This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Ignite the Light Ministries Radio and Podcast. It is our mission to help listeners develop a deeper relationship with Jesus by sharing what the Bible says and what it means. We aim to encourage and equip you to serve others, share the gospel, and reflect Christ in every aspect of your life. I'm Pastor Wyatt Cud.
Thank you for tuning in.
So today we are going to be looking at Psalm 42. Psalm 42.
So for context, Psalm 42 was written by David.
Now David certainly had his fair share of trouble, pain, and lament, and this psalm is a psalm of lament. And the exact circumstances of this psalm are unspecified, but we see at the beginning says for the director of music, Maschil for the sons of Korah is. For the director of music, that means this is a song. This is a song that meant to be sung. It's meant to be sung.
Now, masculine. That is a Hebrew word that is transliterated to English. There's no direct one-for-one translation in English, so we just leave it as a Hebrew word. And some speculate that it means an instruction or wisely crafted. For the sons of Korah, now the sons of Korah, the Korahites, they were the helpers of the Levites.
That's in the Old Testament, the priestly class. They would have been the sons of Korah would have been the performers to this song.
So, as always, we're going to do a solid read through and just let Scripture speak for itself, and then we'll talk about it.
So, Psalm forty-two. Starting here at verse one, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have become my food, day and night, while people say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember, as I pour out my soul.
How I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One, with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? 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 Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep, in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love; at night his song is with me. A prayer to the God of my life, I say to my to God, my Rock. Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
My bones suffer mortal agony, as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God? Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?" Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior, and my God.
So we've been going through the Book of Colossians, and the Colossians is an epistle, a letter of the apostles in the new in the new a letter from Paul, an apostle in the New Testament.
Now the epistles are largely instructional, meant for church doctrine and knowing the right way of conducting ourselves in the world. But the Psalms are different. The Psalms are songs. Hymns, laments, poetry—they're meant to speak to our emotion and our thinking as well. The Psalms are inspired word of God, and they are for us to feel and to think with God.
They can be counterintuitive at times, but this should be expected, given their purpose. It's an odd thing. It's an odd thing to be a redeemed person living in the truth of Jesus, yet still surrounded by pain, suffering, and the brokenness of our world. What we have here it's kind of like a one way phone conversation from David to God. It's what David wants God to know, but what we don't see is God's response in this psalm.
Now, since it's inspired, it means there's something here that God wants us to know about this one-way phone conversation. There's something here God wants us to know. There's something about David's expression of misery, suffering, grief, and despair that God wants us to know.
So, the question we ask as good interpreters is, "What does God want me to learn from this song?" So, let's try to answer that question. What do we know about the circumstance that David's in? There's not enough details dependent to any one event, but we do know he's in deep pain, he's in grief, depression, he's mourning. Verse seven it says God has allowed waves and breakers to sweep over him.
Now there's tons of circumstances we can go go through in our lives that will lead us to such a place, sickness. The loss of health, the death of someone close, having a falling out with somebody we care about, loss of a job—like the list goes on.
So, what are we supposed to learn? And I believe it's this: we can bring our pain to God. Bring your pain to God. And this is exactly what David is doing in this Psalm of Laments, and it itself is an act of worship. And I believe David models how to bring our pain to God, how to go through seasons of depression well, how to grieve and mourn well.
There are five ways we see in this passage that we can bring our pain to God. The first. David is honest. He's honest with himself, and he's honest with God. Verse six it says, "My soul is downcast within me," plainly stating the reality of the situation to himself and to God.
Verse seven, "All your waves and breakers have swept over me." The waves and breakers of life—they're crashing against him, so he's downcast. He's experiencing the weight of sorrow and sadness that originate with the fallen nature of our world. He's experiencing the deep and painful disconnect from the reality of God and his yearning to be with Him, and the fallen, broken state of our world. Things do not work the way they were originally designed. There's sickness, aging.
There's death. There's violence. There's selfishness. There's poverty. Things do not work the way they were originally designed, and if we have even an ounce of sanity, the reality of this fallen world should break our hearts at times.
So, it's good to mourn. It's okay to feel sadness. It's okay to go through seasons of grief and depression. And if that's you this morning, I want to affirm. There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with going through that. God's heart, in fact, is broken in light of the fallenness of our world, and we reflect God when our hearts are also broken for it and because of it. Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus, John 11. Jesus mourned over the state of Jerusalem as he was riding in to be crucified. Luke nineteen.
Jesus, the perfect Son of God that we strive to be like, was also downcast, and he taught, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Matthew five. If you are downcast this morning, do not bottle it up. Do not bury it. We can be honest with ourselves and with God. We can bring it all to God, though not part of the original design.
Sadness and grieving at times are the only natural and rational response to the brokenness.
So we take this to God. We ought to be honest with God. Verse nine: I say to God, my Rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go on mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
So again, with the psalms, we have two things happening: we have thinking and we have feeling happening.
Now we know that David does not cognitively think or believe that God has actually forgotten him. In light of verse eight, he says, "By day the Lord directs his love; at night his song is with me." David does not think God has abandoned him, but it sure feels like it. God, why have you forgotten me? Why must I mourn? Why must I bear this weight?
Why must I suffer the oppression of the enemy? God, why? Why, in your perfect love, would you allow this? I don't understand. God wants us to pray prayers like that, honest prayers.
God wants us to tell Him how we feel, how the pain feels, because He cares about us. God wants us to have time to outpour our feelings honestly to Him.
So, to illustrate this, I want to point us to the book of Job for a second. In the book of Job, Job's friends are trying to console him and also correct him, and they're doing a rather poor job. And Job says in verse six twenty six, "Why do you intend to rebuke my words when the words of one in despair belong to the wind?" And what Job is saying here is. Would you please stop, like, nitpicking my words and and trying to correct what what I'm saying? When I'm in agony, I'm in great pain.
I I might say something wrong. I might say something a little unorthodox. Let me express it. Let me get it out so the wind can take it. There will be time later to get it right.
But allow me the grace to say the wrong things sometimes, so I can honestly express how it feels. There's a time to correct. There's a time to comfort. They're not always the same, and God is our great comforter. This is what the psalmist is doing.
This is what God wants us to be able to do with Him. God wants to know your heart. And you don't have to worry about saying everything perfect. God's not sitting there judging you with a clipboard, because what you feel and what you know to be true don't exactly line up. Even Jesus hung from the cross, quoting the psalm, saying, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Now Jesus knows and believes better than anyone.
God is not abandoned. God is not left him. God is with him. But it's how he feels, and he's perfectly comfortable expressing this to God. The best friends out there, the best friends out there are the ones that we can call at any time and just vent to.
Those are the best friends, aren't they? Even better is you know when it's really bad when they can zip it and just be silent and not try to correct things but can just sit there and be present with us in the pain. And I'd say even better than this is a friend who knows exactly what we're going through. Congregation, that's your Father in Heaven. We can be honest.
We can be honest with ourselves, and we can be honest with God.
So, the next thing we see David doing, David affirms God's sovereign love, despite how he feels. Verse eight, it says, "By day the Lord directs his love; at night his songs are with me." A prayer to the God of my life.
Now David affirms what he knows to be true about God. God is not absent in these moments, and I think David does something even a little deeper here. Verse seven: All of your waves and breakers have swept over me. These waves that sweep over me, that are battering me, they too belong to God. God is sovereign.
God is in control of the situation, and for whatever reason, God has allowed this. I may fail to understand. I may not grasp God's reasons, but my understanding is not required for me to have faith that there is a reason. David, though he may not feel it, affirms the truth. He cognitively knows God is in control, and the next thing he does goes in tandem with this.
David ministers to himself, verse five. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. Ministering to yourself, positive self-talk to that person in the mirror is so so important, especially right before you're about to go to the gym, and you don't want to go, man.
Guys, gentlemen, especially you know you got to throw up some poses too, you know, and maybe your arms look like Kermit the Frogs, but like that's why we go. But it doesn't matter. We're going. You got to throw some poses up, anyways. You get in the mirror and you say you're a monster.
You're gonna get in there and you're gonna press that bar through the ceiling. You got it? Yes, sir. Then maybe you get in there, you peter out halfway through, or you know you stub your toe on a fifty pound weight. Couldn't be me.
But we got through the door, didn't we? The little pep talk it got us through the door. Positive self talk. Why am I so are you downcast? Put your hope in God.
Now we may not always feel the truth of what we know we should tell ourselves, but that is why we tell ourselves the truth. That person looking at you back in the mirror—that's the person we have to spend the most amount of time with, and we have a choice. What kind of relationship am I going to have with them? Might as well decide to be their very best friend. Speaking to them like they're worthy of love, worthy of encouragement, worthy of a break every now and again.
Speak to yourself the same way as if speaking to a close friend. You can do it out loud. It doesn't even matter if you're in public anymore. You can just take one of these guys and be like, you know, you're the best man. Like, you know, and they'll think you're talking to a friend.
You can do it in public. But how we talk to ourselves, especially in moments of deep pain, is so important. David is ministering to himself, reminding himself of genuine, authentic hope he has in God, and he's not just blowing smoke. No, like we wouldn't lie to our friend, would we?
So we don't lie to ourselves either. But we don't have to. We can remind ourselves of authentic hope in God. And we do this by remembering His promises that He's never going to leave us, He's never going to forsake us, that He is our great provider. And we also do this by remembering authentic encounters that we have had with God, which segues to the next point that we see David doing.
David remembers; he remembers when he could feel God clearly. Verse four: These things I remember, I as I pour out my soul. How I used to go in the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One, with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Verse six: My soul is downcast; therefore, I will remember you. From the land of Jordan, the heights of of Hermon, from Mount Mizar, and David, in his deep moments of anguish, when he can't feel God, he recalls, he remembers the times when he could clearly feel God's presence in the temple, in creation, when he could clearly perceive God.
He could feel God when he's surrounded by the congregation, everybody praising. His name. He could feel God when he was at the mountains of Herman, in sight of the mighty creation that God made, at the tremendous waterfall of Mount Mizar. These are real places, by the way, and the waterfall there is is huge. Look it up when you get home.
It's breathtaking. And David remembers God's presence in these places, and we can do the same when our feelings of God are crowded out. By feelings of deep anguish, grief, and sorrow, we minister to ourselves and remember when. Remember when, my soul. Remember that time at church when God was telling the speaker like exactly what he needed to say to me.
Like, what does that happen anywhere else? Like, that was him. Remember that time you almost died and God pulled you out at the last second. That was him. Remember when you prayed a prayer that you thought was too big, but God answered it.
That was him. Remember when God asked you to step out of the boat in faith, and you were scared, but you did it anyways, and then you walked on water. That was him. Remember when there was somebody that you needed to talk to. And the Holy Spirit told you things about them that you couldn't have known, or maybe it was like someone else entirely took over.
You can't even remember what you said, but it was the perfect thing. That was God. Remember when you stared up at the night sky, unable to count the vastness of the stars and total awe and magnitude of creation? That was Him. That was God.
God in our lives has a perfect track record, and it can be so comforting in our painful moments to remember when, remember when God did this. Even before us, we can look in the Bible and see God's perfect faithfulness to all the believers that came before us. Remember God's faithfulness to you. In our anguish, we can minister to ourselves by remembering these moments. We may not feel him today, but we know he is there, still in control.
And I will yet praise his mighty works again and again. In my pain, I might not be able to praise him today the way I want, but I know I will yet praise him again.
So the next thing we see, David thirsts. Forgotten. Verse seven. It says, "Deep calls to deep." Now, the most important decision of our lives is our decision to follow Christ. The second most important decision is who you marry.
If you're unmarried, there's no need to rush it. It's it's too important to rush. If it were not for my wife, I really don't think I'd be here today. God is my first reason to fight a man. She's a close second.
Deep calls to deep, like in marriage. There's a desire to know deeply and to be deeply known. To share everything with this other person and be understood. And we're hurt. When our partner isn't trying to understand us, fights will come about when we misunderstand each other.
Because we both desire to share everything and be understood, to know deeply and to be deeply known. Deep calls to deep. It's the same with God. God desires for us to go deep with Him to take the next step. To know him deeply and allow him to deeply know us.
Now, of course, God knows everything. God is omniscient, but we can still hold things back from him. We can go to our secret place where we think we are not seen, and you know, leave Jesus in the living room. We can go to our secret place where we hide idols, or and it's a place we can bury our pain and bottle it up. We can go to our secret place, but see, God wants to know us even there.
Again, God is omniscient. That's not what I'm talking about. It's the voluntary welcoming of God into this secret place, and God loves you too much to kick the door down. He stands at the door and he knocks. God wants us to trust Him enough to invite Him into our secret place, to trust that He's not there to judge or condemn on account of what happened on the cross, and to trust that He's actually here to make things better, to heal us.
Deep calls to deep, invite God into the secret place. Gosh, you will know intimacy with God. Unlike any other. Verse one: David thirsts for God as the deer pants for streams of water.
So my soul pants for You, my God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go and meet with God? So what I'm about to say next might be hard to hear. Why does God allow these waves?
Why does God allow my anguish? Why did God allow this particular thing to happen? And the truth is, I think the most honest theologians would say, for this particular instance, why God allowed this, we don't really know. For some circumstances, we might never know till we're on the other side with God in heaven.
Now, why God allows pain and suffering? This is on account of human free will, so so that we have the choice to actually love God back. And when God gives humans free will, it opens the door for the potential of sin, for the potential of evil. But God decided that a world with the potential of evil is better than building a world with a bunch of robots who just do what they're told. No, see, God allows human free will so that we can authentically love Him back.
Hey there, I hope this sermon has enriched your day. If you like this message, I want to personally invite you to join us for Sunday worship. We have two locations in Virginia: Trinity Methodist Church in Concord and Mount Comfort Methodist Church in Appomattox. Come join us Sunday morning at 9:45, and we will help you get connected. As always, I'm Pastor Wyatt Hud.
Thank you for tuning in.
