We are told that when Theodore Beza, one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation, could not sleep, he would invariably recite Psalm 63 so that even though he could not sleep he would be filled with a spirit of joy and hope. Beza’s experience was not unique. Through the centuries as the people of God have weathered challenges and faced uncertainties, the God whose love this psalm proclaims has been the foundation for their hope.
In the psalm’s center section, David proclaims: “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips…My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me” (v. 5,8). As our church prepares to open the next chapter in its life with a new Senior Pastor, David’s words remind us that our hope is in our God whose love both satisfies us and sustains us.
The love of God satisfies us. The worst may bring out the best in the people of God. It did in David’s case. This psalm concerns the time when Absalom, David’s son, mounted a rebellion against his father causing David to flee for his life. Suddenly, David was a man whose life was filled with perplexities and difficulties. Such experiences have a winnowing effect - reducing life to its essentials - and just as the compass needle seeks true north, so the believing heart is drawn to seek shelter in the love of God. We are reminded that while life is dear, God’s love is dearer. To dwell with God is better than life at its best - even life at ease, in a palace, in health, in honor, in wealth, or in pleasure.
David says there is found in the love of God a richness, a sumptuousness, a fullness of soul-filling joy that is comparable to the richest food our bodies can be nourished by. The Hebrews were more fond of fat than perhaps many of us are in our cholesterol-sensitive world. Their highest ideal of a festive provision is embodied in these two words: fatness and rich food. A soul that is hopeful in God and full of His favor is one that happily feeds on the best of the best!
In our busy and distracted world, this is easier said than done. C. S. Lewis wrote about this with great insight. In his essay, "The Weight of Glory," Lewis decried this tendency we have to relegate the prize of being satisfied with God’s love to second, third, or fourth place. He says, “We are such half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
It is easy for us who have been in the church for a while to fool ourselves on this point! Delighting ourselves in God is not necessarily the same thing as involving ourselves in Christian service or upholding Christian standards. Nor is delighting ourselves in God the same thing as having an interest in church history, Christian literature, Christian music, or studying Christian orthodoxy. Our involvement in such things can be the fruit of knowing true delight in the Lord, to be sure, but they are not the same thing.
Our problem is that we are prone to pursue even good and honorable things above God. We are prone to settle for less than the only love that satisfies - the love of God. This is why we spend so little time in the private reading of God’s Word, prayer, and worship. And so, because God loves us and wants the best for us, He is always having to prove to us the emptiness of satisfying ourselves with substitutes for Him. Jesus summed it up this way: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5.8). That’s what God wants for those He has set His love on; in all of life, He is at work to purify our delight in Him.
The love of God sustains us. This, too, is an ingredient of our hope according to David. The only hope for those whose love is too weak to seek God’s best is, as David says in Psalm 63, in God whose “right hand upholds me.” God’s love will sustain us. What a balm of comfort! God has set His steadfast covenant love on His people. He has wedded himself to us forever! That means God’s love is a delight that pursues us through thick and thin. God simply will not let us go. In the words of Francis Thompson’s famous poem, “The hound of heaven has tracked us down.”
Remember, enjoying the fat and rich food of God’s satisfying love is not something we have to earn. It’s free! It’s not something we have to rise to because God’s love, in Jesus His Son, has come down to us. Jesus died for our sins that separated us from God. Jesus accepted the blame and punishment that our guilt deserves. Jesus invites the weary soul to dine with Him. He says, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
