Latest / Reformed Thinking / My Soul Thirsts for God in a Dry Land (Psalm 63) | Charles Spurgeon

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My Soul Thirsts for God in a Dry Land (Psalm 63) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome back to the show. We are doing something a bit
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different today. Or well, maybe not different so
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much as getting back to basics. No distractions, just, you know,
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the text itself. It's good to be here, and
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honestly, considering the state of the world, getting back to
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the text feels less like an academic exercise and more like
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a survival strategy. I agree completely.
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For anyone new joining us, let's just establish the ground rules.
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This is reformed thinking, right?
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We aren't just reading old books for the sake of nostalgia.
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We're analyzing classic theological texts and we do it
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through a very specific framework.
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We look at things through the lens of the Westminster
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Confession. Yes, which means we hold to a
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high view of Scripture, the absolute sovereignty of God, and
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a fairly realistic, sometimes gritty view of the human
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condition. We're not looking for bumper
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sticker slogans here. We want the bedrock.
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We want to know how the theology of, say, the 17th or 19th
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century stand up when life actually gets hard.
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And to do that, we are opening up a massive work.
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Today we're looking at Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of
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David, specifically his commentary on Psalm 63.
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Treasury of David is a beast of a book.
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It took Spurgeon something like 20 years to finish.
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And the thing you have to understand is it's Spurgeon
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isn't just giving you his own hot takes.
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He's acting more like a curator. He pulls in voices from the
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entire history of the church. I noticed that on the notes it's
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not just Spurgeon talking. We have cross references to
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Augustine, to Samuel Rutherford, Matthew Henry, John Chrysostom.
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All the heavyweights. It's like a round table of
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history's greatest minds, all focusing on this one song.
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It is. You get the Patristic Fathers,
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you get the Puritans, and you get the Victorian Preachers all
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wrestling with the same Hebrew verses.
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And you know, Psalm 63 is the perfect place to start because
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it's often called the Wilderness Psalm.
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Let's set the scene, because context is everything here.
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If you read this while you're sitting in a comfortable chair
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with a cup of coffee, you might miss the the vibration of the
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text. You really might.
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The title of the Psalm is a Psalm of David when he was in
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the wilderness of Judah. And historically, most scholars,
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Spurgeon included, believe this wasn't written when David was a
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young shepherd on the run from Saul.
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That was a young man's adventure.
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In a way, this is different. This is later.
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Much later, this was likely written when David was the old
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king, fleeing from his own son Absalom.
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Oh, that shifts the tone completely.
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This isn't an adventure, it's a tragedy.
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It's a coup. His own son has staged A
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rebellion. The nation is divided.
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David is sourced to evacuate Jerusalem.
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I mean, just think about what that means for a second.
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He leaves his palace, he leaves the comfort of his bed.
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He leaves the Ark of the Covenant behind.
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He. Flees into the desert just to
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keep his head attached to his shoulders.
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It is a total collapse of his earthly circumstances.
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He goes from the throne to the rocks, probably in a single day.
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And yet, and this is the hooks version, makes his incredible
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observation right at the start. Yeah, he says.
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David did not leave off singing because he was in the
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wilderness. He didn't stop.
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He didn't stop, and Spurgeon notes that David didn't just,
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you know, idly repeat psalms that were intended for other
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occasions. He didn't just recycle a temple
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Psalm or some happy clappy tune while he was out there in the
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grid. So what did you do?
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He composed a wilderness hymn specifically for the wilderness.
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That implies a serious intentionality.
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He's allowing his environment to shape his worship.
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It suggests that our circumstances, no matter how
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dire, are the raw material for a specific kind of worship that,
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frankly, cannot be produced in comfort.
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You can't write Psalm 63 in a palace.
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You have to be thirsty to write it.
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You have to be thirsty. So our mission for this deep
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dive is to examine exactly that. How does a believer find
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spiritual satisfaction? What the text calls marrow and
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fatness in a dry land. And honestly, how does divine
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sovereignty operate when your life is falling apart?
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It's the question of how we find God when all the visible
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evidences of his favor, the palace, the peace, the order are
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stripped away. Let's get into it, Section 1,
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the wilderness as a classroom. We should probably be specific
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about the geography here. When I hear a wilderness of
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Judah, I'm picturing the Sahara. You know, endless sand dunes.
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Is that accurate? Not quite, no.
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The Hebrew word here is midbar. It refers closer to a steppe or
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a pasture land. It's not entirely dead, but it
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is uncultivated. It's a place used for driving
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cattle, but it lacks settled habitation.
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So it's rocky, scrubby terrain, more like the high desert.
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Yes. The source notes describe it as
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having no wood and very little water.
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It's a place of exposure. You're exposed to the heat, the
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cold, the wild animals, and in David's case, the.
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Assassins sent by his son. Exactly.
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It's a place of total vulnerability.
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And Matthew Henry points out attention here in the notes that
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I found really interesting. He says that even in Canaan,
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which is supposed to be the fruitful land, there are
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wildernesses. That is such a sobering thought,
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isn't it? We often have this linear view
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of the Christian life, right? You leave Egypt, which is sin.
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You go through the wilderness and then you enter the promised
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land, which is blessing. And once you're in the promised
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land, everything is green. And that's the idea.
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But Henry reminds us that you can be in the promised land, you
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can be in the covenant, you can be a king and still find
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yourself in a desert. So you can be in the church, you
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can be in what looks like a season of blessing, and yet find
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yourself in a spiritual step where resources are scarce.
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Precisely. But there's a theological
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implication here that the experts bring out again and
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again. The wilderness is often where
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God is seen most clearly. The source lists a few examples.
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Hagar saw God in the wilderness. Moses saw the burning Bush in
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the wilderness. Elijah heard the still small
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voice in the wilderness. It seems to be God's preferred
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classroom. When the distractions of
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civilization are removed, the vision of the divine becomes
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sharper. Spurgeon has this great line, he
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says. There was no desert in his
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heart, though there was a desert around him.
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That's the distinction. The environment is dry, but the
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internal state is actively fighting against that dryness.
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He's not passive. No, Spurgeon points out that
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David didn't just sit there. He didn't fall into it.
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He calls slovenly idleness. Right there is a discipline to
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worship in crisis. It is easy to worship when the
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choir is singing and the bills are paid.
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It's a discipline to compose a hymn when you're thirsty and
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haunted. From a reformed view, we would
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say these circumstances are what providentially ordained.
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Without a doubt, God didn't accidentally lose track of
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David. He marched him into that
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wilderness to shape this specific expression of faith.
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Which brings us to the text itself, verse one, O God, thou
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art my God. We have to stop there.
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Just those first few words that sounds simple to our English
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ears, but the source material highlights a shift in the Hebrew
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that is massive. Yes, the text moves from Elohim
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to Eli. Can you break that down for us?
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I can try. Elohim is the plural form.
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It speaks of majesty, power, the creator, the God of awe.
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It's the God of chance, this one.
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It represents the royal, we of the divine.
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It's a name that inspires reverence from a distance.
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It's the general term for God. The general powerful cosmic
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term. But then David immediately
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switches to Eli. That's singular.
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It's possessive. It means my strong one.
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So it changes from the cosmic to the intensely personal.
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Instantly there's a quote from Lydon in our sources that is
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just beautiful. On this he says, God gives
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himself to the single soul with his absolute completeness, as if
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there were no other being. That is hard to wrap your mind
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around. It is.
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We think of God dividing his attention among billions of
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people. You know, if I give you my
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attention, I have to take it away from someone else over
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there. Because we are finite, we can
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only give ourselves by halves, by fractions.
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But Lydon argues that an infinite being does not divide.
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He is fully present to every single believer.
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When David says My God, he is just claiming ownership like
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this is my property. He is acknowledging that God has
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given himself entirely to David. As if David were the only person
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in the universe at that moment. As if you were the only one.
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But you know, there's a quote here from Thomas Horton that
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adds a necessary layer of realism to this.
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He says saying Oh God, thou art my God is easy to the mouth, but
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hard to the heart. I can see that it's a great
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slogan, but when you're actually suffering, when the evidence is
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stacked against you, does it stick?
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Horton points out two conditions where it's saying this is
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incredibly difficult. One is unregeneracy when you
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don't actually know him, that's obvious.
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But the other one is desertion. Desertion.
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What does he mean by that? He means when you feel
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abandoned, when you were in the wilderness to look at the empty
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horizon, to look at the fact that your son is trying to kill
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you and still say you are mine. That requires a faith that is
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not natural. It has to be supernatural.
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It has to be. It's a gift.
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The verse continues early. Will I seek thee now?
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Spurgeon has a lot to say about this word early.
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Oh, he loves this word, and for good reason.
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It has a double meaning. First, there's the literal
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sense. It means the dawn, the morning.
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Like the manna in the wilderness, you had to get it
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before the sun came up and melted.
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It exactly. There's a practical discipline
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of starting the day with God before the day gets its hands on
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you, Spurgeon says. When the bed is softest, we are
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most tempted to rise at lazy hours.
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But when comfort is gone and the couch is hard, if we rise the
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earlier to seek the Lord, we have much for which to thank the
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wilderness. That hits home.
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Comfort makes us lazy. Crisis wakes us up.
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Well, think about the psychology of it.
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When you're in a real crisis, how do you wake up?
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Usually wake up with a pit in your stomach.
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The anxiety hits you before your feet even hit the floor.
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So the early here isn't just about the clock.
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It's not just David setting an alarm.
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No, it's about priority. It implies eagerness.
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The Hebrew suggests an immediate, desperate search.
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Like if you're drowning, you don't say I'll call for a
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lifeguard later this afternoon. You seek help early,
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immediately. The intensity of the situation
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drives the timing. And that intensity leads to the
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physical description of his need.
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My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee.
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We need to unpack the anthropology here, the view of
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the human person. He mentions both soul and flesh.
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Usually when we read flesh in the New Testament, especially in
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Paul's letters, it's a negative term.
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It's the sinful nature lusting against the Spirit.
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Correct. But here in the Psalms, Spurgeon
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argues, David is talking about his actual physical frame, his
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body. He is saying that his spiritual
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longing is so intense, so vehement, that it is physically
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affecting him. The source calls it a sympathy
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between body and spirit. And that's a very real
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phenomenon. Yeah.
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Have you ever been so anxious or so in love that you physically
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ate, that you lost your appetite or you felt a literal physical
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pull in your chest? Absolute.
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That's what Dave is describing. His body is in a dry land
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without water, so he's physically thirsty, and he uses
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that physical thirst as a perfect picture of his spiritual
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thirst. His whole being, body and soul,
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is crying out. Spurgeon makes a very strong
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assertion here. He says thirst is an insatiable
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longing. There is no reasoning with it,
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no forgetting it, no despising it, no overcoming it by stoical
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indifference. You cannot argue yourself out of
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being thirsty. You can't sit there and use
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logic to tell your body it doesn't need water.
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It won't work. And you can't argue yourself out
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of needing God. From a reformed perspective,
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this is the state of the regenerate soul.
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The Holy Spirit creates A thirst that the world cannot satisfy.
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You can't just use Stoicism to say, well, I shouldn't be needy,
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you are. The question is what you do with
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that need. And that need drives him to a
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vision. Section 3 covers verses 2 and
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three. He says his thirst is to see thy
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power and thy glory. So as I have seen thee in the
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sanctuary. Notice what he's missing.
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He isn't saying I want to see the beautiful architecture of
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the Tabernacle he's in saying I miss the smell of the incense or
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I miss the social gathering with my friends.
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He misses the power and the glory.
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He misses the tenant of the building, not the building
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itself. He's had an experience of God's
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presence in corporate worship, and now he craves that same
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presence in his isolated crisis. There is a quote from William
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Strong in the notes that is, well, it's quite blunt.
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He says origins, things like preaching, sacraments, Church
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services are dry breasts or shells without a kernel if God
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has not met within them. That is a jarring image, isn't
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it? Dry breasts.
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It is. It's almost offensive.
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But think about what a breast is for it is a source of life and
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nourishment for an infant. A dry breast is a tragedy.
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It is the promise of food with no sustenance.
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So what's he saying? Strong is saying that going to
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church, singing the hymns, taking the bread and wine, those
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are the structures. They are the breast.
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But if God isn't met in them, if the Spirit isn't present, there
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is no milk. It's just biological mechanics
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without life. That is the danger of ritualism,
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of just going through the motions.
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We can love the habit of church more than the God of the church.
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And David, stripped of the ritual, realizes that what he
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really craved all along was the glimpse of God's glory.
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He says I want to see you here in the desert, just like I saw
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you there in the sanctuary. So the location was a training
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ground. I think so.
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The sanctuary taught him what to look for so that now in the wild
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he can recognize it. He realizes that God was never
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confined to the building in the first place.
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Then we get to what might be the most famous line of this entire
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Psalm, verse 3 Because thy loving kindness is better than
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life. We just have to pause and let
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the weight of that hit us. This is a radical hierarchy of
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values. It's completely countercultural
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then and now. It is Most of us operate on the
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assumption that life is the top value.
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Survival is #1 everything else is secondary.
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Self preservation is the primal instinct.
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We're wired for it. But David says no, there is
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something better. So how?
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How can loving kindness be better than existence itself?
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Well, the experts in the source material break this down
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logically first. Life is transient.
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It's short. It's a vapor.
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But God's mercy is everlasting. OK, that makes.
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Sense second life is shared by animals.
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A dog has life, a Jackal has life.
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But the loving kindness of the Lord is the peculiar portion of
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the chosen, the elect. It's a higher category of
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existence altogether. And the Third Point is that life
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can be miserable. Exactly.
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Life could be full of pain, betrayal.
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I mean, look at David's situation.
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He has life in the wilderness, but it's a hard life.
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It's full of rocks and treason. But God's favor is never
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anything but good. It's pure goodness.
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Augustine weighs in on this in the notes.
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He talks about the one life. He says we have many possible
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lives. We could choose a life of
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business, a military life, a quiet life of farming.
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But God's favor is the one life preferred above all others.
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It's the difference between merely existing and truly
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living. Living in God's smile while in a
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desert is better than existing in a palace under His frown if
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you have his loving kindness. Death is just a doorway.
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If you have life without His loving kindness, well, you're
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dead already. That conviction leads directly
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into worship, which brings us to Section 4, the Anatomy of
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praise, verses 4 through 6. David says, Thus will I bless
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thee. While I live, I will lift up my
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hands in thy name. We see the physicality of
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worship again. Hands.
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Hands are used for work. Hands are used for war.
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David was a warrior. His hands had held swords and
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slings. The harps and harps, yes, but
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here lifting the hands is a gesture of surrender,
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independence. It's showing empty hands to God.
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It says I have nothing to offer and I am ready to receive.
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He also talks about his mouth. My mouth shall praise thee with
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joyful lips. And there's a great quote from
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Thomas Shepard in the notes. He asks if you love a hawk or a
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hound. You praise it.
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That is such a piercing question, isn't it?
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If you have a favorite dog or a favorite sports team or a
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favorite car, you don't shut up about it.
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You find ways to bring it up. You praise what you value.
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So Shepherd's question is, how can one love Christ and remember
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remain silent? The implication is that silence
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is an indicator of low valuation.
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If you're not praising him, maybe you don't treasure him as
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much as you think you do. Then we get this rich, almost
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decadent imagery in verse 5. My soul shall be satisfied as
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with marrow and fatness. You know, on our modern health
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conscious culture, fat is something we cut off the steak,
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right? We want the lean cut.
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Right, fat is bad. But in Hebrew culture, and
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really in most ancient cultures where calories were scarce, fat
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was the best part. It was the energy.
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The marrow was the delicacy scooped out of the bone.
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So this represents the highest idea of festive provision, a
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royal banquet. Best meal you could possibly
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imagine. And notice the paradox again.
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Where is David while he's writing this?
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He's in a dry and thirsty land. He is physically starving, or at
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least he's rationing water and food.
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He's probably eating dried dates and stale bread, but he claims
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his soul is feasting at a royal banquet.
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He is finding a satiety in God that the finest meals of his
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palace couldn't give him. This moves us from the feast to
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the bedroom. Verse 6 When I remember thee
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upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night, watches.
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The bed is a distinct theological space in this text.
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It's not just a piece of furniture.
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Spurgeon breaks this down in a really interesting way.
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He says the bed can be a place of choice, a place of necessity
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or a place of indifference. Right.
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It's the place where you are finally alone with your
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thoughts. The day is done.
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For many people, the bed is a place of anxiety.
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That's when the distractions finally stop and the worries
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come crashing in. Spurgeon speculates that perhaps
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the wilderness danger kept David awake.
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He's sleeping on hard ground, maybe listening for Assassins in
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the dark or The Sound of Wild animals.
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It's very likely. I mean, he is suffering from
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insomnia caused by a coup. But look at what he does with
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it. He doesn't just toss and turn,
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he converts the insomnia into a hymn.
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He turns his bed chamber, which is just a patch of dirt under
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the stars, into a sanctuary. The text makes a distinction
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here between memory and meditation.
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It says when I remember thee and meditate on thee.
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Yes, John Wells has a great analogy for this.
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He says memory is the chest or the ark holding the truth.
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It's storage. You put facts about God in
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there. OK, so that's the raw data.
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Right. But meditation is eating the
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manna. It's taking the truth out of
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storage, putting it in your mouth and digesting it.
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It's making it part of you. So David isn't just recalling
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facts about God in the middle of the night.
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He's not just listing attributes.
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He is chewing on them, savoring them.
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And that chewing, that meditation, turns the anxiety
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into satisfaction. He joins the choristers of
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heaven, as the commentary says, while lying in the dark, haunted
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by his own son. It's a radical repurposing of
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sleeplessness. Moving on to Section 5, let's
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call it the synergy of grace, verses 7 and 8.
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Because thou has been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy
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wings will I rejoice. This is the logic of faith.
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It's not a blind leap. It looks back in order to move
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forward. The word because refers to the
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past. So he's remembering.
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He's remembering God helped him with the bear and the lion when
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he was a shepherd boy. God helped him with Goliath.
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God helped him survive years of running from Saul.
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So because you did all that. Therefore, which is future
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tense, I will rejoice. I will trust it's a confidence
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based on God's proven track record.
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He uses the memory of past Providence to fuel his present
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confidence. Exactly.
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It's not blind optimism, it's a calculated trajectory based on
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the unchanging character of God. Then we get this incredible
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phrase in verse 8. My soul followeth hard after
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they. Oh, that language is so strong.
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The Hebrew word is debac. It means to cleave or to glue.
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It's the same word used in Genesis for a man leaving his
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parents and cleaving to his wife.
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So to be glued to God. To be stuck to him like super
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glue. Yeah.
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It implies a desperate, clinging effort.
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Following hard. It's an active, energetic
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pursuit. But then immediately after that,
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in the very next breath, he says, Thy right hand upholdeth
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me. And there it is.
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There is the reformed tension we love so much, the beautiful
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paradox. The interplay between man's
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action and God's action. Precisely.
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On the one hand, man is following hard.
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We are pursuing, we are running, we are clinging.
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But why are we successful? Why do we fall away?
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Why doesn't our grip fail? Because thy right hand upholdeth
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me. That's it.
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So do we follow because he upholds, or does he uphold
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because we follow the? Reformed answer would be.
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That we follow because He upholds.
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That is the expert insight of the sources.
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If God withdrew His upholding hand for a single second, our
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soul would not only stop following, you would stop even
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wanting to follow. We are glued to Him, but he is
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the glue. Our pursuit is response to his
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preservation. There is a quote from Samuel
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Rutherford here that just captures the intensity of this
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following heart. He says I do not want him.
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I do not want him. It's old Scots fork.
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I cannot do without him. It's not that I don't desire
20:56
him, it's that I lack the ability to live without.
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Him. It's a statement of absolute
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necessity. It is, Rutherford goes on to
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say. He would be happy to just look
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through a hole in the door at Christ for all eternity.
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That is the desperation of following hard.
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It's not a casual interest, it's a survival necessity.
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Now, after all this beautiful, intimate, glued to God language,
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we have to address the shift in the song.
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It's a jarring shift, yes. We get to section 6.
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We move from spiritual longing to what sounds like violent
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justice in verses 9 and 10, the portion for foxes.
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It is a bit of whiplash, but it shows the wholeness of David's
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faith. It's not just personal piety,
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it's also a deep concern for divine justice.
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David writes. But those that seek my soul to
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destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
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He remembers his enemies. This isn't an abstract
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meditation anymore. He's thinking about Absalom and
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his counselors like a Hitaphil and notice the language.
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They aren't just political opponents.
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They're seeking to destroy his soul.
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This is a spiritual battle. It is, and He prophesized their
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destruction. He says they will fall by the
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sword. And then we get that very
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specific, very graphic curse in verse 10.
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They shall be a portion for foxes.
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And the notes clarify that the word translated foxes here is
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more likely jackals. Which makes perfect sense in a
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wilderness context. So what's the significance of
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that? Well, biologically, the Jackal
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is a scavenger. It digs up shallow graves.
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It cleans the battlefields of the unburied dead.
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That is a horrific image. It is the ultimate humiliation
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for a Hebrew to be unburied, to be denied an honorable tomb, to
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have your body desecrated and become meat for the scavengers
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of the wild. David is saying that these men
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who are trying to steal the throne and kill the Lord's
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anointed, they won't end up in royal tombs, they will end up as
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dog food. So how do we handle this
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ethically as modern readers? It sounds like personal revenge.
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It sounds vindictive. It does, but we have to read it
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through the lens of the covenant.
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David isn't just a private citizen, he is the king.
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He represents God's rule on earth.
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To strike at David is to strike at God's order.
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So this isn't just David being petty.
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This is David agreeing with divine retribute of justice.
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He's aligning his will with God's justice.
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The notes mention the principle that he who strikes a believer
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dries a nail in his own coffin. And historically, this was
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fulfilled with chilling accuracy.
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Absalom's army was slaughtered in the wood of Ephraim.
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The text says 20,000 men. Absalom himself was caught in a
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tree and killed, then cast into a pit.
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He didn't get a royal burial. He got a pile of rocks in a
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forest. He became a portion for foxes.
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Metaphorically, his ambition led him to an ignoble end.
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It is a sobering reminder that digging a pit for the godly
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usually leads to falling into it yourself.
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The imprecatory Psalms, the psalms that call for judgement
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are uncomfortable for us, but they remind us that God is not
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neutral toward evil. He is a judge and he defends his
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own. And that defense leads to the
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final section, Section 7, The King's rejoicing, the final
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verse, verse 11. But the king shall rejoice in
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God. Notice the title he uses for
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himself. He calls himself the king.
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He is in the desert, he looks like a refugee.
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He has a tiny band of loyalists with him, nothing compared to
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Absalom's army. By all outward appearances he is
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a deposed ruler, but he asserts his identity, the king.
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He is claiming the title God gave him despite his
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circumstances, screaming the complete opposite.
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That is faith reality, says refugee faith, says King.
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And notice where his joy is located.
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He shall rejoice in God, not in the eventual victory, not in his
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army, not in his own cleverness. His joy is in his relationship
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with God. The Psalm ends with this great
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contrast of mouths. Yes, it brings everything to a
24:43
close. Everyone that sweareth by Him
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shall glory, but the mouth of them that speak lie shall be
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stopped. So you have the mouth that
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praises versus the mouth that lies.
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Exactly. The liars, the accusers, the
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traitors, those who counseled Absalom, their mouths are
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stopped. Ultimately, they are stopped by
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death, by the shovel full of earth, as Spurgeon so vividly
25:03
puts it. They are silenced by judgment.
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But the mouth that swears allegiance to God.
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The mouth that praises. That mouth sings forever.
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It glories. It is the difference between the
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temporary noise of the wicked and the eternal song of the
25:17
righteous. So let's try to bring this all
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together for a moment. We've walked from the dry
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wilderness, through the thirst into the sanctuary of vision,
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found marrow and fatness in the night watches, faced the
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jackals, and ended with the security of the king.
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It really is a path from emptiness to fullness, all
25:33
without ever leaving the physical desert.
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The geography doesn't change, but the soul's condition is
25:39
completely transformed. What are the key takeaways for
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you? For me, first, it's the value
25:43
seeking God early, that eagerness, that priority that
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crisis forces upon us and. For me, it's the necessity of
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the upholding grace we only seek because He holds our effort is
25:53
empowered by His grip. And I think the big one is that
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our environment, our circumstances, they do not have
25:59
to dictate the state of our worship or our soul.
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Not at all. They are the context for it, the
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material for it, but not the cause of its failure.
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I want to leave our listener with this thought, something
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that really struck me from the commentaries regarding the bed.
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If David could convert his sleepless anxiety in a dangerous
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wilderness into a bed of piety, what does that suggest about our
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modern insomnia? That is a challenging question.
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We spend so much time and money trying to distract ourselves to
26:29
sleep. We listen to podcasts, we take
26:32
pills, we count sheep, we scroll through our phones until our
26:35
eyes burn. But the text invites us to
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something radically different. Instead of counting sheep, the
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believer is invited to unite with the choristers of heaven.
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Your insomnia can be an altar. And perhaps the darkness of the
26:47
night, The stillness is given to us specifically so we can see
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the glowing attributes of God more clearly, undistracted by
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the sunlight and the business of the world.
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A deep challenge for our next sleepless night.
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Thank you for walking through this incredible text with us.
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It's. A pleasure, pleasure, a true
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feast. And thank you for listening.
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We will see you on the next deep dive.