Devotional Short Note to Psalm 63: People sometimes complain that their worship is boring and that they need a fresh look at it. Edward Heppenstall put it the best: the revival needed is a revival of Bible Study. He said it is not in verbalizing truths, ecstacy, inner feeling, overpowerment of the “Spirit”, not merely mental, not an escape from obedience, not emotional excitations, is not subjective, is not testimonies and is not philosophy. David also got it right. In the wilderness and barrenness where he knew what it meant to be thirsty, David says that his soul thirsts for God (63:2b). He seeks God, he thirsts for God and longed for Him. This is step one in all true worship. If you take your pillow at row number three next to the wall near the back of the church so that you can have a comfortable view of everyone walking in, you came for the wrong reason. Your water bottle is in your bag and who talks about thirsty? David. And not for water but relationship. Notice how David is looking for God: “So in the Sanctuary have I looked [ḥzytk = to see in a vision] for You” (63:3a). The same word is used for Daniel’s visions that the Lord gave him. Nobody calls David a prophet and yet he saw with the same instrument God in the Sanctuary the way Daniel did. Same word. He desired to see God’s power and glory and speaking of these two, the heavenly sanctuary is full of it (63:3b). There was no sanctuary in the wilderness where David was. Many people complain that the Bible does not teach a Sanctuary Message and that there is no such thing as a heavenly sanctuary. Good morning. Follow this link long enough and you will think differently. David says he could see the “mercy/lovingkindness” of God in the sanctuary (63:4a). Exactly. That is what salvation is all about. The whole engine of salvation spins on two wheels: mercy and justice. And God has both. David saw it. No-one sees the mercy of God and does not want to praise Him with their lips (63:4b). Then David says “So will I bless You as long as I live. In Your name will I lift up my hands” (63:5b). Is this a praise service that David is attending? A temple gathering? A tabernacle service of all the people? No. He is solitary. Alone. He will raise his hands not with the beat of the drum or amid shoutings of hallelujah. Alone he will raise his hands. David is not prescribing liturgy here for modern churches. It is not a theology of ecclesia that he is designing here. Privately, with no one in sight but sand and sand and more of it, he raises his hands. Praise is not absent in the next verse because he says “my mouth praises You with joyful (yhll) lips”. David says that “You will [future] satisfy my soul” (63:6a). David intends to bless the Lord as long as he lives but he also gives us a picture of what is happening at night: “If I remember You upon my couch, in the nightwatches I will give thanks in You” (63:7b). Your Bible should be open here for comparison. Can you see the word “meditation”? Take a pen and scratch it out. Rewrite the word “give thanks/praise” over it from the Late Egyptian word ḥknw and not from an Arabic word taken over by Arab-speaking Rabbis of the Middle Ages meaning “meditation”. Nobody knows what the word haggah means in the Bible and the Hebrew Dictionaries guess it is Arabic but David knew nothing of Arabic. When you roll over at night on your bed, do you utter “thank you Lord”. When you wake up in the deep hours of the dark, do you say “Thanks Lord for everything”? That is what David is doing here. Why the emphasis here? Here is the reason. Some Adventist Doctorates were done on the word “meditation” and unfortunately Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalistic ideas is brought to the table suggesting that we should include also with our prayers, acts of meditation. A meditation theology is suggested and now advocated in lectures. It is very dangerous and one should read the dangers of this thinking in the work of Gershom Scholem of Jewish Mysticism page 34 where he explains about “meditation” in Jewish Mysticism: “This transformation, which has meant a great deal for the true life of the Kabbalist, has become crystallized in the conception of Kawwanah, i.e. mystical intention or concentration, which is its instrument. In the words of the liturgy as in the old Aggadahs, the Kabbalists found a way to hidden worlds and the first causes of all existence. They developed a technique of meditation which enabled them to extract, as it were, the mystical prayer from the exoteric prayer of the community, the text of which followed a fixed pattern.” To cite Adventists teaching meditation as a biblical doctrine based on the Arabic understanding by Rabbis and Mystics, just the following: “Biblical meditation within an Adventist theological context may be experienced as intensely personal, deeply transformational, and providing the framework for a dynamic encounter between the Holy Spirit and the practitioner.” All the texts used by this doctorate are based on the misunderstanding unfortunately and misguidedness of modern Hebrew Dictionaries that base their semantics not on a language David spoke but a language the Middle Age Rabbis Saadia Gaon, or Redak, or Rashi, or Ibn Ezra understood and used, namely Arabic. This phenomenon in Judaism led to very strange and esoteric ideas and practices among the Jews and which are still operative. David had nothing of it. The word meditation he did not use but thanksgiving or praise, a synonym to praise in 63:4b. David thanks God because He was his help (63:8a). In the shadow of His wings he rejoice (63:8b). It is in this context that haggah must be understood: praise (63:4b), bless (63:5a), praise (63:6b), remember (63:7a), give thanks (63:7b), rejoice (63:8b). This makes more sense than the list: praise, bless, praise, remember, meditation, rejoice. Like the women in the crowd that grabbed Jesus clothes, David did the same: “My soul cleaves behind You” (63:9a). God moves to such a faith His right hand to the back and holds the person fast “inside” for David says “in me You will hold Your right hand” (very literal 63:9b). “And those to destroy, will seek my soul, they shall go in the deepest parts of the earth” (63:10). David sees the end of the wicked in the eschaton. David is now full of futures since it is in the prophecies that he finds his comfort against the potential danger of evil in his existence. “They shall be hurled to the hands of the sword” of the Warrior Messiah Christ (63:11a). “A portion of foxes shall they be” (63:11b). David knows how foxes of the wilderness would come and seek remainders of prey lying around to feed on. “And the King [Christ the King of Kings, also God] shall rejoice in God [Father]” (63:12a). It can only be Christ and not David as Judaism teaches since “Everyone that swears by Him shall glory for the mouth of them that speak lies [at the eschaton] shall be stopped” (63:12c). This stop is not just a one-time case but has everlasting implications.