Proverbs 63:1

King David, who wrote this passage of Scripture, Psalm 63, composed it during a very interesting time in his life. He was on the run. At this time, he was king, as you can see near the end of the passage. He was fleeing because his son, Absalom, had turned against him and sought to overthrow his father to take the kingdom. David had left Jerusalem and found himself in the Judean wilderness, a place he knew very well. He had spent many years running from King Saul in that wilderness.

There he was with some of his mighty men, individuals who had been with him for many years, fought in battles alongside him, and had seen both the best and the worst of David. Although David was a man after God's own heart, he was also a wretched sinner like us. His men witnessed his highs and lows, and they truly knew him.

In the wilderness, David penned these words: "O God, you are my God; early will I seek thee. My soul thirsts for thee; my flesh longs for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is, to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips. When I remember thee upon my bed and meditate upon you in the night watches, because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul follows hard after thee, and thy right hand upholdeth me. Those who seek my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth."

They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion for foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God, and everyone who swears by Him shall glory. The mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.

That's worship. When we think of worship in our day, particularly in the context of an evangelical church, we often envision someone leading in song, with us singing—perhaps standing, maybe kneeling, arms lifted. This is the paradigm under which we function and live. However, it is very short-sighted. For the last several years, I have been contemplating the topic of worship because the Bible reveals that man's chief end, his chief purpose, is to glorify God. God is set towards His glory being exalted; He is passionate about His glory.

Our whole existence should be given to what could be called a doxology, dedicated to the glory of God. Whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, we should do so for the glory of God. Our entire being, our entire life, is to be worship.

In the modern evangelical church, of which we are a part, we have reduced worship to 20 to 30 minutes on a Sunday morning. At best, we have a group of guys getting together on a weeknight after perhaps a long day at work, with another long day ahead of us tomorrow. It is not often that people set aside time to do what we are doing, but this is the paradigm of worship for us. This is generally as far as it goes.

We fail to recognize that worship is so much more, so much greater than this. Some of the purest worship that we find in the Bible occurs in situations like those seen in Psalm 63.

Where you are in dire straits, I saw some pretty intense worship last night. I was at our brother Ken's house for the Super Bowl, and some of you may know Ken; he's a passionate Giants fan. I have some YouTube videos that I shot last night, but we don't have a projector, so I won't show you the whole being of someone engaged in a form of worship. You can look on YouTube if you want to; I did post one of them.

That kind of joy-exuding worship is indeed a form of worship. I don't want to diminish it, because it is ascribing value to what is being seen and rejoicing in it. I think there are aspects of what takes place when we see something like a sporting event that stirs us emotionally and causes us to engage with it in an overflow of emotion. There's something to be learned from that and applied to the way we live our lives as Christians.

We can learn a lot from how God created us, as He created us as instruments of worship. If His whole goal and focus is His glory, then that comes upon everything He does. The way He has created us is such that we are instruments for His glory. We are instruments for worship, and we need to recognize that God created us in that way.

There are so many different things throughout the day that we encounter that should stir us to worship Him, to exalt Him, to lift Him. It shouldn't just be when musicians begin to strum a guitar and sing songs. Yes, that's part of it, but that's not all of it; that's actually a very, very small part of it. I'm sure if you're anything like me, and I assume that you are, when you hear pastors and preachers talk about heaven and how we're going to spend eternity worshiping God, it can be concerning when we've boiled worship down to just singing songs.

You start to wonder, could we really do that for eternity? I mean, your laughter at least tells me that you've wondered the same thing. Are we really going to be in God's presence for eternity, doing what we have been doing for the last four songs, and we'll do a little bit more when I'm done? Is that really what we're going to do for eternity? It's not, but we're created for worship.

Because of that, we'll worship almost anything. We always default to worship, and that's where idolatry comes from. Idolatry is misplaced worship. We need to recognize that whatever we're doing, wherever we're at, we can be engaged in worship to God that is God-honoring, that is, if you will, a sweet-smelling savor to God. Just like when an offering or a sacrifice was offered at the temple, or like what might take place at a worship gathering like this, or what takes place on a Sunday morning, or at a men's retreat.

The same kind of worship that comes when we're corporately gathered together singing songs for His glory can happen and should happen from our hearts and from our lives all the time, and not just in the form of singing songs.

So, what I'm going to ask you to consider, and to even think about after we go from here tonight, is how your life is worshiping God. How is it honoring to Him? How is it directing attention to His glory? How is it magnifying and esteeming Him? Everything we do can and should be engaged for that purpose.

We should get to know this because, again, this is what we're going to spend eternity doing. We should think long and hard on the realities of worship and rethink worship, if you will. I think we've gotten incredibly narrow in 20th and 21st century worship in the Christian church in America, and we've lost something of what the fullness of it is. I would highly recommend that you study and read the Psalms.

When I say to study and read the Scriptures, I don't mean to go and pick apart every verse, outline it, and find out what this word means in Hebrew. I mean to think long and hard about what was happening that stirred the writing of this. A lot of times, the Psalms begin with a heading. For example, at the beginning of verse 1 in Psalm 63, it states, "A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah." Even though it's just a few words, it provides an incredible amount of information.

David is not in Jerusalem, the city of God. He is not in his comfortable palace or at the beautiful temple. He is not involved in offering a sacrifice to God at the temple. Instead, he is perhaps in a cave, very likely. He knew the caves of the Judean wilderness very well, having spent over 20 years hiding in them. I imagine, although we could be wrong, that he is probably down near the Dead Sea, near En Gedi, which was a place that David loved to visit. En Gedi is an oasis located in one of the lowest parts of the earth physically.

In an arid, dry area, if you want an understanding of what it's like, just go out to Borrego Springs; you'll know the exact climate because that whole region is a mirror image of San Diego County. So, there he is, and it seems that when he is writing this, he is away by himself, although he had some of his men with him. He is in the wilderness, and his son has turned against him. His kingdom has been taken from him, and he knows that this is the result of his own actions, his own sin. His house has fallen apart, and his family has disintegrated because of his own actions.

He had committed adultery and was involved in a murder that he plotted. He lied about it for an entire year, and it was discovered in a pretty heavy way when Nathan the prophet came to him. You know the story: Nathan tells him a story about a man in his kingdom who had everything, while his neighbor had nothing. All his neighbor had was one lamb, a sheep that his family adored and kept as a pet in their own house. This rich man, having some visitors, stole his neighbor's only possession and slaughtered it to put it before his guests. David responded, "This man shall die."

He's going to restore, and then he's going to die. Nathan said, "You're the man." I don't even know if we can imagine what that was like. I mean, Nathan had incredible wisdom. You don't go to the king and say, "You're a murdering adulterer," unless you want to lose your own head. So, I mean, incredible wisdom was given to him by God. How do I address this, God? You've clued me into an incredible sin by the king. How do I bring this up? He brings it up in a way that is just miraculous. I mean, they should have made an epic Hollywood movie about it. I'm surprised they haven't done a good job on that one yet.

As a result of this, David knows that he should receive justice. God is merciful. God expresses His mercy to him, and David writes Psalm 51, one of the most beautiful psalms of repentance and return to God. But God also tells him that as a result of this, there are consequences to sin. Even though there's forgiveness, there's always a consequence. One of the consequences of sin is that his family was going to be devastated by it, and there was great devastation that came from it. One of his sons raped one of his daughters. David had a lot of wives, so there were a lot of half-brothers and half-sisters involved. One of his sons rapes his half-sister, and then Absalom wants his father to do something about this. David really doesn't handle it very well, so Absalom takes matters into his own hands and kills his half-brother who had raped his sister.

David knows he needs to do something about this, but he won't do anything, and Absalom flees, running away. The house, the kingdom, is in shambles. If ever there was a Jerusalem Star tabloid, it was going crazy at that time. Absalom was away for a time, but ultimately, he is brought back to the kingdom. He then develops a scheme with a group of other men, some of them David's own advisors whom David had wronged. He turns on his father and runs him out of the kingdom, and that's the context of this whole situation.

Oh God, You are my God. Even though I'm a complete and utter wretch, You're still my God.

That's a phenomenal thing. That should inspire worship. Worship is, well, one of the forms of worship is thanksgiving and gratitude. When you contemplate who you are and what you deserve, I talked a little bit yesterday about conscience. When it's just you in your car on the freeway or just you at home alone, or wherever you may be, and it's just you and your conscience, you know what no one else knows, not even your closest friend or your wife. You know who you are. You know what's in your heart.

In that time when you recognize, "Oh God, you're my God," it's an awesome thing to realize that He would still be our God. That kind of possessing Him, saying "You are my God," stirs this desire: "Early will I seek Thee."

Now, there are a couple of ways we could think about "early will I seek Thee." Of course, our immediate thought goes to early in the morning. I'm not much of a morning person. I'm really not. I'm actually quite carnal in the morning. You know that old statement, "the flesh wakes up first"? It's like amplified with me. It's an amazing thing. So, I'm just not much of a morning person, but there is that truth that early we ought to seek God.

In some ways, it's hard to develop a discipline, if you will, to do that unless we have this recognition of who we are and that God is our God. That recognition would stir us to seek Him early.

Another aspect of "early will I seek You" is the idea of quickly, immediately, in any circumstance, in any situation. Have you ever been going through a trial or a difficulty, and you've been struggling with it in your mind and in your heart for three hours, twenty-four hours, or even forty-eight hours? You're still wrestling with this: "How do I deal with this? What do I do about this?" Then your wife or a close friend says, "Have you prayed about it?" and you realize, "I hadn't thought about that." Yes, your pastor does that too.

My wife is regularly schooling me on what it means to be a Christian, not by what she says to me, but through her life. Early will I seek You, quickly. Early will I seek You. My soul thirsts for You. My inner longing, my inner desire is for You, God. My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You. This is the whole of my being. My body, my soul, my longing is for You.

In what way? What kind of way? It thirsts for You; it longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. The appetite of thirst is a phenomenal thing. You just can't survive for very long without quenching that thirst, and so that's revealed in this desire for God. I need You. It's not just, "Hey, I want to be near You." I need Your presence.

To see Thy power and Thy glory, as I have seen Thee in the sanctuary. Now again, he's in the wilderness; he's not near the temple. He says, "I long to see Your power and Your glory in the same way that I know who You are. I need to see You in this situation." All of this is worship. This longing, this desire, the position that he's in—it's all worship, the whole thing.

To see Your power and Your glory, as I have seen You in the sanctuary, because Your loving-kindness is better than life. You only really get to see and know and understand the loving-kindness of God when you recognize how much of a complete and utter wretch you are. The loving-kindness of God, which is often referred to by the Hebrew word "chesed," can also mean mercy. The mercy of the Lord, the steadfast love of the Lord that Jeremiah speaks of in Lamentations 3, never ceases; His mercies are new every morning.

What a wonderful thing! You really only get to know the mercy of God when you have been a complete and total fool.

And so, your loving-kindness is better than life. As a result, my lips shall praise You. That's verbal worship. That's what we do on a Sunday morning. That's what we've done here tonight. My lips shall praise Thee; thus will I bless Thee while I live. I will lift up my hands. It's another form of worship. It's a sign of surrender, a sign of longing and needing. It is a recognition that He is higher positionally than we are, a recognition that we need Him.

My lips shall praise Thee; thus will I bless Thee. I will lift up my hands in Thy name. My soul shall be satisfied, as with marrow and fatness. From what You give, my soul is going to be satisfied. In Isaiah 55, He speaks to the children of Israel who, by this time, were very far from God and not seeking after Him. Although they still went to the temple, they still went to church, and they still did religious things, their hearts were not engaged in it.

He says in Isaiah 55, verse 1, "Ho, everyone that thirsts, come ye to the waters. And he that has no money, come ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money, without price. Wherefore do you spend your money on that which is not bread, and you labor for that which satisfies not? Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness."

He is not speaking here of physical food and drink. He is speaking of what God gives. The people of Israel were consumed with trying to get what they could from this world, but it didn't satisfy at the soul level, the internal longings. And so He says, "Come and receive from the only source that satisfies."

Worship is the recognition that God is the only source that satisfies. Recognizing Him as that and coming to Him for that—that's worship. It's ascribing to Him value so that others can see and know that you really believe this; it's not just from your lips. So, come, delight, and eat that which is good.

And delight your soul in fatness, that which God gives. Your lovingkindness is better than life. My lips shall praise You; thus will I 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.

It should be a joyful thing, a joyful noise when we gather together. Now, quite honestly, when a bunch of men like this gather together, it's a joyful noise. But it's a good thing that God doesn't say, "Bring to Me a joyful four-part harmony." Because, well, this group wouldn't do it. A joyful noise. Why is it joyful? Well, again, it's the joyful recognition of who we are and who God is, and yet He still accepts us. He is our God and desires to be our God. That should stir joy because nobody else in this world, if they really knew who we were, would want anything to do with us, even our wives. True?

Joyful noise. My lips shall praise You. My mouth shall praise You with joyful lips. When I remember You upon my bed and meditate upon You in the night, watch this. This tells us a little bit about David's character and some of the things that he did. This is not new to us if we've studied the life of David and gone through the Psalms. Like I said, I encourage you to do that. Just read through them and think on them.

David spent a lot of his life alone in the wilderness, still and quiet. This is something that's a lost thing in our culture. We don't really know what it is to be alone and to be quiet. A few years ago—it's been a while now—I used to do it more often. I haven't done it recently. I went out to Borrego with Josh, myself, and Rick Kirstead, and we hiked up one of those canyons. We hiked for three or four hours to get up to wherever we were.

There was a little oasis with a creek flowing down, and we found some rocks where we could take a nap underneath. It was hot outside, but as soon as you got into the shade, it felt freezing cold. It took about an hour and a half for my ears to stop ringing from the sounds we are so accustomed to all the time.

There is an uncomfortable nature in us when we are alone and quiet, especially when your cell phone doesn't work and all those bars disappear. Suddenly, you feel disconnected. Maybe it's just me; I don't know. It could be my generation, but we have such a hard time being still, even if it's just for ten minutes.

I challenge you in the morning to read a Psalm and then just be quiet for ten minutes. You might get to about two and a half minutes before you start to twitch because we don't know how to be still and quiet. However, this stillness is such an important aspect of worship. As David says in the Psalm, "Be still, and know that I am God." I will be exalted, even in the midst of that stillness, just sitting there. That is a form of worship.

How so? Well, I am sacrificing my time to just be still, as unto the Lord. It is a sweet-smelling favor to God. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness; my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips when I remember You upon my bed and meditate upon You in the night watches.

It is not impossible, but it is hard to meditate upon God if you haven't hidden His word in your heart. I challenge you to memorize even just a verse or two. You might say, "I'm not very good at memorizing things," but set yourself an entire month to memorize Psalm 1. Maybe take a year; I don't care. Whatever it takes, memorize it, and then think on it.

I would say a good percentage of the time I spend driving around in my car when I'm alone is spent reciting the scriptures that I've committed to memory, like this one, Psalm 63.

I'll clue you in on a little secret about how I memorize scripture, including this very psalm that I've been committing to memory over the last month. Hold on one second here.

Psalm 63: "O God, you are my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsts for thee. My flesh longs for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy love and kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips. When I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches, because thou hast been my help, therefore, in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul follows hard after thee; thy right hand upholdeth me.

But those that seek my soul to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion for foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God. Everyone that swears by him shall glory, but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

I take my voice recorder and my Bible. I push record and I read it. Then I listen to that about 400 times, and it's in my heart. So, what does that do for me? When I'm driving down the road, instead of listening to Roger Hedgecock, which will only make you mad, or Michael Savage, which will make you insane, or Sean Hannity, which will make you want to drive off a cliff, or Glenn Beck, who will make you think that the end of the world is tomorrow, I meditate upon God's word. I just think on it.

Psalm 67: God, be merciful unto me and bless me. Cause your face to shine upon me, that your way may be known in all the earth, your saving health among all nations. Let the people praise you, O God. Let all the people praise you. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you shall judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon the earth.

As I reflect on that passage, I realize how audacious this prayer is: "God, be merciful to me. Bless me. Cause your face to shine upon me." Doesn't that sound completely arrogant? If someone prayed like that in a prayer meeting, some of the pastors or elders might bring them aside afterward and say, "That's a little obnoxious." However, the next verse clarifies the intent: "that your way may be known in all the earth." So, it's not very selfish. I am praying for your blessings so that people would see your glory and desire your governorship over their lives.

He says, "When I remember thee upon my bed," indicating that when he is sleepless, when he is about to go to sleep, he remembers the Lord and meditates on Him in the night watches. This is a form of worship—thinking on God. Some people, especially as they progress in age, find it harder to sleep. Often, this difficulty arises because their minds are weighed down by various concerns: work, family, or a retirement account that is no longer there. Instead of allowing anxiety to take over, we can release those burdens to the Lord. This act of setting our minds and affections on Him while reflecting on His word is also a form of worship.

Do you think David had some sleepless nights when he was in the Judean wilderness? What was he doing during those times? He was meditating upon the Lord. And what did he remember when he meditated on the Lord? "Because you have been my help, therefore in the shadow of your wings will I rejoice." My joy, my rejoicing, is found in you, God.

Not in my job, not in my retirement, not in any other earthly thing. My joy, my rejoicing is in You. Because I know that You've been my help. You've always been my help. My soul follows hard after You, and Your right hand upholds me. My desire is for You; I seek after You, and when I do, You hold me up.

Those who seek my soul to destroy it—Absalom, or Saul before him, or whoever it was, the Philistines at various times—those who seek my soul to destroy it, they shall go into the lower parts of the earth. It's a reference to Sheol, hell. They shall fall by the sword; they shall be a portion for foxes. But the king himself, he's reminding himself, shall rejoice in God. My hope, my joy is to be found in You. Not in my mighty men, not in my army, not in my position, not in my wealth, not in any other thing. My glory, my joy, my rejoicing is You. Everyone who swears by You shall glory. But the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.

What a good reminder. There's a lot of sick injustice in this world—sick injustice that should make you angry. It should. It should make you angry. It makes God angry. Like that incident yesterday, a man whose wife went missing a few years ago was the key suspect being investigated. No charges had been brought against him, but his children had been taken from him. He was having supervised visits, and the lady who was the supervisor over those visits brought his two kids, five and seven, to his house. They ran into the house, and he shut the door, locked it, and blew the house up. It's a sick world.

In October, a two-year-old girl, her name was Yuyu...

A Chinese girl in Beijing walked out of her father's hardware shop in the late afternoon. She walked into the street. The car wasn't going very fast. The driver ran over her, rolling over twice. She lay in the street for 18 minutes and was run over two more times, still moving. More than a dozen people passed by her, looked at her, and just kept going. She died in the hospital two weeks later. That should anger us.

How do you worship a God who is inactive when that happens? The only way to worship a God who seems inactive in such situations is to know that He is just and that there will be justice. He is slow to anger, but He is just, and there will be justice.

Every aspect of our lives is to be worshiped. We need to seek how we are to worship in whatever circumstance or situation we go through. We shouldn't just be waiting for the Sunday morning worship time. That is the culmination of our worship, when we, as one body, gather together with one voice to announce and declare the praises of our God to Him. But that is just the result of the heart of worship that has already been kindled in us from Monday through Saturday.

Jesus said to the woman at the well, "I tell you the truth, the hour is coming and now is, that those who worship God will worship Him in spirit and in truth." The Father is seeking those who will do so. You will not worship Him on this mountain or that mountain, but you will worship Him in spirit and in truth.

What does He mean by that? He says it's not about the place. It's not about the format. It's not about whether or not they have a guitar or a piano, or if they sing choruses or hymns. That's not it at all; that's just a part of worship, a very small part.

You will worship God in spirit and in truth when you're stuck in traffic, when you're getting ready to go to sleep, or when you're having a sleepless night. When you're rising early or doing a job that you hate, whatever it is, you can do that as unto the Lord in worship. Whatever you do in word or deed should be worship. When we live our lives in that way—though I’m not saying it’s easy—that's something we should strive for. By the grace of God and the power of His Spirit, we should seek to do that.

When we live in that way, we will look forward to these times. We will look forward to the opportunities on a Sunday morning. We will be the loudest people singing in the room, even if we are totally off-key. Even if it is just a joyful noise, all of this will make sense when you're living in a state of worship.

That's been my request to God for a while: "Lord, help me to live in such a way that is worshipful." It's very hard. I might hit the mark like twice a week. God, You created me for Your glory. Everything You created is for Your glory. Am I being used for Your glory? Am I an instrument of worship all the time?

Father, this is... Lord, You are passionate about Your glory. You want us to be passionate about Your glory. Help us, Lord, to learn what it means to worship You in spirit and in truth, wherever we are and whatever we are doing. And, Lord, when given the opportunity, may we sing with unbridled lips, unconcerned about the person in front of us or to the side of us.

What they might think, Lord, just like David when he danced before You. His own wife thought, "What a fool," and he didn't care. He went so far as to say, "If you think that's bad, just wait. Stick around. You ain't seen nothing yet."

Lord, help us to live with that kind of abandon, that really doesn't care what other people think, because all we're consumed with is Your glory. Work this into our lives, Lord, because You created us for worship. Help us to worship You, unconcerned about the person in front of us or to the side of us and what they might think.

Lord, help us to live with that kind of abandon that really doesn't care what other people think. Work this into our lives, Lord, because You created us for worship. Help us to worship You.