I want to start by pointing out that Psalms 42 and 43 are believed to be one psalm. It seems pretty obvious when you look at verses 5 and 11 of Psalm 42 and verse 5 of Psalm 43. All three verses ask the exact same question:
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him,
My help and my God.
All three verses ask the same question … “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are disquieted in me?” … and they all provide us with the same answer … “Hope in God” … hope in my help … hope in my God.
Now … you’ve probably heard me say this before and you will no doubt hear me say this again: “Pay attention to every word in the Bible.” Pay close attention to every word in the Bible.
Every word? Even words like “and” and “the” … words like “a” and “to”? Yep! Even words like “a” and “the” and “to” can make a significant difference when it comes to the meaning of what you’re hearing or reading. Trust me … pay careful attention to what you’re reading.
Take Psalms 42 and 43, for example. What stands out in Psalm 42 and 43? Well … the three verses that I just mentioned … verses 5 and 11 in Psalm 42 and verse 5 in Psalm 42. You might have noticed something else. The wording for all three verses is exactly same. This didn’t just happen by accident. When King David wrote this psalm, he did this for a reason. The repetition serves a very important purpose. Can you guess what that is? If King David repeated these lines over and over, it must mean that he wanted to draw our attention to them and the reason that King David wanted to draw our attention to them is that they must be very important to our understanding of what he was trying to convey to us through these two psalms, amen?
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” The noun “soul” is mentioned six times in Psalm 42 and 43. But notice something else. Remember … pay close attention. Did you notice something? It’s pretty significant. Every time that King David mentioned the word “soul,” he attached another word to it. What word is that? It’s a very small word … just two letters … easy to just skip by it. Do you see it yet?
It’s the word “my.” Every time King David mentioned the word “soul,” he didn’t call it “a soul” or “the soul” or “some soul.” He called it “my soul.” In other words, he didn’t describe it as some indiscriminate “soul” but as a very a very specific “soul” … his “soul.”
Have you ever been so down in the dumps … have you ever had the blues so bad … have you ever been so hopeless … so overwhelmed … so full of despair that even your soul is in agony? If you’ve never experience torment of the soul, trust me … it’s literally one ‘hell’ of a place to be. There are a lot of different kinds of torment and agony in the world but … for me … there is no torment like the torment of the soul. If you’ve never experienced it, I couldn’t describe it to you in a million years and if you have experienced it, then you know what I’m talking about and I don’t have to describe it to you.
You see … I always thought that I had a “soul” … but I always thought of it as some kind of energy or ghosty thing that lived inside of me somewhere, somehow … and when I died, it would rise out of me like some kind of Casper the Ghost thing that looked like me … you know, like you see in the cartoons. This ghosty thing would rise up out of my body and either hang around and roam the earth and scare people or float idyllically up to Heaven.
So … my “soul” was just there … living inside of me … going where I’m going … doing what I’m doing … and I never paid it any mind. I wasn’t “aware” of it so I didn’t think about it and certainly didn’t take care of it … I didn’t think I had to. My body needed to be taken care of … my body could get sick and break down … even die … but “souls” … they might be real but they don’t need attention … they don’t need to be taken care … they can’t get sick … or breakdown … or die … like my body can … or so I thought …. [pause] …
Until my soul got sick … very, very sick. I didn’t know that it was sick. Never occurred to me that my soul was sick … but I did know that something was wrong … very, very wrong. The worst part was that I couldn’t tell what was wrong … and neither could the doctors. I was in pain all the time but there wasn’t any part of my body that I could point to say, “Doc, it hurts here.” There was nothing to take a picture of … nothing that I or any doctor could put their finger on … and yet … something was terribly wrong. There was nothing physically wrong with me but I was in pain all the time. My mind was going all the time … it never stopped. I was restless, irritable, and discontent all the time. If I was awake, I was miserable … but as I said, there was nothing physically wrong with me.
The only way that I could describe it was chronic agony and exquisite torment … and no amount of booze or drugs could cure it. O sure, they could make it stop hurting … for awhile … but once the booze and the drugs wore off … that exquisite, indescribable pain … that misery and torment … would come screaming and raging back with a vengeance … just as strong and as painful as ever. Can I get a witness? Ever experience the torment of the soul?
As we are about to learn, no amount of money, no amount of sex, no amount of power or fame … no matter how strong or good looking you might be … nothing can cure your soul sickness except for one thing. Care to guess what it is? Well, verses 5 and 11 in Psalm 42 and verse 5 in Psalm 43 give us the cure, the antidote: Hope in God! But not hope in just any god. The cure for “my” soul sickness is “my” God.
As Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 prove, even kings … with huge armies at their command … servants waiting to cater to their every want and whim … with more wealth and power and status than any one human ought to have … even kings can get the blues and be crushed by despair. Do you think that is possible for movie stars and sports idols … with all their money and adoring fans … do you think that they ever get depressed? Do you think that billionaires … who can buy and sell companies like we buy socks … do you think that they ever feel despair?
What about you? Is it possible for a good, devout Christian who loves the Lord with all their heart and soul to be downcast and tormented? To be depressed and overwhelmed by life?
You bet! It’s part of life. It comes with being human. Do you think that Moses … once an Egyptian prince now a fugitive from justice … self-exiled to wander in the desert and herd sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro … do you think he ever got the blues? Or Hannah … unable to have children … the victim of constant taunts and ridicule … do you think she ever felt down-hearted? When Elijah was hiding in cave … a reward put on his head by Queen Jezebel, High Priestess of Baal and wife of one of Israel’s most wicked kings, Ahab … do you think Elijah was feeling a bit, well, overwhelmed by his situation? Do you think that Samson … blind, chained up like a dog in a Philistine prison … do you think he wept bitter tears of remorse and regret? Do you think that David … a man after God’s own heart … do you think that King David knew anything about the long, dark night of the soul?
Imagine your own son … your beloved oldest son … stealing half of your army and staging a coup against you. That’s what David’s son, Absalom, did. David had to flee from his own son … from his own palace … from his capitol city of Jerusalem … to escape from being captured by his own army.
We know that David wrote these two psalms while he was on the lamb from his own son and his own army because he mentions remembering God from “the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar” in verse 6 of Psalm 42. Hermon and Mount Mizar were located in the northern-most part of Israel … up by what is now modern day Jordan and Syria. David’s home, his palace, was located in the capitol city of Jerusalem … right in the heart of the southern kingdom of Judah. The places that David names … Jordan and Hermon and Mount Mizar … were well outside of the safety of his kingdom, Judah … but he was also a long ways off from Temple as well. Because of his son’s betrayal, he had to flee and his exile meant that he was cut off from his family, his wealth, his power … but most of all, he felt as though he had been cut off from God. Remember, the Temple represented God’s house here on earth. God lived in His Temple amongst His people and the Temple was physically located in Jerusalem. David is not only isolated physically and geographically, he feels that he is completely isolated spiritually. He is a long way from his home, and he is a long ways from God’s home.
“These things I remember as I pour out my soul,” David laments in Psalm 42, verse 4, “how I went with the throng and led them in procession to the House of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.” These memories bring him comfort but they also heighten his despair. He used to lead the people into the Temple … now he’s on the run. He used to lead worship in the Temple, singing and praising God with shouts and songs. Now he has to lay low and sneak around in the wilderness. His memories remind him of all that he once had … all that he left behind … family and friends … the Temple … God … and this constant realization causes his heart and soul to spiral down, down, down into deeper and deeper despair. He not only feels shut off from family and friends … he not only feels shut off from God … worse than all of this … he feels that God has forgotten him. “I say to God, my rock, why have You forgotten me?” he pleads in verse 9. “Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
In verse 10, David says that he has a deadly wound in his body. What kind of wound is he talking about? It’s a wound that you can’t see. It’s a wound to his heart. It feels like his very soul has been wounded. He is separated from all that is familiar to him … all that he knows and loves. He feels separated from his family, his friends, his city, his God. And, to add insult to his deadly injury, his adversaries taunt him.
Now, I want you to pause here and think about this. He feels separated from God and he feels like God has turned His back on him and his adversaries … one of them his own son … and others … men who served in the military with him, who fought wars with him, who served under his command … make fun of his obvious pain and despair: “Where is your God?” (v. 10) … taunts that suggest … possibly even confirm in David’s mind … that God has abandoned him and has truly forsaken him. Isn’t true that God had taken away everything that he valued most in his life?
To be sure, these taunts let David know that he has been abandoned and forsaken by his son, by his men and by officers that he once assumed were loyal to him and … and as we know, sticks and stones may break our bones but words can wound the heart and soul. Their taunts were like shots to his heart. They were painful. It felt like the whole world … his whole world at least … was kicking him while he was down and … as I already pointed out … they felt all the more painful because David feared that they may have a ring of truth to them.
And so, alone, isolated, on the run, hunted, he is overwhelmed and begins to grieve. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls. All your waves and breakers have swept over me” (v. 7). He is drowning in his grief. It feels as though his problems and emotions are about to swallow him up. All this is just too, too much for him.
And yet … [pause] …
And yet … as deep in despair as he was … as hopeless as he feels … something inside of him knows better … that something is his soul. “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (v. 1-2). Underneath his deluge of problems … underneath the moaning of his broken heart … his soul sings a note of hope. Even though his tears have been his food both day and night … even though people mock him and ask him why God has abandoned him … his soul knows that that is not true.
How do we keep from drowning in our sea of troubles? How do we keep our heads above raging waters? How do we keep going in the midst of the storms of life? We listen to our soul.
What is the first thing that David’s soul tells him to do? It tells him to pray, to talk to God. If his soul thirsts for God … if his soul longs for God … then the place to go to get your thirst for God slaked, to put an end to your longing for God is to go to God, am I right? David not only goes to God in prayer but he is honest with God. “I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully, because the enemy oppresses me?’” (v. 9).
Once again, pay attention to the words. In the midst of lifting up his complaint to God, he calls God “my rock.” By calling God his “rock,” I believe that it is his soul, his spirit, that is reminding him that despite all appearances … despite what David might think with his mind, believe in his heart that God … like a rock …is and was and always will be … that God … like a rock … is the same yesterday, today, and forever … that God, like a rock is solid and immoveable. And his soul, by reminding him that God is his rock, reminds him that God is not his persecutor or enemy but his fortress, his defense … that God is neither the cause of his trouble nor takes delight in his suffering as his enemies and adversaries have been doing but is the “rock” that he can lean upon and depend upon to get him through this seemingly hopeless and impossible time. Even though his tears have been his food both day and night … even though it seems like his circumstances will never change … even though it “feels” like God has forgotten him … by speaking honestly to God about how he feels, he reminds himself that God … who has been his rock and strength in days past … is still his rock and strength today … and will continue to be his rock and strength forever.
Another thing that David’s spirit or soul does is to remind him of God’s “hesed” … his unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love for him. “By day,” says David, “the Lord commands His hesed [… His steadfast, unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love], and at night His song” … God’s song … “is in me, a prayer to the God of my life” (v.8).
That, my brothers and sister, is absolutely beautiful. “By day” the Lord surrounds David with His steadfast love and “at night” His love fills the air like a song while he sleeps and it fills David’s heart with hope. “By day … at night” … awake or asleep … whether he’s aware of it or not, he is surrounded with God’s love and filled with the song of God’s love.
Remember what I said about paying careful attention to the words. David said that at night “his song” … meaning God’s song … is with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (v. 8). The song is not David’s song … it is God’s song and God song is a prayer to God … not David’s prayer to God but God’s prayer to God. So, what is David saying? That God is praying a prayer to Himself? No. His soul … which is the Spirit of God in him … is praying to God on David’s behalf. The Apostle Paul explained it like this: “Likewise the Spirit” … capital “S” … “helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs” or, as David calls it, “songs” … “too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).
David’s hope comes from his “rock,” from God’s unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love for him, from God’s song in him. Even if his circumstances “look” as if God has forgotten him, his spirit, his soul says “no way!”
When you remember God’s “hesed” … when you remember God’s unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love for you … when you cling to God’s promises, it reminds you that God is always clinging to you. Just as we look for something to cling to when the ocean threatens to sweep us out to sea, we cling tightly to the great truths of God and His love for us when the waves of life threaten to sweep us out into the sea of despair. Our trust and our faith in the truths of God, our faith and trust in the “hesed” … or steadfast love of God … is the ballast for our little boat of life. They are what keep us from capsizing in the whirlpool of our emotions and feelings.
And God is not only able to keep us afloat … He puts a song in our hearts. Look again at verse 8. When does God put a song in our hearts? When does He put a prayer to the God our lives in our hearts? At night! At night … the darkest part of the day. At night … when our fear is the greatest. At night … when we’re tossing and turning in bed, rehashing the horrors of the day and making up new terrors for the dawn and the days ahead … God puts a song in us, a prayer to the God our lives. Can I get a witness? Have any you experienced God’s song in you or felt your spirit praying to the God of your life in the midst of your deepest fear and agony?
God alone is able to give His people songs in the night. He alone can enable us to endure life’s difficulties with a distinctive spirit. To someone who has never experienced God song in the night, what I’m saying will come off as sounding ridiculous and nonsensical … but to those of us who have heard God’s song in us, God’s songs of the night are a powerful testimony to the grace and sustaining power of God. The lyrics and the melodies of God’s songs of the night may have been forged in the furnace of difficulty but they are not filled with the moaning and lament of suffering but with the words and notes of faith and hope.
Speaking of songs of the night. One night a musician stopped at the Starbucks on 51st and Broadway in New York City. It is considered to be one of the busiest and most lucrative Starbucks location in the world. Because of that, it is a famous spot for street musicians to drop in and play. As you might guess, the tips are quite substantial and there’s always the hope that one might get “discovered.”
So, the customers really weren’t paying much attention one night as one man sang, accompanied by his friend on an electronic keyboard. During the set, a woman sitting next to the keyboard was singing and swaying along to the music. After the set was over, the woman came up to the performing duo and apologized for singing along and perhaps distracting them while they were doing their best to entertain the customers in Starbucks. “I hope it didn’t bother you,” she apologized.
“No,” the man playing the keyboard replied. “In fact, we love it when people sing along. Would you like to sing the next selection with us?”
Delighted, the woman accepted.
“What song would you like to sing?” the keyboardist asked.
“Do you know any hymns?” she asked.
The keyboardist had been raised in the church, so he was delighted and asked her, “Do you know ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’?”
“Absolutely,” she smiled.
They began to sing: “Why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come?”
All the customers in Starbucks were transfixed.
“I sing because I’m happy …
“I sing because I’m free … for His eye is on the Sparrow … and I know He watches me.”
At the end, the whole store broke out in deafening applause. As the moment passed and everyone went back to their Frappuccino soy lattes and their conversations, the woman explained to the two performers that it was a miracle that the keyboardist had picked that particular hymn to sing. “That was my daughter’s favorite song. She died of a brain tumor last week. She was only 16 years old.” Stunned, the keyboardist asked the woman if she was okay. “No … not really,” she said, “but I’m gonna be okay. I’ve just got to keep trusting the Lord and singing His songs and everything’s gonna be just fine.” She knows what David means when he says that God’s song is with him, amen?
As David experiences the agony of the present, he recalls the joy and ecstasy of the past. He remembers being surrounded by like-minded and like-hearted brothers and sisters singing and praising the Lord. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul,” David writes, “how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving” (v.4).
One of the devil’s favorite tools is despair! When we get down, he convinces us that the last thing we want to do is to be around people … especially happy, phony church people where you have to be all up and smiling and pretending like everything A-Okay because nobody really wants to hear all your troubles and woes … especially not at church, am I right? Besides, when your world is falling apart, the happiness of other people only heightens your pain and suffering … so you stay home. You isolate.
Despair is like quicksand. The more you isolate, the more lonely and depressed you get. The more lonely and depressed you get, the more you isolate … and the further you sink into the quicksand of despair, the harder it is to escape.
We’ve all seen nature shows on TV. The lionesses crouch patiently in the bushes watching a herd of gazelle, just waiting for one of them to move away from the herd … and then … pow! … dinner for the pride! That’s how the devil works. “Be alert and of sober mind,” the Apostle Peter warns us. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1st Peter 5:8).
When you isolate, the devil has you right were he wants you, believe me. When you isolate, the only two people you have to listen to are yourself and the devil. The devil’s sole purpose is to keep you down and to keep you isolated and the last thing he wants is for you to go to church, let me tell you. He can’t physically stop you but he sure whisper in your ear and mess with your mind. He’ll gladly give you a thousand and one reasons why you shouldn’t go to church … and, at some point, he’s gonna find one that hits the mark. In Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes Satan as shooting fiery arrows at our hearts and at our minds … a very apt picture, wouldn’t you agree?
It’s easy to go to church when you’re up for it, amen? When you’re feeling good … but let me tell you, it is way, way, way, WAY more important for you to go to church when you don’t fee likel it … trust me. It is absolutely crucial that you dig deep, that you pray for God to give you the strength to roust yourself up out of that bed, get dressed, and literally drag yourself into church if you have to. It’s important to go to church but it’s way, way more important to go to church when you don’t want to. Trust me, I know. But I also know that it’s the devil whose trying to hold me back from going to church when I am in despair because he knows what will happen if I do go to church and join with the multitude who are celebrating and shouting God’s praises and singing songs of thanksgiving. The best workouts I’ve had at the gym were the ones where I didn’t want to go. The best AA meetings I’ve been to are the ones where I didn’t want to go. My best worship experiences have been the ones where I didn’t want to go … not because anything significant happened there … it’s just that it feels like the world is being lifted off my shoulders the minute I pull into the parking lot, that devil loses his grip on me the minute I walk in the door and get a smile from a brother or sister. The devil knows that I will feel better when I leave the church than when I came in because the music, because the praising, because my brothers and sisters will remind me that my hope is in God’s “hesed” … His steadfast, unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love … who puts a song in me that will drown out the siren call of the devil if I seek it out … and I will always find it because God is always putting a song in me if I have the spiritual ears to hear it … and the church is a great place to check out my spiritual hearing and getting it working again, amen?
As David’s psalms prove, anybody can get those way-down spiritual blues … which shouldn’t be too surprising because David was human, just like the rest of us, and getting those way-down spiritual blues is just part of the human condition … and the best place to be when your soul longs for God, when your soul thirsts for God, when your soul is cast down is to be celebrating and singing God’s praises in God’s House with God’s people, amen?
Listen … I know how hard it can be to keep going when the devil’s doing his best to keep you down. I’ve been there. It tough … tough, tough, tough … I know. It feels like you’re dragging a 100-ton boulder up the side of a mountain. It feels like you’ve got two or three houses on your head. It can feel like you’re carrying the whole world on your shoulders … like the waves and billows of life are going to sweep you away at any moment. Believe me, I understand … and I also understand what happens if you stay chained to that boulder, if you keep carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.
That’s why reading the Bible is so important. We see that we are not alone … that even kings like David have problems that can get them down … but we can also learn from kings like David what they did to get out of the quicksand of their despair, what they did when their souls longed for God, when their souls were cast down.
And when we pray, God’s Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit within us, will put a song in us and will pray right along side of us. I promise that God’s hesed … God’s steadfast, unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love … will give you the strength you need to get out of bed, to get dressed, to get in the car and go to His house where you can be with Him and be with His people. I can make this promise because He’s done it for me many, many times. God will answer that prayer because He knows what will happen once you get to His house … once you get a hug, once you start singing, once you hear His Word.
Right now, we have to meet like this… by computer … but even this has been inspiring and uplifting for me. I look forward to seeing all of you, worshipping with all of you, hearing about God’s “hesed” once again, sharing with you what God is doing in my life and hearing what God is doing in your life. I’m glad that we have this technology but I also have to be honest with you … I miss going to church. I am so looking forward to the day when we will get to pass through the doors of our church once again and enter the House of God and be surrounded by His people as we sing and praise God for getting us through this pandemic, amen?
When the devil has you down, do like David. When your soul thirst and longs for God, when your soul is cast down and it seems like your problems are going to swallow you up and nobody cares, do what David did. Remember. Remember the times when you felt closest to God. Remember all the times when God answered your prayers to remind you that He is answering your prayers now. Remember God’s “hesed” … His steadfast, unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love … for you. Remember the times when you thought that you would never be able to worship and praise Him again … but you did. Remember the times that His rod and His staff comforted you as you passed through other valleys. Remember how it felt like your troubles and your despair would never end … but they did.
And then do what David did and trust God to carry you through your present storms of life to the other side where you will once again get to go to the holy House of God and stand before His altar, and sing praises to the Rock of your salvation.
If God feels far away, the question is, “Who moved?” If Jesus feels far away, the question is, “Who moved?” If the Holy Spirit feels far away, the question is still the same … and the answer is still the same. God didn’t move. He is here, now, present. Jesus didn’t move. He is here, now, present. And the Holy Spirit didn’t move. He is here, now, present. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … here … now … present …
Binding up the broken hearted …
Lifting up the fallen …
Offering beauty instead of ashes …
Offering the oil of joy instead of mourning …
Offering a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness …
Offering you life instead of death …
And because we know that God, that Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are here … now … present … we also know what the future holds …
The lion will lay down with the lamb …
The wicked will cease their troubling ….
The weary will find rest …
We will survive the journey …
There will be no more sorrow …
No more tears …
No more hatred …
No more evil …
No more hunger …
No more terror …
No more fear …
No more war …
No more hopelessness …
No more sickness …
No more disease …
No more pandemic …
No more doubt …
No more … no more … no more, amen?
No more because our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
Yes! Jesus is coming again to make things right. Everything will be okay. Until then, we can follow David’s wonderful example and advice and stand on the Rock of our Salvation.
When hope is all there is, it’s all we need, amen?
Let us pray:
Hear our cry, O Lord:
Listen to our prayers. From the depth of our hearts we call to You. We call to You as our hearts grow faint. Lead us to the rock that is higher than us … for You are our refuge … a strong, indestructible tower against our foes.
We long to dwell in Your tent forever and to take shelter under Your wings. As the deer pants for streams of water, so our souls pant for you, O God … our souls thirst for You … for You are the Living God.
We put our hope in You and in Your “hesed” … Your steadfast, unwavering, never-changing, unconditional love … and we praise You, our Rock, our Savior in the midst of our storms, in the midst of our despair.
In the name of Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection give us hope of eternal life and who sent us Your Holy Spirit to comfort and guide us we pray.
And all of who trust in God’s hesed say with me, amen!
