Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.39 – October 1994
Thirsting After God
Sermon: by Rev. M. Vanderree
Text: Psalm 42
Reading: John 4:1-25, 7:37-39
Dear people of God,
The foundation for the Christian life is GRATITUDE.
Gratitude is the hallmark, of our walk with the Lord. It is also the hallmark of our life with other people, as we grow and develop spiritually. It is out of gratitude that we seek to meet with the Lord and desire to worship Him as families. Because we are grateful we long to enter into His presence by prayer and wish to serve Him in our work knowing He sees all that we do. Out of gratitude we want to teach our children about the Lord and His will.
As one person has put it:
Gratitude is a response to grace. The compassionate life is a grateful life, and actions borne out of gratitude are not compulsive but free, not sombre but joyful, not fanatical but liberating. When gratitude is the source of our actions, our giving becomes receiving and those to whom we minister become our ministers.’
Yet, isn’t it true to say that we struggle with this? I know I do. We have urgent things to do, people to meet, books to read, events to attend. Either our jobs demand time and overtime, or possibly in unemployment much of our time is spent looking for a job and worrying about not finding it. Our families need time and energy. Our studies could fill every waking hour. Our houses and flats need attention. We promise to do things for the church or community organisations. Problems in the world concern us and we are frustrated about not being able to do anything. We simply do not have the time. Our diaries are full and when we have time at home we want to put our feet up!
What thought have I given to expressing my gratitude?
Today, let us try to enter into the experience of the man of Psalm 42. We will see that he experienced a deep thirsting and longing to be in the house of God and to be reminded of the presence of God Himself. But more than this. This man finds water from a well that quenches his thirst. His longing and thirsting after God is satisfied in the well which God digs.
Our longing for God is just as real. We recognise this as we have gone through today’s service. This morning make space for God, that we may delight in God’s work of salvation and so bubble over with gratitude.
We will see, firstly that thirst is real, and, secondly, that thirst can be quenched.
1. Thirst Is Real
This Psalmist longs to be with God in the temple. His thirst for God is intense, personal and provoked. How striking the imagery is which he uses. He refers to a deer looking for water. We understand that this appropriate imagery in the context of the heat of the ancient Near East. We certainly understand this at a time when we are confronted with drought at home and famine abroad. The sun belts out its heat. To live and survive in that heat is a taxing business. Water for the deer is not a luxury, but a necessity for survival. The water is refreshing and invigorating. Without it the deer will die.
Such is the INTENSITY of the thirst of the Psalmist’s soul. To be reminded of God’s presence and to be able to meet with God in his house for worship was not a luxury; it was essential for survival.
What about us?
Not only is his thirst intense, but it is profoundly PERSONAL. He is not speaking for someone else, but he expresses his own desire to meet with God. He knows that the living God is not some idol of stone, wood or the imagination. The living, covenant God is the object of his desire. He wants to meet and commune with Him. He remembers the communion God made possible at the time He revealed Himself at Mt Sinai (Exodus 19:17, 29:42-43, 30:6,36).
His thirst is also PROVOKED. It is hard enough to struggle on your own, seeking for reassurance of God’s presence. It becomes an even more bitter pill when others around you rub salt into the wound. Men around him were taunting the Psalmist by saying: ‘where is your God?’ These questions were like knife slashes that cut to the heart of an already feeble and tottering sense of God’s presence.
Despite our busyness, we thirst, don’t we? And this thirst is just as real as the Psalmist’s. Is it just as intense, personal and provoked?
For instance, whenever there is a baptism isn’t it our deep desire that our children will not only become responsible members of a community, but that they will become people who know and return God’s love in Christ?
So, for our children to grow in this kind of love, our own resources are just not enough! We must draw from a well that is deeper than our own. So our cry is like the Psalmist: ‘We thirst for you!’ As our children grow up we pray that they will also experience life with a real thirst.
To see someone close lose a life’s partner; to know that the home you once shared, that was built to fulfil a dream is now empty; these things make me realise the intensity of loneliness experienced. To this loneliness I cannot respond by saying: ‘I understand’, because I don’t. Out of this loneliness, there is a cry which says, ‘God, my longing for you is great, like a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you, O God.’
They may be in the middle of crisis and turmoil. Thundering questions and raging doubts are attacking. Relationships within the family are falling apart at the seams. There will be the pain and heartache of a broken past, in which we say, ‘My God, where are you?’ Our thirst is personal and it needs to be quenched.
A student working through high school or university will feel the blasting heat of current ‘secular thought’ and the words of wisdom of ‘men who have come of age.’ There will be the challenge by those who say that faith is redundant. We can create life in test tubes. We are able to send men into space. Science and technology are breaking new ground every day and we hear the provocation, ‘Where is your God?’
We are really no different from the Psalmist. Oh, the questions he asks are expressed in a typically Old Testament way. He is far from Jerusalem and the temple, the centre of worship. Desperately wanting to be there, he feels forsaken. But the experience of his faith and the need it reveals, is real. That need is still the same today.
The thirst is real but who put it there in the first place? A 14th century contemplative wrote:
‘When the Holy Spirit comes into the soul and kindles there the fire of love, the flames throw out blazing sparks which cause a thirst – a longing for God.’
St Augustine put it this way: ‘Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God, for we were made for you.’ The thirst for God comes from God and no other. It is the result of a heart gone astray from its real `home’. It is the result of being made in the Maker’s image. Our thirst will not be quenched until God satisfies it!
Then how is it quenched?
Remember, God is in the business of restoring, reconciling, redeeming, embracing and loving a people called to be His own. The thirst is real but it can be quenched.
2. Thirst Can Be Quenched
I still recall the time when we brought Bradley home from hospital after he was born. During those first weeks of life, while we were trying to teach him to sleep through, he had different ideas. In those first weeks, which seemed to last forever, there were nights where he would not settle. We’d try different remedies to settle him. In the end we were walking him up and down the hall in the stroller late at night or early in the morning.
He wanted to be held, rocked and consoled, until finally he would fall asleep. We are like that. We try to satisfy our thirst for God through our own remedies, but we remain thirsty still. Nothing but the flowing streams of God will quench the thirst of a soul panting for Him.
The Psalmist looks to the past for consolation. His state is pitiable! Feeling sorry for himself, he dejectedly and forlornly drinks his tears and refuses food. Nostalgically, he remembers when things were better: ‘How I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving’ (42:3).
But that is past. Now there is nothing.
Our search for quenching our thirst is often the same. Remember the golden days? The time when the family was together? The joy of laughing with your partner. The days when health was good? The time when questions and doubts were less? Those days are past. Now there is little but the thirst for God.
But there is a source at which this thirst can be quenched. The quenching of our thirst is not found in the past or in ourselves; it is found in God our Saviour. He is the source of our hope!
Our natural response to our thirst is to dig wells of our own from which we hope satisfying water will come bubbling forth. [Read Jeremiah 2: 13.] Jeremiah prophesied at a time when God’s people had forsaken Him and they tried to find satisfaction in their own broken cisterns.
When we face frustration in our family, work, church, bowling club or school, we hope to have our thirst quenched by looking for security, love, or significance. We look and expect from others that which we can only get from God. The Psalmist, while caught in despair, yet has not given up hope.
He knows the way home to the loving embrace of the living God.
Much later Jesus would confront the Samaritan woman: ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4:13-14).
Jesus again assured his followers, ‘If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scriptures has said, streams of living water will flow from within him’ (John 7: 37b-38). Our thirst can be quenched. And the good news is that we don’t have to rely on our own cracked wells!
Indeed Christ thirsted so that our thirst could be quenched. How was it that Jesus could say that He is the living water? Surely, only because of His own thirst! Because he had tasted the fires of hell, for which there was no quenching, ours can be quenched. Surely, our thirst can be quenched because of Jesus the Christ, our hope and our Saviour who is the fulfilment of the longing of the Psalmist. This is the glorious and free Gospel of God’s grace!
After Jesus came and invited everyone to drink freely of the ‘water I shall give’, neither Peter, Paul, John or Andrew or we need to search any longer. The foundation of our spirituality has a bottomless well from which we can draw. Jesus the living water has come. Our panting is over. Our thirst assuaged. That is the source of our gratitude. Knowing that we can drink of this water must be the heart of what we model to our children. We live because we have Christ.
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Behold I freely give
the living water thirsty one,
stoop down and drink and live.’
I came to Jesus and I drank
of that life giving stream;
My thirst was quenched,
my soul revived,
and now I live in Him.
AMEN