I came up the steps in the gym building a little over a week ago listening to Shane and Shane sing “As a Deer.” As I hit the landing, looking straight ahead out of the windows, I saw a deer standing at the edge of the woods as if it was staring at me. That was the exact moment, Shane and Shane were singing the part, As the deer pants for the water. I had been reading Psalm 421 and 43 in thinking about this sermon. I knew right away there was no relationship between that moment and this sermon.
I had no idea at that time what the next few days would hold. I’ve come to see that, to some degree, we are going to live out the psalms. It has been a rough few years for everybody. I think we have come to see the importance of the gathered church singing, praying, and preaching the Word.
The Sons of Korah in the superscription of Psalm 42 were in the time of David gatekeepers and musicians in the house of God. They loved the house of God and gathering with the people of God. It flavors their songs. Here is how they wrote of it in Psalm 84, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God then dwell in the tents of wickedness (84:10).2
Most scholars feel that Psalms 42 and 43 belong together but at some point came were divided for liturgical purposes. I want to take the Psalms together because they are bound together by a common refrain (42:5,11; 43:5).3
The refrain serves to divide the two psalms into 3 sections.4 The occasion of the psalms is impossible to know. Whatever the occasion, the psalmist is separated from the house of God and thus God’s Presence and the company of God’s people. In this situation, he longs to be with the people of God in the special Presence of God at the house of God.
Let’s walk through these two Psalms and then make some applications.
In the first section (42:1-5), the psalmist likens his longing to be in the presence of God to a deer panting after water (1-2). His longing is intensified by the ridicule of people saying, Where is your God (3)? He is not being asked where God is, but is being ridiculed for his longing for a God who is obviously nowhere to be found. You are longing for God! Where he is? To soften the blow of such taunting, the psalmist remembered how he led the people of God in joyful procession with shouts and songs during the annual pilgrimage festivals (4).5There were three annual pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Pentecost (Weeks), and Tabernacles (Booths) (Lv. 23).
It is hard for us to imagine how the worship of ancient Israel at the tabernacle and later the temple could be joyful and full of praise, but it was. They gathered and shouted and sang and sacrificed their way into deeper and deeper communion with the living God as the cloud rested on the tabernacle (cf. 2). They felt and saw God’s Presence in the company of the His people. Perhaps, they had more joy in worship with the gathered people of God than you do?
The psalmist closes the stanza with the refrain, asking himself, Why are your cast down, O my soul…? (v5).
He opens the second stanza (42:6-11) using the words of the refrain, My soul is cast down within me (6). The psalmist is the guy who actually tells you how he is when you ask. He is cast down—humbled, bent, low, despairing. Again he remembers God, but from a place that is directionally as far as he can get from the house of God (6b).
Deep calls to Deep (7) draws on the language of Genesis 1:2 when the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. Everything the psalmist knew that represented divine order was now like the unformed world at creation. This is a picture of all that is overwhelming.6 In the belly of the fish Jonah quoted this verse, All your waves and your billows passed over me (Jon. 2:3). Like Jonah, the psalmist did not separate his situation from the control of God: your waterfalls, your breakers, and your waves (7).
Yet in middle of his distress and disordered life, he remembered that he is in covenant with God and draws on that truth. By day the LORD directs his steadfast love to him and by night his song is with him (8a). Though the God is absolutely in control of his distressful, chaotic situation, he knows that God loves him and sings over him.
He turns God’s love for him and his song over him into prayer to God who is his life (8b). His life situation seems contrary to the truth he knows. He laments, my rock; Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy (9)? He remembered God (4, 6), but it seemed that God had forgotten him.
Here we learn at bit more about those who taunt him. They are his adversaries who constantly say, Where is your God (10)? The spiritual and emotional pressure impacted him physically. He compares it to a deadly wound in his bones.7
Again we hear the refrain, as he directs his soul to hope in God (11).
In the final stanza (43:1-5), the laments of the first two sections are answered in the prayer of the psalmist. You can see this in the pronoun shift. In the first two sections, the dialogue is primarily internal.8 The pronouns are mostly first person. The psalmist is talking to himself. In the last section the lament has turned into external dialogue with God. The pronouns are primarily second person.
His prayer is transformative. There is a thread of lament in verse 2 to show that lament should give way to prayer. He cries out to God to vindicate and defend him against the ungodly (lo hasid) (1). We learn more about his accusers here. They are people who do not know God, who are not in covenant with God.
Petition and lament are tied together here, with the one being the impetuous for the other. Vindicate me….for you are the God in whom I take refuge (2). If that is the case, Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning? We may understand the flow of the logic a bit better if we read verse 2 before verse 1. Why have your rejected me? Why do I go about mourning? Vindicate me…. Lament lead to petition.
He further petitions God to send out [His] light and [His] truth to lead him to the place of God’s presence (3) that he may approach God through sacrifice and praise (4).
The refrain is transformed by prayer (43:5). While the words of the refrain remain the same, the accent on the refrain changes.9 In the lament section, the accent is on the first part, the downcast soul (42:5,11). No longer is the psalmist going along with his soul. He rebels against himself. He reasons, if God vindicates him and leads him, why should he be downcast? Rather, he will hope in God, an expectation that God will again bring him to the place of praise.
Despair and depression were not uncommon in the world of the Bible and are not strangers to us today. C.H. Spurgeon suffered from depression.10 He wanted people to know because he thought it might help them in some way. You know those super-spiritual people who have it all-together and have all the answers? Stay away from them.
At 22, Spurgeon was preaching to thousands in the Surrey Gardens Music Hall when pranksters yelled, “fire.” A stampede ensued that left 7 people dead and 28 severely injured. His anguish was so great that his wife feared he would never preach again. He also suffered physically from Bright’s Disease, gout, rheumatism, and neuritis. His ailments kept him out of the pulpit one-third of the time. If that was not enough, his critics attacked him saying, he was under the judgment of God.
In all this, Spurgeon believed God had a good purpose in his suffering, and he sought to know that purpose. He wrote, When the gold knows why …it is in the fire … it will thank the Refiner for putting it on the crucible and, and will find a sweet satisfaction even in the flames. He felt we could never be like Jesus if God did not treat us like him. He wrote, Do not expect to be crowned with gold where he was crowned with thorns? Shall lilies grow for you and briars for him?
Spurgeon found comfort for his soul in the sufferings of Jesus. In a sermon titled, “The Tenderness of Jesus,” He said, I desire to speak, as a weak and suffering preacher, of the High Priest who is full of compassion. Jesus is touched, not with the feeling of your strength, but of your infirmity.
Despair and depression can arise from physical, emotional, and/or spiritual sources. Perhaps, we know the cause, or the cause may remain unknown. Whatever the case, the pain is common and all too real. I want to draw out a few thoughts from these psalms to help us cope with the seasons is despondency.
We don’t know why the psalmist was separated from the house of God, but it created much despair in his life. Adding to his longing to be in the Presence God, his enemies used the occasion to taunt him with the accusation, Where is your God (42:3b, 10b)? If God is your God, if he is real and powerful, why doesn’t he deliver you?
Dear Friend, these are the same insults the Savior fielded as he hung on the cross. Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying,… He trust in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him, For he said, I am the Son of God (Mt. 27:43). Did God have purpose in the things the Son suffered? Yes, He had purpose. Is it too much to reason, then, God does all things for a purpose? Don’t waste your pain.
Though his enemies hurled their insults at the psalmist, he took comfort in the fact that nothing he was experiencing was beyond the compassionate control of God. He said in essence, My world has come apart and this trouble is your waterfalls, your breakers, and your waves (7).
In that context, the psalmist affirmed God’s steadfast love, loving kindness, covenant love for him and God’s singing over his life (8). We cannot miss this connection.
What a strange comfort, that in one and the same event his enemies meant to demean and ridicule him, while God meant to demonstrate his great love for him and sing his joyous songs over him.
What do you do when your world comes apart? How do you answer the taunts of your enemies when they say, Where is your God? By saying, He would do something but he can’t. Or he had no idea this would happen. He loves you so but has determined to do nothing to help. What comfort is that?
It is a blessed comfort to know that God is right in the middle of my trouble with me. The waves that are rolling over me are his waves. Kiss the waves! In his waves, he will demonstrate his loving kindness to me by day and sing over me by night. I am not wiser than God or more loving and caring than God. I know this, He has promised to love me and do good to me. Therefore, I will wait and hope in him. God has purpose in our pain.
In the dark places of life, we tend to lose a sense of God’s presence. Much of Psalm 42 is an internal dialogue. The psalmist longed to come and appear before God (2b). He remembered the joyful procession to the house of God, which is the same as appearing before God (4). He remembered God from the land of Jordan and Hermon from Mount Mizar (6b), the place of his isolation, the farthest point from Jerusalem and the face of God.
The psalmist remembered God. The problem was he felt God had forgotten him (9) and rejected him (43:2). He felt separated from the Presence of God and even cast off by God. Notice in breaking out of his internal dialogue, he says to the God who is his rock, “Why have you forgotten me (9a)?” and to the God who is his refuge, “Why have you rejected me (43:2a)?
The fact that he is talking to God is the first indication that God is there. The absence of God is an irrational thought. The psalmist understood theologically that the living God is Present. Yet, in the waves of deepest despair, he lost any sense of God’s presence. Calling on God is the first indication that he is Present.
We also need to think rightly about God. If his absence, him forgetting us, and him rejecting us is irrational, how are we to think rightly about God? Look only to the how the psalmist addresses God: the living God (2), my God (5,11, 43:5), my salvation (5,11, 43:5), God of my life (8b) my rock (9), my refuge (43:2a), my exceeding joy (43:4a). Remember God in the dark places of life and call on him.
The psalmist rightly longs for the Presence of the God in the company of God’s people. He rightly recalls those praise-filled occasions when he went to the house of God with the people of God (4).
Our tendency is to self-isolate when we are downcast. He rightly prays for God to send light and truth that will bring him to God’s Presence in the company of God people (43:3). In approaching God, who is his joy, he will offer praise (43:4).
If the devil can keep you from gathering with the saints, he will do it. Have you ever noticed how stuff just comes up on Sunday morning? You have to ask yourself, why not Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, etc., why every Sunday? We often make it way too easy for the evil one to hinder us from gathering with the people of God. God is Present in a way with his gathered people that you will not experience elsewhere. He gave His Spirit to the gathered church. Gather while you can.
The refrain shows the Psalmist moving from listening to himself to talking to himself. As we work through the stanzas, the refrain gains momentum. In the dryness of his separation from the face of God, he preached to himself (42:5). In the depths, he preached to himself (11). Finally, rising up from the depths he cried out to God, and preached to himself. Suddenly, to be downcast and in turmoil became unreasonable. He will hope rather in God, for he will again praise him (43:5).
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, One of the problems for the despairing is we listen to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. David, in effect, says, “Self, listen for a moment to what I have to say—Why are you so cast down?” Know how to handle yourself, question yourself, and preach to yourself. Remind yourself of who God is, what God has done, and what God has promised to do. We must understand that this self of ours—this other man within us has got to be handled; do not listen to him! Turn on him! Speak to him! Remind him of what you know. So rather than listening to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you—you must take control.11 Preach to yourself, don’t listen to yourself.
The psalmist at length turned his lament to prayer. God is not far away. You can talk to him. While prayer may have a therapeutic value, it is not simply or primarily therapy. It is calling on the God with whom were are in covenant whose loves us is far beyond our ability to comprehend (8). This God is powerful to vindicate us in a way that God alone can defend, prosecute the enemy, and execute his verdict.12 He will do it. If we are going to be God’s people in this world, we stand in constant need of vindication, defense, and deliverance. Pray for vindication (43:1).
Pray for light and truth. The light (43:3) of God answers, Why do I go about mourning (9b, 43:2b)? Mourning (qadar) is dark. Why do I go about in the dark? I’ll ask God for light. Truth is God acting in covenant faithfulness. Truth, God’s faithfulness, answers God having forgotten (9) and having rejected (43:2) us. No circumstance can take us from his memory and for no reason will he cast us off. He has promised by this light and truth to bring you safely into his presence to give you joy and fill your heart with praise (43:3). Hold fast to the truth. God is trustworthy.