Hope in God

Today we are going to open up Psalm 42. As we walk through this Psalm, the question you should have in the back of your mind is, "What does hope in God look like when life gets hard?" Last week we talked about belief in Christ, in whom God has revealed Himself to us authoritatively and most clearly. However, it might seem easy, when life is going well, to believe the Jesus is our savior, that God loves us, that God cares about us, sees us, and is there for us. But what about when life gets hard? 

Read Psalm 42  

Sometimes we get the idea, or someone tells us, that part of what it means to be a Christian is to always be smiling, to always be happy. To be chipper, perky, paste on that church smile and say, "Jesus makes me warm inside." That is some folks' notion of Christianity. But is this what real faith and hope in God always look like? This Psalm would tell us otherwise.  

Movement 1 

This Psalm falls into two basic parts, verses 1-5 and then verses 6-11. The each end with an identical phrase commending hope in God; but let's start where the Psalm starts.  

v1-2 In verses one and two the Psalmist begins with an analogy. He describes for us a thirst for God which is analogous to a deer panting for running water in a dry and arid land. Like a deer being pursued by predators, deeply in need of a drink, so the Psalmist feels. Oh, that he might drink from the fountain of God's presence! He longs to appear before God, but apparently has been cut off from Jerusalem and the temple, where God's people worshiped in the Old Testament.  

v3 In verse three he further details the torments of his soul. He is so distraught that he continually finds himself weeping. "My tears have been my food day and night." This is the kind of anguish he feels from sensing a separation from God.  

v4 Adding to the anguish he feels in this scenario are the memories of the times when he was able to not only go to the house of God, but to lead the processions of people in their singing, shouting, and worshiping of the Lord. As amazing as that experience must have been at the time, its absence now is a source of pain for him. God will do that for us sometimes; teach us the value and importance of something by taking it away, either for a time or for the rest of our lives.  

v5 As we move into verse five we see the Psalmist engaging in what we might call a "personal pep talk." It's a bit more serious than that, but we'll call it that anyway. He rebukes himself for being so cast down and torn up, preaches to himself that he must wait upon God, patiently hoping in Him; because one day He will again experience His presence. 

Movement 2 

v6 Moving from this pep talk of hope in verse five, in verse six we see again that the Psalmist soul is cast down within him. This causes him to remember God wherever he roams, from the land of the Jordan to Mount Mizar. 

v7 In verse seven our writer returns to the use of imagery, and pictures the afflictions of his soul as the roar of a waterfall or the breaking of waves of water crashing over him. [Note: this is the perspective of every single commentary I consulted. I personally wonder if verses 5-8 shouldn't be taken as one piece, all referring to the need to hope in God, whose love and kindness crash over the writer like so many waves. However, because my view is completely novel as far as I can tell, I elected to teach what is the consensus understanding of these verses.] These trials can all be traced back to the Sovereign hand of God, for they are His waves, and the waterfall belongs to Him as well. 

v8 Contrast this with verse eight, where not only does God control the afflictions that befall us, but He has a steadfast love which we can firmly trust in. He commands His love, His mercy, and at night the Psalmist can say, "God's song is with me," and commit his prayer to the God of his life.  

v9 But moving into verse nine, what does he say to God? He wonders, "why have you forgotten me?" Why am I mourning, oppressed by my enemies? 

v10 In verse ten this lament continues as he describes what it feels like as his enemies torment him, jeer him, and mock him--"where is your God?" they sneer. This sneering, combined with the separation from God which the Psalmist already senses, combine to pierce like a dagger or a spear into his bones. 

What defense of it shall you give? 

v11 Verse eleven, though, brings us back to the all important conclusion; an exact repeat of what we read in verse five. "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, my salvation and my God." 

4 Lessons to Draw 

So there is an overview of the Psalm, I want to quickly draw four lessons from it and apply them to our lives today. 

1) Life is hard. Circumstances and make life difficult, often circumstances which are out of our control. And then there are the times when other people make things worse. There may even be times when it feels as if God Himself has forsaken us. In verses 3 & 10 we see the Psalmist being mocked, and in verse 9 he wonders aloud if God has forgotten him. It seems like life keeps crashing on him like a waterfall, breaking over him, wave after wave after wave. Life is hard.  

2) Our response to life being hard is often to feel cast down in our souls. To be sad, depressed, upset, etc. I said in the introduction that some people think Christian=happy. This simply is not so. There are times when we, like the man writing this Psalm, feel overwhelmed by life and cut off from God. And even though He never does leave His children (Hebrews 13:5), the feeling that He has or will can sometimes be debilitating.  

3) The proper response to feeling cast down in soul or separated to God is then to thirst for God. We need to know that a proper thirst for God in difficult times is just as much a sign of our love for Him as rejoicing in Him is when times are good. Feeling separated from God and longing to be near Him is a sign of spiritual health, not sickness. The person writing this Psalm knew God deeply, knew what it means to love God, and knew that when we feel apart from God, our number one priority should be a desire to be near Him.  

4) We must learn to trust God, to hope in God, and nothing else. Look at the circumstances of the writer: cut off from Jerusalem, the temple, the center of Hebrew worship; adversaries mocking him; his own soul cast down within him --he could easily have looked at this and thought, "God must not be real, or he wouldn't allow all these bad things to happen", or, "God must not be good, a good God would save me from bad things happening." If we rely on our circumstances or our feelings to guide us, we will end up believing all sorts of lies about God, about the world, and about ourselves. We must cultivate a deep distrust for our feelings into our lives.  

Conclusion 

The Psalmist rebukes himself, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" and he points himself to where his confidence must rest: "Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." Hope in God.  

Romans 8:31-32, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"