I might just invite you to pray with me before we open up the word this morning. Let's pray together. Dear Lord and heavenly father, we come before You this morning. We open up Your word to a tough and emotional passage, and, Lord, we just ask for comfort. We ask for peace.
We ask for understanding as Your spirit works in us. Lord, I pray that You'd be with me as I preach and teach the word, and, Lord, I pray that You'd be with the hearers as well, that Your spirit would be with them, that You would work in them in their hearts and minds. Lord, we just pray this in Your name. Amen. So to start off this morning, I wanted to mention that I've recently started watching a new TV show.
It's an anime, and it's called One Piece. For those of you who don't know what anime is, it's basically cartoons for adults. And the goal of the main characters in the show is to become the greatest pirates ever, and they wanna find the most elusive treasure called the One Piece. And as the main characters seek to achieve this goal, they are met sort of every 10 episodes with a new opponent. The new opponent is usually not anticipated by the main characters, and the opponent is always hyped up to be the most powerful and formidable adversary of them all.
Once the new opponent has been introduced, there are usually multiple tense episodes in which the main characters attempt to defeat the opponent, fail to defeat the opponent, get very close to dying, and then survive and complete their mission. And our lives can kind of operate in a similar way. We have a biblical purpose. We have a goal and a reward to look to, yet we consistently meet formidable opponents along the way. The opponents distract us from our goal, and they drive us to lose hope.
Our souls long for a God who can be unseen, seemingly unavailable, and disinterested. Our minds have logical knowledge of the happy ending, but a downcast and thirsty soul can seem to outweigh this knowledge. And I think Psalm 42 might just be one of the most beautiful, heart wrenching, and encouraging expressions of what it looks like to live with hope despite having an opponent filled storyline. So as we open up this passage together, one of the main things that stands out is that it speaks a lot to the human soul, this psalm. The first two verses say, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
As the writer reminisces over past times in verse 4, he says that he's pouring out his soul. In verse 6, he says, my soul is cast down within me. The chorus of this very psalm is a question to the human soul. Why, my soul, are you cast down, and why are you in turmoil within me? And this really is a psalm which speaks to the human soul, which made me wonder, what do we mean when we say the soul?
What is the Bible meaning when it mentions the soul? And of course, the meaning is a little bit complicated and a little bit vague. But there is a sense in which the soul can be understood by all of us. When people speak about the soul or you hear the words of this psalm, you can almost feel or acknowledge what the soul is. But we often limit our understanding of the soul as the part of us that's purely emotional.
Or maybe we limit it to the cartoon style definition of the soul, which is some kind of generic Casper ghost that lives in us and is only released when we die. While the Bible doesn't give an exact description of the soul, it does give something to guide us in our knowledge of the soul. The Hebrew word, which is translated to soul, is the word nephesh. Nephesh most often translates to soul. However, it has a variety of meanings that help us to understand.
Nephesh directly translates to throat. The human throat being the thing by which we receive life giving food and water. It carries the meaning of you are what you eat in some sense. Nephesh is also used in Genesis 2:7, for instance, when the scripture says, the Lord formed a man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a nephesh, a living being.
The thing that makes us a living being is our nephesh. Psalm 49:7-8 says that no one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them. Or more directly translated, the ransom for a nephesh is costly. No payment is ever enough. And so here in this passage, nephesh is best translated to just life.
Again, in Genesis 17:14, nephesh is translated to simply mean person. So the physical combined with the inner self. And in Deuteronomy 24, it's translated to heart, referencing our passions and our desires. So in our passage, you get the sense that since the psalmist is using this word nephesh to reference our soul, he means to reference our whole being. He means to reference the living being that makes us who we are.
He means to reference the breath of life that God puts into us, the person we are physically combined with the personalities that make us and the desires that drive us. And so it's no wonder that in this passage, when we hear about the soul being cast down, it seems like it's all encompassing for the psalmist. It's no wonder that when he's saying all of these issues that he's having, he's rather expressive and a little bit dramatic about the weight of what he's feeling. And now if we were dwelling with God and the earth was functioning properly as it was ordained, and if we didn't have sin, our souls would be greatly satisfied and operating as intended. Yet as we read this psalm, we know that something isn't right.
The human soul gets cast down, and it has turmoil within us. And we have to ask, what causes this in our lives? What causes this in the life of the psalmist? And now the psalmist mentions a whole heap of suffering, which form part of his soul being downcast and disturbed and in turmoil. He says, firstly, he's oppressed by an enemy, a physical oppressor with weaponry and fighting.
He's being attacked physically. He fears for his life. He's not just being attacked, but he's also being taunted by the enemy. They say to him all the day long, where is your God? He suffers mortal agony, physical pain.
In the ESV, it says deadly wounds in his bones. He's separated from the house of God, where he used to dwell with God's people and praise among the festive throng. He used to lead the people in the procession of worship, and he is now separated from that. It's no wonder he says that his tears have been his food day and night. It's no wonder he compares his trials to the waterfalls, the deepest waters, waves and breakers sweeping over him.
It's like he's being tumbled in the ocean, and he can't breathe. No wonder he asked God, why have You forgotten me? He's drowning in his sorrow, and the weight of that is affecting his entire being, his nephesh, his soul. And we all, at some point, have to deal with one or more of these issues being pressed onto us as we live the Christian life. Although we don't face a physical enemy with weaponry and war currently, we do face a spiritual enemy, Satan.
Daily, there is an enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion waiting to devour us. He tempts us to sin, and then when we fall for the temptation, our souls become cast down in a state of guilt and self loathing. Satan loves to drive us to that point of despair with our sin. He loves it when we get drunk again and make a fool of ourselves. He loves it when we fall into temptation to watch pornography again after resolving to never do it.
He loves it when we lose our temper at our spouse and we have tension between the two of us. Satan loves driving us to the point of despair with our sin, to the point where we cry out with the apostle Paul in Romans, what a wretched man that I am. Satan loves that, and he is our enemy. Like the psalmist, we also face health issues, injury, chronic pain. These things are often pressed onto us.
Some of us have immense pain, leaving us with no choice but to be bedridden. Some of us have injuries with ongoing mobility consequences and pain. Some of us face the weight of terminal illness. Some of us face the heftiness of depression or a draining amount of anxiety. Some of us face the weight of difficult parenting.
Children who walk away from the faith not being able to have children at all. Some of us face the weight of that. And like the psalmist, we face the continued and ongoing pressures of a society who yell out at us, where is your God? You might literally have to face this oppression as you are evangelising on the streets, for instance, or in your workplace, or you might face this question within yourself as you watch someone dismantling your faith. Maybe you're watching someone like Stephen Fry, and when he says, why should I respect the capricious, mean minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?
Bone cancer in children, what's that all about? And within ourselves, we love to ask where is your God? Satan loves to ask us, where is your God? Facing any one of these issues could lead the Christian to tears, to feel as though God has forgotten them, to feel as though they are drowning in their circumstances, washed away in the deep waters. Yet it's interesting that among all of those things, feeling downcast about life circumstances alone, it doesn't really summarise the depth of the complaint of the psalmist, especially when you consider that feeling cast down is common even in those whose life is going well.
Life circumstances can contribute, and they do, but they're not the cause alone. The psalmist acknowledges his pain and suffering. He lists it all out, yet he still asks, why, my soul, are you cast down? Why are you in turmoil within me? If there was a direct correlation all of the time between our life circumstances and being cast down in our soul, we'd probably end up trying to sort of find joy in fixing our circumstances, and that might be the meaning that you pull out of the text.
Downcast because you don't have enough money and it's making you anxious. Here's your solution. Find a bible verse that makes it sound like God wants you to be rich and then pray for money. Or maybe try working yourself to the bone sixty hours a week to establish your own business. One day you can relax in the comfort of riches.
Downcast because you're tired? Buy a boat, holiday house, or sports car. On the weekends, you can just enjoy yourself. Retire to a beachy location and spend the rest of your life collecting seashells. Just relax.
Just forget about everything. That'll fix your downcast soul. Downcast because of health. If I could just feel better, then I'd be happy. Essentially, there is a prosperity gospel version of this psalm, and it goes something like this.
Why, my soul, are you cast down? Why are you in turmoil within me? I am cast down and in turmoil because my life circumstances are not as good as I'd hoped for. Therefore, if I have enough faith in God, He will give me everything I want until I'm happy. But this is not the true message of this psalm.
The psalmist looks at his dire circumstances, his downcast, disturbed, tumultuous soul, and yet he still asks the question, why am I cast down? If his life circumstances really were the cause of his depressive state, he wouldn't ask the question. He's cast down, and he's in turmoil because his soul thirsts for his God, the living God, the rock. He is cast down and in turmoil within himself because his soul thirsts for his God, the living God the rock. The psalmist says he pants and he thirsts for God, and then he asks, when can I go and meet with God?
His soul is thirsty because it longs for what it was made for. Enjoyment of God's presence, enjoyment of relationship with the God that made him and designed him, enjoyment in glorifying His name, which is his given purpose. And if we are separated from this created perfection with God because of sin, we can expect that we're gonna get thirsty to return to that perfection. This means that being cast down can happen no matter what our life circumstances are. Like, yes, the life circumstances contribute.
They can weigh us down. Absolutely. But there is one life circumstance which trumps them all, and that is thirstiness caused by a separation from God. Downcast, disturbed soul is a symptom of thirstiness for God. Perhaps this is why the word nephesh directly translates to throat.
Because through it, we need life giving water, otherwise our souls remain thirsty. And now, this is true of the unbeliever who is searching for some kind of hope to deal with a downcast soul in this world, but it's especially true of the believer, this fact that we're thirsty for God. If we look to Romans 8:22-23, it says this, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up until the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, us believers, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. We, as followers of Christ, believers who have received the spirit, we groan inwardly as we eagerly await God's redemption.
We as Christians almost have special right to this cast down feeling that the psalmist is talking about because we have received God's promises for our redemption, and we are the thirstiest to receive them. The question really begs then, what do we do with the symptoms of our thirstiness? When our lives seem to cave in and we are downcast within, what do we do? The psalmist gives us an answer quite clearly. Why, my soul, are you cast down, and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God. Putting our hope in God is the solution, but it is easier said than done. It would be quite easy for me to just end the sermon there and go, everyone, hope in God. See you later. But it's easier said than done.
The human soul does not easily find hope. And as I wrestled with this passage, and as I was working out, I got to this point in the sermon, and I'm like, I don't know how to unpack this. I put my sermon aside, and I went for a walk. We used to live at Mount Gravatt at the bottom of the mountain there, and I went for a walk up the mountain and I get to the top and there's a group of people there who are all standing there and they're pointing up into the trees and they're all standing there looking at this koala up in the tree. And it just sort of it brightened my day a little bit to see that, and everyone was gathering around and sort of pointing and saying, come have a look at this.
There's koalas up in the tree. And so that ignited something in my head, and I was like, alright. Gotta go back home and work on my sermon Because I thought of this analogy that finding hope can be a bit like looking for a koala on a bushwalk. If I set out on a walk up Mount Gravatt on the search for a koala, I probably won't find one if I am looking down at the ground the whole time, and I tend to do that because I don't want to trip and fall. But if I'm too focused on trying not to trip, I will miss the koalas in the trees.
And so, likewise, hope is not easily found if our only focus is planning our lives to minimise suffering. Planning our lives to not trip. I won't find a koala if I decide I wanna run up Mount Gravatt. If I set up, set out to find a koala, but then realise that running is very thrilling, and I'm about to set a new personal best, my focus then moves away from the koalas, and it moves towards I've gotta run as fast as I can. Likewise, hope is not easily found when we make ourselves busy.
Running through life, no rest, no Sabbath, lots of hobbies to keep ourselves busy. It's a surefire way to make sure we don't have to think about the state of our soul. Hope is not easily found with mass distraction. Again, if I set out up Mount Gravatt, I will struggle to find a koala if I'm the only one looking for it. Koalas are a grey brown blob in a sea of grey brown dark green trees and bark, And I usually just end up looking up for as long as I can, and then I get a sore neck.
Hope is not always found with just an excess of content. Sometimes you can be looking for hope by reading scripture as much as you can or listening to as many sermons as possible or trying to pray for as long as possible or serving at church as much as possible with, like, trying to repay God back, we can do all that and still miss the hope we're looking for. And if I set out up the mountain on one day and I don't find a koala, then the next day I might not feel like trying. I tried yesterday and I couldn't find one. Likewise, hope is not easily found when it isn't formed by perseverance.
Romans 5 and Romans 8 say that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. Who hopes for what they already have? If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Hope isn't easily found if we don't wait patiently with perseverance. But the human soul can find hope.
All is not lost. I can more easily find a koala if I gain knowledge and techniques, if I read a book, for spotting koalas and then put that knowledge into practice. Likewise, it is helpful in tough times to have good theology. Yes. That is true.
But hope is found in putting the meat on the bones of our theology. Having hope is sending the theology to our hearts. And there are two distinct circles of theology that you could think about. There's heart theology and professed theology. And the two of those things, they must overlap.
If they don't overlap, they will get further apart, and we may become sluggish or cynical people with calcified hearts and maybe a laughable idea of God's sovereignty and goodness. We can easily lose sight of that. The famous Puritan John Owen, he describes the process of heart theology and professed theology overlapping. He preached the gospel for years but didn't truly experience God until suffering was pressed on him. These are his words.
God visited him with sore affliction, where he was brought to the mouth of the grave and his soul was oppressed with horror and darkness. Sounds awful. It was through this suffering though that he says his professed theology was able to overlap with his heart theology. The truth of the scripture that he knew in his head was made so beautiful to him that it was pressed onto his heart. And it was from this place in life that he was able to find the hope required to rise above his suffering and continue to preach powerfully.
And the psalmist in our text today does the same thing. He shows that his professed theology and heart theology overlap. He names God as his personal God, the mighty one who protects him, his rock, and his saviour. That's his professed theology. And it moves to his heart as he suffers.
He proves that it's moved to his heart as he suffers because he says that he will again praise God. The psalmist moves from his downcast soul. He lists everything that's going wrong in his life, and he says, if my God really is who He says He is, I'm gonna praise Him. People who have professed theology, which overlap with heart theology, desire to praise God in their suffering. They move to action.
They move to do what God created them to do. They press their theology into their hearts very difficultly sometimes by praising and serving. If you want to be a solid, weighty, radiant man or woman someday, find hope in your pain by pressing your professed theology into heart theology. And back to the koala. It's easy to find a koala when there's already a group of koala spotters who can point them out to you.
On Mount Gravatt, they actually, if they're not around, they actually leave an arrow in the dust that points to the tree that the koala is in. The psalmist acknowledges that it's easier to find hope when he's surrounded by God's people. The psalmist reminisces on times gone by when he would go to the house of God to worship among the festive throng and lead people in the procession of worship. Why would he remember that in his pursuit of hope? Why does he bring that up at all?
Okay. Great. You went and sung songs. Why are you reminiscing on that? Because there is a correlation between meeting with God's people and finding hope.
Trying to find hope by yourself is wearisome, and it's often unfruitful. We ought to put people around us who can help us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, as in the words of Hebrews 10. Consider finding people who you can count on to do this. Look to surround yourself with people who can encourage you, sympathise with you, tell you when you're going wrong, point you to a book or a helpful resource, or boldly confirm truths with you. Boldly confirm biblical truth with you.
People, the people that God has put around us, they're a gift. They help us move our professed theology to our hearts. Because when truths are said out loud by another person, they become alive and real. Same thing when we sing to one another, when we teach and admonish one another through psalms and hymns and spiritual songs like Colossians says. It presses truth onto our hearts.
When you can see and hear someone else truly believes the scripture, it presses that truth onto our hearts. And this is a beautiful part of being a follower of Christ, is that even in our suffering, we are part of the body of Christ. We are part of His church. Each one with a spiritual gift, each one with a unique personality given by God, each one performing a different job so that the body of Christ may be built up. If you need to be built up in hope today, you would do well to let the body of Christ support you in that.
Do not give up on the habit of meeting together. Come to church. Hear the word of God taught in power. The word of God is powerful to save those who believe. Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and find a group of people who you can be known by.
And this is gonna make it easier to find hope. And then lastly, with the koala. The key to koala spotting is not to fixate on the koala sometimes, but to realise that there is rest and enjoyment in searching for it. More often than not, I need the walk more than I need finding a koala. Likewise, hoping in God can feel a bit like holding your breath, clenching all your muscles, eyes popping, waiting for God to do something.
I've got to do something. Yet hope often comes when you can close your eyes. Release a slow breath, and take a warm magnesium bath for your aching muscles. The point of hope is not often immediate resolution. When our lives go wrong, we naturally and validly tend to wallow in our pain and say, oh my goodness, this is bad.
Like, we feel we have to do something immediately. We're thinking we're in God's bad books. We've been written down on the bad side of God's book, and we've got to try and earn our way back into God's favour so that the suffering stops. And this is what holding our breath and clenching looks like. But this is not how hope works.
Often, the key is to do nothing. And when I say nothing, I don't mean become lazy. I mean, adding perseverance to your suffering, as Romans 5:3-5 says. Perseverance can look like giving yourself the chance to sit, to wait, empty yourself, and dwell on your life before God. Fullness can only be had through emptiness.
Ecclesiastes 7:3 says, sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of the face, the heart is made glad. Persevering in the dirtiness of life and all the weightiness of suffering can make God present to us. C. S. Lewis says this very thing.
It's when we notice the dirt in our lives, it's when we notice the suffering that God is most present to us. It is the very sign of His presence. If we give ourselves the chance to add perseverance to our suffering, to notice the dirt, to sit, wait, and be empty, we might begin to see that our cast down soul and pain is beautifully pressing theology into our hearts. It might be beginning to beautifully press a delight for God into our hearts. It might begin to beautifully press on our hearts and need to be saved and a dependence on God as our saviour.
And finally, as we persevere, it's good to do it alongside God. In fact, you must. The psalmist does this. We should present our suffering and our dirtiness to God because He cares for us. It is good to treat prayer like the psalmist does.
It's good to cry out to God, to groan in His presence, to pour out your soul to Him, to talk with Him and just say, God, why have You forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning oppressed by the enemy? It's good to cry out to God and wait. It's good to cry out to God while sitting in the dirtiness of life. It's good to ask God for help.
It's good to ask the spirit to work in us and wait. Let the tears and the pain propel you deeper into fellowship with God. Wait on God, persevere with Him, cry out to Him, dwell with Him, and breathe out. This will help produce in us a hope that cannot be put to shame. And you might be thinking, yeah, all of those are great suggestions.
It's kind of missing something. All of these suggestions don't really help us find hope without this key ingredient. In order to find true and lasting hope for the future, we have to fully and finally deal with a solution or come up with a solution for our thirstiness, our longing to dwell with, enjoy, and know a perfect God. We have to find a solution to that. That's what the psalmist's main complaint is.
And this is why the psalmist writes that he will hope in God who is his saviour. The psalmist knows that in order to have hope, he must have a God who can save him from his thirstiness. A God who makes a way to bring a wretched, sinful, thirsty human back into His perfection. True hope can only be found by a person who sees their need to be saved and has confidence in a saviour. All other hope is fleeting.
It's no good to hope in theology if it doesn't address our sin. If we're thirsty to dwell again with God, we've got an issue because we're unholy and we can't be in the presence of a holy God. We need theological assurance and heart assurance that our sin has been dealt with fully and finally, so that one day we can again dwell with God. It's no good to hope in churchgoers if they aren't able to point you to a saviour who says, let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Without pointing you to a saviour to hope in, all they can do is sympathise.
It's no good to find hope through perseverance if we don't know a saviour who upholds us by mediating, interceding, and advocating for us with the father. What does anyone persevere for without hope of being saved from their troubles? And just like when I'm out on that walk at Mount Gravatt, and I'm walking, and I see off in the distance up in a tree, I see a furry little blob, and I go, there it is. And he turns his face towards me, and I get that sense of joy and satisfaction. Just like that moment on the bushwalk, God gives us the most amazing fulfilment of the psalmist's hope of a saviour through the perfect saviour, Jesus Christ.
You see, we can now find hope in our theology and what we believe if it is a theology of Christ Himself. Wondrous hope is found through a professed and heart theology that the only way to the father is through the son, who was delivered over to sin, raised to life, and through faith in Him, cancels our debt so we can return to God's dwelling place where all things will be made new and every tear wiped from our eyes. We can now truly find hope in the scriptures through Christ who gives us His spirit to understand the scripture and be moved powerfully by it. We can now truly find hope through God's people if those people point us to Jesus. Wondrous hope is found by surrounding ourselves with people who see our cast down soul and point us to Christ so that we can hold unswervingly to the hope that we profess.
We can now truly find hope in our perseverance, in our pain, in our suffering if we draw near to God through Christ who always lives to make intercession for us. Wondrous hope is found in knowing that God is working in us by the spirit to turn our suffering into delight through Christ our saviour. And that even as we fail Him on this journey, fail to trust in Him and sin, this saviour is pleading our cause for us. Why, my soul, are you cast down? Why are you in turmoil within?
Put your hope in God, who has given His son, Jesus Christ, so that one day our tears will no longer be food. The enemy will no longer taunt us. Our souls will no longer thirst, and we will dwell in the newness and glory of God's eternal presence. Let's pray together. Dear Lord God, we come before You now, and we are a people who suffer.
And Lord, we wanna present our suffering to You this morning. We think of those who deal with physical health pain, who deal with ongoing mental health issues, who deal with loss of loved ones, who deal with just life's consistent issues. Lord, we present these to You. We lay them before You, and we know that You care for us. And we put hope in You as our saviour who has given us Christ Jesus, who has taken our sin, made us blameless, upholds us, and brings us into Your presence forevermore.
Lord, we just pray that for those who struggle with hope, that You would renew this delight, this hope in the future that You have given to us and that You have promised to us. Lord, as we groan, please be near to us. Lord, help us to dwell on Your scripture powerfully by Your spirit. Lord, we pray that the words would be powerful to us in our devotions and in our prayers. Lord, we pray that this gospel would be made profoundly apparent as people dwell together, as this congregation gathers together as the church of Christ, as the body of Christ to build one another up, each with their spiritual gifts.
Lord, I pray that this church would be a church that builds one another up in hope. Lord, we give You thanks for Your son, Jesus, and we pray this in Your name. Amen.