Summer in the Psalms | Spiritual Dehydration - A Thirsting for the Lord | Psalm 42 | Devin LaBay

Well, good morning.

Before we continue in our study of some selected psalms this summer, I would like to recognize the newest member of our congregation.

I know this is kind of on the spot, but this is my first first peek at Henry Clay Johnston this morning.

So I'd just ask his dad, Chase, if he'd just stand up and let us get a good look at him.

Woo! You didn't see it, but Kami and I were sitting behind it.

We were kind of peeking over and getting a good he's adorable, beautiful.

What a blessing it is to have uh a child come and be a part of their first worship service.

Um do we have any other babies that are here?

Um this is your their first worship service this morning.

I don't want to leave any anybody out.

Uh I know we have some beautiful young children in our audience this morning, and uh that's always, always a blessing.

As we continue in our in our study of selected psalms, um this one here is is I think one of David's deepest.

Um he's pouring himself out to God.

Um and there there's uh an old saying, and and and I'll tell a little story before I reveal that saying, but uh I can remember a very rainy chilly night in uh the first Friday night in November of 1986.

I was a junior in high school, and we were playing our last football game of the season.

Our season was was over.

The only highlight we had left was to ruin the season of our cross town rival.

Now, uh our crosstown rival was one of the one of the top ten teams in the state, and and probably in the top 50 in the country, and it's a program that that if you're really into high school football, you would know.

Uh but we just had a bad season.

So all we had left was to try to prevent them from winning the district title.

It had rained all week, the field was a swamp.

But for some reason, at halftime it was tied 7 to 7.

And I remember our coach coming in and saying this saying, Boys, leave it all on the field.

We've heard that a hundred times.

But that night for us it meant something because if we if we did, then we knew they they would not win the district championship.

In fact, they would have a a little bit more difficult road trying to win the state championship, which they did not.

Uh and so we went out and we had to kick the ball to them.

It was pouring down rain, the mud was probably about yay deep, and we kicked it off, and yours truly was on special teams, and it just turned out that when the receiver caught the ball, I was right there to meet him, and the ball squirted out, and we recovered.

And we kicked a field goal, and later we gave him a safety, but we wound up winning 10-9.

And out of all the times we played those guys, that's only the second time we ever beat him.

And so that was a big deal.

But we left it all out on the field.

That's kind of, in a sense, what David is doing here in this psalm.

He's in a bad way, he's in a bad spot.

And he's come to the conclusion that he just needs to pour it all out to God.

He needs to leave it all on the field, and he needs to trust God for the answer that he doesn't have.

And so, before we get into the message this morning, let's join together in prayer to our Father and ask the Spirit to give us a deeper understanding and a connection with what David is saying in Psalm 42.

Let's let's pray together.

Our Lord and our God, we're we're humbled to be here this morning.

Worship can become routine, and that's one of the dangers that we need to avoid.

Because every week that we join together as a family in this room, it could be our last.

It could be the last time that we're together.

This could be the last opportunity that we have to sing praises to you, to leave it all on the spiritual field, so to speak, before your return.

Worship is invaluable.

And you intended it to be that way.

Because each and every one of us as believers, as your children, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we we need to come coasting in here every first day of the week on spiritual fumes, ready to be refueled.

And we pray that the worship service this morning, first and foremost, has been a blessing to you.

And that we will be refueled spiritually this morning.

We'll be challenged, we'll be filled to the point that our spiritual cup is overflowing so that we can share the overflow of your spiritual blessings with those around us.

So thankful for David's words in this psalm.

He reaches deep, deep into his soul, and he shares with you and with us today the blessing of being in relationship with you.

Spirit, help us to connect, to identify with what David is saying this morning, to understand what it means to truly be spiritually thirsty and to be spiritually filled.

Lord, we we love you more than our our words can express.

We love you more than our deeds can prove, and and that's the way that you've intended it.

In a sense, that's what grace is about.

It can't be earned, but it can be enjoyed, and we thank you, Father, for pouring your grace upon us.

Lord, we love you, and we thank you.

In Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Family, the 42nd Psalm, let's get into some technical things here.

The 42nd Psalm is titled For the Director of Music, and it is it is described as a maskle, which is an instructive ode for the sons of Korah.

Now, the sons of Korah were a family of musicians who were descendants of the same Korah, if you remember, who led a rebellion against Moses in the desert in Numbers chapter 16.

Numbers 16 · chapter mention

And if you go back and you look at that, figure out pretty quickly, that's a pretty serious thing.

It was a serious crime that led to some very grave consequences in the literal sense.

We read there that God calls the ground, if you remember, of course, when I think about this, I think about uh uh the movie The Ten Commandments.

Okay.

Uh but you if you read the text, um, you can read where the ground opened up and it swallowed all of those who were involved in the rebellion, along with their families in verses 31 and following.

And the thing about it is, church, it's quite surprising that Numbers chapter 26, verse 11, tells us that the line of Korah, however, did not die out.

Numbers 26:11

And as you follow the genealogical line through 1st and 2 Chronicles, we see that the line of Korah did continue.

According to 1 Chronicles chapter 6, verses 31 and following, David, when he was organizing the different tasks for worship in the temple, he assigned the ministry of song for the most part to the Kohthites or the family of Korah.

1 Chronicles 6:31

The head of this group was a man named Haman.

And he's also listed as the writer of Psalm 88.

And he is a direct descendant of Korah, who led the rebellion against Moses in the desert so many years earlier.

Church, the continued existence of this family line is a testimony to the grace of God under an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth covenant.

You see, time after time, whether it be old covenant or new covenant, God is always more interested in reaching for restoration and redemption rather than for condemnation and destruction.

God would much rather be reconciled to his creation than alienated from it.

And in many Hebrew manuscripts, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 actually comprise a single psalm, a single work.

But this morning we're going to focus on Psalm 42, what we know is Psalm 42.

Psalm 42 has two major divisions, verses 1 through 5 and verses 6 through 11.

And both of these sections end with the very same statement put your hope in God, for I will praise him, yet praise him, my Savior, and my God.

So although David's never mentioned as the author of Psalm 42, but here's the thing it is it is so Davidic in its composition that Spurgeon in his commentary put it this way He says, it smells of the son of Jesse.

And so as we delve into this Psalm this morning, what we'll see, what I hope that we will see, is that this is one of David's most expressive psalms.

And in it we see his hunger and we see his thirst for the Lord's presence in his life.

Verse 1 says, As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God.

It's a very familiar verse, isn't it?

Benset the song.

We're familiar with the song that we sang earlier.

But we need to understand exactly what David means and what David is saying when he pins these words that are so familiar to us.

Here David relates his desperate thirst for God.

And he relates it to that of the hunted deer running for its life.

He feels as though he is just steps ahead of the hunter, not knowing where the next arrow is going to come from.

This is real for David.

And this is how he is expressing it.

And all he can think about, family, is I am thirsty.

I am so thirsty for the Lord.

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever been really thirsty?

I mean, really, really thirsty.

Now when Devin's thirsty, I usually reach for iced tea, sweet tea, preferably, or Coca-Cola.

I just think I'm thirsty.

I can remember one time when I was really, really, really thirsty.

Years ago, I was a youth minister at the time.

We were taking a group of teens from Russellville, Arkansas to Dallas to Six Flags.

And we had made the trip to Six Flags, had a great time, had two van loads of teens, and we were heading back to Arkansas, and we had just crossed over into Arkansas, and there's a stretch of Interstate 30 that's just there's nothing there to speak of.

No places to stop, really.

And guess what?

It always happens on a trip like this.

Never happens just going around town somewhere or a local trip.

It's one of those long ones.

The air conditioner goes out in one of the vans.

And so I got a problem I got to deal with.

And so we'll pull over, and we were talking, we were this is before cell phones, okay?

I mean, when they were popular.

So we're talking on walkie-talkies.

Okay.

So we pull over, and uh I said, okay, here's the deal.

Ladies, all the ladies on the air conditioned van, fellas, get on the non-air conditioned van.

It was July, it was a hundred and something, it was hot.

And so the ladies were gonna ride in the air conditioning, fellas gonna ride and suffer in the non-air conditioning.

And so we we get back on the road and we finally find a place to stop and get something to drink.

I am thirsty.

I don't want iced tea, I don't want a coke, I want water.

And not water from the cooler.

I just want one of those bottles of water that's just sitting out.

Because if it's too cold, I'm gonna chug a luggage and I'm gonna get a brain freeze, and I don't want that on top of all this.

And so I got one of those big, big ones, big liter size bottles of water.

I pulled the cap off of that thing and it was gone.

And here's the thing, here's how I know that I was I was thirsty.

Thirstier than I'd ever been before or since.

I could literally feel the cells of my body absorbing that water.

It's like Ross Perot used to say, that great sucking sound.

I mean, I could feel my cells just taking it all in.

I was thirsty.

But here's an amazing side note.

When we went back to get on the vans, everybody wanted to ride on the unair-conditioned van.

I had like three people trying to get on the air-conditioned van.

Everybody wanted to be together.

That's a cool thing about a youth group.

You know, they want to have fun together, they'll even suffer together and I'll have fun doing both.

But that that is that is the thirstiest I've ever been in my life.

I could feel it.

And the point that I'm making, family, is this David has a thirst for God that he can feel.

He can feel it, not just in his soul.

He feels it physically, and he's going to go into some depth toward that a little bit later in the Psalm.

And so, family, what we see in verse 2 is that David enlightens the readers that his thirst is not for H2O.

It's not for water as we know it, but for the living water that can only be found in the living God.

He says, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

And notice what he says next.

He says, When can I go and meet with God?

When can I go and meet with God?

Church, he can't wait until he can worship the Lord again.

Is that the way we feel?

When we walk into this place, we can't wait to be here.

Can't wait to be together.

But most importantly, can't wait to engage in worship with the one true and living God.

David cannot wait to meet with God again to worship him.

He's been separated from the worship experience for too long.

And he thirsts for worship.

Family, ask yourself, when was the last time that you were thirsty for the Lord?

You see, in David's time, worship was central to the temple.

Because that's where the Lord's presence was experienced.

Under the law, the proximity that you enjoyed in relation to the Lord's presence was determined by ethnicity, it was determined by gender, and it was determined by experience.

And so, if you were a Jew, and if you were male, and if you were a priest, you were closer in proximity to the Lord's presence than anyone else in the temple.

That's the way it worked under the law.

The Bible says in Colossians chapter 2 that these restrictions have been done away with.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

They were nailed to the cross with Jesus.

Also, Jesus, if you remember, he says, where two or more believers are gathered together, that he will be with them.

Family, Christ intended the church to be the people, not the body, not the building.

But for David, the temple was central.

Central to his worship experience.

And he longed to be in the temple to worship the Lord.

Verse 3, we get a taste of the temptation that David is experiencing.

Listen to what he says.

He says, My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, Where is your God?

Church, so many of us at one time or another, like David, our tears have been our food.

Day and night, either because we're too anguished to eat, or because we have nothing to eat.

Depending on the situation.

And rather than our enemies questioning where our God is, many times it's been us asking the question Where are you, God?

Church for David, worship is the center of his life.

Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why he is referred to as a man after God's own heart.

And in the midst of his tears, he reflects.

Like so many of us do on happier times, on the happiest time of his life.

He says in verse 4, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

Take a good look at that.

In the midst of his situation, that's what he looks to.

That's what he's focused on.

David is pouring out his soul, wishing to be filled with the living water that is his God.

And his greatest memory.

Now here's something that I think we need to think about.

Was David leading the procession because he was king?

Or was he king because he was leading the procession?

You see, David's worship was not a byproduct of his status.

Family, his status was a byproduct of his worship.

And notice the attitude of worship that he describes in verse 4.

He says, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

When was the last time you saw or heard anything like that?

When was the last time you participated in something like that?

Is that not?

Describe what worship should be.

What about us?

Is our worship a byproduct of our status?

Or is our status a byproduct of our worship?

It depends on which of those two things have the highest priority in our life.

A worship or our status.

In verse five, we see David and what we all experience within ourselves.

The personal pep talk.

The inner conversation with ourselves.

Here David is talking to himself when he says, Why are you downcast, O my soul?

And this is the real beauty of David.

And the wealth of the Psalms at its core.

David is human.

David is human just like all of us.

And church, how many times have we done the same thing when we're discouraged?

Here we see David experience what we all experience within ourselves.

His faith is reasoning with his fear, and his hope is arguing with his sorrow.

And in the latter half of verse 5, the faith and hope of David attempts to put to rest the fear and the sorrow of David when he says to himself, put your hope in God, for I will praise him, my Savior and my God.

Family, in essence, what David is saying is, Yes, I'm tired.

Yes, I'm discouraged.

Yes, I'm scared.

Yes, I'm brokenhearted that my own son wants to kill me.

Yes, I thirst to the depth of my soul to worship my Lord in the temple.

Yet I will praise the Lord, my Savior, and my God.

Let me tell you something.

That's a hard corner to turn.

It's a hard corner to turn.

Verse 6 says, My soul is downcast within me, therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, from the heights of Hermon from Mount Mazar.

What we see there is that David is locating himself when he writes this.

He locates himself in the region of Mount Hermon, which is the tallest mountain in the area, rising over 9,000 feet above the desert.

David stands on Mount Mazar, a lesser peak in the region, which means small hill.

And family, David realizes where he is, not only physically, not only geographically, but spiritually.

David is far removed from the temple and would much rather be on Mount Zion than Mount Mazar.

At verse 7, David employs the imagery of raging waters to describe his spiritual condition.

He says, Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfall, all of your waves and breakers have swept over me.

The headwaters of the Jordan River begin at the base of Mount Hermon.

And when the rainy season comes, the Jordan River suddenly turns from a peaceful little stream into a raging flood.

And look at what he's saying there.

Look at what he feels.

Trouble has overwhelmed him.

Like wave after wave crashing down on him.

As if they're calling to each other and coordinating their attack on him, and they're coming down on him like a crushing cascade of water.

He feels like he's drowning in it.

You ever been there before?

Again, we see the beauty of the Psalms.

We're in a world that attempts to convince us that we're the only ones that suffer, or we're the only ones who have unique problems.

We see that David has been there and has overcome.

Verse 80 says, By day the Lord directs his love.

At night, his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

Family, ultimately, David knows that God is still in control by day, and the song of God's promises and his prayers comfort him at night.

But even with this knowledge, David, like so many of us in his humanity, is still challenged with doubt.

Listen to what he says in verse 9.

I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?

Family, when I read verses 8 and 9 together, what I hear David saying is, Lord, I believe.

Help me with my unbelief.

I'm hanging on, but just barely.

Of what benefit is it at this point for me to suffer?

What lesson am I supposed to learn from this, Lord?

Have you ever asked any of those questions before?

This is where David is.

David further illustrates the crushing weight of his dilemma in verse 10.

Listen to what he says.

He says, My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, where is your God?

Church, the perceived absence of God by David's enemies, and more and more by David himself, pierces David to the core of his being.

But again, in verse 11, as in verse 5, David realizes that he is spiritually distracted.

He rallies his soul and he musters his faith and his courage and in effect says, Hey, I'm going to leave it all on the field.

I'm going to put all my trust, all my hope, all my faith in my God.

And it's here that he decides that all he truly has is his faith.

And if truth be told to all of us, that's all we have.

All that we truly own and all that we truly have, and is the most valuable possession that we have is our faith.

David, more faithfully and probably more peacefully, repeats his self-encouragement from verse 5.

He says, Why are you downcast on my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Church, no matter what the outcome, David has decided.

He has decided that he has lived in his faith and he will die in his faith.

Not when it's convenient, but when it's hard.

What about us?

Family, this psalm begins with David's desire to worship and to commune with the Lord.

As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

Ask yourself this morning, are you thirsty?

Are you feeling an overwhelming sense of spiritual dehydration in your soul today?

That only the Lord can quench.

Are you ready to pour out your soul deep within you?

So that you may be drawn deeper to the Lord this morning.

Jesus makes that opportunity available to you.

You can leave it all on the field.

You can leave it all at the foot of the cross.

Whatever's been troubling you, whatever burden you've been bearing, you can ease and relieve that spiritual thirst that you have right now.

And not only be filled, but as David says in Psalm 23, verse 5, that your cup spiritually may be overflowing.

Psalms 23:5

Is that what you're looking for this morning?

Is that what you truly need?

Because you know that everything else you've tried just isn't working.

It's not cutting it.

It may be temporary, but you keep coming back to the same old spiritual thirst that only a commitment and a recommitment to the Lord can provide.

We want to pray with you and we want to pray for you.

Your shepherds will be here to receive you this morning.

And there's no shame in walking an aisle.

In fact, there's courage and being able to say, hey, look, I can't do it.

I need help.

I need prayer.

I need encouragement.

I need love.

I'm thirsty.

If you're looking for a church home this morning and you're visiting with us, we'd love to have you here as a part of our central family.

Whatever you need, please don't leave today without that need being met.

Leave it all at the foot of the cross while we stand and sing.