Sermons on Psalms 63:5

… so one last image here from manton manton says joy and delight are fed by meditation for meditation turns god's promises into food and then manton quotes psalm 63 verses five and six. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. Which brings us back to our pursuit of God and our joy in him. And turning the thirst and the hunger of our souls to God for satisfaction by beholding his power and glory and doing that through meditating on his word. I know the unfamiliar can sound complicated and that there's a but there is a real simplicity in meditation one way we might sum it up is to say be a Christian hedonist with God's word when you open the Bible in the morning you're there for gain Here we go. when you seek to get your soul happy in him you want to taste some sensible benefit you come to warm your cold heart you come to eat and drink and feast to satisfy spiritual hunger and thirst and amazingly God is honored when we come to him like that when we come like a hedonist and say, I'm here to feed on you, God. …

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… And in verse five, he says, I'll be fully satisfied as with the richest of food. With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. Now, think about this. In verse one, he says he was thirsty and there's no water. Now in verse five, he says he's satisfied as with the richest of foods. What changed? No servant came to David with a platter of food. There's no mention of drinking water here. So how do you go from starving of thirst to being satisfied as with the richest of foods? You feast on God. You realize that God will be enough for you. You understand that in the human soul, nothing can satisfy the longing of a human soul outside of the person of Jesus Christ. And we all know that to be true. How do we know it to be true? Because we've run to a thousand other things to do it. career or status or money or being in the right neighborhood or you name it whatever the world has to offer but all of those things leave you hungrier after than before you took your first bite and David says, in the middle of the wilderness, with none of life's advantages on my side, I am satisfied as with the richest of foods. …

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5. And thus is the Scripture fulfilled, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” For it is easy to believe, that though sorrow may precede this witness of God’s Spirit with our spirit; (indeed must, in some degree, while we groan under fear, and a sense of the wrath of God abiding on us;) yet, as soon as any man feeleth it in himself, his “sorrow is turned into joy.” Whatsoever his pain may have been before; yet, as soon as that “hour is come, he remembereth the anguish no more, for joy” that he is born of God. It may be, many of you have now sorrow, because you are “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel;” because you are conscious to yourselves that you have not this Spirit; that you are “without hope and without God in the world.” But when the Comforter is come, “then your heart shall rejoice;” yea, “your joy shall be full,” and “that joy no man taketh from you.” (John 16:22.) “We joy in God,” will ye say, “through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement;” “by whom we have access into this grace,” this state of grace, of favour, or reconciliation with God, “wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Rom. 5:2.) “Ye,” saith St. Peter, whom God hath “begotten again unto a lively hope, are kept by the power of God unto salvation: Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations; that the trial of your faith may be found unto praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ: In whom, though now ye see him not, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:5.) Unspeakable indeed! It is not for the tongue of man to describe this joy in the Holy Ghost. It is “the hidden manna, which no man knoweth, save he that receiveth it.” But this we know, it not only remains, but overflows, in the depth of affliction. “Are the consolations of God small” with his children, when all earthly comforts fail? Not so. But when sufferings most abound, the consolations of his Spirit do much more abound; insomuch that the sons of God “laugh at destruction when it cometh;” at want, pain, hell, and the grave; as knowing Him who “hath the keys of death and hell,” and will shortly “cast them into the bottomless pit;” as hearing even now the great voice out of heaven, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.” (Rev. 21:3, 4.) …

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