The last three verses of the psalm look to the future and express David's confidence that in time his enemies will be destroyed, the mouths of those who have slandered him will be silenced, and he will again be openly praising God with others who also love and seek him.
Let me suggest another way of looking at this section of the psalm. We can see it as statements, first, of David's satisfaction in God and then of two results flowing from it.
About a thousand years after these words were written, David's greater descendant Jesus Christ said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matt. 7:7). David did not know these specific words, of course. But he did know the reality of them since he elaborates this idea in the next section (vv. 2-8).
There are various ways of outlining the eleven verses of this psalm. They can be found in the various commentaries. The New International Version is probably right on track, however, when it sets verse 1 off as a stanza to itself. This is because the verse expresses the longing of David's soul for God and because the next section (vv. 2-8) describes how that longing has been answered in the past and is being honored in the present.
There are three types of people in any Christian gathering. There are those who are followers of Jesus Christ in name only, which means that they are Christians in name only. They seem to be following after God and Christ and say they are, but theirs is a false following, like that of the five foolish virgins who did not truly know the Lord and were rejected by him. The second class are those who are following Jesus but are following "at a distance,” like Peter at the time of Jesus' arrest. The third type are those who, as Murdoch Campbell suggests, "in storm and sunshine, cleave to him and enjoy daily communion with him."1 These people want God, and they want him intensely, because they know that he and he alone will satisfy the deep longing of their souls. David was a person who desired God above everything else, and Psalm 63 is a classic expression of his longing.
