9th August 2026

Experiencing the Psalms 3 – 09/08/26

This is the 3rd in our light-weight summer series about the Psalms.  The first was a general introduction, the second was about 3 psalms that marvelled at God’s creation, but all in different ways, and today’s is about “thirsting for God”. 

As we said two weeks ago, psalms come in all shapes and sizes, the have different subjects, they’re in different moods, and so on.  They’re written by a number of different people, and some of them amazingly personal.   Today’s two, Psalms 27 and 63, the ones that Angela and Philip just read to us, are both written by David.

I don’t know about you but sometimes God seems to be right there, at other times he just doesn’t, and sometimes he can seem a million miles away.

In our first one, Psalm 27, David seems to be feeling God right beside him, and that gives him huge confidence.  Listen again to the first 3 verses.

The LORD is my light and my salvation -- whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life -- of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me, even then will I be confident."

The word “LORD” here is the one we talked about last week.  Not the one that means “boss”, but the one that means the "I Am," or "He who brings into existence everything that exists," It is he that David pronounces as the stronghold of his life.

There is a total lack of fear in what David says to Yahweh, Whom shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? My heart will not fear. Even then, will I be confident.

Notice the imagery he uses too. Yahweh, the “I am” God, is for David his light, his salvation, the stronghold of his life, his fortress, so that, even in terrible trouble, he has total confidence. 

And then he says, and I love this bit "One thing I ask of the LORD,
this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” 

Why?

Because in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. 

“There”, says David, “I will be safe”.

Safety today is at a premium, isn’t it. We are constantly at risk of one thing or another.  Internet scams. Drunk drivers. Dishonest politicians, you name it.  There’s always something.

It is almost certain that when David wrote this Psalm he was either fleeing from Saul, so before he became the king, or much later when he was fleeing from his third son, Absolam, when he tried to usurp his throne.  Either way, he would have been in mortal danger.  But look at his attitude. Even then, what he wants to do most is to go to God’s tabernacle, to sacrifice with shouts of joy, and to sing and make music to the LORD."

The terms "house", "temple", "dwelling”, and "tabernacle" all mean basically the same. He was talking about God’s tabernacle that was at Shiloh in those days. The Temple in Jerusalem was built during Solomon’s reign, so after David's time, much to his chagrin, but that’s another story. 

There are many references in the Psalms to dwelling in God's house, beginning with verse 6 of the so familiar Psalm 23, "Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Another is Psalm 65:4: "Happy are those whom you choose, and bring near, to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple."

And Psalm 84, another classic "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....

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."

But to "dwell in the house of the Lord" doesn’t mean to actually live in the temple, sleeping there as Eli and Samuel did, it’s a metaphor for being close to the Lord at all times. It expresses a longing to get close to God, and therefore be in a place of safety and rejoicing.

Once he’s there, what does David do?  "Hear my voice when I call, he says, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, 'Seek his face!'  Your face, LORD, I will seek."

As you might expect, the expression "to seek the face of someone" means to seek an audience with a person in authority, to be face to face in their presence. And so here David is speaking of his yearning for personal intimacy with the Lord God himself.

The Apostle Paul said something very similar. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3:10-11)

There’s lots more in this psalm that I could talk about, but let’s have a look at our other one, Psalm 63

This is also David, remember, and again timing wise, it was also either when he was fleeing from Saul or from Absolom, we don’t know which. We do know, however, because it says so, that he was in the Desert of Judah.

Whichever it was, on that day he seems to have been in a different place, spiritually.  

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

When Moses was nearing the end of his life and leadership, when God had forbidden him from crossing the river Jordan and entering the promised land, he said to his people "From there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29, NRSV) 

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the Israelites who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. In it he prophesied to them "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)

“With all your heart” is the common phrase in those two quotes and that’s what David was doing. O God, you are my God, earnestly, with all my heart, I seek you.

In conclusion can I say that it’s all too easy, I find, to take God for granted, and let our priorities be determined by what’s going on in our lives, or worse still by what we see in the news, or on our social network feeds.  We say to ourselves “Oh, God’s out there somewhere.  That’s fine.”

But should we not, perhaps, follow David’s example and be more deliberate, and more focused, in the way that we seek communion with the one, the ONLY one, who can give us the confidence we seek in life.  Not so much because we should, or must, but because we actually want to and most of all because we can.  What an awesome privilege that is.

Let’s pray.  Lord, sometimes we do feel dry and parched in our souls, you know that. I pray that you would put within me, and within my brothers and sisters here this morning, the same kind of earnestness to seek you that David had, and that is characteristic of true followers. Help me, help us, to seek you with “all our hearts” and thereby find the fullness of soul that you have for us. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.