Longing for God in the Down Times

Transcript

GRM 1246
11/01/2020
Longing for God in the Down Times
Psalms 42 - 43
Gil Rugh

That song leads us right into what we are going to be talking about in our consideration this morning. If you turn in your Bibles to Psalm 42, the 42nd psalm, we will be looking at Psalm 42 & 43, which tie together well as we will see, the same theme running through them. Psalm 42 and 43 are one of the more familiar psalms in the Bible, you will recognize portions of them even if you don’t recognize it by the title. Certain passages here probably have been fixed in your mind if you have been a believer very long. It’s about discouragement and depression. We find ourselves coming to this portion of the word of God along with other psalms because there is no one who doesn’t have to deal with these at one time or another, and sometimes as a regular pattern of life. No one can ever say well, I’ve never been discouraged, I’ve never been depressed, I’ve never been down. We as believers can’t say that either. We all go through down times. Some of those down times are deeper down than others. Sometimes there are times when we feel like we are overwhelmed and almost despair of being able to get through. That is what the psalmist is writing about. We appreciate the psalms because they bring reality to us. You know, we pass each other in the halls of the building and we say how are you? And we’ll say fine, how are you? Fine, then we go on and yet there can be things going on inside that just put us in turmoil.
How do you deal with it? That is what the psalmist is struggling with. The writer of this psalm is one who has a real relationship with God. He is torn because there is a part of him who feels like God has forgotten him and he has nowhere to go and nowhere to turn, there is a certain hopelessness. There are sections of the word of God that have been used by the saints over the years. I went back to a couple of my Puritan writers and the Puritans were in the 1600’s, that period of time when the Puritans were in prominence and their writings have been republished and they were quite verbose. I don’t know how they did it without typewriters or computers but Richard Sibbes is one of the men that I went to and there are seven volumes of his works and they’re rather small print and decent sized volumes of sermons and so on. One of his sermons came out of these psalms and he titled it Discouragement’s Recovery. I thought, well, that is almost 400 years ago and here he preached a sermon on discouragement’s recovery. Then I pulled off another Puritan writer, William Bridge and his multiple volumes have been printed as well and he is from the 1600’s. He was quite verbose and he did a series of sermons on Psalms 42 and 43. In fact, in print they covered 275 pages, 13 sermons on what he titled Lifting Up for the Downcast. I thought, there again, another writer, I had forgotten about William Bridge writing on that. When I pulled it off I looked and I had marked it from years ago, I went back and read my markings and thought, oh boy, that was a good sermon, that was good to lift up the downcast. Then more recently Martin Lloyd-Jones preached a series of sermons. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor, physician to the queen or something like that, before he became a pastor. He became a pastor then for a number of years, 30 years or so, at Westminster Chapel in London. And so many of you have read some of his writings. In 1965 he published a series of sermons he preached at church and titled Spiritual Depression, It’s Causes and It’s Cures and the first sermon in that came from Psalm 42 so it’s a psalm we go to when you are depressed. My section of Psalms here is marked up rather well, so it is a place for encouragement.
Want you to look at how it is titled, the titles aren’t necessarily part of the text, there is discussion of that, but it’s “for the choir director” or some translate it “for the chief musician.” I mention this because I want to remind you that the psalmist who writes this is writing out of the experiences of his heart. What he is going through personally, revealing his innermost feelings, but it wasn’t just for himself. It was written as a song that was to be stored up by the chief musician at the temple, at the tabernacle then the temple, here the temple. So that it could be sung by the people of God when they came up to worship together. So it was intended much more broadly than just to read about for interest what one person struggled through. This was to be sung by the people of God, to remind them, to encourage them.
Then you will see it’s a maskil and you have in the margin of your Bible there is discussion of what the word ‘maskil’ means, something to be contemplated or skillful teaching, but it was of the sons of Korah. The discussion on the sons of Korah is: was this written by the sons of Korah or was it for the sons of Korah, it could be taken either way. And I think probably it was for the sons of Korah for the sons of Korah were involved in the musical part of Israel’s worship. This is part of the Levitical tribe and the Levites, you remember, were the priestly tribe and that tribe was entrusted with the responsibility of things associated with the tabernacle then the temple when it was built under Solomon. The sons of Korah were musicians. I’m not musical but I enjoy the music and appreciate it. It is a ministry. I went back and went through some of what was said about the musicians in 1 Chronicles, and we don’t have time to do it. I put out all the verses but when I got done putting together what I was going to say I didn’t have time for you to enjoy that. But you can work through it in 1 Chronicles because when David and then Solomon organized the worship of Israel for the tabernacle, music was a key part of it. In fact, there were 288 musicians, singers, players of instruments. I had to smile because we have all this discussion on music, the kind of music, and the loudness of the music or the softness, what kind of instruments are appropriate. One of the sections in 1 Chronicles, instructions are given to the instrumentalists about what they play, and there are those for the trumpets and the cymbals and they are to play very loudly because it is a time of celebration, rejoicing, God’s people together. The instruments, the singing were all part of it.
Now I want you to come back to 2 Chronicles, we had to skip 1 Chronicles, so that is the summary. Come to 2 Chronicles and you go down the alphabet, 1 and 2 Samuel, I and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and you come to 2 Chronicles. Now we’ve moved beyond the time of David and Solomon, Jehoshaphat is the king now, but he is utilizing what was established by David and Solomon for the music part of the worship of Israel. In 2 Chronicles 20:18 tells you Jehoshaphat is the king and the preceeding verses would do that. Look at verse 19, there Israel is joined together in Jerusalem worshiping the Lord and verse 19, “The Levites, from the sons of the Kohathites and of the sons of the Korahites.” Now you put ‘-ites’ on the end of that and you have the fathers Kohath and Korah and we are talking about the sons of Korah being the musicians entrusted for the leading in the music for this psalm. We see the Korahites, sons of Korah, they “stood up to praise the Lord God of Israel, with a very loud voice.” Not only were the instruments to be loud, the voices where to be loud, there is no holding back, this is to honor and praise God and declare the truth concerning Him.
But Korah… now we remember Korah from Numbers 16, why don’t you come back to Numbers 16. There came a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, it was led by Korah. These in the psalm we have, which were four of the sons of Korah who were leading in the music worship of Israel at a later time, were descendants of the Korah mentioned in Numbers 16. What happens in Numbers 16, Korah and some others with him decide that Moses is not the one to be the leader of Israel and neither is Aaron, the high priest, who was to lead in the worship. So the leadership of Israel is being challenged by Korah and some associated with him and then he gets 250 men who were chief men, men of importance in Israel, to join with him in this rebellion. We have been to this passage before, what I mentioned to you is contained in the first three verses and they tell Moses and Aaron in verse 3, “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” Then the interaction, but you could read on your own if you need a refresher. Then God is displeased, because Moses and Aaron didn’t appoint themselves, God appointed them, so this is a rebellion against God. God says to Moses, step aside, I will just wipe them all out and we’ll start over. Then Moses intercedes for these people. You realize that God said this to Moses. I would have said just a minute, Lord, I will get out of the way and you proceed. But Moses intercedes and says you can’t do that, Lord, because you made a covenantal promise, You can’t go back on Your word. (I’m phrasing for time.) God instructs Moses, alright, I’ll take care of the rebels, leave the people, make certain the nation survives.
What happens? They all gather together and Moses says, alright, we will all meet together, Korah you come and those joined with you. The 250 men who think they ought to replace Aaron and his family in the priesthood, you bring your sensors, and we will bring an offering to God and whoever God accepts… So you are familiar, you know what happens to Korah, and the men right with him. The ground opens up under them and they immediately go to Sheol, then fire comes out from the Lord, down in verse 31, reading this, “The ground that was under them split open, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions”. They all and all that belonged to them went alive to Sheol. Then verse 35, “Fire also came forth from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense”. Now while we’re here, it says Korah and those associated with him went down to Sheol. How do we have the sons of Korah, his descendants, leading in the music in Israel? For that we have to go to Numbers 26:9, “The sons of Eliab: Nemuel and Dathan and Abiram. These are the Dathan and Abiram who were called by the congregation, who contended against Moses,” so they were mentioned at the beginning of Numbers 16, “and against Aaron in the company of Korah, when they contended against the Lord.” We are talking about this family now, Korah, “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up along with Korah, when that company died, when the fire devoured 250 men, so that they became a warning.”
Then verse 11, “The sons of Korah, however, did not die.” Interesting note here that helps us understand how the sons of Korah become well-known as leading musicians in the worship of the nation. They evidently didn’t join there father in this rebellion, they’re of age to make their own decision, so they didn’t die. So that is why Korah has descendants that can be used and we are reminded of Ezekiel saying God won’t hold the fathers accountable for the sins of the sons or the sons accountable for the sins of the father, each will bear accountability for their own sins. It didn’t keep the sons of Korah from becoming prominent and leading in the worship of Israel. Come back, sometimes you read a passage like this and say, well, it’s for the sons of Korah, I thought they all died in the rebellion. Well, there is a little note in Numbers 26 to remind us that the sons of Korah did not die in that rebellion, they evidently didn’t join in it. Alright, so its for them, for the chief musician to lead Israel and using this as one of the songs. We remind ourselves psalms are songs put to usually string accompaniment but we see other instruments used with it as well, they are to be sung. These are for the worship of the nation, not just for the private worship of the individual and the Spirit of God has preserved them for us so they are applicable to us as well.
This psalm is in three parts and I’m just calling it the psalm, we are going with the two psalms as together. Most take them together because they seemed tied together by a consistent refrain and the content is the same. Whether they’re written at the same time, put together, they are the inspired word of God, they are here together, they tie together, everybody is in agreement. I think the three parts fit together. The repeated refrain, I will mention that first, verse 5 “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence”. Then you come down to verse 11, the second refrain, same basic statement as we had in verse 5, “Why are you in despair, O my soul?” Then you come down to chapter 43 verse 5, “Why are you in despair, O my soul” and why are you disturbed?” The same basic, so that three-fold refrain marks the break, we might call it the three stanzas of the song. You have verses 1 – 4 that end with that refrain in verse 5, then you have verses 6 – 10 ending with the refrain in verse 11, then you have verses 1 – 4 in chapter 43 ending with the refrain. Like I would say we do stanzas then you have the chorus that is in some of hymns that repeat after the end of every stanza, a similar breaking down.
This is about the spiritual longing of the psalmist, his passion for God, but we are going to go back and forth. He is in inner turmoil, he is depressed, he will talk about being crushed in spirit. It’s like everybody has broken my bones, talking about how severe the inner pain is. There is no place to go, I am at the bottom. Yet he has a passion for God and that’s how it opens up with very familiar verse, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” This first section, verses 1 – 5 is about the psalmist’s passionate, longing desire for God. That will run though this because we can’t lose sight of that, in his deepest depression he has a passionate longing for God. It is like a deer that is so thirsty, desires… I’m like that deer that just wants the water, to me it’s like the refreshing that can only come from God, “my soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
Keep that in mind because the psalmist is going to be attacked by his enemies. He has either forgotten you or doesn’t exists, which is it? You claim he’s your God, well, if he is a God and He’s alive, he doesn’t have any interest in you, so either he’s not really a living God or he doesn’t care about you. For the psalmist he’s fixed -- my longing, my soul thirsts, so that is the inner longing, that passion, that desire for God, in the fullness of a relationship with Him. I want you to keep in mind this is a true believer who has a passionate longing for God and he can have a relationship with God. He does, because he is going to talk to God through this song but it’s not all that he wants it to be. It won’t be until he is joined with others, worshiping in the presence of God which for the Jews would be at the temple in Jerusalem. My soul thirsts for the living God, the God who is alive, the God who can act on my behalf.
Remember this is used in the New Testament. Jesus talked to the woman at the well, said you will drink of this water but you will thirst again. If you drink of the water that I will give you, you will never thirst again, it is water for eternal life. He will talk about the Holy Spirit that way in John 7, out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. This he spoke of the Holy Spirit who would be given to those who believe in Him, the living God provides life. We get to Hebrews 4 and the word of God is living. Because He is a living God His word is living, it’s active, it’s able to work, and do and accomplish. The psalmist has this settled belief. I want to enter into the fullness of that. But he is torn in his depression, discouragement, but he starts out right where he needs to.
But he wants to know at the end of verse 2, “When shall I come and appear before God?” You know, it’s not complete. We’ll see as we get further down into the middle here that the psalmist is far removed from Jerusalem where the temple is. That’s when he says I come and appear before God. That’s when he came with fellow Israelites and they joined together in worship in the presence of God because that is where the glory of God was manifested. Remember, then in the tabernacle, then in the temple there at Jerusalem. And he is far to the north, he is up on the border with Syria, so northern Israel there, far from Jerusalem. “When shall I come and appear before God?” This is my passionate desire but he is in great sorrow, “My tears have been my food day and night,” this has been ongoing. There are down times we have that come and go, and then there are those times that seem to come but they don’t go. Then he says, my tears have been my food. It’s like food you eat, you take it in regularly through the day. And into the night, my tears don’t stop. This situation has been so desired he can’t stop crying. I’m in tears all day and they go into the night, the tears don’t stop. This is a person that is really depressed. How do you function when you are a basket case as we would say. All tears, they have been my food, they are what I have, they keep running down, I taste them all day as they run down.
Then it’s added to, “While they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ ” This is a man who had a testimony about his God, He is a living God, He takes care of me, He meets my every need. He is a God who gives me joy, pleasure, and happiness. Oh yeah, I see it, it’s all over your face, tear-stained. Oh yeah, you got a great God. I tell you your God is either dead or he doesn’t care about you. It’s like Job’s comforters, it can come from fellow believers. Job’s comforters come but he says you are terrible comforters, you just add to my burden. All they would say is you must have sinned, no wonder God doesn’t want to do anything with you, He’s got to judge you. You add that to the enemy who are always glad to attack God’s children when things go wrong because to them that just proves your God is a nothing, cause he can’t even help you deal with life. They say to me all day long, where is your God, where is He, can’t He help you? Maybe He doesn’t live, maybe He’s just a statue or maybe He is a living God but He sure doesn’t care about you. Would a God that really loves you and cares about you leave you in this hopeless condition?
Verse 4, “These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.” These are gong back and forth. Started out with how he’s longing for God, then my wretched miserable condition added to by the attacks of those around me. Now I’m back, this is what I remember, “I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them,” or accompany them, “in procession to the house of God,” note this, “with the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.” I think back of those times when I joined with my fellow-believing Israelites, would go to the temple together. The presence of God was manifest there, we would celebrate in worshiping God, we had joy and thanksgiving. There is something in that. The psalmist is cut off from this now. You know, he is out here and there are people but they are not people that are helping him. He is cut off from that re-enforcing fellowship of the worship of God’s people, at the time when he needs it the most. He is at a low time, you now, at the bottom of the barrel. I would need that. In the Old Testament God intended for his people Israel, those were the people He called for Himself as a nation, to join together in worship. That is why we have those instructions that I referred to, for example, under David and Solomon of 1 Chronicles, for the worship, God’s people, giving forth of God’s word and the singing of truth, in God’s truth, and the worship of God, reinforcing one another in that. David remembers that. If I say David it’s the psalmist. Used to referring to him as the psalmist, we don’t know for sure whether he wrote this or not, he could have. It’s similar to what David would experience but others as well. He misses that, I remember it, those were the goods days, oh, how I long for them again, to be in the presence of God’s people. In the presence together of our God, worshiping Him, the joy that He brings and comes from that.
But the refrain. You know, sometimes you have to talk to yourself. We have addressed this, we looked into Philippians 4, I said it would be a background for what we are doing in the psalms. You know, sometimes you just have to get away and give yourself a talking to. You have done that, I have done that, depression effects us all. When you are going through it you think you are the only one and nobody understands and it’s no fun. What the psalmist reveals here, you take yourself aside and he says, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?” I mean, he has collapsed on the inside, I’m ‘sunk down’ you have in your margin. This is a terrible testimony of a man of God being used to write scripture who says the longing of his heart is God and on the inside he is totally broken. I’m in despair and this just hasn’t been this morning. It had been going on day and night, evidently day after day because these people who are questioning his relationship with the living God have been doing it all day long. This isn’t just something, well, I will get a good night sleep and I’ll feel better in the morning. He can’t even get a good night sleep as we will see. So the day runs into the night and the night runs into the day. Then I’m not getting enough sleep because I can’t sleep. Now I can’t think right, I’m just sinking deeper. Where do I go? Have you ever been there? I have been there. Have you ever been there? It is real! You think, will I ever get out of this?
Is there any hope, that is what the psalmist is saying here, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?” It’s like talking to yourself as though it’s a separate person. I’m going to take the inner person of me, set him in that chair and I’m going to give him a lecture. Why are you in despair, why have you become disturbed, why are you so crushed down? “Hope in God,” there it is, “for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence,” He will see me through this. You know what helps our faith grow? The further down to the bottom you get, because I have to take it by faith cause my feelings sure are no help. All I can think about is the despair I have, the hopelessness I feel. But the refrain. I have to talk to myself. Gil, why are you in despair, what is going on in there, why are you so crushed down? My heart, my emotions, the inner person that I am, here is what you have to do, hope in God. In each of these I have underlined that in my Bible, “Why are you in despair, O my soul?” and then underline, “Hope in God” cause that is what it’s all about. The reality of where I am but I have to maintain my hope in God. He will see me through, there’ll come a time when I’ll come out of it, I will get the help of His presence.
You think good, we could end the psalm. Read the first line of verse 6, “O my God, my soul is in despair within me.” You know what? You know all the truth, you know what to say, but I get up and you know what my next statement is? God I’m just as bad off as I was. You know, yeah, you know what’s true, this is where we are going back and forth. This is why this psalm is so helpful. We think there is a snap fix, get over it, it’s done. Well, one side of that is true, that’s verse 5, the refrain, “Hope in God,” why have you become disturbed within me, why am I churning on the inside, why can’t I keep from bawling all the time? God will see me through this, oh, okay, good, we can go on. Then the next verse, “O my God, my soul is in despair within me.” And it doesn’t go away.
“Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan,” here is how we know where he is. Then, “the land of the Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.” Mount Hermon that majestic mountain to the north of Israel, up in the region where New Testament Caesarea Philippi is, some of you have traveled in the Holy Land. These are where the headwaters of the Jordan River are, come out from Mount Hermon. So we know the region he is, we don’t know where Mount Mizar is. It means ‘little mount.’ Most writers say it wouldn’t be another name for Mount Hermon because the Jews wouldn’t speak of this mountain which was so important to them as a little mountain but it may refer to some of the smaller mountains around it as large majestic mountains have. But we know this is where he is, the headwaters of the Jordan.
So he is far removed from Jerusalem and the place where the center of worship for Israel was. Verse 7, he is talking about, as he picked up in verse 6, the crushing despair that’s caused by the isolation he experiences and the relentless opposition. You know, one of the things that we have to be careful of, sometimes we sort of get disappointed, then we get discouraged, get despaired, then we are depressed. Sometimes one of the things that happens is we begin to withdraw, we want to pull away. Things aren’t going right and I think part of the solution is I just don’t want to be around others right now, I don’t want to be with other believers, I don’t feel like going to church. One thing happens and people step away. Now the psalmist is here in the north, we don’t know why he is here or what brought him here. But the fact is he is cut off from that fellowship of like-minded believers who have that passion for God who could join with him in the worship of God and reinforce him. He is out here now, somewhat isolated and being pounded on by those who are attacking him. God didn’t intend… When He saved and called the nation Israel He put them together in a nation. They were bound together physically, as well as spiritually because they were a physical nation. But when He saved us what did He do? We are talking about this in Romans 11 (evening message). He put us in the body of Christ, in local churches, so we could interact together, exercise spiritual gifts together, so the body could function so we could grow. We want to realize the importance of this as he talks about his crushing despair and the relentless opposition. You don’t want to get out there alone. God doesn’t leave you but He never intended us to function in isolation. That is why He got Israel involved in corporate worship, if you will, this is why He put us together in a local church.
Verse 6, “O my God,” we might as well be honest with God, He knows what is going on. I don’t come to God in prayer and pretend everything is okay. I come to Him and tell Him, God I’m in despair, I.., my soul is in despair, Lord, my heart is crushed, my.., I.., I have nothing left inside, I can’t go, I don’t know if I can get up, I can’t stop crying. What’s-the-good-of-getting-out-of-bed kind of situation. So I’ve got to tell God. Now note, he hasn’t abandoned God, then get away and say, well, when I put my life back together I will get back in a right relationship with the Lord, then I will get back with God’s people. It’s not fixable that way, it’s not! Now we are talking about believers; for the unbelievers the only fix for them is to come to know the Lord. Then they hear this and say why should I come to know the Lord, sounds like they got the same kind of problems as me. Well, the same kind of problems but totally different solution. But he is honest with God. Tell God like it is, Lord, I’m in despair, Lord, I’m hopeless, there is no covering it, You know me as I am, I have lost all go. He desires God but he can’t get back where he needs to be. “Therefore I remember You”. That word ‘remember’ when used so often in the Old Testament doesn’t just mean you call something to mind. You call it to mind with a desire to act upon it, to be able to carry it out. I remember what God said in His word. Well, I remember it so I can do it. So I remember You from the land of the Jordan to the peaks of Mount Hermon and so on.
“Deep calls to deep,” so I remember God and that would carry him back to what went on when he joined in worship with God’s people. His life with God seemed so good, just all I expected it to be, I remember that. And then you read verse 7, “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me”. You know, at the headwaters of the Jordan so he is not out near the ocean. The headwaters of the Jordan as the waters rushed down there to form the Jordan River. They come down through those narrow valleys and they wash and crash against the sides. You know, there is a certain turmoil going on. That’s what he means, “deep calls the deep at the sound of Your waterfalls.” It’s God doing this, all Your breakers and Your ways have rolled over me. So he sees the waves crashing down and the turmoil and he says, Lord, that’s what’s going on inside me, my insides. You know, people will say to you, I’m churning, my insides are going 100 miles an hour, I don’t know what to do. That’s his picture and it is creating despair cause he can’t settle down, he is depressed, he’s at the bottom. You note here, it’s Your waterfalls, Your breakers, Your waves have rolled over me. He is not in the physical water but the physical water is a beautiful picture just like Isaiah wrote, the wicked are like the waves of the sea, constantly churning up evil. So here I see these waters come rushing down from Mount Hermon and they’re in this valley and back and forth and churning. Lord, that’s Your waterfalls, You have brought this into my life, they are Your breakers, they are Your waves have rolled over me. You see he hasn’t left God, so to speak, can’t understand why it seems like God has left him, but he is confident this is God at work. Now remember that, depression is part of God’s work in your life, my life. Sometimes when you go and talk to God about it, you think God I don’t understand this and I’m having a hard time dealing with it but I have to come back to His sovereignty. That is what the psalmist does here. In his despair, he reminds himself, this churning, this unrest, this despair hasn’t gone away. But I’m reminding myself its Your waves washing over me, its Your waterfalls crashing down on me, these have come from God. Because he hasn’t abandoned the sovereignty of God. That is where we come back to, is He sovereign or is He not?
I happen to be reading… I pulled a book off my shelf, that is what happens when I walk through my library, I happened to see a book, it had nothing to do with this, but it ended up fitting. I pulled it off and sat down in a chair just to skim through it and I end up reading the book, enjoyed reading the book but it wasn’t what I was intending to do. But the writer wrote about the sovereignty of God and He controls everything, but then he undid it all because he says, the details of your life are your choice, not God’s. It’s like it doesn’t matter what decision you make, either one will be good with God. Wait a minute, if He is sovereign in every situation and every choice I can’t pass it off.
So here the psalmist hasn’t let go of his good theology in the sense God is sovereign. Only He could have brought this into my life. Now I can’t understand why He would do that to me who longs for Him so much. Why does He want me so beaten down? You know what happens when we are at the bottom? We learn to trust God in a deeper, greater way cause I have no other hope. He’s beyond thinking I will get myself out of this, I will work out of this. I am beyond that but I still believe God is sovereign. You know what you do, you learn to trust Him. “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials,” that is where the psalmist is, in various trials, within, without, they are attacking him from without and he is going to pieces within. “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials.” Why? For “the testing of your faith produces endurance.” (James 1:2,3) The psalmist has to trust God because of the trial. We wouldn’t have to learn to trust Him if an evening in prayer would take care of it. I could get up in the morning, smile, and people would say, how are you doing? I have never been better, I talked it over with the Lord, I rolled all my cares over upon Him, and He cares for me, and this is a new day. Problem is I didn’t sleep and I’m overwhelmed with sorrow and I don’t feel like eating. No, no, not another day. I can’t even look forward to when this day is done because the night doesn’t get any better. Written for our encouragement.
Then he picks up with verse 8, “The Lord will command His lovingkindness.” How sad that I never learned to speak it with the Hebrew roll in your throat, ‘h,’ but as I said, my Hebrew professor said say it like you’re clearing your throat, oh, not like that Gil, but it’s ‘chesed,’ it’s covenant love, God’s special love. “The Lord will command,” His special love, “His lovingkindness in the daytime; and His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.” Well, wait a minute, that’s not reality. You have already told us the tears roll down all day long, now you are saying God will.., but I know I will come out of this. I know what the end will be. So I can’t leave hold of that. I’ve changed, my circumstances have changed, my feelings have changed, God hasn’t changed. So what He is willed for me today, this week, this month, this year, I don’t know how long, it will pass. He will be true to His word, He “will command His special love (for me) in the daytime and His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.” If I can’t sleep I might as well sing to God. I will give Him… my prayer will be the song I offer to Him, this would be one of them. He is writing it.
You know, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and the first thought is I’m frustrated, you have things to do tomorrow and I need to be fresh, need to have a good night’s sleep. The more I think of that the more wider awake you are, then you are worried about this or troubled by that. You know, I end up saying, Lord, I’m awake, I might as well go talk to You. I could do it in bed there but usually I like to get up and go to another place and now I open up the Word and read passages like this psalm. Lord, I have to first settle down, my mind is going so many directions I don’t know which direction I am going. Lord, I just have to quiet myself so I want to talk to You and I want to talk to You from Your word. This is His word to me and some of it I repeat back. Lord, this is me, I feel like I’m being crushed, that You are washing over me trouble after trouble. Right now I don’t feel like I have the grace to handle it, I’m becoming non-functional, but he goes back from that.
“The Lord will command,” I know He is putting the waves over me but He will command His lovingkindness and I will answer Him with my song and that will be the prayer to the God of my life. I love it! He is the living God, He is the God of my life, He gives me life, He loves me. “I will say to God my rock.” I love it! He’s my strength, He’s my foundation, He’s my security, my all. Up in verse 7, He is the one who was pouring the waterfalls of depression and discouragement over me. “I will say to God my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?’ ” You see the mixture that goes on, we need to be encouraged by that. It doesn’t mean, well, I can’t have any confidence with God until this depression goes away. I will say to my rock -- I’m not going to let go of the truth of God, He is the unchanging God, He is my rock. Burden of my heart is: God why have you forgotten me and that is how he feels. “Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” I am to have victory over the enemy. Lord, what they are saying just beats me down more, yes, Lord if I am down on the ground and they are stomping on me… cause I don’t have an answer, You seem to have forgotten me. I’ve been with believers who have asked me that, do you think the Lord has forgotten me? I come to a passage like this. You felt like it if you have been a believer very long. I don’t know, I feel like I’m in this alone. Now if the Lord was in this with me… but you see the conflict, “I will say to God my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?’ ” If He is a rock how could He have forgotten you? That is the turmoil you know that we go through. So we go through it. “Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me.” It’s like they just pummel me till every bone in my body was broken, that is how crushed I am on the inside. “While they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ ” It’s like Job, because he says, you know, I wish you weren’t here talking to me, and these were supposed to be his closer friends. You put the others out there and he talked about them, they don’t think anything of spitting on him. He’s… you know? Where is God? You have had a testimony, may have had a testimony in your family with relatives, at work, then your life seems to unravel. What kind of testimony can I have? I mean, they see me, I’m a basket case. Yeah, I went to visit him and all he did was cry, all she did was moan. Then they always said how great their God was, yeah, God will take care of me. They said their God was alive. I don’t know, if their God is alive I sure don’t want anything to do with Him, and if He is alive He sure doesn’t care about them. And those kind of things just stab you because now you think my testimony… What kind of testimony do I have and Lord, I’m even beginning to wonder. Why do I go mourning all day? Why have You forgotten me? If I’m honest there seems like there is truth to what they say yet I know it’s not true.
So you have the refrain again, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?” That is where he is. “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him. The help of my countenance and my God”. We see that, the despair hasn’t gone away, the crushing spirit hasn’t departed, but I’m going to hope in God. That is where our faith gets to be strengthened like iron. I won’t let go of that hope which is faith that God will do… I don’t need faith in what I’ve already received. Then I will be testifying to what He did. My faith is strengthened and I have to get up today and face my same discouraged, depressed state because God has chosen to keep the waters pouring over me.
Psalm 43, “Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case.” Psalm 43, he earnestly prays for God to rescue him. You don’t change that desire, we are human, I don’t want to be depressed, I don’t want to be discouraged. I don’t want to live my life like this but I will hold onto God while I live like this and cry out to Him to deliver me. “Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation; O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!” Everyone who’s against me and it seems like everybody is, the nation, the individual person, Lord intervene on my behalf, they lie. That is the way it goes. When people see you are down they pile on, they say all kind of lies about you to discourage you. It just happens, it’s the reality. They think they can win if they ruin you, if they add to the burden on you until you collapse but he says in verse 2, “You are the God of my strength.” I love the next statement, “Why have You rejected me”? This back and forth is so much reality and if you are honest and you think about it, you have been through this, if you haven’t you have something to look forward to because believers go through it, you can’t escape it, and the devil piles on.
“You are the God of my strength”, basically what he said when he called Him his rock in verse 9. “You are the God of my strength; why have you rejected me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me; let them bring me to Your holy hill and to Your dwelling places”. He wants to get back to the fellowship with God’s people and the worship of the living God. Need that as God’s purpose, He has him here for a time so he can grow in his faith right through this. God hasn’t thrown him out there to be destroyed, but He has brought him out there to strengthen his faith. We say, O God, strengthen my faith, make me a better testimony, but then the trial comes. And then we have to face it like this and it’s reality, we are human, He knows our frame, we are but dust. “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy: And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.” He never loses sight of that. God, God, God, my God, the living God, my rock, my strength, that is what keeps him going. It doesn’t say this will be acceptable. I will take it day by day, I’m not going to let You go. It’s like I’m holding on to God in my hopeless despair but I know the outcome. Verse 5, that refrain again, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him. The help of my countenance and my God.”
Whatever happens I know in the end God will bring me through it. For us as believers, with the revelation of the New Testament, doesn’t matter what happens. You know where we will end up? The glorious presence of God declaring His praise and glory. In the meantime I understand that part of His plan for me is to appreciate the importance of the fellowship of God’s people in worship. Oh, I can worship God at home and indeed we can and we do. But God has put us together in a fellowship of believers, don’t let yourself get cut off from that. If you can’t help it God’s grace provides the grace but you can expect there will be trials. Some of you are watching from home because you can’t be here and there is the disappointment of not being able to be here and that brings it’s own pressure. For all of us we have the final hope. God’s says some day He will gather us in His presence, we will gather around His throne, we will worship Him and praise Him, so we know how it comes out. “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him. The help of my countenance and my God”. I don’t make light of depression, I don’t want you to feel, oh, depression means I’m not spiritual. It may happen to the most spiritual people. Here’s the psalmist, used to write scripture and his depression was necessary so he could write it as it really is, because that is what God intended us to have, to sing, to be reading these thousands of year later so we would know. Yeah, I don’t have to think depression is something out of the ordinary. Doesn’t mean I have to come to like being depressed, we shouldn’t. But I’ll accept it from God -- shall we receive good from the hand of God and not evil, so He is the God who loves us. My hope is fixed on its promises and that will see me through day by day.

Let’s pray! Thank you, Lord, for the riches of Your word. You are the living God, You are our sufficiency, You are our strength. Lord, You know each one of us as we gather together worshiping You here in this auditorium and in homes and different places. Lord, You know what we are going through, You know us as we are, You know some are going through despair, discouragement, depression, the feeling of hopelessness, being cut off, being alone, the sense and feeling that maybe God has abandoned me. Lord, we are encouraged that the psalmist knew those feelings and he took hold of You because You would not let him go. He would not let You go. Your promises will be carried out in Your time. We trust You with a fixed hope, with a settled faith, that being an encouragement and a blessing as we go our way. In Christ’s name. Amen.