Sermon Bible Commentary
Psalms 42:2
I. When the Psalmist says, "My soul is athirst," he certainly describes no rare or peculiar state of feeling. The thirst of the soul is as generic as the thirst of the body.
II. The Psalmist said, "My soul is athirst for God." He knew that all men in the nations round him were pursuing gods. Pleasure was a god; wealth was a god; fame was a god. What the Jew had been taught was that the Lord his God was one Lord. He was not to pursue a god of pleasure, a god of wealth, a god of fame. He was made in the image of theGod. TheGod was not far from him. The thirst for happiness means and ends in the thirst for God.
III. The Psalmist goes on, "Even for the living God." It is no idle addition to the former words. The gods which the Israelites had been taught they were not to worship were dead gods. There is a thirst of the soul to create something in its own likeness, but the first and deepest thirst is to find in what likeness it is itself created, whence all its living powers are derived, who has fixed their ends, who can direct them to their ends.
IV. Finally, the Psalmist says, "When shall I come and appear before God?" A bold petition! Ought he not rather to have prayed, "O God, prepare me for the day when I must appear before Thee"? This is the modification which we who live under the New Testament generally give to words which those who lived before the incarnation and epiphany of Jesus Christ could utter in simple fulness. What they held was that God prepared them for His appearing by teaching them to hope for it. If they did not expect it, did not hope for it, they would be startled and confounded by it; if they did, every step in their history, every struggle, every joy, was an education for it.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 129.
This verse expresses the attitude and mission of the Christian Church. The attitude. For what are the struggles of Christian souls except, in the midst of a world that is quite complicated with difficulties, in the midst of a world that is overwhelmed with sorrow, in the midst of a time of severe temptation, to constantly rise and gaze high above the thought of evil, and gaze towards the sun of brightness, and cry for God? And what is the mission of the Christian Church? Is it not to help men and women in their struggle and their sorrow to forget, at least at times, their pettinesses and degradation, to rise to better standards and loftier ideals, and to cry for God?
I. In such a verse as this we are face to face with one of those great governed contrasts that are found throughout Scripture and throughout human life. There are at least four forms of attraction which are presented to our souls. There is (1) the attraction of natural beauty; (2) the attraction of activity; (3) the attraction of the intellect; (4) the attraction of the affections. There are many things given; there are many attractions to draw: they will stimulate; they will help; they will console; they will give pleasure: there is one thing that satisfies the immortal; there is one life that meets your need. "My soul is athirst for God." There is something deeper in man than his aesthetic desire or his active practice, something deeper beneath us all than anything that finds expression, certainly than anything that finds satisfaction. You yourself, the foundation of your life, must be satisfied; and being infinite and immortal, you can know but one satisfaction.
II. What is meant by the thirst for God? (1) It means thirsting for and desiring moral truth. The thirst for God means the thirst within us to fulfil His moral law. (2) The thirst of the soul for God is the thirst to love goodness because it is right.
III. It is our privilege, beyond the privilege of the Psalmist, to know in the Gospel, to know in the Church, Christ, God expressed in humanity. Is your soul athirst for the Highest? You may find it if you come in repentance, if you come in desire, if you come in quiet determination to do your duty you may find it satisfied in Christ.
J. Knox-Little, Anglican Pulpit of To-Day,p. 267 (see also Manchester Sermons,p. 193).
I. Let us learn from these words a great law of our being. God made us that He might love us. God has given us the capacity of loving Himself, and He has made it a law of our being that we must love Him if we are ever to be happy, that there is no happiness for us but in fulfilling that law of our being which requires us to love the living God.
II. Again, we learn when we look at the text and think of the longing that filled the heart of the Psalmist how wonderfully little our lives and our hearts correspond to this purpose of God's love. How little of this longing there is in our hearts, this thirst for God, the living God; and all the while God, looking down upon us in His infinite mercy, is longing for our hearts, the hearts of His children. We may say it with reverence that the heart of God is athirst for our love, and longs that our hearts should be athirst for Him.
III. This expression of the Psalmist may be the expression of a soul that has known what it is to love God and to enjoy God's love, who is mourning under the hidings of God's countenance, the sunshine of whose love has been clouded, who is walking in darkness and having no light. Never did a soul thirst for God, cry out for God, the living God, but God sooner or later, in His own good time, filled that soul with all His fulness, flooded that soul with all the sunshine of His love. It is for the Holy Spirit's help that we must pray; it is on His help we must lean; it is He from whom we must ask the power to thirst for God, the living God.
Bishop Maclagan, Penny Pulpit,No. 731.
Taken in their original sense, the words of our text apply only to that strange phenomenon which we call religious depression. But I have ventured to take them in a wider sense than that. It is not only Christian men who are cast down, whose souls "thirst for God." All men, everywhere, may take this text for theirs.
I. There is in every man an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God, and that is the state of nature. Experience is the test of that principle. (1) We are not independent. None of us can stand by himself. No man carries within him the fountain from which he can draw. (2) We are made to need, not things, but living persons. Hearts want hearts. A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. (3) We need oneBeing who shall be all-sufficient. If a man is to be blessed, he must have one source where he can go. The merchantman that seeks for many goodly pearls may find the many, but until he has bartered them all for the onethere is something lacking.
II. There is a conscious longing, imperfect, though fully supplied; and that is the state of grace, the beginning of religion in a man's soul. There can be no deeper truth than this God is a faithful Creator; and where He makes men with longings, it is a prophecy that these longings are going to be supplied. "He knoweth our frame," and He remembereth what He has implanted within us. The perfecting of your character may be got in the Lamb of God, and without Him it can never be possessed. Christ is everything, and "out of His fulness all we receive grace for grace." Not only in Christ is there the perfect supply of all these necessities, but also the fulness becomes ourson the simple condition of desiring it. In the Divine region the principle of the giving is this to desire is to have; to long is to possess.
III. Lastly, there is a perfect longing perfectly satisfied; and that is heaven. We shall not then be independent, of course, of constant supplies from the great central fulness, any more than we are here. Thirst as longing is eternal; thirst as aspiration after God is the glory of heaven; thirst as desire for more of Him is the very condition of the celestial world, and the element of all its blessedness.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester,1863, p. 135.
References: Psalms 42:2. S. Macnaughton, Real Religion and Real Life,p. 13; T. G. Rose, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiii., p. 261; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 36.