March 10, 2002 Psalm 42-43
For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, Where is your God?" 4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. 5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. 8 By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" 10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
1 Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men. 2 You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? 3 Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. 4 Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God. 5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” the little blue engine said, as it chugged up the hill to deliver the toys to the village on the other side of the valley. This well known story features a little train who loads up his cars with some toys who had been stranded and tries to get them over a hill to some children in a valley. As the train approaches the hill, it is unsure as to whether it will make it or not. But the closer it gets, the further it goes, it continues to pump itself up by saying “I think I can.” As it finally nears the top, the little blue engine then finally says, “I know I can and I knew I could.” It had to talk itself through it.
Haven’t most of us done this at one time in our life or another? Whether it was calling a girl for a date, going through with a surgery, or getting pumped up for a big game, we have all had to “talk ourselves through it.” That’s what Psalms 42-43 seem to be doing as well. The Sons of Korah were facing difficult times. The recurring theme of the Psalm is - Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? They also said, My tears have been my food day and night. They didn’t know how they were going to get through their difficult times, but they tried to talk themselves through it. So today we’ll see how you can -
Talk Yourself Through The Sorrow with Tomorrow
I. First ask, “what is the source of your sorrow?”
How many of you have ever heard of the “Sons of Korah?” This is one of those intriguing stories in the Bible for me - because of the history of these men. The actual Korah comes to the forefront in Numbers 16. It says,
Korah . . and 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders who had been appointed members of the council. . . came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD’s assembly?” 4 When Moses heard this, he fell facedown. 5 Then he said to Korah and all his followers: . . . “You and all your followers are to appear before the LORD tomorrow—you and they and Aaron. 17 Each man is to take his censer and put incense in it—250 censers in all—and present it before the LORD. You and Aaron are to present your censers also.” 18 So each man took his censer, put fire and incense in it, and stood with Moses and Aaron at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 19 When Korah had gathered all his followers in opposition to them at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, the glory of the LORD appeared to the entire assembly. 20 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 21 “Separate yourselves from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” . . . 25 Moses . . . warned the assembly, “Move back from the tents of these wicked men! Do not touch anything belonging to them, or you will be swept away because of all their sins.” 27 So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing with their wives, children and little ones at the entrances to their tents. 28 Then Moses said, “This is how you will know that the LORD has sent me to do all these things and that it was not my idea: 29 If these men die a natural death and experience only what usually happens to men, then the LORD has not sent me. 30 But if the LORD brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the grave, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt.” 31 As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart 32 and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah’s men and all their possessions. 33 They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. 34 At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, “The earth is going to swallow us too!” 35 And fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.
However, Numbers 26 adds a footnote - The line of Korah, however, did not die out. Whereas Dathan’s and Abiram’s family backed their decision, Korah’s did not. While Korah was trying to lead a rebellion against Moses, some of his own children stood their ground and said, “no, father. We are not going to follow you!” How sad it must have been to see their own father and family then get swallowed in rebellion and unbelief! What a sad history for his descendants to have recorded in Scripture the failure of their forefather. It was one of Korah’s descendants - the Levites - that wrote this psalm.
But that wasn’t even the topic of their grief in today’s psalms. These two psalms, which are actually connected by a common theme, reflect another sorrow they had. In verse one and two they state, As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Vs. 6 continues on, I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. These two verses give us a little background as to WHERE the sons of Korah were writing from - the heights of Hermon. The headwaters of the Jordan started from Mt. Hermon on the northern border of Israel. As they were living in Northern Israel, the Levitical Sons of Korah were sad because they could not get to Jerusalem and worship the Lord. You see, back in Old Testament times, there was only one official place to celebrate important festivals like the Passover - and that was at the temple in Jerusalem. Imagine for instance, that all of your family was coming home for Easter, but you had to work. That same feeling of not being able to go home was felt by the Sons of Korah.
Why couldn’t they? Although we don’t know for sure the time that this psalm was written, it would seem to indicate that this was a result of the split in the kingdom. When Jeroboam led a rebellion against Solomon’s son Rehoboam, ten northern tribes followed his lead. Once this was done, Jeroboam set up two calves to worship on the northern and southern borders of Israel so his people would worship THERE instead of in Jerusalem. He didn’t want his people going to Jerusalem. Yet the descendants of Korah, even during this time of rebellion remained faithful to the true Lord. Since they were no longer permitted to go down to Jerusalem, they missed their opportunity to worship. These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. And what made it worse was that all of the heathen idol worshipers were saying to them, Where is your God? These jabs started to get at them, as even they started to ask the question in Psalm 43, Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Just as water flowed down from Mt. Hermon to the Jordan, they felt that all your waves and breakers have swept over me. They were being drowned by God’s waves of discipline.
You have to admire these sons of Korah, don’t you? It really saddened them over the fact that they couldn’t worship with the multitude like they once did. They had an intense desire to worship. Instead of just worshiping a false god at the closest place, they decided to be ostracized and ridiculed by sticking with the true worship that was God pleasing. It would be nice to see such a zeal to come and worship today.
When you compare the things that you get sad over to what the Sons of Korah were saddened over, does that sadden you? When you ask yourself, “why are you downcast, oh my soul?”, what answer do you get? When I find myself becoming sad when my favorite sports team loses, that is sad. When my children have a temper tantrum over what kind of cartoon they get to watch, it is a sad sight to see. When you find yourself getting depressed over your waist line or over a girlfriend or a raise, how does it compare to what saddened the Sons of Korah? It’s sad to see what makes us sad. When we ask ourselves, “why are you downcast, oh my soul,” it is a good question to ask. It makes us examine whether we really have any God pleasing reason to be depressed. When we talk ourselves through it, it gives us an opportunity to re-examine why we are sad in the first place.
II. Then ask, “God what do you have to say?”
Sorrow and depression can come from a number of things. Whether it’s unresolved guilt, a physical thing where your enzymes aren’t hitting right, or whatever. It might be God pleasing, and it might not be. But just finding the SOURCE of your sorrow isn’t enough to help you deal with it, right? Sometimes you can no you have no real REASON to be sorrowful and depressed, but you are anyway.
The question is, what do you do? How does the world deal with it? The easiest way is to find a short term solution. Take a drink or take a drug. Sometimes it’s a punishment thing. I was treated rotten. I feel rotten. So I’m going to abuse my own body and punish myself by getting drunk. Sometimes it’s an escape thing. When I drink, the pressure seems to lift from my shoulders. If you aren’t a drinker, you might try to escape from your depression by just crying it out. Or maybe you might try to talk it out on the internet or with a professional therapist. These things might have short term effects, it might seem to work for a short time, but they usually don’t last long, do they?
What did the Sons of Korah do in their times of sorrow and depression? We already stated it. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Notice that in this time of sorrow, the sons of Korah desperately sought out - like a starving deer going to Mt. Hermon - two things - the first one was fellowship with God. And so he prayed to God in Psalm 43, Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. They asked God to send out a rescue and research party of light and truth - to lead them back to the holy mountain of worship in Jerusalem. That would go a long way in making them feel better.
Psalm 119 says, “your Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.” Jesus stated in John 12:46, I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. With these cross references the meaning and example of the Sons of Korah is clear. When your soul is downcast, the first place to go is to the light of God’s Word - to seek out Christ. How often is it though, that we do this? When is the last time that you were having a really bummer day, and you opened your Bible and started reading it? I think most of us are trained to pray and pray and pray, which is good and God pleasing. That’s what the Sons of Korah did in today’s Psalm. But then we leave it at that. The Sons of Korah tell you, “seek the Lord!” Why? They answer their own question - Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. So often depression comes from a feeling of not being loved - of being deserted - of being helpless. But when you read the light of God’s Word - the sweet Gospel - and come to the altar of God - to the cross, it says, “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. . . . his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. . . . for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son. . . he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” When you get in the Word God talks to you, assures you that he loves you, that he forgave you for whatever thing you can’t forgive yourself for, and that he has a special place in heaven prepared for you. When you open your Bible and read the Psalms or the Gospels during a time of depression, that light will penetrate your soul and help chase the blues away.
The sons of Korah went on to say, These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. The second reason they wanted to get back to Jerusalem was to live and celebrate and worship their God with fellow believers. You wonder why people are depressed, when in the midst of their sorrow they go to a smokey and dark bar with unbelievers and listen to depressing music? What good does that do? Martin Luther used to praise music so highly because of it’s effect on the soul. Think about how uplifting it feels to come to church and sing songs that say, “Jesus Your Blood and Righteousness, my beauty are, my glorious dress”, or “God loved the world so that He gave, His only Son the lost to save!” When you get the opportunity to surround yourself with fellow believers, their hope and their faith is able to encourage you. They are here to help you through difficult times. When you are going through sadness, there is no better time to get into worship and talk to fellow believers as that. Don’t be too proud to share your sorrow. Don’t be afraid to talk through the sorrow.
The sons of Korah were going through difficult times. So they prayed. They sought the Lord. And they yearned to spend time with fellow believers. The sad thing was, that whatever the situation - even though they WANTED to, they didn’t have the freedom of getting back to Jerusalem and doing so. But it was that hope of tomorrow - of one day worshiping on the holy mountain - that kept them going. They talked themselves through it - Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. It was that hope of knowing they had a LIVING God and SAVIOR - as opposed to the idols around them - that gave them strength in times of sorrow. Even if they never made it back to the physical Jerusalem, they still had the hope of praising God in the heavenly Jerusalem that kept them going.
In my year and a half here, it seems to me like this is one of the most difficult times that our congregation is going through. I know the spiritual issues we face, and the physical ones as well. Instead of getting easier, the ministry is becoming more challenging and difficult as the world becomes more and more wicked. I honestly catch myself saying, “how is this going to work?” Sometimes I really get depressed. But then I ask myself, “why are you downcast, O my soul? Jesus still died for me. We are still going to heaven. God is still alive.” And when I experience a wonderful worship service with fellow Christians, I then realize that now is not the time to give up. Now is the time to examine our sorrows. Pray about it. Get into God’s Word, and seek the support of your fellow Christians. Now is the time to bond together. This will assure us that there is hope! Our Savior and our God who died is still alive - even in the middle of Lent. It may seem like it’s an uphill battle, but God is on our side. And with faith in Christ it’s all down hill from here - straight into heaven. So talk yourself through the sorrow with tomorrow! Amen.
