Pastor Kent. Well, good evening. Good evening. I do want to thank the pastors. I've seen many of you scattered around for entrusting me with the ministry of the word this evening. It is a privilege to preach in any church at any time. It is especially a privilege for me to preach in this church. You all don't know this, but you all have been a great encouragement to me over the years from afar. And so my prayer for this evening is that God by his word might encourage you even as you have encouraged me. Would you pray with me briefly as we turn our attention to Psalm 63? Lord, we have come to behold wonderful things out of your law, and we need the power of your Holy Spirit in order to do that. We pray now that you would pour upon us the grace of your spirit and illuminate the word to our hearts that we might see and taste and know the glory of your son Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen. Let's make sure you all can hear me. Try again. You want me to just talk loud? Okay. I'll try not to move around too much. We'll see how this goes. Well, what comes to mind when you think of home? When you think of home, what comes to mind? Of course, for the Christian, the answer to that question is a little bit complex. When you think of home, you might think of where you grew up. You might think of the house that you'll return to tonight. You might think of a vision of the future that you want to build. And yet as good as each one of those examples of earthly homes might be, we are not at home in this world. We know that because home is defined in scripture essentially as where our Lord is. This is why Paul can write in 2 Corinthians 5, we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So if we're not home, where then are we? Well, according to scripture, we are at present in the wilderness. You know that the paradigmatic journey through the wilderness in scripture is Israel's journey from Egypt to the promised land, a journey through the wilderness. And in Hebrews chapters three and four, we know that Israel's journey is just a picture of the church's journey through this present evil age. In the wilderness, we face enemies, both without and within. the world, the flesh, the devil, they conspire against us to keep us from reaching our eternal home. And if that is the case, then if you are meaning to follow Jesus in this room, and I see so many young people right here, I want you especially to pay attention. If you mean to follow Jesus faithfully and get through the wilderness, you have an urgent question before you. How? How do we get home through the wilderness? Well, Psalm 63 is a psalm for the wilderness. You can see it in the superscript. We're told here that David wrote this psalm when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Now that time period could refer to a couple times in David's life, but given that David refers to himself as the king in verse 11, which you just heard read, it's most likely that he wrote this psalm during the second of those two possibilities, when he was fleeing Jerusalem from his son, Absalom. You might recall this story, you can find it if you want to go read it after this in 2 Samuel 15 and following. Absalom had won the hearts of Israel. He had persuaded them to oppose his father David. He mustered a great army against his father and he forced David to flee Jerusalem into the wilderness. And David responds to all of this suffering by entrusting himself entirely to the Lord. We know this because when the Levites brought the Ark of the Covenant out of Jerusalem into the wilderness, David responds in this way, 2 Samuel 15, 25, and 26. 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 let me see both it and his dwelling place. But if he says I have no pleasure in you, behold, here I am. Let him do to me what seems good to him. How is it that David can entrust himself entirely to God like this? It's essentially because he knows that his only way to get home through the wilderness is to trust God alone. Now, we might know how to get home. I've given you the answer. Can we pray now and leave? No. We know that it's not enough simply to know how to get home. We have to actually get there. We have to actually persevere through the wilderness. We need motives, reasons to fortify our faith and our exclusive trust in God. This essentially is the question that Psalm 63 aims to answer. Why should we trust God alone in the wilderness? Psalm 63 gives us three answers, and these will be the three points of this sermon. Why should we trust God alone in the wilderness? The first answer, he is our only certain hope. Look at verses one through four. You'll see there a piece of this psalm that is probably its most memorable piece, David's vivid description of his longing for God. Of course, it's surprising because David is suffering. He's lost his home, his beloved city, he's running for his life, and the rebel who seeks his life is his very own son. We would expect David to long for many things, but what dominates his prayers in the wilderness is a longing for God. He's conscious of his separation from God's holy place, and it is this that plagues him. He says his soul thirsts for God. His flesh faints for God. His longing is so intense that it isn't contained by his soul, but it spills out into his body. In the wilderness, David wants God more than he wants his circumstances to change. Now, how can that be? What must be true of David that God is uppermost in his desires in this way? The answer, I think, lies in a more neglected part of verse one that we kind of skip over is just the beginning of a prayer. The address to God at the very beginning, it's his opening cry, oh God, you are my God. We shouldn't treat that just as a fitting prayer introduction. If God is not David's God, the whole psalm falls apart. He can't pray it as he does. And to be honest, there's a good reason to question whether David is telling the truth here. David's assertion is so surprising. It's so surprising because as he's leaving Jerusalem, his enemies thought that he was under God's curse. You can look at 2 Samuel 16, where Shammai, who is a member of the household of Saul, comes and follows David and tries to curse him as he's leaving. He says, get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man. The Lord has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul. He thinks, Shimei thinks, that David is being judged by God as he's leaving Jerusalem. And we can press this even further. Friends, the fact that God is anyone's God at all is astounding. No one is righteous. No, not one. Not one of us can lay claim on God as if he owed us something in return. So for David to say this, oh God, you are my God, there must be some warrant, some basis, some objective reality that he is appealing to. And David has that. His basis is God's objective, invincible promise. You can see this in Genesis 17. You can see this throughout the Bible. Second Samuel 7 in particular, God pledges himself to David in a special way by covenant. And then in Acts 2, Peter tells us that David understood these old covenant promises to refer forward to his greater son, Jesus Christ. Of course, we know that in Christ, a new covenant was established in his blood, and it has this as its central promise. You shall be my people. and I will be your God. There it is. There's David's warrant. David embraces these promises of God by faith. His opening cry is possible because of God's promise. His longing for God is the reflex of the heart that has been made new by the Holy Spirit. His certainty that God is his God, even in the wilderness, is possible only because he had received God's covenant promises by faith. And so if you would endure in the wilderness, you must begin, we must begin where David begins. We must begin with God's objective promise. You can try to establish or settle your hope in God on any other foundation. You might think you can hope in God because of your own internal experience. You might think you have hope in God because there's so many evidences of grace in your life. You might think it's because of the material blessings or circumstances which he has bestowed on you. But setting your hope on those things is entirely misguided because all of these things are inherently unstable. On the other hand, God's promise is unshakable bedrock. Friends, embrace that promise by faith. It doesn't matter how prosperous or content you are right now, if God is not your God, you have nothing. But it doesn't matter how much you're suffering, if God is your God, friend, brother, sister, you have everything if God is your God. But someone might say, I want to be confident in God, but my faith is weak. I can feel my grip on his covenant promises slipping. What does David instruct us to do? He would urge you to nourish your faith where God promises to feed it. So David's longing for God, which he expresses in verse one, inclines him in verse two to remember Israel's public worship. See that little word? So, consequently, as a result of this longing, he says, I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. What is the sanctuary? The sanctuary is God's holy dwelling in Israel's midst. Prior to the building of the temple, it was central to Israel's worship. It was where sacrifices were offered to enable Israel to remain in God's holy presence. And in the wilderness, David is consoled by the memory of what he beheld in corporate worship in the sanctuary. He beheld, you see it there, the power and glory and steadfast love of God. David was strengthened by this memory, even to the point of exploding in praise for God in the wilderness, verses three and four. Now, as believers in the new covenant, we don't worship in the tabernacle, but our worship isn't deficient for that reason. It's actually better in public worship through the means of grace. God graciously strengthens our faith. Think about where you hear and see Christ and behold his power and glory. It's as we hear him preached from the scriptures. This is where we behold God's power, glory, and steadfast love. So if our experience in the wilderness erodes our trust in God, if it tempts us to relinquish our hold of him, what should we do? We should prayerfully attend public worship. Come eager. expectant of how the Holy Spirit will minister Christ to you through his word. And so we have a sure and certain hope in God, which is founded on his covenant promises, but, and this is remarkable, looking at verses five and six, God is gracious to give even more than his objective word and promise to us. He also gives us a sense of his satisfaction, a sense of joy in him. Why should we trust God alone in the wilderness? He is our only satisfying hope. Look at verses five and six. We see here that David's longing in verse one is satisfied in verse five. My soul will be satisfied. How? Importantly, It's not that Absalom's rebellion has come to an end. It is not that David has returned home to Jerusalem, his beloved city. It's not that he has a secure and peaceful kingdom once again. Rather, in verse six, David is satisfied when he remembers and meditates on God. God is his fat and rich food, which satisfies his hungry soul. Now I wonder, do you think of God as satisfying in this way? Do you think he is capable of it? If not, you should. This church's confession, which helpfully summarizes the teaching of scripture, puts it this way. God has all life, glory, goodness, and blessedness, in and of himself. This is why God can satisfy. God is not like us. If we want satisfaction, we go outside of ourselves to find it. We need food and water. We need a loving family and friends. We need good work to do. We need entertainment. But God never finds in himself a lack of happiness that he then has to make up. He doesn't have to look outside of himself to be entirely, eternally blessed. He is entirely self-sufficient. Do you know that God is the bottomless fountain of true satisfaction? He has it in and of himself. Every good thing that you might enjoy in this world is only kind of a little picture that wells up from God's bounty. Before anything else ever existed, God was infinitely happy in himself. He didn't create to satisfy some felt need. He didn't need creatures to do something with. He was already incomprehensibly blessed. But when he made us, and this is astounding, when he made us, he made us in his image. Part of what this means is that he designed us to be satisfied in him. He designed us to share in his own bottomless blessedness. And so David drew on these deep wells in God. He drew on the all-sufficient, eternally happy God, which is the way in which he can be satisfied as with fat and rich food, even in the wilderness. Now I wonder, especially you young people, do you think of God in that way? When you think of God, do you think that he is just a lawgiver? That he is, oh, a savior whom you can enjoy forever, but for now, not really? Do you think that other things are better than him in some way? Do you believe that he is the only answer to the emptiness of your soul? On your journey through the wilderness, The trials you face will prove to you that no created thing can fill up your appetite. Young people in particular, ask the older saints around you about their journey. Only the uncreated, all-sufficient one can satisfy the hungry soul. Now you might be thinking, how in the world do we so feast on God like David did? Fortunately, he gives us the answer. In verse six, he says that he meditated on God and remembered God. This word meditate, it just recalls Psalm 1, the blessed man meditates on the law of the Lord day and night. David pondered God as he is revealed in his word. And it was by means of the word, in conjunction with the Holy Spirit, that God fed David's hungry soul. I don't think I need to convince you that you want to be satisfied in God. Pretty straightforward. However, I believe, and I would put money on the fact that each one of us in this room needs renewed, intensified resolve to meditate on God in his word. So much other than God clamors for our attention. the phones in our pockets, the news, gossip, trivialities, even good things in life which just consume a lot of time and energy. Friends, turn your minds to the source of all blessedness. Do it early. Do it often. Go to God in his word. Meditate on it. Ponder it. Consider it. And just in case you think that meditation is the spiritual life hack that you have been searching for all this time, that now finally you will be satisfied in God as David describes here, I would remind you that it is God's sovereign prerogative to bless his word. We can do this. We can prayerfully use the means of grace that he's provided to us to enjoy him, We will not always feel the deep satisfaction which David does, but God does graciously give it in measures to get us to our heavenly home. So we've seen that God and only God can be our satisfying hope. We've seen that he has ordained that we should enjoy him through meditation on his word. But we need to keep following David's line of thought here. If David's opening declaration, oh God, you are my God, was sort of the foundation of the psalm on which it rests, verses seven and eight are its heart. We learn there that confidence in God, satisfaction in God, is only possible when it is founded on God's redeeming grace. So why should we trust God alone in the wilderness? Third point, he is our only saving hope. He is our only saving hope. This will cover verses seven through 11. Verse seven begins, you see that little word, for you have been my help. What David is doing is tying the satisfaction which he has experienced in God in verses five and six to the cause of that satisfaction, which is God's help. More specifically, God's saving help. And as David reflects on God's help, where does his mind turn? but to the sanctuary. He says that in the shadow of God's wings, I will sing for joy. Now that could be a reference to God's generic protection. It certainly is at least that. But I think there might be here an echo of Exodus 25 20. Given the Psalms context, remember David has sent the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem. He's already in verse two remembered the sanctuary where he worshiped God. Now he invokes the shadow of God's wings. Here's what Exodus 25, 20 says. This is where God tells Moses how to design the top of the Ark of the Covenant. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. Their faces one to another toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. Their wings overshadow the mercy seat. In case you're not up on your Old Testament history, the mercy seat was where sacrifices were offered, which enabled sinful Israel to dwell in God's presence. This is where the sacrifices were offered, which enabled David, a sinful man, to commune with God. The doorway to satisfaction in God and to joyful singing is through the mercy seat. Friends, David's Old Covenant language translates seamlessly to our New Covenant age. The mercy seat is gone because it has been fulfilled in Christ's once-for-all atoning sacrifice on the cross. Christ crucified is the shadow in whom we must take refuge. And it's through His death and resurrection that we who have fled to Him for refuge can have confidence that God is our God. In Him, we have access to the soul-satisfying blessedness of communion with God. In Him, we have a perfect High Priest who intercedes for us at God's right hand. He himself is our confidence that God is our God. He is the bread which banishes hunger. He is the drink which banishes thirst. Brothers and sisters, we have a reason to sing for joy in the shadow of God's wings, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ and his all-sufficient sacrifice on behalf of his people. Friend, if you don't know Jesus, If you have not placed your faith in this Jesus, whom you have just heard of, you should know that he shed his blood to reconcile sinners to God. And you can come to him today, turn away from your sins, rely on him alone for salvation. He himself says, come all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. So come, if you are restless, if you lack confidence, especially in your circumstances, He, Jesus Christ, will satisfy. Now, among the many glorious benefits of Christ's death and resurrection is the promise of preservation. Look at verse 8. Throughout Psalm 63, we have read and I've spoken of David's actions. He seeks, he longs, he looks, he praises, he meditates, he remembers, here he clings to God. But for all his clinging, look at the hand that upholds him. God's right hand upholds him. We shouldn't think this is a literal right hand, God does not have a body, but we're meant to connect this symbol to other places in scripture. It's valid to ask, what is this right hand? What does it do? Well, in Isaiah 48, we read that this right hand created the world. In Exodus 15, we read that this right hand redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage. In Romans 8, 34, we read that our Christ is seated at this right hand. The right hand here is God's omnipotent power at work for the saints. So if you are in Christ, God's right hand upholds you. Through all of your trials and troubles in the wilderness, God upholds us. And it is not a weak right hand that upholds us. He will see to it that we arrive safely home. He is willing because of his great love in Jesus Christ. He is able because he is the almighty God who calls into being things that do not exist and who raises the dead. As Jesus himself teaches us in John 10, 27, and 29, I give my sheep eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. It's in that hope and confidence that David awaits the final destruction of his enemies in verses nine through 11. If God was not his God and Christ was not his savior, David could not draw comfort from God's end time justice come to expression in the present. But with God as his God and Christ as his savior, this future judgment gives David hope. that his enemies, those who pursue him through the wilderness, will perish, and he will rejoice in God. Only if you have Christ can this coming judgment be a source of strength in your present wilderness journey. Saints, we have real enemies in the wilderness. Which spiritual enemy most plagues you today? Is it temptation? besetting sin, the world's evils, the devil himself? As you consider that question, remember that the day is coming when your enemies will be destroyed, when we will together rejoice in God. On that day, we will leave the wilderness, we will cross the Jordan, and we will enter the promised land. We will be home. Brothers, sisters, what comes to mind when you think of home? Remember, here we have no lasting city. Here we are in the wilderness. But by God's grace in Jesus Christ, each one of us, if we are in Christ, will come to the city that has foundations. Until we arrive there, let us trust in God alone because he is our only certain hope our only satisfying hope, and our only saving hope. Let's pray together. Lord, we give you thanks for your word. We pray that you would apply it to our hearts now by your spirit as we consider it. It's in the name of Christ that we pray, amen.