Brother Gary Sunday Morning 9/22/13

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 9/22/13

Psa 42:2  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

David described his soul as thirsting for the living God.  Then He asked, “When can I appear before God?”

This Psalm was written during a crisis in David’s life.  It was extreme.  There had been a lot of things transpire in his life.  He had a son that rose up against him as king and David was fleeing from him for his life.  As he fled, his son took the throne and pronounced himself king of Israel.

There are times in our life when we are faced with difficulty.  It gives us an opportunity to seek after God and say, “I am not able to handle this; I need divine intervention in my life.”

David sent this psalm to the chief musician and wanted it sang often.  He wanted to remember how God had helped him in this situation.  The son that rose up against him lost his life and I believe it was a steady grief to David’s heart because he lost his son.

Psa 42:1  To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

Psa 42:2  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

We realize that every one of us has a thirst built into us.  It is a thirst of the soul.  There are other thirsts: there is a thirst for love and family, the thirst as the caribou have for the ocean and saltwater, some have a thirst for viewing the ocean others for creeks and rivers.  This is a thirst of the soul:  My soul thirsts for God.

It is vital that every one of us acknowledges our thirst for God.  It is dangerous to quench it and allow a thirst for other things to take its place. 

David said, “I am thirsting for the living God.” 

This week we had a man visit us to bring something; he was doing a nice, kind deed.  I asked if we could pay him and he said no.  I asked if I could make him a cup of coffee and he stood around and wanted me to know about his and his wife’s heartbreak. 

There is only one that takes care of heartbreak and disappointment and that is God.  We are in a position over and over again to say, “God, I am thirsting for God.  My exact situation in life is positioning me that I must reach the living God.”

When can I appear before God?  I believe that God is waiting for every soul in this thought.  God wants every soul to try to get to Him.  For those that desire to reach God, God is waiting for men and women to cry out to Him.

The distress of my soul, this crisis in my life, this burden that I have…  I don’t know that David realized that his son would lose his life in what he was pursuing to do.  Yet we understand that people make choices that not only cause them to have great losses but sometimes cost them their life.

David’s very own son had turned from him and from God.  There is nothing that will burden the heart of a parent like knowing that one of your children is going astray.  Everyone in this life that has a son or daughter going astray know that there is ‘nothing sadder in all creation than a soul in isolation’.  This son had positioned himself against God and also against David.

We have some of our family that are unapproachable.  Sometimes there are walls that go up and even if you talk to them they cannot hear.  This son had positioned himself so that David could not talk to him. 

There had been terrible disgraces in David’s family.  We don’t have any control over what has happened in our families in the past.  I cannot allow my families’ sin to cause me embarrassment, but I can certainly learn from it.

David had confidants that chose to work for his good and other that chose to work for his evil.

You may have a lot of things going on in your life that are unknown to me but they are not unknown to God.  You may have prayed for certain things that have not come to pass.  It could be the voice of the enemy is saying, “Is God really real?”  It may be there is someone of your acquaintance that is saying that.

Psa 42:3  My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

Psa 42:4  When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

There are times when you must pour out your soul to God.  Tell him how you have worshipped and been there when it was the time of praise. 

Psa 42:5  Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

Have you ever felt that your soul was disquieted?  Have you felt that there is unrest in your soul?  It is vital that we have soul rest and know how to calm our soul before God.  It is vital that we know how to get to Him when our soul is disquieted.

Disquieted:  roaring.  Have you ever felt your soul and felt that you (speaking with my grandsons in mind) had Thomas the train for a heart and that train was just moving and moving?  I don’t vision it as four inches long but as a locomotive on the track.  The old ones were steam fired and caused the energy to get to the wheels with the mechanism that I am talking of.

Everything in David’s soul was roaring.  Then David got a hold of himself.  Let us remember to get a hold of our self and hope in God.  “For I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”

Psa 42:6  O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

God says in His word that He has made a book of remembrance.  Sometimes we need to make a book of remembrance of what God has done for us.  It is so easy to forget what God has done for us. 

I’m going to talk of David’s book.  “First I’m going to remember what God did in Jordan.”  The children of Israel had crossed the red sea and spent a long time wandering in the wilderness.  God moved on Joshua and told him to not be dismayed but to be encouraged. 

May God help you to, as I preach this, remember some things that God has done for you.  We thank God that He delivered us from sin. 

God says, “It is a time for you to come to spiritual maturity.”  One time the children of Israel wanted to get a leader and return to Egypt.  I think of the song the choir sings, “Shall I go back into the world?  No, no, not I.” 

Unless you follow God with all your heart and measure to all that God wants you to then when the enemy presents himself and says it is easiest back where the garlic and the onions are, you will be wanting to turn back.  Remember the big grapes are over in Canaan. 

May God help us to have big spiritual fruit: a big amount of love and joy. 

David said, “I’m going to remember what God did in Jordan.”  God said to Joshua, “It is time to cross Jordan and to get over into the Canaan land.  Joshua instructed the priest to get ready to cross over.  There were a dozen of them and when they put their feet into that water, the water began to roll back. 

David wanted to remember that.  The Jordan was full and was up to the top of its banks.  Think of our river when it is up to the top of its season and logs are floating down it. 

As they went it was a wall of water on the side.  It was a high wall of water.  The priests went out and were men of courage.  They went right out to the middle and over onto the other side.  Joshua said, Lets put a stack of rocks in the middle and an altar on the other side in remembrance of what God has done.

Don’t forget what God has done.  Anyone can sing when the sun is shining bright and things are going well.  When the difficulties come we want to have a book of remembrance written of what God has done for us and what God did at Jordan.

When people trust God then over and over He gives the victory.

Mizar means, that little hill.  No one seems to have an identity with what David was talking about.  There were a lot of little hills.  My thought is that there was a little hill that God met with David on.  There was a hill that God met with Abraham on.  He met with Moses on a hill.  There are times when we must have an identity with God.  Moses was out herding sheep on the back side of nowhere. 

When we are on the back side of nowhere it would be impossible to tell what mountain that God met with us on.  I still remember shutting off my power saw and hearing my father pray on a mountain somewhere.

I remember my father’s mountain:  One day after my mother had prayed for 8 or 9 years my dad came to a realization that he needed a savior.  My dad suffered many things in his life.  One time he was so sick that he was unable to work.  He thought it was heart trouble.  

I don’t know how long it lasted.  His cattle began to die, his pigs began to die and everything went worse.  My mother climbed the stairs and asked, “Do you want me to pray for you.”  He answered, “No I don’t.” 

Out on the hillside I don’t know how many years later, on what we call ‘the grassy hill’ he bowed at a stump and said, “God if there is a God I want you to tell me.  I don’t want some woman or some preacher telling me.  I want you to tell me.” 

One morning when he awoke God spoke, “This is your time.”  He went to the barn and prayed.  God meets with people out on the hill side.  He can meet with them anywhere. 

David said, “I’m going to remember Mizar, that little hill.”  Don’t forget what God has done for you.

“It is no secret what God will do.”

Deep calleth unto deep.  Every one of us in this audience know the greater the depth of my need, the more vital that we have an identity with reality. 

We live in a society that has left us with a lot of cliché’s like, “Everything is just great.”  I don’t think that things are just great in America. 

I am not going to deal with the moral crises in America.  People have no one to turn to, their grandchildren are abused, they are abused, they lose jobs and there is no place to go, the cliché needs to be thrown out.  The reality is for an individual to say, “I have great needs, my country has great needs, my family has great needs.” 

That doesn’t mean you are moaning and complaining, it means, I have a touch with reality.  Someone brought in a request for a child in this community that doesn’t have a dad.  The cross in the first crossing means that two little children were left for a grandma to raise.  Things are not great.

I prayed for a young man that was sentenced to murder for driving drunk and killing two young men on the highway.  I thought as I prayed, “I wonder where he took his first drink.”  Sin takes people where they don’t want to go and leaves them where they don’t want to stay.

Psa 42:7  Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Deep calls to deep:  in order to get an answer from God there must be an urgency.  There must be a recognition: “Dear God I really need help form you.”  There must be an honesty: “I am not up to the challenge that is before me, I need help from God.”

The thirst of the soul:  I have a deep hunger and thirst for God.  False doctrine will not be pushed down the throat of an individual that is seeking after God.  False doctrine is attractive to those that are seeking a way out.  The only way up is down.

If we realized that we were close to bankruptcy but were on a vein of gold that was big we would go with urgency to the vein and dig wouldn’t we.

Psa 42:8  Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

When you are desperate before God, “God I really need you.”  Now is the time to pray.  For these precious families with young children, now is the time to pray.  “We have this moment to hold in our hands and to touch as it slips through our fingers like sand.”

The reality is that God has promised that He will command His loving kindness in the daytime and give a song in the night.

Deep calleth unto deep:  you know why David could leave us this beautiful psalm that we could call an exhortation was because in his deep distress he called upon God and kept it up.  God’s loving kindness kept him.

I love hymn stories.  I wish that everyone that had written a song had sent me the song and the story behind it.  I was reading the other day of a couple ministers that were holding a revival and the tent fell down, the storm moved in and everyone started getting wet. 

Brother Naylor crawled under and helped the sisters get out of the tent but they didn’t have their hats.  Brother Naylor crawled back under and got them their hats.  Brother Naylor and Brother Warren secured a place where the sisters could stay and be dry and warm. 

Their sources of light ran out of oil, Brother Warren and Brother Naylor slept in the tent and battled on.  That night God gave the song, “We will press the battle on.”

Deep called unto deep:  if you will dig deep then you will get a song in the night.  If you will dig deep, the sun will come up and the grace of God will shine bright for you.

David suffered much; his losses were great.  God restored him to the throne. And God provided.

God gives us an opportunity to know God in the good times.  We have had a lot of good times.  During those good times, there have been temptations come.  In those times of temptations, cry out to God and say, “The times are good, but I am thirsting for the living God.”

There have been times of crisis.  What are we going to do in the time of crisis?  There is only one thing to do: go right on thirsting of God and crying out to Him.  Go right on determined to press the battle on.  Remember what God did in Jordan.  Remember what God did to Moses and the battle, remember the little hill.

Remember at least two little hills, one where someone else met God and one where you met God.  I can’t close this thought of the little hill without thinking of the hill we know as Mt Calvary.  That hill where God’s own son paid the supreme price for all of our needs to be met.

That thirst of the soul, don’t stop it or allow it to be quenched until you can say, “My soul is satisfied.”