The Souls Thirst For God

Praise the Lord everybody. Good evening. It's good to be with you. Thank you Pastor Upton for the invitation. Wow, this is wonderful on a Friday night. I don't know what degree of participation this is but it looks like it's pretty good. Amen. Looks like you have a love for the word of God and I'm so honored to be here to be with you. I've never been to Pittsburgh. This is my first time in the area and I saw a little bit of lightning and thunder today. I didn't expect that in winter. But I see rolling fields, small mountains, beautiful Pittsburgh. You live in a wonderful place. Actually my grandfather's from here. Not too far from here anyway. And I'm honored to be here. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. I pray that you would be blessed. Would you open your Bibles to this 63rd Psalm? Why don't we stand together and read this Psalm? If my eyes aren't deceiving me, a

very good friend of mine is here tonight. It's a surprise. Brother Stan Miller, it's so good to see you. 63rd Psalm. A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Oh God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee. In a dry and thirsty land where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. I'd like to speak tonight on the subject of the soul's thirst for God. Father in the name of Jesus, I pray your blessing upon this teaching and preaching of your word. I pray that you would be honored in your word tonight, both in the way it is preached and the way it is received. Help

me by your grace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for standing. You can be seated. David says that his soul thirsts for God. What he's saying beyond merely expressing the idea that he desires fellowship with God is that his soul's desire for God is a thirst. A fundamental need. It's not a want. It's not a preference. As the body thirsts for water, the soul thirsts for God. The idea here is that in the heart of every man, every woman, no matter how depraved or sinful, there's a deep, unreachable, irreducible, unremovable, unextractable desire for the divine. There is a thirst within us that can't be quenched by any other means. There is a desire. I would describe it as an awe for God. A desire for the divine, for the glory of God. Your soul can no more live without God than your body can live without water. With every breath you take, you emit water and that water has to be

replenished. Every bead of the heart requires water. Your body's about 60% water. Water keeps your organs alive. Water lubricates your joints and muscles and makes movement possible. Water keeps your brain alive and able to think and plan and talk. Your body was built around the need for water. The body can live for weeks or even a month without food, but you only have about two days without water. And along with oxygen, it's the most fundamental need the body has. There could be no greater physical need. There's no alternative to water. And when water is depleted, we are depleted. And David is saying that the soul needs God just like that. It's not an option. The loss of water has to be replenished exactly to the degree that it's depleted. And David is saying that the soul needs God like that. There was never any alternative in mind when we were created. Our very being was built around the need for God. You understand?

Around the need for God. It was factored into the equation from the very beginning. It's hard wired into you to desire God like your body desires water. You have to have him. You understand? We can't exist without him. And I don't mean merely in a spiritual sense. In a very real, almost a material sense, you need God. Every single day, with every breath, our soul is crying out. There are no godless hours of our lives. From moment to moment, as our soul awaits the next moment, God must replenish our soul. God framed the world by his word, and he upholds the world by his word, which means that every single moment, the foundation of our lives is being upheld by God. Now, in pagan lands before Christ, this thirst infused life, the life of the pagan and the pagan culture with the divine. Even though the pagan followed false conceptions of God, they built temples and altars everywhere they went. They named their

cities after the gods. You can go to the ruins of the temples in South America, and you can see there is this thirst for God. It wasn't something that was just passed down from one generation to another, and that's really the degree to which we're influenced by this idea of God. You can have separate continents separated by whole oceans, and people are doing the same thing though they've never had any contact with each other. In their own way, they're all reaching out for God. Their languages were infused with the divine. They prayed constantly. They sacrificed constantly. Every well of water was associated with a nymph. Every forest was haunted by dyads in their thought. Every mountain was a throne of the divine. Every hill was the home of gods. The wind was thought to be a god. The sea was a god. The moon was a goddess. The sky was named after a god. The land was the land of a god. You

couldn't take a step in the ancient world without tripping over the divine. And in the land of Israel, things weren't all that much different, so far as the prevalence of the divine. God was everywhere. The psalmist said in one place, O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising. Thou understandest my thought before I even have them. Thou compassed my path and my lying down, and you're acquainted with all my ways, for there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether before I've spoken it. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge, it's too wonderful for me. It's high, I can't attain unto it. Wither shall I go from thy spirit, O wither shall I flee from thy presence. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell low, thou art there. If I take

the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost part of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand hold me. Where can I go from thy presence? Now, in the modern world, though, scientists began announcing that we'd arrived in an age of reason, not religion. That science had demystified the world. People had, they said, turned to religion in the old world only because they didn't understand the world and reality. But since science had discovered the keys to reality, religion was now obsolete, superseded by a higher knowledge. Religion was a form of knowledge, but it's a primitive form of knowledge. Religion's a kind of primitive science. It's what you resort to mentally, intellectually, when there are no better explanations. But now that we have better explanations, we can do away with the old. Now, even if there's something we don't understand yet, the scientists said, we now know the process by which to discover any truth. I want

you to imagine a primitive tribe who had no contact with the modern world and imagine meeting them, being invited to one of their religious rituals. Maybe at this ritual or ceremony, they'd attempt to find out whether or not it would rain tomorrow. Or try to contact their ancestors to ask an important question. And they'd probably do something like start a fire, boil water, throw in a lock of a child's hair, the venom of a snake. Maybe throw in some magic stones. But imagine taking out all of a sudden while you're attending the ceremony, your iPhone, and opening your weather app and telling them it won't just rain tomorrow. It's going to hail at 9 o'clock, maybe even 9.30. And imagine sending one of the tribesmen to the other side of the camp and having them FaceTime each other, a family member. They'd ask you what ritual you performed. What were the ingredients that produced this magic? Our answer would be, it isn't magic,

it's science. But they'd insist on knowing more, science. Science would just be their word for magic. And so maybe you'd open up your phone and show them the wires and batteries and metals and glasses and conductors and the electricity. But they wouldn't suddenly quit believing in their magical world. They'd simply adapt this new information to their old beliefs and say, well our snake venom, our locks of hair weren't the right ingredients. We need instead to use the correct ingredients as shown by these phones, metal, batteries, glass, copper, wires. Ah, that's the right thing to put in the cauldron. They'd be essentially correct. Science and magic, they're not two different things. Science is just magic that works. Magic that uses the right ingredients and mathematical formulas and has discovered the correct ritual, placing this metal here, starting the fire there, touching the glass here, joining the wires there. But the modern scientist doesn't see things that way. They tend to believe that science and

magic are completely different things. Magic is pure fantasy, the product of primitive superstitious superstition. But science is pure rationality. Religion is no longer necessary, they say, and science has all the answers. It was hard not to believe, if you really think about it, the scientist's gospel. They discovered the atom and unlocked the most fundamental building block in the universe. You've heard of the barber who bragged his blade was so sharp and his hand so steady he could give a nat a shave. But scientists knew how to do something infinitely more impossible. They found a way to split the atom and unlock its hidden power. Whole cities, whole countries could be set on fire simultaneously. As God had visited ten plagues on Egypt, making the sky dark in the middle of the day, and he turned rivers into blood and part of the Red Sea to demonstrate awesome power. Science demonstrated its power in the inferno of Nagasaki in Hiroshima. The whole world was

warned that we were now at the mercy of a red button. But science wasn't done flexing its muscle. It planted a flag on the moon and discovered the theoretical components of a thinking machine that we call today computers. Science had a benevolent side too. Israel sometimes called their God Jehovah Rafika, the God who heals us. But healing was always at God's discretion. But science all but eradicated diseases that had plagued children, like they had really eradicated polio. Science put a stop to typhoid and scarlet fever, things that had completely destroyed whole civilizations. Science had demystified, demythologized the world. We discovered that we're not subject to mysterious forces anymore. No divine invisible will is out there commanding our obedience, they said. We don't have a God or gods to placate or please what seemed mysterious before like the lightning before the thunder. Stars falling in the sky, green lights dancing in the northern night, the storm upon the sea, the wisdom and loyalty of

a horse. There was no mystery anymore. Chemicals and atoms, these were all completely predictable causes and effects, reactions, collisions. Well, this kind of idea oftentimes it makes its way out of the laboratory where a select few are capable of understanding things, these kinds of things. Usually its channel to the wider world is through literature. So what is discussed in the laboratory only ends up on the street through way of storytellers, philosophers. And as usual, this idea made its way to the man on the street through literature. In the late 1800s, early 1900s, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started telling stories about a detective named Sherlock Holmes. And the average plot or the typical plot of a Sherlock Holmes story is essentially there's an individual is killed in the fifth floor of a high story home. And all the doors were locked, all the windows were locked from the inside. Nobody could have gotten in. Nobody whatsoever. They had eliminated every other possibility. The only

explanation was some kind of divine curse. And that's what the folks in the story went with. That was the explanation that they were dealing with something, some higher power. There was no other physical explanation, no murderer until Sherlock Holmes comes along and then shows that there is physical evidence that you just didn't see. And pretty soon the veil of the divine just parts and you see that it was a very ordinary criminal that performed this feat. And so many stories revolve around that kind of idea, like the Hound the Baskervilles, that sort of de-nathologizing idea. Even later on into the 20th century, you had stories that made its way to film and TV, like Star Trek. Star Trek, there was one particular film, Star Trek, where they had been cast into some other galaxy. And they thought they were about to meet God. And they were able to make it into this God's presence. And they stood in awe of him. They believed

that he was the creator of everything, even though they were hard-boiled scientists. But then he turned out to be just another alien, a power-hungry narcissist, like everybody else. So many stories revolve around that sort of thing, the dispelling of the divine and the appearance of the ordinary. It was all pretty interesting for a little while, but that kind of idea ran its course. People stopped being interested in it. And then in the 1970s, the 1970s or so, somewhere right around there, Frank Herbert wrote a sci-fi series. And all the science fiction was all very scientific and not religious. But then Frank Herbert comes along and he writes Dune. And he puts the spiritual and combines it with sci-fi. It becomes very popular. And then George Lucas comes along and he dreams of Star Wars. And there's this mysterious religious force that's more powerful than all of the mechanisms in the universe. Of course, I could quote Darth Vader for you really, really well

right here. Your technological marvels do not compare. In other words, it didn't take very long and we were already thirsting for God again. That story, the old story, it became old really, really quick. And then really, the great American myth is Star Wars. It's science, but it's infused with religion. Almost like it met a need, a hunger, a thirst that was already there and people couldn't get enough of it. You open up science fiction that's been written over the last 40 years now. It's almost all of that characteristic. Oh boy, I forgot the best one. You remember the Sherlock Holmes thing was explaining, it's not a religious explanation, it's a science explanation. In the 1960s, you know who started doing that, it was Scooby-Doo. That was the whole thing. But no, anybody watches Scooby-Doo today, it's just the silliest thing. Kids are like, they don't understand the plot, it doesn't appeal to them at all. What they like is shaggy and Scooby, that's

it. But what we tried to do is chase God away, away from our consciences, away from our thoughts, away from our practices. We separated earth from sky. What was once called the heavens, we now called space, the final frontier. You think about that, that evolution from the word heaven to space. You know the word space didn't appear in the English language as a reference to what was above us until about the year 1636. There was no concept of what was out there as being empty. It was believed that once you got up into that atmosphere up there, you were ascending into the heavens. That's why they literally called it heaven. But then we separated earth from sky and expected people to be happy and content and satisfied. And we just found ourselves empty and depressed and anxious. Human life was once saturated in a sense of the divine. We named all of our days of the week after divine beings. We called Wednesday,

Wotan's Day. Thursday is Thor's Day. Friday is Freak's Dog. These are Norse gods. We named our months after Roman gods like January and March and June. We used to refer to dates as BC and AD. And now it's the godless BCE and CE as if that's fooling anyone. We used to think of even our emotions and personalities as being influenced by the divine. Being in love was the result of being under the influence, the pagan said, of Venus or Mars. Being jovial was caused by the influence of Jove. Being angry was under the influence of Mars, the god of war. But once scientism began to take hold, we either dropped the supernatural from our language. Or we kept the language but forgot the original meaning. So we now have a language full of forgotten relics of our former beliefs. We still refer to being able to owe someone money as credit. But we've forgotten that credit comes from the Latin credo, which means

literally I believe or I trust. And this is why our dollar says in God we trust. It's the basis of credit. It's an acknowledgement from a pre-scientific age. The basis of our entire financial system is trust. And more specifically a trust in God. We hold a mere piece of paper in our hands but have to trust that this paper has worth. I overheard a conversation about a month ago or so. There was a woman bragging to her friend that she had scolded a stranger the other day who wished her a blessed day. She complained that this was totally inappropriate. We shouldn't force our beliefs on people, she said. She said she should have just said instead goodbye. Little did this woman realize that the word goodbye is literally a rounding off in simplification of what used to be an entire phrase, God be with you. The triumphs of science though has done much damage for whatever we have gained. These triumphs have been

short-lived. Confidence in science has been severely shaken. Commentators in the mid-1900s said that religion was dying and would be soon dead altogether. They said we're going to see the disappearance of churches and religions and spiritual organizations and religious practices. People are going to adopt a more rational way of life they thought. But just the opposite has happened. Just the opposite. Heard a teacher once put it to me this way. He said our desire for God is like a shooting geyser. There are unknown amounts of pools of water underground. The geyser shoots regularly releasing this water. If you go up to Old Faithful and you try to put a cork in the ground and you try to seal it up and put cement there where the crevice is in the earth. You think that's going to stop the geyser. You're sadly mistaken. The water is going to find another way to the surface. It's going to take unexpected routes. Strange, twisting routes but it

will emerge. That's what our culture's desire, our human desire for God is doing. We've just tried to seal up the crevices the traditional ways. But that hasn't stopped the desire. It hasn't taken away the desire. It's just made it find unusual routes to the surface. Just since the year 2001, more than 1,000 new religions have been registered and recognized with the U.S. government and given 501C3 status. Tens of thousands of new religious organizations have received tax exempt status in the last 20 years. You know what's going on? My soul thirsteth for thee. In a dry and thirsty land where no water is. My soul longeth for thee. So what we're not going to get is less belief. What's going to happen? What is happening and what has happened? When we have taken out the more traditional means of approaching the divine. We don't get less belief. We're getting in our culture weirder belief. We found out that if you eliminate organized religion, you

don't get no religion. You get disorganized religion. Less accountability. A number of years ago, I discovered YouTube and I fell in a rabbit hole and it lasted a couple of years. I didn't think I was going to emerge. And what I discovered, I was so fascinated by cults. And religious figures who started new movements. And I did as much research as I could do. Sometimes it was through YouTube, sometimes on the internet, but in other places as well. Sometimes I would go directly to places and observe. There's this fellow that I came across online. And his thing is he's taken a vow of silence. He doesn't speak. He just stands on the podium or at the podium on stage and he gazes and the people gather in. And this religious experience, he has literally hundreds of thousands of followers, devoted people around him. And it's called the gaze. That's all he does. He just looks. And if you will, if you will contemplate

him for long enough, if you will just not expecting any words, if you will just sit there in silence and contemplate what he's doing, you're going to get past the rationality of words and vocabulary and rules and regulations. And you're going to break through into some kind of spirituality. And you're going to get a glimpse of the divine through his gaze. His name is Brocco. Brocco. And the strangest thing is he not only has, when he shows up in town, he has, he has, he fills stadiums. But he also once a day has the gaze viewing. And you can log on and for a certain fee, you can, you can, you can sit there at your computer and you can watch the gaze there. And I remember, I remember, you know, I wanted to know who were the, who were the, who were the people who, who fall for that kind of thing. And, and I had an idea that these are, these

are kind of soft-minded, soft-brained, sort of, you know, just really gullible people. And then I go, you know, I find out that in fact, Brocco's followers, his most devoted followers are usually college graduates. They're usually, they're usually white-collar professionals. And they typically describe themselves as left-brained, very rationalistic kind of people. Hmm. That's fascinating. You know what's going on? You try to stifle the divine, all of your life. And then you get into your 30s and 40s and you find yourself utterly broken and empty. You're depressed and lonely and sad. And then the appeal goes forth. Look into the gaze. The next thing you know, you're an occult. Educated people aren't supposed to believe in God. So you suppose their education is going to eradicate this thirst? As if a professor could rewire the human being at the most fundamental level of existence. As if you could talk a man dying of thirst out of being thirsty. Can't do it. You can't do it.

One more. I'm sorry if I bore you with these, these details. I feel like I need to make the point. Another, and these are a couple of examples of things that I can repeat that are publicly edible as it were. But I found another intellectual movement. It's called the breatharian movement. And these breatharians as they called themselves, they said, you don't need to eat food. You only need to take sips of water every couple of days. But the air that we breathe in is sufficient to give us all that we need. This is what God intended in the beginning. We weren't meant to eat anything. Never mind that we were given teeth for goodness sake. I don't know what you'd do with that. But the air can give you all the sustenance that you need. And these guys, they'll show up on, in the 1980s they were showing up on, boy I forget what talk show it was. And the guy is sitting

there and he's really, really thin. But he says he hasn't eaten in 17 years. And then there was this, just a few years ago there was this lady that said that she's about to become a breatharian. And she wanted to broadcast it and put it online so that people could watch her becoming a breatharian. And she was going to live off of air. And she put up cameras all through her trailer where she was going to live for the next 40 days. And so there was not a corner that you couldn't see her in. And she wanted to make sure everybody could see, improve. Scientifically, you don't need food. You can wean yourself off of it slowly. And she felt she had weaned herself off of it. And so now she begins and she starts the broadcast. And she's getting, after a couple of days, really, really weak. But then she's making trips to the bathroom. That didn't throw up any red flags

at all, apparently. And then she did, in fact, get so weak that she passed out and paramedics were called. And they found that she had a refrigerator inside her bathroom. And she was taking a little bit of stuff. As biblical faith wanes in our world, something is beginning to take its place. That's why I'm talking to you about this. That thirst doesn't just go away. We thirst for God. So we try to find Him in a thousand other places. And this is the moment for the church. You might think there's no interest. Oh, there's interest. Oh, there's interest. You know, when you get really thirsty, I've never gotten myself to this point. But I'm told, it's phenomenon. It's the mirage phenomenon. You begin to see things that aren't there. You even, one of the first things that you see that isn't there, is in a desert you'll see an oasis. You'll see a body of water and you will then down into the

sand and start lapping up the sand. This is what our culture is doing. It's filling its mouth with sand. You wonder why our cities are overrun with drugs. Sand. Sand. It's sand. It's packing sand into our mouths. As church attendance and affiliation go down across culture, drug use rises. What's happening there? Correlation? Causation? It's both. The sense of awe and spirituality that we normally find in religion becomes a need to find that sense of awe and glory and euphoria in psychedelics, mind-altering substances. To get in touch with something that transcends normal experience, to step outside of reality and come into direct contact with another reality. You know what they're all saying in their own way, all of these addicts, all of these lonely and desperate people, they're all saying, my soul thirst is for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Drug use isn't, it's not the only, it's not only a result of the loss of biblical faith.

There's also the rise in sexual experimentation. The loss of traditional faith across the culture leads to frightening levels of boredom with life. And so our culture is trying to find meaning and transcendence and excitement in crossing moral boundaries. You know what this is? There's a thrill in going beyond moral boundaries because moral boundaries are human boundaries. It would seem. There's a desire to go beyond the human. Deviant sexual behavior is a misplaced desire to reach beyond our humanity and experience the divine. Some have turned from faith in God to faith in nature. They try to find this sense of awe and nature as a substitute for the God of the Bible. It's almost understandable. There are moments in nature that demonstrate the greatest shows of power. We were on the West Coast a few days, a few weeks ago rather. My wife and I and the seas were at what was called a king tide. The waters up, the tide is up as

high as you could ever see it. And I stood on the beach and felt the earth beneath me tremble as one distant wave after another rose up like colossal white panthers leaping up and falling down upon the shore. 60-foot waves so large they look like they're moving in slow motion, slamming into the great rock formations like a frost shooting up in jagged fashion on a frozen window. The impenetrable gray skies boiling with thunder, touching the horizon, 100 seagulls, soared motionless in a perfect line in the sky, high above, gliding on the 50-mile-an-hour winds, all of them facing the dim eastern sky at dawn, as if in holy reverence for the break of day. I then stood in an ancient forest, Sitka Spruce's trees hundreds of feet high, holding on to the same forest floor that has nursed them since before Columbus was born. I understand, but this is just a creation. Imagine the majesty of its creator, fearfully and wonderfully made. When I

consider the heavens, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man? And science itself is succumbed to the thirst for God. You'd think that at least if everyone else succumbs to this thirst, science-driven people would be able to stave it off, but they can't either. So science has begun to take on the characteristics of religious belief. Everyday people are asked to trust the science, to have faith in the experts. Have you noticed that every natural disaster is now connected to a narrative? In Biblical times, a flood would come or a hail storm or hurricane or a great fire would occur. And the priests or the prophets would say, this disaster has happened because we humans have sinned and are being punished. 30 years ago when a hurricane would come, we'd shrug our shoulders culturally and say, how awful this is, what bad luck, what can we do? Nature has a cruel side. But today, we're right back where we were

3,000 years ago, thinking exactly like bronze age priests. The tragic weather is now connected to something we've done wrong. After every deadly weather event, you can turn on any new station and listen to our scientists say, this hurricane is the result of climate change. And as long as we continue to live lives of privilege and spending and accumulating and expanding, nature is going to retaliate. In other words, nature is punishing us for our sins. And this sounds, if I am not mistaken, exactly like something the ancient priests of Apollo would have said. And you know what else all of this sounds like? Even the scientists are saying, my soul thirsteth for thee. Our culture is like a hummingbird, flying but completely still, poised over the bud, trying to extract sweet nectar from the heart of the flower. We're trying to extract the divine from this world, but coming up empty and thirsty still. And as we chase the God of the Bible away

and try to quench the thirst of our souls with substitutes, people are getting more and more disordered. The apostle Paul said, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. For the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made so that they are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Neither were they thankful to God, but they became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened and they professed themselves to be wise but they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like unto corruptible man, to birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things where for God also gave them up to uncleanness through lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. They changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more

than the creator. And for this God, God gave them up to their vile affections for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust toward one another. Men with men working that which is unseemly and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not good for them. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity. There you have it. This wasn't said by some preacher last Sunday, but 2,000 years ago. Well, what do we do, church? What do we do? One of the seven sayings Jesus uttered from the cross should be remembered, especially here tonight. According to John's Gospel, the crucified Christ said, I thirst. What was happening? He said he thirsted and the people at the

cross gave him a sponge of vinegar. But it wasn't just physical thirst that was happening here. The Son of God had for the first time in his life been cut off from God. He had entered into the spiritual desert that he so prayed against in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was the first human being completely cut off from the presence of God. Why did he go through this? So that we could be planted in the presence of God. He was forsaken so that we could be received. He got what we deserved so that we could get what he deserves. Ladies and gentlemen, the Lord has made it so abundantly clear that I can just say it in a moment, repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus and receive His Spirit. Watch the order come back into your life. Watch the demons flee. Watch the addictions go away. And contentment and satisfaction and goodness flood your heart. Waters in a dry and thirsty

land. Life springing up where there had been nothing but sand. Oh God, Thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My soul longeth for thee. In a dry and thirsty land where no water is to see thy power and thy glory. So as I've seen thee in the sanctuary because thy loving kindness is better than life. Better than life. My lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. Coming soon. It's coming soon. Now we have a taste of the water. But one day the Lord is coming back in every desert. Every desert will come to life. The sun will rise in the east on that day. If it's spring the flower will unfold and perfume the air. If it's summer frogs will emanate with warm shallow ponds. If it's fall the leaves of the oak will turn crimson red. If it's winter men will

be stepping outdoors and catching the scent of snow before it falls. On that day women will give birth to babies and name them after their grandfathers. On that day students will study for their exams. Families will sign long-term mortgages. On that day the nut a squirrel dug into the ground three years ago and forgot about will come to life and the merest green sprig of what will one day be a giant pine tree will rise like Lazarus from the earth. The baker will squeeze chocolate frosting in the shape of happy faces on apple fritters. The fisherman will check the weather and stow their nets. The judge will be handing down a prisoner's sentence of 30 years in prison. A thief will be surveilling a home on some street. On that day a man somewhere will be trying desperately to hide his adultery. A preacher will read an article in the news and say to himself, I think that will preach this Sunday. A

mother will get a diagnosis of cancer in a few months left to live. On that day a girl will finally master the language of the foreigner she loves. Two will be working in the field. Two will be working at the mill. Two will be sleeping in bed. That is to say on that day everything will be quite normal. And then all of a sudden with no warning the sky will shatter. And his coming will be like a thief in the night. His coming will be like a man sitting in his quiet library at night with a book in front of a fire near a window and suddenly a rock thrown through the pain of a glass. It's coming soon. And he will end all of this. But now. But now. You don't have to wait till then. But now. If any man thirsts let him come to me. If any man thirsts let him come to me. The spirit and the bride say

come and let the one who hears say come. Let the one who's thirsty come and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. Have you taken any inventory in the last 45 minutes? What things are there in your life right now that are the result of you trying to find what you can only get from God. How hard have you made your life trying to make this work? How many other things will you turn to? How many other things? If you say I will I understand that God has a claim upon my life but not today. Not today. Maybe some other time. But if God has a claim upon your life tomorrow surely he has a claim upon it today. Jesus name. Jesus name. May your church may your church bring this life-saving gospel and never lose faith in it and never substitute it for anything else. Anything else. May we have the utmost confidence in your

gospel. May we recognize all of these maladies and disorders in our culture and understand and read the signs of the time and understand that this is a thirst misguided, misdirected and God I pray that the church would seize this opportunity and seize this moment of great thirst. Jesus name. Come to the altar tonight and talk to the Lord. If you have been seeking contentment in other places