“Who is Seeking Whom”

“Who is Seeking Whom”    7/18/99

Psalm 42

One of the primary themes in the Bible is about men and women searching for God.

Go back to the book of Exodus and there’s Moses going up on Mount Sinai hoping to find God up there.  I think it’s safe to say that he got more than he bargained for.

And then there’s Ruth and Queen Esther in OT times,  very different women in very different circumstances,  but both seeking after God.

It’s recorded that Solomon heard from God words very similar to the words in the beautiful song from Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah….”If with all your heart you truly seek me,  you shall ever surely find me,  thus saith our God.”

We move into the lives and accounts in the NT and we find the same thing.  Men and women seeking after God,  seeking to know God,  seeking to know the will of God for their lives,  seeking to see the face of God.

We think of both the men and the women who surrounded Jesus and then people a little later like Paul and Barnabus and the businesswoman Lydia mentioned in Acts 16.  Men an women seeking after God.

But I think there is something we need to understand here and it’s something very important.

I believe that the seeking which we see here in person after person isn’t business as usual religion.

The seeking we see in these people is about more that religion in general.

There quest for God was about more than the desire to embrace a system of ethics and religious traditions and rituals.

It preoccupied them.

It drove them.  It consumed them.

If I under stand this correctly,  they were like desperately thirsty animals searching for water.

The words of the ancient song go like this:  “As a deer longs for flowing streams,  so my soul longs for you O God.  My soul thirsts for God,  for the living God.  When shall I come and behold the face of God.”

I think that what we’re talking about here is passion isn’t it?

Our biblical forefathers and foremothers were passionate in their quest for God.  

They were passionate in their quest to do God’s will.