As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth My soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God for the living God. Psalm 42:1, 2 KJV
As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalms 42:1-2 NASB
…Unto God my exceeding joy. Psalm 43:4 KJV
To God my exceeding joy. Psalm 43:4 NASB
We are not given any insight into when the words of Psalm 42 and 43 were uttered. Are they the breathings of the heart of David during his years in the wilderness, or perhaps when fleeing from Absalom? Do they reflect the inner longings and struggle of some other noteworthy Jewish sufferer? And what is their link with the sons of Korah?
Though we do not have answers to all of these interesting questions, there is no reason that we cannot glean pictures and principles from the heart-longings of the godly man contained therein. In this Psalm and the next, we are introduced to a man who longed for the presence of God. The principle for us to see is that the writer associated not only his joy but all his joy with the presence of God. Second, he longed for that presence with the same fervency as the hart sought water to sustain life.
The picture afforded us in his words, in turn, is a foregleam of Calvary. We who know so little of the presence of God have no standard by which to measure what the interruption of the joy of that fellowship meant to the Lord Jesus. If a mere man, beset with sin, could grieve over the inability to physically be in God’s presence and enjoy the delights of His house (43:3, 4), who can measure what it must have been for the sinless Son? He had known and enjoyed the unhindered and uninterrupted presence of God eternally; what must it have meant to know six hours of interruption while being made sin, a curse, and an offering while on the cross?
In Psalm 16:11, the Psalmist there reminds us that in God’s presence is “fullness of Joy.” Here, in our Psalm, God is His exceeding joy. Without any intention on my part of mitigating the physical sufferings the Lord Jesus received from the hands of men, I think they must pale in comparison to what He endured when He was forsaken and His soul “thirsted” for God; when there was a hiatus heretofore unknown, and the joy of that fellowship was withdrawn, and He was forsaken.
His cry while on the cross, “I thirst,” while it may have served several purposes, would at least reflect something of the thirst of His soul for the joy of the divine presence which now was withdrawn. We might well sing, “None of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed.”
His “exceeding joy” was the presence and enjoyment of the fellowship of God. He experienced its absence for those hours on the cross that His own might know the same exceeding joy for all eternity.
Consider:
Along with the sorrow of being forsaken, what do you think the sinless, sensitive soul of Christ felt when His soul was made an offering for sin? If His hatred for sin was pure and perfect, and His love for God complete and perfect, can you gain some idea of His suffering?
