Fulfilling Your Deepest Longings

Welcome to our continuing series on the book of Psalms, an expository devotional to help you grow in your love, passion, joy, and delight in Jesus Christ. We're in Psalm chapter 36 today. I want to pray, then we're going to get into the word.

Father, thank you. I pray that you'd speak words of life, words of anointing that our lives would be transformed. We thank you for this particular chapter and how it's going to dig deep into our heart.

In Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 36 is a very interesting passage where it speaks about the deepest longings of our heart. There's passion inside of you.

There's hunger inside of you. There's ambition inside of you. There are deep desires to live a fulfilled life, to live an abundant life.

The problem is we often don't know how to channel those desires to the right riverbanks to get them to where they truly belong to be. This Psalm 36 is a study of two different men, two different people, and how they address the deepest longings of their heart. I would say right from the top to you that the problem is not that we desire too much.

The problem is we desire too little. And when I say too little, I mean too much little things, things that are not important, things that are not the deepest, truly the deepest longings of our heart. Psalm 36 is broken down into really two to maybe three segments, but the two key segments in the first is verses one through four.

And it's speaking of a man whose deepest desires of his heart have gone astray, and he's using those desires to look for things that are illegitimate and not going to bring him life. And then Psalm 36, four through 10 begins to speak about the person who finds the right course of action to find that fulfilled life. So let me read verses one through four first.

And I want you to be listening to a word that repeats itself here very often. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes, for he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.

The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit. He has ceased to act wisely and to do good. He plots trouble while on his bed.

He sets himself in a way that is not good. He does not reject evil. The key to these first four verses is that there's a man who does what he wants himself.

It says he sets himself. He sets a course of action. He looks at the deepest longings of his heart.

He's looking at the passions. These are passions that God put in there. The passion itself is not illegitimate, but it's what we use to fulfill that longing of our heart.

And here's a horrible, horrible picture of a man who's gone astray in trying to fulfill these deepest longings of his heart, but he's looking in all the wrong places. And not only that, it says he sets himself. This is a picture of a man in rebellion of God.

This is a backslidden Christian. This is somebody who's lukewarm. This is somebody who is worldly.

They have the name of Christ, and they haven't had an experience with Christ. And maybe they're active and involved in their church. They might even be in Christian ministry.

But really what they're after is an illegitimate passion. It could be something that's totally sinful and vile, sexual immorality, a pursuit of mammon, of money. But it could be certain things that almost seem legitimate in itself to do ministry.

But the longing of your heart is, I want to be recognized to serve people, but I want to get the credit for serving people. It can be an insidious and almost subconscious desire for life, but found in all the wrong places. This is a man who sets himself.

He's setting a course of action to find fulfillment. And the thing we see in these first four verses is that 12 times, isn't this amazing? Just in four verses, 12 times it mentions he, he himself, himself, he delights. It's all about himself.

It's the reality of God put a desire for longings in my heart, but it's the moving in the wrong direction to get those desires fulfilled. And then it begins to break this down in verse one. It says, transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart.

The word speaks here is, can also be translated oracle. Transgression is like an oracle to the wicked. And what we mean by that, oracle is a bit of a deeper word than simply speaks.

An oracle in ancient days was somebody, could have been a man or a woman who was seen as almost like a prophet who would speak a word about impending doom or about blessings to come or setting a course of action for an army. They go to the oracle to find out the message from the heavens. And so this is saying that there's, there's a heavy word.

It's like a, a very deep pull transgression is oracling to the wicked. And then it says deep in his heart. See, that's what this message is all about today.

There's, there's deep longings in our heart, but, but what is, what is this long, what fulfillment is this man after it's transgression that's speaking to him. A man could feel a longing to be loved, but he could look for love in all the wrong places. A woman could be looking for a recognition and, and, and, and try to, to do something extravagant to get the glory and the recognition.

These are, this is the transgression that is pulls to the heart. And these, these, these are deep things. These are not light things.

These are, these are temptations that speak so deeply to the heart. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep inside of heart. It's not a, it's not a light word.

Hey, come over here and do this, or why don't you try this? This is something that's deeply rooted. This is something that maybe they've experienced so many times that it's almost like dug a trench in their mind and in their heart there that keeps pulling them like riverbanks, pulling them into the same thing over and over again. That's why sometimes these addictions become almost like to the point where we say, I don't know how to break free.

I've tried a million times. I've tried to eat better. I've tried to not use this.

I tried to not drink that. I've tried to not look at that. And, and we keep getting pulled back to those things because it has, has taken deep root in our heart.

They speak to us. It calls out. It woos us.

It lures us. It's a voice in our mind. It's also, and now this is gonna sound really strange, but it's almost like a voice in our eyes.

Our eyes see something and all of a sudden their eyes are the eyes of the desire of the eyes is what first John says. The desire of the eyes is a temptation. It's a lure.

It's a pull. That's deep inside this person's heart and reality. And I know I'm repeating myself here, but it bears repeating.

You were created for desire. Don't ever try to diminish your desire. Don't, don't ever try to say, I have to stop having desires.

As a matter of fact, you were meant to have deep passions, but they are meant to be directed in the right way to the right source. They're meant to be directed towards Jesus and not things of this world and the deep needs and the longings and the passions and the desires of our heart are something that God gave to us. But the enemy comes along and he tries to say, this is where you'll find that fulfillment of that deepest longing of your heart.

And that's why this next part of verse one is pertinent to this, this deep desires of his heart. His desires become deeply entrenched in this thing, deep in his heart. Why? Because there's no fear of God before his eyes.

In other words, his eyes are on whatever gives him temporal pleasure rather than a long game, so to speak, of looking unto Jesus as Hebrews tells us to looking unto Hebrews 12, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. I would add to that the author and the finisher of our passionate desires being fulfilled. We really find abundant life when we look to the life in Jesus, no fear of God before his eyes, the desires of eyes.

First John chapter two, verse 16 and 17 talks about the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. This is where if that continues, these are going to be transgressions that will speak deep into our heart. And if it says here there's no fear of God before his eyes, then I would suggest to you that it is the fear of God before your eyes that will diminish the power of these deeply rooted avenues that we take to try to find life.

Verse two goes on to say he flatters himself in his own eyes. Interesting, he's repeating the word eyes here. What are we looking for? So he's looking to be a man who sets himself in his own way.

And then his own eyes, it's almost a picture of looking in a mirror. And he looks into this mirror and he knows the transgression is speaking to his heart. There's no fear of God before his eyes.

And in his eyes, he's looking at himself and he flatters himself. He flatters himself. He looks at him and says, this form of fulfillment is exactly what I've longed for.

It speaks to me and I'm chasing after it and I'm getting it and just going for it, but I'm okay. And this could be he flatters himself in the sense of, well, maybe I'm not doing that thing. So that temptation is not winning the day quite as often as it used to, but it's still in your heart.

It's flattering yourself. Say, I'm not so bad. It's just a small thing or God understands why I keep going back to this illegitimate source to try to find life.

It's the flattering self. The Hebrew word for flatter here is interesting. When you look at this in Strong's Concordance, it doesn't seem to really draw out the word flatter because it means to divide or to diffuse.

In Job chapter 38, verse 24, it speaks about scattering light that is diffused. It's taking light and moving it into two different directions. And so what does that mean when it's translated the word flat? He flatters himself in his own eyes.

It simply means he sees himself and he separates the things that he doesn't want to see so that he's only left with looking good to himself. He's fine in himself. He doesn't really need to change.

He's not that desperate. He doesn't need rehab. He doesn't need confession of sin.

He doesn't need to share with his wife his struggles. He doesn't need these things. And so he flatters himself.

He sees himself and he separates out the sinful, the evil, and he only sees himself in the best light. And therefore, he's not deeply aware of his own sin. He's not even aware that deep in his heart the oracles are speaking to him.

He's not even aware that there's no fear of God in his eyes. He's not even aware he's falsely flattering himself. And this is disabling him from coming to the awareness of his sinfulness.

And when you're not aware of your sinfulness, you're never going to repent. And so this idea of flattering yourself by diffusing out, it's not so bad. There's only these little things.

But look at all the good things that I'm doing. No, face the reality. There are some things that are deep in my heart.

There are some things that I'm putting before my eyes that I can no longer bear to flatter myself and say all things are fine. But to face the reality of this wickedness that has taken root in your heart, that is working deep in your heart. And he says to himself in verse 2, I'm flattering myself that his iniquity cannot be found and hated.

You flatter yourself if you diffuse this light and try to look good in your own eyes. You're never going to find out the reality. You're never going to hate your own sin.

You could have superficial repentance. You could make a commitment you'll never do it again. But you're going to find yourself circling back to that same sin again and again.

Why? Because you don't really hate it. It gives you a sense of the fulfillment of that deep longing in your heart because you're not going to the true source to fulfill your longing. The result of that is in verse 3, the words of his mouth are trouble and deceit.

He's lying about who he is. He's not telling the truth about confessing the reality. He's living in a deceived reality and he has ceased to act wisely and to do good.

There's two elements here. He no longer has wisdom about how to go about the God-given desires and passions. And he's meant to do good things with these, but he's gotten so off course.

And now he, it says in verse 4, he plots trouble all on his bed. This is found in the first few chapters of Psalms. Why do the people imagine vain things? Why are they plotting against? And who are they plotting against? The king and the king's son.

It's Jesus himself. And this is where I get that phrase. He sets himself in a way that is not good and he does not reject evil.

This is a person who has tried to fulfill his longings, but the depth of his heart is going into the wrong course. Now, that's first one through four, and that's kind of the negative news, but it changes gears here really, really quickly in verse 5. If you have your Bibles open, look at the first word there in verse 5. It's your, and that may not seem significant to you, but it's profound because there is a radical shift taking place here. David, as he's writing this Psalm, he's speaking about maybe some of the own struggles that he's faced when the temptation to bring Bathsheba into his house, it was deep in his heart and he flattered himself that he was going to, but maybe it was, he was seeing others, the Absalom's or the Saul's, he was seeing those who came against him and he's seeing these men who do not reject evil.

And what does he do with that? What does he do with seeing a world gone awry? He fixes his gaze above your, who is the your here? He's speaking about God. He's speaking about, almost in a foreknowledge of the son to come, the king to come who will sit on the throne of righteousness, your kingdom, your. And if you'll look at this radical shift here, your steadfast love extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to clouds, your righteousness like the mountain, your judgments are great like the deep man and beast.

You save, oh Lord, how precious is your steadfast love. Oh God, the children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house and you give them drink and the rivers of your delights for with you is the fountain of life.

In your light, we do see light. Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you and your righteousness to the upright of heart. Not only is there a shift, but it's an extravagant shift.

And we said from verse one through four, 12 times it mentions he or his or him or himself. And look at the psalmist shift here. Now the focus is on, not on the 12 times of mentioning he, but now 15 times in these five verses here, five or six verses here, 15 times he says, you, yours, you, you're the one, it's your light, it's your righteousness, it's your steadfast love.

He's fixing his gaze on the thing that will fulfill the deepest longings of his heart. He no longer believes that anything that the oracle of the wicked speaks to deeply in his heart has any life to give to him. And he's finding it's something above what's found in this world, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the lust of the eyes, the things of this world.

David and the psalmist here is showing this radical contrast between one who feels he can meet his own need by the things the world has to offer him and not fixing his in a higher place, in a greater place, in a more glorious place, you know, in a place that brings true, wonderful life. It's you, God. It's your life.

It's your righteousness. It's your truth that does it. And a true child of God has not set himself on his own things.

He has set himself on your. Here's my question for you today. Are you more a he type person or are you more a your type person? Are your eyes fixed on what he, speaking yourself, can get or your eyes fixed on life that comes from your throne, from your grace, from your mercy? I want to encourage you to be a your person and not a quote-unquote he person.

Fix your eyes on the your and the he will diminish in its power. The oracle will not speak so strong because you have something deeper than the deep things that are speaking, the oracle speaking of transgression. This is so important that our eyes are not on the he of this world.

Now, can I take a little caveat here and say there's something also important is when you find out this life of looking towards your righteousness, your faith, your goodness, then the he's of this world that trouble you. Maybe you watch the news every night and he's doing this and that kingdom is doing that and that country is doing that and this war is there and this economy is like that and this political party does that and this leader of that political party said that and the newscaster was interviewing this person and they said that and there's conflict and there's crisis and there's stress and there's dilemma and there's wars and there's famine, there's earthquakes and there's sin abounding and unrighteousness prevails in the streets and crime is overwhelming people and abortion is going like mad and kids don't even understand their own sex and they think that they're a male is a female and a female is a male and there's transitioning going on in our school systems are a wreck and they're teaching foul and vile things and that's he, he's doing this and transgression and iniquity and and deceit and trouble and plotting on their bed and rejecting what is good and doing what is evil and it's so easy if we're not careful to get caught in that trap, to get fixated on that, to get stressed over that, to get anxious over that, to get fearful, to fret, to look at these things with worry and anxiety and just begin to almost cower like or get angry in the flesh. I've seen this happen to so many people that they're righteous people but all of a sudden the flesh comes in this thing and they're not, the Bible says the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God and yet at the same time there is a godly anger that is different than a worldly anger and so we need to understand that there's this world out there but we can't fix our eyes on that.

We have to keep that your look, that you are look and therefore that gives us the power to minister with love and truth and justice into a culture that's falling apart at the seams and just is going to hell in a handbasket and it gives us the potential to have the anointing to move into that culture and to do something that is uniquely born of the power of God. So I just love these next parts of this verse 5 through 10. This overwhelms me.

Look at some of the elements that are promised to those who put their eyes onto Jesus. Number one it says right in verse 5, your steadfast love. The deepest longing of our heart is to be loved.

There's no way around it. It's to be accepted, to be wanted by somebody, to fit into a group of people. And here we see this promise of the your.

He can offer this to you. Your kingdom, God, can bring this. What is it? A steadfast love.

I love the word steadfast there in the Hebrew is unfailing faithfulness and mercy. It's so profound because every other source of love that we're looking to fulfill the deepest longings of our heart, every one of them is going to fail you. Every other form of love is temporal.

It's up and down. It's oftentimes conditional. It's based on the emotions of the person or maybe the struggles they're going through and all of a sudden love feels, they feel less inclined to demonstrate true love to you.

And the ebbs and flow can be heartbreaking. Some people will reject you. Some people will leave you.

Some people will forsake you. But not Jesus. He says your steadfast love of the Lord, it's forever and ever.

It's this unchanging nature, the character and attribute of God. He's unchanging. And here it is in this character.

His nature is steadfast love. And I love this. It extends to the heavens.

Look at these words here. The depth of a steadfast love, of faithfulness, of righteousness, verse six, of judgment that are like the great deep. You save man and beast.

How precious is your steadfast love. He repeats that. We feast on your abundance of your house.

You give us drink. You give us rivers of delight. Give us fountain of life.

You give us light. Once again, verse 10, steadfast love. And then verse 10, or again, righteousness.

These are the promises of God's attributes being delivered to us and fulfilling the deepest longings of our heart. And He's steadfast in all these things. In other words, His righteousness is not up and down.

His judgments are always true. The feast that He offers you is a steadfast feast. It's constantly available to you.

He doesn't ever take it away or withdraw it from you. This is so precious that He gives these things. Okay, so verse one talks about transgression speaking to the wickedness deep in His heart.

Now look at the depth of His steadfast love and His righteousness and His judgments and His justice and His preciousness of all these things that He's giving to us. Look at how He describes these things. He says it extends to the heavens.

It's to the clouds. It's like the mountains of God. It's like the great deep.

You see the contrast between verse one and verse six? The deep is transgression. Now in verse six, the deep is a steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, and judgments. It's deep, like the great deep.

And then it says, how precious is your steadfast love? It's like in the shadow of their wings, and there's a word of house, and there's a river, and there's a fountain, there's light. This is just, He's pulling out all stops. He's just saying, I can't even phantom all the different words that I could possibly use to describe the goodness of God, how He can fill your heart, how He can be the source of life that you're longing for, how He can get you to the place where the things of this world no longer have the allure to you because you have such riches in Christ Jesus Himself.

And then in verse seven, it says, how precious, man, how precious are all these things, the promise of a steadfast love, how high, how deep, how wide is His love to us? It's precious. The Hebrew word there for precious means it's rare, splendid, priceless, weighty. It's like a precious stone.

It's rare to find how precious is steadfast love. The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast.

I like this word feast. It means to be saturated, to be abundantly satisfied, to have great pleasures or great delights in the things. Another translation of this word here, feast, means to be drenched or soaked, satiated in something at the fullness of the fatness of the abundance.

When you're abundantly satisfied by His, by your great pleasures, transgression loses its deep calling and you are now fixated and glorifying and honoring that which truly gives you life and no longer are those things that don't give life having such a strong pull. We all have these deep longings. We all have great passions.

And once you begin to say, God, as I look to your life, there's a feast available for me. And it says, you give me drink from the rivers of your delights. There's such, such sweetness here.

You and I are meant to be living a life that we, when somebody asks us, how are you doing? I'm delighted. There's so much delight in God. You know, we might murmur or bicker and complain, but really when we look at what is offered to us, we should be living a life of delight.

I delight at the fullness of what God is giving. I delight to drink at your rivers. But those delights are available.

But it says in verse, the ending verse, you give them to drink. You can't just see a river of delights there. You have to drink to partake of that.

That's the study of the word. That's prayer. That's worship.

That's Christian fellowship. That's intimacy with Jesus. This is drinking.

And that's where you find the deepest longings. I started this message by saying our desires aren't too deep. They're too small.

Our desires are too small because we're looking at things of this world. We're looking at the verse one through five availabilities of this world. And it's too small.

It won't fill you. It doesn't fill the depth of the longings of your heart. Verses five through 10 begin to speak to us about all these offerings to us.

Verse nine goes on to say, for with you is a fountain of life. And in your light, we do see light. Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you.

And here's another thing that we need to understand is he has rivers of delight, but we have to drink from him. And he has steadfast love, but that is available to those who know him. And when it says know him, what he means by knowing these attributes, it's a lot of people don't know that Jesus has steadfast love, that he's a fountain, that we can feast on him, that he's precious to us.

We haven't taken the time to get to know him, to be intimate with him, to learn of him, to grow in him, to be hungry for him, to thirst for him, to turn off the news and maybe listen to some podcasts or some sermon videos or go to a midweek prayer meeting and just get saturated and feast on the things of Jesus. And then you'll see that your and your righteousness to the upright of heart, to knowing him and to being upright in heart, these are this precious feasts that we're talking about here. They come only to those who know him and have a hunger to be filled by him so that our righteousness is given, his righteousness is given because in our heart there's a desire for these things, not a desire of the verse 1 through 5. And then it concludes in this, let not the foot of the arrogance come upon me, nor let the hand of the wicked drive me away, verse 12.

There the evildoers lie fallen, they are thrust down, unable to rise. You see, the desire to rise, the desire to excel, to be lifted is actually reversed when we're letting transgression speak to the deepest part of our hearts and we're saying that's going to fulfill me. What happens, we're thrust down, our emotions are thrust down, our desires are thrust down, our hope is thrust down, there's a sense of despairing because everything I've tried doesn't meet the deepest longings that I know are in my heart.

They're not evil desires, they're just desires after evil things that I've taken that desire and turned it the wrong way. And then I lie fallen, they don't give me life, they don't give me a feast, there's no fountain of life, I don't see any light, and I'm thrust down and I'm unable to rise unless there's this shift that this verse chapter 36 is talking about, a shift from being someone who's setting himself in a way to find life and someone who sets his eyes on the you're, you're the king, you're the one, you're my all in all, you're my only hope, you're my only life. And that's, and I would say to conclude, then the reverse of verse 12 is our reality then, that we're not going to lie fallen, but we'll be risen up to new heights in Christ Jesus.

We won't be thrust down, but in due time he will exalt us. And they'll never be said about us, we're not able to rise, if we fall seven times, we get back up because we know where the feast is, we know where the river, the fountain of life is. And I pray for you, I pray that right now you would say, Jesus, there's some things in my life that are going off course, there's some hungers and thirsts that are trying to be fulfilled and things that will never give me life, they'll just thrust me down.

And I want to turn from that today. I don't want to flatter myself any longer. I want to turn from that now and say, Jesus, and let me pray for you right now, Jesus, I pray that we would turn from every wicked thought, everything that speaks to the deepest parts of our heart, and we would say, no, there's no life there.

And Father, and it's not just resisting that pull, but it's getting so full of something else. And that's you and your fountains and your delights, your preciousness, the rarity of your steadfast love, that we would eat and drink of that feast and that fountain. And in doing so, we'd be so full of the deeper desires that you put in our heart, that for eternal things, that temporal things would have no pull in our life any longer.

Thank you, God. That's what you would mean by setting us free from wickedness and turning our eyes towards that which produces the deepest forms of life and the deepest forms of fulfillment. Thank you.

Now, in the name of Jesus, we can rejoice now and say, I'm full of life. I'm full of abundant life. I'm full of precious things.

I'm full of the fountain. The rivers of living waters flow through me. I have that which is so precious to me.

And Lord, we would rejoice in that and bask in that and dwell in that place so no other place would come and distract us from the centrality of these deep, deep things, the deep things of God. We thank you for this in Jesus' name. Thanks for joining us.

We have just finished chapter 36. We're doing a 12-week series, and these will be putting in book forms. The first volume is out now called The Altar of Our Heart, and it's available here at World Challenge.

I'd love for you to purchase that new book that's has just been released, and we would love to send multiple copies, give them to your friends. We believe this devotional expository teaching of the Book of Psalms is probably one of the Old Testament books that really is the most New Testament because it speaks of Jesus so much. And if you want the deepest longings of your heart fulfilled, I pray that this series, if you've not watched some of the previous ones, I want to encourage you to go back.

They're on YouTube or they're on World Challenge as well or various platforms that you can watch this series. I pray, and I believe, and I trust that this is helping you grow by leaps and bounds in your faith. God bless you.

Grace and peace to you.