We are going to look at Psalm 63 today, but in particular, I want to focus on verse five, which I find to be a very remarkable sentence, not the least of which because I grew up in the 80s, and we were told that fat is bad for you. And so I see this as a kind of psalmic vindication. of the most delicious parts of the animal. But this is what it says there in verse five. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. The fat soul here is a thing to be reckoned with for sure. I would wish for all of you to have the fattest, most satisfied, most entirely contented souls possible. It is a very good thing and would do very much toward your battles with sin. and your work towards fruitfulness in this life. If we could say the same thing with David. Now the whole Bible can actually be understood along these lines. This is no secondary matter. According to Romans chapter 1, In the course of man's history and what has fallen out with man, which I take to be there in Romans 1, it's simply an expression of this is what has happened to man, rather than trying to find a specific point in time. It began at the fall, but it recapitulates itself with every generation. This is what has happened with men. And according to Romans 1, what has happened with men, what has fallen out with men, is we have rejected the knowledge of God. Verses 22 and 23 of chapter 1 say this, claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. And you notice what comes next though, the very next verse it says, therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their heart to impurity. And I just want you to notice the connection between these two things, okay? Obviously there is a connection of punishment We are handed over to our sins. It's actually a punishment. We look at those sins and we think, oh, we're going to be punished for those things. And often we will be. OK, that's that's that is true. However, that that misses some of the point there. One of the things that has taken place there in the human heart is that the human heart has been corrupted. OK, so there's two parts to this. We have rejected God as God. We have rejected him as being separate and holy and worthy and awesome and the chief of our affections and so forth. And the second thing is that he has handed us over to lustful hearts. But my question is, where did the lust come from? Where did the lust come from? Where did we develop this craving, grasping, sucking wound in our souls that is profoundly unsatisfied? The two things are certainly connected. We become lustful creatures. I'm gonna use the word lust a lot to describe the opposite of what David is describing there. And the word lust just simply means to desire what is unlawful. But we are lustful creatures because we have exchanged for the glory of God. We ejected God from our hearts, we worshiped birds, and our hearts, consequently, as it says in verse 21, are darkened. They've been malformed, misshapen, they've become troubled. That's what happens when you reject the creator from your soul, from your affections, from your worship, from your attention. Beloved, I want you to see this about the transfiguration. God not only sent his son to simply die on the cross for your sins, he did that. He not only sent the son to die on the cross and to be raised, he did that. But he also sent the most beloved son of God to once again fill the hearts of man with the glory of God. To fill the sucking lust in every chest. and turn the flow back on by the power of the Spirit. As Jesus himself says in John chapter seven, whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. This is the very opposite of evil lust. It is the property of the believers in Jesus, he says. The suck has been switched to flow. The result is life. The result is joy. The result is peace. The result is all the good things. The result is what we simply call eternal life. That's the work of the spirit in our lives. Such a soul that is overflowing like a stream, like a river. Such a soul is a powerful and glorious thing in the kingdom of God. One such soul can do many mighty works in this life. And that's what is being described here in Psalm 63, maybe using different language, but this is the type of life that we are after. This is why he took his disciples up on the mountain to see something truly glorious, why Moses was summoned up. to change the shape of their hearts and set them on the right course. But let us briefly go back and look at the context of Psalm 63 itself. Psalm 63 is apparently about David when he was in the wilderness of Judah, and because he spent a lot of time in the wilderness of Judah during the time when Saul was persecuting him, during the time when Absalom was persecuting him, it's difficult to nail down exactly when this is. I believe I have mentioned to you before that the wilderness of Judah is not like the wilderness of Mount Hood, which we might, on a given day of recreation, want to head up there and enjoy a peaceful time of recreation, maybe even swim in a lake and sit beside a tree and read a book of poetry or something like that. That is not very much what the wilderness of Judah is like. It is very much a desolate waste. When there is no rain, and because of the pattern of how rain falls there, which is very common, when there is no rain there, it is a desolate waste. Sometimes it will rain abundantly. That happens twice a year. You'll see in scripture, it'll talk about the early and the latter rains. And when that happens, the whole thing turns into this beautiful, glorious green thing. And that lasts for about 45 minutes. And then it goes back to being brown again, just like Southern California. That's when all of the real estate people come out of their houses and take all the pictures. And you're convinced that living in Southern California is just like living in the Garden of Eden. But really, it's just for that 45 minutes, when that is like that. But what happens during that time is the grass shoots up, the streams will flow with water, shepherds will move their sheep to that region and find grass to feed their sheep, but that is not the norm. Rain comes only, as I said, in those two short seasons. Other than that, it is a bare-bones desert. So when David says there at the beginning of this psalm, O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, As in a dry and weary land where there is no water, you need to imagine Him looking out over a very desolate waste. This is the soul's natural state without God. Desolate, thirsty, parched, weakened. We could multiply that. Now David himself remembers while he's out there, he remembers times of great satisfaction. Again, not physically, so he's seeing this physical experience, he's experiencing something physically, but he is calling to mind what matters most, which is his spiritual experience, his relationship with God. It reminds him of that, okay? So this is, he says, he recalls in verse two, I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. I actually here prefer the New King James, which I think is just simply a more literal translation of the Hebrew. So I have looked for you in the sanctuary in order to see, to see your power and your glory. He was in and about the sanctuary of the tribe of Judah. He couldn't go inside. Right? And actually, during his day, the tabernacle was in disarray. But he's been there to behold the power and glory. He wanted to see a glimpse of God. He knew the story of Moses. He knew that Moses, beholding the face of God, his face shone with glory all the rest of his days. He knew that Moses on the mountain did not eat or drink at all for 40 days and came down stronger than ever. And when Moses died at the end of his life, it was not because of ill health. It was because God said, you're done. Check your time card. We'll see you on the other side. That's the only reason he came down full of life. He came down radiant with glory. And that's the story. that he remembers as he himself would stand there offering the sacrifices and performing the rituals and thinking of the wondrous glory that lies on the inside, longing to see that, knowing that that is the inheritance of the saints of God. I look for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. But it's not merely an aesthetic privilege, seeing the glory of the Lord. Surely it is that in the full, but it is also a relational privilege, okay, that he speaks of here. It's not just something to see, it's whom he knows. Because in verse three he says, because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. And this overflows, first and foremost, in praise and gratitude. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you, so I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. And we all know that it's not possible to watch a really good movie or read a really, really good book without desperately wanting to watch it with someone else. wanting to tell someone else about it, to share the experience? How much more our experience of the glory of God? It must overflow in praise. This is what C.S. Lewis noted in his little book on the Psalms. As he's reading through and he just sees all of these calls to praise, calls to praise, calls to praise, his first thought was that, man, it seems like God is quite vain. to demand all this praise, but what he came to realize is that what God is calling for human beings to do is to complete the experience by overflowing in praise. That completes the experience of the enjoyment of God's glory. We have to tell about what we've seen and heard. That's part of the joy in it. Now David then, and remember he's still in the wilderness, considers that such experiences with God are truly satisfying to the soul. We come to our sermon verse here. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. That's ESV. It's different than what we chanted. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. Now I don't know what John the Baptist looked like, but I'm sure he wasn't a very chubby guy. He spent a long time in the wilderness. From his youth, he went out to the wilderness. His body almost certainly did not have too much fat on it. The wilderness is not a place over... It's not like Kauai, you know, where you can just kind of like roll over in your hammock and grab... And you just get like a dull whip, you know, like just... You know, or you just like... And then, you know, Mai Tais show up or something like that. It's not like that. It's like barren. There's nothing there. He ate locusts. He found wild honey, okay? But in the same wilderness, David considers how while a body might waste away, the soul can continue to be nourished and contented. Now here we touch a common theme in the Psalms, which is meditation. And it's often recommended to us by the psalmist just by their own example, sometimes by precept, sometimes by description of what the godly man is like, but often by their own example. And here David is in the wilderness. He's not in the sanctuary. He wants to be there. That is a place where the soul gets filled. The soul finds its nourishment, but glory to God, you can access the loving kindness of God through your memory, through meditation. And that's what he does. When the busyness of the day gives way to the nighttime, he might be in a cave or he might be in a forest, he's hiding, his thoughts turn to God. He's seeking that nourishment. He's seeking that strength of soul. He says, my soul will be satisfied with fat and rich food. My mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. How important is our memory? How important those times in our lives when we unplug, probably from our phones, we turn off the podcasts, we turn our thoughts to that which the soul needs most, our great and awesome God and his loving kindness to us. I have now for years become convinced that perhaps the greatest danger to our souls is from our digital devices, it's not just lust-inducing pornography. Surely, that runs contrary to everything in this psalm, but also, and maybe even in a more profound way, simply the loss of boredom. The loss of quiet, the loss of that time to think and ponder and turn our thoughts and memories and imaginations back towards what matters most. Those times when we were kids in cars and we didn't have digital devices and we just stared out the window for hours and our imagination would just roll around up there. Those times on our beds when we hear the nighttime sounds of sprinklers and our little 10-year-old selves let our minds drift towards fascinating and wondrous things in the world. How is God a Trinity? I remember lying on my bed at Christian camp, I think I was about 13, and for whatever reason, I think it perhaps had been a speaker that day, my mind just drifted and started thinking about eternity. How is it that God has always been? I started to think for the first time that I can remember of the implications of that, of what that means. How different he is from us, his experience of time and his relationship to creation. And I was just in awe and just lying there in my little sleeping bag at camp. What was it like for God to exist forever and ever? And my mind just rolled. And if I had had a phone during that time, None of that would have happened. The power of memory, the power of meditative thought, just thinking and pondering and chewing on things we know to be true. It's a very, very important way that our souls are nourished. And I don't know, we don't have a way to measure, per se, the exact nourishment of the church today. But I think we can probably conclude from the fruit of what we see out there in evangelicalism and various places in the church that the church is malnourished. We probably need to return to some of these ways by which the saints of old nourished themselves and strengthened themselves. But let us continue. We're reminded now that the reason David is in the wilderness is because of a dangerous opponent. He says, you have been my help. In the shadow of your wings, I sing for joy. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. This is what he's been meditating on. Not just this beatific vision, this glory of God, not just the loving kindness of God, but his protection, his care, his promise, his promise to defend his people. And he remembers this because his life is in danger. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be a portion for jackals. We need to always remember David was not just like camping out there, like on a camping trip or something like a Boy Scouts or something like that. He was fleeing persecution. He would go out into the wilderness because there were people who wanted to run him through. And that drove him to meditate. There's a certain kind of, puts a different cast on his meditations, doesn't it? This wasn't the kind of like precious moments, kind of like little thing with his little latte and his, you know, his little Bible opening thing like that. This is a man that was probably, his heart race, you know, gets going from time to time as he considers there's villains out there that want to kill him. And the promises of God are very precious and important during that time. It's a very, adds a little point to his meditations. But he concludes here with a summary of the situation, but the king shall rejoice in God and all who swear by him shall exult for the mouths of liars will be stopped. And I want you to notice at this point that there is a sharp contrast between the actions and bodies of these sinful opponents and the actions and the body of David and all who swear by God." So we have these two parties and in both of them the bodies and the actions come into play here. They're described. Notice that the mouths of these liars, they're going to be stopped. They're going to be shut. In the verse before that it says, their bodies shall be given over to the power of the sword. Rather than being satisfied as with fat and rich food, they themselves will become fat and rich food for jackals. A portion for jackals. In verse 9, they will go down into the depths of the earth. David is going up and they are going down. And in contrast, it was David's body, his hands, his lips, his soul, his memory, his eyes, all of it was consecrated unto the Lord to find its fulfillment in the Lord. But the bodies and souls of these evildoers, in contrast, they come to a complete and utter ruin. So that's the context of this verse. And I want to return to this verse now and make some few points, just make a few points of application. Now that we've seen how it fits into the whole, we see kind of what it is that David's getting at, there's some lessons here for us. One of these comes directly from this verse here. Others, I'm pulling in some other places that describe this. There's just three things that I want you to see real quickly in what it means to have a satisfied soul. A soul that is truly satisfied. And by the way, this isn't in my notes here, I just want to note this. There is a wonderful essay, I think you can still find it online, about fat souls for our kids. I think it was written by Doug Jones or Doug Wilson or somebody like that, but it describes the process of reading good books to your kids and how that makes the soul grow. and telling good stories to your kids and good music like Jamie Souls and what that says you just see the souls of your kids they just develop like these real plump cheeks you know and the souls what all that that means what that is describing is the fact that there is a kind of nourishment in a good education that builds up virtue in the soul and things like that. That is not exactly what is being described here. You could say, it's not exactly, I think there is a parallel here, okay? It's not exactly the same thing though. This isn't just describing that. There is a kind of emaciated, used-to-scrub kind of education that gives kids pipes and drains and tells nothing of dragons. And that kind of a soul is, in a sense, very weak and emaciated, and doesn't understand much about wisdom in the world and things like that, and can't get along very well with other people, and so forth. There is another kind of education that feeds kids on good stories and you guys understand what I'm saying here. But this is describing a very particular type of thing that can't simply be substituted by other stories and mythology and those kinds of things. This is the Lord himself. This is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that is present and given to people, that provides food and nourishment for the soul, which can't simply be reduced to reading good books to your kids. It can't simply be reduced to that. There is a nourishment that belongs to the saints of people that can't simply be reproduced by Mormons and good, wholesome American people like that just by reading stories to your kids. And I would commend that to you. And I would actually commend that essay. It's wonderful. But it's not exactly what is being described here. The nourishment that is being described here is the Lord himself, his loving kindness, His mercy, His grace, His beauty. His attributes, it's Him. That is what makes the soul to thrive and to grow here. So coming back to our points of application, what is it that satisfied souls do that other souls don't do? One thing that they do is they continually return thanks and praise heartily. There is a kind of thanks and praise that the emaciated and weak and famished soul can squeak out. But it is not the kind of overflow that we see here all over the place in this text. This is a soul that cannot contain itself. It must praise the Lord. It's right here in the text. The richly satisfied soul. One where the setting is on flow rather than suck. It overflows in praise. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food. My mouth will praise you with joyful lips. It comes out of a joyful heart. Out of a joyful heart. Now, if we do the opposite, we put our hands up to the sky, we resist the glory of God, we suppress the knowledge of God, and we withhold gratitude. We create a lustful soul in that place. That's the very opposite of this gratitude and praise. It is natural then that once the heart has become full and once it begins to overflow again with gratitude and praise, as the glory of God comes into our hearts, it begins to overflow with gratitude and praise. This we come to understand is exactly the dynamic of what the gospel does in the book of Romans. This is what God's mission is due. He looks down at this human heart that is just this lustful, grasping, needy thing, and He saves it. And He redeems it. And He fills it. By the end of the epistle of Romans, once the whole mission of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit has been considered, and explained in all of its parts. Paul concludes that the whole thing has been reversed, okay? That man falling short of the glory of God, it has now been reversed. He has created something very different in the hearts of man, and it says this in chapter 15. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. Jew and Gentile united in thanksgiving and praise, gratitude for God keeping his promises and showing unfathomable mercy. That is the heart transformed and now giving praise to God. That's the first thing that gets repaired, that we see here. Begins to praise, begins to sing. No longer be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. What? What happens? Singing. Gratitude. Joy. From your hearts. Not with arms twisted. Joyfully. Willfully. Happily. Freely, you could even say. The second thing that we would see, what a satisfied soul does, what it's like, This is what satisfied people do. They resist temptation. They resist temptation. It is the lustful soul that gives in to temptation. It is the craving soul that gives in to temptation. The fattened soul, the soul that is satisfied, the soul that is eating that marrow and those fat portions, that soul is the devil's nightmare. The soul that is content in God can resist temptation in a way that a lustful soul cannot. What will you offer? What will you put in front of the content soul and say, turn away from God. Walk away from his ways. Look, look what I'm holding out before you. The content soul, the soul that overflows. Just imagine, just go back to that picture. Of John chapter seven, out of his soul will flow rivers of living water. What do you offer that person that they don't have? How do you entice that person away from the will of God? They overflow. That's where we want to be if we are to overcome sin. That's where we want to be if we're to overcome sin. I'm reminded of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar and there's a character, Crassus. Julius Caesar, Crassus is one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar. Spoiler alert, it doesn't go well for Caesar. But he's portrayed as a principled but a deeply unsatisfied person. And Caesar is onto him early and he doesn't trust him. And the reason he doesn't trust him is because he sees a leanness in him. He sees a leanness in him. And he takes that as a mark of instability. Such people, such people like that, you don't trust. They want something. They'll turn on you. They turn against you. Caesar says this, let me have men about me that are fat. Sleek-headed men, such as sleep at night. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. While he's concerned about himself, he's not concerned at all about the law of God or Cassius, sorry, I said Crassus. Cassius, he's not concerned about him turning from the law of God. He's concerned about him turning from him. But it's the same dynamic. in relation to God, the soul that is too lean, too hungry, too craving, too lustful, it'll turn in a minute. Just wave something in front of its eyes, it'll turn, it'll turn. It must be a full soul to resist temptation. It must be a full soul to resist temptation. The key, you see, above all to resisting temptation is a proper diet, it turns out. Fill up the soul regularly with what it needs. Fill up the soul with the Lord's glory, with the loving kindness of the Lord, regular meditations on truth. You will find temptations lose their force. When something is presented to you, you say, I'm good. I'm fine. I lack for nothing. Do you see your soul growing lean? Feed it. Fill it to the brim. Stuff it. Give it what it needs, sing songs, glorify the Lord, place beautiful and true words about it that can strengthen it. And I think I've made that point there. That's how we fight against sin, marrow and fatness. The third thing what satisfied people do is they think of others. They think of others. They have an outward orientation. The stream is not sucking within, it's flowing out. It's also a good person to be a neighbor to. It's good people to have around in our church. Consider the way in which the apostle reasons in Philippians chapter two. He begins not using the language of fat and marrow, but he's describing the same thing. When he says this, so if there's any encouragement in Christ, the heart that is taking courage in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, he's describing fat souls that have known the loving kindness of God, that are filled, that are to overflowing, that have fed themselves on the gospel of Jesus. He said, if that's true of you, What should follow from that? What should be the logical next thing that comes from that? He says this, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord and of one mind. Christian unity. Souls that are healthy, souls that are well-fed live together in peace. The craving, grasping soul, that's where you will begin to see disunity. And he goes on, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. The soul that is to overflowing, the soul that is deeply content can even go so far as to say, you know what? You ahead of me. You ahead of me. Not just my interests. I'm good. I'm fine. I am content. I will look for your interests. I will look out for you. I'll put your needs ahead of my own. It's just what Jesus described. Out of your soul will flow rivers of water. Who doesn't want to live next to rivers of water? Rivers of water. But souls that are desperate, sucking, and lustful cannot think of others. They cannot think of others. The vacuum is sucked inside. And of course, the perfect example is Christ as he goes on. There never was a soul, a being more contented than Jesus Christ himself, was there not? The Son of God lacked for nothing, needed nothing. Lust was so foreign to him. It's incomprehensible to even imagine him up in heaven. I need, I need. It's not him. It says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped. but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. He did that from strength, strength of his soul, strength of his person, knowing what he is, knowing who he is, knowing where he came from, knowing his relationship to the Father. He came from a place of confidence, and from that place, he could pour himself out for others. because the life of God was in him. He could give and never, ever, ever run out. All these things work together. Souls that overflow in giving thanks and praise are also going to be a great help in overcoming temptation, in your neighbor overcoming temptation. The streams flow out. They help neighboring souls to remember the Lord. Our lives work in and out of each other. The effect multiplies in healthy communities. Souls that are filled with God affect the people around them. It becomes contagious. They give life to people around them and encouragement. As you gather around people that have souls that are overflowing, you find strength to resist temptation. You see people being cared for. That's the life of the church. It's the way that it's supposed to work. All the parts working together. I was asked yesterday what our strategy would be for caring for the world and thinking of outreach, and I think my answer was meandering, to say the least. I sat and thought about it, and my mind went to all these different kinds of social media campaigns. different ways of kind of getting the word out, and how are we gonna meet our neighbors, and how are we gonna get the, you know, invite people to church, and who is it gonna be that we're gonna, and I'm thinking of strategies, and I'm thinking of strategies, and probably was not a very, probably was not a very helpful answer. Honestly, the most important thing in terms of our strategy as a church, and being effective in this world, bearing fruit, growing, multiplying, Being a shining light here in Washington County has to do with whether or not we're going to be a community of people where life flows out of us or where there's a sucking, grasping, needing, pointing inward towards ourselves. Church splits begin with lusts, cravings, neediness, brokenness, You know, apostasy, that here. Lifelessness, that starts with sucking wounds in our souls. But multiplication, fruitfulness, comes from contentedness in God. Contentedness in His loving kindness. It flows from that. I believe that nothing else is more important in terms of our outreach strategy. We do also need to probably do a few more things in social media, but that's really secondary. Really secondary. Growing things reproduce. Growing things reproduce. Dying things don't. Dying things don't. That's the key to our outreach. In conclusion, you cannot escape the hard life. Once again, David has written the most beautiful and touching poetry while spears are, as it were, hurtling towards him. He writes from that place. We all will have seasons in the wilderness and continue to have seasons in the wilderness, are in seasons in the wilderness. We will have opponents, we will have trouble of all sorts, But it is the worst, as one commentator said, the worst has brought out David's best. It's always what happens. The worst brings out David's best. The persecutors drove him into the wilderness. The persecutors drove him to his God. The persecutors drove him to meditation. The persecutors drove him to consider what his true security was. And we benefit from that. We get this beautiful little inspired poem, a little gift of the Holy Spirit to lead us in the way. But it's certainly going to be much of the same with us. The life that we know, those rivers flowing with water, we remember that Jesus spoke that way about rivers flowing out. He spoke that way as a man who was about to suffer martyrdom to people, many of whom would suffer martyrdom. This is not a way to escape your troubles, but it is a way to thrive in the midst of them. Even there in that place with no water, overflowing, as it were, with fat and rich food. And I pray that God does the same with us. Amen. Sola Deo Gloria. May God be glorified in the preaching of his good word.