WHY ARE YOU CAST DOWN

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. Why are you cast down? Why are thou cast down, O my soul?

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And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. Psalm forty two verses five and eleven. The sons of Korah who wrote this song were temple singers, and yet here is one of them weeping, his only food, his own tears, asking, Where is what where is thy God? Verse three. Even the worship leaders have hard days. Psalm forty two contains one of the most healthy spiritual practices the Bible records. The believer talks to himself. Notice the construction. The psalmist does not say I am cast down and stop there. He addresses his own soul. Why art thou cast down? It is a difference between drowning in feelings and questioning them. Martin Lloyd Jones in his classical spiritual depression observed that most of our discouragement comes from the fact that we listen to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves. Have you realized? He wrote, that most of our unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself. End of quote. The psalmist refuses to be a passive audience to his own gloom. He preaches to his own soul. What does he preach? Hope thou in God. The Hebrew Yakal is a verb of waiting, waiting with expectation, waiting because something is on the way. It is not optimism, it is patience grounded in promise. Spursion called this kind of hope, a rope let down from heaven by which the soul climbs out of the pit. The Psalmist who preaches by remembering verse four, I remember. The Psalmist also preaches by remembering verse four. I remember the days of going to the house of God. Memory becomes a weapon against despair. The God who has helped you before has not lost his skill. Notice that this question Why art thou cast down? Is asked twice. Verse 5 and verse eleven and even repeats in Psalm 43 verse 5. The discouragement comes back. The psalmist preaches the same sermon to himself again. This is realism. The dark day does not always lift after one prayer. Sometimes you must speak hope to your own soul, and again and again and again. The psalmist anchors his hope in something specific, the help of his countenance. To see God's face is to be saved. We who live after the incarnation have seen what David could only ache for. God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness had shined into our hearts to give us the to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians chapter four verse six. If your soul is cast down today, ask it, then preach. He has helped before. He will help again. Do you believe it? Say amen.

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O Lord, when our soul is cast down, give us courage to preach truth to ourselves. And we shall yet praise you. Amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters.