Psalm 42 Good Friday 2026

Introduction

The Main Point of this promise of Hope in Psalm 42 is This: Just as the deer pants for water and the Psalmist cries out in the night, our thirsty souls find their ultimate answer in the "I thirst" of Jesus on the cross, where He endured the ultimate abandonment to ensure we are never forsaken.

The Book of Psalms Psalm 42: Where Is Your God?

Verses 1–4 use powerful water imagery to express the psalmist’s need for God and the feeling of being removed from the Lord’s presence

Psalm 42 opens with the famous imagrey of a deet longing for streams of water

Psalm 42:1 “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God.”

It has been used to make beautiful paintings of a tranquil forest and a deer lapping water from a quiet brook

But that is not what the author had in mind

In the Hebrew it is the language of a deer exhausted near collapse desperate for life

Picture ribs showing and laboring every breathe

See this psalm is about the desperate longing deep in us for things to be how they are supposed to be

God’s people were in exile and were hoping against hope the nightmare would end

It is the cries we make in the dark for God to show up and make right what is so wrong

For Him to be who He says He is

He goes on to say his only food has been his tears in verse 3

The opening power of the imagery should be paintings of good friday

It is not the image of a desperate deer but they are images that point to the cross of our King

Desperate

Driven out of the city to the hill of death

Laboring every breathe

Ribs showing

Even John 19:28 crying out in anguish I thirst

Psalm 42 opens with the image of Good Friday

But for the perfect Lamb of God a drink never came

Deliverance was withheld

God never showed up

He was forsaken in Matthew 27:46

And that is what makes good Friday good

God turned his back on the Son so He would never turn His back on you

The rest of Psalm 42 means for us because his desperate cries of thirst went unanswered from Heaven

Tears and a small stream are the first images of water but more come in verses 6-10

For the pslamist and us a promise of different eater comes

In Verses 6-10 our small tears and a small stream explode into a flood when God shows up

The Book of Psalms Psalm 42: Where Is Your God?

The sought-after water has become an overwhelming flood

We feel the exile

We feel the thirsting for God to show up

But because God never wiped Jesus’ tears ours will turn into a flood of God’s goodness

The day He shows up we will be overwhelmed by the flood

We wait on a sure hope and the Psalmist tells us in the nights full of tears hold onto what is coming

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.”

Put your hope in the Good of Good Friday

Put your hope in the good of what it purchased

Put your hope in the good of the forever that is coming

Put your hope in the flood God is bringing into your life if He is where you trust

The Book of Psalms Psalm 42: Where Is Your God?

The ancient Israelites had waited many times in their history for God to appear 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.

We know the feeling of our own exile and longing

We know our own story of nights where tears are our food

We know the feeling of the desperate deer on the run laboring with every breathe to find hope

But we know something else

Paul says we have been let in on a secret

The secret we have been let in on is that Good friday wasn’t the end of the story

The secret we have been let in on is that our nights of tears have an expiration date and the flood is coming soon

The Book of Psalms Psalm 42: Where Is Your 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.”

As we remember good friday remember he cried out in a thirst we will never know and went unanswered so our tears could turn into a flood of God answering us and one day making all things sad come untrue

We remember on good friday that our exile will end

We hope in the sure hope that all of this will end with another stream

Revelation says a never ending Stream of life is waiting on us

On its banks is the tree of life

I will sit with my grandpa and Jesus and dip my toes into it

And joy forever more is all that we will know

Because Jesus’ resurrection provides the ultimate answer to the soul’s cry for God, our present thirst in the wilderness is transformed from a desperate cry into a confident hope that the living water who rose on Easter will one day restore us completely