Better Than Life

This week we're in Psalm 63. If you have a Bible, you can go and turn there. Psalm 63. And one of the things that happened for my family and I, we were on a trip to Greece with a group of about 40 folks from our church. And while we were there, the world changed.

I don't know if you knew that or not or realized it, but my wife was messing with social media and she told me the rest of the world is talking about how great America is. Pastor John alluded to this last week, talking about how we help people discover ranch dressing. But the World cup started and so people were singing Take Me Home Country Road. And for like at least a minute we became a soccer nation. Some of you who didn't know the difference between a red card and an uno card all of a sudden were like passionately cheering on our national team for the US to win the World Cup.

And while we didn't make it to the finals, you do know that what you value is revealed by what you will pay. Hey, did you know that the finals that took place last Sunday between Argentina and Spain was the most expensive ticket for any sporting event in US History? To put it in perspective, some of you know that the Canes won the Stanley cup, right? You guys know that we're still here. Yeah.

You could buy a Stanley cup finals ticket here in Raleigh for under $1,000. Just, just in your mind, guess what you think the cheapest ticket was to get into the finals for the World cup last Sunday. An idea, idea. Nevermind. The least expensive ticket according to seat pick just before kickoff was $9,500.

$9,500. For those of you who are slow on the uptake, the average ticket for that game last Sunday was was $15,331. The cheapest ticket on the FIFA official resale platform was $21,995. Okay, it gets worse. Listen to this.

On the FIFA official resale site, one seat was listed at $2.3 million for a 90 minute experience plus. Commercial break, hydration, whatever.

After the game was over with, they sold pieces of grass for $450. We're having a drought in Raleigh. If anyone would like to buy a piece of grass for my yard, I'll do it for 200. Anybody? Anybody?

Some of you might hear that thinking, that's why I don't like soccer or sports or you wouldn't pay that for the super bowl or World Series or anything like that either. Okay, pay attention, keep listening. Got some other numbers for you. And today's message is not about money, just so you know. It is about value and what we value.

But weddings. The average American wedding right now costs $34,000. Some of you are like, that's ridiculous. Others of you, like, that's all they paid. Okay, got it.

The average. That's 12,000 for the room, 2,700 for flowers. It's about $284 per guest. Okay. Do we really like them, honey?

It's probably a conversation we would have at my house. A family of four going to Disney for five days easily can cost $10,000. But no one gets home and says, why did we spend all that money? It's the memories. They're worth it, right?

Pets. Americans spend $150 billion a year on pets.

Yes. You're very quiet for that one, for some reason. All right, I want you to play along with this one. Subscriptions. Get this.

Researchers actually called people's houses and said, how much do you think you spend on subscriptions? Streaming services, you know, whatever. Different things you got, Spotify, whatever. And people guess on average, $86. But then they said, all right, well, we want to go through.

Let's go through some of them. And they told people where to look to see what their actual subscriptions were. And the average price was actually around $219. So they were not. It was more than double they were paying than what they thought they were.

So here's something some of you need to know. Your bank account knows a version of you you haven't met yet. You're doing things. You're like. You don't even realize what's actually happening here.

All right, does anybody here have a coffee habit? Anybody afraid to raise your hand because what I might say next. All right, there you go. Average cup of coffee at most of these bougie coffee shops. Starbucks, Caribou, and all the niche places.

Jabbala Solar. $6 a drink. If you do that five days a week, that's over $1,500 a year. Right. Have you ever been in line at the coffee shop and the person in front of you negotiated?

I've never seen it. I've never seen someone say $6. Could you do 4? Can you do 4 today? If I buy 100 cups right now, will you do 3?

We $3 per cup. I'll come pick them up every day. No, no one's ever done that.

Because we pay for what we're passionate about.

And so it might not be soccer for you, and it might not be baseball. Or football or sports. And maybe it's not coffee or pets or anything like that. But what's the most valuable thing in life? And most people would say life.

That's why these numbers make sense. Health care. Americans spent about $5 trillion on health care in 2023. That averages out to about $15,000 per person. It's almost 20% of the total U.S. economy for health care.

Cancer treatments range usually between 100 and $300,000 per year. There are some treatments that are as much as $2 million for a single treatment for cancer. Organ transplants. Heart transplant costs between 1.6 and $1.9 million million dollars. But does anyone say, no, that's too much?

No, I'm going to buy a truck. What gets a truck? You don't have a life. You can buy all the coffee you want. No Life.

Liver transplant, $900,000. But you can get a kidney. This is a discount. 400 to $500,000.

Air ambulances. Those helicopters will come pick you up and take you to the emergency room. Now put this in perspective. Like, think about when you go and you're a tourist somewhere and fly around the Jamaican Falls, fly around New York city, you know, 60 bucks, 150 bucks, whatever it is. Air ambulance, 30,000 to $60,000.

But no one says, I'm not paying more than 10. That's it. I'll die. I'll just stay right here and die. Why?

Life.

Life is valuable to us. So we'll pay for it. We'll pay for our passion. Now, with that in mind, it will make this psalm hit a little bit different when I read it to you. David says in Psalm 63 and verse 3, this because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.

So most people, if you surveyed all people and you looked at everybody's bank accounts, they would say, the most valuable thing in life is life. And David's going, there's one exception. God's love. My question for you today is, do you agree? Don't answer right now, though, because we say we believe a lot of things, but what we do actually reveals our beliefs.

That's why we're doing a series about stories. And the stories we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves. We tell ourselves stories about the world around us. We tell ourselves stories about other people.

We tell ourselves stories about God. And believe it or not, sometimes the stories we tell ourselves aren't true. So what do you do? David shows us in this psalm. So Psalm 63, we're going to cover all 11 verses today.

But I'm going to start off with just reading the first three verses. It's a psalm of David, is the first thing that says, that little part that comes if you have a Bible with you right before verse one that's still inspired scripture there, that's not planted there by your study Bible or whatever. Translator, editor, put that there. That's actually part of the manuscripts that we found for the Old Testament. So it's a psalm of David.

And so some of you know who David is. David's a giant killer. David's a man after God's own heart. David's the guy that messed up with Bathsheba. David's a warrior, a poet, a musician, but he's also a dad.

And that becomes relevant because a lot of times when we read a psalm, we just know it's these words on this page and it's a song or praise. And so we get into this worship mode. But you've got to realize this is actually a psalm of grief, because this is happening in one of two times in David's life. It says while he was fleeing in the desert of Judah. There are two times when that happened early in his life at Haften, when Saul was pursuing him to take his life.

And he had been anointed to be king, but he didn't have the position of king. And so he had the. The gifting, the blessing, the call of God on his life, but he didn't have the platform yet. And so he was hiding in caves and running in the wilderness. I don't believe that's this time.

Scholars debate about it, but most scholars believe it's later in his life. We don't have time to read it all today, but this week you might want to go read 2 Samuel chapters 15 through 18, and you'll have the exact context of this story. Because what's happening is David's fleeing because as a dad, he was like a lot of dads I know. He was awesome at his job. There's songs that people would sing about David.

Saul has killed his thousands, David his tens of thousands. He was a great warrior, published author, musician, poet. We'll read some of his poetry today. But at home, you can't hide your flaws. At home, people see all of you, and there's cracks in his character.

Just like all of us, just like me, just like you other dads sitting here today. He was passive with his kids. And so his son, his son, let that sink in, is stealing his kingdom from him. He's stolen the Hearts of the people. There's not an election, but he's winning them over.

And so David flees into the wilderness. And so he doesn't just sit down one day in his comfortable palace and pen the words, your love is better than life. His life is on the line. He's fleeing for his life. He's barefoot.

We know that when we read Second Samuel, he's running over the Mount of Olives. Those of you who've gone to Israel with me, you know where that is. But he's going to the desert side, not to the Jerusalem side. He's in Ein Gedi. I've been there with some of you.

There's only one place to get a drink there, in a vast, vast wilderness. In fact, the first online service we ever had. Welcome if you're joining us online, Was in Ein Gedi, because it happened during COVID I remember calling Pastor John, our executive pastor, and saying he was at soccer practice. He loves soccer, even when it's not World cup year. And he was coaching.

And I said, governor Cooper saying, they're gonna shut the world down. I'm over here, different time zones, so I know about it before you. And so I was calling him up, just kidding. And I said, hey, we gotta do something, because people aren't gonna be allowed to come to church. And so our tech team, first time this ever happened, we had never done online.

Was my wife holding my iPhone. And we pre recorded it and sent it back because we were in the future. And so that was our first time. Some of you will never walk there. You'll never be in the desert of Judah, but you will all be in the wilderness.

The wilderness whispers to you. You're alone. You've lost. Maybe even God has forsaken you. You deserve this.

No one else will understand. And you start to shift your story from what's true to what you tell yourself to be true. David shows us what to do in those circumstances. In this psalm, look at it after the superscription. We've got verse one.

In verse one, he says, oh, God. Some of your translations, or You, God. The NIV 2011. You, God, are my God. God in general, God, the concept God that we read about.

You're mine. You're personal. You belong to me. Earnestly I seek you. Some of you have old translations.

And it'll say, first thing in the morning, or eagerly, I seek you. Yeah, eagerly, I'm coming after you. So God's not just coming after him, he's coming after God. I thirst for you. Think about that.

Where he is, I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water. That's interesting. So everything physically around him should dictate that what he wants more than anything is water. But that's not what he says.

But then he says this in verse 2. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory, because your love is better than life. My lips will glorify you. So here's David. He's in the wilderness.

The wilderness is whispering to him, just like it would to any of us.

And some of what's being said is true. He planted the seeds for the weakness in his kingdom that he would be in this situation, that his son would be so angry with him that he would try to overthrow his father. He does deserve this at some level. But also, he wasn't asking for this. And here he is, and he talks about his thirst.

And then it's going to go on. And he's going to talk about his satisfaction. He's going to talk about his confidence. And so we're going to see these three movements as we read all the way through verse 11. I don't mind if you read ahead.

Feel free to do so. But here's what the outline is going to be. We're going to talk about his thirst, his treasure and his trust. The first is his thirst, which we see right here in verse one. He says, I thirst, I in a dry and weary land, where everything around me should dictate that I want water.

I want you. You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you. I thirst for you. That doesn't make sense.

Shouldn't you thirst for water? He says, I thirst for you. And you've got to understand the setting. The setting is key and how he got in this setting. And so that's why a lot of times we just read by the superscription the Psalm of David when he was in the desert of Judah.

But this is significant. And if you think about what the desert is, what the wilderness is, throughout the Bible we see a lot of groups of people and individual people in the wilderness. Moses using the wilderness. Jesus himself, 40 days in the wilderness. Israel, 40 years wandering in the wilderness.

The prophet Elijah spent time in the wilderness. So what is the wilderness? We've got to ask ourselves. The wilderness is a place of testing. We don't have to guess about that.

The Bible tells us that in Deuteronomy, it says this. Deuteronomy 8, verse 2. Remember how the Lord your God Led you all the way in the wilderness. These 40 years, speaking to Israel, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart. Who needed to know?

It wasn't God. It was because of what was in their heart. They were in the wilderness, but they didn't know.

So we tell ourselves a story. Sometimes God gives us the gift of a wilderness. Not so we'll believe the whisper. So we'll find out what's in our own hearts, look at what it is and what takes place in the wilderness. And where David is, he's got, I mentioned, he's barefoot, he's got no shoes, no sandals, no throne, none of the foods that he's used to, people bringing to him, none of the comforts.

No comfort, no self sufficiency. The desert, the wilderness is a place of dependency. It's a place where the self sufficiency is stripped away. So for some of you, you might wonder, have I been in the wilderness? Am I in the wilderness?

It's when you get to a spot where you have things taken away from you and you become aware you can't fix it on your own. That's why people will pay what they pay for cancer treatment. That's why people will pay what they pay for an air ambulance, because they can't do it themselves. So the cost is, whatever it costs, that's what we'll pay. Because this is so supremely valuable.

And so some of you, you lose a job or a relationship or people's approval or some other thing that at one point you could depend on an investment goes south, your retirement account's empty. That's the wilderness. It's a place of dependency. It's a place of testing. It's also a place of formation.

That's why Moses was there. Why did Jesus spend 40 days being tempted here? We know David goes here on his own. He chooses this route. I don't know this.

I wonder though, did David go here when Absalom was taking his kingdom? Because he was familiar from when he was fleeing from Saul. And he knows that God met him there before. I don't know that the Bible doesn't say that. I just wonder he intentionally flees to this place.

And it's interesting to me when we think about David and the David that we know who killed his tens of thousands, who commands an army, who's the greatest king in Israel's history. And that dude had some abs. Have you ever seen Michelangelo statue? Yeah. So in second Samuel, chapter 15, when this happens, a messenger came to David and he told Him.

The hearts of the people of Israel are with Absalom. They like him better than you. David doesn't say, then kill him. He says to all his officials who are with him in Jerusalem, come, we must flee or none of us will escape from Absalom. How does he get there?

Well, I told you his passivity in the home was the problem. Here's where you read about it. You go back earlier, and he sinned with Bathsheba in 2nd Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. We read about Nathan's confrontation of him and all of that. And then we read about what happens in his home after that.

His oldest son, Amnon, rapes one of his daughters, Tamar, then throws her out because he's done with her. And Absalom is ticked. But he waits two years for David. David gets angry. David does nothing.

Here's why. Because David murdered Uriah and David, we don't think or know that it's consensual. He calls for Bathsheba, what's she gonna do? He lies about it. He kills his friend, commits adultery.

A man who's a murderer and an adulterer doesn't feel like he has a whole lot of moral authority in his own home. And you can read yourself what Absalom does to Amnon. And they're estranged for six years. I think it is total. But for four years, Four years, Absalom sits outside of David's gate as people come to the king's palace to hear from a judge.

What should we do in this situation? What do we do here? And this guy's morally compromised. Is he given the judgments that at one time he would have given?

And so Absalom sits outside the gate and he does what every politician does every four years. This is going to happen in a couple years. It doesn't matter who's in office. The Democrats do this, the Republicans do this. It doesn't.

Whatever it is, that's a pinch point for society. You talk about that. Go, I'll fix that. So I promise, in two years there will be people. I don't know who the people are for sure, but they will come and they will tell you, we can fix this inflation problem.

You caused it. But okay, so Absalom sits outside the gate and he says, well, if I was the judge, read it. If I was the judge, I'd listen to you. If I was the judge, things would be better. And he wins the hearts of the people.

Your own son fear David.

And it's in that context that we realize this is not just a Psalm of praise. This is a psalm of grief. He's lost his kingdom, his family's a mess, and it goes back to his compromise. Here's what gets said in 2nd Samuel, chapter 12 about his sin with Bathsheba. Because we oftentimes preach that text and we talk about how he was forgiven and restored.

And that's true, but there were consequences. We often skip the consequences. Here's what God said. 2nd Samuel, chapter 12, verse 10. Now therefore, the sword will never depart from your house.

This is to David, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. This is what the Lord says out of your own household. I'm going to bring calamity. Oh, and he did. I'm going to bring calamity on you before your very eyes.

I will take your wives, which he stored up and was commanded not to have as many wives as he had. I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you. And he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. That's second Samuel chapter 12. He flees in chapter 15.

Here's two Samuel, chapter 16. So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he slept with his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel. That's the same roof that David first saw Bathsheba. Now his son is sleeping with his concubines there.

And in that David says, you, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you, I thirst for you. My whole being longs for in a dry and weary, parched land, I want any of us would say, water.

Can you think of the time that you're the thirstiest you've ever been? I have a friend one time who was crazy enough to ask me this ridiculous question. He said, do you want to run this race with me in the Sahara Desert? I didn't do it, just so you know. I told him on that call that he was crazy.

But then I started thinking about it after doing a little bit of research. And my research told me that it's the hardest foot race in the world. Run through the Sahara desert. It's a 150 mile race over multiple days. You send your own provisions there, tent, food to eat.

He said, you run with bags around your feet so the sand doesn't get in your shoes because then it'll get inside your blisters. I'm like, we're signing up for blisters? No, a lot of people have run it. And I read about one guy, Maru Parisipi. If you'd like to look him up.

He's an Italian police officer who ran this race. He was also a professional athlete who did these kinds of races. 150 mile race. The longest day is the fourth day on the fourth day in his race. He's 38 years old.

He's running. There's a windstorm. It's 110 degrees outside, but it's a dry heat. Don't worry, it's not like North Carolina.

The windstorm created waves of sand. Have you ever been hit by a wave, like at the ocean and you come up and you're disoriented, like you're not sure which way is the land we've been surfing or something. He was disoriented because this lasted for hours, these waves of sand. He ended up getting lost for nine days. When they found him, he was 180 miles from the course.

The race itself was only. Not only, but only 150 miles. He was 180 miles away. From that he crossed into a different country.

He said what he did for survival. So from his own words, this is what he said. I drank my own urine, caught bats in a ruined desert shrine and drank their blood. Bats are rats with wings. Just to think about that.

And he said he ate lizards and beetles raw. When they found him, nine days, he lost 30 pounds. No one's signing up for that diet.

30 pounds. The doctors. His kidneys had failed. He was dehydrated. He almost died.

He talks about what it was like mentally as well. Why do I tell you that? Because it's gross? No. Because when you're thirsty, cost is irrelevant.

You'll try anything. And let me tell you something. Everyone here thirsts.

And while we may never run the Sahara, certainly not now, we've all tried approval, success, money. Will try almost anything to quench the thirst of our soul. Was CS Lewis who said, if I find in myself a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation that was made for another world. Ecclesiastes 3:11. God's placed eternity in your heart.

And David is now in the story, not in the comfort of a palace in the midst of the wilderness. Telling what's coming out is what he actually believes. I thirst for for you. How do you get there? That takes us to our second point, the treasure.

See, the psalm is almost written backwards. It's not chronologically that he started off with a thirst for God. He learned how great God was and then his thirst changed. See, the things that we oftentimes put in the place for our thirst. Whether it's a relationship, approval, success, those things in and of themselves are not bad.

They just can't carry the weight of. Of what's being talked about here. He says, my Nephesh, my soul, the NIV in 2011 says, My whole being thirsts for you. I long for you. The problem is those things, the new truck, the vacation, the whatever it is that you put in that spot can't carry the weight of a soul.

They're not evil until we put them in the wrong place. And so what's in the right place? God's love. That's the treasure. That's what happens here.

He says, you, God, are my God earnestly or first thing in the morning. Some people, some old translations say it that way. We fix the translations because people are messed up, because we think, well, if I just do that, then as long as I do my Bible reading in the morning or pray first thing when I wake up, before I go to the bathroom, before I do anything else, I'm gonna pray, right? Then we get this legalistic mindset. It's like, check that box.

Now I can do whatever I want. And this is the whole point. So people would read old translations, then they'd go to their pastor and be like, so do I need to do my devotions in the morning? I need to read my Bible in the morning. I need to remember a scripture in the morning to pray in the morning.

Right? It means of first importance. That's what the translation is trying to say. So they changed it here to earnestly, eagerly, above all things, I seek you. I seek you.

I thirst for you. There's this craving in my soul, and my whole being longs for you, my Nephesh. My soul longs for you in a dry, weary land where there is no water. And then verse two tells us how this happens. But before I even read verse two, some of you may be asking yourself, is that.

Is that what I. What's true of me? I know that's, like, what I should say. I'm at church. That's the right.

Jesus is the right answer, like all that. But is it true? It's just between you and God. What does your soul thirst for? It ultimately is God.

But what do you think it is? What's the story you tell yourself that will satisfy your soul? When they found Maru, when he was in the Sahara desert, they obviously got him to doctors. His kidneys had failed. They said it took over two years for them to start functioning properly again.

He had to be on A fluid diet for multiple months. Like I said, he lost a bunch of weight, but the doctors had to diagnose him to know what was wrong and what the treatment would be. So if I was your spiritual doctor, I would ask some diagnostic questions. And I wrote them down this week. And I want you to ask them to yourself.

Just between you and God. And you and God are the only ones who know for sure the answer. And you only know it if you're telling yourself an honest story. And so here's the questions. What do you daydream about?

That'd be if I came in with my spiritual chart. No. So what do you daydream about? And you need to be honest. Because our mind often drifts to when we fantasize the thing that we believe will bring us relief.

Satisfaction. Might be a vacation, might be money, could be control, could be sexual, could be approval. Or maybe it's God. What do you daydream about? Next question I would ask is, where do you run when it hurts?

Food, another person, Shopping, Netflix, your phone, Alcohol, work, sports or prayer? It's between you and God. What you run for, for comfort is oftentimes a functional savior.

What disappoints you the most? If you were having an awesome week next week, Monday goes well. Who has a good Monday? But you had a good Monday. Then Tuesday goes well, then Wednesday.

If this happened, it would ruin your week. Team lost, traded their star player, bank account went to zero, spouse left. What is it that would ruin your week? Because.

If you wouldn't say distance from God. Maybe that's not the most important thing.

How would you finish this sentence? If I just had blank, I'd finally be happy. Just honest. You and God talking. That helps you diagnose.

Now verse two. This is how David got here. To the place where he's in a dry and weary land, where there's no water. And he says his soul thirsts not for water for God. Here's verse two.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. What does it mean to see him in the sanctuary? Gotta ask yourself that question if you're studying the Bible. First of all, you need to understand what he means by sanctuary. What he means by sanctuary is a tent.

If you read the Old Testament, David wasn't allowed to build the temple because he was a man of blood. He was a warrior. So Solomon was the one who actually built the temple. So while David was the king, they would keep the Ark of the Covenant, a symbol of God's presence with the People with Israel. So remember, that's when David danced.

Those of you know the Old Testament, and he had a tent wherever they would go. The Ark of the Covenant stayed in the tent. Interesting. If you do read 2 Samuel chapters 15 through 18 and get the full context. I've only given you portions.

They start bringing the Ark of the Covenant with David when he's going into the wilderness and he says, no, send it back.

Huh. Why would he do that? Let me read you Those verses briefly. Second Samuel, chapter 15. In verse 25 and 26, the king said to Zadok, take the Ark of God back into the city.

If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he will bring me back and let me see it and his dwelling place again. But if he says, I am not pleased with you, then I am ready to let him do whatever he seems good to me, whatever seems good to him. That's trust. Maybe this is best. It's what I don't want.

But God's in control, not me. But then here, when he's praising God, he says, I've seen you. He's remembering back. He's not saying he doesn't want God's presence now, but he's remembering back when he saw. It's like Isaiah in Isaiah 6.

He had a vision of God's power and his glory back when he had his throne, back when he had his money, back when he had everybody's approval and they were singing songs like, Saul killed his thousands, David his tens of thousands. He's the greatest king Israel's ever had before Absalom stood at the gate and stole everybody's heart. He remembers seeing him in the sanctuary back when he was in comfort. And that's where the praise is coming from. The now that he's in pain.

Here's the lesson for those of you who need. How do I apply this? How do you live this stuff out? A great story, but what about me? Okay, here you go.

God often will put in you in times of peace what you need in times of pain. So when you. Right now, maybe some of you are on a mountaintop, things are going great. You just got a promotion, you need to lose your job. You just got married.

You're not looking for. You've got like, all. All the things are going right. And it's so easy to get comfortable in those times. That's why it's so important still to gather with God's people, to be in prayer.

Read your Bible. Sometimes you read the Bible and it's hard. Like, let's Be honest. Just read it. And you're like, I don't know.

I didn't really apply to me. David's singing songs out in the desert. I ain't going to the desert. I got air conditioning. What are we doing?

God's planting in you. In that time of comfort, what you are going to need when you're wandering in the wilderness and you start to hear those whispers, you're all alone. But he said, I'll never leave you or forsake you. But it feels like no one else understands. There's no temptation to seize you, but what is common to man.

But I mean, if I just got. No one's been tempted like I've been tempted. Yeah, the Bible talks about that. How do you keep your way pure? Psalm 119.

He's storing that up in you. Cause you're gonna need it. And I don't know all the circumstances for all of your lives, but if you're gonna be here for any amount of time, more than next week, the wilderness is coming. And God will give you in peace what you're going to need in pain. Notice it throughout the Bible.

In Colossians, chapter three, it says this. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly. That's the New Testament. The New Testament and the Old Testament gives the same principle. You see it over and over again.

Why does it need to dwell in you richly? Here's why. Because when the pressure comes on, what's inside of you comes out. So when the word of Christ dwells in you richly, you start telling yourself a true story. When the pressure's on, when there's nothing in there, what are you gonna say?

You start believing the whispers. It's like we talk about as a vision for our church. We want you to experience spiritual transformation. So much in you that it oozes out of you. Gospel saturation happens as a result of.

Not because the church told you read your Bible in the morning. You tell one person about Jesus this year? No, because it's in you.

I was talking to a guy this week. He was at my house. Dishwasher's broke. Somebody from church already tried to come over and help me fix it. I've tried to fix it.

Probably caused more damage. I don't know. The repairman couldn't figure out right away, which made me feel a little bit good about me.

We're standing there talking. He's making all the noises of. This is going to be expensive. You know those noises, right?

Then he looks over and he sees a sign that my Wife has hung up on the wall. She's decorated. It says, in Christ alone. It's a reference to an old hymn. Some of you know that hymn, he goes, in Christ alone.

What is that? What does that even mean? I've heard that before. It's kind of a weird thing. So rather than singing the hymn to him, which would have probably made my bill go up tone deaf, rather than singing the hymn to him, I talked to him about the New Testament concept of what it means to be in Christ.

To be in Christ means that you're united with him. Doesn't mean you know about him. Doesn't mean you can answer Bible questions about him. It means the two of you are one. That he lives in you and you are in him.

You possess him. He possesses you. Did you notice verse one? He starts off with this concept of God. Oh, God or you, God are my God.

You know what I told that repairman? So there's a lot of people in our city that are religious and they know that hymn. And they don't know Christ. They grew up in a church. They've been around the church, they've got assimilated into Christianity, but they aren't Christians.

Matthew, Jesus speaking, says, a lot of people are gonna stand before me one day and I'm gonna say, depart from me. I. I never knew you. And they're gonna say, but I did this stuff. And here's my resume and here's all these things. They weren't in Christ.

So being in Christ is a personal thing. Where God that you've heard about in Sunday school and at church, he becomes your God. That oftentimes happens in the desert. By the way, the analogy I used to use when I was a youth pastor is you think about the best meal you've ever eaten. Now imagine that I served that to you, but before I did, I chewed it up and spit it out on your plate.

Now you get to eat it.

I tasted the food. I experienced that. It was good, then I told you about it. If that's what your faith is, you might not be my God. You just believe in God and so do the demons.

And shudder. David is going, this is my God. I've experienced him in the sanctuary. And what God stored up in that time is now coming out. Psalm 119 says it like this.

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Hiding God's word in your heart comes before resisting the temptation. Can you imagine a soldier if he didn't learn how to use his weapon? Until he got into battle. Oh, they gave us these cool looking guns.

I gotta run. Just see what it does. That'd be stupid. Can you imagine if you were on a plane and the pilot didn't know how to call back for emergency signals because he was reading the manual? Once the engine went out, oh, you're in trouble.

You know, this is a life principle. If you want to be ready in the time of pressure, then you, during the time of ease, need to get ready. But that's not human nature. It's not what we do. We drift away from God.

We get comfortable. Jesus, speaking to his own disciples, tells us this principle. He's departing. He's told them multiple times, but they're not ready for it. The same Mount of Olives that David walked over to go to the desert, Jesus is now on with his disciples.

And he's walking toward Jerusalem. It's the place of Gethsemane. And he promises them the Holy Spirit. And look at what he says. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

You can't be reminded of what you've never received.

So if you're in comfort, it's time. Time to store it up. Psalm 63, verse 3. Because your love, that's the treasure, your love, that's hesed. The Hebrew word hesed.

We don't know how to translate. I took Hebrew on like a speed course in seminary because I knew it was gonna be tough. And I thought maybe I can squeak through it. I did 10 weeks in two summer sessions of like, I don't know, they were like two or three weeks each. And we studied the book of Ruth.

And the only word I really remember is this. And sometimes in the Old Testament, it's translated mercy, because we don't know how to translate it because our word for love is too weak sometimes. It's translated covenant love, loving kindness, sometimes unfailing love. We're just trying to throw descriptive words on it so somebody could get an idea of what this means. David is not saying here God really loves me.

He's saying more than that. He's saying God is committed to me. That's what his loving kindness is. That's what chesed is, is that God is a covenant, a promise to you. And it's not just that he seeks God in the morning.

God is seeking him all the time. And some of you need to hear this. God's coming after you.

You're like, I'm a Christian, aren't I? Already found. He's still coming. Does he have all of you? No.

Not if you're honest.

You are. Chesed is better than life.

Do you agree? Don't answer. The way you see it is the last point. Trust. Verse four, he says.

And here's where we see the trust flowing out of him. I will praise you as long as I live. Remember in verse 4, no circumstances have changed. Absalom still has Jerusalem's heart. David's still in the wilderness with no shoes and no throne.

I will praise you as long as I live. And in your name I will lift up my hands. I will be fully satisfied. And so there's praise in verse four. There's satisfaction in verse five, as with the richest of foods.

This dude might be drinking bat blood for all we know. And he's talking about the richest of foods. We'll come back to that with singing lips. My mouth will praise you on my bed. I remember you when you have 3am conversations.

That's often your real story. What are you worried about? What are you thinking about? Why are you awake at that time? David's going, I'm talking to you, God.

I'm going to remember what you did in the sanctuary. I'm going to remember who you are. I'm going to remember your love in my life. See, the chesed love is not based on David's performance. David's a schemer, an adulterer, a murderer.

But God is committed to him.

I think of you through the watches of the night because you are my help. I sing in the shadows of your wings. Verse 8. I cling to you and your right hand upholds me. They're holding each other.

Verses 9 through 11. He talks about his enemies. He doesn't name Absalom or the other people who've betrayed him. Here, look what he says. Those who want to kill me will be destroyed.

They will go down. Maybe not in this life. They will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. That's the lowest place in the Hebrew thought.

But the king, he's speaking of himself, will rejoice in God. All who swear by God will glory in him. It's not just true for David, it's true for us. All the mouths of liars will be silenced. You see what trust produces here?

We see the thirst, we see the treasure. And now we see the trust. The trust here produces praise. Verse 4. I will praise you as long as I live.

And that's exactly what he's doing in this psalm. You see, the problem for many of us is that when we end up in the wilderness, we believe the whispers. And the whispers inform our story. And we listen to ourselves talk to ourselves. But we don't preach to ourselves.

What David's doing here, he's going to hear the same whispers anybody would in the wilderness. He's preaching to himself. In fact, when he talks about being satisfied here, you can't quite pick it up, but it's actually future tense. It's not that he's satisfied in this moment, but he's clinging to the satisfaction that he knows only God can give him. That's trust.

His enemies haven't been destroyed. All these things have. He's got an army at his disposal. He knows how to kill tens of thousands of people. But notice, David's not the one doing any of the activity.

Verses 9 through 11. Trust. And so out of that trust flows this praise. While the wilderness is whispering, you lost. They don't like you anymore.

Their love for you was fickle. Just because of what you gave them, David, not because of who you are. You're alone. Even God has forsaken you. David talks back.

I have a long quote I'd like to share with you. And some of you might take a picture of it. I might not read the whole thing by a spiritual doctor named Martyn Lloyd Jones from a past generation. He says this. The trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression, in a sense, is this that we allow our self talk to us, our self to talk to us, instead of talking to ourself.

Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? And another way to say that is, is this just double talk? He says, no, far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?

And I'll pause right there, and I'll go back to the passage. And I want you to notice the verbs. I will Praise you. Verse 4. I will glorify my lips will.

My mouth will. David's not just speaking. David is preaching to David. He's in the wilderness in the moment. He's not back at the palace.

He hasn't won. And he's looking back at this thing 10 years ago. Nope. I will. I will praise you.

I will be satisfied.

So back to this quote by Lloyd Jones.

Have you realized that most of our unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself. Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You've not originated them, but they start talking to you. They bring back the problem of yesterday. Somebody's talking.

Who's talking to you? Yourself is talking to you. Now, this man's treatment in Psalm 42, which is actually a parallel of Psalm 63, it's the as the Deer Panteth psalm. Instead of allowing this self talk to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. Why are thou cast down, O my soul?

He asks. His soul has been repressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, self, listen for a moment. I will speak to you. Do you know what I mean?

If you do not, you don't have much experience with this. And I'll read this line as the last line of this quote. The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. So when you talk to yourself, do you speak truth? Or is it just that story that's running through your head?

David is speaking the truth to himself. He talks about this rich food. This dude doesn't have any rich food right now. He's out in the wilderness. In fact, the language that's used here in the Hebrew, when he talks about the richest foods, he's actually using fat language.

And he's not talking about American obesity. There's nothing about Ozempic here. Nothing to do with that. Dude, they lost 30 pounds, all right? He's talking about the fat portions of an offering.

That's the best. And Leviticus tells us, and so every Israelite that reads this would know this. Humans aren't allowed to eat that. That's for God. And David's going, I am feasting on that with you.

I am satisfied in you. Verse 7. Because you are my help. I sing in the shadow of your wings. That's a safe place.

And then verse eight, talk about his hope. He got his satisfaction, he got his praise. In verse eight, he says, I cling to you. Your right hand upholds me. That word for clinging.

It's the same word that's used in Genesis 2:24 when it says, for this reason a man will leave his mother and father and cling, cleave to his wife. You leave and cleave. It's the language of Ruth and Naomi. In the book of Ruth, Ruth clung to. Your people will be my people.

Your God will be my God. I am committed. That's loyal. Love will cling to you. But you think about it, David's a failure.

It's got me thinking. I remember when our kids were little, we took a family vacation, four girls, to Charleston, South Carolina. Now Charleston's a great place. Don't take little kids to Charleston, South Carolina. Here's why.

It's a walking city. We didn't really know that. My wife and I got there. We got four little girls. I think there were 10, eight, six and four.

And we're walking everywhere. Those little legs don't go everywhere, just so you know. So it's nine bazillion degrees out. It is not dry heat. It is wet heat.

And we're carrying people, except when we go to cross streets, then they want to walk. And so we tell them, you got to hold a hand, you got to hold hands. Now if I told my daughters, now they're teenagers, if you got to hold my hand, they'd be like, you're weird. What's wrong with you? Listen, I'm just trying to save your life.

How about that? How about that? I got 10 year old, 24 year old, 6 year old grabbing our hands. Thank the Lord, God gave us four hands. Amongst my wife and I, a couple of their hands weren't even big enough to hold our whole hand.

They grabbed a hold of the fingers every time with the sweat and everything, they'd slip off. But we grabbed the wrists.

So David's going, I cling to you, but your right hand upholds me. Who's holding who? Here's the reality. They're both true. You're seeking after him.

Does matter. He never stops seeking after you. You clinging to him doesn't matter. But he is not going to let go of you. If you've experienced and received his love, so have you.

The beginning of the message. I said, There's $15,000 sport tickets and you know, spend all kinds of money on Disney and pets and coffee and all that stuff. But there's one thing that's more valuable than life itself. If you've experienced that love, then you know his love is better than life. If you haven't experienced it, why not?

You can receive it today. Jesus gave his life so you'd know his love. So he knows this love is better than life. Do you bow our heads? Let's pray.

Father, we come before you today and I pray there'd be one soul that would hear these words and know that they might believe in you. They might believe, oh, God, you're out. I believe in God. I believe that he created everything. I believe those things.

But he hasn't become your God. And you want him to be your God. You want your sins to be forgiven him, to be your Savior. The Bible tells you what to do. Place your faith in him.

Acknowledge your sin. We've all sinned. David sinned. I've sinned. You've sinned.

We all sin and fall short of God's standard of perfection. And he wants you to be with him forever in a place called heaven, which is perfect. But if he let you come there with all of your imperfection, it wouldn't be perfect anymore. So he wants to cover you in his love, his perfect love.

In order to do that, you've got to receive him, don't you? Acknowledge your sin and receive Jesus Christ. To be your Savior right now, be the most important thing you could ever do in your life, most important decision you could ever make. Just acknowledging Jesus. I believe that you died for me.

I believe that your death paid for my sins. And I want to receive you. And I want to receive your love. A love life you've ever met, never experienced before. Just pray this.

Father, I. I come before you. I admit my sin. I don't want to ask Jesus to be my Savior. If you pray that you mean it. The Bible says that he makes you one of his children.

There's nothing you could do to not become one of his children. He'll always hang on to you. And even when you turn from him, he's coming after you. And even when David sinned, God's loving kindness, his covenant love, his hesed never stopped. That's what's better than life.

Life changes. We waver. His love does not. If you've experienced that, you've got reason to praise him. If you think your satisfaction has found another place you've misplaced.

Your satisfaction may need to shift, may need to change. You can. It's good news. You're breathing. There's time.

But there comes a day when there's no more time.

And then it's too late.

Right now, in this moment, there's time. And we praise you, God, I'm sorry. For when I waver, recalibrate my heart. I pray for those that are also waverers, drift in comfort.

God, will you help us, Help us to see who matters more than anything else. It's you and your love. If you need to keep praying, you keep doing that. I'm going to say amen in a moment, but you've got freedom to express yourself before God however you want. It's in Jesus name I pray.

Amen.