Psalms 49–51; 61–66; 69–72; 77–78; 85–86 Part 2 • Dr. John White • August 24-30 • Come, Follow Me

followHIM - Hank Smith & John Bytheway

In this episode of 'Show: followHIM,' Dr. John White explores Psalms 61–66, 69–72, 77–78, and 85–86, focusing on themes of divine refuge, sp

Key takeaways

• True security comes not from external circumstances but from God's covenant love and presence.
• The body is not a hindrance to spirituality; it is an essential part of our embodied longing for God.

Main topics

• Divine refuge and trust in God beyond circumstances
• The embodied nature of spiritual longing

Notable quotes

"From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."

"I don't believe you have a thirst. You are a thirst."

Conclusion

Dr. John White concludes by affirming that true fulfillment comes not from earthly

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Welcome to part two with Dr. John White, Psalms 49 through 86. Speaker 2 (0:06) We're going to look at Psalm 61. We get in here this phrase that the rock, we understand the rock, obviously a metaphor, is higher than I. The big idea here is the divine refuge, taking comfort in God, transcends geography. at any kind of emotional distance, that security is in God himself and that we're guarded and vouchsafed by God's covenant love, not our circumstances. I love what he says, Psalm 61, two and four, he says, from the end of the earth will I cry unto thee when my heart is overwhelmed. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. I will abide in thy tabernacle forever. This is verse four now. I will trust in the covert of thy wings. That's a powerful passage. It really welcomes us. When he talks about the end of the earth, he's not talking about miles. It's at the end of your resources. The prayer from the place isn't make me taller. It's lead me to the rock that is higher than I. All formation starts with this admission, building our foundation. The New Testament is on the rock, Jesus himself, which cannot fall. That's even kind of an echo of Helaman chapter 5, verse 12. Speaker 1 (1:22) You're right on. I love how he says, I don't know this. And then we think. Yes, he does. You're doing pretty well. Speaker 2 (1:31) I want to share a story here. In 2012, when I took the job at Baylor, similar to taking the job here at BYU, my son and I moved down, but Cindy and the girls stayed back because we had to sell our house and some other circumstances that postponed their move. There was this choir from Baylor that came and it sang, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need. And I'd never heard that song before. I started to look at who sings that song. And guess what I discovered? The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Tab Choir, baby. This is like this pre-evangelism that the God was already starting to pull my heartstrings. And I love the line, no more a stranger nor a guest. That peace and belonging that comes when you understand the shepherd and what he supplies. When I was a boy, we moved nine times. There was a lot of instability. a lot of unpredictability. One of the strengths is I can make friends very quickly, but I always work from this insecure attachment because I'm wondering, are these my roots? Are these my people? Can I trust them? I love what we see in this Psalm, that there's a love that does not move away. There's a love that says I belong. And this is one of the signatures of the LDS community that drew me in, is that I belonged before I believed. Sociologists talk about this, that oftentimes people start with this idea that you have to assent to some belief, some dogma, some structure of any worldview that one holds. But we often find ourselves enculturated, we're brought into a community, and as we belong, we believe. And that's exactly what happened to me when I began to come here and make six trips. I began to listen to the saints pray. I began to go to these lab meetings with Dr. Nelson, with all of our students, the way they loved, the way they accepted me. For someone who works from an insecure attachment, that was startling to me. Like these people don't even know me and they're accepting me and loving me. Again, that was a portrait of God's acceptance, God's love of me. As I began to then journey, I recognized that these people who often have been misunderstood because it was a they at that point, Scripture says, New Testament, that you will be known by your love. They discipled me without me knowing it. They tutored my heart. They schooled my heart. Then when I started to read the Book of Mormon, I started to get more evidence. It made the transition easy because I understood that I now belong. I'm just a decision away of fully trusting in this and getting baptized. I like that move there in Psalm 61. And then Psalm 62 is... This idea of an unshaken rest of the soul is found exclusively in God. His power is always matched by a steadfast love. Again, no status or wealth can ground it. Six times in six verses, he uses the word only in verse 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 9. Only God, not God plus savings, not God plus reputation, only God. Then verse 1 declares the rest. truly my soul waiteth upon God. Verse five, we must command it. My soul wait thou only upon God. We see this stillness is not some kind of personality type. It's a practice. Trust is rechosen over and over. We wait, we trust, we wait, we trust. And as we get more drawn into relationship with God, that only increases our hope to continue to trust. I want to make a handoff now, though. From Psalm 62, it stills the soul. Psalm 63 aims the soul. This is the one I've been waiting to talk about. Let me take some time to unpack this. There's a lot going on in Psalm 63. He says, My flesh longeth for thee. The big idea is that communion with God so surpasses all other earthly good, including life itself, that even the wilderness deprivation where we're parked and we're dry. becomes the occasion for the soul's deepest satisfaction. Speaker 1 (5:42) Most people don't know this, the early church, meaning the broader early church tradition, Speaker 2 (5:47) not just the restored gospel early church. Psalm 63 was the fixed morning psalm of every Sunday service. For centuries, Christians began the Lord's day by saying, early will I seek thee. I'm a morning person. I had a paper out when I was a kid. It started at 4 a.m. When I then became a Jesus follower, it wasn't hard for me to start seeking the Lord early in the morning. Versus my brother, when I gave the paper out over to him, my dad would look out there at 5 in the morning. He had fallen asleep over the papers. So my brother prays at night. He doesn't pray in the morning. Speaker 2 (6:24) Psalm 63 here, the first point is you don't have a thirst. I really like this. I don't believe you have a thirst. You are a thirst. Oh God, thou art my God. Early will I seek thee. My soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. I like how it even starts there. Oh God, thou art my God. Notice it starts covenant relationship that we belong to God. That should then catapult us. That should dispose us to want to seek him. It uses the language of the soul. As human beings, we're no like ghost in the machine. This is very concrete. In fact, I love the Hebrew language here. It talks about the throat. That's the organ of thirst. The whole living, wanting self is thirsting. As embodied people, we're thirsting. And as early as the dawn, our first movement of waking consciousness should be for God. It escalates here. It moves from identity, thou art my God, to pursuit. This soul thirst and this body ache. It's interesting in the DNC, it talks about that the spirit and the body are the soul of man. The restoration, I think, defines the soul the way Psalm 63 does and the way that it's prayed here. David's flesh bodily longing isn't sub-spiritual. It's the soul doing what souls do. We're supposed to reach out for these kinds of things as embodied creatures. The body makes possible a breath and depth and intensity of experience. and it's interesting, Elder Bednar, he has a talk on things as they really are, and he goes into the body there in ways that I've never, I mean, it's so enriching. I think you even see resonance here, this idea that as human beings, we can't talk about what it means to be human apart from the body. In fact, a lot of philosophers talk about the difference between people who think they have a body, merely have a body, versus I am a body, that we are bodies. On one level, you can use the language, I have a body, but We are embodied creatures and we don't want to deny or suppress that somehow that's sub-spiritual. There's a view early on in the first three or four centuries of church called Gnosticism. Somehow the body is evil. Here we have way before that heretical belief, David's showing us that the body is good. In fact, the body has thirst and longing. It ought to be ultimately longing for God. Moving this along, this is where C.S. Lewis has really helped me a lot. He has this argument from desire. This psalm fits in there really well. He says, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Lewis talks about that hunger corresponds to food, thirst to water. So why do humans carry a longing? Nothing that finite creaturely reality can satisfy is because we are made for God. Even Ecclesiastes says eternity is set in our hearts. The only thing you can satisfy it is something that's infinite. All the omnis that we know as far as the attributes of God. David's thirst ultimately is for God himself, we see. And even he says in verse two, the sanctuary. That's pretty cool. And this is something I'm really looking forward to. I can only go into the temple for proxy baptisms. So I'll get my, it's a temple endowment. Here in October, in fact, I meet with my bishop this week. We're working through reading Anthony Sweat, Holy Invitation. I'm really excited that you see the role of this temple and sanctuary in the Psalms too. And I really can't speak to that from the Restoration Gospel completely because I haven't been, unless you guys want to give me insights. Speaker 3 (10:09) Just read Anthony's books. I've had my kids read those before they've gone through the temple. Speaker 2 (10:15) Well, what we see here then that communion deepens longing. It doesn't retire it. As we connect with God in the temple, as we connect with God in the sacrament meetings, this should only strengthen and fortify our worship, our trusting in God. And then point three here, better than life. This is a bold claim. If you think about it, he says, because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. I love that quote by Joseph Smith. He says, could you gaze into heaven five minutes? You would know more than you would by reading all that was ever written on the subject. The five minutes of seeing heaven reorders all our values. If we really understand God's loving kindness, we should value it more than anything, than life itself. Now, some people say, well, what does that mean? God wants to preserve our lives. So by loving God, then we're getting a life with him that preserves us in eternal, the abundant life. The extremes that people go, we see people are martyred for the faith. They're willing to give up their own life because they've had this sacred encounter. They know God. Most of us aren't going to have to do that, but that's people who've been really caught up in this trance, like Joseph Smith, as far as gazing into heaven. Stills the soul and aims the soul. And that gets at that idea that Rightly ordered love is always going to be done in and toward God. Augustine, this is where I think he's brilliant. St. Augustine was perplexed by how can I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and might and have anything left over for anything less than God? The way that he can figure this is we love everything in and toward God. In fact, Catholic theologians go so far to say that any instance of love needs to be properly suspended and connected to God. So you can say, on one hand, I love ice cream, and make sure you love ice cream appropriate to the kind of creaturely good that it is. So I don't love ice cream the same way I love my dog. I don't love my dog the same way I love my spouse. And I don't love my spouse the exact same way I love God. But God is the purpose. Everything is loved in and toward Him. All earthly penultimate goods should be loved properly in relation to God. And that's why we need to cultivate these thirsts in the right directions so that they're aimed ultimately