'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.'--PSALM xiii. 2.
This whole psalm reads like the sob of a wounded heart. The writer of it
is shut out from the Temple of his God, from the holy soil of his native
land. One can see him sitting solitary yonder in the lonely wilderness
(for the geographical details that occur in one part of the psalm point
to his situation as being on the other side of the Jordan, in the
mountains of Moab)--can see him sitting there with long wistful gaze
yearning across the narrow valley and the rushing stream that lay
between him and the land of God's chosen people, and his eye resting
perhaps on the mountaintop that looked down upon Jerusalem. He felt shut
out from the presence of God. We need not suppose that he believed all
the rest of the world to be profane and God-forsaken, except only the
Temple. Nor need we wonder, on the other hand, that his faith did cling
to form, and that he thought the sparrows beneath the eaves of the
Temple blessed birds! He was depressed, because he was shut out from the
tokens of God's presence; and because he _was_ depressed, he shut
himself out from the reality of the presence. And so he cried with a cry
which never is in vain, 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God!'
Taken, then, in its original sense, the words of our text apply only to
that strange phenomenon which we call religious depression. But I have
ventured to take them in a wider sense than that. It is not only
Christian men who are cast down, whose souls 'thirst for God.' It is not
only men upon earth whose souls thirst for God. All men, everywhere, may
take this text for theirs. Every human heart may breathe it out, if it
understands itself. The longing for 'the living God' belongs to all men.
Thwarted, stifled, it still survives. Unconscious, it is our deepest
misery. Recognised, yielded to, accepted, it is the foundation of our
highest blessings. Filled to the full, it still survives unsatiated and
expectant. For all men upon earth, Christian or not Christian, for
Christians here below, whether in times of depression or in times of
gladness, and for the blessed and calm spirits that in ecstasy of
longing, full of fruition, stand around God's throne--it is equally true
that their souls 'thirst for God, for the living God.' Only with this
difference, that to some the desire is misery and death, and to some the
desire is life and perfect blessedness. So that the first thought I
would suggest to you now is, that there is an unconscious and
unsatisfied longing after God, which is what we call the state of
nature; secondly, that there is an imperfect longing after God, fully
satisfied, which is what we call the state of grace; and lastly, that
there is a perfect longing, perfectly satisfied, which is what we call
the state of glory. Nature; religion upon earth; blessedness in
heaven--my text is the expression, in divers senses, of them all.
I. In the first place, then, there is in every man an unconscious and
unsatisfied longing after God, and that is the state of nature.
Experience is the test of that assertion. And the most superficial
examination of the facts of daily life, as well as the questioning of
our own souls, will tell us that _this_ is the leading feature of
them--a state of unrest. What is it that one of those deistic poets of
our own land says, about 'Man never _is_, but always _to be_ blest'?
What is the meaning of the fact that all round about us, and we
partaking of it, there is ceaseless, gigantic activity going on? The
very fact that men work, the very fact of activity in the mind and life,
noble as it is, and root of all that is good, and beautiful as it is, is
still the testimony of nature to this fact that I by myself am full of
passionate longings, of earnest desires, of unsupplied wants. 'I
thirst,' is the voice of the whole world.
No man is made to be satisfied from himself. For the stilling of our own
hearts, for the satisfying of our own nature, for the strengthening and
joy of our being, we need to go beyond ourselves, and to fix upon
something external to ourselves. We are not independent. None of us can
stand by himself. No man carries within him the fountain from which he
can draw. If a heart is to be blessed, it must go out of the narrow
circle of its own individuality; and if a man's life is to be strong and
happy, he must get the foundation of his strength somewhere else than in
his own soul. And, my friends! especially you young men, all that modern
doctrine of self-reliance, though it has a true side to it, has also a
frightfully false side. Though it may he quite true that a man ought to
be, in one sense, sufficient for himself, and that there is no real
blessedness of which the root does not lie within the nature and heart
of the man; though all that be quite true, yet, if the doctrine means
(as on the lips of many a modern eloquent and powerful teacher of it, it
does mean) that we can do without God, that we may be self-reliant and
self-sufficient, and proudly neglectful of all the divine forces that
come down into life to brighten and gladden it, it is a lie, false and
fatal; and of all the falsehoods that are going about this world at
present, I know not one that is varnished over with more apparent truth,
that is smeared over with more of the honey that catches young, ardent,
ingenuous hearts, than that half-truth, and therefore most deceptive
error, which preaches independence, and self-reliance, and which
_means_--a man's soul does not 'thirst for the living God.' Take care of
it! We are made _not_ to be independent.
We are made, next, to need, not _things_, but _living beings_. 'My soul
thirsteth'--for what? An abstraction, a possession, riches, a thing? No!
'my soul thirsteth for God, for _the living God_.' Yes, hearts want
hearts. The converse of Christ's saying is equally true; He said, 'God
is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit'; man
has a spirit, and man must have Spirit to worship, to lean upon, to live
by, or all will be inefficient and unsatisfactory. Oh, lay this to
heart, my brother!--no _things_ can satisfy a living soul. No
accumulation of dead matter can become the life of an immortal being.
The two classes are separated by the whole diameter of the
universe--matter and spirit, thing and person; and _you_ cannot feed
yourself upon the dead husks that lie there round about you--wealth,
position, honour. Books, thoughts, though they are nobler than these
other, are still inefficient. Principles, 'causes,' emotions springing
from truth, these are not enough. I want more than that, I want
something to love, something to lay a hand upon, that shall return the
grasp of the hand. A living man must have a living God, or his soul will
perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst
the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to
need _persons_, not _things_.
Then again, we need _one_ Being who shall be all-sufficient. There is no
greater misery than that which may ensue from the attempt to satisfy our
souls by the accumulation of objects, each of them imperfect and finite,
which yet we fancy, woven together, will make an adequate whole. When a
heart is diverted from its one central purpose, when a life is split up
in a hundred different directions and into a hundred different emotions,
it is like a beam of light passed through some broken surface where it
is all refracted and shivered into fragments; there is no clear vision,
there is no perfect light. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one
source to which he can go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly
pearls, may find the many; but until he has bartered them all for the
one, there is something lacking. Not only does the understanding require
to pass through the manifold, up and up in ever higher generalisations,
till it reaches the One from whom all things come; but the heart
requires to soar, if it would be at rest, through all the diverse
regions where its love may legitimately tarry for a while, until it
reaches the sole and central throne of the universe, and there it may
cease its flight, and fold its weary wings, and sleep like a bird within
its nest. We want a _Being_, and we want _one Being_ in whom shall be
sphered all perfection, in whom shall abide all power and blessedness;
beyond whom thought cannot pass, out of whose infinite circumference
love does not need to wander; besides whose boundless treasures no other
riches can be required; who is light for the understanding, power for
the will, authority for the practical life, purpose for the efforts,
motive for the doings, end and object for the feelings, home of the
affections, light of our seeing, life of our life, the love of our
heart, the one living God, infinite in wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness and truth; who is all in all, and without whom everything else
is misery. 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.'
Brother! let me ask you the question, before I pass on--the question for
the sake of which I am preaching this sermon: Do _you_ know that Father?
I know this much, that every heart here now answers an 'Amen' (if it
will be honest) to what I have been saying. Unrest; panting, desperate
thirst, deceiving itself as to where it should go; slaking itself 'at
the gilded puddles that the beasts would cough at,' instead of coming to
the water of life!--that is the state of man without God. That is
nature. That is irreligion. The condition in which every man is that is
not trusting in Jesus Christ, is this--thirsting for God, and not
knowing _whom_ he is thirsting for, and so not getting the supply that
he wants.
II. There is a conscious longing, imperfect, but answered; and that is
the state of grace--the beginning of religion in a man's soul.
If it be true that there are, as part of the universal human experience,
however overlaid and stifled, these necessities of which I have been
speaking, the very existence of the necessities affords a presumption,
before all evidence, that, somehow and somewhere, they shall be
supplied. There can be no deeper truth--none, I think, that ought to
have more power in shaping some parts of our Christian creed, than this,
that God is a faithful Creator; and where He makes men with longings, it
is a prophecy that those longings are going to be supplied. The same
ground which avails to defend doctrines that cannot be so well defended
by any other argument--the same ground on which we say that there is an
immortality, because men long for it and believe in it; that there is a
God because men cannot get rid of the instinctive conviction that there
is; that there is a retribution, because men's consciences do ask for
it, and cry out for it--the very same process which may be applied to
the buttressing and defending of all the grandest truths of the Gospel,
applies also in this practical matter. If I, made by God who knew what
He was doing when He made me, am formed with these deep necessities,
with these passionate longings--then it cannot but be that it is
intended that they should be to me a means of leading me to Him, and
that there they should be satisfied. For He is 'the faithful Creator,'
and He remembers the conditions under which His making of us has placed
us. 'He knoweth our frame,' and He remembereth what He has implanted
within us. And the presumption is, of course, turned into an actual
certainty when we let in the light of the Gospel upon the thing. Then we
can say to every man that thus is yearning after a goodness dimly
perceived, and does not know what it is that he wants, and we say to you
now, Brother! betake yourself to the cross of Christ go with those wants
of yours to 'the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world': He
will interpret them to you. He will explain to you, as you do not now
know, what they mean; and, better than that, He will supply them all.
Your souls are thirsting; and you look about, here and there, and
everywhere, for springs of water. _There_ is the fountain--go to Christ.
Your souls are thirsting for God. The unfathomed ocean of the Godhead
lies far beyond my lip; but here is the channel through which there
flows that river of water of life. Here is the manifested God, here is
the granted God, here is the Godhead coming into connection and union
with man, his wants and his sins--the 'living God' and His living Son,
His everlasting Word. 'He that believeth upon Him shall never hunger,
and he that cometh unto Him shall never thirst.' God is the divine and
unfathomable ocean; Christ the Son is the stream that brings salvation
to every man's lips. All wants are supplied there. Take it as a piece of
the simplest prose, with no rhetorical exaggeration about it, that
Christ is _everything_, everything that a man can want. We are made to
require, and to be restless until we possess, perfect truth--there it
is! We are made to want, and to be restless until we get, perfect,
infinite unchangeable love--there it is! We must have, or the burden of
our own self-will will be a misery to us, a hand laid upon the springs
of our conduct, authoritative and purifying, and have the blessedness of
some voice to say to us, 'I bid thee, and that is enough'--there it is!
We must have rest, purity, hope, gladness, life in our souls--there they
all are! Whatever form of human nature and character be yours, my
brother!--whatever exigencies of life you may be lying under the
pressure of--man or woman, adult or child, father or son, man of
business or man of thought, struggling with difficulties or bright with
joy--Oh! believe us, the perfecting of your character may be got in the
Lamb of God, and without Him it never can be possessed. Christ is
everything, and 'out of His fulness all we receive grace for grace.'
Not only in Christ is there the perfect supply of all these necessities,
but also that fulness _becomes ours_ on the simple condition of desiring
it. The thirst for the living God in a man who has faith in Christ
Jesus, is not a thirst which amounts to pain, or arises from a sense of
non-possession. But in this divine region the principle of the giving is
this--to desire is to have; to long for is to possess. There is no wide
interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream
over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the
desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid and
life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and
truly desired it; but just in proportion as he desired it, he got
it--just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied. Therefore we
have to preach that grand gospel that faith, simple, conscious longing,
turned to Christ, avails to bring down the full and perfect supply.
But some Christian people here may reply, 'Ah! I wish it were so: what
was that you were saying at the beginning of your sermon, about men
having religious depression, about Christians longing and not
possessing?' Well, I have only this to say about that matter. Wherever
in a heart that really believes on God in Christ, there is a thirst that
amounts to pain, and that has with it a sense of non-possession, that is
not because Christ's fulness has become shrunken; that is not because
there is a change in God's law, that the measure of the desire is the
measure of the reception; but it is only because, for some reason or
other that belongs to the man alone, the desire is not deep, genuine,
simple, but is troubled and darkened. What we ask, we get. If I am a
Christian, however feeble I may be, the feebleness of my faith and the
feebleness of my desire may make my supplies of grace feeble; but if I
am a Christian, there is no such thing as an earnest longing
unsatisfied, no such thing as a thirst accompanied with a pain and sense
of want, except in consequence of my own transgression.
And thus there _is_ a longing imperfect in this life, but fully supplied
according to the measure of its intensity, a longing after 'the living
God'; and that is the state of a Christian man. And O my friend! that is
a widely different desire from the other that I have been speaking
about. It is blessed thus to say, 'My soul thirsteth for God.' It is
blessed to feel the passionate wish for more light, more grace, more
peace, more wisdom, more of God. That _is_ joy, that _is_ peace! Is that
_your_ experience in this present life?
III. Lastly, there is a perfect longing perfectly satisfied; and that is
heaven.
We shall not there be independent, of course, of constant supplies from
the great central Fulness, any more than we are here. One may see in one
aspect, that just as the Christian life here on earth is in a very true
sense a state of never thirsting any more, because we have Christ, and
yet in another sense is a state of continual longing and desire--so the
Christian and glorified life in heaven, in one view of it, is the
removal of all that thirst which marked the condition of man upon earth,
and in another is the perfecting of all those aspirations and desires.
Thirst, as longing, is eternal; thirst, as aspiration after God, is the
glory of heaven; thirst, as desire for more of Him, is the very
condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its
blessedness.
That future life gives us two elements, an infinite God, and an
indefinitely expansible human spirit: an infinite God to fill, and a
soul to be filled, the measure and the capacity of which has no limit
set to it that we can see. What will be the consequence of the contact
of these two? Why this, for the first thing, that always, at every
moment of that blessed life, there shall be a perpetual fruition, a
perpetual satisfaction, a deep and full fountain filling the whole soul
with the refreshment of its waves and the music of its flow. And yet,
and yet--though at every moment in heaven we shall be satisfied, filled
full of God, full to overflowing in all our powers--yet the very fact
that the God who dwells in us, and fills our whole natures with
unsullied and perfect blessedness, is an infinite God; and that we in
whom the infinite Father dwells, are men with souls that can grow, and
can grow for ever--will result in this, that at every moment our
capacities will expand; that at every moment, therefore, the desire will
grow and spring afresh; that at every moment God will be seen unveiling
undreamed-of beauties, and revealing hitherto unknown heights of
blessedness before us; and that the sight of that transcendent,
unapproached, unapproachable, and yet attracting and transforming glory,
will draw us onward as by an impulse from above, and the possession of
some portion of it will bear us upward as by a power from within; and
so, nearer, nearer, ever nearer to the throne of light, the centre of
blessedness, the growing, and glorifying, and greatening souls of the
perfectly and increasingly blessed shall 'mount up with wings as
eagles.' Heaven _is_ endless longing, accompanied with an endless
fruition--a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life!
My brother! let me put two sayings of Scripture side by side, 'My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God,'--'Father Abraham! send Lazarus,
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue.'
There be two thirsts, one, the longing for God, which, satisfied, is
heaven; one, the longing for quenching of self-lit fires, and for one
drop of the lost delights of earth to cool the thirsty throat, which,
unsatisfied, is hell. Then hearken to the final vision on the page of
Scripture, 'He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.' To us it
is showed, and to us the whole revelation of God converges to that last
mighty call, 'Let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him
take the water of life freely!'