If He Has to Reach Way Down, Jesus will Pick you UP

Topic: If He Has To Reach Way Down, Jesus Will Pick You Up

Text: Psalms 42

Date: January 30, 2021

Series: Set Me Free

Mental health is one of the most complex and far-reaching issues in our community. It crosses every racial and socio-economic line. It affects 1 in 5 people in the United States. Yet, it is an issue that is greatly misunderstood and our community is woefully under-equipped to serve those struggling with their mental health. Since we are called to actively love our neighbors, we need to learn how to embrace this part of our community. Set Me Free is a series designed to help us process not only our approach to mental illness, but also to fuel us to rest in what the scripture teaches us about it. Our God has the power to free us from the chains of mental illness.

Introduction:

Do you have persistent feelings of sadness or worthlessness? There’s a chance that you could be battling with depression.

Thirty-five million Americans (more than 16 percent of the population) suffer from depression severe enough to warrant treatment at some time in their lives. In one given period, thirteen to fourteen million people experience it..

Depression can have a variety of meanings because there are different types of depression. Depression as a is not the same as brief mood fluctuations or the feelings of sadness, disappointment, and frustration that everyone experiences from time to time and that last from minutes to a few days at most. Depression is a more serious condition that lasts weeks to months, and sometimes even years. Misdiagnosis of depression is common. It can often be misdiagnosed as anxiety, which is a common affect in many types of depression or other mood disorders.

Life has highs and lows, and as in a mountain range, the lows often come right after the highs. Like Elijah, we may scale the heights of spiritual victory only to soon find ourselves in the dark valley of depression. While certain forms of clinical depression should be professionally treated, many depressed feelings are part of life’s ups and downs.

Family, here this… When life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up.

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

Depression can drain energy, twist values, and assault one’s faith. Depression can affect anyone. Depressed feelings may cause some people to turn away from God. Depressed people must learn to trust what they cannot feel or see. They must understand that happiness comes from communion with God, not anything on the earth.

The Bible recognizes the heaviness of depression. God’s love and understanding reach out to those who are depressed and discouraged. God promises to give consolation, beauty in place of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of heaviness.

Isaiah 61.3

To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Psalm 73:26 ESV

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

The Bible tells us to be filled with joy and praise (Philippians 4:4; Romans 15:11), so God apparently intends for us all to live joyful lives. This is not easy for someone suffering from situational depression, but it can be remedied through God’s gifts of prayer, Bible study and application, support groups, fellowship among believers, confession, forgiveness, and counseling. We must make the conscious effort to not be absorbed in ourselves, but to turn our efforts outward. Feelings of depression can often be solved when those suffering with depression move the focus from themselves to Christ and others.

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

We must maintain strong faith in God and hold even more tightly to Him when we undergo trials and temptations. The Bible tells us that God will never allow temptations into our lives that are too much for us to handle (1 Corinthians 10:13). Although being depressed is not a sin, one is still accountable for the response to the affliction, including getting the professional help that is needed. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

Here in Psalms 42, we great ways as to how we can address this. This Psalms is a lament psalm written by men who formerly were able to freely worship God with the Lord's people. But something has changed. They have found themselves very similar to how we feel many times. Many of us tend to find ourselves at time in the same place. In a state of depression.

Sad

Discouraged

joyless dispositions

Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt

Suicidal thoughts/attempts

Which in turn causes us to feel far removed from that which is most important to us. We find ourselves feeling removed from our relationship with God which in result causes us to begin to question whether we fully believe in the first place. (Ad Lib)

When this begins to happen, we must hold on to the reality that everything that we are experiencing, God is with us. He will never leave you alone! Even when you feel as though you are at your lowest low, God is always at His highest high and is looking to pull you from the sinking sand and place your feet on a rock.

Listen, all of us experience at some point in our lives depression, but the question is how do we press through it?

Here in Psalms 42, there are 4 ways that we can make it through depressed times:

Call on the Lord: (v. 1-4; v.9-10)

First, we must Call on the Lord!

Psalms 42.1-4

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?” I remember this as I pour out my heart: how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God, with joyful and thankful shouts.

The author started this Psalm with prayer and honestly, that’s the best place to start when you are feeling low. When we are feeling sad and worthlessness seems to be overwhelming us, there’s no better person to talk to than the one who created us in the first place. Talking to God has a way of reminding us who we really are and what we really need. (Ad lib)

Every Christian has prayed to God at some point in their lives. God hears these prayers, whether they’re silent or spoken aloud. But calling on the Lord is definitely audible. In the Bible, the Hebrew word for call means to call out to, to cry unto, and the Greek word means to invoke a person, to call a person by name.

For example, when a little boy falls off a swing, he immediately cries out, “Mommy!” When his mother hears, she runs to him, wipes away his tears, and soothes him. Children cry out to their mothers when they’re hungry, tired, or scared. They cry because they’re helpless and they need to be cared for.

When we cry out to the Lord, it’s because we’re hungry for Him, we need Him, and we can’t make it without Him.

The psalmist says He desperately panted for God.

*And he told the Lord about it in his prayer:

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

*Deer can run for several miles, and for short bursts they can get up to 35 miles per hour! Deer can also leap over 8 feet high and can cover over 30 feet in a single bound!

*But deer desperately need water. "To the fleeing deer, no water means no habitat, no haven, no home and no hope, especially when they are followed, fearful or fatigued. This word 'pant' is talking about a craving, longing, hunger, thirst, or desire for something.

*The Psalmist here was just that... spiritually thirsty for the Lord. That's why he said: 'As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God.'" Think about being that thirsty, so thirsty that your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth, and all you can think about is water. He desperately panted for God in this prayer. -- Then he poured out his pain to God. He did just as we should… Called on the Lord!

Sometimes we are in so much emotional pain that we either could not eat at all, or he was crying so much that his tears mingled with his food. It’s in this times that we learn to call on the Lord.

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

We must call on the Lord!

Check our Attitude (v.5; v.11)

In depressing times, not only must we call on the Lord, but second we must check out attitude.

How often do you question yourself? How often do you remind yourself of who you are or even whose you are? How often do you have rhythms in your life that you just check your own attitude?

Thats what happening here in the text. Look at verse 5:

Why, my soul, are you so dejected (sad and depressed; dispirited.)? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

Many times we find ourselves in turmoil, because we’ve placed our hope in the wrong place. We’ve placed our hope in the wrong person. That's how this writer felt in his soul. But as he reflected on who the Lord was, and all God had already done for him, he began to check his attitude. It was as if he thought: "Now wait a minute, why are you cast down, O my soul? God is always good, and He is always true to His Word. So, hope in God, and begin to praise the Lord for the help of His presence."

See, checking your attitude pushes you to remember who your hope is in. To

hope in God is to believe it is possible to become like Jesus Christ in character, in essence, in glory. To hope in God is to believe that just as Jesus epitomized love in His actions and treatment of people, so it is possible for every man or woman to be in relations with others.

Will you dare to hope in God? If you already hope in God, will you dare to continue to hope in God? The promise from God is, for those who do not lose heart there is a rich reward (Galatians 6:9).

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

Check your attitude.

Commit Ourselves to the Lord’s Care (v.6-7)

We must call on the Lord, Check our attitude and third, we must commit ourselves to the Lord’s care.

He says in the text:

I am deeply depressed; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your billows have swept over me.

This man's troubles hadn't gone away. In vs. 6 he freely admitted this truth to the Lord: "O my God, my soul IS cast down within me." And in vs. 7, he felt like the Lord was crushing him under a waterfall: "Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me."

He freely admitted his anguish to God. But at the same time, he strongly committed that he would remember the Lord. Again in vs. 6: "O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember You. . .""The way to forget our miseries, is to remember the God of our mercies."

Hebrews 4:16 ESV

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Lamentations 3:22-23 ESV

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Sometimes people say that God is too big or too busy with more important things to be concerned with something as inconsequential as the details of our lives. But this sentiment is not biblical. God absolutely cares about the little things that happen in our lives.

To gain some perspective, we must first understand that everything is little compared to God; He created the entire universe. But the question of whether God cares is more fundamentally about the depth of His love than it is about the breadth of His power or the importance of a particular detail. Throughout the Bible, we see evidence that God cares deeply about our lives.

For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” Isaiah 41:13

God doesn’t simply send an angel to hold your right hand. The God of heaven and earth personally holds your right hand. This is a figurative expression of his closeness to us and his personal care for us. He says that we are not to fear because he personally helps us – “I am the one who helps you.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5.6-7

God isn’t so busy running the universe that he doesn’t have time for our petty worries. He tells us to cast all our anxieties on him. Why? Because HE CARES FOR YOU. He cares about you. He cares about your children and grandchildren. He cares about you in your job. He cares about your church. He cares for you, that you would have joy and strength.

The biblical depiction of God is one of mighty power and also astounding love. When we love someone, we care about the details of their lives. How much more does God, who is love (1 John 4:8), care about the lives of His children?

Confess Our Faith in God (v. 8)

Life has highs and lows, and as in a mountain range, the lows often come right after the highs. Like Elijah, we may scale the heights of spiritual victory only to soon find ourselves in the dark valley of depression. While certain forms of clinical depression should be professionally treated, many depressed feelings are part of life’s ups and downs.

Family, here this… When life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up.

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

Depression can drain energy, twist values, and assault one’s faith. Depression can affect anyone. Depressed feelings may cause some people to turn away from God. Depressed people must learn to trust what they cannot feel or see. They must understand that happiness comes from communion with God, not anything on the earth.

Listen, all of us experience at some point in our lives depression, but the question is how do we press through it?

Here in Psalms 42, there are 4 ways that we can make it through depressed times:

(To make it through depressing times we must):

Call on the Lord

Check our attitude

Commit ourselves to the Lord’s Care

And finally, 4 we must confess our faith to God.

The psalmist was still in pain, but listen he didn't give up. He kept calling on the Lord.

Watch what he says in the text:

Psalms 42.8-9

The Lord will send his faithful love by day; his song will be with me in the night— a prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?” My adversaries taunt me, as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?”

Though he was in pain, though his life was in shambles, be never forgot who his rock was. He had a ton of questions. He had a ton of feelings that he was processing, but he never fogot who his rock was. Though he felt like the Rock had forgotten him, he never forgot the rock!

Who is the rock?

We know that the Rock in vs. 9 is Jesus Christ! He is the Rock of our Salvation.

Psalms 18

I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock where I seek refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I was saved from my enemies.

Rock of ages (yes, Lord)

Cleft for me (yes, Lord)

Let me hide (yes, Lord)

Myself in Thee (yes, Lord)

I get tired (yes, Lord)

I get weak (yes, Lord)

I get worn (yes, Lord)

Jesus is my rock

My rock, my sword and shield

And He's my wheel in the middle of a wheel

He guides my footsteps and wipes away all my tears

Jesus is my rock, my rock, my sword and shield

Even though life has it way of presenting its own ups and down, we must never forget that we have confessed our faith in Jesus. He is the rock of our salvation meaning that there’s nothing to big nor too small for him. He is a rock, that sends his love to us when we feel as though all is against us. He’s such a rock that even when we feel as through we are forgotten, he reminds us that we are never forsaken. Jesus is the rock that we must commit our faith to.

Conclusion:

When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)

The answer for our downcast souls is a long look up at our Savior! That's why Isaiah 26:3 declares: "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." The hard times will come, but God shows us what to do: Most of all, keep looking up at the Lord.

(To make it through depressing times we must):

Call on the Lord

Check our attitude

Commit ourselves to the Lord’s Care

And finally, 4 we must confess our faith to God.

Main Point of Sermon: When Life has us downtrodden, God has the power to lift us up. (If He has to reach way down, Jesus will lift you up)