Let us turn to our Bibles to Psalm 63. Psalm 63. As you know, at the end of every month, I go through a psalm.
I’m over a third of the way through the psalms now. We’re on Psalm 63. Let us listen attentively to the Word of God as we go through Psalm 63.
O God, you are my God. Early will I seek you. My soul thirsts for you.
My flesh longs for you in a day, in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you.
Thus I will bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with morrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips.
When I remember you on my bed, I meditate on you in the night watches, because you have been my help. Therefore, in the shadow of your wings, I will rejoice. My soul follows close behind you.
Your right hand upholds me. But those who seek my life to destroy it shall go down into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword.
They shall be a portion for jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God. Everyone who swears by him shall glory, but the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.
Let us pray. And in these words of the psalmist God above, may our hearts also go out to you with joyous desire for God above. As we see, this is a theme here.
He highlights it at the beginning and again at the end in which he describes his desire and his longing for you and your help and your deliverance and how he rejoices and is glad therein. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, may we meditate upon you and what the things that you have done for us and that we would stir ourselves up by reading your word and praying that we could continue to have a longing for you, God Almighty, and the things that you continue to promise to do for us. We ask and implore you by the power of the Holy Spirit within us.
Amen. Like most psalms, this one has different themes interwoven, although they may be similar themes to other psalms. And you can see it by highlighting the verbs.
One helpful technique for you, perhaps, going through a text, although you wouldn’t be able to read your Bible after a just go along and highlight the verbs and see if you see a consistent pattern. In this case, you see seeking, thirsting, longing, looking, meditating. But there’s also other ones that are grouped together, praising, blessing, and rejoicing, or the phrase lifting up your hands, which of course is an idea of praising and blessing God.
So the former group of words, thirsting and longing and seeking, of course, emphasizes David’s desire for and unto God Almighty, the covenant-keeping God. That desire is for his help and his protection, as made clear, especially near the end, verse 9, but those who seek my life to destroy it. So his longing, of course, is for God Almighty as he is, even if God had done nothing for him, we ought to serve him and follow him.
But in particular, his longing is for protection and guidance in his life, as it often is for the rest of us. The expression in his is deep desire for the Lord as a salvation of his own people. Because of this ultimate goal and desire of David’s life, indeed our life, we rejoice, he rejoices, and blesses God for delivering him from such judgment from his enemies.
And so the two themes are interwoven. And although we’re not being pursued by those who would kill us, praise be to God, we can nevertheless read this beautiful language here and embrace what the psalmist has as our own words. The first point, longing for my God, verses 1-4.
Longing for My God
Oh God, you are my God. Right? You are my God, and what does God say? You are my people. And so here we have, as I preached in Hosea last week, that covenantal phrase, although part of it, right? There’s about 30 passages that have a more explicit or expanded phraseology of this.
This is just a little bit you can see, I hope, after that sermon. Oh, this is referring to the covenant of grace and mercy upon his people. That language we read in Hosea, that you who are not my people are not my people, and you shall say, you are my God, and I will say, I, you are my God, and you are my people.
I am your God, and you are my people. Some variance of that. And so here, this covenantal language, then I will say to you, you are my people, and they shall say, you are my God, at the end of Hosea chapter 2. From Genesis to Revelation, that language is there.
And I’ve read those verses. The language here in particular is of owning the covenant, if I could use that phrase. Not you are God over all.
We read that this morning, I think it was Psalm 36, when I was describing how God is the Savior of all mankind in the sense of preserving and guiding them, not in the sense of saving their souls, necessarily, unless they are the elect. And I quoted that psalm because it highlights, amongst other psalms and other parts of the Bible, how God is the creator of all things. He’s the God of the world.
This is a unique theme in the Bible, that is, with respect to the culture around them at the time in the ancient Near East, because it reminds you, the pagan gods and the false religions, the dead gods, as opposed to the living God, as we saw this morning in 1 Timothy 4.10, their God is only big enough for their little country. It’s the God of that country. It’s the God of the ocean.
It’s the God of the grains. It’s the God of this or that, these little domains. And what do we read over and over again in the psalmist? The Lord of heaven and earth, of everything that you can see and not see, and he guides and directs and preserves all things.
And so here, this language is not, you are God over all, would you do me a favor, please? But rather, you are my God. And the implication is, and we are, or I am your people. I am one who is chosen by you, a precious treasure.
So this is not a foxhole conversion, as we know, obviously, because it’s David. But to highlight here, I’m highlighting how significant this language is, what it could have been otherwise, because that’s not what he’s talking about, just God in general. But God is our God, the one who is especially our savior and our deliverer, this special covenantal relationship.
And as such, it’s an expression of what? Trust, reliance, dependence upon him, and the promise that he has given us in that covenant. Using this phrase is David calling upon God as a son, an adopted son to a father asking for help in times of need. And so this morning in Sunday School class, I went over the differences between justification and sanctification.
And I don’t have it up here, but I mentioned, as you may recall, adoption being part of this picture. And the adoption is this, right? We are his. We are brought into the number of God’s elect.
He didn’t just give us Christ’s righteousness and pardon us, we’re no longer condemned, you can go off on your own now, goodbye, have fun. But he brought us into the judge’s family. He’s no longer a judge, he’s our father.
That’s the adoption concept. And that’s clearly implied here. He has a special relationship and the covenant has given him not only justification, as you remember Romans 4 quotes, Paul does, the Psalms, David saying, Blessed is he whom the Lord has not imputed iniquity or sin.
The implication being he’s been imputed to him righteousness. You’re a sinner or you’re not. There’s nothing in between.
And of course, sanctification, but also adoption. The thirsting and longing here in which he calls out before God, early I will seek you. He’s so eager, he’s not going to wait.
My soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. We live in such a land.
It’s not that bad, of course. It’s semi-arid up here in Colorado. And so we have concerns.
We’ve had water restrictions and whatnot, as you know, taking care of the yard and the like. We’re blessed, nevertheless. We have drinking water, even though prices seem to keep going up.
But this is more deserty than anything out there. And a lot of the places that he finds himself in, especially when he was fleeing. The title here is the Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.
Wilderness has no easy access to water. In other words, they had oases and the like in places that were much greenery, but also they had desert areas. And so he’s using, clearly, this picture and this metaphor to describe how much he needs his Lord and Savior.
Now, it’s not an emotional description as such, although emotions are, of course, part of it. And they ought to be part of it, brothers and sisters. I know people like to make fun of the Presbyterians as the frozen chosen.
And we kind of laugh because I think we’re secure. We know we have emotions. We know we can get excited and uptight or whatever the situation is around us.
It’s God working in and through us, and we do have emotions. It’s just that I think properly that there’s a time and place for expressing them. One of the fruits of the Spirit is what? Self-control.
People forget that. They always like the joy, the peace, the kindness, the happiness. Wait a minute, there’s self-control.
That’s, in fact, very important. It has its place, of course. Now, there’s different times to be sure in our life in which our emotions get high and move and we get excited and the like.
Like watching the glorious sunset upon the majestic Rockies. I love sitting in the front of my house, and I’ll see this once in a while. It’s hard in the winter.
I don’t like being out when it’s cold. But you can still see it. You peek out the window.
It’s a beautiful picture. It’s kind of pink sometimes and got that orange, of course. And I sit and wonder, this is marvelous that God has created such majesty and grandeur around us.
And if this, I think, is marvelous, how much more marvelous is the God who created it? And so you do get excited, and pastors do get emotional in this regard. You may even feel goosebumps at times, but not always. But the picture here is more precisely a strong desire towards the Lord, His will, His convictions, that He needs God.
He needs to seek Him. He needs His help. He needs deliverance from the Lord Himself, that He indeed is the chief end of man.
You can make this a text, proof text, for the Shorter Catechism, the first question, what is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. To long for Him, to thirst for Him, as we need water. I have a water bottle up here, and I never get enough.
And you never get enough. You’ll sleep, you’ll wake up the next day, what do you want? You got to have some water. I know some of you don’t like to drink a lot of water, but eventually you have to drink water.
You can’t get away from it. That’s the picture here. You can’t get away from God.
You need Him more than you need water, than you need air, because He’s the source of water and air. He’s more precious than life itself, for life comes from His hand. Now, of course, He wants help in particular.
As I described earlier, certainly He desires God, even if the Lord God Almighty had done nothing for Him. God is worthy of all honor and praise. We must remember this fact, and unbelievers must hear this from us.
It’s not, look what God has done for me. He’s the, you know, the Santa Claus in the sky. I get all kinds of goodies from Him, and we get them in the way of the church.
The church is helpful. The church gives us money, gives us advice. This is true, but we shouldn’t give the impression to the world that it’s because of the goodies we get from God that we honor and love and serve Him.
But because He is the Creator God, and He is our Savior, just simply who He is is sufficient for us to bow before Him. But He does have a purpose, and He has a concern, and it’s a particular concern that people want to destroy Him. They want to kill Him.
It’s a common theme, of course, of David’s life. He’s a king, he’s a general, and he’s got enemies all around him. They want to kill David.
Thanks be to the Lord, we don’t have people trying to kill us, but we do have problems nevertheless. Sin wants to kill us. Satan wants to destroy us.
The world wants to tear us down. These are our enemies. They’re real, and often they don’t have a face, but they’re still just as dangerous.
Do we desire help from the Lord? Then we should pray and seek out help, as we read here. Use this psalm as your own prayer, if need be. And he continues here, which he describes looking for the God, verse 2. So I have looked for you in where? The sanctuary, to see your power and your glory.
He went to church. We don’t go to the temple, praise the Lord. As I’ve said before, I don’t want to be a priest having to kill animals.
I don’t like to kill animals. See, I’m soft-hearted. This emotionalist pastor, I don’t want to mess with that.
I want to learn about God, though. That’s why I went to church, kept going to church, and eventually became a pastor. And all of you keep going to church and reading about God, and want to learn about Him, because it encourages you, it strengthens you, it feeds your soul.
Here’s that metaphor of being fed the Word of God, right here in Psalm 63. Or in this case, drinking the bountiful blessings of our Lord and Savior. Now, in the next section here, verse 3, because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you.
Thus I will bless you while I live. So there’s that other theme interwoven with the desire, his longing before the Lord. That’s why I call it here a joyous desire before God.
He’s rejoicing and blessing him. Loving kindness is covenantal faithfulness. The Lord always keeps His word.
That’s why He cries to him, You are my God. I’m embracing the promises of the covenant and coming to you with those promises, God. You said, You will be with me.
Because the covenant, in its simplest form, is a promise. God will take care of us, of course, in His time and His way, but it will happen. He will save us to the uttermost.
And it’s His word for the body, of course, and His word for the soul, to echo this morning’s sermon. And for the body, they were given, as a reminder, the special promises of deliverance against flesh and blood enemies. Go into the land, slaughter the enemies of God, those who hate you, who would, without a hesitation, take you out in your sleep.
Remember some of the battle stories there in Samuel and David’s life and the like. They did. They came in and slaughtered all kinds of people, the enemies of God.
They’re very ruthless. We, again, live in such opulent times, such security in the West, although unfortunately we’re seeing more and more of the Muslims. I mean, they, in my mind, they’re kind of the closest idea of how bad things were in the ancient Near East.
These people are ruthless. They don’t think a second thought about taking out a knife and stabbing you. And God said, defend yourself, and I promise you, if you follow my ways, you will be victorious.
And they were. Over and over again. We know the stories, of course, we know a lot of stories in which they failed, because they failed in the most basic ways at times, violating God’s worship, for example, and the like.
And God brought failure upon them as a punishment. But it’s a special promise we don’t have. We don’t have the promise, hey, you know, if you’re king, if you’re president, if you’re general, is a Christian, and if he prays, and he’s faithful in church attendance, and he honors God, then God will give you a deliverance in battle.
That’s not a promise of ours. The promise that we have is more generic in the sense of, if you use the means of providence that God has given you, like defend yourself, you’re going to probably succeed, if you’re wise about it. Right? Use common sense, just like the unbeliever.
Preserving your body, protecting yourself. So here, he does a double thing. He’s asking for help for his body, of course.
They wish to destroy me. They wish to literally kill him with a spear. And he’s going to use common sense.
We talked about that before in the other Psalms, where God had trained him through providence, how to use a sword, and to be smart about these things in the battlefield. And we, too, are supposed to do the same thing. So this is a general promise, using the means of providence, is what I call it, that we will often, and again, by God’s timing in his own way, be successful one way or the other often.
Like, I don’t know, running when you’re outnumbered. Simple as that. But, more especially, of course, the deliverance for our soul.
The promise of victory over sin is a more thorough promise, if I can use that description there, in the here and now. Right? We’re given a new body, but we don’t have it yet. Meanwhile, I have to struggle with this and the sicknesses of this world.
But we are promised victory over sin and death in the here and now. We can say no to sin, and have said no to sin, and I’ll talk about that all next week, that’s what it does, dovetails the sermon here, in Sunday School class on sanctification. That yes, it’s imperfect, and it’s unequal, and it’s growing.
But the growing part, as I’ll highlight next week, shows us you have changed, you have grown up, you have done things you wouldn’t do before, and you have avoided things you otherwise wouldn’t have done, you would have done otherwise. By God’s grace, you have matured in your sanctification and in your growth. And same with David, when he embraces these promises, that they are not only the promises, the unique promises, of course, of military victory that they were given in the Old Testament, but also victory over his own sins, and the struggles that he has, and the call of repentance that he has as well.
Ours is, and his as well, David’s is a victory, God’s love and kindness, and the victory in our life is against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And we can look towards that future. He praises God there, my lips will praise you, again, he emphasizes this, and thus I will bless you, I will lift up my hands in your name, that’s clearly a picture of honoring God before the world.
This word is interesting here, praise, before God, there in verse 3, my lips shall praise you, is mostly used in the Psalms, it’s kind of interesting. And it’s praise with words, of course, because we can’t contain our joy, our mouth is going to open. You can praise in your heart, you can pray in your heart, right, you can talk to God as well, but eventually your lips are going to move, as it does with David here, my lips shall praise you.
And of course, with song, that’s what these Psalms are, they’re songs. Words to melody, often prayers of a sort, and certainly praises before God Almighty, and so with his lips, he cannot contain himself, and he will cry out to God with praising him with psalm and timbrel. Praise with the truth and the depth of God’s word.
And praise with hands as well, I will lift up my hands in your name, I will never tell you not to lift up your hands when you’re praying before God, when you’re praising God with songs and the like, you can do that, it’s okay. It’s mentioned a number of times, because it’s not uncommon in your outward actions, when you’re excited about something, that it spills out into your hands and your feet. Now, of course, you don’t want to cause a commotion, there’s that Presbyterianism, do all things with good decency and order.
Satisfied in My Helper
Yes, that’s true. Second point, satisfied in my helper, verses five through seven, my soul shall be satisfied as with morrow and fatness. Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, I grew up relatively poor, as a number of you have, and what do you do when you have that cheap steak? You got to eat it all.
You even got to eat the fat. My dad would tell me, that’s the best part, son, eat that fat. I’m just like, it’s rubbery, it’s about, what in the world? I still don’t get that to this day.
I’m not like running around, let me see some more fat. Now, I’m not going to knock the rest of you, if you like fat, go for it, you can have my fat, I’ll mail it to you. Obviously, what he means here, is this is the good stuff.
It fills me up. I would say, a filet mignon, with not a lot of fat. That’s what I would say.
So don’t get lost on the words, right? What’s the intent? What’s the purpose of this description here? That’s what he’s talking about. He’s satisfied with God’s promises, God’s deliverance, over and over again, the life of David, as we know. That’s why it’s important to go through those stories of the Old Testament, the histories.
I want to make that clear. It’s not just a story someone made up, they’re history, they’re historical facts that have occurred. And there in Hebrews chapter 11, the great hall of faith there, in that chapter, he recites those events.
And it would mean nothing to you if you didn’t know what was going on in the Old Testament. That’s why history is important for Christians, especially divine history, because it encourages us. God took care of David, he’ll take care of me.
He’ll guide and protect me and preserve me, as he’s always promised. Remembering verse six, when I remember you on my bed, and I meditate you in the night watches, some people can’t get to sleep because their brain turns on even more before they go to sleep. Others not so much, apparently his is.
I think it’s probably true for all of us, things are really bad, you’re not going to sleep well. It has to get pretty bad and pretty stressful. And you’re going to be like the psalmist, I remember a lot of things going on before I go to bed.
Now what he’s remembering, however, he’s controlling himself. It was that fruit of the spirit self control, to remember what God has done. That’s the implication here.
I remember you on my bed, not just well, there’s God, okay, I almost forgot God existed. That’s not what he’s saying. The idea of remembrance used often in the Bible is to meditate upon right? Here’s the parallel.
Remember, how does Hebrew poetry work? It runs by synonymous parallelism. That is similar ideas with similar words. It doesn’t rhyme with sounds like English does.
It rhymes with ideas, the similar ideas. And so when he says, I remember it’s parallel with I meditate. Okay, in verse six.
And he rejoices there. Because you have been my help, he knows it for a fact, he meditated upon these histories, you can meditate upon your own history, how God had preserved you, as I mentioned this morning, and guided you to redemption. And therefore, in your shadow of your wings, I will rejoice in the shadow of your protection as God is a great winged bird, a mother description elsewhere, a mothering bird who preserves his people, and we are under his wings, therefore protected, he rejoices.
He’s happy, he’s even excited. It’s a shout of joy is what the word refers to. Different than the other word for praise there in verse three.
Often again, used in the Psalms. In fact, the Psalms have a lot of unique words, because it’s poetry, he’s trying to find synonyms for another word that you would normally have. So he ends up finding different words that are unusual.
It clearly uses for the voice, use of the voice, excuse me, in this word for rejoice. It’s not just rejoicing in the heart, but it’s rejoicing with the lips. Verses eight through 11, rejoicing in my defender, David is rejoicing in God who is his defender, verses eight through 11, my soul follows close behind you, your right hand upholds me.
Rejoicing in My Defender
Eight and seven could probably go together, depending on what commentator you use or how you look at it, because you have been my help, and therefore in the shadow of your wings, being in the shadow of his wings, he’s what my soul is following close to you, and your right hand upholds me and preserves me. But those who seek my life to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth. As you preserve me, those who wish to destroy me are being taken out.
So he’s rejoicing in God, watching over him, being upheld by God Almighty. That is, he preserves or rescues us. I didn’t highlight that this morning, but certainly one of the similarities between God being the savior of all mankind and God being the savior, especially of those who believe, is he does uphold both of us.
Although they’re upholding, it doesn’t last forever if they don’t repent, ours will, especially of our soul, but even of our body. He has done much for us and given us much prosperity, especially in the West, to preserve our bodies until that day of the resurrection. And without his aid, in other words, we would fall day by day.
We would fail even day by day. He is always with us, even when we sin, he protects us in spite of our foolishness. And he is much a part of our life, so much a part of our life that we forget sometimes, simply driving across town, not getting run over by more and more crazy people.
I’ve mentioned this before, and I see you guys nodding your head, yeah, it’s just more obvious the last several years, it’s just crazy people on the road. Who taught them how to drive? But you’re alive because God is preserving you. Doesn’t have to be something dramatic, oh no, I almost got skewered by a spear like David, but it’s simply a reminder that God is always there, even in the mundane things in life.
And that’s why you’re able to come to worship, survive the snowstorm and the like, God is with us, he is preserving us, he is upholding all things, especially his people, especially you, brothers and sisters. Meditate upon that when you struggle with things in life, he is there with you. Those seeking his life, verse 9, but those who seek my life to destroy it shall go into the lower parts of the earth, they’re going to be wiped out.
Here is the most specific description of the concerns and problems that he has. Again, the Psalms are often very vague enough that you’re like, I think that could fit me, but specific enough, we know it’s more than just bad feelings, something bad is going on around him. It is, of course, a problem and a common problem with David that they try to literally kill him with a sword, with a spear, and with a chariot perhaps running him over, whatever would work in their case.
And although in the West it doesn’t happen as much, thanks be to God, but it does happen in the world right now, in Africa. I heard of slaughter of about 70 Christians recently. Because they’re Christians, we forget this.
Middle East, of course, China in their own way, North Korea, it’s still their brothers and sisters. Don’t let the prosperity and the peace that God has blessed you with confuse you, that without that blessing, people would try to kill us. They don’t want to hear what we have to say, left to their own devices.
And so we should pray for them and for each other, but more importantly, not just those seeking his physical life as he prayed for deliverance, but we should always pray for those who seek our spiritual life, who wish to destroy us with lies and heresies and false teachings. That’s more important than our body. So those false religions and false teachers who wish to devour our souls, we need deliverance from them and pray to God for more faithful churches in America and in Europe than elsewhere in the world.
Because it’s hard, and there’s lots of deception out there, and we need help. Even pastors need help. We all need help, brothers and sisters.
And so we must cry out before God for deliverance of our bodily concerns, yes, but always for our soul. And the punishment, of course, is they shall go to the lower parts of the earth, they shall fall by the sword, verse 10, they shall be a portion for jackals. That’s pretty gruesome.
I mean, he’s saying their remnants will be eaten by scavengers, that’s what jackals are, they’re scavengers, as well as dogs. We were listening to a psalm on the way out here in which it describes God and bringing his angels of judgment, and the dogs shall have their fill. Right? Because dogs back then were scavengers as well.
If we had wild dogs in America, they’d be scavengers. And this is what’s left for them if they do not repent. Now he writes this, not with glee, I’ve preached on in purgatory psalms, as you recall, we don’t do this out of joy and masochistic pleasure and light, sadomasochism, but rather with confidence, a simple statement of fact, God will bring justice.
He will vindicate his name and vindicate his people. And that should be a comfort for us, brothers and sisters, as it was for David. Rejoicing king, here we read the last verse, but the king shall rejoice in God.
Everyone who swears by his name shall glory. Now it may be indirect reference, I think, to David. Again, the psalm is of David who was in the wilderness, perhaps fleeing from Saul or Absalom, his eldest son.
But what I want to focus here is the second part of 11. Everyone who swears by him shall glory. David certainly was a type of Christ and is swearing to David in this imagery here, swearing to Christ our Lord and how he has the victory.
Our king, Jesus, is indeed rejoicing in God in his work that’s finished on the cross, applied to us in history by the power of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the word. He rejoices and we ought to rejoice with him. We ought to have thanksgiving in our hearts for the great deliverance our mighty king has given to us.
We are, as Christians, sworn fealty to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It means submitting to his rule. It’s a public acknowledgment of his lordship.
Every Christian swears by him. That’s the idea. And we shall therefore glory.
There’s the other word besides praising and rejoicing and lifting up hands, the other part of the theme in this book of the psalm here of longing and desiring and calling out before God. Because of this, he rejoices because he knows God has delivered him in the past and will deliver him again. That’s faith.
That’s trust. We have oaths in God’s name, of course, in the name of Jesus. We give vows as church officers.
We give vows as members of the church as well that they are there for a solemn and public purpose, but always to acknowledge the lordship of our Lord and Savior above us. And we glory, that is, we rejoice in praising God. And the king shall rejoice in God and everyone who swears by him shall glory.
There again, parallel ideas are not exactly the same, of course. On the one hand is the king and the other is his servants, but both are what? Rejoicing and glorying. It’s extended parallelism, they call it.
For what? Again, what Christ has done for us on the cross, delivering us, saving us, preserving us, protecting us, sustaining us, even here and now. He rejoices in it, brothers and sisters. We ought to rejoice as well.
The good things that he has done for us and continues to do for us, especially for our souls. You know it because you’re alert and you’re awake. You are willing to come to church when others look down on you.
You’re willing to read his Bible. You’re willing to walk away from bad influence. I don’t want to hear that.
I want to hear that language. I don’t want my life and my sanctification to be brought low. That’s God working in you.
That’s God sustaining you by the power of his spirit. Praise be to his name. Let us rejoice because our desire and longing, brothers and sisters, I know in an emotional sense it comes and goes, but at the end of the day, believers will always have this thirst for him and can never ultimately leave or flee from him as our King and Savior.
For he who is with us, he is glorious and divine, and he is our deliverer. Amen. Let us pray.
We bow our heads and hearts in submission to you, glorious King Jesus, and we thank you and rejoice that you are our deliverer and preserver and sustainer, and that you have indeed watched over us against those who would seek our life, especially the world, the flesh, and the devil, that would seek our spiritual life, our soul, to drag us down into the lower parts of the earth. Preserve us, God. Sustain us, we pray.
May we cry out to you. May we read this psalm as part of our words, that our soul thirsts for you, our flesh longs for you, as one who is in a dry and thirsty land where there’s no water. There’s only you, God and Savior.
May we continue to look for you in the sanctuary and without, wherever we go, to see your power and your glory always with us and before us, we pray, by the blood of our Lord and Savior, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.