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[ Silence ] [MUSIC - "THE STATUE OF LIBERTY"] (SINGING) Hail the city of our God. Hail the city of our God.

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Hail the proud, dear, Harvard Law. Hail, Harvard Law. ♪ We have thought of thy lovingkindness ♪ ♪ Thy lovingkindness ♪

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♪ O God, in the midst of thy temple ♪ ♪ In the midst of thy temple ♪ ♪ Of thy tearful ♪ ♪ We have thought of thy lovingkindness ♪

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♪ Thy lovingkindness ♪ ♪ O God, in the midst of thy tearful ♪ ♪ In the clouds of my loving kindness ♪ ♪ According to the Hebrew law ♪

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♪ So is the bread to the king of the earth ♪ ♪ By my right, let all the world's hearts confess ♪ ♪ This is Lord God's wonderful gift ♪ (upbeat piano music)

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♪ Let all Zion rejoice ♪ ♪ Let all Zion rejoice ♪ ♪ Let all Zion rejoice ♪ ♪ Let the battle song to the re-bound ♪

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♪ Let Hosea rejoice ♪ ♪ Let Hosea rejoice ♪ ♪ Let Hosea rejoice ♪ ♪ Let the battle song to the re-bound ♪

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♪ O come, O Zion, the her-abode ♪ ♪ Well the towers, the towers are up ♪ ♪ Mark ye well, oh mark ye well ♪ ♪ The bold ones, 'cause there, 'cause there ♪

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♪ They're all for Dallas' ♪ ♪ And we may tell it to generations following ♪ ♪ That ye may be talent to generations following ♪ ♪ That ye may be talent to generations following ♪

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♪ That ye may be talent to generations following ♪ ♪ That ye may be talent to generations following ♪ ♪ And save the sinners ♪ ♪ Till the grace of God abides ♪

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♪ For this God is love ♪ ♪ God is love ♪ ♪ God forever and ever ♪ ♪ And ever and ever ♪

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♪ For this God is love ♪ ♪ God is love ♪ ♪ God forever and ever ♪ ♪ For this God is love ♪

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♪ God is love forever, forever and ever ♪ ♪ Forever and ever, forever and ever ♪ ♪ Forever and ever ♪ ♪ He will be our guide ♪

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♪ Even unto death ♪ ♪ Even unto death ♪ ♪ He will be our God ♪ [ Music ]

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♪ Will be over ♪ ♪ Even on ♪ ♪ Today ♪ - Amen.

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Hear this word. Oh God, thou art my God. I seek thee. My soul thirsts for thee.

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My flesh faints for thee as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee

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as long as I live, I will lift up my hands and call on thy name." Psalm 63, verses 1 through 4. The subject of the message, "Thirst for God." There is a restlessness in me. There is that in me that cries out for that which is beyond me.

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My soul thirsts for God. There is that in me that cries out for the highest and best. There is that yearning without which life has no meaning. being thirsts for the eternal like dry ground desiring rain.

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The soul seeks God like parched desert land that thirsts for water. A longing for God is the status of the soul of the psalmist. It's a condition experienced by every person. It's not a situation or condition which is peculiar to the psalmist.

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It's a universal experience. For there is a longing in the soul of every person for God, for the sumum bonum, for the highest good. There is an eagerness to find meaning in human existence.

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There is something within that drives us to embrace the great mystery of life. There is that which yearns for unrealized hopes. As the dear pants, father, waterbrook's soul pants my soul after thee, oh God. My soul doth thirst for God, the living God.

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We're so constituted that when we are ourselves, we seek after God. Augustine expresses it succinctly when he says, "Thou has made us for thyself, O God, and our souls are restless until we find rest in thee." We are made for communion with the eternal.

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We are finite creatures of the dust, but we are designed to have fellowship with the infinite. We are human, but we are made to share a romance with the divine. That spark of divinity within us cries out for that great divinity beyond us. Both the imminent and the transcendent are part of our religious experience.

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In the bad rush that so often surrounds our daily existence, there is need for every one of us to take time to practice the presence of God. We need to respond to that longing which is within the soul. It's a kind of longing like that when one has spent a sleepless night and anxiously

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awaits the first light of dawn. It's a satisfaction of that longing that nourishes the soul. for God. Water is a precious commodity to travelers. In fact, water is essential to life. We have just in recent months been concerned about the development of a water plan here in the state

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of Texas because water largely determines the extent to which we grow and have prosperity. So concern has been shown and people have responded to the development of a water plan so that we can sort of vouchsafe our future, continue to be a state that grows and prospers. Well people in ancient times had the same concerns, in fact more so.

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Because it so happened that the land out of which the Bible has come to us was a land where people found themselves constantly dealing with the problem of water. The southern part of Palestine is desert land, so 60% of the land is desert. And I can't forget the experience that when we spent back in 1962,

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an entire day traveling through the desert, a group of us who were on that bus cried out time and time again for water. Everyone knows the experience

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of how dry your mouth can get when you want water. And people who lived back in the early times had the problem even more so with water being a prized possession and when water came in the form of rain, they saved it so that they could have it for days to come.

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And so the psalmist uses this analogy in order to express one of the most profound truths that have to do with our relationship to God, thirst for God. As a garden is made ready for irrigating waters, so is his soul made ready for the eternal. So there is a soul sickness where there is no communion with God, for the soul satisfaction

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is with God. Thus all things seek for rest a home above, a home beneath the sun. The sun will seek the west, the bird will seek its nest, the heart another breast whereon to lean, the spirit seeks its God. A longing for God, a longing for communion with the

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eternal, that's what the psalmist expresses. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Then he goes on to say, "To see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary." I have seen thee in the sanctuary. That somehow in the sanctuary experience in gathering with the people of God.

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He had experienced that which has to do with the satisfaction of the soul. I have seen thee in the sanctuary. That even now, those of us who gather here share in the experience of the satisfaction of the longing of the soul for the eternal.

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I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Oh, there are those who come to the sanctuary who see a lot of other things. They see the beautiful windows, they see the carpet,

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they see the pews, they see the hymnals and all of those things. They listen to the music and somehow in the midst of all of it, they miss God.

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But the wonderful thing about the testimony of the Psalmist is he says, I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Isaiah had been to the sanctuary many times. He'd been there and he saw the incense,

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he saw the sacrifices that were made. But something happened one day when he was there. And it was an unforgettable experience, he says. It was in the year that King Uzziah died

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that I saw the Lord. He was high and lifted up. And I saw his royal garments. He said the very skirts of his garment filled up the temple.

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I saw the Lord. He was sitting upon a throne, and I recognized that while Uzziah had died, that God was the ruler. He's still on his throne.

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I saw him in the sanctuary. And around the throne I saw the seraphim. And one cried to the other, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.

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"The whole earth is full of his glory." And when I saw the Lord, I looked at myself. And somehow when we see the Lord, we see a mirror of ourselves.

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- Amen. - Yes. And as I looked at her, I recognized how dirty, how filthy I was, and I cried out, "Woe is me, for I am undone.

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"I'm a mean man of unclean lips, "and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." I saw the Lord. In other words, that time I really communed with God.

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And he said, "Something happened," he said, one of the seraphim took the tongue from the altar and took a live coal and put it to my mouth and said your iniquity is cleansed, your sin is purged. It all happened because he communed with God. It's a wonderful thing that when we

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gather here Sunday after Sunday and in the worship service that we can say that That longing in the soul was somehow satisfied through the worship. I saw the Lord! I experienced the presence of his spirit! That's what the psalmist is talking about. Friendship with God. Friendship with God. God, friendship that goes on day and night. He goes on in that passage to say

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that I have meditated upon you in the night watches. Not only was the Psalmist active and communing with God in the day, but he says I meditated up on you on my bed during the night watches. So that in the midst of the day when I when things were going well when I had joy and health and all of that

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I enjoyed friendship with God but also when night came. In the night season when we are growing old and feeble and when our health is ebbing away that in the midst of it all I still have a glorious friendship with God. I've meditated upon you upon my bed during the night watches. Thirst for God. A

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thirst for God. He goes on to talk about his enemies. All of us have some enemies. We have some contrary forces with which we must contend. There are those that seek to destroy me, he says, but those who seek to destroy me, those forces that are arrayed against me, that in the midst of it all that they shall

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perish by his sword. God will fight our battle. That he has a sword and vengeance is not something that we are to take to ourselves. Lord says vengeance is mine. I'll take care of that. He has his sword and he says that they shall really perish under the earth. In other words, it's another way of saying that they

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shall go to hell, for it represents she all. They shall be the victim of the foxes. They shall be devoured. But this all happens because there is a glorious communion that the soul shares here with God. Glorious communion. The soul longs for God and there is a thirst after God. In fact, the Son of God who walked this

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earth and who set the example for us gave us this word, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. That if there is in the soul a hungering and a fasting for that higher righteousness that God in his love and mercy satisfies our longing. That's what he says, that because of your steadfast love means more to me than life itself.

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That there is nothing in this whole wide world that means more than having God's steadfast love. It's there no matter what happens. It's there. It's a love that will not let me go. Amen. Steadfast love.

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So Jesus Christ, our King of kings, who travels this desert road before us in the crisis of the cross, cries out, "I thirst, I thirst."

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They are around the cross. Some are gambling. Others are cursing, there are those who are ridiculing him, but he cries out, "I thirst." In the midst of it all, he thirsts for God, no matter what may happen in the midst of

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all of the crises of life, that the thing that means most to him is the satisfaction of the Father. I thirst for God. Oh how wonderful it is when we have a thirst for God, for his word. Have that thirst to say well there's something in me that longs for

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God's word. I want to hear his word. I want to read it. I want to feast upon his word. It's a glorious feast. He talks about the feast there, the marrow and the fatness of the soul. Somehow you know there's enough of God for you to get all that you can take and there's plenty more left. There's enough of his love!

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There's enough of his strength! There's enough of everything that God has! All of the good things of this life you can just eat to your heart's content. That's a wonderful thing. The feast of the soul is satisfied in this longing for God. And the one who cries out, "I thirst," cries out to the only one that can satisfy our needs.

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Oh, sure, we get a lot of things we want. We get clothes. the clothes that we get we find it next year the style changes. You know I had some wide ties and by the time I thought I had enough wide ties they changed them

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to the narrow ties. You get this kind of dress and it's low this season the next season it's a little shorter and it's it's just changed this way and that way and somehow the more we get the more we say we need. But here with God is the only means of the satisfaction of the needs of the spirit. Only God himself can satisfy the thirst of the soul.

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There's nothing like water. You have a lot of other things but there's nothing like water. And And you know so often that's the very thing that we deny ourselves of. It's so plentiful. And I hear people say, "You know, I haven't had any water today."

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And some people say, "Well, I don't drink much water." And they pride themselves on that when that's one of the main needs that we have, water. And people die from starvation. But authorities in health say that most of the time, what we call starvation, people

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die from hydration. You can go a long time without food. I've seen people go two and three weeks that were fasting, but you can't go that long without water.

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It's water. That basic need, and that's the need that only God himself satisfies for us through Jesus Christ. I heard, I heard the voice of Jesus saying,

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"Come unto me and rest, lie down, thy weary one, "lie down, thy head upon my breast." I came, I came to Jesus as I was weary, worn, and sad, and I found in him a resting place,

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and he has made me glad. - Amen. - I heard the voice of Jesus say, behold I freely give,

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the living water, thirsty one, stoop down and drink and live. - Amen. - I came to Jesus and I drank of that life-giving stream.

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My vest was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in him. That's a great experience. It's an experience that God grants to those who seek after him over and over again.

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And we extend it now for those who would unite with the people of God here at Ebenezer. Give your life to Jesus Christ. purpose to walk in his ways to live his life accepting him as Lord and Savior we

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invite you to come. ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ I heard the voice of Jesus say ♪ ♪ The world shall be my home ♪

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[music] Lay down thy weary heart, lay down thy head upon my breast. ♪ Through my pain to Jesus ♪ ♪ As I was ♪

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♪ Here in the Lord ♪ ♪ I stand ♪ ♪ I found him there ♪ ♪ A resting place ♪

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♪ A living and laying place ♪ ♪ I heard the voice of Jesus ♪ ♪ For Jesus' sake behold my grief ♪ ♪ The living water ♪

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♪ Praise ye unto God my grief ♪ ♪ To come and bring her here ♪ ♪ I gave to Jesus ♪ ♪ My bread ♪

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♪ Oh, that my spirit may rest ♪ ♪ In extreme ♪ ♪ My heart was blessed ♪ ♪ My soul rewired ♪

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♪ And now I live in Thee ♪ I need you, baby. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]