Summer Psalms - Psalm 42

So Psalm 42 is where we are today. So you can turn there in your Bibles, the words will come up on the screen. And I've called this message a Psalm for Sadness. A Psalm for Sadness. Now, that's not very creative.

Like, I could have been a lot more creative, surely. I'm sure you would have come up with a better title. But hopefully it is relatable. And if it's not relatable for you, if it's not where you're feeling this morning, you might be thinking, I should have stayed home. I'm happy it is.

I guarantee a great message or a great encouragement for you, for someone in your world, someone in your life who might be struggling at the moment. And so we're going to read the psalm together, and then we'll work through the verses and then we'll draw it together at the end. But as we open God's Word, let's pray. Oh, God, we thank youk for your word. We thank youk for this psalm.

Father. We pray wherever we're sitting today, however we come in, however we're feeling, whatever the story of our week has been, Lord, we just make ourselves settled now and ready to hear from youm. We ask Holy Spirit that yout would speak to us today, that we wouldn't just hear hear good words, but we would hear your word that it would change our lives. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. So Psalm 42 says this for the choir director. A psalm of the descendants of Korah. Now we have again a little context clue. It tells us who it's written by.

And it is a psalm of the descendants of Korah. The these are people who are from the tribe of Levi, and they are set apart as singers in the temple. And this is one of their songs. Says this as the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God.

When can I go and stand before Him? Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, where is this God of yours? My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be. I walked among the crowds of worshipers leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of great celebration. Why am I so discouraged?

Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again. My Savior and my God. Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you even from the distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar.

I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me. And though each night and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life. O God, my rock. I cry, why have you forgotten me?

Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?

Their taunts break my bones. They scoff, where is this God of yours? Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God.

I'll praise him again. My Savior and my God. And so, if we turn our attention to the opening words of this psalm, we have this vivid image. The psalmist writes of a deer as a deer pants for water. Now, I don't know much about deer.

There are probably people here who know far more than I do. But the image is not of a deer that is simply a little bit thick. Thirsty. I picture because it's more. You know something?

I'm more familiar with that dog who, having gone for a long walk or a run with their owner, now arrives home. And that panting, that desperate panting that they have where they look like if you. If I don't get some water, I'm going to collapse. And this is the image we have of the deer, as the psalmist writes, as the deer pants for water. Now, my understanding is that if a deer is panting like that, it's probably because it's been running for its life from a predator.

It's taken off. And now, having reached across a rugged landscape, having reached safety, it's now desperate for water. And the psalmist says, this is how I feel. This is how desperate for God I am. Do you notice how he doesn't say, oh, God, I'm desperate for your rescue, or I'm desperate to.

To see what you can do. But instead, the psalmist writes, I'm desperate for you, just like the deer for the water. And we see that the reason for this desperation is that there's great sadness. The psalmist gives us a second picture and says this. They say that day and night, the only food I have to eat are my tears.

I wonder if you can picture that maybe at some point in your life that has been your journey or your story, amidst the tears that are streaming down your face, that you've had no appetite for food. And we see why the psalmist feels like this, because he tells us in verse 3 and 4, he says that my enemies taunt me. They look at my sadness, and they Say, where is this God of yours? We saw that same message, didn't we, in Psalm 3 a few weeks ago, as we saw this psalm written by David, who faced the same taunting and perhaps had this fear within his spirit. Well, what if God has abandoned me?

What if God has? What if the taunts of my enemies are true, that God has forsaken me, that he's abandoned me? And I think often in our sadness or depression or our hurt, we can feel the same. And we cry out to God and we say, where is God? But here the psalmist feels not only cut off from God, he also feels cut off from the people of God, because he says this in verse 4.

My heart is breaking as I remember how I used to be. I walked among the crowd of worshipers leading a great procession to the house of God, singing for joy and giving thanks amid the sound of a great celebration. So we see that he's cut off from the people of God, and he's also cut off from the house of God. And this is causing him this incredible despair, this worry, this hurt, because he thinks back to how things used to be. Maybe you've had that moment in life, too.

You think, oh, if only I could go back to where I used to be. I could go back to that time in my life where I felt so close to God, where I felt God was using me, where I felt God, the Holy Spirit, leading me and directing me. If only I could go back to that. And this is the story of the psalmist, and we don't really know why. Some commentators suggest that maybe he was sick and so he was cut off from the house of God.

Some suggest that maybe he was in hiding. Others suggest that this psalm was written during the time of the Babylonian captivity, that he was cut off from the house of God, from the temple where he worshipped. But we don't really know. We don't really know for certain. But what we see here in the psalmist is this loneliness and this despair.

Now, the thing that stood out to me this week as we looked at this, Pastor James led us through last week a psalm of Lament. And if you missed that, I'd encourage you to listen to it, because Lament is something we don't often talk about in church life. We talk about encouraging upbeat things, and we think, oh, lament, that's sad. We don't want to focus in on that. But what we often see in the psalms of Lament is we see this pattern where the psalmist starts pouring out their heart to God, crying out to God, saying, God, where are you?

Why are things happening in my life? Why are these things going wrong? And then the second half of the psalm, we often see a renewal of faith, a confidence. They say, but I'll put my hope in God. God is the one who lifts my head.

God is great. He's worthy of my praise. And so we see this pattern of lament where it starts in despair, but it finishes in joy and it finishes in celebration. But what I find encouraging and perhaps really raw and relatable about this psalm is maybe you noticed it doesn't follow that same trajectory. There are moments of desperation.

One moment he proclaims his trust in God, and the next moment he cries out, why have you forgotten me? And then we see a declaration of trust again, and then we see an exasperated cry. And I think part of the reason why it's so relatable for us, because any of you who have traveled through sorrow or grief or depression or sadness will know that it's not linear. It's not, I was sad, and then I'm always happy. It's not.

Every day was hard, and then every day was easy. We. We see these waves again. One day you'll feel the light breaking through and you'll feel great, and then the next day you'll be drowning again. And we see the psalmist expresses this reality, and yet in the midst of it, he does something powerful because he doesn't just sit in his sorrow, he actually speaks to himself.

And we have that for us in verse 5, where he says, why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I'll put my hope in God. It's like the psalmist is saying to himself, come on, put your hope in God. I'll praise him again, even though I don't feel like it.

Even though I feel discouraged and my heart is sad, I'll praise him again because he is my Saviour and my God. I love the fact that the psalmist questions his own emotions, doesn't disregard them, but challenges them. And then he preaches to himself. He says to himself, the truth is, God has been faithful before and he'll be faithful again.

But we see, as I just said with the flow of this psalm, that that doesn't immediately fix anything because he goes on in verse 6 and says, Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you. Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will make a choice to remember you. Remember, at the start of this series, we said one of the things that the Psalms teaches us is that our emotions are important and that God wants to hear the cries of our heart. But one of the things that the world says to us is that your emotions are true and valid above everything else. They should be the thing that guides and directs your life.

But the psalmist challenges that. He says, I'm feeling deeply discouraged, but I will remember you, even though it doesn't feel like it at the moment. I'm going to remind myself of who you are. God. And then he gives us, in verse seven, another powerful image.

He speaks of the sound of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. Now, if you've been at the beach and you've been out in the surf, particularly on a rough day, and you've been dumped by waves, you'll know this feeling. You feel out of control. You feel like you can't even work out which way is up and which way is down. And this is how the psalmist describes how he's feeling.

He speaks of being dumped, wave after wave, of the suffering that comes. But I want you to notice there something really important. He calls them God's waves. Your waves and your tides are surging over me. Because even in the deepest of sorrow, the psalmist acknowledges something really important, that God is still in control.

Because often in sorrow and grief, we feel God. Why is everything out of control? Why aren't you working in my life? Why aren't you doing anything? But the psalmist says, God is still in control.

He's still sovereign. And then we see a flicker of hope again. He says, but each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me. And through each night, I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life even in the darkness. Anyone who has gone through a season of grief and depression would tell you that often the times where it feels the heaviest is in the dark of night.

It's when the light is gone and when you're left in your own thoughts and the busyness of the day has disappeared. And here, in this moment, the psalmist finds comfort in singing songs to God. I love the fact that Scripture tells us just to make a joyful noise. It doesn't say it has to be a tuneful noise. Praise God for that.

In the night, the psalmist sings songs of praise to God. Even when he feels abandoned by God, he declares what he knows to be true. And then we see the psalm closes up again. We have this refrain still with his enemies taunting him, he reprises the refrain and says, why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?

I Will put my hope in God. I'll praise him again. My Savior and my God. You see, he's still struggling with sorrow. We get to the end of the psalm.

It's not some unrelatable thing where he reminds himself of the truth of God and then he's perfectly happy. He's still struggling in sorrow at the end of this psalm. But instead of choosing his sorrow, he chooses hope. He preaches to his own soul. He reminds himself again that even in the sadness, God is worthy of his praise.

Now, that's a fairly heavy psalm. It's quite heavy. But there are some really important truths here that I want us to grab a hold of today. And I want to spend the last 10 minutes or so unpacking those with you. So there are three thoughts for you today that about what Psalm 42 teaches us.

And we have those coming up on the screen for you. Firstly, Psalm 42 teaches us that sadness is a reality in a broken world. I wonder if you've ever heard Christians, particularly Pentecostals, called those happy clapping people. And it's this image, it's this idea, it's this cliche that all Christians get together on a Sunday morning and they put big smiles on their faces and they jump around and dance and clap. I'd be happy with some more dancing here on a Sunday morning.

So go for it. I think the worship team would agree. But they get there and there's some, like, disconnect with the realities of life. There's some fakeness. It's like either these Christians are blissfully unaware of the realities of life, or they're all taking part in some ridiculous charade that they get together and they all pretend to be happy.

Now, I don't want to rain in your parade. If you've come in this morning and you're feeling joyous and happy and you're like, isn't God good? And then I come and sit in the sermon and now I feel guilty about being happy. I should have stayed in bed and not gone to church. I don't want you to feel guilty because the takeaway for you today is a reminder for how we love and we care and we support those in our joyful Christian community.

Community who are walking journeys of sadness, who are suffering from depression, who might be battling with grief. That's the takeaway for us who might be feeling particularly joyful this morning. But see, there are people here who would say, yeah, I'm joyful in knowing the Lord, my Saviour, but I'm still sad. I'm joyful, but I'm still battling grief or depression or whatever it is, because the statistics tell us, and I'd suggest to you this morning, that we have a bit of a sadness pandemic as a country. Now, we don't like to talk about pandemics, do we?

So we won't labor the point. But research tells us that one in five Australians is experiencing anxiety or depression at any given time. And among those who are among young people between the ages of 16 to 24, it's even higher. It's two in five. So it's nearly 40% of young people.

Research also tells us that Australians report higher rates of burnout than almost any other country in the world, with six in 10 feeling exhausted by the weight of.

Now, those are quite sobering statistics, and I'd say to you, the church and Christian community is not immune from that. There are people in this room, there are people in your family, and you're definitely in your workplace or in your friendship circle who are walking that journey. And often in Christian community, we can feel like I have to hide that because if I'm not joyful, if I'm not happy all the time, then maybe it's because I don't have enough faith. Maybe it's somehow I'm a substandard Christian. I should just trust God more.

I should just have more faith. And I think sometimes Christians and churches have been guilty of presenting that image that those who might be struggling with grief or with depression or sadness should just have more faith. But it's not at all what scripture tells us. In fact, we look through God's word time and time again, and we see great figures of faith, in fact, people that we would aspire to be like, people who we would say, if only I could just have a little bit of faith like them. If only I could see God do the amazing things in my life like he did in their life.

We see these figures of faith over and over and over again through scripture. Scripture. Let me just give you a couple of examples. This morning we find Elijah, a man who saw God do amazing things, collapsing under a tree in the wilderness, asking God to take his life. We read of Job in his suffering, longing for his life to end, struggling to understand why God would allow such pain.

Jeremiah is called the Weeping Prophet. He wrestles with deep sorrow as he cries out to God, wishing he'd never been born, crushed by the weight of feeling rejected and the weight of the calling on his life. We read of Paul, one of the most influential figures in the New Testament, he speaks about being burdened beyond his ability to endure, to the point that he despaired of even life itself. And then as we open up the Psalms, we read of the psalmist, chief among them, David, a God who is described as having been after God's own heart, who pours out his grief, he cries out in fear, loneliness and sorrow, and often describes feeling abandoned and overwhelmed.

Now, if that is you this morning, if you say, well, I can totally identify with how they're feeling, we want you as a church to hear that you are not alone, that there is no shame in feeling that way, and that there are people here who want to love you and care for you and walk that journey with you and that God hears you and he sees you and he loves you. And that's the story we see in each of those examples, that as they cried out to God, as they brought their worries and their fears and their grief and their depression before God, that He surrounds them with love and he walks that journey with them. Which brings us to our second thought from this psalm. Secondly, there's no simple cure, but there is a way forward. Now, maybe that's hard for you to hear this morning, but perhaps it's encouraging.

This sermon won't take you from sadness to joy. Look, if that was what I had been asked to do this morning, I would probably retire, take an early retirement, because it just. It's not going to happen. The psalm shows us this. And I think sometimes in the depths of despair, we can think, if I could just read an encouraging Bible verse, or if I could just hear a good sermon, then I would snap out of it and feel better.

And those things are essential, and they build our faith, and they are where we should turn in times of depression and sadness and discouragement. But sometimes when those things don't fix it, we then feel like God doesn't care. We feel like. But if God really loved me, if the Holy Spirit was really working in my life, then reading that verse or hearing that sermon would fix it entirely. And so we absolutely believe as a church that God can miraculously restore you from sadness and depression.

But we also believe that God can work in you even in the midst of it, that he still has a plan and a purpose in your story. Because the reality is, more often than not, it's a journey. It's a road that we walk. You know, I praise God for doctors and for specialists and for the medication that he's given us to help us on that journey. And I encourage you, if that's where you're at.

And if that's the journey you're on, the need for that type of support isn't a lack of faith. Praise God for specialists and people that he has gifted with incredible minds to help us with those challenges. But this psalm does also, in tandem with that, give us a scriptural response as well, because we see it in two things. We see it in what the psalmist longs for and in what the psalmist does in the midst of his grief. He longs for the house of God, the people of God, and the praise of God.

Now, I often see people in grief and sadness running away from God. They run away from the church, they run away from Christian community. They shut down and don't go out of the house. But what they end up with is they end up sadder and further away from a loving family who wants to lift them up as they walk this journey. And so I'd encourage you, if it's you or if it's someone in your life, encourage them to get into a church family.

Encourage them to join a small group to surround themselves with a church family who want to encourage them and pray for them and raise them up when they can't do it for themselves. And then we see what the psalmist does. He honestly expresses his feelings to God. Did you see that? He takes his questions and his uncertainties to God, but he also reminds himself of the truth that he already knows.

He preaches to himself over and over, reminding himself of who God is, who God has been in his life, and what God has promised. Those are the truth that he already knows. And even though probably in that moment he doesn't feel like it and he might not be able to see it, he still declares the things that he knows to be true. And he takes to God the things that he doesn't understand. And Then third, Psalm 42 teaches us that our Savior, that Jesus knows our suffering.

You might have recognized some of the words of Psalm 42 this morning, because just as the psalmist cries out, God, why have you forgotten me? Or in some versions, God, why have you forsaken me? Centuries later, the Gospels capture for us Jesus as he echoes those words, as he is there on the cross, broken because of our sin. Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And there we have on the cross a Savior who knows our sadness, a Savior who has walked through grief, through pain, and through suffering.

Isaiah calls him a man of sorrows acquainted with deepest grief.

The one who knows you and calls you child is Not a distant God unmoved by your struggles. He's not a distant God who knows nothing of the pain that you might have experienced or might be experiencing. He's a God who stands, stepped into our suffering, who carried our burdens, who wept, who bled and who died.

But Jesus didn't stay in the grave. And because of the cross, because of the resurrection, we don't grieve without hope. We have this ability to look to the eternal hope, hope that we have this promise, a guarantee of a life that is to come where there'll be no more sorrow and no more pain. And we have the opportunity to be a part of what God is doing here and now. And so I'd say to you this morning, for those who are struggling, hold on to hope.

See, Jesus knows your pain. He knows your sadness, he knows your grief. And he sees you this morning and he walks with you through it. Because Scripture tells us that you haven't been abandoned. And for those this morning who might be walking in joy, I'd encourage you be someone who carries that hope to others.

Walk alongside those who are struggling, Notice them, see them, speak life to them when they can't speak life to themselves. Be the hands and feet of Jesus and walk that journey with them. And for all of us, as we saw at the end of that psalm, let's be people who preach truth to our souls. Regardless of the season that you find yourself in this morning, let us say again and again, I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again, my Saviour and my God.

Now, church this morning, I want to give you an opportunity. Perhaps you're here today and you think I don't know that Savior for myself? Maybe you've heard of him, maybe you've heard the stories or you've been in church before, but you think I actually don't know that personal Savior in my own life? I don't know what it means to have Jesus as lord of my heart and my life. And I want to give you the opportunity to do that this morning.

It's not a confronting or scary thing. I'm not going to make you come and stand out in front of everyone and have us sing some weird song to you or there's nothing strange that's gonna happen, I promise. All it is is praying a prayer. It's making that decision to have Jesus as lord of your life, to invite him in to be the Lord of your life. And then it's a decision to follow him, to live out each day walking with him, so I wanna give you that opportunity this morning as we close our eyes and bow our heads.

Let me pray and then I'll give you a simple prayer to repeat after me. Our God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for Psalm 42. Oh, God, we thank you that when we open your word, it isn't just full of stuff that doesn't align with the reality of our lives, but it is so real, it's so raw, it's so vulnerable and honest. It doesn't paint an unrealistic picture of what it means to live in a broken world.

But instead we see psalms like this, where the psalmist comes before you, crying out to you and saying, God, I feel like you're distant. God, I feel like I've been forgotten. But God, we thank you that we see throughout your word this promise that you know, never leave us or forsake us, that you walk with us, that you understand our grief and our suffering and our sadness, and you walk with us through it. Lord, we thank you for the church. We thank you for this body of Christ, Lord, that you established and you planted and you gave a purpose to.

And part of that purpose, God, was to journey with each other, to celebrate the highs, but to weep in the lows together, Lord, so that we wouldn't have to do this Christian walk on our own, but through you and because of you, that we would have a family, a church community to walk that journey with us. And so, Lord, we pray this morning for those who might be feeling deep sadness, Lord, who might be feeling grief from loss or whatever it is, Father, who might be struggling with depression. Lord, we thank you for the people that you have gifted with skills and abilities to provide support, the doctors and counselors and all the other different people who are in this world who can walk that journey with us and help us as we journey that. But Lord, we thank you too for your Holy Spirit at work in us. We thank you for your word, that it speaks life, that brings hope, even in despair.

And we thank you for Jesus. We thank you for this Savior who came, lived and died and rose again so that we could have renewed hope.

And this morning, if you would like to make that decision to put your hope and your trust in Jesus, I just encourage you. We're going to pray a prayer and I'll pray a line, and then I'll invite you to pray it after me. And if you want to do that in your head, if you want to do it out loud, if you want to do it silently, that's up to you. So would you pray with me? Dear Jesus, we thank you that you came and lived and died.

That you rose again defeating death.

That you ask us to come to you in our brokenness and our sin and our shame.

And that you promised to take that, to make us holy and righteous before God.

So I ask Jesus that you would forgive me this morning.

That I would know you as my Lord and Savior.

That you would fill me with the hope of eternal life.

And that in you I'd be filled with joy.

Thank you for being Lord of my life in Jesus name, Sam.