Hello, Hope Fellowship! Welcome again to our podcast “Full of Hope: Encouraging One Another with the Word of God,” where we seek to regularly equip the people of Hope Fellowship with truth from Scripture. 

I’m Jeff Brewer, one of the pastors here at Hope. And on behalf of the elders we want to make sure that everyone is being cared for in the church with the variety of needs that you might have. Please contact your mission group leader or if you are not yet connected with a mission group, you can reach us by emailing info@myhopefellowship.org 

Over the next few podcasts we’re going to look at Psalm 42, a psalm that speaks to our hearts when we are discouraged. 

And if ever we are tempted to discouragement, it is in these days of the coronavirus. 

Listen to Psalm 42:5–6. The psalmist asks himself, 

Why are you cast down, O my soul, 

and why are you in turmoil within me? 

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, 

my salvation and my God. 

 

My soul is cast down within me; 

therefore I remember you,
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, a pastor who pastored in England during the years before and after WWII, once wrote, 

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you.” (Spiritual Depression, 20–21) 

Psalm 42 and 43 are great examples of how we need to turn from merely listening to ourselves to speaking to ourselves. David asks the question four times in these two Psalms, “Why so downcast, O my soul?” He is hitting the mute button on himself and he is beginning to speak back truth. 

Psalm 42 and 43 are often thought to have been originally one Psalm because of this common theme. They are laments, which means they are passionate expressions of grief or sorrow.

Laments make up the largest number of Psalms in the psalter. I suspect it’s that way because all of us can relate to being discouraged and having the cry of the psalmist echo our cries when we are in despair. 

Ask yourself: what do I need most when I am discouraged? What do I need most when I am isolated and fearful because of the coronavirus? 

The answer is found here in these Psalms: we need truth that is outside ourselves. We need to speak to ourselves more than we listen to our fearful hearts. 

So over the next few podcasts we’re going to look at three ways we can speak to ourselves truth from God’s Word when we are downcast and discouraged. 

Today, let’s tell ourselves, 

Self, even though you are discouraged, remember how your thirst for God has been satisfied in the past. Remember you have found refreshment in who God is. 

In verse 6 the Psalmist says, “my soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and Hermon, from Mount Mizar.” 

We don’t know the full context of what was happening when this Psalm was written, but we do know the psalmist is far from the place where he worships normally because Mount Mizar is north of the Sea of Galilee. It’s a long way from Jerusalem. 

The psalmist is used to being in the house of God as he draws near to God. 

He says in verse 4, “These things I remember as I pour out my soul; how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.” He remembers how it used to be, and how far he is from that now. 

It’s no wonder the Psalm starts, “As the 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?” He is longing for refreshment because he is in a far off place. He’s remembering past refreshment and delight in God. 

When you are discouraged and feel spiritually dry, one way is to remember how sweet the refreshment we have had in Christ has been in the past. 

Thirst is something that we typically don’t think about unless we are feeling it. This should help us as we think about the picture that the psalmist is painting—thirst or a longing for God is essential to the follower of Christ. A building block of being a disciple of Jesus is that he or she desires God and longs to know him better. So we must be aware that our most basic need as a Christian is to desire God more and seek to get to know him more. The first step in thirsting for God is to recognize that he made us to long for him and to find our satisfaction in him. 

Why so downcast, O my soul?

But here is the problem for us and presumably the psalmist: he knows that God is the answer. After all, if you look at verse 2 he calls him the living God and in verse 5, “my salvation,” and “my God.” 

These Psalms paint a picture of someone who is thirsting for the right thing but he is currently unsatisfied—and this satisfaction is just outside of his grasp. 

Why so downcast, O my soul?

When we speak to ourselves and we question our hearts, what is bound up in the “why” of the “why so downcast” is the truth of the knowledge of God and the satisfaction available in Him. The psalmist is reminding himself of days when he was not discouraged because of the hope he had in God. Put your hope in God. “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you.” 

This Psalm helps us sit down beside ourselves, and, pointing us back to God, says, 

He knows me. I can say he is my God. 

He loves me so much he sent his Son for me. I can say he is my salvation. 

If I know him and he knows me, then “why are you downcast O my soul?” 

Our souls are cast down within us, therefore we remember God—specifically how we have been satisfied by him in the past. 

Next time, we’ll look at the specifics of what he has done that we need to remind ourselves. 

See you next time. Remember, we have hope in Christ. Let’s encourage ourselves with this hope by speaking truth to ourselves and by making that hope known in a struggling world.

Music by Joseph McDade. https://josephmcdade.com. Used with permission.