The Gospel According To: David (Psalm 42)

Introduction

We give horrible advice to people when things are bad

“Everything happens for a reason”...

“God never gives you more than you can handle”...

“It could be worse”....

Its awful

Put yourself in David’s shoes…

He is probably the author during the time either Saul is hunting him down to kill him or his son is hunting him down to kill him…both of them while in the act of taking the throne God promised Him from him…but hey David it could be worse

In the midst of all the bad advice he talks to himself

God uses it to give us a glimpse into the heart of every person who has ever questioned what is going on…why is this happening…God do you even care

And from this pain of lament he grounds us in the Gospel according to David

He gives us instruction on life in the middle of lament

Instruction on who God is, who we are, what obedience produces, what sin produces, what to feel and hope for and how to hurt.

Maybe you are here today and you are in this place

Maybe you have been told you can’t talk to God like that…you can’t be angry at God and this psalm alone says God welcomes the spectrum of emotions the human experience generates

Christopher Wright says this about Laments “Lament is not only allowed in the bible it is modeled in abundance. God seems to want to give us as many words as possible with which to fill out our complaint forms as to write our thank-you notes”

We are going to look at 4 aspects of this suffering individuals instruction for us:

The Psalmists Pain

The Psalmists Path

The Psalmists Prescription to us

The Psalmists Picture of The Savior

The Psalm says this

Psalm 42

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?” I remember this as I pour out my heart: how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God, with joyful and thankful shouts. Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil?

Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. I am deeply depressed; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your billows have swept over me. The Lord will send his faithful love by day;

his song will be with me in the night—a prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?” My adversaries taunt me, as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?” Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

1. Psalmist’s Pain:

We see a Homesick man in exile far from home and alone…hunted

There is so much pain form this author’s heart.

Let me describe what that would look like

Imagine we are invaded we are taken away amd everything destroyed you knew

There we are mocked and told everyday that the God we worship must be weak because their gods on their side overpowered our god

Can you fell that a little

That is what this man is going through

So he is longing in pain for his spiritual home and his physical home in verse 1, 6, and 4

It starts with verse 1​

psalm 42:1

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God.

I have seen this so often depicted on cards, paintings, and reminders to want to do your quiet time

That is not the horrific reality of this panting

The word used in this verse is only used one other place in the bible

It is in Joel 1:20​

Joel 1:20

Even the wild animals cry out to you, for the river beds are dried up, and fire has consumed the pastures of the wilderness.

This exiled man is comparing his pain to a distressed deer

Imagine ribs showing malnourished on the verge of collapse

Not the Poetic image so many christian cards show this verse with

That is the level of exhaustion he is in

he knew the flourishing we were made for in the presence of God in the multitude of His people

Now only nostalgia is his friend

this image express the psalmist’s need for God and the feeling of being removed from the Lord’s presence.

The verses are nostalgic, lamenting that life is no longer as it used to be

It is his physical home that was tied into his spiritual home that ties the pain together​

Psalm 42:2

I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?

The temple was the dwelling place of God

It was where God’s covenant people lived in the flourishing of God’s covenant steadfast love

He has been seperated from every home he knew

He pleads and remembers

When will I come and see the face of God? (v. 2). And the psalmist remembers: How I would pass over with the crowd, and I would lead them up to the house of God with a sound of rejoicing and thanks, a crowd keeping festival

we live in an age where church is simply a place to culturally gather with like minded members of our society

white conservatives in one, hispanic Pentecostal at another, black only in another, liberal in another

We have buffet style cultural gatherings

That is not God’s design

Imagine it as it is supposed to be

One place one people representing the nations all communing as a people made new

from death to life through the Gospel

Imagine the magnitude if that was a Sunday in Greenville

Imagine leading that and never having it again

The books of Psalms and Chronicles suggest that worship at the temple in Jerusalem was a dynamic and awe-inspiring experience

Far from god and far from home

Verse 6 tells us just how exiled he is

Psalm 42:6

I am deeply depressed; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

This is probably metaphorically used to describe distance

Mount Hermon was a multi peaked mountain far north of the Promised Land

He has lost home, community, purpose, presence of God, the show of God’s power to save …among hostile people

Those who have won physical victory over God’s people taunt him day and night​

Psalm 42:3

My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?”

In suffering we don’t need outside voices to accelerate our doubt do we

Isn’t is always in our own minds?

Maybe i have done too much wrong

Maybe grace isn't enough

maybe he can cover some sins but not my worst and this is my piunishment for it

But the lost world uses the suffering of believers as their evidence that God is not real and we are simply fools

He says he hears this taunting all day

“where is your God?” and he has no answer to give them that will be persuasive enough to make it stop

he has nothing tangible

In fact for Him the only tangible place was destroyed by these people

All they see is the pain the world has been bigger than god to inflict

It is no different today

the problem of pain has always been the greatest threat to faith

But i ask this

If you remove our God does that remove pain?

No

The question then for God’s people is how are we going to interpret the experiences we know of a fallen world?

You see the burden of proof is on every worldview to deal with the problem of pain

Every religion, government, philosophy, even atheists have to make sense of the problem of pain

This psalmist is doing the only true interpretation of pain

we all have Unmet expectation- like watching your dad lose a fight

We all believe we are doing God’s will in times then the rug is pulled out from under us

Here is the instruction of this powerful psalm even in this expression of pain

The psalmist resets his expectations as he processes

He is teaching us this powerful tool

We can expect because we are saved that God’s purpose for us is worldly prospering

We assume we are in God’s will so we extrapolate out what we then expect it to play out like

That is a recipe for painful interpretation of our pain

God’s purpose for you in your salvation is to then teach you how to live again

God’s purpose is to surgically make you more like Christ not comfortable

God’s purpose is that you are a light to a watching world that all knows pain

He cant see this in his pain but the reality is that Israel had forgotten its purpose to be

missional and holy as a light to the nations

So through exile he sent them anyway

Because of this very exile the 3 wise men for example were exposed to the Word of

God and knew to come to the King

Our expectations of our life as Followers of Christ can interpret pain in damaging ways if we aren’t seeing His purpose in us as His people

The Sovereignty of God (v7,8,9)- Not always a source of joy.

In seasons of suffering it is a source of questioning his goodness - YOUR Waves,

YOUR Covenant Name and Love

We can identify no matter what we are experiencing with the pain of the psalmist and get help from the path he takes in it.

2. The Psalmist’s Path

If we zoom out we see some practical steps he is taking as he processes that instruct us today

We see 4 things He doest to reset as he processes

1. Authenticity:

We can know he was not a southern baptist

He is not ok and when asked he does not say he is ok…..It is ok to not be ok

Psalm 42:9

I will say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow

because of the enemy’s oppression?”

In all of our relationships with Christ and his people we will have pain create crisis’ of faith

This Pslam instructs us to be authentic

Imagine this too

This was a leader of God’s people

He is telling pastors you will not be ok all the time and the path to healing is to be authentic

No one is above a crisis of faith be authentic with it

2. Remembrance-

nostalgia can be unhealthy but he remembers the right things

He doesn’t say life and flourishing are out there and I got i wrong he longs to be connected again to the God and people he remembers and know alone bring life

He remembers The Covenant God-

While the Sovereignty of God is a source of perplexing to the psalmist and can be to us

it is also a source of comfort.

He does this in Psalm 42:8

The Lord will send his faithful love by day; his song will be with me in the night—a prayer to the God of my life.

There is unshakable hope in a right view of God

Tim Keller says “The image of our glorious God delighting over us with all His being (Isa 62:4, Zeph 3:14, Dt: 23:5, 30:9) if this is only a mere concept to us then our needs, suffering, will overwhelm us and drive our behavior. Without the power of the Spirit, our hearts don’t really believe in Gods delight or grace, so they operate in their default mode. But the truths of the gospel, brought home by the Spirit, slowly but surely help us grasp in a new way how safe and secure how loved and accepted we are in Christ”

3. Preaching to himself.

He has been faithful to study the word, truth, and cultivate a Christian worldview to answer life’s deepest questions with the Gospel

This is the pattern of the psalm. V5 and V11 he is preaching to himself.

Psalm 42:5

Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

He has cultivated a perspective only work in your faith can bring about

Gloria Furman reminds us in pain to only be consumed b the things you will be consumed by 3 million years from now…that is the Glory of Christ in a world with no more pain, tears, fear, or sin

If we are anti-intellectual with our faith we will crumble in the face of suffering

4. Prayer and disciplines-

He is not lazy or turning to escapism

self-indulgence especially in times of suffering is a constant lure.

But we see in the psalmist that he remains disciplined.

This is a prayer.

This is instruction that will be sung in the second temple

He is still using his spiritual gifts of teaching

He stays disciplined.

He doesn’t get up and walk out of the movie half way through because the hero looks to be losing.

I think of Peter in John 6 saying “where else will we go” we are all in with you we know you are it and this doesn’t make sense right now but we are in this with you.

So we see things that are also bigger picture prescriptions for us.

3. The Psalmists Prescription for us (V5-6)

The psalmist is fighting the untruth

In times of pain the enemy uses the same strategy he used in the garden

The assault is on the character of God, the steadfastness of His love, His trustworthiness

The Psalmist is instructing God’s people for the ages a Pre-emptive strike on the battle for our mind-

Psalm 42:11

Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

Martin Lloyd Jones says this: “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”

The ancient Israelites had waited many times in their history for God to hear them and show up and deliver them.

In Egypt, they waited for deliverance from slavery. In the wilderness, they waited to go into the promised land.

In exile in Babylon, they waited to return to Jerusalem and to the presence of God.

When we find ourselves in circumstances where God seems to be absent, when our very beings feel as though the weight of the world is upon them, may we be able to speak the assuring words, “Wait for God … for I will again praise him.”

The prescription is to cultivate a hunger and a thirst for God that is immediately missed when it is absent.

The prescription is to know why you believe what you believe

so when crisis of faith happen we don’t jettisin our faith for a better articulated or better sounding belief that leads to walking away from your weakly held faith

Listen to this description of this type of believer from

Cornelius Plantinga He calls them a person who spiritually flourishes

“A spiritually whole person longs in certain classic ways. She longs for God for the beauty of God for Christ and Christlikeness for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual health itself- and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces. As we may expect her longings dim from season to season. When they do she longs to long again”

The psalmist is remarkably spiritually healthy in this psalm. A perfect picture of faithful suffering.

Because in this psalm we see an incredible picture of the Savior and the Reason we can hope in our pain.

The prescription is to HOPE IN GOD

4. The Psalmists Picture of the Savior

We have hope in trial because of the one who experienced ultimate exile, was forsaken, cursed, shamed, and endured the ultimate injustice on our behalf.

The Psalms were the language of Jesus

This is a picture of the Gospel and what Jesus perfectly endured to rescue us.

Look and see your suffering savior for you in this psalm

The exile of the Psalmist

Christ became an exile stepping down out of heaven as Paul says in Phil 2:6, without even a place to lay his head in Matthew 8:20 waves and breakers

Christ was taunted and mocked

Suffered injustice and shame and rejection as the Suffering Servant of Psalm 53- Much more than the Psalmist even

Not mocked “where is your God but mocked even more “if you are god…take yourself down from there”

Hear the Psalmist in Psalm 42:7

Psalm 42:7

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.

There is a play on the hebrew words here

The “sounds of the joyful temple crowds replaced with the thunder of crushing waterfalls

Instead of the worship of the multitude passing over him in worship he is unable to get breath as the waves crush over him

The Expression deep calls to deep is not reassuring but the image of terror

Depth of sea in the Old Testament was the place of Evil and Chaos

Crushing pressure that only Christ would know in all of its terror

Praying in the garden his spirit was terrified to the point of trauma causing blood vessels to burst and seep through his pores as His soul was crushed in the will of the father and swept over by sorrow

Remember back to the deer on verge of collapse

Ribs showing with every breath

Crying out in thirst

See our savior The thirsting savior nailed to a tree, prophesied in Psalm 69:21, fulfilled in John 19:28

John 19:28

After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now finished that the Scripture might be fulfilled, he said, “I’m thirsty.”

Ribs showing with every struggling breathe as he suffocated in our place

But purchased for us a “firm foundation” in our salvation, and a future hope so that we can be like him in our afflictions set our face like flint, and for the joy set before us endure to the end.

Because of the Savior we can sing songs like “Jesus I My Cross Have Taken”

Go, then, earthly fame and treasure, Come disaster, scorn and pain

In Thy service, pain is pleasure, With Thy favor, loss is gain

I have called Thee Abba Father, I have stayed my heart on Thee

Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;

All must work for good to me.

Soul, then know thy full salvation

Rise over sin and fear and care Joy to find in every station,

Something still to do or bear. Think what Spirit dwells within thee,

Think what Fathers smiles are thine, Think that Jesus died to win thee,

Child of heaven, canst thou repine.