And feel free to go five or ten minutes over, or longer if you like. I'm going to preach now? No. No. When you do preach. Oh, okay. I thought you meant when I prayed. Okay. All right. All right. Dan forgot to mention that I'm a, that region, I'm a professor of meritis. And I think they meant to honor me with that. I've made the mistake of looking up a meritis in a Latin dictionary. And it means worn out on fit for service. So I own up to that. I don't want to miss that title. All right. Our text this morning is Psalm 63 and invite you to turn with me to Psalm 63. In the earliest church, they began their Sunday services with singing of the Psalms. And the first Psalm they sang was the Psalm. So it's got an ancient pedigree in church liturgy. It's a Psalm of David when he was in the desert of Judah. I'm reading from the new international version. Oh, God, you are my God. Or honestly, I seek you. My soul thirst for you. My body longs for you. In a dry and weary land where there is no water. I've seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live. And in your name, I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied with the richest foods with singing that my lips, my mouth, will praise you. On my bed, I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help by singing the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. They who seek my life will be destroyed. They will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. But the King will be joisting God all swear by God's name. We'll praise him while the mouths of the liars will be silenced. They got it as benediction and spirit to this portion of this word. Father, we would remind ourselves at what cost we are in your presence. Thank you for that great love of the triumphant God that gave your son who died to everything. He gave himself and across with the blood that's beyond all comprehension ordained sacrifice for the beginning of time for your people. Because of that, we have boldness. Thank you that he conquered death, ascended it to heaven. He gave his church, your spirit. May we know that power. Not of our manipulation and not of our study, though those who read the study is important. But a heavenly power. Give us the grace to make it our aim in life not to be happy, but to allow you to make us holy. And we know what it means to be set apart, consecrated to you, cleansed and powered, and walked so differently from the world. Our feet have been stained during the week. We come to you to be washed. Not only haven't been washed clean in Christ, but from those sins that be set us, help us to find your cleansing so that tomorrow we will not carry the mud of last week into a new week. But to know us behind us in you, we come with very mixed feelings this morning, sorrow, joy. We come with a realization of how privileged we have been here, I believe, as chapel, to have had this ministry of your word that's been here for years now, and continues with such blessing. We're a unique generation. We're unique people. Help us to understand it, and be full of praise. Make us accountable stewards to what you have given us, for to whom much is given, much is required. That would frighten us because we've been given so much, but your grace is at work. We do not work to earn your favor. We work because we love you and you just prompt us that way with new creations. You know our hearts. Some of us are joyful, some of us are deep griefs, and your word has that unique ability to comfort the poor and the same word to sober the rich, to warn those that are high and consoled those that are low. What a unique word to compete every need, and we cannot manipulate that. But your spirit, who searches all things of yourself and the one who searches as a lamp, the innermost, ready-to-be, ceases of art, can bring the light of your word, the cleansing, the refreshing of your word, just as we need it, we are naturally rebellious. We do not welcome it. We want our own way, good, break our hearts, doing us what your love toward us wants to do. Help us to be broken and no joy. The joy of your salvation, a Christ name, amen. You have your Bibles then, who you return to Psalm 63, and if you do not have a Bible, may I encourage you to share your, to look to a neighbor and those who have Bibles, be conscious of those who do not have Bibles so that all may be looking on the text, as well as hearing the text. I'm hard enough to follow, but without a text, I'm impossible to follow. So I encourage you to have the text in front of you, Psalm 63. So I said in the first hour, I come this morning with very conflicted emotions. With great sorrow, I honestly believe that as Lewis Johnson was the greatest Bible expositor of the second half of the 20th century, this church assembly, it reminds me very much of the cleanest sheep its words to Solomon, blessed that your people have ears to have heard. Yours has been a unique, unique heritage. I know none equal to it, but I come with great joy because we know Lewis's faith, Johnson's faith, and I know he's at rest and peace. His work is done, and he's run the race for us. I can see it well. It's an honor. I come with conflicted emotions because as Dan said, I feel it is an honor to be here on this particular Sunday when we reflect in part upon his death. Dr. Johnson was the most influential teacher in my life. Shaped my ministry, made me energy. I'm eternally in his debt, and the man who had the most influence upon me that I should be feeling his pulpit that he found it, and that Dan carries on so magnificently. That I should be privileged in the providence of God. I feel the honor, but I also feel very deeply my unworthiness by the comparison. Dr. Johnson was exceptionally charismatic. He was very good-looking. He had a build when I arrived of an athlete. He was a golfer almost by profession. He was a southern gentleman with a gentility of which I know nothing. Of course I didn't have to tell you, I didn't have his build. When he spoke, there was a resonance in his voice, and I would notice in conference rooms when I was in committee with him the walls would vibrate even. Never vibrated for me. I had an ignoble assumes in his voice. Usually with lovely Carolinian accent. I just got this old jersey accent. No comparison. Well-furbished mind. Best red member of the faculty when I was at Dallas by far. Wonderful heart for God. The sood, the word of God. Reflected upon God. And I think we should celebrate that. I think we're looking for models. And we've had an exceptional, exceptional model that we celebrate. And I also come with the mixed emotion of not only with my mixture of emotions, but also with joy to be here. I believe his chapel. We used to come here often. And as Dan said, often Dr. Johnson was sometimes away ministering. He was such a demand. And I had the privilege of following the pulpit and coming to know the saints, I believe, his chapel. And we developed something of a family relationship that has lingered with me. So to be here is a real, real joy and a delight. Our text is Psalm 63. And I want to talk on the title of the sermon is quenching. You're thirst from for God. But that's what the Psalm is about. Quenching, a thirst for God. And the Psalm guides us blazes a trail from thirst to quenching and how it comes about. And I just want to trace that movement. You notice in verse 1 it begins with, if he says, address to God and seeking God, he says, My soul thirsts for you. By the time we get to verse 8, there's been tremendous movement. My soul clings to you. He's arrived. And out of that grows the confidence and the praise of victory and the king will live. And you will notice that there are three paragraphs, verse 1, verses 2 through 5 and verses 6 through 8, before that triumphant ending of victory. And each of these gives us a benchmark or a landmark. We continue the metaphor of a path that we have to pass. We can mark them out on a way to that fountain where our thirst will be quenched. And that's what I want to do. Not my words, it's spirit-inspired words that gives us direction to go from thirsting to the richest of foods. How does it all come about? My method comes from the Benedictines, who used in their devotional way of worship, a certain order, called the Lectio Divina. And I have adopted it from my own private time in the morning. The Lectio Divina method was also used by Luther, I discovered, and by Calvin. And it was the method I'll use for the exposition. The Lectio Divina had four parts to it. The Lectio, and that means to read. The Meditatio means to think about what you read. And then they would use the Oratio and Hebrew in Latin, which means to pray. So you would understand and you would pray. And the one that's most difficult for me is the Contemplatio, in which you just experienced spiritually, the reality of what you had prayed about, you just emotionally enter into it. I'm going to modify it somewhat. The Lectio, the reading, will be a bit more than reading. I'm going to do my exegetical work there and take out key words so we know what we're talking about. Hope it will be clear. And then I'll move into the Meditatio, and for me will be reflection on what we've read. And in each case, I will use to capture the truth and oxymoron, a juxtaposition of terms that are in a positive, don't go together. But by the juxtaposition, you get a new insight into truth, such as cruel kindness, their opposites, but sometimes kindness can be cruel and demands it, cruel kindness. And then I'll move into the, for pedagogic reasons, I'll go into the Contemplatio with each parent point. And I'll try to give you an image, as best I can, I'm not very good at that, but at least what I would do for my devotional time, I try to create images that I can understand and enter the image. And then finally, I will have an Arrazio at the end of each of the three points, and read us a prayer, and if God suddenly climbs you, to join me in my prayer. So let us begin. First, the Lectio. And we start with the superscription, a Psalm of King David, when he was in the desert of Judah. There were two occasions when David had a flee into the desert of Judah. One was when he went out of flee from Saul, the jealous King Saul, and he was out in the jazz desert of Judah. The other occasion was when his own son and the nation hated him without cause, absent from sought to usurp him. The kingdom was about to be overthrown by a son who was willing to take his father's haram on the roof of the palace, and commit intercourse with the entire haram in the sight of the whole nation, talk about pornographic TV. Think of that. In reality, the King's son, a very desperate moment in Israel's history, worse than ours in this moment. David, representing righteousness, the values of the things of God, he's threatened with death. You can see that in verse 9. They who seek my life. And you can see he's already a king, and I say it's an Absalom, because you'll notice in verse 2, 3, he talked about verse 2 rather. He talks about a sanctuary which was only there during Absom's time, not during Saul's time, reckons himself as a king. In verse 11, but the king will be joisting God. It only fits that scenario. He's been threatened with death, and the other thing is that in that world, when a king was threatened with death and a war, he would find his refuge at the temple, but David can't get to the temple, because the whole temple area where the dome of the rock presently sits is occupied by the enemy, and he can't get there, and he's left out in the desert. In that precarious situation, that's the situation under which he writes this song. You could see if I go word by word, we never get through it, but note the O. The minute you get that, evocative, you know you're dealing with an immense Psalm, which is also called a petition Psalm. It's just like when I say, dear John, you know immediately that it's a letter. If I say once upon a time, you know it's a fairy tale. If I say, where is this, and where is that? You might suspect I have a legal document that you don't comprehend. And when you have evocative like this, O shepherd of Israel, O God, O Lord, you know it's a petition, but there's something very strange. These petitioned Psalms, well what they have in addition to address, O God, in addition to confidence, in addition to praise, well petitioned Psalms have petitions, and what's so unusual about this Psalm, there's no petition. There's no prayer. What you expect in a Psalm like this is deliver me. Get me back to the sanctuary, look at Psalm 3. Deliver me. No petition. It's an anomaly that having a petition psalm with no petition. God, when we refer to as the God, he means that was just not human. He means heaven. He means immortality, power of life, not mortality and death. It's totally other. And we're in that section of the Psalter known as the Elowistic Psalter, where the personal name for Israel is God. Modern times we used to be called Jehovah. Many today say Yahweh. The personal name I still prefer the translation Lord is not used, but he means that God. The all powerful God gets combined at once with Israel's God. So this God is the God of the creation. All things. This is the God of the Exodus, the patriarchs, the Exodus, the living agent, Israel out of Egypt. This is the God of Joshua in the conquest. This is the God that ultimately we move Saul and put David on the throne. This is the God who beyond David's time will reveal himself as he will reveal himself what he really is like in his son, Jesus, the son of God. So we would know in a way that was never known, the depths of his love for his people, the power that can conquer death in his resurrection. And someone that led the entire canon, I do know in justice when I say, the God of which he's speaking here, is the triumphant God and as a Christian, whoever honors the Son, honors him. If you've seen him, you've seen the Father. And it's no, it's totally consistent, say, to refer to Jesus, the son of God. And he says, you are my God. And I want to talk about that. What does that mean? See the passion with which he has thirst. He seeks murderously my soul thirst, my body. Notice the parallelism, soul, body. I really want you. I want to eat your body, I want to drink you, I want to, I thirst for you. I need your presence in this desperate, desperate situation. And he likenes it to a dry and weary land and so the physical situation in which he finds himself is but a metaphor for his spiritual reality. And I can identify with that. There was a benefactor and his family invited, he wanted to take what he did. He took his family of six and my family of five. And he said to me, you can go anywhere you want to go in the Middle East. Too bad it was July. We went to Iran. We went to Iraq. We went all over the Middle East. I remember we were in Iraq. That's the thing about the Persian Gulf War from my perspective. I can't see much good about the whole situation. I agree with what Bush is. Don't misunderstand. I don't want to get into that. My point is this. At least we know where Iraq is now. And we were traveling. I was going from Basra. We were going from Basra up to Baghdad. And I think you kind of know where that is. You see it on TV enough. You know where that is. We were traveling in a Mercedes mini bus. It held 17. He was 6. I'm a family of five. We had a driver in a guide, which made 13. In the middle of the bus, we had a huge tin, which we chucked with ice, and put the Pepsi's in it, to last us the day. And that's how we traveled. And we were going from down where Abraham began, and we're going on up to Baghdad, and close by is Babylon. So I can go anywhere I want to go. I said, yeah, we got halfway up there. You know, I'd like to go over to Waka, which is in Sumerian. It was Ulrich. You know it in the Bible. It's Eric. You ever wondered where Eric is? It's up there. And it's a great site. It's noted to be the birthplace of civilization on the 5th stratum of Waka. It's the first wheel. The first writing. It's where it all began. I don't like to see that. Where it all begins. Well, we had to get off the main road. We're about a half an hour down the dirt road, out in boiling sun, not a shade tree anywhere. And I thought to myself, you know, if we were not run out of water, and if this bus stalls, we're in deep trouble. If we couldn't get back to civilization. I looked into the tin, and there was no Pepsi's. We drank them all. I was there to lecture the belief of the kids. I couldn't. It was so hot, my tongue was cleaved to my palate. My lips would stick together, and after a minute I had a shut up. It was wonderful. The only good thing I could find in the whole thing was you never went to the bathroom. It just evaporated over there. Anyway, we're driving down this road, and I see we have no water. I see my youngest one is rather fair, and he was turning a bit purple, literally. And we're upon the bus stopped in the heat, and it was a very perilous situation. And it looked up a bit, and there was a truck with a canvas top on it. This is a biblical story almost. It's an ice truck. In the middle of a desert. And these bad women had this ice truck and some fish they had that they had caught in a river. And they saw our need, gave us the ice, saved our lives. We were in a dry and weary land, and without water we would die, and what the point of the metaphor is that without water you die physically, and without God, you're dead. You don't have life. You are spiritually dead. But most people don't know it, and that's the problem. They're not thirsty. So that's the metaphor you need water. Well, so much for the lectial. Now the meditatsio, what's the point? Well, the point is the first landmark we have to pass is that we realize our thirst is for God, and our problem is we don't know it. We know we're not happy. We know we have problems. We know there's problems in our home, in our marriages with our children, and we go through life with problems. We know that, but we don't seem to know that part of this whole thing, our real problem is that we need God. And the first thing is to realize that your real thirst is for God. My oxymoron comes from the words of our Lord, where he used it wasn't particularly an oxymoron, and he said, my oxymoron is, blessed are the thirsty, no more. Just blessed are you if you're thirsty. Because then you're in a position to be saved. Let's try to understand this, blessed are the thirsty. Let's try to look at it, think of an illustration, and this is one that's in reverse, but I was kind of interested about 15 years ago, in John Balucci. I knew he grew up in an evangelical home. He was on a Saturday night live, and I'd seen, I'm ashamed to say I went to look at one of the shows, but I, he was an absolute mocker, walked away from the faith. At 30 years of age, he got hooked on drugs. He died at 32. Tragedy, gifted man, grew up in Wheaton, Wheaton College area. I read about his death, and the autopsy showed that because he was so on drugs, he had no urge to eliminate, didn't know he had a eliminate. Nothing signalling it. The result is that bladder became so distended that eventually it killed him, pints of water. He had no need, and he died. The point of making this until you realize you're thirsty, you're dead. That's the first thing. It's to have an urge, to have a need. If you had no appetite, you had no need to eat, and you didn't eat, you would die. The first thing we have to realize is that we have a need. And so every flexion, why is it we don't know that? And I came to realize what we do is, Luther said, a god is that to which you sow clings. I'd like to expand that a bit from the Psalms. A god is that in which you find your security and your significance. That's your God. What are you resting your life on for your life? What do you trust in? What do you boast about in your self-talk? You're not going to tell anybody else how proud you are, at least if you're like me. Where's your significance? Where's your security? And I think most people they find it in their money. If you have money, everyone will call you successful. That's just the way it is. You will have security, you will have significance. At least you think you have. It's an intoxicant. The reason the point I'm making is instead of going to the fountain of real water where drinking an intoxicant that has an nourishment and can't meet our need. That's not true of young people. When you get older, you wish you had more sense about money. When you're young, it's sex appeal, for most. If you don't have sex appeal to a logic state, you have no security in your group and no significance. I think that's still true. I think so when I go into church to minister, I see all these lovely young people. They don't see me. I feel like a post. Kind of look around me, trying to catch somebody else's eye. I don't know what it's all about. I was there. Thank God for youth. But it's a false God, obviously. Or power. You know another person. You know how to manipulate them. You know their strengths. You know their weaknesses. You know exactly how to push their button and get what you want. That can give you security and it could also give you significance. And if you like me, and you have no money, and you have no sex appeal, and you have no power, ask my wife, then you'll have to find it in your ability to teach, in your ability to preach. I can find my security and my significance in this sermon. And what is good can become the invidious enemy of my soul. And I go with the thing. And it's all nothing. Your money will fail. You all know that. I think I've used years ago, the illustration, an allegory of a rich man. And in this allegory, an angel appears to him, and he says, ask what you will, I'll give it to you. And unlike Solomon, he says, yes, I know it. I want to want the stock market page one year from today. Which was great that he got next year's newspaper. And he was reading it over. He was going to make a killing. Trouble is, his eye glanced across the page. And he saw his picture in the obituary column. And he lost all interest in the stock market page. That put it all in perspective. And we all know, a picture isn't tomorrow's obituary columns. We're well aware, this sex appeal, it's fleeting. Charm is beauty is fleeting. Charm is deceptive. Beauty is fleeting. The beauty of youth promises a lifetime of apt happiness. And thank God for the beauty for the moment. But eventually, we have to replace it with artificial flowers. It's gone just like that. It doesn't last. Power, as Sodom was saying, it's going to be broken and it will be broken. And the best thing about teaching, I think one of the best thing is, you live generations real fast. Most people only experience one or two. A professor experiences a generation every three years. Totally new student body. While they're there, you can achieve some fame. They think you're a great teacher. They say all kind of nice things about you. You go back three years late. Nobody knows you. You're an absolute nobody. It's the best thing in all the world for you. A friend in our apartment that has recently come to Christ. I now realize that everything I had, meditation, and she was a psychiatry and psychology. She says, that's all empty. Absolutely empty. I said, yeah, cotton candy, right? And secondly, right. Just cotton candy. There's nothing to it. Reminds me of a mother that she didn't have much money. And she wanted to feed her child a baby. And so she went into the restaurant and she picked up all these little cremos. I don't know if this is true of all cremos or these little things for your coffee. But she would pick them up and put them into her child's baby bottle and feed the child the cremo. It's all chemicals. There's no nourishment, but she didn't know it. This is true story. The child died. There's nothing. It's a tremendous metaphor, I think, for the world. We're drinking nothing. And there's no salvation. And then, God in His grace sends us a crisis. That's the best thing that can happen to wake you up. After 9-11, America kind of got spiritual for a while. We began singing the national anthem when Kate's old song, God Bless America, and America the beautiful. And all of a sudden, we were all talking about God and it lasted two months, and then it's gone. It woke us up for a minute and went right back to our old ways. Nothing real to it. David is in this crisis and he knows his thirst. I'm facing death. I know this to be true. The Canadian health care system has certain merits to it. Not the way they intend. Back in 2000, I was diagnosed with having an vagina. That was a very happy. That was bad news. But thanks to the Canadian health care system, a week later, they decided I don't have an vagina. So I had a week. Well, I had this wonderful experience of learning to thirst for God and feeling how people feel. Who have an vagina? Somehow, God in His grace fell for a while and pulled me out. Following year, they diagnosed me as having Parkinson's disease. Well, that's not very happy news. I read everything on Parkinson's disease. Believe me, I was on the net. I really wanted to know what Parkinson's was all about. One of my friends was in a Parkinson's group. He said, I quit it. I got so discouraged. It's not a happy side. In that, I understand how people feel. I had a problem once I began getting better. I wasn't supposed to get better. Ironically, with the CT scan, they should have given me at the beginning. They gave me because I'm getting better. I found out I had a hematoma in my brain. That was created. But at least I had two months of it. And I really understood. And I thank God for it. Last year, I wasn't here because eventually I had led to a pulmonary embolism and if it hadn't been for the fire department and emergency ward right next door, I wouldn't be here this morning. I've been there. And those are crises. You know how it feels. And you have options here. And I found the temptation at that point to take anesthesia. And I discovered this ways of taking anesthesia that would deny me of knowing God and experience and reality one of which is stoicism. Well, everybody's going to die anyway. So let's grin and let's bear it. We develop a fatalistic attitude. Well, that's the way it is. You never find God. And I think the other thing we do is in psychology and we psychoanalysis, which is all kind of a place. But we analyze like with Kubla Ross. And so we go through five stages of dying. And you start with denial. And you end up with resignation. And I think what we're really doing is I can control my behavior. Oh, I understand five stages. And I never think about I'm dying. It's a substitute. We never face the experience. We get numb to it through our ability wanting to control it. And the other way is to simply denial. Read the story of a St. Louis radio station and the cleaning woman was going by a studio where the hostess was entertaining a marital expert and how he handled problems in marriage. And the cleaning woman walking by said, all is well. Well, the hostess thought that was the best thing she had heard. Better than any of the marital experts were giving her. It was just this cleaning woman. And it was so brilliant to her that she invited Ms. Blue to begin the program and end the program with those words all as well. Ms. Blue will never get out of her ghetto with that denial. If as you all said, all as well, it's still be an Egypt. And if you're going to just say, I'm going to be happy, there's some people, I'm going to be happy, all right, better than being bitter, but you're never going to be saved. You take these roots of denial and trying to control it and stoicism. You say you miss the opportunity. You miss the opportunity of the experience and the horror of it. And that drives you to God who is the reality. And you end up, there is no Exodus, there's no deliverance, and there's no praise. If your life is without praise, believe me, you either are on intoxicants or you're taking an anesthesia in some way but if you really understand when I'm talking about this, praise on your lips as in my song that leads me to the... This is my longest point, sorry. This leads me to the controversy, I'll leave you with an image, the Garden of Eden. The word garden and Hebrew is garden and entails a wall. There's a walled otherian and I want you to picture that. There you are outside the garden inside of the luxurious trees and the tree of life, and there's the gate, but this cherubim thinks like this, probably. With flesh and sores, and you can't go in, is because you have an intoxicate in one hand and an anesthesia pill in the other hand. And with that intoxicate and that anesthesia, believe me, my friend, you're never going into that garden. Now, the Oratio, the prayer, if you wish to, pray with me. Lord, open your ears to hear your reproach of the lead out of the sea inns. I am rich. I have acquired wealth, and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. And Lord, hoping our hearts to understand that only the hungry are fed with the bread of life. Only the thirsty drink of your life-giving spirit only those that mourn. Find comfort. Amen. And now come to the second point, which will be a lot shorter. This servant is going to, instead of getting longer and longer, shorter and shorter. Second point. Just a few points, by way, of the electio in verses two and five. So we can understand it. It moves from the past. What he does here, he reflects upon the past. I have seen you and I could be some help to you here. He has two words for see. One is rawa, and one is haza. Normally rawa refers to physical sight. Haza refers to prophetic sight. Insight. And that's the word he uses. I have seen with insight. I have seen you. The other word you need to understand is sanctuary. I have seen you. I have seen you. The other word you need to understand is sanctuary. Kodish refers to God's holiness. And this is his place of holiness. And I may say you see God's holiness is not an attribute as such. God's holiness is the sum of all his attributes. It's what makes God different from us. That makes him other. Holy. Without sin. There's another Power. Other Love. Uncontaminated in any fashion. And in that sanctuary there are symbols. Now I do not know what David's sanctuary was like. Well given the details of that, it was a tent. But what exactly the tent was like. I don't know. But in any case, what I do know is that in that sanctuary and that were the kind of way the dome Beams, they were stinks like, and they spoke of God's otherness with his power and his glory. And under it was the chest, and the chest was the ten commandments of God's transcendent moral will that can never be destroyed. And there was the part of manner that reminded Israel that God sustained them through an awful wilderness. There was Aaron's rod that he chose a priesthood for the people. He's with the symbols that he sees and thinks about, he flexes upon, and he articulates the attributes I have in mind. I beheld your power and your glory because your love is better than life. These are the two principle attributes that he needs power, love for power without love, his tyranny and love without power is weakness. You need both. You put some right together, power and love. Well, I think that's sufficient for the Lectio. Now the Meditatsio, first we have to realize where a thirst is, and then secondly we have to reflect upon God, and his sublimities, his power and his love by oxymoron is where there is no water, there is water. I take my oxymoron from Booker T. Washington's up from slavery. It's a book that every American ought to be required to read. It's one of the great books of the twentieth century, early twentieth century. And I appreciate Martin Luther King and his dream. Booker T. Washington had a solution, and there's a difference. We need both. You need dreams, but you need solutions, real solutions, and Booker T. Washington had them. He gives a story of a vessel of ship that was lost at sea for many days and they're now out of water. And they spied a friendly vessel, so up from the mass they sent the signal, water, we need water, and the signal came back from the friendly vessel, lower the buckets where you are. The captain didn't understand it. Sent the signal, water, water, we die of thirst, came back, lower buckets where you are. This went on three or four times, and finally the captain of the stricken vessel, lowered his buckets and up came in the buckets, fresh living water from the mouth of the Amazon. In the middle of the ocean, they didn't know it. They were in the mouth of the Amazon, all around the fresh water. I'm saying, you may be in an ocean of despair. There may be a crisis in your life. I've been there. I know what it's like. I know how you feel. No one can be there but you. You walk it alone. I'm trying to share with you this water, whether it is no water, God is there. And so much better than the cherubim and the ark and the mercy sea. It was all symbolic, and we have seen beyond that, but the symbols appointed as the mercy sea. It's the love of God, yes, but it's the love of God in Christ Jesus that He died for you, personally. He knows you. Don't let your God be too small. Everything God touches has the thing, the affinity on it. He spends your lifetime studying an ear. You spend your lifetime studying an eye, and you learn more and more about less and less and you never arrive at the end of it. It's just infinity. Why do you think he doesn't know you individually because there are four billion people on the planet? There's nothing to God. He knows you, and he loves you. He died for sinners. That's what I'm saying. May I give you the grace to understand who you are and power. He conquered death, sent it into heaven, built this church over 2,000 years, and the gates of hell have not prevailed against it yet, and hell has knocked off our heart against us. We're here, and we'll be here. It will fail, power, and it's yours. Reflect upon it. Content plots you. Yes, go back to that garden. Go back to the gate, but replace the cherubim with flesh and sword, with cherubim with the wings saying to you, come into the garden and find rest for your souls. It's there, if you'll enter. Now the Oratio, if you wish to pray with me, Lord, give us the faith to believe our Lord when He said, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. In Jesus' name, amen. The third step is found in verses 6 through 8. It's at night, obviously, and notice what it does. On my bed, I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night. This is a bit cartoonish, but it makes the point. The opposite of remember is not forget. The opposite of remember is to dismember so that you forget. It's what happened in the United States in 1973 when our Supreme Court took the Bible and prayer out of the school. They dismembered the next generation from the American heritage dismembered, and this generation doesn't know the Bible, it's vividly illiterate, and they stumble and they know not what. It all goes back. We didn't dismembered, and we didn't even realize the full significance of it. If the opposite of remember is to dismember, then remember, you see the etymology of it, and I'm putting it a bit too strongly, it is to remember, to remember yourself, and that's why there's no petition. What David needs to do is he's had this prophetic insight into what this is all about, and that's who I am. I remember, and we could add here myself to that heritage and make it our own. The contemplates, the meditatial then, is having realized what a thirst really is, and having reflected upon the source of life which is God and His love and His power and His attributes, what he has to do is to remember my oxymoron is taken from Isaiah. When Isaiah says, come by wine and milk without money and without cost, my oxymoron is by without cost, you can see that's an oxymoron, by means cost, you can't buy something without a cost, but here it's by without cost, it's freezes Isaiah. Come by it without cost, what it means is what I'm offering you, you cannot buy with gold and silver and significance, and all that you hold and the world holds dear, what I'm talking about, you're not going to see on any news broadcast, no financial page, you're not going to see it anywhere in the world, except here, because spiritually it means to repent of your intoxicants, it means to throw away your anesthesia pills, it means to live by faith, it means to reflect upon God, it means to rely upon Him, that takes faith, it's not our nature. You don't learn to ride a bike by studying about a bike, you have to ride a bike. You don't learn the life of faith by studying theology, it's great, but that's not faith, it's the risk, you don't know what it is until you risk riding it, you do not know what I'm talking about until you throw away your intoxicant and really rely upon God, do you really believe? He's true, do you really believe the gospel? If you do, you'll throw it all away and you'll have life. And it means to tell the story, I'm reminded of one of my colleagues at Reformed Seminary, he's got one of these marvelous million dollar voices, he's got a radio program, he's very popular, he's a wonderful guy, he had a church down in the Keys, Florida Keys, and when Hurricane Andrew came through, blew his church away, it was a big church, blew the whole thing away, blew his house away, he looked out, so everything God, and he said, I said, damn it, I'm free, it's all gone, what I'm saying is blown away, count on God, be free, what am I saying in the contemplatio? Yes, there's the garden, there were the flashing sores of the cherubim, there is the wings and now I'm saying come into the garden, rest your soul, trust him, and you will prevail, this is the model of Esquilis Johnson, he turned his back on a golfing career, a brilliant mind, he would have made millions in business, he had everything going for him, turned it all away, spent his life reflected upon God, joined with the community of believers every Sunday to remember, to eat his bread, drink his blood, that's Esquilis Johnson, that's life, when I conclude with the hymn that I understand you all love, and when I go sing the words, I just have the words, and it was written by James voice, I greatly appreciate it, you know this song, she could follow along with me, I'm gonna try to sing, I'm just gonna read it, I can separate my soul from the God who made me whole, wrote my name and haven't scroll, nothing, hallelujah, trouble, hardship, danger, sword brought by those who hate my Lord, slander here, no reward, nothing, hallelujah, angels, demons, now and then wickedness dreamed up by men, persecution come again, nothing, hallelujah, victors wear a dame to be by the God who set us free, what can therefore conquer me, nothing, hallelujah, we face death for God each day, what compluck us from his way, let God's people ever say nothing, hallelujah, shall we pray, Father, thank you for David, thank you, he was an apathetic, thank you, he was full of passion, passion for you, and lived real, so Lord we pray with your benediction upon us that we may know youth there, quencha thirst, may we reflect upon you, may we remember you again and again through the watches of the night, amen.