought!