Psalm 42; Psalm 43
God’s word, Psalm 42 and 43. This is the beginning of book
two of the Psalms, and it’s to the choir master, and it’s a
mascule of the sons of Korah. And it says in verse one, as
a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for
the living God. When shall I come and appear
before God? My tears have been my food, day
and night, while they say continually to me, where is your God? These
things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with
a throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad
shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you
cast down, oh my soul? And why are you in turmoil within
me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. my salvation,
and my God. My soul is cast down within me,
therefore I remember you. From the land of Jordan and Hermon,
from Mount Mizar, deep calls to deep, at the roar of your
waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over
me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night
his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say
to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of my enemy? As with a deadly wound
in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me continually,
where is your God? Why are you cast down on my soul
and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God for I shall again
praise him my salvation and my God. Vindicate me, O God, and
defend my cause against an ungodly people. From the deceitful and
unjust man deliver me. For you are the God in whom I
take refuge. Why have you rejected me? Why
do I go about mourning because of the oppression of my enemy?
Send out your light and your truth and let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy
hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of
God, to the God of my exceeding joy. And I will praise you with
the liar, O God, my God. Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall
again praise him, my salvation and my God. Amen. May God bless our time as we
spend a few moments in his holy and sacred scripture. Well, the
subject I wanna speak about tonight is spiritual depression. And I bring it up in that way
because depression is spiritual. And for the Christian, our causes
and cures need to be seen through spiritual eyes. We need to understand
them. Do you remember after Elijah called down God’s fire at Mount,
which Mount was it? Herm, no, whichever one it was.
He called down God’s fire and remember it licked up the altar,
it licked up the sacrifice and all the water around. He was
fighting against the bells. What did Elijah then do? Was
there an after party? No, he went into the wilderness.
and laid down and sucked his thumb. That’s pretty much what
he did. God put him up on a shelf. God was done with Elijah. Now
what would you think would happen after such an event like that?
You think in America, Elijah would go lay down in the wilderness
of Nevada or Utah and put his thumb in his mouth and curl up
in a ball? No, he would probably go on a
speaking tour. And he would have one of these tents like we have
out by the highway. And it would be filled every
night for a month until it was time to be the itinerant famous
guy and moved to the next place. But there was Elijah depressed
after doing a mighty work of Almighty God. One of the great
preachers of 18th century was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. What
did we call him? The prince of preachers. But Spurgeon was very
well known for suffering from deep and dark depression. In fact, during one of the services
where he was preaching and thousands would be there, someone called
out the words fire, and many were trampled. It was a disaster,
and he literally never got over that event. It happens to the
best of us. We get depressed. We have feelings
of dejection, despondency. We get in a slump. We get in
a downturn, and there are all kinds of reasons for it. For
some, it’s chemical. It’s a lack of serotonin. For
others, it’s temperamental. We know folks who are just natural
Eeyores. It’s always cloudy. The glass
is always half empty. We groan and we grump and we
can find anything to complain about. Sometimes it’s seasonal
when it gets dark. When the days are shorter and
it’s cold and miserable and it feels like we live in the Siberian
wilderness, depression can come. It can be physical. Extended
periods of bad health, of hurting, of aching, of not getting better
and finding no resolution to health problems can lead us into
depression. It can be situational. It can
be from a period of joblessness. It can be from relational struggles. It can be from a market crash.
In fact, our history books tell us that over and over throughout
the history of America when the markets crashed in the 1800s
and the 1900s and even in recent years, we see where depression
leads many who are closely tied to the stock market into death
spirals. It can be because of burnout.
It can be simply because of our own unbelief in the promises
of God, and ultimately it can be because Satan, like some of
you are studying on Sunday mornings in the book of Job, Satan has
been unleashed in our lives. Now, there are a couple things
we can do to fight depression. Practically speaking, we need
to have a good diet, we need to exercise, we need to sleep.
And sometimes we just need to work, not necessarily our day
job, but we need things for our hands to be busy doing. It can
be spiritual. The book of John tells us that
if we walk in the light, If we have Christian fellowship, and
if we return often to the gospel, those are the ways that the gospel
of John, or 1 John, tells us that we can overcome spiritual
depression. So Psalms 42 and 43 ask the same
question several times. There are some accusations against
Christians that come several times. There are a couple statements
that appear multiple times, but look at 42, verse 11. 42 verse
11 says, why are you cast down, O my soul? It says, why are you in turmoil
within me? Back up to verse five. Why are
you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within
me? And then look also at chapter
43 verse five. Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Why are you in turmoil within me? This is the sons of Korah
wrestling one of them at least, wrestling with spiritual depression. So that’s the theme of Psalm
42 and Psalm 43. Now, who are the sons of Korah?
Well, some of you may remember to your Israelite history in
the wilderness, about 250 of them complained against Moses
and what happened? They got taken care of. A pastor’s
dream, right? God take care of those problems.
No, that’s not the way it works. I’m sure Moses wasn’t real happy.
But they were the Levites. and they provided temple music.
And you can see it in the early verses of 42. He says in verse
three and four, he says, my tears have been my food day and night.
They say to me continually, where is your God? These things I remember
as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them
in the procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs
of praise and multitude keeping festival. These were the folks
who made music for the temple. but they were also from the family
that were rebellious and died in the wilderness. And it’s a
good reminder that sometimes a generation after those who’ve
been unfaithful, like the sons of Korah who rebelled, there
can be a godly generation after that does great work for the
Lord. So there’s the sons of Korah. But also we’re shifting
from book one to book two. And in book one, guess who is
at the center of the Psalms? It’s Yahweh. Now you see Lord
in all caps in your Bibles, And in Psalms 1 through 41, Yahweh
is the divine name used. Now, as we enter book two, the
divine name is simply gonna be God. You see the change. You
look at 41, then you look at 42. You see the word God, G-O-D,
capital G-O-D, multiple times in Psalm 42. So you see a shift
in how the psalmist address the character of God, the nature
of God here. And it’s not just because of a difference of authors,
David and the first book, and now the Sons of Korah, they’re
gonna write the next several psalms. It sure sounds like David in
42 and 43, though. It does, it sure does. But there’s
a shift. Now, look at a couple repeated
things. One last little theme to look at. Verse 42, 5, 42,
11, and 43, 5, as I’ve already mentioned, are the little phrases,
why are you cast down, O my soul, why are you in turmoil within
me? And then notice something else
that’s repeated, 42 verse three, his enemies continually say,
where is your God? That takes place in 42 three,
it’s also in 42 10, where is your God? And then also, 42 verse five, and then 42 verse
11 says, hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation
and my God. So there’s a, you see a couple
of things repeated, that’s important. So let’s dig into spiritual depression
just briefly, if we can for a moment. Verses one and two, what’s the
cause of the psalmist’s spiritual depression? It’s simply this,
he can’t go to church. He can’t get to the house of
God to worship. He’s away from the temple. And
geographically, if you look at being out near Mount Hermon and
Mount Mesur and all those places near the Jordan, he’s getting
closer and closer to pagan nations. And some of you may despair and
say, what has the world come to? What is America gonna end
up being? This world’s gone to pot. I can’t
live here. I’m a pilgrim trying to make
progress and all this going on. Well, here’s the psalmist speaking
directly into the way we sometimes feel. We’ve got pagans all around
us. It seems like we’re outnumbered.
Well, there’s another thing to think about. He’s unable to worship
because he’s away from the temple. But for a Levite, it also means
he can’t work. And you think about our brother
Andrew Brunson. Can he preach in prison? Not on Sunday in church. Can he proclaim God in prison?
Of course he can. But wouldn’t you think he’d rather
be doing what he’s been doing for the last 23 years? Moving
about the city, holding Sunday worship, ministering to his congregation. So you can imagine how hard it
would be for the Levites to say, I can’t get to the temple and
I can’t lead worship and give people the opportunity to praise.
Now think about our homebound members. who can’t be here. Flip
to the back of your bulletin, look at that list. These are
people who haven’t been in the house of God for whatever reason,
health, we got college, we got military. Don’t you think it’s
extra special when we go visit them and take the presence of
God from here to there? Something to think about. Not
being able to worship or be in the house of God can lead to
depression. How does the psalmist speak of
his desires? Look at verse one, as a deer
pants for flowing streams. So pants my soul for you, my
soul thirst for the living God. He is literally out in the desert.
I mean, that’s where he is, but he’s out in the desert spiritually
as well because he can’t get to God. He misses the fellowship. Well, there’s a second thing
that, shows us the cause of depression here. We find it in verse 3 and
10. The people keep saying to him,
where is your God? They say it in verse 3, they
say it in verse 10. We live around, how do we say
it? We are Israelites living in the land of the Philistines.
We are Israelites living in the midst of Babylonians. We are
surrounded by unbelievers. And they say to us, where is
your God? Is he able to save you? Is he able to heal you?
Is he able to help you? Now, remember in the ancient
Near East, every little nation state had gods. The Canaanites
had theirs, the Egyptians had theirs. And remember when God
had it out with Pharaoh, who else did he have it out with?
The gods of Egypt. Oh, you think your gods control
the flies? I control the flies, or the sun,
or the water, and the blood. the death of the firstborn. And
so they taunt these unbelievers. And sometimes we feel like we’re
being taunted because of our belief in Christianity. And in
ancient Israel, just as it’s true today, the reputation of
God is on the line. And so when people speak ill
against our God, we take it personally. We take it to heart because we
love our God and the redemption that is ours in Christ. Now today, In the Job Sunday
School class, they were considering the question of wisdom. And wisdom
from the Bible helps us understand how to deal with the taunts of
unbelievers and the paganism that seems to want to attack
Christianity. There’s a third source of aggravation
or spiritual depression in this passage, and I call this one
the good old days. Look at verse four. He says,
these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with
the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad
shouts of songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. What sweet
memories of church, what sweet memories of, maybe what’s in
Psalm 121, how does that one go? I was glad to hear them saying
to the Lord’s house, let us go. Our feet are standing in Jerusalem.
It’s the festal song. It’s one of the Psalms of ascent
where the pilgrims making their way up to Jerusalem to worship
God at one of the great feasts say, I was glad when they said
to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. He remembers sweet
memories of church. Our family goes to the beach
every year, the same place, the same week. They’re making a stay
somewhere else this year. We’re gonna have to figure that
one out because it’s breaking tradition. But when we go and we get there
and we spend our time there, it goes by quickly. It’s a yearly
pilgrimage. And when we get in the car on
the way home and we’re saying goodbye to the ocean and the
trees and the place we stayed and the precious memories we
just had, inevitably one of us will say, well, it’s gonna be
11 months and about 22 days until we come back. because it’s an
important pilgrimage for us. We’ve been going down there the
last 17 years. It’s where a lot of life has
happened. While a lot has changed in our life, going to this one
place has not changed. But it’s important to us, just
as it was important to the Israelites. And can’t you imagine them on
their way home from Jerusalem after one of the yearly feasts
saying, well, it’s gonna be 11 months and 20 days until I get
back. And so the memories of church
are helpful. Think about holidays and church
life. When something is absent, something’s
missing. Christmas isn’t the same when
grandma’s gone. Or church isn’t the same when
we lose another one of our saints. And so we think about the good
old days. We think about sometimes everybody else is having fun
when we’re not over the holidays. And so this is a cause. It can
be a cause of depression, of saying the question, why are
my cast down? Why is there turmoil within me?
Well, a fourth way, a fourth thing that can cause hardship
is simply life. How does that commercial go?
Life comes at you fast. And the real answer ought to
be know the Lord. Look at verse seven. It says,
deep calls to deep. At the roar of your waterfalls,
all your breakers and all your waves have gone over me. I don’t know how many of you
have been out on the ocean, but if you ever go out on the ocean on a calm
day, it’s lovely. But if you ever go out on the ocean and
it’s just semi, not calm, Those waves, when they’re seven feet
tall and your boat is going up and down and up and down, can
be rather scary. But here he’s saying, the waves
are crashing over me. And something that can weigh
on us very heavily is when life just crashes and crashes and
crashes. And we can only take so many beatings, as it were.
And so life comes at you fast. We’re taking on water. Verse
five, I’m sorry, verse nine gives us a fifth. A fifth cause or
possibility for depression, we find it in verse nine. It says,
I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go
mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Sometimes we get
to thinking God has failed to act on our behalf. Do you think
our friend, our pastor friend we’re praying for, wonders? While
he sits in prison, has God failed me? Not just have my fellow countrymen
or my president or whoever have failed me, but has God failed
me? Why has he left me here? I mean, the number of days that
count, we see it in these emails, it’s up to 200 and I don’t know,
20 some, 30 some days. Has God failed? And maybe you
feel that way when a sickness doesn’t leave you or some sort
of hardship and difficulty comes upon you. God has failed to act,
you might say. Well, there’s a last, a final
means of depression, and that comes in 43 verse one. It says,
Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people. From deceitful and unjust men
deliver me. Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by
being attacked by unbelievers, just the relentlessness. I can
imagine this would be the case for a young person who goes off
to college. their Christian and their worldview,
which has held so well for them. It’s been embraced by their family.
It’s been buttressed by the church and the teaching from it. Their
Christian friends have confirmed it and they’ve lived in a nice,
somewhat safe cocoon, but they go to college and every liberal
professor, every liberal student attacks them and belittles them
and calls them names, calls their Christianity a crutch. That can
be depressing, but look, if you will, at verse two. I’m sorry,
verse five. It’s one of the couple times
the refrain is given. Why are you cast down? Why are
you depressed, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within
me? Have you ever been in turmoil
where you feel like you’d rather die? You feel like you’d rather
not get out from under the covers, for if you do, bad things will
happen. It comes, it comes to Christians.
And we laugh about the cures. I’ll just get a pill, not a depression
pill, just I’m gonna pop a pill and have this over with. I want
an easy fix. Sometimes it’s chocolate. Get
a bucket of ice cream and a spoon, not a bowl, but a spoon. Or sometimes there’s retail therapy.
We’re gonna go shop. And those things can help, they
can lift up our spirits. But there’s a more godly way,
there’s a more Christian way, a more biblical way. And when
we read through Martin Lloyd-Jones’ spiritual depression, you know
what he takes you through? He literally takes you through
the order of salvation, that from eternity past, God set his
affection upon you. Won’t that send the blues away?
That from eternity past, God has set his affection upon you.
And that in the course of time, the son of God became man and
he suffered and he died in your place. He took on your sin. He who knew no sin became sin
for us. And he took on our sin and he
paid the penalty that was due us for our sin. He paid it and
has wiped away our sin. We go on through the order of
salvation and we realize that by his Holy Spirit, the calling
that God places on us through his word helps us to see our
sin and embrace Jesus as he’s offered in the gospel. We realize
that our faith in Jesus leads to God at work in us, sanctifying
us, making us holy, getting us heaven ready and leading us safely
there. We talked a few minutes ago about
what does God require of us. to escape his wrath and curse
for sin and misery. He requires faith in Jesus, repentance,
and a diligent use of the means of grace. And so what are the
cures for spiritual depression? One is to tell yourself over
and over what is true and to reject what is false. Go to the
Bible. Look at what in your life is
spiritual and what is unspiritual. Now y’all know from time to time
I make little jokes about We have all these voices screaming
in our ears, and there’s Oprah over here, and there’s Dr. Phil
over here, and there’s pop psychology over here, and there’s these
TV preachers saying, you have your best life now, and there’s
all this coming in your ear. But then there’s God who comes
and says, hope in me. Put your faith in me. Renew your
faith and your hope and your trust. We have to be able to
discern, even when we’re down in the dumps, or be willing to
receive it from our friends, not the friends of Job, but good
Christian friends, to discern what is true, what is false,
what is spiritual, and what is unspiritual. And I’m really afraid,
I really am, that a lot of Christians are listening to untrue, unspiritual
help. And we need to make sure our
ears are in tune to the true voice of the true shepherd, that’s
Jesus. So we need to get a hold of ourselves
as it were. We need to hope in God. We need
to get to church because that’s where God is proclaimed. What
do we say every week? We’ve come to the house of God, we’ve come
to the Lord’s house, the Lord’s day, the Lord’s people. And we’ve
come to meet with God. We’ve come to hear his greeting,
his call to worship. We’ve come to confess our sin,
hear his assurance of pardon. We’ve come to affirm our faith,
to repent of our sins. We’ve come to give to him our
whole lives, our tithes, our offerings. We’ve come to hear
his word, receive it. We respond to it, we receive his benediction.
What else will cure spiritual depression than a good market
day of the soul in the Lord’s house? And so we hope in God,
we get to church. We also have to have a firm grip
on what is ultimate reality. Oh yes, there’s storm clouds.
Yes, there’s sickness. Yes, there are chemical issues
within our brains. Yes, there are seasonal depressions.
Yes, there are hardships in life. There are things that are utterly
hard to overcome, but who is bigger than the clouds? It is
God himself. And so one of the greatest blessings
I think we can have in this life when we’re down in the dumps
is to go to the house of God. What was the memory that the
sons of Korah or the psalmist here had? Wasn’t about ice cream. Though that helps, it really
does. Retail therapy, it does help. I’ve been there, it does
help. It’s going to worship. It’s going to the house of God,
to meet with God, to be with his people. Notice in a couple
places in Psalm 42 and 43, it speaks of God as the rock and
the stronghold. Psalm 42 is really a lament and
Psalm 43, if you attach it to it and it becomes one song, it’s
the psalmist being confident that he’ll be vindicated. You’re
the God, it says in verse two, whom I take refuge. Send out
your light, send out your truth and let them lead me. So is spiritual
depression a real thing? Absolutely. Is it curable? For
sure, with the gospel. Is it treatable? Yes, in God’s
house, with God’s people together. Remember the book of Hebrews
tells us that we have a high priest who’s been through every
human infirmity. I mean, we just heard this morning,
didn’t we, about Jesus leaving the throne of heaven to come
suffer for us. And about in the garden, how he was, he was in
anguish, even unto death, sweating droplets of blood. And so, do
you think, don’t you think, don’t you know, that if we get ourselves
into the turmoil, the inner turmoil the psalmist speaks of, that
we can’t go to Jesus? and he will know better than
we do what it is like to be in the depths and the pits of hardship. Let’s pray together. Our God,
we thank you for the glory of the Psalms, the beauty of their
truth, and we thank you that they point us again to you, our
father, who loves us, who cares for us, and can provide for our
every need. Oh, Lord, we pray that we would not suffer alone
when We get down in the dumps when our spirits get low. We
pray that we would lift our eyes up towards you, that we would
come to your house to, again, what is good and right and true.
We’d love to be in your altars and in your sanctuary where even
a sparrow finds her home. We pray that we would, as brothers
and sisters in the faith, look into each other’s lives and know
our ups and downs and know our seasons and know our difficulties
and know our hardships. And then as we’ve been learning
the last couple of weeks to count others better than ourselves,
to serve others for the sake of their good, for the glory
of God. And we pray that we would be faithful ministers to one
another, because life gets hard, our emotions get low, and things
can come crashing down. And we pray that we would be
like those pictures we see sometimes on the news where In a marathon,
a long race, another runner, instead of finishing the race
for himself and winning a prize, stops and helps another because
the end is the same. It’s to get across the finish
line, help us to see and think and live, and especially love
like that. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.