The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Where is your God when you need him? Today on The Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, the author of Psalms 42 and 43 is being taunted and questioned by those around him as he battles with spiritual depression. What does spiritual depression look like? And how can we as believers find hope to overcome in times of darkness?

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In Psalms 42 and 43, the psalmist feels downcast, oppressed, disturbed, depressed, and rejected. Where can he turn for help? And where is God in all of this mess? If you have your Bible, turn to Psalms 42 and 43, and let's find out together.

Dr. James Boice: It's hard for me to imagine that a book on depression would be popular. But in 1965, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel in London wrote a book called *Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure*, which proved to be one of the most popular and widely circulated books he ever wrote. The only reason I can think of why it is popular is certainly not the subject itself, but the fact that Christians in all walks of life, at one time or another, experience depression and therefore look for a book that deals with it and offers a suggestion how it can be cured.

We're all depressed at times. We get down in the dumps, we sing the blues, and we feel that God has forgotten us. Sometimes we pray; it doesn't seem that he listens. The problems that we have don't seem to be answered, and what we experience is something that others have known before us. The great mystics used to refer to that experience, those times in life, as the "dark night of the soul." Not only do we experience such times, we also find them puzzling because when we think about them, we can't understand why in the world God should allow times like that to come into our lives.

We pray, we ask him, we don't always receive answers, and we think in the back of our minds that because we're Christians, things should really be going well. We take a clue from Erma Bombeck's book, *If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?*, and we find that to be true. Well, I'm sure you've felt that way. Psalms 42 and 43 deal with this. And I suppose the same facts that have made Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book on depression so popular and widely circulated and well-read have also made these two psalms, Psalms 42 and 43, among the most frequently read and sought-after psalms in the Psalter.

We are naturally inclined to turn to a psalm that asks very honestly and forthrightly, "Why are you so downcast, O my soul?" Because if a writer of sacred scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit could ask a question like that, well then it must be all right for us to ask it too. And we're encouraged when we find the writer going on to say, "Put your trust in God, for I shall yet praise him." We say, "Well, if that's his experience, then that will probably be our experience too."

Now, at this point in our study through the psalms, we come to a new book of the psalms, that is a second section. The first section occupies Psalms 1 through 41, and then beginning here with Psalm 42 through Psalm 72, we have the second section. And as we move into this second section, there are a number of changes that are noticeable. One is the variety of authors of the psalms that come in at this point. The first book of the Psalter almost all of the psalms are by David, and all of the psalms that are named are by David.

There are a couple that have no names at all. The first two psalms are introductory; they may have been by David, but they don't have his name with them. And then there are two others that don't have any names, but altogether 37 psalms in the first section of the book of Psalms are by David. And now we come into the second book, and we find a collection. There are psalms here by David as well, quite a few, 18. But in addition, one is assigned to Asaph, another to Solomon, and seven, or perhaps eight if you assume that Psalm 43 is written by the same author as Psalm 42, are assigned to the sons of Korah.

And then there are a few that have no names with them. We're also going to find more psalms of Asaph and David and the sons of Korah, as well as another by Solomon and a few other authors later on in our study. Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 are the first of a group by these authors, the sons of Korah. There are two groupings of those psalms here: this second section that we've come to now, and a second one that begins with Psalm 84 and continues to Psalm 88, with the exception of Psalm 86.

So we're entering into the largest collection of psalms that are written by this other group of authors. Now, that's interesting to reflect on just a little bit because we want to know who these people were. They were Levites, that is priests, and they were descended through Kohath, who was Korah's father, who was descended from Levi, and they were employed in the temple music. Now, the interesting thing is this: when the Israelites were wandering in the desert, Korah, from which they get their name, led a rebellion of 250 community leaders against Moses.

As a result of that, he was judged, and not only was he judged, the other leaders were judged and all their households were judged. If you read that account in the 16th chapter of Numbers, it's a rather horrifying thing. The people are instructed to get away from the people who had led the rebellion. "Stand away from their tents," says God, "because I'm going to destroy them." And the people did, and the earth opened up and swallowed them all. Very terrible story.

For some reason, the sons of Korah were spared. And it would seem, judging from their later employment, that out of gratitude to God for his mercy in sparing them from that judgment, they dedicated themselves to the worship of God in the temple, to the composition and the performing of the temple music and these hymns. Now, there's a lesson in that right at the beginning. It's not the lesson of the psalm, but it's an interesting one. It tells us that there can be devout children of reprobate fathers, as well as reprobate children of devout fathers and mothers.

And it teaches that no child need be kept from serving God because of the sins of his or her parents. If you have had an ungodly ancestry, if you can't look to a father or a mother who taught you in the ways of the Lord, perhaps all your background is something that is sinful and of which you're ashamed, that does not keep you from serving God and serving him wholeheartedly. And the sons of Korah are an example of that. There's another interesting change at this point in the Psalter. I don't know exactly what to make of it, but the names of God change noticeably.

According to Franz Delitzsch, who's one of the great commentators on the psalms and has taken time to count this sort of thing, in book one, the name "Jehovah" for God occurs 272 times, and the name "Elohim" only occurs 15 times. That's a significant balance in the direction of the name "Jehovah." But in the second book of the Psalter, to which we come now, "Elohim" occurs 164 times and "Jehovah" only 30 times. As I say, I don't know exactly what that means, but it's a fact.

Now, these two psalms go together, several reasons for that. In some Hebrew manuscripts, they're printed together; that's one indication. Another indication is that there's no title at the beginning of Psalm 43. Sometimes that indicates that the second one followed on immediately from the first. There is the refrain, "Why are you downcast, O my soul," and what follows, that occurs in both psalms. That ties them together. But the chief reason why these two psalms are to be taken together is that they both deal with depression, spiritual depression.

And they deal with its causes and they deal with its cure. There are a number of causes, but those that are mentioned here in the psalm are at least six, and that's probably the place that we begin when we want to study the subject. Now, let me ask, where does spiritual depression come from? What are the causes? Here's what the psalm suggests. The first, which we find in the opening verses, is forced absence from the temple of God and therefore from the worship of God.

Now, that is less of a problem for us today than it was for the ancient psalmist. To be separated from the temple in Jerusalem was far more significant and far more of a deprivation than it would be for us to be deprived from the worship in our own particular congregation. Because even a good congregation doesn't have the same significance as the temple did in Jerusalem. And yet, nevertheless, that same sort of feeling can come over us when we're separated from our friends. We don't know from this psalm who the actual author was, that is the specific individual.

"Sons of Korah" simply refers to a group. But we do know something about him. He tells us what happened. He was separated from Jerusalem, being taken or having found it necessary to travel to the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon from Mount Mizar (verse 6). Now, we don't know where Mount Mizar is. Mizar means "little mountain," and that could be anywhere. But we do know where Mount Hermon is in the land of the Jordan. It refers to the area north of Jerusalem and somewhat to the east on the far side of the Jordan, but very far north.

One of the commentators has suggested, somebody who knows the Holy Land well, that if a captive were being taken from Jerusalem in the direction of Babylon, the passage would be north by exactly that route, and he would probably be able to catch a glimpse, the last glimpse of the mountains of his homeland from that area. So perhaps you have a description here of somebody being taken off or having to travel off to a foreign country, and this is the last glimpse he has back from the mountaintop of Mizar toward his home where the temple is to be found.

And you see that evokes real longing and sorrow in his heart. He's not where he would like to be, and so he finds his soul cast down because of that forced separation. And then there's another dimension of this alienation. Remember now that the sons of Korah were engaged in the temple worship. They performed and composed the songs that were sung, what we know as the psalms, and perhaps other music and songs as well. If he's being taken away from Jerusalem, that means he's being separated from his occupation, that is from his work, the sort of thing in which he found his satisfaction and his meaning in life.

Now, you may very well have experienced that sort of thing because it's quite common. It may have happened if you've lost a job. You poured yourself into your work, you considered that to be meaningful, you got a large sense of satisfaction and meaning to life from that, and then suddenly it's taken away from you. And you say, "Well, what am I doing here? What am I good for anyhow?" Sometimes people are fired, and they feel that. Or they get too old and they have to retire, and then they say, "I'm too old, there's no use for me anymore."

It's the same sort of thing, and it certainly can lead to the kind of depression David or this young man had. There's a second thing he mentions. He mentions it twice in verses 3 and 10, and that's the taunt of unbelievers. In this distant land, separated from his friends and meaningful work and the temple of God, the unbelievers that surrounded him made fun of him, saying, "Where is your God?" This must have hurt him a lot because he repeats it. You have to understand that that is not a statement made by an atheist.

There weren't really atheists in the ancient world. The first real atheism came into the world with Greek philosophy. People believed in God—not the God of the Jews necessarily, but they believed in God. So they're not saying, "Where is God? There's no God." That isn't the essence of the taunt. What they're really saying is, "Where is your God when you need him?" You see, if your God was worth anything, he would answer your cries and bring you back to Jerusalem. Where is he now?

Now, that is a cause for real depression. You and I have often asked that kind of question. Where indeed is God when we need him? Where is God when I'm in a far country, when I'm separated from my usual work, when I'm taunted by enemies? Why doesn't God seem to hear my cries? Why doesn't he intervene to change my circumstances? I'm sure you've asked that kind of question at one time or another. There's a third thing that bothers him. It's what we find in verse 4, and this is the memory of better days.

Now, memory functions in different ways. A little later on in the psalm, we're going to find it functioning in a good way, a proper way, as he thinks about God. But you see here, it's functioning in a destructive way. He's thinking about the things that he used to enjoy and can no longer enjoy because he isn't in Jerusalem. What he's remembering is the great times he used to have in the temple: "How I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng."

Now, it's hard for us to imagine the full extent of this exuberant kind of joy in worship that the ancient Hebrews had. C.S. Lewis captures a bit of it in his classic little book *Reflections on the Psalms*. He has a chapter in there called "The Fair Beauty of the Lord," and he calls it an appetite for God, almost a physical thing. That's the sort of language you find in the psalm. This man is talking about tasting God, thirsting for God, panting for God. Lewis says that was almost literally true of the ancient Hebrews.

Let me quote some of the verses he puts together to explain what it was like: "All the cheerful spontaneity of a natural and even a physical desire was theirs. It was gay and jocund. They were glad and they rejoiced. 'Let's have a song,' they sing. 'Bring the tambourine, bring the merry harp and the lute; we're going to sing merrily and make a cheerful noise.' Noise, you might well say; mere music is not enough. 'Let everyone, even the benighted Gentiles, clap their hands. Let's have clashing cymbals, not only well-tuned but loud, and dances too.'"

That's the sort of thing you find when you go through the psalms and put verses like that together. Our services don't have quite the same exuberance, though we come very close, especially with Robert Carwithen on the organ and the choir, Jim Hall on the trumpet, and the Westminster Brass. It gets even louder when we have the PCRT because we have drums as well. Well, I shouldn't say our services don't come close. They do. We have that sort of thing. And here's a man who remembers it and says, "Oh, for the good days when I used to be able to do that."

Some of our members have felt depression by being deprived from the kind of things they've enjoyed here in past days. Sometimes they're shut up in a nursing home and they can't get out anymore, or they're sick, or they fall, or they're in a hospital, they have an operation. Sometimes they move away. I meet people who have moved away from here all over the world, and they remember the wonderful times they had worshiping God here at Tenth Church. I think it probably was even more intense in the case of this man, and as his memory goes back to the good days which he thinks he's not going to see again or may not see again, he finds himself being depressed by the memory.

He mentions a fourth thing in verse 7: the overwhelming trials of life. He refers to them as waves and breakers. Now, it may be he's in the mountain country that he's camped along with those whom he's with by a mountain brook, and here you have the headwaters of the Jordan or some other river tumbling down over the rocks. And he's sitting there watching this. Under other circumstances, he might be charmed by the scene. He might say, "Isn't this wonderful, this beautiful running brook and the pleasant sound of the water tumbling over the brooks?"

But you see, these things are weighing on him, and things that would normally lift his spirits actually depress them because he looks at those tumbling rivulets and he says, "That's just like all the troubles that are breaking on my head. All your waves and breakers have come crashing over me," is what he says as he thinks back on his misfortune. Verse 9, he mentions something else. He's crying out to God because he senses that God's forgotten him. He's been asking God to do something, but God hasn't done it. God's not acting quickly to help him.

Verse 9 reminds us of what Jesus cried from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" though Jesus didn't take it from here; he took it from the first verse of Psalm 22. But that's the kind of thing you have. You see, when you're in a state of depression like that, you feel that God has abandoned you completely. And one of your complaints is that he doesn't intervene. He doesn't intervene quickly to answer you in your need. Well, we have that in Psalm 42.

You go to Psalm 43 and you find something else: he's being attacked by ungodly and wicked people. They're probably the same people who were taunting him earlier, saying, "Where is your God?" But you see, in this section, we learn that not only were they making fun of him, they were actually attacking him unjustly because what he calls for here is God to intervene and vindicate him, that is to show that he's right against these slanders that are being raised. Now, it's not unusual for people who are trying to live for Jesus Christ to experience unjust slander of this sort.

The devil will certainly stir it up, but it doesn't even require the devil. We are not of this world, and the world will hate those who try to live like Christ. Jesus himself said that. He said, "You are not of this world, even as I am not of the world. Because you're not of this world, that's why the world hates you. In this world, you will have tribulation." That's what Jesus said. So it's not unusual to experience that, and sometimes when we experience it to be really cast down.

Now, those are the causes of depression that the psalm describes. I suppose we could add other things too. In Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book that I mentioned earlier, he names a number of other things, listing them. There's temperament, for example. Not everybody is alike. Some people are naturally buoyant; I wish I knew more of them. Other people get easily depressed; I know far too many. And somebody's going to say you're much too much like that yourself, especially my wife, especially on Sunday nights when I'm tired. But temperaments differ, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones mentions that.

Physical conditions enter in. We can be affected by ill health. It's not necessarily a spiritual thing that gets us down. We just don't feel good, and that can weigh upon us, especially if we're inclined in that direction. Sometimes there's a down reaction after a great blessing. You find an example of that in Elijah. After his great victory on Mount Carmel, he had such a letdown after that tremendous spiritual victory that he's out in the desert feeling sorry for himself. He thinks that he's the only one left. Elijah, the great prophet. "I'm the only one left," he said, "and they're seeking my life to take it away."

Sometimes you feel like that. That's the cause. And then, of course, there are the attacks of Satan. Martyn Lloyd-Jones mentions that. And there's simple unbelief. We don't trust God, and when we don't trust God, we experience depression. And I suppose you could add other things to that. How about a great disappointment in life? Or some personal failure? Something you tried to do and you just blew it. You could have done it, but you didn't, and you blew it, and you find that depressing. Or how about the burden of simply getting old? I guess the list is endless; we could go on and on.

But enough about that. What we find in the psalm is not only a description of causes of depression, we also find an approach to a cure. And that's the point at which we want to end. What the psalmist talks about here is so different from what the world does. You know what the world does when it gets depressed. It tries some other experience, quite often. Divorce and remarriage is something some people try; that'll pick me up, so they think. Excessive entertainment: "You know, let's go out and have a good time."

Or frequent vacations: "Let's change the scenery." Some people pop pills. Other people are on habit-forming drugs. There was a scene in *Family Ties* where Mallory, Alex's sister, was describing her depression. She says, "When I get down, I go shopping." And a lot of people do that. They go out and buy a new dress or a Miata, and they think that'll pick them up. Well, a cure, but a cure only for a time. All those things are basically ineffective. Now, what is it that the psalmist does?

Well, he does three things, and you see it in that repeated refrain. I'd suggest, if you haven't memorized the psalms at all, that this is a good verse to memorize. Perhaps you know Psalm 23 and maybe Psalm 1 and Psalm 100 and some of those that people know and often quote. But if you haven't done that, if you think you can only handle a verse, try this one: "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

Now, there are three things in that, and I want you to remember them. First of all, the psalmist takes himself in hand. Now, what I mean by that is that he doesn't give in to depression or self-pity. Rather, he confronts it and he wrestles with it in order to come out on top. He reminds himself of what he really knows, and he finds that there are no reasons for being cast down that are as strong as the reasons for being exalted in God, his Savior. Now, Martyn Lloyd-Jones makes an awful lot of this in the book I just mentioned.

In the first chapter, in his introductory way, he goes over these various causes of depression. And when he gets to the end, he begins to suggest the solution that he's going to develop further on in the book. And he says the very first thing is talking to ourselves rather than allowing ourselves to talk to us. He calls that the very heart of the solution in the matter. And then he explains what he means. He says, "You know, when you get down, the way you feel can dictate to your thinking, and so you begin to think in a screwy way."

But he said you have to change that around and you have to begin to think in order to control your feelings. It's a great principle. Christians need to learn that, and especially today because our culture panders to our feelings. Our culture is always telling you you've got to feel good, and when we don't feel good, we think something is wrong. And what we have to do is think good first, and if we think good, the feelings will follow. That's what you have to do. Here's what Lloyd-Jones says: "You have to take yourself in hand. You have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You have to say to your soul, 'Why are you cast down? What business do you have, you being disquieted, you who know God?'"

You have to turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself, 'Hope thou in God,' instead of muttering around in this depressed way. Oh, dear, a great step forward in some of our Christian lives if we just learn to do that. J. J. Stewart Perowne, another one of the commentators, says this is the struggle between the spirit of faith and the spirit of dejection, between the higher nature and the lower nature, between the spirit and the flesh. And that's exactly what it is.

So that's the first thing, the important thing. Don't give in, but wrestle with it, think it through. The second thing is that he challenges himself to do what should be done. That is, what he should do is put his hope in God. And so that's what he tells himself to do. He thinks it through. What you ought to be doing instead of feeling sorry for yourself is put your hope in God. You're not going to find hope in anything else. Nothing in the world is going to give you any lasting hope.

Everything in the world is going to pass away. This is a sinful, failing world; it always has been and it always will be. The only place you're going to find any stability is in God, so put your hope in him. It's a mark, you see, of simple sanity for the Christian to do that because it's the only reasonable thing. And then the third thing, he reminds himself of a great certainty. And I find great encouragement in this. What he says is this: when he hopes in God, he finds that he's going to be able to trust God to improve things in the future.

Because he says, "I will yet praise him." That is, the day is coming when God is going to intervene in a way that will enable me to praise him as I did in the past. Why is that? Well, it's because God hasn't changed, and therefore his purposes for me have not changed either. He's blessed me in the past; therefore, he'll bless me in the future. I can count on that. I may not be experiencing it now, but it's going to come, and so I have to live in the hope of that certainty further down the road. Now, if you're in a depression, remember that.

You see, this is a sensible, reasonable way. It's not a Pollyanna kind of an approach and saying, "Well, there's nothing to be depressed about." There is something to be depressed about. You are depressed, and you can explain exactly why you're depressed. But you see, the argument transcends that. It says, "Yes, of course, those things are there. Those things have come into your life. God has allowed them to come; he must have a purpose even if we don't know what it is. But that isn't the end of the matter. Time is coming when you're going to be praising him again, so put your hope in God and live in the expectation of what he's going to do."

I find that to be of great personal help when I go through difficult times here at Tenth Church. I say, "Well, we're going through difficult times now, but God has blessed us in the past. He hasn't changed. He's going to bless us again in the future. And so he's going to intervene, and so I put my hope in him and go on." You find multiple examples of exactly that in scripture: people who have gone through difficult times but have lived through them and have come to praise God again in the end, people like Joseph and Moses and Joshua and David and some others.

Now, I end with the obvious question: does it work? We've talked about the causes of depression, listed some of them, and we've talked about this cure. The answer is in the psalm. Yes, it does. You see it as you make your way through the psalm. Look how the thought flows and how the mood rises through the psalm. You have to read it carefully, but you'll find that that's what's happening. There are three stanzas, two of them in the first psalm, and the third stanza is Psalm 43. In the first stanza, the psalmist remembers the former days at the temple, and he's oppressed by the memory. It gets him down.

It's what he's lost. In stanza two, he draws on memory again, but this time it's to remember God and his goodness. You see how he's moved forward? In the first stanza, he's troubled by the taunts of his enemies who are saying to him, "Where is your God?" He repeats it later. But in the second stanza, the answer to that, the answer he has is that God is with him. That's where his God is. In verse 1, God is absent. In verse 9, God is his rock. And by the time we come to Psalm 43:2, God is his stronghold.

And he's praying confidently that God will guide him back to the place of worship and to the joys of former days. Or to put it this way, the first two stanzas, Psalm 42, were laments. The third stanza, Psalm 43, has become a strong, believing prayer. And you see it in the last stanza as well, in verses 3 and 4. Look how it works. He's thinking now of what God is going to do. God is going to reverse his experience and bring him back to Jerusalem so he can worship again.

But notice how it builds. God is going to bring him back to the holy mountain, that is Mount Zion, to the place where you dwell, that is to the temple upon Mount Zion. "Then I will go to the altar of God," that is the altar standing before the temple on Mount Zion. And finally, the last phrase there, "to God, my joy and my delight." He's going to be back with God himself. Is there a cure for depression? Answer is yes, of course there is, but it's not in us. Cure to depression is in God. Therefore, it's up to us to seek God's face so that ours will not be downcast, which is exactly what David does. Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you for this study of depression as we find it here in this psalm, and we would ask you to apply these truths to us and bless them in our own understanding and in the way we function in the down times. And so teach us to become increasingly strong in our faith, in our trust in you, so that we'll be able to say at all times, "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed? Put your hope in God, because I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

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