Psalms 63:1 - Homiletics

An invocation and a vow.

"O God … seek thee." Rightly understood, these are the sublimest words human lips can utter. " My God!" To claim God as his own with joyful, adoring intelligence and absolute faith, is the highest act of which our nature is capable. It is melancholy to think that these same words may denote the degradation of our nature instead of its glory! The Prophet Isaiah, with holy indignation, restrained only by pity from utter scorn, depicts the idol worshipper falling down before his wooden image, and saying, "Deliver me, for thou art my god!" ( Isaiah 44:14-17 ). Perhaps we need not go far to find even a lower depth. These words, "My God!" constantly slip from thoughtless, profane lips, as an unmeaning exclamation, with no trace of religious feeling. The poor heathen, who has some dim sense of an invisible spiritual power behind his image, may look down with wonder and pity on the educated Englishman who is devoid of all sense of worship, all consciousness of relationship to the Father of spirits. We have here

I. DAVID 'S SUBLIME DECLARATION . "O God, thou art my God!"

1 . The expression of worship . Our English word "God" is one of those ancient words whose original meaning is unknown, The Hebrew word for which it stands in the Bible primarily means "mighty." The object of true worship is the omnipotent, self-existent Creator. Yet observe that mere power is never set forth in Scripture as the sole or chief reason for worship,—that would be heathenish. God's wisdom, righteousness, truth, holiness, bountiful loving kindness, and pardoning mercy are everywhere regarded as his claim to our worship, obedience, trust, and love. Underneath, like the solid rock on which the temple stood, is this foundation truth of his almightiness. Worship is bowing down before God, but it is also looking up. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." The more abasing the sense of our weakness, ignorance, sin, need, the more glorious and joyful a thing it is to look out of ourselves to him with whom is "the fountain of life," and say, "O God, thou art my God!"

2 . The expression of the sense of personal relationship . " My God!" Worship is much, but it is far from being the sum of religion. No small proof that the Bible is God's Word to man—a message from our Father to his lost children, is this—that its practical aim throughout is to awaken and appeal to this sense of personal relationship to God; to show us how sin has put us in a wholly false, unnatural relation to him; to bring us back to our right place and character—"children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

3 . Accordingly, this is the utterance of faith —reasonable, happy, unlimited trust. Nature, brilliant with the glory of its Maker, ruled by the awful harmony of his unswerving laws, impresses us with the distance between the Creator and the creature. Sin adds to the sense of distance that of estrangement and fear. In Psalms 51:1-19 , David says, "Thou God of my salvation!" but does not venture to say, "My God!" But when faith sees "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and grasps his plighted word, the shadow of guilt is chased away by the joy of pardon. Love casts out fear. The soul that was "far off" is "brought nigh by the blood of Christ." Experience comes in to help faith, and the language of faith becomes also the language of adoring gratitude and exulting certainty: "O God, thou art my God!"

II. DAVID 'S PURPOSE AND VOW . "Early will I seek thee." Our Revisers have happily kept this beautiful word "early," which an overstrained scholarship seeks to get rid of. The Hebrew word is the same with the word for "dawn." We have a similar figure in Psalms 130:6 , a very natural and forcible image to a nation of early risers (comp. Alexander on Isaiah 26:9 ). This yearning of the spirit after God—heart hunger, soul thirst for his presence, love, likeness, is the very voice of his Spirit in the soul. Desire, hope, quest, perseverance, are all included here (see Psalms 130:2-5 ). And they who thus seek shall find, for "the Father seeketh such" ( John 4:23 ). Some sincere Christians may feel this intense yearning after God an experience they would fain reach, but scarcely dare claim. Take courage; he is God of the valleys as well as of the hills. The prayer of the humble is his delight. Why not make David's words your own—with better right than he? For the ancient saint came and claimed his privilege only on the ground of God's covenant; we claim our birthright through him who said, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God" ( John 20:17 ; cf. Romans 8:16 ). We are met for worship, yet there may be those to whom worship is but a dead form, who have never aspired, never cared to say, "O God, thou art my God!" You pity and despise the poor Hindu idolater. Which is really on the lower platform—he in his rude, dim, maimed, yet sincere fashion, expressing his sense of dependence on a higher and invisible, power, "feeling after God;" or you, with the light of nineteen Christian centuries shining full on you with the open Bible, with the music of God's message of reconciliation filling the air, yet with man's noblest aspiration, the quest of God; man's deepest, purest affection,—the love of God; man's sublimest capacity,—the worship of God, dead or slumbering in your soul? Alas! you do not dream what a glory, power, joy, meaning, would come into your life if from this hour you learned to say, "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee."