Tawa Baptist

As the deer pants for the water

Scripture: Psalm 42, Numbers 16 & 26:10-11, Romans 7:15-25, John 4:14.

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Psalm 42
  • Romans 7
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Good morning everyone

Many of you will be aware that Shona is uploading a recording of a hymn to her Facebook page most days while we’ve been in lockdown. Last Wednesday afternoon I was at my computer, working on the sermon, when Robyn walked in and played me Shona’s hymn for that day. It so happened that Shona’s hymn was ‘As the deer pants for the water…’, the very song I had been working on for this morning’s ‘Anthems’ series message. I didn’t know Shona was going to play ‘As the deer…’ and she didn’t know I was going to preach on it. 

Some would call that serendipity. Some would call it chance. Others might call it providence or a God moment. When things like that happen, I like to see God’s hand in it. For me it is a sign of God’s presence.       

As the deer pants for the water is a song about longing for God more than anything else. It was written by a guy called Marty Nystrom. Marty was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1956. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in music education in 1979. It is unclear to me exactly when Marty wrote ‘As the deer…’. Some sources say it was 1981, while others say it was 1984. In any case, the story goes that Marty had travelled to Dallas Texas to attend summer school at the ‘Christ for the Nations Institute’. Possibly there was a girl there he was interested in but that relationship didn’t work out the way he had hoped. For whatever reason it was a difficult summer for Marty. He was struggling with some inner turmoil, and he was struggling physically with the Texas heat.

Marty’s roommate suggested he go on a water fast to draw close to God. A water fast is when you don’t eat any food, you only drink water. Marty recalls what happened next…

“I took up the challenge, and on the 19th day of the fast I found myself sitting at a piano trying to write a song. I was simply playing chord progressions when I noticed a Bible on the music stand of the piano. It was open to Psalm 42. My eyes fell on the first verse of that chapter… ‘As the hart (deer) panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.’ After reading the verse I began to sing its message, right off the page. I wrote the first verse and the chorus of a song, pretty much straight through.”

Marty had no intention of showing the song to anyone. It was to be for his own devotional time with the Lord. However, before leaving the school to go back to Seattle, he did share it with one person, Dave Butterbaugh. Dave then introduced it to the students of the school and it became a favourite.

As the deer pants for the water is special for many people. (Neville tells me they played this song at his baptism.) On the face of it, As the deer appears to be quite simple, but its roots run deep in Scripture. There are many interpretative possibilities. This morning’s message focuses on just two of the Scriptures I’m in touch with as I reflect on this song. First let us consider Psalm 42… 

Psalm 42

The opening verse of Marty’s song reads…

As the deer pants for the water so my soul longs after You
You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship You

These lines find their inspiration from Psalm 42. Psalm 42 is oozing with the pathos of longing for God. From verse 1 we read…

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.

6 My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

8 By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” 10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

You may have heard on the news this past week of the New Zealanders who were stranded in Peru due to corona virus border closures. It was desperate times as many of them were being turned out of their accommodation and unable to “safely shelter” in Peru. I imagine they were longing deeply to return home. Fortunately, God’s providence came in the form of a government-organised mercy flight, which left Lima last Tuesday (14 April) and touched down in Auckland on Wednesday. I expect those on the flight and their loved ones were greatly relieved.

The psalmist’s home was Jerusalem. However, when we read Psalm 42 all the way through, we discover in verse 6 that the psalmist is writing these words not from the temple in Jerusalem but from the slopes of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is nearly 340 km’s from Jerusalem which, in the ancient world, was a formidable distance. In some ways being on Mt Hermon was (for the psalmist) sort of like being a New Zealander stranded in Peru.

The author of psalm 42 remembers how he used to lead people in a procession of worship to the temple in Jerusalem and he longs to be able to do so again. For ancient Jews the temple embodied God’s presence. It’s not that God was only present in the temple. God is omnipresent – like the air we breathe he is everywhere at once. But to the Hebrew mind, God was somehow present in a special way in the Jerusalem temple. Consequently, the psalmist longs to return to Jerusalem and worship God there. Mount Hermon just isn’t the same.   

For Christians, Jesus is our home. He is our sanctuary, our safe place, our temple. On more than one occasion Jesus identified himself as the new temple. Jesus embodies the presence of God in a special way. Jesus taught us that wherever two or three people are gathered in his name, there he is also. So, in Christian understanding, the new temple is not a building – it is a gathering of two or more believers in Christ.

With this in view there is a connection between Psalm 42 and our current experience in lockdown. Some people, perhaps especially those in a bubble by themselves or in a bubble without any fellow believers, may be longing to gather with other Christians to worship God. It’s not that we can’t worship God by ourselves. It’s just that it’s not quite the same.

Having said that, even when we are able to gather for church services, there are still some things that prevent us from worshipping God. On one level we might want to give God praise but on another level we just can’t because what we are feeling on the inside is incongruent (it doesn’t fit) with praising God.   

We may, for example, be going through some inner turmoil. Certainly the writer of Psalm 42 was in distress. He says, ‘My soul is down cast within me.’ If we are feeling anxious or sad it is very difficult to praise God and mean it. In that situation we are best not to fake it. God wants our honesty. Sometimes we don’t have words to offer God. Sometimes all we have are our tears. In verse 3 of Psalm 42 the psalmist says, ‘My tears have been my food day and night…’  He longs to worship God. He longs to have intimacy with God but all he has is a deep and overwhelming feeling of sadness. ‘All your waves and breakers have swept over me.’

If all you have to offer God are tears, then that is where you start, but it’s not where you finish. Please, don’t settle into self-pity. It is a trap. After flushing out his emotions with tears, the psalmist then engages his brain and his resolve (his will). More than once he says to himself, ‘Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?’ This shows us the psalmist is thinking about the cause of the problem, so he’s looking for a solution, or at least some way of managing his feelings. Then he engages his resolve by saying to himself, ‘Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.’  Resolve is that grit, that commitment, that discipline of your will to put one foot in front of other and just keep going until you get through it.   

Praise and worship is not always the starting point. More often it is the goal and we have to do a fair bit of processing before we can reach the goal of praising the Lord. Very simply, the psalmist gives us a three stage process for dealing with our inner turmoil…

Step one: express your feelings in a healthy way – don’t bottle things up and don’t pretend but also don’t wallow in your tears for too long.

Step two: engage your brain – think about why you are in turmoil. This is where talking to someone who knows you and is wise can be helpful.

And step three: resolve to move forward in faith & hope toward God.    

Marty Nystrom was not able to worship God in the way he wanted to while he was downcast and in the pit. He had to do some processing first. In fact, Marty wrote his song at the end of 19 days of processing by fasting. Now I’m not suggesting you need to go on a water fast for 19 days. That may have been the right thing for Marty at that time but it’s not the right thing for everyone. We are all having to give up enough during this lockdown without adding a water fast to the mix. So we need to exercise some common sense.

The point is, we may long to worship God but are prevented from doing so because of what is happening inside of us. Another thing that can hold us back from worshipping God is a feeling of shame. Shame is different from guilt. Guilt is usually a private internal feeling, whereas shame is more of a public external thing. Shame is something we are made to wear so it’s something everyone sees. Often shame is undeserved.

Psalm 42 is one of the songs of the sons of Korah. The sons of Korah were part of the tribe of Levi who served in the temple, but not as priests. They were called the sons of Korah because they were descended from a man named Korah. The book of Numbers tells us that Korah rebelled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness and was killed by fire. However, the line of Korah did not die out. [1]

I imagine the descendants of Korah had to wear quite a bit of shame through no fault of their own, because of what their granddaddy did. But God is so gracious and just. Some centuries after Korah’s rebellion, his descendants served as worship musicians, composing and performing songs in the temple in Jerusalem. This is a beautiful picture of God’s providence and redemption. By giving the sons of Korah a valuable role in his service, the Lord clothed them with honour.

Perhaps, like the sons of Korah, you have a chequered ancestry, a few skeletons in the family closet. Perhaps, through no fault of your own, you live with a sense of shame because of this. Maybe this feeling of shame inhibits you from worshipping God as freely as you would like. May be you don’t feel good enough. Jesus came to set the captives free. God has a place of honour for you in his purpose.

There is more we could say about psalm 42 but I would like to move on to our next Scripture, Romans 7

Romans 7

In his letter to the Romans, chapter 7:15-25, the apostle Paul writes …

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.

Now you might be thinking, how on earth does this relate to today’s song? Well, let me explain. In this reading from Romans Paul is describing the war that rages inside each one of us. On the one hand, we love God and want to do his will. But on the other hand, there are forces at work within us that seem to sabotage our best intentions, so we end up not obeying God as we want to do. Paul calls those sabotaging forces our ‘sinful nature’. While Jesus has conquered sin on the cross, we still wrestle with sin in this life.

I don’t know if you have ever tried swimming in jeans and a pull over. It’s very difficult, not to mention dangerous. Every movement is heavy and sluggish and you keep feeling like you’re being dragged down. Swimming in a wet suit is quite the opposite. A wet suit is streamed lined and naturally buoyant – it actually helps you to stay afloat and makes swimming easier.

Obeying God is the purest form of worship. Trying to obey God while we are encumbered by our sinful nature is like trying to swim in jeans and a pullover. Our sinful nature is one of those things that gets in the way of us worshipping God properly, as he deserves. In contrast, being clothed in the righteousness of Christ is like swimming in a wet suit.

Returning to this week’s song. Part of the chorus reads: You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship You.

The heart here is a metaphor for a person’s inner self – our core.

In the Bible the heart isn’t just a container for our emotions. The heart more accurately refers to the mind and will.

To sing, You alone are my heart’s desire seems like a grand claim indeed.

For those of us who take seriously the words we sing it may feel dishonest to say that God is our only desire. In reality our hearts generally have a number of competing desires.

But the chorus is not the only part of the song that makes bold claims. We may also feel like we are stretching the truth when we sing lines like, ‘I love You more than any other, so much more than anything’ in verse 3.

Or ‘I want You more than gold or silver… you’re the apple of my eye’ in verse 2. While God certainly deserves our greatest loyalty and affection, he doesn’t always get it.
 

And this is where Paul’s words in Romans 7 are so helpful. Paul gives us a way of separating our heart’s desire from the competing desires of our sinful nature. In verse 25 of Romans 7 Paul says: So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

‘In my mind’ is another way of saying ‘In my heart’ because remember, in the Bible, the heart refers to the mind. ‘In his mind’ Paul is 100% devoted to doing what God wants (he’s a slave to God’s law). But in his ‘sinful nature’ (which is something different from his heart and mind) Paul is not inclined to do what God wants.

King David helps us to see the distinction Paul makes between our heart and our sinful nature. In the Bible, the prophet Samuel describes David as ‘a man after God’s own heart’. [2] Which is another way of saying that ‘in his mind’ David wanted what God wanted. And yet, despite being a man after God’s own heart, David’s sinful nature led David to commit adultery with Bathsheba and orchestrate Uriah’s murder. These were clearly things God did not want. So while the desire of David’s heart & mind was to do God’s will, David’s sinful nature sometimes sabotaged his obedience to God. This did not stop David from praising God though. David’s sinful nature did not stop him from writing psalms and delighting in the Lord.       

What I’m saying here is that we can sing to God, ‘You alone are my heart’s desire…, and mean it, because the desire of our heart & mind is something quite different from our sinful nature. While it is true that we all still struggle with sin in this life, the good news (for those who trust in Jesus) is we won’t have to wrestle with sin in the next life. Our ‘sinful nature’ was nailed to the cross with Christ and will not drag us down in the life to come. In eternity we will be free to swim (or worship God) without being encumbered by our sinful nature.  

Therefore, when we sing ‘and I long to worship you’ we mean, ‘I long for the time when Christ returns in glory and I am finally free of my sinful nature, finally free of that force in me that keeps sabotaging my obedience to God.

In verse 3 of the song we sing to Jesus these words, ‘You’re my friend and you are my brother even though you are a king…’ 

Friend, brother and king. These three relationships all have one thing in common: obedience. But the kind of obedience one gives to a friend or a brother is different from the sort of obedience one gives to a king.

We obey a king because we have to – that is our duty. But we do what a friend or a brother asks because we want to – because we love them.

In Matthew 12:48 Jesus says, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus is saying that obedience to God is what makes us part of God’s family.

Likewise, in John 15 Jesus says to his disciples, “My command is this: Love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command…”     

Obedience is the purest form of worship. When we sing ‘I long to worship you’, we mean ‘I long to obey you Jesus, not just as a king (because I have to) but as a friend and a brother because I love you’. 

In Matthew 5 Jesus says to his disciples, ‘Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for you will be satisfied.’ If you truly hunger and thirst to be free of your sinful nature and to worship God in spirit and in truth, then God who looks upon the heart (and mind) will satisfy your desire. 

Conclusion

In verse 2 of the song we say of Jesus, ‘…only you can satisfy…’

Jesus is God’s providence, God’s serendipity for our thirsty soul. As Jesus says in John 4:14…

“…whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The water Jesus was talking about is the Holy Spirit. Jesus satisfies our thirst for God through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ Spirit is water to our soul.

What is it you long for?

Let us pray.

Father God, you know our needs and you care for us.

We pray for those who are thirsty for you but don’t know it. Save them from looking in all the wrong places. Help them to realise their need for you. May they encounter the living Christ and be satisfied by the water of your Spirit. 

We pray too for those who are thirsty for you and do know it. Help us as we wait for you. Lead us beside still waters and refresh our spirit with your Spirit. We pray these things in the name of Jesus our brother and our friend. Amen.

Let’s sing, ‘As the deer pants for the water’ in our bubbles now…

Verse 1

As the deer pants for the water
So my soul longs after You
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship You

          Chorus

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship You

Verse 2

I want You more than gold or silver
Only You can satisfy
You alone are the real joy giver
And the apple of my eye

Verse 3

You’re my friend and You are my brother
Even though You are a King
I love You more than any other
So much more than anything

Outtakes

The chorus of the song begins, You alone are my strength, my shield.

The image of God being a shield is found in a number of psalms. It is a way of saying that God is our protector, especially when we are under attack.

To say that God alone is my strength and shield is to admit our own vulnerability. We are like sheep (basically defenceless) but God is the one who defends us.    

Questions for discussion or reflection:

Listen to the song ‘As the deer pants for the water’.  What are you in touch with as you listen to this song? (What connections, memories or feelings does the song evoke for you?) 

Have you had any God moments lately? Who might benefit from hearing about your God moment?

How do you feel when reading through Psalm 42? What are you missing (longing for) most during this time in lockdown?

On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being extremely thirsty and 10 being satisfied) where would you place yourself in longing for God? Why?

Discuss / reflect on the three practical steps the writer of psalm 42 gives for processing his inner turmoil? How might these apply to your life?

What prevents you from worshipping (obeying) God properly? Is it in your power to do anything about this? If so, what? If not, what is in your power to do?

What is Paul saying in Romans 7:15-25? How does Romans 7:15-25 help us to sing, ‘You are alone are my heart’s desire’?

What are the implications of calling Jesus our friend and brother?

[1] For the story of Korah refer to Numbers 16 & 26:10-11

[2] 1st Samuel 13:14