Wisdom in the Desert (Week 2): A Hunger for Holiness

Well, I have AI have a confession to make this morning.

I enjoy watching people from other countries eat American

food on YouTube. Does anyone?

Do you know what I'm talking about here?

Raise your hand if you also enjoy this.

No, nobody, nobody, nobody watches this.

OK, if you are unaware, maybe people are just too embarrassed

to admit it. I don't know, but but there are

people, I there's all, you know, Josh and Ollie, Mr. H and his

family. There's a European couple in

America, There's two sisters from North Korea.

There's a whole list of people who they'll either take out an

American recipe and cook it in their own country and then taste

it themselves, or they'll actually travel 5 / 5000 miles

to come to the US and taste some of this American food for

themselves. And just some.

And some of the food that they're that they're fascinated

by, we eat every day or several times during the week perhaps

we've been eating these foods our whole lives and they are

just amazed. They're amazed they're Tex Mex

BBQ biscuits and gravy of all things is what they're sampling.

And I watched their reactions as they're eating, and they're just

amazed by how good it tastes. And I'm just kind of like, oh,

yeah, yeah, it's good, right? It's good, right?

And that's what I'm thinking to myself.

And. And somewhere, somehow, somebody

told them American food is amazing.

You've got to try this for yourself.

And they do. The sad thing is, I was thinking

about this. The sad thing is, is that I

would say that most people are more interested in seeking out

good food and new flavors than they are in seeking the

spiritual blessings of God. Psalm 34, eight says taste and

see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes

refuge in him. Last week, Pastor Ben introduced

us to a group of people in the early church known as the Desert

Fathers and Mothers who weren't content to know, just know about

God. They wanted to know God and they

went to great lengths in their spiritual hunger to experience

more of God. Their devotion continues to to

inspire generations today. The Bible has many examples of

this hunger for God. So if you have your Bibles or

phones electronic devices this morning, turn with me, if you

will, to Psalm 84. Psalm 84 is we study a hunger

for holiness. But first let's pray, Lord God,

I pray that you would speak through me and to me God, I pray

that I would decrease, that you would increase.

I pray Lord, that as we lift you up, that you would draw all of

us to yourself in Jesus name. And everybody said Amen, Amen.

Psalm 84. The first thing we see in this

passage is a passionate pursuit, A passionate pursuit.

The author sought the presence of the Lord with an uncommon

intensity. Look with, look with me at

verses one through 4. How lovely is your dwelling

place, O Lord Almighty? My soul yearns, even faints for

the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out

for the living God. Even the Sparrow has found a

home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may have her

young. A place near your altar.

O Lord Almighty, my King and my God, blessed are those who dwell

in your house. They are ever praising you.

Salah, look at the language used here.

Yearns, faints, My heart and flesh cry out.

Verse three goes on to say even the Sparrow, which is a bird of

little value, and the swallow, which is a bird that's always

restless, we're able to live in the courts of the Lord and find

refuge and peace. The author is desperate to be

closer to God and even seems to envy the birds who perched in

the Tabernacle courts. But the devil doesn't want us to

want God, and he does his best to Tempest away from pursuing a

close relationship with God. How many of you ever heard of

the seven deadly sins? Are you familiar with that?

OK, well before before Gregory the Great famously named the

Seven deadly sins, there was a man named John Cashin and he was

one of the Desert Fathers. And he spoke about the eight

thoughts, the eight thoughts, the deep rooted patterns of the

heart that tend to pull us away from God.

And we're going to look at this list with practical suggestions

from our study for how to overcome these temptations.

I just want you to think about them.

Weigh these in your own heart. See if you have fallen into

these temptations. The first is gluttony.

Gluttony. And the suggestion is to fast

one meal in the next week and replace that time with prayer.

Lust. And the suggestion is become

mindful of the shows you are watching and time spent on your

devices. There's greed.

Lean into generosity every chance you get this week.

Could you put off buying something for yourself and gift

that money to someone else? Anger.

Practice breath prayers. Just a short prayer, every

breath. As you breathe in, breathe out a

blessing, perhaps on the person who's frustrating you.

Breathe peace. Ask God for your help.

Take time to calm your inner world, and take time to pray for

those who frustrate you. Dejection.

Start a gratitude journal. Begin each day this coming week

by naming 10 things you are thankful for.

There's a Cydia, which means apathy or listlessness.

Commit to prayer walking each day this week.

There's Vainglory, which means boasting fast from any posting

on social media this week which showcases admirable aspects of

your life. Just keep that to yourself.

Then there's pride, which is really the root of all sins, and

the suggestion is for confession.

Be honest with someone you trust about this week's talk and the

areas of struggle you are dealing with.

In Revelation chapter 2, God begins by commending the church

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

in Ephesus for their hard work and their perseverance.

But in verses 4 through 5, he says, yet I hold this against

you. You have forsaken your first

love. Remember the height from which

you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did

at first. I'm just going to give you a

sermon within the sermon. This is just a little bonus.

That's not a bad way to repair a relationship to start there.

If you're struggling in a relationship, if you're

struggling with a spouse or a loved one, remember when.

Remember the good times together, perhaps, and turn away

from the direction that you're going and start doing again the

things you did at the beginning when you first fell in love,

when you first had that relationship.

Start over. If you've drifted into one of

these sins, know that you can turn around today and go God's

way. Maybe the spiritual hunger shown

in these verses will inspire you to pursue a closer walk with

God. I remember the first time that I

read The Pursuit of God by AW Tozer.

Anyone read that book? Wonderful book, wonderful book.

I encourage everybody to read it.

I thought, here is a man who's hungry for God.

Here's a man who will not be satisfied with anything less

then to bow his soul at God's feet and love him with all of

his heart and soul and mind and strength.

And I thought, that's how I want to be too.

I want to be like that. It's contagious.

It's contagious. AW Tozer called people with this

passionate love for God the Fellowship of the Burning heart,

and I'm convinced that this fellowship is much smaller than

we might suspect. I remember the tender joy on my

grandmother's face as she would sing in the garden, and I've

sung songs like Refiners Fire or As the Deer or I'm Desperate for

You, and other songs more recently, such as Homesick for

Heaven. Songs over time, over the

decades that have seemed to express this hunger for God.

The author displays this same passionate pursuit, and it gives

us an example to follow today. The second thing we see in this

passage is the Pilgrim's Progress.

The Pilgrim's Progress. God gives his strength to us as

we are tested by the difficulties of life.

Look what verses 5 through 8. Blessed are those whose strength

is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.

As they pass through the valley of Baca.

They make it a place of springs. The autumn rains also cover it

with pools. They go from strength to

strength till each appears before God and Zion.

Hear my prayer, O Lord God Almighty.

Listen to me, O God of Jacob, Sela.

The Valley of Baca is also known as the Valley of Tears or the

Valley of Sorrow. It's a valley full of thorny

bushes that inevitably scratch you as you travel on your way to

Mount Zion to worship. It's a place of testing to see

if you're willing to endure that travel to worship God.

But it's also a place where travellers see the provision of

God as they pass through the valley of Baca.

They make it a place of springs. The autumn rains also cover it

with pools. There's something when you need

it. Now.

God is a just in time kind of a God.

God gives you what you need, not necessarily what you want, but

what you need just in time. It's one thing for me to hear or

read stories about God's faithfulness.

It's another thing entirely to see God's faithfulness in your

time of trial and to know that you were faithful to God in your

trial as well. Verse 7 says they go from

strength to strength. Most of the time.

The further you walk, the more tired you get.

But here we see the people on pilgrimage getting stronger the

further that they travel, and so should it be in our walk with

Christ. As we learn more about Jesus, we

learn to draw our strength from Him.

I remember a missionary that had to return to the States to have

a surgery and I watched her as she recovered when she was so

weak that she could barely, barely lift her arms.

But her face lit up with this incredible joy as she as she

worshipped the Lord. And eventually the strength of

her body caught up with the strength of her spirit and she

was able to return to the mission field.

Philippians 413 says I can do all things through Christ who

strengthens me. Use the means of grace not for

an end in and of, in and of themselves, but for a way of

drawing closer to God as a way of filling your soul with God's

love and with God's power. And remember that the valley is

not the destination. It's a place of discovery.

It's a place to learn more about God and more about yourself.

I'm not sure what valley you might be in today, but I know

that everybody deals with something and know that God

intends to make you stronger because of it.

So we've seen a passionate pursuit, we've seen the pilgrims

progress, and finally we see the perfect provision.

The perfect provision. God has blessings in store for

those who trust Him. Read with me in verses 9 through

12. Look upon our shield, O God.

Look with favour on your anointed one.

Better is one day in your courts than 1000 elsewhere.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God than

dwell in the tents of the wicked.

For the Lord God is a son and a shield.

The Lord bestows favour in honour.

No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is

blameless. O Lord Almighty, blessed is the

man who trusts in you. Better is I would rather they

show a recognition that being in God's presence is better than

anything else in the world. I remember the story of Martha

complaining to Jesus that Mary was just sitting at the Lord's

feet listening to what he said instead of getting up and

helping her. But Jesus told her in Luke 1042.

Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away

from her. A friend and I once ate at a

restaurant that served all you can eat pancakes for $0.25.

Yeah, back in my day. And the waiter told me if you

leave hungry, it's your own fault.

Matthew 5-6 says blessed are those who hunger and thirst for

righteousness, for they will be filled.

If you're empty and hungry in your soul, if you sense

something as missing, you came to the right place because God

says you can have all of him that you want.

But here's the thing, When I ate all those pancakes, I won't tell

you how many I ate, but when I ate those pancakes, I didn't

want another pancake for two years.

I didn't eat another pancake for two years.

Honestly, I had had enough. But it's the opposite with God.

It's the opposite with God. The more time that we spend with

Him, the more that we draw our life from his life, the more of

him we want. Saint Bernard, put it this way,

We taste thee, O thou living bread, and long to feast upon

thee. Still we drink of Thee, The

Fountainhead, and thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

The more time that we spend with God, the more of Him that we

want. Verse 11 describes God as a son

and a shield. This illumination and this

protection. Who gives favour and honour?

In fact, God doesn't hold anything back.

No good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is

blameless. I'm not going to say that you're

not going to experience difficulty.

We already talked about the valley.

We are. We will occasionally walk

through the valley, but the blessings of God upon His people

are unmistakable. Verse 2 and verse 10 talk about

the courts of the Lord. And if you remember, in the

Tabernacle and later in the temple, there were separate

areas with greater restrictions. Really.

There was the outer court, and then there was the inner court,

and then there was a veil, a heavy veil which separated the

holy place from the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies.

And only one person could go into the Holy of Holies, and

that was a high priest. And that was only on one day of

the year. But it was the Holy of Holies

where the presence of God was in a special way.

When Jesus died on the on the cross, the veil of the temple

was torn into from top to bottom as if God was saying, you can

come in now, you can come in. Hebrews 416 says, let us then

approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may

receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of Dean.

Hebrews tells us that the earthly Tabernacle was a copy of

a heavenly of the heavenly courts.

It was a copy. It's just an imitation, but now

we have access in the heavenlies, in heaven, in the

heavenly courts. We have access to approach in

our spirit God's throne of grace.

More than anyone in the Old Testament.

We now have access to the presence of God Himself.

Finally, we can realise the reality of what it says in verse

4. Blessed are those who dwell, who

dwell, who stay there in your house.

They are ever praising you. Today, in all the stress of

life, in any valley or test, your spirit can continually

dwell in the presence of the Lord.

The Bible says God has placed eternity in the heart of man.

God has placed a God sized God shaped whole in our spirit, in

our soul and we all feel the need to fill that void.

Most of the people in the world honestly are trying to fill that

void with power, pleasure or possessions.

The same things that Jesus was tempted with in his desert.

The devil came to him and said if you are the Son of God, tell

these stones to become bread. You haven't eaten in 40 days,

it's not pleasant. You're hungry.

Why don't you just enjoy a little pleasure?

Throw yourself down from the temple.

When the angels catch you, you'll be recognized and you'll

as the Messiah and you'll have all the power.

Everyone will will respect you. Just bow down and I'll give you

all the possessions in all the kingdoms of the world.

You'll be a trillionaire. Power.

Pleasure. Possessions.

It's the same temptations we have.

Jesus was tempted in every way but without sin.

And the people of this world pursue these things to try to

fill the God sized void in their soul, and they feel fuller for a

little while, but it never satisfies.

It never satisfies because we have an infinite need and only

the infinite God can satisfy it. Mick Jagger saying I can't get

no and I won't say saying it. I can't get no satisfaction.

I can't get no satisfaction. And I try and I try and I try

and I try, but I can't get no satisfaction because there's a

God sized, a God shaped hole in his soul and only God can fill

that. So there's a back story.

I don't know if you realize this.

There's a back story going on behind the scenes for Psalm 84.

If you look in my Bible, it says Psalm 84 for the director of

music according to Getteth, which I think is a strained

instrument. So Garrett, you're, you're in

there of the songs of Kora, of the sons of Kora, a song of the

sons of Kora. Who's this Kora guy?

Was he some spiritual leader? Was he a, a prophet perhaps?

Was he a, did he write songs as well?

Who's this? Who's this Kora?

Was he a spiritual example for the people to follow?

No, quite the opposite. Kora was a Levite who got

jealous of Moses and Aaron and LED 250 members of the Israelite

council along with some 3 prominent men from the tribe of

Reuben in a rebellion against the authority of Moses and

Aaron. And it's recorded in the Book of

Numbers chapter 16. Spoiler alert, this did not end

Numbers 16 · chapter mention

well. God proposed a test, said have

the 250 consul leaders take some of the holy incense which only

the priests were allowed to offer, and put this incense in

small metal, small metal dishes called sensors, and make an

offer, an offering to God along with Aaron.

And then God said, move away from the tents of Korra and from

the tents of the three men of Reuben.

And then the earth opened up and swallowed Kora and all that he

had, and the man from the tribe of Reuben and all that they had.

And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who

were offering incense. And then God had Aaron take and

hammer out these sensors and overlay the altar with them as a

sign for the Israelites. But the sons of Korra didn't

stand with their father. Their desire was for God alone.

And we see their humility and their hunger for God in the

lines of this song. My soul yearns, even faints for

the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out

for the living God. But this wasn't the only Psalm

written by the songs The sons of Korra.

Several other psalms were written by the sons of Quran.

We continue to hear this heart's cry.

They wrote what we call Psalm 42.

And in Psalm 42 verses one through 2, it says as the deer

pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God, my

soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God? They also wrote Psalm 46 verse

one says God is our refuge and strength in ever present help in

trouble. Verse 10 says be still and know

that I am God. They wrote Psalm 48 verse 9 says

Psalms 48:9

within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.

Over and over again. We continue to see their hunger

for God and their reliance on his strength and love.

And does this inspire us? Does this devotion inspire you

today, as Paul Harvey said, And now you know the rest of the

story, You may come from a religious family, or maybe you

used to go to church and you drifted away.

Or maybe you realize today that you have barely even sampled

everything that God has for you. So my question is, what about

now? What about today?

Is God drawing you closer to Himself today?

What is He whispering to your soul?

There's a word that we see twice in the margin.

It's my right margin in my Bible of Psalm 84, and it says sela.

You often see this in the margins of the Psalms, Sela.

The best definition I could find of sela is pause.

Take time and think about that. Think about what you just read.

And that's what we want to offer you today.

As the musicians come, we invite you to pause and take time to

think about the love God has for each of us today.

Maybe you realize that you used to be hungrier for spiritual

things of God than you are right now, and you want that to be

renewed. Maybe you've drifted into some

of the eight thoughts John Cash enlisted that you want to

confess and repent from those today.

Maybe you feel like you're going through the valley of Becca,

through a valley of sorrow, a valley of tears.

And we want to support you, to encourage you, and to offer you

the comfort and strength that we have found during our dark

times. We're on a pilgrimage together,

and we offer you a moment to pray with those who have found

the rest and peace to be found walking hand in hand with God.

Maybe someone here realizes they need God's greatest gift,

salvation in Jesus Christ. Don't harden your heart.

Today is the day of salvation. That's what the Bible says.

Today is the day of salvation.