Seeking A Severe Savior - Psalm 42-43 Series

Psalm 42 For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah. 1 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 6 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 (the salvation of my face) and my God.

Psalm 43:1 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.

Introduction

Review

Does anyone remember that song “Deep Calling Deep” by Margaret Becker? I used to love that song (at least the first 20 seconds – the rest of it was kind of boring musically). It is a whole song based on Psalm 42. And the chorus and the title came from verse 7. Today is our third week studying through Psalms 42-43, but so far I haven’t talked yet about this statement in 42:7.

Psalm 42:7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls.

This is what happens when you listen to a contemporary Christian song before actually studying the passage. It turns out the only part of the song I liked was the part that was a misinterpretation of Scripture. She took that phrase deep calls to deep to mean something deep down in her soul was calling out to the depths of God’s grace and truth. That concept is not a bad summary of the rest of the psalm, so it’s still a good song, but I don’t think that is what this particular phrase means. Look at the immediate context.

42:7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

In the ancient Jewish mind, the word deep was a very foreboding, scary word. The Jews were not a sea-going people, and so they thought of the ocean as a place that was utterly inhospitable to man. It was a place of danger and chaos and darkness and death, and so that word is very often used in contexts of judgment, or to describe the severity of God in dealing with men. That word is what developed into the New Testament concept of the abyss. And so the idea of the depths of the abyss calling out to even deeper, darker reaches of the abyss, coupled with the idea of waves and breakers and waterfalls crashing down and sweeping over him – those are all images that the psalmist is using to describe the magnitude of his dark, miserable, terrifying, hopeless situation in the strongest terms he can come up with. Our man here is deeply depressed.

“If he’s such a godly man, why doesn’t he just consider it pure joy, knowing that the testing of his faith produces perseverance?”

Scripture has so much to say about rejoicing in times of suffering – why doesn’t this guy just do that – realize the spiritual value of suffering and count it all joy?