David in the desert of Judah: a dry, desolate place.  Why was the favored one, the man after God’s own heart, in such a God-forsaken place?  He was wanted, dead or alive: preferably dead.  Saul was afraid of David, hated David, because he knew David had God’s favor and Saul . . . well, Saul had lost it.  Can you lose God’s favor?  Terrifying thought!  Saul lost God’s favor.  How?  By disobedience, by habitually heeding men rather than God.  What was Adam’s sin, the sin that expelled from Eden, from the presence of God: I listened to the woman, and ate.  I listened to her, rather than You.  I preferred those other words to Your Word.

But David, the hunted, wanted man, was also making a name for himself in the wilderness.  His aim was to make known the name of God: all for the glory of God, all to the glory of God.  David became something of a folk hero, out there in the wilderness, a biblical Robin Hood—thief and protector, marked man and champion of the crushed.

The heading to this psalm, added afterwards, tells us that David composed it in the wilderness.  David didn’t rely upon himself, in the wilderness.  Isn’t that the way of the world, though, the manly way: rely on yourself, have confidence in yourself?  Like all those man vs. wild shows?  Hmm.  A man can wander and never find the river.  A man can wander, and find himself right back where he began, crossing his own trail.  A man can find tinder but not be able to make fire.  He might be able to see the edible fungus high up on the tree but have no way to get it.  Then he finds edible berries.  Then he finds a spring.  Then he sees smoke in the distance.  He didn’t put the fruit there.  He didn’t put the water there.  He didn’t cause the fire that guides him to help.  All he knows is what to do when he finds these things, and even that knowledge isn’t by his own ingenuity but by the gifts and grace of God.

In the wilderness, David was relying upon God.  Shall we do less?  “You, God, are my God, / earnestly I seek you; / I thirst for you, / my whole being longs for you, / in a dry and parched land / where there is no water” (63:1).  Acknowledge God.  Those other things we’ve been relying on, as if they had been our gods—they can’t save, can’t provide, and will not bless us, for all our angry, busy devotion.  Together, let us seek the Lord, be eager to hear from Him, eager to know what He has for us to do.  Don’t wait for Him to call you; when you awake, go to Him.  When you’ve finished one task, quickly go to Him asking for another.

David does this.  He seeks God as the water that can satisfy his thirst.  Oh, the blessing of being thirsty for God!  The world offers all manner of things it wants to sell you as water—necessary for life, fundamental.  Anyone here ever watch Survivor?  Is that even on still?  Access to water was primary—truly water was life for them, but not all water was created equal.  In one season, I suppose the first episode, the contestants were informed that the water might have brain parasites.  They didn’t know what to do; they didn’t yet have the means to boil the water.  One of them, a former green beret, solved the problem by taking a big cupful of the water and drinking it.  Would you?  Maybe there are brain parasites, maybe there aren’t.  Would you drink?

In another season, with no mention of brain parasites, a contestant showed the others how it was done when he was growing up in Vietnam: he took his t-shirt, folded it over a few times, making a sort of bag, scooped up water in it, and used the shirt to filter the water.  I’m sure it filtered out many things; I’m sure it didn’t filter out everything.  Strange how the smallest things can cause the biggest problems for us.  Strange, how something so simple and seemingly harmless as drinking water can turn out to be deadly.

David sings, there in the parched wilderness, “I have seen you in the sanctuary / and beheld your power and your glory” (63:2).  Now, we know the Temple comes after David.  What sanctuary do you suppose David means, then?  What is the sanctuary?  Where the Spirit of the Lord is?  And where does the Spirit dwell?  Where God chooses, the place where God chooses for His name to dwell, and that, beloved, I hope you know, is your heart in Christ.  You know I’m not talking about that pump in your chest.  Like David, in those workings and outworkings of our inmost life, by the grace of God indwelling, we behold God’s power and glory.  God is at work in us.  God has plans for us, plans for salvation, blessing and life, a future and a hope.

Knowing this, maybe even feeling this, let us sing with David, “Because your love is better than life, / my lips will glorify you” (63:3).  But wait.  Better than life?  Really?  Could anything be better than life?  If your doctor told you that you had less than a year to live, though there was a possibility they could extend it longer, would you grasp at the possibility, or would you rejoice knowing you were going home to the Lord soon?  Could you rejoice, looking death in the face?  Was it easy, even for Jesus?

Better than life.  Your love, Lord, is better than life.  We can’t, we must not just say that as words that can be said.  If we’re going to say it, we have to mean it, and if we mean it, sisters and brothers, I’m afraid you and I are going to have to start living like it.

Because Your love is better than life, “I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods” (63:5).  I will be.  When?  In the future?  Always, ongoingly?  The plans God has for us are already in action.  Fully satisfied.  That’s a lot, isn’t it?  We don’t like to say so, but it takes a lot to satisfy us, fully.  When we’re living according to the flesh.  Then, we’re never satisfied and always want more, because what we’re after is just what never can satisfy, and we know it, yet this doesn’t stop us.  That may not be the definition of insanity, but it’s certainly the definition of futility.  O, the futility of sin!

When we live according to the Spirit, which can only happen by the Spirit, the Spirit reveals to us that we are fully satisfied, because we have full satisfaction in Jesus Christ.  We feast at Christmas.  We feast at Easter, and these are fun feasts, but the true feast, beloved, is always Christ: he is our true food and our true drink.  By him we are fed, daily, hourly, and he leaves nothing lacking, nothing wanting.  Yet we want, we hurt, we feel empty, lonely, confused.  Why?  Because God has failed us?  Because we have failed God?

We want, we hurt, we feel empty, lonely, confused because we do not seek and thirst for God in our wilderness, the wilderness of this world, the wilderness of our lives, the wilderness where we wake up, wondering how we got here and how this happened to us.  We have sought our food elsewhere; this is nothing new or strange.  It isn’t surprising.  We walk with God until we don’t.  We devote ourselves to God until we don’t.  We keep ourselves close to the Word and listen to God, until we don’t.  We claim Christ yet do not live as those claimed by him.  We allow the world to guide us along; we let our unbound hearts dictate.

The richest food is God’s Word.  But we don’t sit down to feast upon the Word.  We may grab a quick bite on the way out the door.  We slam back a can on the road.  We do not and cannot keep ourselves close to the Word.  The Spirit, beloved, the water—pure, clear, brilliant, refreshing, restoring, renewing!  When we approach our faith, and our life, as what we do, we go wrong from the start.  Our faith and our life are in God’s hands.  We must trust God and learn not so quickly, so exclusively, to trust in ourselves.  In principle we get this, but in practice . . .  God shall supply all our need.  Well, what is there left for us to do, then?  Shouldn’t we be doing something?  Isn’t faith about doing something?

Well, it is, but it might not be what we think, at first.  Might we be guided by the Spirit, the Spirit singing to us through David here in this psalm today, these thousand- and thousand-year-old words, singing to us today, as though almost from eternity?  What are we to do?  What is there for faith to do?  What does faith do?  “On my bed I remember you; / I think of you through the watches of the night” (63:6).  We never feel our need for God so much as when the darkness falls.  Lord, with me abide!  Faith remembers.  Faith contemplates the wonders of God, His glory and grace.  He invites us into these, to dwell with Him, there, to receive and to know His grace and His glory.  Life is in this offer.  Truly, God’s love is better than life, this life, because His love opens the way and is the way to Life, abundant and eternal.  If you’re looking for your best life, now, you will have your reward, here.

We’re not living by faith for this life only.  God’s love is the way of God and the way to God.  He gives it; He causes it to come alive in us, the most unlikely candidates!  “Because you are my help, / I sing in the shadow of your wings.  / I cling to you; / your right hand upholds me” (63:7-8).  My help.  My Savior.  My life.  My joy.  People address these words to so many things that are not God, so many ones who are not God.  People are so desperate and so desperately reluctant to turn to God in their desperation.  O, pray, beloved.  Pray for them.  Come alongside them with the help and hope you know is there, available, in Jesus Christ, the right hand of God upholding us, lifting us.  He lifts his arms that the world might have salvation.  Help them know.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.