Psalm 5/38/41-42

The first two Psalm are a great companion study. Psalm 5 is the song/prayer of an innocent person while Psalm 38 is that of person suffering in the consequence of their sin. The beauty we find is that God's love and compassion is the same for both as long as the suffering sinner is repentant. His protection, His grace, His mercy, His power is for the innocent and the repentant!

Moving on to 41 and 42, we are reminded that there is only one way to spiritually navigate our depression, to praise our way through! Our bodies may need the aid of something prescribed to aid in the restoration of our chemical balance, our minds may need counsel and instruction to re-anchor back to truth, but our spirit always needs one thing, an outpouring of praise and adoration to Him which in turn buoys our inner person to a place of complete restoration, full hope, displacing our despair.

I want to comment on verse 7 of Psalm 42, where find a phrase that is often quoted, "deep calls to deep..." I often hear this used to speak of how the eternal part of our inner person is only ultimately satisfied by the eternal depths of God. That is most certainly true but I do not believe this is the intent of this particular text. The consequence of misusing a certain text is that its original intent is lost, displaced. I believe the the true application of this verse is that there are times when we are caught up in despair to the degree that we feel as helpless as we would be if we were trapped under a pounding waterfall, dropping from immense heights of above, continually driving down into the bottomless depths of the water below. The geographic reference in verse 6 tells us this is speaking of the waterfalls that drop from Mount Hermon and become the Jordan River.

Listen to the text, the latter part of verse 7, "...all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me." Here we see that the situation is one of that of drowning, and a crisis even attributed to the very hand of God, "...Your breakers...Your billows..."

But then hope comes, in verse 8 we find these words, "The Lord will send His faithful love by day, His song will be with me in the night -- a prayer to the God of my life." It is a prayer because this hope of which the Psalmist speaks has yet to be realized. In verse 9 we find this phrase, "Why have you forgotten me?" In verse 11, "Why am I so depressed?" The Psalm ends with, "Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God."

I love the word "still." This reminds us that even when we are trapped in the waterfall of depression that drives us further and further into the depths of despair, we must praise Him still in our prayers for rescue! Our praise must never be motivated by our circumstance but rather driven by our revelation of God! I reference verse 9 above but the phrase that precedes the question "Why have you forgotten me?" is "I will say to God, my rock..." We speak honestly of the feelings of despair we have but always in the context of an unshakeable belief that our rescue comes, from a God who never fails!

Pastor Fred