Cast Down

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone. Welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here.

I have a few announcements to highlight this morning, and first on that list is that today we are electing new deacons. You’ll find a ballot in your bulletins. Please fill in the names of those you would like to see as leaders of our church, and place that ballot in the offering plate as it passes or after church. Please be in prayer for the names you write down, and please be in prayer to serve as a deacon if you are chosen.

Our next quarterly business meeting will be held on Wednesday. Please try to make that if you can. Normally we would be voting to approve the new list of teams and team members for that, but it’s been a little busy around here these last three weeks, and I’ve fallen a little behind. My apologies for that, but we’ll get a list of teams to you in the next couple of weeks and have a quick business meeting after our service to approve those.

Just like your deacon choice, I’ll ask you to be in prayer as to how you can serve our congregation with the talents God has given you. We have lost some pillars in the last weeks, not just of our community but our church. Thankfully we have some pillars still standing. But if we’re going to continue to flourish and grow, we need others willing to stand up and take their place, and I hope that’s you.

Speaking of which, I and the other pastors in town would like to thank everyone who volunteered to make our week of community revival so successful. That was a whole lot of work, but what a great week. People are still talking about that, and I had so many compliments about how smoothly it all went, and that’s all thanks to the people who gave their time to help make that happen.

I’ll ask that you continue to keep the Angus, Eavers, and Johnson family in your prayers. Their losses this week are heaven’s gain, but we still mourn with them. Please reach out to those families and give them your support. Sue is doing well after her surgery but will likely be gone for the next few weeks, so we’ll all be pitching in a bit to cover her absence. Please be praying for her recovery as well, and let her know you’re thinking of her.

I understand the fire department is in need of some pies and cakes for the carnival this week. If you’d like to bake a bit, you can drop those off at the firehouse.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Let’s begin this morning with our prelude.

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we thank you this morning for your continued presence with us. We thank you for a love that surrounds us even greater during our times of hurt and grief, and that in all things you work your perfect will for our perfect good. Be with us now as we lift our voices in song and hear your word. Comfort us, revive us, and help us to be a light to others. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, amen.

Sermon

I’ve had more than one person tell me this week that I need to stop preaching about heaven for a while. I think maybe they’re right. It’s been tough lately for this congregation. Been a tough few years, really. God has called home a fair share of our saints. And even though we shouldn’t be surprised at what is a natural part of everyone’s life, and even though it’s always their gain, losing someone we love hurts, no matter how much faith we have.

I was reminded of that more than once during these last weeks. Life is beautiful, life is wonderful, but life is also so very hard. We are called to endure seasons that challenge our physical health. There are seasons that challenge our emotional health, which is often even harder to deal with. And then there are the hardest times we have to go through, the ones that challenge our spiritual health and we start wondering not only we’ve done wrong or what God is doing, but if God was ever even there.

What do we do when we find ourselves in those times? How do we pick ourselves back up after life’s knocked us down? How do we not just restore our faith, but find on the other side of our hurt that our faith has actually increased? That’s what I want to talk about today.

God’s Word is many things, but above all, it is honest. The Bible doesn’t shrink from the hard things in life. That makes Christianity different than any other religion. It’s upfront about suffering.

Buddhists say that pain is an illusion. Islam says the way around suffering is complete and total obedience to Allah. But Jesus is realistic. He says that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, your life is going to get tough sometimes. Sometimes it will even feel almost unbearable. He says, “In this world you will have many troubles.” But then he also says, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

One of our favorite verses to quote to others when they’re struggling is Romans 8:28 — “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” It’s also one of those verses we honestly don’t like to hear when we’re the ones suffering, because it doesn’t feel like God’s doing any good at all.

But if we believe that God’s will is to always give what is best for us, and if we believe that God cannot make a mistake about what’s best for us, and if we believe that God has the power to give us whatever he wills, then we have to believe that all things work together for our good. That goes even for the bad stuff. And again, the Bible is clear — there will be bad stuff.

The Psalms talk a lot about that, and that’s what makes it my favorite book of the Bible. Every emotion, the bad ones especially, are laid out right there. Love, hate, anger, worry, fear, faith, and everything in between.

It’s hard for us to fathom Moses’s faith, or Isaiah’s devotion, or Paul’s trust in Christ. But the writer of a psalm who sits down and pours out his pain to God? That, we can understand. Because we’re all wounded. We all have troubles. We all suffer sometimes, and we have to deal with the doubt that follows.

Something like that has happened in Psalms 42 and 43, which are separated in your Bible even though most scholars believe that originally they were both combined into one. But what we learn here can help us navigate through our own struggles with faith in a God who loves us. Let’s read together beginning with Psalm 42, verses 1-3:

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

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

Now skip down to verse 6 through verse 8:

O my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

Now to Psalm 43, verses 3-5:

Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

And this is God’s word.

We don’t know who wrote this Psalm, and I like that, because in a way it means this Psalm speaks for all of us. The writer doesn’t waste any words. He gets right to the heart of what he’s feeling in the first verse of Psalm 42 — “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God.”

This is one of the most famous verses in the Bible. You see that verse on paintings and cards and calendars, and it’s always kind of the same scene. It’s a strong buck bending down to drink from a clear pond that’s nestled beside some quiet woods. There’s a morning sun rising over green mountains. It’s always beautiful, always tranquil and peaceful.

But that is not the picture this verse is painting at all.

The way it’s written in the Hebrew, this verse isn’t about a forest, it’s about a barren desert. Instead of trees, it’s weeds and thorn bushes. Instead of soft morning light, it’s hot sun beating straight down. Not green hills, but scorched mountains the color of a used penny. The water isn’t a clear pond, it’s a muddy puddle, and the deer approaching it isn’t a healthy buck, it’s a scraggly doe so weak that it’s barely moving.

That’s what verse 1 really says. It’s the image of an animal coming down out of dry mountains in search of water it can’t find. This deer isn’t just thirsty, it’s dying of thirst. It’s panting, and the Hebrew word for that is a word for the extreme thirst that comes from constantly running from something. Running from a predator. Running from danger. Running from trouble and trial.

That’s what the writer of this psalm compares himself to. He’s a thirsty soul. He’s so run down and tired from struggling and hurting, and now he feels like giving up. He feels like he’s near death, because in all of that struggling and hurting, he’s lost God. This person has lost his Lord, his anchor, and now he’s wandering in a barren wasteland, lost and hopeless.

That's a special sort of thirst, isn’t it? It’s worse than the kind of thirst you have for something you’ve never known. People who’ve never had success can thirst for success. People who’ve never experienced real love can thirst for real love. But what about the people who once had success, but then lost it all? What about someone who once knew what real love was, but now that love is gone?

You see? This person has lost his God, and that’s a terrible thing. But you can only really lose something if you once found it, and that’s what has happened here. He once had God, he once knew what it felt like to be loved and cared for, but now God is gone.

What are we supposed to do when we start feeling this way? According to these two Psalms, the key to getting out of our spiritual valleys is to talk. But it’s to talk in three very specific directions. We need to talk to God, we need to talk to our past, and we need to talk to ourselves. Let’s take a look at each of those.

First, through all of these two Psalms, what is the writer doing? He’s calling out to God, isn’t he? He’s crying out, “Help me. Where have you gone?” But there’s no answer.

That idea carries over to verse 2:

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”

This isn’t hunger. It’s thirst. And this is an important point too, because our body needs water much more than it needs food. We can live about 40 days without any food before our bodies start breaking down. But we can last only three days without water.

And what is it inside him that’s thirsting? His soul. It’s everything in him, his entire nature. It’s not just his body, it’s every cell in his body. His heart and his mind and his spirit are thirsting not for false idols or false hopes, but for God. For the living God who can save him.

Now look at that last sentence at the end of verse 2. That question — “When shall I come and appear before God?” That’s the heart of these two Psalms.

Something in this person’s life has happened to cause him to feel shut out from the presence of God. Something has happened that’s so terrible, so completely shattering, that it’s made him feel like God has abandoned him. And here is the most important thing you can take away from these verses — we don't know what that something is. We don’t know what happened in this person’s life to make him feel like God has turned his back. And that is so, so important. We get that God will sometimes seem to turn away as a consequence of sin. That’s all over the Bible.

But there’s nothing like that in these two psalms. There’s no hint at all that the psalmist has done anything wrong to deserve feeling a loss of God in his life. It just happened. And we can sympathize with that, can’t we? We can sympathize with how this deer feels in the desert because we all go through our own deserts as well. We can sympathize with the writer of this psalm because we all sometimes wonder where God has gone. And those times feel like a death, don’t they? Like a spiritual death. Those times leave us thirsting for God.

Everyone everywhere knows this feeling. It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not. Whether you believe or don’t believe, whether you’re looking for God or you never give Him a single thought, you still thirst for Him. That God-shaped hole is built into every person. “I thirst” is the voice of the whole world.

We’re made to need God because we’re eternal souls, and eternal souls can’t be satisfied by earthly things. That thirst we feel, that longing, can’t be satisfied by anything in this world. But if God fills us with longings, He’ll make sure those longings can always be fulfilled, even when we feel apart from Him. Even when we feel lost and alone and hurt.

Verse 3 lays out the consequences of that hurt. The psalmist says that tears have been his food day and night. If we look a little deeper there, we see that not only is he not eating, he’s not sleeping either. His tears have been his food both day and night, leaving him hungry, tired, and alone. Charles Stanley, the great preacher, came up with an acronym about the conditions when you’re at your weakest and the devil is at his strongest. He called it HALT, H-A-L-T, and that stands for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired.

If you look at these two psalms, you’ll see the writer is suffering from all four. Every one of those is present in his life, and every one will at some point be present in our own. That’s what this psalm promises. It’s almost like whatever his sufferings and however long he’s suffered with them, this man’s heart had swollen with such grief over what feels like God’s absence that it’s finally burst in a shower of tears.

But it gets worse. This man has to struggle with even more than grief, he also has to deal with the taunts of others. Look at the end of verse 3 — people keep asking him, “Where is your God?”

There’s no mention of who these people were. And again, that allows this psalm to be applied to nearly any circumstance in your life.

“Where is your God?” It’s as if these people are saying to him, “Look at this guy. He trusted God, and what’s that gotten him? Nothing but trouble. All the devotion he’s shown to his God, and what has God done for him? God’s turned away. God’s not going to save him. God doesn’t care about him. Which means God is either unable to help, or He’s just unwilling to help.”

How many times have you said that to yourself? How many times have you looked at your life, looked at your circumstances, looked at all those wants you don’t have and all those prayers that have fallen on deaf ears? How many times have you sat down and said, “God just doesn’t care about me”?

Sickness comes, and there’s no cure. Hardship comes, and there’s no way out. Terrible times come, and there seems no reason and no purpose. How can anyone, even the most faithful Christian, endure that sort of suffering without confessing those first few words of verse 6? “My soul is cast down within me...”

These are the words of a person in anguish. It’s bad enough to feel grief, but it’s a thousand times worse when that grief leads us to believe that God has abandoned us or that God isn’t even there, that he never was there, because we can’t see any reason or any purpose behind what’s happening to us.

And all of that leads to the really bad part — the guilt. We’re sad. We’re grieving. We’re doubting. But as Christians, we’re not supposed to be any of those, are we? We’re supposed to have faith. We have Jesus in our hearts. We’re washed in the blood. We’re God’s children. If we’re downcast, if we’re doubting and depressed, then that means we just don’t have enough faith.

Never listen to that. Ever. If that’s what you think, then you need to sit down every day and read these two psalms. If that’s what you think, then you need to remind yourself that Jesus Christ, God’s own son, is known in scripture not as a man of happiness, but a man of sorrows.

The psalmist is feeling his own sorrows, and they come rushing over his soul in verse 6. When he dug deep to find that trust in God, when he hoped that things would be better, his sorrows only returned like a flood to sweep what little faith he had left away. And flooding into that hole that’s made in him isn’t faith, it’s anguish.

So how do we fix this? What’s the answer? Talk to God. That’s always first. But then we also have to talk to our pasts. Now, what does that mean? It’s in a single word right in the middle of verse 6: “Therefore.”

Therefore, what? “Therefore, I will remember you.”

That’s the secret. He’s giving us the key to get out of our griefs and depressions. He’s showing us how to fight when we start believing God has abandoned us. It’s thinking about God’s mercy. God’s power. God’s faithful presence. But the secret isn’t to think about those things in what he’s going through right now. It’s not to think about the better days that are ahead, either.

The writer of this Psalm telling us to think back — to remember.

All of us are living out the story of our lives one page at a time. We don’t know what’s coming, and very often we don’t know what’s happening now, but we can always look back to what’s already been written.

No matter what’s going on in your life right now, no matter how bleak things look, you can always ask yourself this — has God ever really ever let me down? Have I ever really lost him? No, of course not. That’s why the psalmist says remember. Look back and remember how all those dark times you faced became light again.

But even as he remembers God’s blessings in the past, he still struggles. And things seem to get even worse in verse 7:

Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

What’s interesting here is the contrast with verse 1. First there was no water, and now there’s too much. Deep is calling unto deep. One disasater comes immediately after another. One wave crashes into him, and it’s followed so closely by another that it’s like the waves are speaking to each other.

We can understand this too, can’t we? How many times have our lives been stuck in this horrible pattern of one bad thing coming right after another bad thing? One break of bad luck followed by another, one illness followed by another, bad days that turn into bad weeks and months and even years with no end in sight? That’s what’s happening to this poor man here.

He’s overwhelmed. He’s covered up. He can’t take anymore, not just with having to go through these troubles, but not knowing why. And that’s his biggest problem. This man has no Why to explain what he’s going through. We can endure almost any sort of What so long as there’s a Why, so long as there’s a reason. So long as we can see some meaning to it.

But there’s an important bit of wisdom in verse 7 in the middle of all this grief. If you look, you’ll see that these storms are all God’s. Look at what it says — Your waterfalls. Your breakers. Your waves. There’s a reason for comfort in that. If you pair this verse with verse 6 where it says to remember God’s goodness in the past, we start to discover the way we’re supposed to deal with our dark times. It isn’t to pray for a way out of them, it’s to pray for a way through them.

If we remember that God is good and that He loves us, if we remember what Romans 8:28 means — God wills nothing but our best good, and if He has the power to always get what He wills, and if He makes no mistakes about what our best good is, then it necessarily follows that all things work together for good.

And if we pair that knowledge with the knowledge that our storms are His storms, they’re sent by Him and ordered by Him and made to work for the good of His people, then that question of why we suffer doesn’t sting as much, does it? We’re better able to endure. It’s easier to find that thread of faith, because we still might wonder why, but we’ll also be comforted by knowing that even if we never know the reasons why on this side of life, there are reasons, and those reasons are good. And that is good enough.

But how do we know these reasons are good? Look at verse 8:

By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

Two things are contrasted here — day, and night. By day, the psalmist is referring to those times of prosperity, and how those times will return. He’s able to hope for better days because of God’s love for him in the past, and that love will return again. He’s taking the long view of life, isn’t he? That’s what the Bible says we should always do. Think of the bigger picture. He doesn’t just see this moment of suffering. He also sees all the good times before, and all the good times to come.

So even in the night, even in those long periods of despair and depression, he can still find comfort in God’s presence and love. He can still feel gratitude. He can still offer praise, because God will command His steadfast love both day and night, continually.

And because of this steadfast love, we can always approach God in any situation through prayer. Prayer is always available to us, especially when God seems far away. That’s our lifeline, and just because you don’t feel close to God doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray. In fact, that’s when you should pray even more. If you feel far from God, that’s what you should pray. If you’re angry, that’s what you should tell Him. God is the giver and the preserver of our lives. Only He can save us. So the only way we can truly sink, the only way we can truly fail, is if you stop talking to Him.

I’m going to tell you the exact opposite of what the world says. When you’re struggling, it does not matter what you feel. As a matter of fact, feelings can actually get in the way when you’re hurting. What matters is what you know, and what you know is that God is your defender and sustainer. What you know is that God is still with you in your suffering, especially in your suffering, and you can boldly approach his throne.

There’s a plea now as we move down to Psalm 43:3 — “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.”

The light here isn’t the law. It’s the Messiah the light of the world. It’s a symbol of mercy. It’s God's favor. His joy and peace and comfort. He’s asking that now, in this time of darkness when God’s face is hidden, God would give him light. That God would restore His favor to this man’s life. That God would bring him out of this storm, this deep valley, and set him on firm ground. It’s a deep plea here — Save me, God. Help me, God. Don’t hide from me anymore.

To the writer of this Psalm, nothing matters but God’s presence. Nothing is more valuable than that. And this sense carries over to verse 4: “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.”

The altar of God was on Mount Zion, where the sacrifices were offered. The meaning here is that he would unite again not just with others in worship of God, but he would be restored to God Himself. That there won’t be a barrier between them any longer. That their relationship as father and child will be present again. And again, this relationship was everything. This relationship was his exceeding joy, meaning that God was the source of all his happiness and peace, and whatever plenty he had in his life was worthless without that closeness with God.

And an amazing thing happens right here. The writer of this Psalm looks at everything that’s happening in his life, all the bad, all the terrible things that seem to have no reason, and he makes a choice. Because he’s talking to God and because he’s remembering all those times God has seen him through, he can now choose God. He chooses to praise God anyway, and what is the object of that praise? Not what God can do for him, but God himself. His power, his love, but also praise that God will bring him through this time of spiritual drought. God will restore him. And even if he doesn’t, he will still praise God because he. Is. God.

“I will praise you with the lyre, Oh God, MY God.” It’s not just God he’s chosen to worship, but God as HIS God, the God to whom this man had devoted himself. The God he called his God even in this time of terrible pain and trouble.

And it’s because of that choice to look at how terrible his circumstances are and believe anyway, to trust anyway, he can talk to himself. Look at verse 5 of Psalm 43. And notice that verse 5 also happens to appear word for word twice in Psalm 42 — in verses 5 and 11.

What’s this all about? There are pictures of deer panting for flowing streams and the only nourishment being tears. Gushing waterfalls and swelling oceans gripped by storms. And in the middle of these pictures comes a repetition of the same thought — “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” — they’re like the hopeful chorus in the middle of one long sad song.

But notice that verse 5 in Psalm 43, and verses 5 and 11 in Psalm 42, aren’t prayers. The psalmist isn’t talking to God, he’s talking to himself: Why are YOU cast down, O MY soul? Why are YOU in turmoil within ME?

Right here is one of the most important things we need to do to climb out of our spiritual valleys. Prayer is important, prayer is always important. But what’s also important is to think. We have to use our hearts to pour out our feelings to God, and we have to use our minds to think through what we’re feeling and why.

Hope in God, he tells himself, or Wait for God. Things might be so hard now, but things have been hard before, and God’s always gotten me through. The psalmist realizes his need for patience here in dealing with his grief and depression, and the only way you can ever have patience is if you have hope. And your hope is the same as this writer’s: God will not stand by and see his children cast down forever. As surely as the sun will rise, so God’s light will rise over us even if for a while we have to walk in darkness.

Why, then, should we not be encouraged? Why should our faces be cast down instead of up? Hard times will always come, and they will always pass. Our seasons of praise will come again, and if we approach our seasons of hurt and doubt the right way — if we choose to turn to God and trust him — then what we’ll find is that on the other side of those tough times, our faith is made even stronger. God will become even more real, and feel even more present. God will wipe our tears in even our darkest times, but only if we have the faith and the courage to lift our heads.

Always remember in your hard times that God holds you responsible for everything he gives you. That doesn’t just include the good things he gives you. It also includes the tough ones. When those tough times come, you have to have the mindset that the bad is every bit as meaningful as the good, and a lot of times even more so. That means the question you ask shouldn’t be, “How can I endure this?” The question you should ask is, “What’s my duty in this? How can I be a steward of this? What does God want to accomplish through this?” Because that, friends, is faith. That is trust in your God. And that trust will always, always be rewarded.

Let’s pray:

Father, in this time when so many are wondering where You’ve gone, it’s so nice to be reminded that You never go anywhere. You’re always right beside us, always with us, always guiding us with your wisdom and care. We may not always feel You, Father. We may not always sense Your presence, and yet we know Your eye is always upon us. Help us to remember that even as we walk in darkness, You are there. Even as we suffer, Your loving arms still hold us. Even as we wonder where You are, You still remind us that You are right here. We pant for you, Father, knowing that our thirst points us to You. Let us always be quick to call upon Your name, knowing You will lead us through every valley and up every mountain. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.

Our hymn of response is #54, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Will you please stand.