Psalm 42 Nursing Home Sermon (2)

Psalms 42:1-11 NASB1995

[1] As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. [2] My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? [3] My tears have been my food day and night, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” [4] These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. [5] Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence. [6] O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. [7] Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me. [8] The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life. [9] I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” [10] As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” [11] Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.

Whenever I was in undergrad at Harding there was one semester that I decided to take a scuba diving certification class.

I had no reason to take the class, to be perfectly honest with you I just thought it sounded cool and it would be one of those things I could tell people to make myself sound more interesting.

I could just walk up and shake a persons hand and say I am scuba certified and immediately everyone would know just how amazing I am at everything.

Unfortunately for me, that is not how it happened.

In order to get your certification, you have to go on 3 dives with an instructor.

The first dive went swimmingly, no pun intended, but the second one is where I began to run into problems.

For the second dive we were supposed to go 30 feet underwater.

This was down at Greers Ferry near Heber Springs.

For those of you who have never been there, most days the lake is solid brown from the mud that has been worked from visitors like me and my group swimming.

Because of this, well before I made it to 30 feet down, I noticed that if I reached out my hand I could no longer see it.

My breathing became heavier, and using an oxygen tank that is bad because you start running out faster.

My body would not let me go any deeper, I panicked and forgetting my training I swam back up to the top which is dangerous to do in the manner I did it.

I had so desperately longed to see the open air again that I risked my own safety to get there.

To this day I am still not scuba certified which is ok with me, if God wanted me to go that deep he would have given me fins.

But as I was reading this for the lesson today I could not help but to think of that story.

The writer of the Psalm says, “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.”

He feels the weight of the water over his head and as I longed to breath the open air again the writer of this psalm desperately wished to experience God in his fullness once again.

He compares himself to a dear longing to drink water.

As any of us who have worked in these hot Arkansas summers can understand, that drink of water was a necessity.

Worshipping God, experiencing him and his kingdom is not a mere want, it is a need.

We were made to experience him, to wrapped in his mercy, and like the Psalm writer we tend to feel despair when we can’t experience him.

The Psalmist does not give into that despair, however.

Listen once more to how the Psalm ends.

[11] Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.

Though he struggles to see God at this moment or though he may be separated from the worship of God in some way, the author knows that God has not abandoned him and that he will worship him again.

Perhaps you feel like the writer of the psalm this morning and are wondering when you will be able to experience God fully again.

Or perhaps you simply feel that God has been silent recently and you wish to see him work again.

I don’t claim to know God’s plans for each of us, but like the psalmist we can take comfort in prayer to God and in the knowledge that like the writer of this Psalm, that we will worship him again.