Finding Satisfaction in God
John Piper has said, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Do you agree?
Let’s first look at what it means to “glorify God.” What exactly does this mean for us today? What do we mean when we say the “glory of God”? God desires to make Himself known. God wants to brag. Now, for us to say this is arrogant. Why? Because we are not truly worthy to brag. We are not perfect as our creator is. But God is completely perfect in every way. Therefore, He is worthy of all praise and adoration. And therefore, it is right for God to want to put Himself on display. There are two ways in which He does this: 1) in nature (Psalm 19:1-2) and 2) by human beings Ephesians 2:1-10. This should be our goal in life as well-to glorify God. All of creation was created to glorify God. This world exists to reflect the glory of God. God did not create the world to make himself happy. He is already perfectly content within Himself. He created this world to make His name known. We were created to glorify God. And how are we to glorify God? One of the primary ways is to seek satisfaction in Him.
C.S. Lewis writes:
"Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
The problem here is that the child never really gets the point! The child is completely content with the mud pies. He is content to be in a slum rather than at the sea. Is this not the same with us when we continue to be content with our sin? We mess around with and cherish things other than God. There are many secondary things in life that are just fine to find pleasure in. A good wife, a nice car, a home, a great job, etc. All these things are good, when put in the proper perspective. But when we take these things and delight in them more than we delight in God, we create idols. They begin to demand our time and attention and take our attention away from God. Example-Auburn football. I LOVE Auburn football, but when it steals my joy away from my relationship with Him, I need to confess it! The lie of sin is that it will completely satisfy us. The lie of sin is that it will provide for us only what God Himself will provide. God is the only one who can satisfy us completely.
So back to Piper’s quote, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” How do we glorify God when we are satisfied in Him? Let’s look at Psalm 63 to find an answer.
The background of Psalm 63 is very important to understanding the Psalm. David was in the midst of severe persecution from Absalom. Absalom desired to be king. But there was one problem, David was already king. So Absalom decided to become king by conspiracy. And in 2 Sam 15:13, we learn that “The hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom.” And therefore, David flees into the Judean wilderness. And it is here in the wilderness, where David writes this Psalm. The wilderness is not exactly a place of lush trees and clear mountain streams. It is a dry, desolate land not exactly kind to human beings. But even more than the physical threats, David longs to worship the Lord in His temple once again. David has seen God’s glory in the temple and longs to see it again.
I. David yearns for God’s presence (vv. 1-2).
II. David finds satisfaction with God (vv. 3-5).
Verses 1-2: David yearns for God’s presence
READ VERSE 1
The word for “thirst” in verse 1 is used 10X in the OT and in only two uses is it used in a figurative sense of thirsting after God (here and Psalm 42). All other times it is used for thirsting after literal water. Up to 60% of the body is water. Brain-70%, blood-82%, lungs-90%. Needless to say, the human body needs water. We can go about 40 days without food, but we can only go without water for ___ days. In other words, we need water. We cannot go without water for long.
What David is doing here is using a physical reality as an illustration for a spiritual condition in his heart.
My soul thirsts for you…my soul faints for you. This is basically saying that David’s whole being was longing for God. Even his flesh longed for God. Is it just me or does this sound extremely foreign to you? Do you long for God as David did? Do you long for God so much you can feel it in your flesh?
Let me ask you a question…if the Spirit of God were to disappear from your life, would you miss Him? Obviously He cannot leave us because He was given to us permanently. But theoretically if the Holy Spirit were gone from your life, would you notice it? Since our body so desperately needs water, we are to give it water daily. In the same way, our soul desperately needs God. If you haven’t been in close fellowship with the Lord, do you miss it? If not, why? Why is it that we fill our longing to be happy in God with other things? We fill our longing to be happy in God with sex, our career, material goods, etc. None of these things are inherently wrong, but they can be wrong when we use them in a wrong way. They are wrong when they become an idol. They are wrong when they begin to take the place where only God should be. God is the only One who is worthy of our love and affection. We make these other things an idol when we love them more than we love God.
Most translations translate verse 2 as “because I have seen you in the sanctuary” or thus, etc. But the NET Bible translates the word here as “Yes!” It is a particle that stresses the following statement. In other words, David is stressing the fact that he had seen the Lord in His temple. David was recalling the times when he had been in the Lord’s temple, worshipping Him. David had been in His temple and he had experienced the power and the glory of God. Psalm 96:6 says “Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and glory are in His sanctuary.” God radiates glory and strength. They flow forth from Him. And this is exactly what David saw when he worshipped God in the sanctuary.
“Because your lovingkindness is better than life”-What is David saying here? Because he has seen the glory and power of the Lord in the past, he will praise Him. Because David is so enamored by God that He is now determined to praise God the rest of His life.
Do we believe that God’s lovingkindness is better than life? If we truly believed this, how different would our lives look? Over the past few weeks as I have been working through Psalm 63, I have done a “heart check” as to whether or not I truly desire God more than life itself.
After David realizes how glorious and powerful God is and after he realizes how faithful God has been in his own life, David becomes satisfied. The NIV says, “My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.” In other words, the only time David will find true satisfaction is when David decides to praise God and give Him glory. God is the only one who will truly satisfy us.
Illus-thirsty for water. Have you ever been so thirsty that the only thing that would quench your thirst was water? Once you have a drink, you feel refreshed and renewed. We are to have this same craving for God as we do for water when we are thirsty. This is the image that Christ is attempting to bring up in John 4.
How do we find this same contentment David found? We must first have a hunger for God. Why might we not have a hunger for God? It may be because we are eating snacks before the meal. All the other things are merely secondary to the main course. If we don’t have a hunger and a thirst for the things of God, we are feeding our faces on things that are secondary. We must primarily feast on God. Turn with me to Matthew 5:6. A member of the kingdom of God must feast on God. There is no other choice. This is our only way to be satisfied. And if we are not hungry for God, we must seek to become hungry. We must pray as Psalm 119:18 says, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Thy law.”
"God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
The invitation today is this, “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).
