Psalm 42 is a Psalm for hard seasons. I’m talking about those seasons when we find ourselves discouraged or struggling a bit to stay positive, hopeful, or confident. Sometimes we may find our confidence suffering when things are not going as we had hoped. This Psalm has everything about that. It is an honest Psalm. It’s raw, it’s real. We’re going to see how real it is. Someone said it’s throbbing with sincerity. At times, when we read it through, it almost has this kind of painful self-reflection. It’s compelling along with its smaller companion, Psalm 43. We’re going to look at Psalm 43 next week along with the second half of Psalm 42. We’re looking at the first five verses of Psalm 42 today. As we look at it, one of the things we’ll be struck with is how unusual it is. In this Psalm, something happens that is not common. David starts standing outside of himself and taking stock. He looks at how he’s handling something. It’s almost like he starts talking to his own soul. There’s a very interesting dynamic that takes place. We have someone who’s assessing himself and he’s not happy with how he’s feeling. At the same time, he’s trying to encourage himself.

It’s a very fascinating way in which the Psalmist approaches his life with God. I think it has a lot for us to learn from. The Psalm itself opens beautifully. It’s poetic. Many of us have heard this verse before. Look with me at Psalm 42. Verse one says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God.” I love this verse. I always have since the days of my youth. “As a deer pants, he yearns for the water-brook, the flowing stream. So my soul longs for you, oh God,” it’s a picture of someone who loves God, right? It reflects someone who’s thirsting for more of God in their lives. It’s the kind of follower of Jesus I would like to be. Someone who loves God and has tried to pursue Him. That is something Jesus talked about when he said, “Blessed are you, if you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be filled.” We’re invited into that. I ask even now, “Oh God, make me thirsty for you. Help me not to just go through the motions of following you, but let me have a genuine love, hunger, and thirst for your ways. Let your reality be something I yearn for.”

As a standalone verse, this is fantastic. It works. Many times people quote this verse. They quote it and say, “This is how we are to pursue God.” It’s great. It works. It’s fine. When we look at the context, that is why it’s being said there’s far more going on than meets the eye. We see even more than just extolling the virtue of desiring more of God in our lives. I want us to see someone who is hurting and longing to be connected to something he feels deprived of. Any of us who’ve ever felt deprived, wishing for something that we’ve lost could be recovered will be able to relate to this.

If we’re hurting over something that we’ve lost or feel that kind of pain, we’ll be able to connect with how the Psalmist is feeling and what he’s saying. This Psalm has a lot to do with loss and sadness. It also has something to do with trusting God. In verse two he says, “My soul thirst for God, for the living God, when shall I come and appear before God?” The Psalmist is wounded, his heart is hurting. For some reason, he couldn’t go back to Jerusalem. Most likely because it was dangerous. It’s possible, many believe that if he had gone back, he probably could have been killed. He feels like he couldn’t go back to the tabernacle, the Lord’s house. We would say church. The place where he, in his own way, felt like he had to be able to worship the way he yearned to worship.

It was a place that the Psalmist had been accustomed to going to. It’s also a place where he associated as the presence of God dwelling. In his mind, that’s where he has to be to feel God’s presence the way he’s always loved. He feels disconnected from it. He’s in the wilderness, that’s pretty clear, when we read through the rest of the Psalm, you’ll see it. Most likely based on the geographical details that he gives, he is on the other side of the Jordan River and the Mountains of Moab. Perhaps sitting by himself, writing, thinking, and remembering as he gazes down the valley. He’s lamenting his plight longing for what once was. Perhaps as he sat there at the close of the day, maybe at dusk, he saw a deer searching for a stream of water. If you’ve ever seen a deer in the wilderness, it is beautiful, graceful. They sometimes look for water at the end of the day. They can move through so fast, delicately, yet graceful. It’s a beautiful thing to see. A lot of times the deer aren’t looking for water, they know where the water is. They’re searching for the water broke, they’re thirsty.

I think that part of him was thinking to himself as he’s watching them search for the flowing streams, “Oh God, I miss you. I miss the joy of going to your house. I long for you. Like that dear thirst for water, I long for you. I long to go back to your house, oh Lord. Will I ever get to return to the place of your presence?” Thirst is a powerful driver. Have you ever really been thirsty? Not like kind of casual thirsty, but really thirsty. I remember I was backpacking in the Sierras about 15 years ago. I was pushing hard for about 10 miles or so at a good pace. I had a heavy pack. It was hot. At the time I was alone. I underestimated the distance to my final destination. I had done the trail before and thought I was really close, but I wasn’t as close as I thought I was. I did something that I hadn’t really done before. It was so hot, I drank all of my water. I tried to run as lean as I could weight-wise. So I didn’t bring enough water and I ran out. I remember drinking mine up, but I thought to myself, “Oh, I’m almost there. I can just drink it down.” I drank the water and then all of a sudden as I keep moving forward, I realized, “Man, I’m not doing so well.”

I started to break down a little bit. I could tell I was getting a little dizzy since it was hot. There was no water to pump anywhere. I knew the only water I had was where I left it. I needed to get back, but I ran out of water and it was hard. One thing I remember was how good it felt when I finally got water. I also remember, it scared me to such a degree that I made the decision that I would never get to my destination without having at least some amount of liquid in a bottle. Even if I had to get drops along the way, I would end with something in my water jug. I never have arrived without having at least a little bit of water left because I refuse to drink it all until I get there. There’s a spiritual principle in there somewhere. I remember how thirsty I was and how good it felt to drink. 

I think all of us have seen people in the movies who are in a desert and their lips are parched and their skin is blistering. They just need water. There are vultures circling. The sun is beating down. They see mirages of water. I think of Jesus on the cross. There are seven recorded sayings of Jesus on the cross. One of them is interesting because it’s in the middle of His suffering. He says, “I thirst.” It’s a powerful moment when you read it. His body was just totally thrashed and broken. There’s no way to describe what happened to Him. He was so thirsty by the sun beating down, his lips were dry. He’s dying. “I thirst.” I thought of the humility of God that He would allow Him to thirst. I think one of the reasons we’re given that statement is it represents the human cry. I think thirsting is the human cry. We thirst for something to fill us at the deepest levels.

In the end, it can’t be filled in any other way, but through God. When we see that, I’m reminded of the humility of God. The willingness to be broken on our behalf and how He thirsted for us at a physical level so that you and I, at a soul level, may thirst no more. It’s a beautiful gift. I am clear when I believe this, that the Lord wants to meet us in our dry and desperate places. In life, in those dry and desperate places, He wants to meet us just like He wanted to meet the Psalmist. Some of us may relate to the Psalmist in verse three. Some of us may have people right now in our lives who we say, “Man, that’s how they feel. I can see it.” In verse three he says, “My tears have been my food day and night.” Here is a man weeping as much as he is eating. I don’t eat much. I just feel sad. I feel sad about my situation at different times of the day and in the evening. I get overwhelmed in that sadness and water fills my eyes. I’m so sad.

I was thinking about this because that’s how I felt a few years back in a patch of time. It was the first time in my life that I actually related to this Psalm the way that I did. Some of us may have had this happen to us, others may have not, but I remember how caught off guard I was by the force of my emotions. By the power of my feelings and how easily they were triggered. It actually shocked me. I wasn’t used to it. I could be in the middle of journaling or praying and all of a sudden I could connect with something like a passage here in Psalm 42, which is why I’m sharing it right now.

I can remember writing it out as I was doing it and my eyes filling with tears. I was so emotionally raw that sometimes in conversations it would hit an emotional nerve. It would show up right in there. I could feel it. Everything I felt had to do with how sad I was about my circumstances. I was feeling sorry for myself. That’s the truth. I felt deprived and disconnected from the place and people I loved. I felt disenfranchised. On top of that, I felt even worse about the way I was handling it. Somehow, I was being weak and empathetic. Maybe some of us can relate to what’s happening with the Psalmist. Not only am I feeling bad about what’s happening to me, but I’m also feeling bad about the way I’m handling what’s happening to me. Doubly worse. I felt I should be doing better.

Perhaps some of us feel that way right now, or from time to time we have bouts of depression or sadness that hit us, overwhelm us, and start to cover us like a cloud. It just hovers over us. Maybe it’s a situation in our lives that we have to deal with. It’s hard. A condition that will never go away until we manage it, but it wears us down. Our limitations often taunt us. We feel them. Why can’t it be like it used to be? Or a relationship that we had, loved, wanted, and cared for is gone. Or we’re having troubles in ways we never had, it’s melting down before our eyes. We don’t know what to do. We’re sad about it. We miss it. Sometimes it’s hard to explain. We’re emotional, as well as rational beings. So is God, Jesus wept. I love that Jesus wept. Not only is that the shortest verse and the easiest one to memorize, John 11:35. But it’s the first one I memorized as a boy in Sunday school. John 11:35, Jesus wept. I think it tells us something about Him. He’s a man of sorrows, Isaiah says. Acquainted with grief. There are certain situations in life as Pascal, the philosopher said. He said, “The heart has reasons that reason sometimes knows nothing of.” The heart has its reasons which reasons know nothing of.

There is truth in that. Some things we can’t explain. Someone says, “Why are you feeling that way?” I don’t know. That’s how I feel. It’s just how I feel. “Oh, come on. You can get over that,” “I know, but it’s hard. That’s how I feel.” Sometimes we don’t want to feel the way we feel. “I shouldn’t feel this way.” That’s what’s happening here. He’s saying, “Why am I feeling the way I’m feeling? Lord, help me. I should be doing better than this. I am better than this. I should trust you.” The Psalmist is going back and forth. We will see next week, he’s going back and forth. “I’m so sad. This is hard. This is what’s going on. I know I need to trust you, God. What’s wrong with me? Come on, straighten up.”

There is all this interplay going back and forth. “You can do better. Put your faith into action,” This is all happening right here. Sometimes what may not make sense to other people makes real sense to us. That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes our struggles and hurt are real. Our sadness is real. It may not be reasonable, but it’s real. We may say, “Well, I don’t know why I feel the way I feel, but I feel that way.” We can’t change that. We’re going to have to do something with it though or it’s going to get the best of us. Look what the Psalmist says at the end of that third verse, “My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God?” We’re tempted to run past that phrase. He’s basically saying, “I have people in my life who look at my situation and they wonder aloud. I hear them. I hear them. They whisper behind my back and sometimes to my face. They look at me and say, ‘He’s forsaken. He’s forsaken. He’s abandoned by his God, he’s always talking about it.’” What he’s getting at here is where it’s relatable. He’s saying the people are saying to me, “Hey, there’s this God thing of yours. How’s it working out for you now?”

His vulnerability and susceptibility to their criticism only make him more discouraged about his situation because he feels the subtle judgments. He feels the indictment against him, “Have you looked at your life lately?” What’s he supposed to say? He’s struggling with that. It hurts and bothers him. In verse four look at how real he gets, “These things I remember as I pour out my soul, I remember back how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping the festival.” In this verse, his mind drifts back to an earlier, happier time which we are prone to do.

He says, “There are times when I’m alone with my thoughts that I remember the good things that used to be, the times when I would go with my friends, the multitudes joyfully during the festival days, shouting and singing praises to God. Oh, I miss those days. I miss those happier times.” It’s almost as if he catches himself and says, “Oh, cut it out. This is foolishness. Come on, break out of this thing.” In verse five he says, “Why are you cast down, oh my soul? What’s wrong with you? Why are you beating yourself up? Why are you in turmoil within me?” Look at the words ‘cast down, oh my soul.’ The words ‘cast down’ in the original Hebrew is the same word that is used when someone bows down. It means to bow down, to sink. It can imply falling prostrate. It can mean collapsing under the weight of something. In his case, it was sorrow. He was collapsing under the weight of his sorrow. Why is your soul so collapsed within you? He’s depressed. He’s discouraged. I can’t shake this thing. It feels like it’s too much to bear. If we ever had something that was hard to bear, we don’t know what to do because it hurts so bad.

I was thinking about a couple of films that I saw last year. I was impacted by an aspect of what they portrayed. Two of the films were highly acclaimed. They both had something in common. One of them was called Manchester by the Sea, the other one Fences, with Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington. What both of them portrayed were men in deep pain, each of them in different ways. In Manchester, not to go into all the details of it, his pain is so incredibly devastating that a part of him has died and he won’t let it live. It’s like he feels so guilty that he has sentenced himself to death emotionally. He won’t let himself feel anything that looks like love. We were trying to listen thinking, come on, come on, come on. “Nothing there that’s as far as I go.” Fences was a fascinating film as well. You see a man who’s bitter and angry. So tightly wound that he’s built a fence around his heart. There’s a literal fence, but it’s also a figurative fence. Fences keep things in and they keep things out. He’s all locked up in regret and anger. He can’t love.

Part of me, after I had come out of both those movies, turned to share my thoughts. I said, “Man, what they need is Jesus.” I meant it. I said, “I’ve seen Jesus set people free. I’ve watched it with my own eyes. It’s not perfect or without struggle, but I have seen it. I have seen it unlock things like deep guilt, hurt, wounds, and deep regrets.” I’ve watched Jesus heal it to where it doesn’t become a part of who we are. There will be something there, but it’s a scar, not an open wound. There’s a big difference.

In my opinion, one movie is a testimony of grace, and the other a testimony of something that is never going to get better because it’s so infected. The Psalmist Is trying to make sure his heart doesn’t get infected. He’s struggling to take a stance that he knows he needs to take to get through this thing. He says, “Why am I so sad? Why am I so discouraged? What’s wrong with me?” He’s addressing his soul as if it’s a different person. Again, he is standing outside of himself. He’s bothered that he can’t shake this thing. He’s not happy with the way he’s reacting to it. There are a few things here. He’s frustrated and discouraged by the situation, that’s clear. He’s bothered by the reality of this situation. “For this thing that’s happening, I’m deprived, I’m being criticized,” he has more things he’s going to list. He says, “But I’m also discouraged by the way I’m handling the bad situation.” He’s frustrated by that. “Come on, you should be doing better.” I’ve known that feeling. He was overthinking. I have a saying I often share here. I say, “It’s not the act that gets us in the end, it’s the react.” It’s not actually what’s happening to us, it’s how we’re reacting to what’s happening to us.

The real issue is won and lost right there. It’s not what happens to us in life that can be bad. It can be rough. It’s how we react to it that really does the damage. It’s also where opportunity is. This is where God can break things in and out of us. This is where He can teach us how to trust Him in ways that we have never been able to trust Him before. This is where we get compensations in grace. In the first five verses, he says “Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?” There’s a difference between the word that is translated cast down and the word that we translate, turmoil. I know that for some people, this doesn’t matter. Others of you think, “Oh, this is interesting.” Turmoil, the original word in Hebrew literally means making a sound. It implies noise, like a hum, moan, or murmur. It can also be an uproar like a boisterous thing within. It seems what it’s attempting to capture is something that’s churning inside of us in our hearts and minds that we’re so unsettled. 

I can still remember as a young Christian reading this verse in the older version. It says, “Why are you cast down, oh my soul?” Notice the difference. Look how they translate that word. “Why are you disquieted within me?” They’re presenting it in a different way. We don’t use the word disquieted much. “Hope in God yet I will praise Him from the help of His calmness, disquieted again. Why is there so much noise inside of me? Why so troubled? Why so anxious? That is the opposite of calm. I am so disturbed and lacking in peace.” He continues, “Come on now. Hope in God for I shall again, praise him.” He’s telling himself, “Let hope grip you, sell you, time to trust God. He’s able to deliver, He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. Come on.” That’s what he’s telling himself.

That’s capturing of his sort of angst. Here’s what I would like us to take with us. Let’s say this, one’s the diagnosis, but here’s the medicine for us, if we want it. The first thing I was thinking about was based on what we just shared. These first five verses pick up more later. In times of great anxiety and sadness, let’s not compound the problem by overthinking. Let’s not try to solve how we’re feeling. For some of us, this doesn’t mean anything, for others, this is a huge thing to remember. Don’t start sitting in over judgment of yourself. Don’t get stuck into the quagmire of mental loops. We start putting ourselves through this, going back and forth over and over it. “I should have done this, why is this happening? Why can’t this get better?” Looping back and forth, over and over. We have no peace. We’re troubled inside. We keep talking to ourselves, it’s so noisy in there. We have to ask the Lord to give us a sound mind to quit fighting ourselves. “Lord, help me not to fight like this. This is not good.” This connects to the next thought; there are times where we are under duress.

I think there are times when we’re under extreme duress. We need to be more gentle with ourselves. I’m not saying give ourselves a free pass or just feel sorry for ourselves. I’m not saying don’t challenge yourselves to be better or more biblically aligned. We need to remember that when we are emotionally stretched like the Psalmist is we are capable of breaking. If we push ourselves too hard we can actually compound the problem and set ourselves backward. I was talking about this because sometimes you get a physical injury. When you’re exercising or something, you could pull something or get an injury. If we rush back too fast, we can injure ourselves further. Foolishly, I’ve done this. I was talking to my wife about it. I said, “Honey, you’re going to have to go back slowly. Based on my understanding, if you push too hard, you’ll end up losing because you’ll set yourself back.”

I remember talking to someone I care about very much recently. She is a godly young woman. I was watching her struggle with her expectation and feelings about some things. I said the same thing to her, “You’re an accomplisher, you’re a doer. You solve things. Right now, you need to be more gentle on yourself.” Now, some people say, “You need to push yourself a little harder,” but other times there are some of us we need to say, ” You need to be a little more gentle on yourself.” There are times when we need to back off of ourselves for a time. I’m going to say there are times where we’re going to have to let some things be unresolved for a time. “But I want it solved and I want it solved now. I want it fixed now. I want it healed now. I want this past now,” but maybe it’s not going to happen. Maybe it’s not going to be resolved now and certainly not the way we want it. So then what? Maybe we had to be gentle and okay there. We can rarely solve problems well at a high level of emotion or emotional pitch. Sometimes the best thing we can do is ask the Lord to help us calm the internal waters and challenge the way we’re thinking.

I was reading earlier when I was coming to church. After last evening when we shared, I went back home, slept, and came back to the early service. I was thinking about this and remembered reading. I went back and read it. I read it again just for today. I remembered what happened with Jesus. I was just thinking about how do I calm the waters inside of me. In Mark 4, “Evening came, Jesus said, Let’s cross to the other side of the lake. So they took Jesus in the boat and started out leaving the crowds behind, although other boats followed. But soon a fierce storm came up, high waves were breaking into the boat and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with this head on a cushion. The disciples woke Him and started shouting at Him, ‘Teacher don’t you care that we’re going to drown.’ When Jesus woke up, He rebuked the wind. He said to the waves, ‘Silence be still.’ Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm. Then he asked them,” a question I know he’s asked me more than a few times. “Why are you so afraid? Where is your faith?” We need to invite the calmer of the storm into the storm. “Why are you so afraid?” “Well, I’m afraid because there’s this and this and the winds and the storm and the water, and we’re going to die.”

“I’m here with you. I’m with you.” Watch this and the storm calms. He can calm us in the storm. It’s going to require us to trust Him. There is a need to trust the Lord positionally at all times, especially when times are hard. Romans 8:28 reminds us that we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Trusting Him means letting go a bit, believing that He can be relied on to help us through anything that we must face.

I’m going to give you one small last piece here. This is a little more intricate. This is what helped me. I have a writer that I have been using devotionally. I have a couple of them. One of them is a man named Eli Stanley Jones. In my opinion, he was the most significant missionary of the 20th century. He wrote a lot about his thinking. He was a friend of Gandhi’s for example, a great Christian man. He said, “Remember that worry is a kind of atheism. A person who worries says, ‘I cannot trust God. I’ll take things into my own hands.’ The result is a worry, frustration, and an incapacity to meet the dreaded thing when it does come. That’s the result of that kind of thinking.” He said this, it hit me, and at the time I needed it. He said, “With God, you can meet it, whatever it is, you can meet it. You can overcome it.” The phrase that got me, “And assimilate it into the purpose of life.”

I don’t know, maybe it was just where I was at the moment. I remember reading through this when I was going through a trial praying, “Lord, help me to do this. Yes. This is what I need to do. I need to assimilate it. I’m fighting it too hard. I’m overthinking, worrying. I’m becoming fearful, anxious.” I started asking the Lord to help me be more creative and assimilate it into the purpose of my life. I can’t change it, but I can with God’s help turn it from a net negative into a net positive. Assimilate it to the purpose of your life. Instead of fighting, accept and assimilate. Stop the straining. Stop the complaining. Adjust, adapt, adjust, adapt. Trust God to bring good. Remember what does worry say? “God doesn’t care.” Faith says, “God does care. He and I will be able to work it out together.” We supply the willingness, He supplies the power. With that combination all things are possible. We supply the willingness, He supplies the power, with that combination all things are possible.

Lastly, I’ll leave us with this. We must challenge ourselves to remain optimistic. The Psalmist in verse five says, “I need to hope in God for I shall again, praise Him. I shall again, praise Him. I know I will.” He’s going to go back and forth again. This final statement in verse five doesn’t do the trick all the way. As we’re going to see, he’s going to drop back into why he should be feeling sorry for himself, but he’s going to come back again and say, “But I need to hope in God.” It reminds me that we are to be what Albert Barnes called a people of the brighter view. If we love Jesus and we know Him, then we are to be a people of the brighter view. Everyone’s invited into that place. We need to choose our focus. We can visit the dark side I’m talking about emotionally, but we dare not linger there long. We are children of the light called to love and be loved. That’s how we live.

Let’s pray. Lord, I thank you. I thank you because your words are good. Your words are life. Your words have value to us. I ask that as we engage this Psalm and think about it, there might be certain things that might stand out that you might be wanting to speak to us. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is sorrow in our hearts. Perhaps there’s an area where we’re struggling. Maybe we are having a hard time trusting you. Help us to do this. I pray that there will be a compounding sense of strength that will be released by your presence, by your spirit. You will be with us throughout this week. As we come back around the bend again, we will have these things settled into our hearts. When we come back to embrace this word a second time around, it would have even more impact and power in our lives. Help us to think well and invite you into these places where we struggle the most. That is your promise. That is your gift. That is your love. That is your light. Being among us we pray, bless our closing time. The song that becomes our prayer, the song that we’re about to engage together that is so connected to this idea of trusting. If there are any issues in our own lives right now that we’re wrestling through let them settle in as we share in this closing moment. Bless this song, bless this benediction, bless our final time of giving. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.