Untitled Sermon (6)

Two Types of Depression

The first point I want to make clear is that there are two types of depression: the first is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. The brain is an organ like any other. We may not understand it as much as, say, the stomach -- but it’s still just an organ. I read an article some time ago where scientists in a lab somewhere are experimenting with 3D-printing a human bladder -- simply because it’s the simplest organ in the entire body. We can’t do that with the brain -- but it’s still an organ! The brain doesn’t just control things like our breathing and heartbeat, but it also is the source of our emotions.

The second type of depression is really the one I want to concentrate on tonight: depression that is the result of believing a lie. There are so many of these lies people believe about themselves -- the lies that we’re worthless, we’re failures, we’re not good enough, we might as well just quit whatever it is we’re trying to do. I know none of you have ever had those thoughts before, right? These are the lies that I personally struggled with for so long, and the type of depression that most people can relate to. Just like a chemical imbalance, though, we all tend to avoid telling people that we’re thinking certain things or believing certain things because we’re ashamed.

Often people that struggle with this do because they feel like they are worthless, alone, and unable to actually accomplish anything. Sometimes that can flow into our faith life too. It can lead to thoughts like, I didn’t have enough faith or I’m a bad Christian and because of that I’m unacceptable to Christ. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Turn with me to the book of Jonah, chapter 4. Jonah is near the end of the Old Testament, between Obadiah and Micah. Jonah was an unwilling prophet -- in chapter one God tells him to go preach to the city of Nineveh that they had just a short period of time before God would completely destroy their city. Well, y’all all know the story --

Jonah didn’t want to do this, so he decided to run as far away as he could by taking a boat to the other side of the known world. There was a storm, the crew of the boat throws him overboard, and Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish until he decided to obey God and gets vomited back onto dry land. Finally he goes and preaches the message to the city of Nineveh, who decide to repent and plead with God for forgiveness.

This is where the story ends in most tellings -- but that only gets us through the first three chapters of the book of Jonah. What happens in chapter 4 is just as important as what goes on in the first three. 1 Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. 2He prayed to the Lord: “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I thought while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster. 3 And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Think about Jonah’s frame of mind for a moment. He was minding his own business one day when the audible voice of God comes and tells him that he’s been specifically chosen! I don’t know about you, but I would imagine it’d make me feel rather good if God comes and tells me that I’ve been specifically chosen by him -- but more on that later. Jonah’s response was to simply run away. So Jonah runs and ends up in the belly of a large fish.

Those of you who have taken biology or anatomy in school know that a stomach is rarely truly empty. It’s not just a big empty cavern like you see in a cartoon -- it’s a pitch black pit filled with stomach acid that is literally designed to dissolve anything it comes in contact with -- which would include Jonah -- to help with digestion. Wanna know why your throat hurts when you throw up?

It’s the stomach acid coming up with your vomit burning your throat. I say all this not to be gross, but to make the point that Jonah was not just swallowed by a fish, but he was supernaturally protected by the biological processes of that fish so Jonah would have an opportunity to repent. After three days, Jonah gets vomited up himself, where he hears God’s voice a second time. Jonah finally obeys and preaches the message he was given to the city and king of Nineveh, which ends up being saved from the promised destruction.

So Jonah has personally witnessed and been involved in multiple miracles in just a few days. By obeying God -- even though it was delayed -- he saved a city of 120,000 people from certain destruction. And his response is anger and disappointment. Later on in the chapter he even goes so far as to tell God that he wished he was dead! Does that sound familiar to anyone? You’ve seen God work in your life and in the lives of those around you, but yet somehow you’re still unhappy.

Jonah wasn’t alone though. Nehemiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and others are all major Biblical figures that had similar experiences with depression and unexplainable negativity.

So what are we supposed to do, then? How can we possibly overcome this if such big names and well-known figures from Scripture have fought the same battles?

We do what so many of them do -- we simply give it all up to God. Now, I understand how much easier that is to say than to do.

First Peter is a letter written by Peter the Disciple to various churches in the Roman province of Asia Minor -- modern day Turkey -- about persecution due to their beliefs. The letter starts with a reminder that all believers are God’s holy people. Let’s pick it up at verse 9:

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

These two verses are my reminder of who I really am. When we feel like failures, like we’re worthless and alone, and there’s no way God could possibly love us; when those lies from the pit of Hell keep trying to sneak their way back to our minds, these two verses can really pack a punch. Let’s break them down a bit:

It starts by saying, “You are a chosen race”. In the Greek, “race” means tribe or nation -- essentially, the whole lot of us have been specifically chosen by God -- just like Jonah was. Whether we choose to accept that choice is another matter entirely -- the point is that God accepts us.

Acceptance is important; no matter who you are, you want to be accepted by those around you. This is why people join gangs, this is why people do stupid challenges on YouTube, this is why people make bad decisions the world over -- they simply want to be accepted. Already, in the first five words of this bit of Scripture, we are told that God himself accepts us.

It goes on to say that we are a “royal priesthood, a holy nation”. This takes a bit of history to really understand the power Peter is putting on the page. In the culture of the time, there were two types of people who really had “power” and respect among the people: royalty, and priests. In fact, the culture even went so far as to say that the two types of people could never mix -- in other words, a member of the royal family could not be a priest, for example. By saying we’re a royal priesthood, Peter is saying that God doesn’t care what the world thinks, he has given us his own blessing and power.

And, by extension, it also means that God believes we are capable. If he didn’t think we could do it, he wouldn’t have given us the ability to do it!

When Peter says that we are “a people for his possession”, it means that God wants us. We’re valuable to him! How do we know?

Two things determine value: how much someone is willing to pay for something, and who owned that item in the past. For example: an old wheelchair isn’t worth very much on it’s own, but if you learn that old wheelchair was once owned by President Roosevelt, all of a sudden it’s worth a lot more, and people will pay a lot of money for it!

We are so valuable, we are worth so much, that God himself sent his own son down to Earth to die in our place on the cross.

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people” We have nothing in common with each other -- except God. Every single person in this room is either currently going through or has gone through in the past something similar to what you’re dealing with right now.

What does that mean? It means we’re not alone. It means that no matter what happens, whether it’s something super traumatic just mildly annoying, someone will be there to help us through it. What’s more is that God himself will be there the whole time as well. It says we are “God’s people”, not just “one people”.

Finally, it says, “you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy”. In other words, we are

forgiven. God doesn’t rub your sin under your nose, or keep reminding you of everything you’ve done wrong in the past -- we’re plenty good enough at doing that on our own! No, God releases our sin -- he separates us from our sin “as far as the east is from the west”, as the Psalmist put it.

You don’t have to be especially good at geography to understand that is an impossible distance -- we can’t do that on our own. If we go east long enough, eventually we’ll get right back where we started, still going east. Only God can separate our own sin from ourselves.

So think about what these two verses are really saying, and think about it in terms of the lies that we’re constantly bombarded with about our failures and worthlessness:

We are acceptable. God will always accept us, no matter what we or the world thinks.

We are capable. God believes we can perform the tasks he’s set aside for us (with his help) -- otherwise he never would have given us those tasks. God will never set us up for failure so long as we listen to what he actually says.

We are valuable. We are so valuable that he gave his only son to die in our place.

We are not alone. We are a massive family with every believer around the world. No matter how bad it gets, God and other believers will always be there for us to help us get through it.

We are forgiven. It doesn’t matter what we do or how bad it is, God is able and willing to forgive us. All we have to do is ask.

If God himself -- the creator of the universe and everything in it -- believes that we are acceptable, capable, valuable, will never leave us alone, and will always forgive us; why should we believe any different?