Psalm 42. Let's read through
the entire psalm. It's only 11 verses. The word
heart, H-A-R-T, is a word that means a deer, and I think it
means a female deer. But in any case, it's a deer.
He says, as the heart panteth after the water brooks. And the
imagery here is a deer being chased by his enemy, the enemy
to take his life and eat him up. So as the heart panteth,
because he was hounded, and running to get away after the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Now, commentators believe
that this psalm was written by David at the time when he was
running from Absalom. If you remember, Absalom and
a large part of Israel, the nation, entered Jerusalem to overthrow
King David's rule in Jerusalem. King David and his trusted counselor
and some of his trusted army, Joab and the men that followed
him, all fled from Jerusalem because the number of people
with Absalom was great. And so it was a real coup and
David fled from Absalom, his son, and this was a grief, a
great, great grief of heart to David. It was a grief because
his own son turned against him. It was a grief because he didn't
want evil to come upon his son. It was a grief because his trusted
counselor Ahithophel, also turned against him and others, his own
countrymen, and he was outside of Jerusalem. In fact, he crossed
over Jordan outside of the region called Canaan, the Promised Land. And then one of Saul's servants
named Shimei came and cursed David and cast stones and kicked
up dirt at David. And so any number of people were
coming against David with verbal accusations and with an intent
to harm him and the people with him to take away his life. and
this psalm is supposed to be written out of that historical
event. It helps us to understand that
because as we read through this then we'll see that the prophecy
that was spoken by God from this psalm then has to do with the
consequences of sin. I say that because David experienced
this overthrow in Jerusalem as a consequence of God bringing
upon him the result of his sin against God with Uriah, the matter
of Uriah and Bathsheba. When he had Uriah, Bathsheba's
husband, killed in order to cover up his adulterous relationship
with Bathsheba, and then all that followed that. So we see
that God, even though he forgave David this sin of murder and
hypocrisy and everything else, adultery, that he told David
through Nathan the prophet that he would suffer the consequences
of this because he had caused God's name to be blasphemed among
God's enemies. All right, that was the historical
setting and so we see that this event of Absalom and those of
Israel overthrowing King David's rule in Jerusalem is typical
of the sin of a believer and the consequences of that sin
coming in his present life and all of the woe that came from
that. One of the things that came out of that was that David,
being away from Jerusalem, wasn't able to go into the temple to
worship God. That's where the sacrifices were
offered. That's where God made himself known to his people. He wasn't able to do that, and
he laments that in this psalm. So now that we have that historical
context, we're gonna go ahead and continue reading it. It says,
as a heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul
after thee, O God. And you can hear the validity of claiming that
David was running from his enemies. And that in running from them,
he was thirsty like a deer running from its enemies. And this thirst
was for God, because there was nothing more painful to his soul,
to David's soul, or to a believer's soul, than to think that God
was no longer with him. And being separated from the
worship of God gave him that sense, okay? All right, and we
know this in our own experience, don't we? Throughout the day,
throughout the week, the month, until we hear the gospel by the
power of God, we feel distant. We feel separated from God. Our
prayers seem few and empty and powerless, really, weak. And
so we have a reaction to that, and it's this feeling of being
downcast. And that downcast feeling is
actually a blessing from God because of the result that it
has in our lives. It causes us to do what David
did here in this psalm. So going on, as the heart panteth
after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come
and appear before God? All right, to appear before God
means to come into God's presence. It means to come to be accepted
by God. If we think we're not accepted
by God, there's nothing more depressing than that. Nothing
will zap our strength more quickly than to think that we are not
the Lord's or that we have sinned against him and we're distant
from him because of our sin. Those things sap our strength,
they sap our joy, our peace and everything else in our walk with
the Lord. How can we be restored? Well,
this sentence that came upon David comes upon believers. David was a believer. This is
the prayer, this song is the prayer of a believer recorded
here for us by the Holy Spirit of God. Therefore, we can take
this song as the true believer's prayer, can't we? And it's natural
for us, especially in religion and in churches, to act like
everything's okay. But what we see here is that
the opposite is recorded by the Spirit of God in the experience,
the true experience of a true believer that this believer pours
out his soul in his distress of soul to God. OK, my soul thirst
is for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear
before God? Verse three. My tears have been
my meat night and day and night while they continually say to
me, where is thy God? His tears being his meat day
and night means there was no let up, no relief. God didn't
answer him to take away his grief and his enemies joined his grief
and added to it because they accused him. They said, where's
your God? And thus they were accusing him
of being the cause. It was all your fault. What do
you expect? You're getting what you deserve.
You never were truly the Lord's. You can hear everything just
building up here and rolling downhill upon you like a heavy
stone of depression. In verse 4 he says, when I remember
these things I pour out my soul in me. For I had gone with the
multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with a voice
of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy day." So he's
remembering now, he's remembering that sweet fellowship he had
with the assembly of God's saints. Nothing is more dear in this
life than to hear the gospel by, given by the Spirit of God
through the preaching of the Gospel of God's Word to our hearts. And when we hear that with God's
people, those two things in combination amount to the greatest blessing
in this life that we can ever experience. And so he says that
here. I remember these things. I remember
appearing before God. I remember going with the multitude.
I remember going to the house of God, where God is with his
people, and hearing, and not only hearing, but then the response
of joy and praise being brought in response to hearing that word
from God. Verse five, why art thou cast
down, O my soul? So now, this is very important
here. The believer is seen here as
being depressed and despondent, yet he doesn't listen to himself. He actually preaches to his own
soul, and he takes from his memory what he had previously heard
from God, and the joy and praise, and he preaches to his soul,
and he asks his soul this question, why are you cast down on my soul?
Why art thou disquieted, no more quiet, he's disquieted, in me? And notice what he says to his
soul, hope thou in God. Now, this is a very, very powerful
statement, isn't it? Hope thou in God. In other words,
your hope is not in yourself. He didn't look at his feeling
of being downcast or despondent and draw that was the end of
it. I can't pick myself up. What
am I going to do? It's interesting to me that in
the free will works religion, which is 99% of evangelical religion
in the United States at least, and probably in Europe and other
places in the world. In that religion, everything
hinges upon the free will of man, on the decision of man,
on the commitment of man, on the dedication of a person. And God has done everything up
to a point and it's up to you to do the rest. That's really
the summary of all that they believe. And so there's nothing
that would be more depressing then than to be brought to this
point because of sin and thinking that I'm cast down. What do I
do? Well, you could say to yourself,
get up. Or we might do that. We might see a believer despondent. We might say, stop it, just straighten
up. Well, the problem is, is he couldn't
fix it. Therefore, he speaks to his soul
and he says, hope thou in God. You see, all of his strength,
his life, his joy, his peace, his salvation, everything was
in God, not in himself. He wouldn't find life or strength
or joy or peace or salvation or righteousness or anything
that God is to him. He wouldn't find that in himself.
He obviously wasn't happening. His experience was this sense
of despondency and overwhelming depression. So he says to his
soul, hope thou in God. He directs himself outside of
himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, hope thou in God for
I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. Now
this phrase, for I shall yet praise him, is a confession of
hope, isn't it? It's a confession of confidence.
He had confidence. I will yet praise him for the
help of his countenance. Now, the words, the help of his
countenance or the health of his countenance, as it says later,
actually can be translated the salvation of my face. And so
you see in the words here, his countenance was the way he saw
things and the result of God's work. how it affected him, how
it affected his disposition, his attitude, his appearance
in his life. He was downcast, he couldn't
hide it. There was no sense in playing the hypocrite. But if
the Lord was his hope, And it was true that he would praise
him, he would be praising him for the fact that he was his
salvation. And that salvation would cause his face to be enlightened. Not only his mind, but his whole
appearance would change. Verse six, oh my God, my soul
is cast down within me. Now this is honesty. This is
honesty. And I was telling Denise, I've
told her this before, that when I was young and I would read
a sermon by Charles Spurgeon, one of the things I liked about
him is he spoke in his sermons as someone who was real. He was
honest about the way he felt as a sinner. And when you read
the hymns of men who you really like those hymns, it's usually
because the hymn writer says things that identify with your
own experience in your own weakness, isn't it? In other words, a true
preacher and a true teacher is going to express in honesty what
they've learned about themselves by the dealings of God in their
own heart. And that's just the way it is.
You can't bear witness unless you've actually seen it. John
was willing to give his life as a martyr for the testimony
that he gave of Christ. because he actually saw him.
He was persuaded, this is the way things are. This is my life.
And his life in this world didn't really matter because he was
persuaded of it. And so we see that here. He says,
because he's persuaded of these things about himself and about
God, he's totally honest. And that honesty endears the
psalmist to us. It allows us to come alongside. We feel like, in fact, that the
psalmist is coming alongside us in our experience as a sinner,
directing us to our Savior, to our God and Savior, and then
comforting us and showing us where our help is. My hope is
in God, he says. He tells his soul, he's telling
us. And then he tells the Lord, he's honest with us as a teacher
and as a preacher, and he's honest with God about his own feelings.
We can be brutally honest and need to be brutally honest about
ourselves when we speak to God. He knows us. And this is the
freedom we have as the children of God. What father would be
upset with his child if his child so trusted their father that
they came to him and told him everything that was on their
heart, even though it was wrong? That would actually make that
father so tender and compassionate toward his child, that his child
would admit his own weaknesses and needs to his father, trusting
that his father wouldn't react in hostility, but would actually
find a way to help him. He is his father after all, and
so this is the child of God in his experience. Oh my God, my
soul is cast down within me, therefore will I remember thee
from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites from the hill
Mizar. Now if you remember in Psalm
133, Mount Hermon is mentioned because the dew came down upon
Mount Hermon And it was compared to the oil, the anointing oil
that flowed down on Aaron's head onto his beard. And that anointing
oil, therefore, was the blessing that God gave to all of his people. In Psalm 133, he says how good
and pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity. And
that unity, of course, is our unity as sinners having the same
Savior, the same God and Savior in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
he compares that blessing as this oil flowing down Aaron's
head and beard and as the dew flowing on Mount Hermon. Now
this is what he's talking about here. I will remember thee from
the, let's see, therefore will I remember thee from the land
of Jordan and of the Hermonites. So we see that the reference
of the Hermonites here is to that blessing, that place where
blessings flow down from God through our high priest, our
mediator, unto us his people. And then Jordan, of course, is
the river that Israelites crossed when they came from the wilderness
into Canaan. And remember that Jordan overflowed
its banks at that time, and Jordan represented the judgments of
God. That's where John the Baptist
was baptizing in Jordan. They were buried, they were essentially
buried, signifying that they were buried in Jordan when they
were immersed in the water, and that God's wrath was taken away
from them because it represented them being baptized into Jesus
Christ. And because they were baptized
in union with him, then his death was their death, his burial their
burial, his life their life, so that they're confessing that.
John the Baptist baptized people with the baptism of repentance
that they should believe on him who was to come. That's from
Acts 19 verse 4. Okay, so these references here
to Jordan signify the fact that as a river it was flowing with
God's judgments. Joshua was told, God told Joshua,
tell the Levites to carry the ark, and when they step into
Jordan, then God would stop the flow of Jordan, and all of Israel
would be able to pass over into Canaan, a dry shot. And that's
exactly what happened. The Levites stepped into the
river as they carried the ark, and immediately God stopped the
flow, and all of the rivers piled up. and Israel walked across
Jordan, they walked through judgment and they were not judged for
it. So we see in that also that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
Joshua, and who is our high priest, and who is the ark itself, entered
into the judgment of God for his people so that God's judgments
don't come upon us. when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of his son. That's why we have
peace with God. And so this reference here then,
oh my God, my soul is cast down within me, therefore will I remember
thee as the one who withheld judgment from his people in the
Lord Jesus Christ by himself being baptized in that judgment. And of the Hermonites, where
as a result of his judgments, God's Spirit comes down on his
people through the Lord Jesus Christ, our High Priest. From
the hill Mizar. Now, this is the only place I
can find that Mizar is used in Scripture, so I'm not sure exactly
what that is, but it's another reference to a place where God
did something that the psalmist is remembering his blessings.
So in other words, he's remembering, he's remembering. And remembering
is what Jesus told his disciples, as often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. And in 1 Corinthians
15, verse one, let me read that to you. 1 Corinthians 15, where
he gives a summary of the gospel, he begins it this way, he says
in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 1, Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have
received, and wherein you stand, by which also you are saved,
if you keep in memory what I preached to you, unless you have believed
in vain. Well, if means it's not a condition,
but a consequence of our believing. Those who truly believe do keep
it in memory, and what we keep in memory is the gospel. So in
Psalm 42, the psalmist is recalling to his mind God's goodness, God's
own character, God himself in his salvation in the gospel,
and he mentions these places, Jordan, the Hermonites, and the
hill Mizar. All right, now he's going to
go on in verse seven. in Psalm 42, and when he does, we're gonna
see that he didn't just remember God's goodness before, but now
he's gonna set forth to us the actual gospel. Look at verse
seven. He says, deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy
waterspouts. All thy waves and thy billows
are gone over me. OK, now that's a quotation almost
from Jonah. And I want to read that to you
because you'll see the similarity as soon as I get there. I can
never find these things. I'll have to thumb around for
them. You'd think that I'd know them. I won't take long, it's right
after Obadiah. He says in Jonah chapter two, then Jonah prayed
unto the Lord his God, notice, out of the fish's belly. He said,
I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me
out of the belly of hell, cried I, and thou heardest my voice. Thou hast cast me into the deep,
in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about,
all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said,
I am cast out of thy sight. Yet I will look again toward
thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about,
even to the soul. The depth closed me round about. The weeds were wrapped about
my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains. The earth with
her bars was about me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord. and my prayer came to him into
thine holy temple they that observe lying vanities forsake their
own mercy that would be idolatry but I will sacrifice unto thee
with the voice of thanksgiving I will pay my I will pay that
that I have vowed salvation is of the Lord okay that's what
he's talking about here he says in verse 7 Psalm 42 verse 7 deep
calleth unto the deep at the noise of thy water spouts all
thy waves and thy billows are gone over me Well, that quotation
that matches Jonah chapter two is referring, according to Jesus
in Matthew 12 verse 41, is referring to his own death. Jesus said,
as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,
the son of man must be three, or in the belly of the fish,
the son of man must be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. He would be buried. He would die and he
would be buried, And he would be, as it were, in the belly
of the fish, or in the belly of hell, he says in Jonah 2.
All of God's billows and waves, all of God's judgments would
come upon him. And that follows verse 6, which spoke about the
memory of the gospel. Here in verse 7, he's talking
about the experience of Christ in his sufferings. Now, in Matthew
26, Jesus told Peter, James, and John, my soul is exceeding
sorrowful even unto death. That was in Gethsemane. That
matches this text of scripture. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
now. So in Psalm 42, we're actually seeing a couple things here.
We're seeing the experience of a believer, a true believer,
an honest believer, a man calling upon God and God hearing him,
giving him hope. And with confidence, the man
is taught from God himself to preach to his soul, God is your
hope, hope in God. And I will yet praise him for
the help of his countenance, the salvation of my face. And
then he goes on and remembers God's gospel in these historical
things that signify Christ and Him crucified. And then he speaks
directly to it in verse seven, where the Lord Jesus Christ underwent
the wrath, the outpouring of the wrath of God in our place.
So not only do we see the experience of the believer, but we see this
psalm now as a psalm of the Lord Jesus Christ, his own prayers
while he was on earth living as a man on earth in utter dependence
upon God. He so emptied himself that he
relinquished all of his own strength in order to have only the Lord
as his strength, just as a man would have to do. And that's
beyond our comprehension. But nevertheless, it's the case.
He was always in the Psalms crying out to the Lord as someone who
was utterly dependent upon Him, who had nothing more than an
ordinary man, even as a man who was bearing the sins of his people
as a sinner himself. Okay? So now, if you get that
then, what you see here is this Psalm, not only, when we read
it, we say, this man suffered more than I've ever suffered.
This man felt more than I've ever felt. His thirst for God
was more pure than I've ever known. And I've never thirsted
like that. I've never understood that God
himself is the living water, the fountain of living water
that my soul lives upon. I've never really understood
these things to the depth that this man praying in the psalm
does. And I've never had the confidence
that this man had. I've never been able to speak
to my soul and preach to my soul in this way with his power. This
God-given word that he speaks in light and life suddenly comes
to him in the comfort of all that God has said. The reason
why we know we haven't had that same experience in the depth
that this man had is, first of all, because we're not like this
man in that way. We're not as honest. We're not
as needy. We still have so much unbelief.
Our faith is still weak. We don't see as we ought to.
We're like the song that we sang when I was looking at this chapter
on Sunday, where Don Fortner said, I could not see my lost
estate and I could not see God's son. That's the way we are. We,
you and I, We could not see our lost condition. We could not
see God's son. The psalmist is telling us that
he knew his salvation was in the Lord. And he prayed that
way. He bared the very depths of his heart in his prayer. And
he was honest. He was real. And so what we see
here is that this has to be our savior. And because it is our
savior, we take great confidence in the fact that he, his personal
faith, and prayers, and his anguish of soul, and God's answer to
him is our salvation. In Romans chapter four and verse
25, it says, he was delivered for our offenses, our sins, and
he was raised again for our justification. Christ, he was delivered. He experienced these things because
of our offenses, and because God approved of him and received
his obedience and his sacrifice of himself for his people, he
therefore raised him and justified him in that resurrection. and
that is our justification, okay? So knowing that this is the prayer
of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can stand in reverence and in
love that he would so put himself in our place and fulfill all
of our requirements to God so that he would fulfill a perfect
law and he would pay our debt for a broken law and he would
do it all in perfection and God would hear him and raise him
up again so that his experience, deep calleth into the deep, all
thy waves, wave after wave, as soon as one wave crashes upon
me and I'm just starting to Turn, then another wave comes, and
he's under it again. So that was the experience here.
All right? Verse eight, let me read it again.
It says, yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime,
and in the night his song shall be with me and my prayer unto
the God of my life. Okay, so he knew God's judgments,
and yet he had confidence. The believer knows he deserves
the judgments of God against him. We don't want them to come. If they do come, it would be
severe. We wouldn't be able to survive
it. And we know that there's no reason
why God should have mercy upon us, just because we would suffer
more than we could bear. Like Cain said to God, he says,
my punishment is greater than I can bear. Yeah, I know. It
doesn't mean you're less deserving for it. But notice, unlike Cain,
who turned away from God and said, you're too severe, too
hard, my punishment is greater than I can bear, and stuck his
fist, as it were, in God's face, here, the believer, especially
the Lord Jesus Christ, he says in confidence, yet, The Lord
will command his loving kindness in the daytime and in the night.
His song shall be with me and my prayer to the God of my life.
What is he saying? Where does his confidence come
from? What's the basis of it? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ confidence
came because God promised that he would raise him from the dead,
having fulfilled the will of God. But the believer's confidence
is not that he himself personally fulfills the will of God in his
own personal obedience. But his confidence is that God
saves for his name's sake. All of grace, all because of
Christ alone. And because it's alone, it's
Christ alone and of God's grace, then God doesn't look to us for
one thing, one reason. to save us, but he looks to Christ
for every reason, for every merit, for every obedience, to take
away all of our sins, to make our peace, to give us all blessings.
Every condition of the everlasting covenant is fulfilled by him."
Okay? That's confidence. He calls God
the God of his life. He says, He will command, the Lord will
command his loving kindness in the daytime and in the night. His song shall be with me and
my prayer unto the God of my life. Notice a complete reversal. His tears were his meat day and
night in verse two. But here he says God's loving
kindness is going to be my my joy day and night. my prayer
to the God of my life. God is his life. Notice, in this
psalm, he speaks, in the next verse, I'll show it to you. Here's
an example. I will say unto God, my rock. Notice he calls him
my rock. And then, in, let's see, in verse,
where was it? I want you to see this so that, Oh, in verse 6, if you look at
verse 6, he says, Oh my God. Now, people do this all the time
in our day and age. My God, they'll say. And they're
really taking the Lord's name in vain. Not here. His name is
not being taken in an empty use or in a way that makes God's
name cheap without any understanding of who it is behind His name.
The psalmist, when he says, My God, he's speaking of his relationship
to God and who God is. God is God. In this cry, my God
here, notice, who is God? Well, God to his people has revealed
himself as many things. He's the sovereign, so he's my
sovereign. He's the creator, he's the faithful
creator, so he's my faithful creator. That means he can do
anything, he's almighty. He's not only my sovereign and
my faithful creator, but he's also my savior. He says in so
many places, and I won't take time now to read those, but he
says, he says, I am the Lord, thy savior, the only savior. No other God can save, I am your
savior. And Jesus, of course, is the
savior of sinners. And so this term, my God, is
this very close relationship that a sinner has with God in
which God himself is his sovereign, his creator, his savior, his
righteousness, his provider, his shepherd, his healer, his
health, his victory banner, his sanctifier, the one who is always
with him, his covenant God. These things are all contained
in this phrase, my God. And he invokes God's name as
in this way, because this relationship between him and God was established
by God. And so he's calling on God to
honor himself in his great need being his need of God. All right? Does that make sense? We could
say it this way. All that God is, he is in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Remember Colossians 2.9, the
fullness of the Godhead dwells in him. All that God is, he is
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all that God is, he is to
us in the Lord Jesus Christ. All that God is, He is for us
and to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all that Christ is, He is
for us to God. Christ is the mediator, the mediator,
okay? My God, I will say unto God,
my rock, why hast thou forgotten? This is in verse nine. Why has
thou forgotten me? Notice his honesty. This is the
way I feel. Have you forgotten me? Why go I mourning all because
why do I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
The enemy is oppressing me. Verse 10. As with a sword in
my bones, mine enemies reproach me while they say daily to me,
where is thy God? How cruel. The enemy has no intent
but murder of God's people. And the enemy loves the pain
and suffering of God's people in the process of murdering them.
That's their intent. There's absolutely no mercy.
Did the Pharisees in John chapter nine have any mercy toward the
man born blind that Jesus healed? No, they wanted to cast him out.
You are altogether born in sin and teachest thou us. They were
so angry with him, they would have killed him. And so it is
with God's enemies. This hatred came upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. And the same hatred comes upon
all those who are his. It comes from Satan, it comes
from Satan's devils, his demons, and it also comes from everyone
who is the sons of perdition against the gospel. When the
gospel is faithfully preached, those who are not of God hate
it because they hate God. And that's what you see here.
My enemy loves to stick the sword into my bones. He speaks, where
is your God? He's trying to accuse me. He's
trying to remove my trust in God. But this is the greatest
privilege. And I want to say it again to
emphasize it. This is the greatest privilege
that a child of God has in this life. It is to honor God by honoring
his word. living upon his word. Jesus said
that a man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds out of the mouth of God. That's living upon the word
of God. And what is the word of God?
Well, we know it's scripture, but scripture has a message,
and that message is the gospel. And the gospel message is about
Jesus Christ, the word. So we see scripture contains
a message, the message of the gospel, the gospel of the word,
the Lord Jesus Christ. So in the end, The believer is
living by faith on the word on the Lord Jesus Christ through
the gospel preached in scripture, okay? According to the scriptures. How that Christ died for our
sins. How that he was buried and rose again the third day
according to the scriptures. So now the believer's greatest
privilege is to honor God not by living in despondency according
to his own soul's experience. But contrary to the very experience
of his soul, calling down God's word, the truth of God concerning
Christ, and applying it to himself in faith. That's living upon
God's word. And that's a huge, great privilege. Because what else is the will
of God? Jesus said, this is the work
of God that you believe on him. whom he has sent. That honors
God, that honors Christ, and that is a gift of God. When we
hear the gospel and we're persuaded this is the truth, and we live
according to that, we live trusting Christ, then this is God's privilege
given to us to honor our God in looking to his Son. What a
blessing, what a blessing in every trouble, in every temptation,
in all persecution, in life, in death, in every heartache,
in every joy, in every blessing, looking to Christ, who is our
life, living upon His Word. Okay. going on to verse 11. Why art thou cast down, O my
soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God,
for I shall yet praise Him who is the salvation of my faith,
or the health of my countenance, and my God. You see, he comes
back to it again and calls Him my God. What an amazing thing
this is. The very cry The very cry of
the psalmist in this psalm is God's grace. God brought him
into this low condition. God brought him out, but first
gave him the cry. And then in that cry, he showed
him that his hope was in God so that he directed him away
from himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. Amazing grace, let's
pray. Father, thank you. that you're
so gracious to us who are sinners, that you sent your son that we
might live by him, that he is our life, he is the propitiation
for our sins, that we can look away and completely away from
ourselves, because there's nothing in us. There's no life in us
of ourselves. There's no good works in us,
not of ourselves. We don't even have faith of ourselves.
Everything we have, we find in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then
when we find it in Him, we realize that we've been given faith.
And this helps us to understand that faith is looking entirely
to Christ. Help us now, Lord, to look. Help
us to embrace Him with that trust, that trust that leans upon Him,
so that we have nothing but what we have in Him, and all that
God received from Him for His people. That's all of our confidence.
And we trust, Lord, that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the
sovereign God of all men and angels and devils, will receive
us as poor sinners, brought to His feet, made to bow in need
of Him and His mercy to save us from our sins because we cannot
save ourselves. We can't even get ourselves out
of our despondency. We have to hope in Him. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.