"Hope When It's Hard" (Salter) | Psalm 42

Sanctuary

06.21.2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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SPEAKER_01 0:17

If you've remained standing, please. For the reading or excuse me, for the singing this morning, we're going to do it a little differently. Instead of reading the Word of God this morning, we're actually going to sing it. So I invite you to take your bulletins in hand and join me as we prepare to sing Psalm forty-two.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Amen. To the word of the Lord sung. Sound wonderful congregation singing the Psalter. Scottish heritage. Praise be to God. Let me pray for us as we come to the song we just sung. Father, we ask that the words we just sung would come into our heart by the Spirit of God through the preaching of your word. See us, O Lord, as deer panting, thirsty. And meet our thirst in the preaching of your word. In Christ's name. Amen. Well, I have been reading a novel. I actually finished it last night. Is there any better night than when you finish a novel? I just finished it. It's called A Gentleman in Moscow. Its hero, Count Rostov, loses almost everything he has. This new Soviet regime sentences him to live out his days in a single hotel in Moscow, the Metropol. And they move him to a cramped room, a bit of an attic upstairs, where he is to watch the world he once knew disappear. He is an exile. He cannot go outside. He has every reason to give up, but he doesn't. How? Each morning he dresses as though it matters. He keeps his small rituals. He reads his books, he learns the names of the staff and builds relationships. He befriends a curious little girl who roams the halls. And while none of that shortens his long house arrest, what it changes is him. He decides that if he lets the confinement and the exile set the terms, the hotel will stop merely being his address and become his identity. He'll shrink to nothing. And so he refuses to believe everything his circumstances tell him. That instinct is the heart of Psalm 42. The man who wrote it is spiritually parched. God feels far away. His enemies keep asking him where his God has gone, and his own soul keeps dragging him down. But he does not merely listen to his soul. He turns and speaks to it. Twice you'll see him stop, his own grief in mid-sentence, and he says, Why are you cast down? Oh my soul, why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God. For I shall yet praise him. I hope you'll see this morning that this psalmist is not a pretender who says that pain is not real. He just simply will not let his feelings have the last word. And so we're going to put the psalm's own questions to ourselves this morning. Where is God when the soul runs dry? Where is God when we feel like we are desperately drowning? And how does one at the bottom find his way back to hope? First, where is God in the spiritual dryness? The spiritual dryness is seen in verses one through four through the thirst and the tears and the throng. The thirst is in verses one through two. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? The Psalmist opens with a picture of an animal in trouble. We have tamed this picture with tunes about a deer at a cool stream on a pleasant afternoon. That's not the picture here. This is a drought. This deer has come down to a stream bed where he has always drunk water, and the stream bed is cracked mud. This picture is a creature at the end of itself. Simply put, it must drink or the deer will die. That's the image. He is dying for God. This is not a skeptic. He has not lost his belief in God. He has lost the experience of meeting him. And for a soul that has known that deep experience, that absence is unbearable. He's thirsty. But then notice his tears in verse 3. My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, where is your God? I want you to look at what he's living on. His tears. A voice taunts him all day saying, Where is your God? And wherever that question turns up in the Old Testament, it marks the same terrible moment. That the one who trusts in the Lord is being put to shame in front of a watching world. It's a question of mockery and shame. It's the sort of mockery that Job's friends bring standing over a ruined man. And it's the very mockery that will be hurled from the foot of the cross at the Savior. Where's your God? The thirst, the tears, and then the throng, the throng he cannot rejoin in verse 4. These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng, the people, and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. What makes his condition worse in the midst of the dryness is his memory. For a person in spiritual misery, it is a great increase to their misery to remember what they once had. He remembers how spiritually enriched he was in the temple. He remembers how he used to go with the crowd, leading the procession into the house of God with shouts of joy. He did not just attend church, he led worship. And so this memory of something that is no longer is a memory that wounds him. What do we see here? I want you to be careful. There's no sin being confessed in this psalm. And there is no tragedy being named. Those are usually the two things we go hunting for in a dark season. Some failure to repent or some loss to grieve. They're not here in this psalm. I want you to carefully notice what dries his soul. Isolation from worship, constant mockery from the world, and an inability to participate in the worship of God. None of these are sins, yet any of them can leave a believer spiritually parched. This psalm made my heart go out to those who are shut in, isolated from worship, no longer feeling of use in the kingdom of God, is a recipe for spiritual dryness. We need to get near them, encourage them, thank God for the live stream. What is the answer to the question? Listen, the answer is hiding in the thirst itself. Spurgeon says it plainly. The thirst is not evidence that God has left, it's evidence that you are alive. You're living. What did he say? I thirst. Jesus sang Psalm 42 in the dark, parched moment under the wrath of God, so that our dry seasons would never again mean we face the brunt of his wrath. Indeed, Jesus is the singer of this song. Consider verse 2. He says, When shall I come and appear before God? When shall I appear before God's face? And Jesus comes in John 14 and says, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. The face of God and the face of Christ. And one day in the new city, brothers and sisters, we will see his face. Our thirst will be satisfied. We, the deer, will reach the stream. I want to ask you this morning. Which of these has been drying you out? You feel thirsty, you feel parched. Maybe it's the distance from worship. You've been away for a little while and you're back. Maybe it's even distance in worship. You come callous. Maybe it's being a Christian in a hostile world. Maybe it's your sense of a loss of usefulness in God's kingdom. Whatever it is, I tell you today, do not treat the thirst as a verdict against you. Treat it as a pointer to the one who has placed the thirst in you. Second question. Where is God in the sorrowful depths? In verses six through seven and nine through ten, we see distance, we see a flood, we see abounding questions. What's the distance? Verse 6. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you. From the land of Jordan and of Herman from Mount Mizar. He's at a distance, meaning he's far from the temple. He's full of grief. He's cast down, he says. What does he do, though? Therefore I remember you. The remembering back in verse 4, well, that was a sweet remembrance that actually wounded him because of his current experiential absence. The remembering here is different. It is a deliberate turning toward the God who he acknowledges is still there. Even though he is at the headwaters of the Jordan, even though he is on the far slopes of Hermon, even though he is miles and miles away from the temple, though thirsty and grieving at a distance, his remembrance recognize, though far from the sanctuary, I am not far from my God, I remember you. And then the flood. Verse 7. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. The word for deep here is the same word that broods over the waters at the very beginning of Genesis. It is the same word for the flood that broke open in the days of Noah. Jonah prayed this very verse inside of the fish, and it was very dark there. This is not ordinary trouble. The psalmist is wondering if the waters of judgment are crashing over his head. And from that distance and flood, he questions. Verse nine. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Here, he does something that looks like unbelief, but it is really faith. He turns to God and asks, Why have you forgotten me? It's okay to pray real. You don't have to pray right. Doctrinally, has God forgotten him? Well, any theologian could say the answer is no. Experientially, does he sense that God has forgotten him? Yes, pray that. This is not unbelief. He addresses God as my rock. He's praying, he's gripping the very ledge he's longing for. The psalmist asks five questions in this psalm. The questions addressed to God, his rock, reveal this. Hear me. Particularly today, if you're in the dark, if you feel the deep, if you feel the flood waters or the distance, hear me. The questions are not doubts. Faith has questions. Did you hear that? Questions directed to God are not doubts. Faith asks questions too. Listen to me. God does not flinch at the vocabulary of the drowning. God is merciful. He doesn't look at you in your darkest moments and say, You should have said that more doctrinally, profoundly, and astutely. He does not flinch at the vocabulary of the drowning. And then it gets worse. The questions aren't just inside of him, they come from outside of him, verse 10. As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all day long, Where is your God? He is away from the temple. There are enemies and foes saying, Where's your God? You look like you're sinking. Where's your God? He says those taunts land on him like a deadly wound in his bones. And so, what is the answer to that? Where is God? In the depths of our sorrow. Where is God? When we fill the floodwaters of drowning grief. You want to know the answer? The answer's in the pronoun. Your. I want you to notice that he does not say the breakers and the waves. No, he doesn't say that. What does he say? Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. That is the single pronoun that can give you a ballast in the storm. The waves are his. It would be no comfort at all to be told that God does not rule the wind and the sea and the waves. Whatever dark thing is breaking over you, even if an enemy is behind it, I want you to know this morning that enemy is on a leash. And I want you to hear this. Even Satan's breakers are Yahweh's waves. The deep that closed over his head is not loose, it is not random. It has an owner, and it answers to the command of our God. The waves are his. And truly, the waves are his, the waves are Jesus. Do you hear Christ singing this psalm? The taunt, the psalmist could not escape. It was turned one day on the Son of God Himself. They stood beneath this cross and they threw it in his face. In his moment of greatest weakness, they said, He trust in God, let God deliver him now. Essentially, where is your God? Jesus is the singer of this psalm. What did he pray in Gethsemane? He prayed Psalm 42. My soul is very sorrowful even to death. The same thing that Jonah cried in the depths. Now the greater Jonah cries, singing this song, facing a far greater depth and deeper wave of God's wrath for us. He's the singer of Psalm 42. The psalmist felt submerged under the judgment of God. But I want you to hear me, the Son actually was. All the breaking waves of Jehovah went over none but the Lord Jesus. Thanks be to God. Because Jesus was cast down and never once stopped trusting his Father, the believers' sorrowful depths now have a guaranteed floor. We will never go all the way down. He did, we are held. Whatever's breaking over you right now. Are you at a place where you can say, your waves, Lord? Your breakers? If you can't, please know God holds you still. What a great hope. And that's where we turn to now, the hope of verses 5, 8, and 11. How do you find your way to hope? Well, this is very practical. There's a practice, there's some content, and there's some defiance. First, we've got to find the practice for when we're in the dark and in the deep. It's in verses five through 11. I'll just read it once. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. How does a man or a woman at the bottom move toward hope? There is a very important practice to embrace. Start talking to yourself. That's what Psalmist does. Soul, why are you cast down? Hope in God. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones built his most famous work, Spiritual Depression, on this verse. This is his diagnosis. It is unforgettable. Most of our unhappiness comes from listening to ourselves when we ought to be talking to ourselves. Most of our unhappiness comes from listening to ourselves when we ought to be talking to ourselves. I want to tell you this. Your soul, my soul, will preach to me all day long. The question is whether we're going to let it. Or whether we are all going to turn around and become preachers and preach back. That's the issue. The battle of spiritual depression is ultimately fought in the realm of faith. Over which voice are you going to believe? I want you to consider the activity of deep-sea diving, something I will never do. But having read about it this week, I am now an expert. And I read that divers know this strange danger, that in dark or murky water you can lose all sense of which way is up. And it's worse than not knowing because your body will tell you with total confidence that down is up. Panic divers have kicked for what they were sure was the surface and driven themselves straight to the bottom. So they are trained in one rule: do not trust what you feel. Watch the bubbles. The bubbles always rise. That's Psalm 42. His feelings have turned into a liar, telling him God has gone and there's no way up. And he stops listening to himself and fixes his hope on one thing. He preaches to his soul, hope in God. He watches the bubbles of truth. What is the specific content of such a hope? Verse 8. The practice needs content to preach. In verse 8, the first half, he does. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love. Notice that he does not tell himself to cheer up. He preaches God. Who God is, what God has done, what God has promised to do. Hear what he says. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love. I want you to hear that verb. He does not say that God might send his love, that we should hope to feel it. He says God commands it. It is an eternal, royal, covenantal decree, and there is not one night that can cancel it. On this side of the cross, we have confirmed the hope of the gospel. When your feelings tell you that God has condemned you, or that God has walked away from you, or that you are too far down to be reached. Hear the preaching, talk to your heart. If God is for me, who can be against me? Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Talk to yourself. Learn how to be a preacher. And then you get another way to express the content. You got to learn how to be a singer. He says in verse 8, At night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Why don't you see? The truth is not only preached to the soul, it is sung to it. You see, faith does not wait until you feel like singing. Faith in the dark sings first, and then the feelings come. How does that work? It's why we sung Psalm 42. I hope you'll sing it some more this week. Because to sing the truth weds it to beauty. And I want you to know something. Beauty slips past the guard of a tired, frightened mind and lodges truth in the heart where bare argument in the midst of the dark never reaches. It's why you sing to kids afraid in the dark. Don't just preach the gospel to yourself. Sing it in the night. And I got good news. God says he'll provide a song. There is the practice, the content. And then last in verse 11, there's the defiance. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Do you see the refrain from verse 5 comes back word for word? The same from the middle to the end. It's the same question, it's the same answer. Did nothing happen? Is this mere repetition? No, I would tell you this is defiance. The waves have not gone down, the water may not have receded, but the anchor of truth holds. And the repeated refrain sets before us a bracing and necessary truth that we all need to realize. Faith is a struggle. You don't say the truth once and graduate. You preach it to yourself, and then you go back under, and then you come back up and you say it again and you do it again and you say it again. That's godly defiance. You defy yourself. You defy people mocking you, you defy the devil and the world. And say with this psalmist, I shall yet praise him. That's the hope and the way back. I want to ask you when God feels unreal to you, which voice has the pulpit? The self that talks you down or the faith that talks you back? Why don't you go back to that Russian hotel where we began? Count Rostov held himself together by sheer will. He dressed with care. He kept his routines. He chose every morning not to go under. It's a really beautiful thing to watch. But in the end, it really is a picture of a man holding on with his own two hands, and sooner or later the waves rise higher than routines. Yes, I want you to hear me. The believer is called to that same steady resolve. The difference, though, is what holds him up underneath it. Our hope does not rest on how tightly we can grip or even on how loud we can preach or sing to ourselves. Our hope rests on God who commands his steadfast love day by day and gives us a song in the night. The same voice that owns the waves commands his mercy for you. So when you hear that skeptical, aching question from inside or outside, where is your God? You want the answer? Here it is. He is my rock. I will not always feel him. But Christ went all the way under so that I would always know I'll never sink past his mercy. When I cannot see and when I cannot feel and when I cannot find the surface, I am going to follow the bubbles and preach to my soul and sing to my soul, hope in God, for I shall yet praise him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this light in the dark, for this guide for the depths. Help us learn to not listen to ourselves, but to preach to ourselves and to sing to ourselves of the great covenant and love of our God. Pray for those this day who find themselves in the dark, in despair, in the depths. May this message be the bubbles they need to see the surface. In Jesus' name, Amen.