Just as your body thirsts for life-giving water, your soul thirsts for the water of life, Jesus. Sadly, many live their lives with that thirst unquenched. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah turns to what's been called the Psalm of the Soul, Psalm 63, to share King David's heart for quenching thirsty souls. In fact, Thirsty Souls is the title of today's message, and here's David to introduce it.
And thank you for joining us today. In the psalm which was referenced a few moments ago, David cries out, O God, you are my God. My soul thirsts for you. And the Bible tells us that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed of God. There is such a thing as spiritual thirst, and we're going to talk about it today because it has a lot to do with your soul.
We'll get to that in just a moment, but first, a reminder that the resource for the month of October is the brand new book, The Battle for Your Soul, 240-page hardcover book with Stan Strong bookmark included. And in this book, you can identify the enemy's strategies without becoming obsessed with them. You can rest in assurance of your eternal victory secured by Jesus Christ. And you can understand that spiritual warfare leads to greater peace and freedom. This book is available now through Turning Point when you send a gift of any size during this month.
It's also in bookstores everywhere, but if you want it delivered to your own home, send a gift to Turning Point and request it, and we're happy to do it. We're happy to make sure you get a copy of this book as we go into this fall season. We believe that your spiritual walk with the Lord will be enhanced by the truth of this book, and we want you to have it. Thank you for being an investor in the ministry of the gospel through Turning Point. And now here is part one of a message about thirsty souls from Psalm 63.
What's wrong with me, she said. That was Kara Golden's question a few years ago. She had terrible acne, zero energy, and she was 45 pounds overweight. She analyzed her habits and figured out that her culprit was diet soda. She'd been drinking cans of this stuff every day for years, and she was addicted.
When she read the full list of ingredients, she didn't recognize any of them, and she decided that was really her problem.
So she quit drinking diet soda, switched to water, and within three months, she felt like a different person. The problem, as we all know, is that when she switched to water, water can be boring. And so she began experimenting with infusing fruit into her water. After three years of hard work in her kitchen, Kara created an unsweetened drink that appealed to her friends, and she thought it had commercial promise, but when she presented it to the beverage industry, they weren't very impressed and weren't interested in helping her, so she began her own company. And in the early days, she would take orders and load cases into her Jeep and deliver them to stores and even stock the shelves in the stores.
She and her husband spent their weekend date nights discussing how to launch the beverage nationwide. Those strategy sessions, she said, gave her valuable information and helped her create fans for her drink, which was called HINT, H-I-N-T. It's still out there. I haven't seen it in the store, but I found it on the internet. In a world where millions of people are trying to quench their spiritual thirst with toxic mixtures, I want to evangelize for the water of life.
I want to tell you what the Bible says about quenching your thirsty soul. And what I'm going to tell you from the Bible is not a hint. It's an essential. We all want inner satisfaction. Many people do not realize that when God created us body, soul, and spirit, he used parallel patterns.
He made us with physical wants and needs, and then he created the very elements that meet those needs. For example, he created our bodies to require water, and without it, we get thirsty. He used the same pattern when he created our souls. He created us with spiritual thirst that can only be satisfied by himself. And many people go through their whole life and never realize that.
The thirst that you have, isn't there something more that you say once in a while in your life? That thirst is a thirst for Jesus Christ. He tells us that in his book. He tells us that he is the water of life. And the biblical writers were very clear about this if we just read what the scripture says.
For instance, the prophet Isaiah said this about spiritual needs of the people of his day. He said in Isaiah 29, 8, It shall even be as when a thirsty man dreams, and look, he drinks, but he awakens, and indeed he is faint, and his soul still craves. The prophet Jeremiah said it this way, My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jesus, through the word of God and through Jeremiah, his prophet said that what people do is they reject him and then they create something that is worthless to take his place, cisterns that hold no water.
He began his ministry, Jesus did on this note, saying to his followers, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Ladies and gentlemen, I tell you today, if ever there was a world that was thirsty, it's our world now. For we've tried everything there is to try, only to discover it doesn't satisfy. God created your soul and mine with a yearning for love a desire for pleasure an appetite for nourishment and a longing for significance And without the Lord there is absolutely no way to fill those needs with entertainment and materialism and popularity and success, relationships and self-destructive habits. As the prophet Jeremiah said, we dig out broken cisterns to replace the living water of the Lord Jesus.
David dealt with these yearnings in Psalm 63, and that's the passage of Scripture I want to focus our attention on today because someone has said that Psalm 63 is the psalm of the soul. David makes three great statements about his soul in Psalm 63. In verse 1 he says, My soul thirsts for you. in verse 5 he says, my soul shall be satisfied. And in verse 8 he said, my soul follows close behind you.
When our souls thirst for the Lord, they will be satisfied. And when they are satisfied, we will want to follow close after the Lord.
So in the 63rd Psalm, verses 1 and 2, we read about this thirsty soul. It was written, this Psalm, during a difficult season in David's life, The title tells us he was in the wilderness of Judah. He was cut off from the comforts of home and living in a dry, barren land. It was there in the desert that David discovered what his soul needed the most. Listen to these verses from Psalm 63.
Oh God, you are my God. Early will I seek you. my soul thirsts for you my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water so I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory one writer pictures David standing outside of his tent in the wilderness it's at night and the moon and the stars are shining over the barren desert stretching into the darkness and the silence. David is lonely and he's weary. The emptiness around him mirrors the ache within him.
In the middle of that desert, his thirst did not drive him away from God. It drove him toward God. In the wilderness, David discovered what thirsty souls discover, that only God can satisfy the deepest need of the human heart. Notice how personally David begins. He prays, oh God, my God.
He doesn't speak of God as a distant deity, far away, untouchable. He speaks of him as his own God. And he uses three words to describe his need for God. First, he says he seeks God. He says, early will I seek you.
This expression in Hebrew is related to the word dawn, like the dawn of the day. And it literally means that the earliest thought he has, David says, as he wakes up there in the desert, is his desire for God. That phrase has such an impact throughout the history of the church that in Orthodox churches, Psalm 63 is called the morning psalm because it says early in the morning will I seek you. And for centuries, it has held a prominent place in the church's morning worship, and it is regularly chanted as part of the liturgy and churches that do liturgy. The second expression David uses is thirst.
First of all, he says, I seek for you. Then he says, my soul thirsts for you. He looks around at the parched desert where there aren't any wells of water, and he feels as though it represents his own life. There is this unquenchable thirst within him, and he longs for that thirst to be satisfied in God. Then he uses the third expression, longing for God.
My flesh longs for you, he says, in a dry and thirsty land. And the word longing literally means to faint. David said, I am so weak, I am about to faint spiritually because of my need for you. What a picture he paints for us in these three early verses. The dry and thirsty land surrounding him becomes a picture of his soul apart from God.
I don't know if you've ever felt like your soul was a desert place, but if you've ever been there, you know what David was experiencing. To understand this, we need to fill in part of the story of David's life at the time when he wrote this psalm. He was running away from Absalom. The record tells us that as David was leaving Jerusalem, Abiathar and Zadok, some of the priests, went back into the sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and without David's permission, they lifted it on their shoulders and carried the Ark of the Covenant out of the city to the desert. As they crossed the Kidron Valley, David realized they had brought the Ark of the Covenant out into the wilderness, where he was fleeing from his own son, Absalom.
Now, if you study the Old Testament, you know that the Ark of the Covenant was one of the most sacred pieces of furniture in the tabernacle, because it symbolized the visible presence of God among his people. When the ark was absent, the people of Israel suffered. Remember the Philistines stole it one time and took it away. And during that period of time, the Philistines suffered because they had the sacred ark and Israelites suffered because they didn't have it. And if I were David and I had heard, I'm out in this wilderness and I'm having this bad day.
You know what, David, they brought the ark of the covenant out here to be with you. I would say, yay, bring it on. I need everything I can get. Whatever help you can give the Ark of the Covenant, okay, that'll be fine. But notice what happened.
2 Samuel 15, 25, Then the king, David, said to Zadok, Carry the Ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and show me both it and his dwelling place. And then later on in verse 29, We read that Zadok and Abiathar carried the ark of God back to Jerusalem and they remained there David sent the ark back because he knew first of all that it wasn supposed to be in the desert It was supposed to be where it was. But he also, more importantly, understood that he needed more than a symbol of God's presence. He needed God's presence.
The ark was good, but he didn't want the ark as much as he wanted God. And he was saying in his heart, if God wants me to survive this, I will survive it. And if he doesn't, I will not. But what I need right now is not the Ark of the Covenant. I need the living God to be with me.
And that is one of the great lessons of the wilderness, in my estimation. In moments of heartbreak, loss, fear, or uncertainty, you don't need something to hang around your neck. Crosses are good. I don't have any issue with them. Unless you think that the cross around your neck is able to do something it can't do.
Symbols can't save. Only the Savior can save. Symbols can remind you of the Savior. But you know, I know a lot of people, you do too, they think wearing a cross around their neck is some kind of a good deal for them. If they keep doing that, they're going to be okay.
Not so. You don't need the cross around your neck. You need the cross in your heart. You need Jesus Christ in your life. And David understood that.
He said, send the symbol back. I don't need the symbol. I need the reality. I need the substance. I need Jesus.
You need God to draw near and carry you through the wilderness. And that's what David discovered.
So he had a thirsty soul. Then in verses three through five, we discover he had a satisfied soul. All of us know what it's like to be thirsty for God, but we don't have to stay that way. We can be satisfied, and that's what David discovered. Notice verses 3 through 5.
Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you. Thus I will bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with morrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips. David's life is hanging in the balance.
He's lost the kingdom, at least he thinks he has, been betrayed by his own son. It's one of the darkest days in his life. And then he realizes that he hasn't lost the most important thing in his life. And he says to God, God, your loving kindness is better to me than my life. Here is David comparing two very good things, life itself and the loving kindness of God.
And he comes to the conclusion that while life is precious, God's loving kindness is even better. Think about that for a moment. For most people, life is our most important possession. We do everything we can to protect it, preserve it, and enjoy it. But David says that the steadfast love of God is even better than life.
The word translated loving kindness refers to God's faithful, unfailing love. It is his covenant love, A love that never gives up, that never changes, and never goes away. And no matter what was happening with David in the wilderness, God's love was there. And David knew it. Human love can disappoint us.
Circumstances can change. Even life itself can be taken away. But God's love remains constant, and it never ends. It endures forever. It endures even beyond this life, if you know Jesus.
and because of God's great love, David says, verse 4 and 5, Thus I will bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. When God's love fills the soul, praise becomes the natural response. David says, My mouth shall praise you with joyful lips.
What an interesting thing that is. And we see this in so many of these passages about the soul, that praise enters into the discussion. David knows about this, and he shows us many different ways to praise God. In the first six verses alone, we see praise flowing from every part of his being. He praises God with his lips.
Verse 3, my lips shall praise you. He praises God with his hands. I will lift up my hands in your name. Verse 4, he praises God with his mouth. my mouth shall praise you.
Verse five, with his lips, with his hands, with his mouth, David praises God. I know that there's a lot of discussion over the years in our churches about what you should do when you want to praise God.
Some of you raise your hands and you may wonder, is that okay? It is absolutely okay. And it's okay because it's biblical. That's what you should do.
Now you don't have to do it, but you can do it with his lips, with his hands, with his mouth. David praises God. When you're thirsty for God, one of the things that draws you into his presence is your praise. When you praise God, God comes down to be with you in a special way. I remember 20 years ago, 30 years ago almost, I had cancer.
Some of you were around at that time. I don't talk about it very much. Haven't talked about it in a long time. but it was a pretty serious time. It was lymphoma cancer and it was stage four.
I was very concerned and I noticed people ask me questions. You know, when you're sick like that and you're a public person, people have no problem asking you whatever they want to ask you. And they asked me whether I ever cried during that experience. And I didn't like that question because real men don't cry. But it's been long enough now that I'm over that, and I remember that for a while I didn't cry.
God had prepared me for what was coming. I had a pretty solid attitude about it. I had good people around me, and I was doing all right until Easter Sunday. Never forget it. You see, at that particular time, I was going through a procedure called stem cell transplant and that very misunderstood It simply this They put toxic cells in your body that are supposed to kill the cancer cells you have Unfortunately, those toxic cells also kill your white cells if you don't get them replenished.
So before you do that, they extract from you bags full of white cells, 13 bags of white cells they took out of me. They put them in a freezer, and then after they put those dark cells in to take away the cancer, as soon as that's done, they replenish your body with white cells or you would die. I was on that Easter Sunday at the lowest point of that process. My white cells were almost invisible. And I remember getting up to go out into the living room of the hotel where I was staying.
We were allowed to stay in a hotel as long as it was 20 minutes from the hospital so that if you needed to get to the hospital, you could get there right away. I went out into the living room, and I thought, that's Easter, man, I've got to find something on television. And I started to look for a service. I happened to be able to find a service. I don't remember which one it was, but I knew that it was a good one because they had great, beautiful music and worship and celebration, so I stopped there and I watched.
and suddenly, without warning, I began to sob uncontrollably. I'll never forget that. Easter Sunday. It caught me completely off guard. Donna came in from the other room and she said, are you okay?
And I said, no, I'm not okay. I want to be in church. I don't want to be here. I belong in church. This is Easter Sunday.
At first, I thought I was just missing you guys, missing the church. But as I sat there and listened to those songs about the risen Christ, I realized I was missing something much deeper than that. My soul was so thirsty that day. I had spent weeks thinking about treatments and appointments and medications and all the challenges that come with a battle like that. But that Easter morning, my attention was lifted away from my circumstance and back to the Lord.
And as I worshiped, something changed. I was still sick. I was still in a hotel room, still had a difficult road ahead of me, but my soul began to find satisfaction in God again. And you know, I've never had a resurrection experience, but that's the closest thing that ever happened because on that Easter Sunday, my white cell count went way up 28,000. It was almost zero.
I had a resurrection. I never experienced anything like that in my life And that is exactly what david is saying in this psalm He's not sitting at a banquet table. He's sitting in the wilderness But he is saying my soul shall be satisfied because i'm going to worship god And he lift his hands and he lifts his lips in his mouth and he worships the lord The thirsty soul is followed by the satisfied soul and at the end of the psalm the committed soul the more we allow God to satisfy our needs, the more we become committed to him. The more we realize this is what I've been waiting for. This is what I've been looking for.
This is what my soul has been desiring. To know him in that way, to have that kind of fellowship with him, to the sense that you feel like he's almost in the room with you. Look with me at verses six through eight. David says when I remember you on my bed I meditate on you in the night watches because you have been my help therefore in the shadow of your wings I will rejoice My soul Follows close behind you your right hand upholds me You know i've told you before there's some value in doing a journal But journals help you to remember what god does And when you remember what God has done for you in the past, it has a very important impact on you in the present. Because you realize the God who did that for me back there is the same God who is now in my life.
He did it then. He can do it now. God, what you did in the past was so incredible. I remember that. Remember me now as you remembered me then.
And we hear ourselves sometimes say, do it again, Lord. Do it again like you did before. We'll have the second part of this message tomorrow on the Tuesday edition of Turning Point. I hope you'll be with us then. Hey, I hope you're getting Turning Point's magazine and devotional.
The October edition is very special. It goes right along with what we're talking about on the radio. It interacts with the book, shows you the things that are going to happen this month as we roll out this new book. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful piece of printed poetry, if you will. And I wish you were getting yours.
If you're not, I want to help you do it. Simply, when you get in touch with us, tell us, please send me the magazine, and it will come to you in the next issue that comes off the press. You can also get the devotional material downloaded into your internet box and have it there every day. I tell everybody it's fresh bread. They're for you Monday through Friday and one on the weekend.
We'll see you tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening. For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series, The Battle for Your Soul, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected. Our monthly magazine, Turning Points, and our daily email devotional.
Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new book, The Battle for Your Soul, 31 Biblical Secrets of Spiritual Warfare. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the New International and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the battle for your soul on Turning Point with Dr.
David Jeremiah.
