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Instruction

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Instruction

9 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

In Psalm 42 the poet speaks of a thirsting for the living God. This psalm is known as an instruction. In it the poet gives us a glance into his heart, and he says what God is for him and what he may find in Him.

It cannot be said with certainty who the author is of this psalm, but our thoughts go to King David. For in it we hear the soul-cry of a man who is separated from the institutions of God. In this psalm, he is in very difficult circumstances. He cannot go to the house of God to have communion with Him whom he cannot miss. And as he wanders far away, the enemy mocks him with the question, “Where is thy God?” Not only is it dark outwardly, but it is also dark inwardly. It stormed in his heart. He felt forsaken of the Lord, and that especially caused him to go so bowed down over the world.

No, David was not a stranger of grace. He had come to know the Lord as a holy and righteous God, but also as a God full of grace and mercy in His only beloved Son, Christ Jesus. Oh, what a wonderful time that was for him when the Lord showed him that outside of David He had opened a way for a sinner to be saved. When the love of God for His people, which is from everlasting, was poured forth in his heart, he has had wonderful times when that communion from above.

However, at that moment he had to miss all this. That friendly countenance no longer made his heart rejoice, and the Lord had hidden His face. That is why sorrow and fear filled his heart. He could not help himself with that which had happened in the past. Where it was once light, it was now dark. Where there was once joy, now there was sorrow. Where there was once possessing, now there was missing. That is why fear filled his heart. He missed God, and without God he had nothing.


“Now we will go from strength to strength. We will never doubt again. Now it will always be light, for the darkness is past.”


Who of God’s children cannot understand this? Also in their lives how they must experience that the days of darkness are many. They never counted on that. When the Lord opened a way where there was no way, when heaven descended and a little of the love of God was felt within, then they said, “Now we will go from strength to strength. We will never doubt again. Now it will always be light, for the darkness is past.” And at that time they meant this with their whole heart. “Now we will never sin again.”

But it is so different from what they thought. There came a day when His nearness was no longer felt. Fear filled their hearts. Had the Lord withdrawn Himself? It became dark within and without. The voices within began to speak. “Where is now your God? Where is He who was your life, your salvation? All that which you have experienced, was it really God’s work? Perhaps it was all of yourself.”

How fearful it became. Then they say, “Lord, if it was Thy voice which spoke, Thy hand which touched, may I hear and feel it once more.” Is that the experience of your heart today? See then that this is exactly the purpose of the Lord in hiding His blessed countenance from His children. It is that they may look upon their empty hands and stretch them forth unto Him, who gives songs in the night.

Will we ever rightly value the blessed presence of God unto the soul, then it is necessary that there are the times that we miss His blessed presence. When David missed that sweet communion of the Lord, a soul-cry was born. He went outside by himself and walked out into the hills to find a quiet place to sink down in prayer, crying out his needs unto the Lord. And when he was there upon his knees, he heard something he had heard often before. However, it had never pierced his heart as at this time.

He heard the crying of a hart (a female deer). The hart was in a desperate need and felt close to death. Only when a deer is near death does it cry out with such a heart-rending cry. What is the problem of that hart? It is exhausted and cannot go on. Oh, how it pants, how its heaving sides gasp, and how it longs for the cooling stream. Not only that it may drink large draughts of the fresh waters and quench its burning thirst, but also that it may swim across and escape the hunters who continue to pursue.

Oh, is there such a stream of cooling water in this wilderness? Yes, when the sun’s rays fall upon it, then the hart can see the water far below. It can smell the water, but there, upon the cliff high above it, the hart cannot come to it. Then it raises its head and in deep despair her cry sounds across the hills. One can hear that it is a matter of life and death. If it cannot quench its terrible thirst, then the hart must perish.


“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.”


How strong, how striking the figure. Yet strong as it is, how earnestly David employs this to set forth the panting of his soul after God. He said, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.” Without the Lord, he cannot continue. He felt that to miss God is to miss everything.

While lying there, his heart is destitute of that which formerly gave him so much hope and courage. Now he says, “My soul thirsteth for God.” That thirsting is a mark of the grace of God in his life, even though he cannot see it at that time.

A person in his natural state does not know a thirsting after God. He may thirst after gold, after lands, after honor, but he does not thirst after God. True, many thirst after God’s heaven, knowing that heaven will give eternal rest. But only grace poured forth into the heart of man causes a thirsting after the God of heaven. This does not mean that this thirst is always equally strong in the life of God’s children. Many days pass by when it is so cold within that it seems as if nothing can ever be made warm again. How dead it is within when heaven does not quicken and hell does not frighten.

No, we cannot rise up unto the fullness of the figure which David used. We cannot, we dare not, place our feelings stretched out fully side by side with his, or use the same burning, vehement, ardent expressions. But we may see what the experience of a child of God is. No, you must not be utterly cast down when you cannot find the exact same thirst in your life as was David’s experience. The question is, “Can you find any?” If so, take courage, for the Lord despises not the day of small things. That new life is the work of His hands. It can be covered under the ashes of sin, but it never dies. Those hands which have placed it there will also uphold it.

What a blessing when that new life may grow, such that the missing which is felt within becomes a sorrow after God. Then a living complaint ascends up unto the living God. When your inner life is the work of His hands, then you will continue to need those hands. Those hands do not always work in the way you think they should, for they have much work to do to break down what you build and to lead in a way that is always against self. However, it is a way in which the Lord will receive all honor and the sinner will receive God’s salvation. Under those hands, those people may become less and less, yes, nothing, and God becomes more and more, yes, everything.

What a privilege it is to know that inward thirsting. It is often so different. Then we are so converted, then we can live with what lies in the past, and there is so little need for the Lord. Is it then any wonder that it is so dead within? With the poet it was different. He could no longer miss the Lord. When his thoughts went back to Jerusalem, where the temple stood, and to the altar dripping with the blood of the sacrifices, there the entire service spoke of that blood which alone cleanses from all sins.

Is it then any wonder that he panted for the house of God, and that he longed for that assurance which flows from the cross of Calvary? There a dying Savior thirsted as no creature ever thirsted. But through His mediatorial thirsting, He opened a fountain of living waters. And now He could say, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink” (John 7:37).

Those thirsting ones shall never be put to shame. The more they may drink from that fountain, the more strongly they long for communion with Him. There are times when they may lift up their eyes and say, “When shall I come and appear before God?” For when a foretaste is already so sweet, what shall it be to one day be there where God will be all in all. Then they may forever drink without ever being thirsty.

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Bekijk de hele uitgave van donderdag 1 september 1994

The Banner of Truth | 28 Pagina's