Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Do You Thirst For? | The Writings | Psalm 63

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

We're all thirsty for something. What do you thirst for? Are you truly satisfied? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Psalm 63 points us to the only One who can quench our heart's deepest thirst. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 63

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Obey Your Thirst. This famous marketing slogan of the 1990s, it's being brought back to life by the iconic soft drink brand Sprite. It's part of an attempt to better reach the younger demographic of consumers today. Yet the executives at Sprite see Obey Your Thirst as more than just the revival of a slogan. For them, it points to a fundamental desire for all people. One of them put it this way. Here's a quote. You think about the youth of today and the amount of pressure that they're under. Cultural pressure, pressure to be like everyone else, we felt like, obey your thirst, and what it means

was right for this moment for that consumer. Okay, did you catch that? For Sprite, obey your thirst isn't just a marketing strategy for soft drink beverages. It's a window into who we are and what we really want. Whether you realize it or not, you are thirsty for something or someone. And on top of that, you are obeying something or someone. We're all wired to thirst and obey or live in response to that thirst that we have. We can't help but obey our thirst. Now that's all fine and good, but the slogan from Sprite raises a question. It's an important one. Is your thirst being satisfied by the right thing? Are you obeying the right source of satisfaction? We're forced to reckon with these questions in Psalm 63, the Psalm of David that brings us to the important

intersection of both thirst and obedience. Now, before we let God's word shape us in our time together, let's ask for His grace and His presence to be felt. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift, the precious gift of life and breath today. Thank you for your word. Jesus help us abide in you as we engage with your truth in this time. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through our time together in Psalm 63. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. We come before you as thirsty people, and we need you. In Jesus' name, amen. The composition of Psalm 63 took place while David was in the wilderness of Judah, fleeing from an enemy and surrounded by a dry and arid landscape. And in that less than ideal setting, we get these words. Here's the very beginning of Psalm 63.

Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. David here is thirsty for God. His whole being is thirsting for God. He's in the wilderness, surrounded by lifelessness and longing for the one true source of life.

Now this is a good moment to take a quick pause and ask, do you ever feel this way? How have your emotions or experiences indicated that you, deep down, that you're thirsting for God? Maybe it's a circumstance of disappointment or a season of depression, or maybe a lingering sense of anxiety in relation to work or a big life decision or a person that you're worried about. These versions of the wilderness are legitimate things to bring to God with lament asking for resolution. And yet these things also illuminate our thirst for something bigger, for something better. Notice here in Psalm 63, David isn't longing for different circumstances. He's not asking to get out of the dry wilderness, not here at least.

He's declaring that his ultimate thirst is for God. Do you realize that you, in an ultimate sense, that you're thirsting for God? One of the pervasive problems of our lives is found in our ongoing attempt to try to quench the thirst of our hearts with lesser inadequate things. This tendency is highlighted in God's judgment of His people in Jeremiah 213, where we read, For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves. broken cisterns that can hold no water. There is a real source of satisfaction for our thirst, one that we're freely offered and our creator. Yet left to our own devices, we forsake that

fountain of living waters over and over again. Obeying your thirst through these broken cisterns only leads to more desperate thirst. So what makes the God of the Bible a different source of life for our thirst. David explores that in verse three with a powerful one-liner that could be his mic-drop moment in Psalm 63. In verse three, we read this, because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. Bold statement, David. What do you think about that line? Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. Is that true? Do you live like that's true? There's a lot of good stuff in life. Do you believe that God's steadfast, never giving up always in forever love, is better than all of it? David is trying to

dismantle any illusions we may have that our thirst could be possibly quenched by anything but the living God. Amidst the thirst and the longings that we have, nothing, nothing compares with the steadfast love of God. Not an amazing day or month at the office, not a pleasure-filled evening or weekend, not the escape of addiction or distraction, not even a strong track record of performance in the spiritual disciplines as good as those are. God's steadfast love satisfies our thirst better than anything in life. And because that's true, David's thirst for God, overflows into his obedience to God. We read this in verse 8. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. Now the word clinging here is a particularly important Hebrew word in the Old Testament,

DeBak. And it points to more than just thinking about God or having feelings about God. It's about faithfulness in a committed relationship. This is a kind of clinging that necessarily, It necessarily involves kind of letting go of other competing commitments, letting go of the other things that we might be inclined to obey, letting go of the other things that promise to satiate our thirst, and instead holding fast to the one who promises to be with us. Now, there's another important element to verse 8 that we need to recognize because it shapes how we interpret this Psalm and every other part of the Christian life.

David is clinging to God because God is upholding him with his powerful right hand. That's the only reason David can cling to God. It's because he's already held in God's hands. The basis for this close, intimate pursuit of faith is God's gracious presence in his own steadfast pursuit of us. reading the psalm i reminded of jesus's words to the samaritan woman in john chapter four when comparing himself to other things that claim to quench our thirst jesus says this everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks of the water that i will give him will never be thirsty again the water that i will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life this one

woman in John 4, she not only receives the living water of Jesus, she responds to it, telling other people about him. She obeys Jesus, the one who satisfies her and sacrifices himself for her. She doesn't just obey her thirst. She obeys the one she thirsts for. That's the impulse that Psalm 63 is meant to stir up in us. It points us to our cravings to ultimately, to ultimately point us to our creator. Let's finish our time together now by just using verses 1, 3, and 8 to draw us into a faithful posture going into the rest of our day. God, we come before you as people in the wilderness and we are thirsty. Help us face our thirst with open eyes. Protect us from the allure of busyness or distraction that would cause us to ignore the deepest,

longings of our hearts. God, your steadfast love, it is better than life. Would you, by your grace, expose the ways that we forsake your faithfulness? Work in us the ability to not only think about your steadfast love, but to experience it, even in the seemingly mundane parts of our days. God, we want to cling to you and follow you with everything we have. Help us see what we should let go of so that we can cling to you. We can only hold on to you because you're already holding on to us. Help us be the kind of people who grow in obeying you because you are the one we thirst for. In Jesus' name, amen.