Psalm 42-43 (2)
Summer in the Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Spiritual Depression
Spiritual Depression
2 corin 1:8-11
Romans 5:1-11
Charles Spurgeon is regarded as the most successful baptist pastor that God has used for his glory. Spurgeon had the opportunity to pastor the metropolitian Tabernacle. He began pastoring there at the young age of 20 and was the pastor there until his death in 1892.
Spurgeon’s life is characterized by the success that many would seek to find. His preaching grew a small church into a boombing church. His understanding and commitment to scripture would put even the best to shame today. Of one perticular person was asked after he visited the church on how divine was Spurgeons preaching, his reply was, His preaching, his preaching I would rather hear the man pray.”
Spurgeons dedication to the word of God and JEsus Christ was something that we should emulate.
Spurgeon also dealt with a great deal of depression. His depression came from two main events. First, at the age of 22 he preached in the Surry Music Garden halls. While he was preaching someone yelled Fire! The false alarm sent people into panic that ended up killing 7 and injuring over 20 more.
The second event came around the age of 33. Spurgeon He endured intense kidney inflammation known as Bright’s Disease, along with gout, rheumatism, and neuritis. The severe pain eventually prevented him from preaching a third of the time. Additionally, the effects of overwork, stress, and guilt began to accumulate. His struggles were highly visible, attracting criticism from many who claimed his suffering was divine punishment.
He would go on in his pain to pen, ““I could say with Job, ‘My soul chooseth strangling rather than life’ [Job 7:15]. I could readily enough have laid violent hands upon myself, to escape from my misery of spirit.”2”
How do we as Christians understand depression and the spiritual application of this? We have all been given bouts of depression. but are we not supposed to have the Joy of the Lord? Are we not supposed to be happy?
I think these questions come from a false teaching that has perverted the church in the past 100-200 years. The health, wealth and prosperity gospel promises a life filled with happyness and joy with breakthroughs that lead to happiness and outward joy. It leaves no place for the person to see the effects of the world and lament, to be cast in some spiritual depression.
Today my desire is just as Spurgeon did to his students is to teach on spiritual depression. He wrote this. Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light.3
My purpose for today is for you to see the Hope of God for indeed he is your salvation.
Longing for God in the midst of Spiritual Depression (42:1-5)
The psalmist longs for God.
soul pants and thirst
Desires God to be his satisfaction
Desires to see God worshipped corporately
God has not left but the situation surronding him has caused his spiritual depression.
Application:
He desires two things to be in the presence of God and to be with God’s people
Presence of God
To be in the presence of God is the desire of the psalmist. He desires to worship him.
God’s people
568 commands in the new testement to one anothers
addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you,
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Longing for God is also to remind yourself of the truths of God verse 5
“when we imagine God to be present otherwise than he has revealed himself in his word, and the sacred institutions of his worship, or when we form any gross or earthly conception of his heavenly majesty, we are only inventing for ourselves visionary representations, which disfigure the glory of God, and turn his truth into a lie.”
Literal Salvation of God’s presence
Reflection of God in the midst of Spiritual Depression (42:6-11)
He reflects on the lord.
What he has done for his people
“when he called to remembrance his former condition, experienced so much the greater sadness by comparing it with his present condition”
Who he is verse 9
He reflects on his sin
that this may be because of his sin (7)
“That, on the one hand, our joy may have respect to the paternal love and favour of God towards us, and that, on the other, the only cause of our grief may arise from feeling that he is angry with us”
He reflects on the steadfast love
in following his commands
singing
and prayer
He reflects on who is in control
Application
Personal
singing
prayer
remembering
Calling out to God in the midst of spiritual depression (43:1-5)
Understanding that the Lord brings vindication, he clears the blame of his people
understangin that the Lord will provide his light and truth to lead out of the position they are in and bring them to himself. this will result in praise and worhsip and joy
now he waits reminding himself of God.
Is there a cure for depression? Yes. But it is not in us. It is in God. The cure is to seek God’s face, so ours will not be downcast, which is what the psalmist does.
James Montgomery Boice