We are continuing our subject of, well, subjects, Christians Avoid, but we're going to be taking a break next week as Brother Ron Schinkel shares with us, but then also beyond that, we're going to be celebrating the Christmas season, so we will be having some messages related to that, so we're going to take a break from this. Today is the uplifting topic that we never talk about, and by the way, I want you to understand, Larry gave a great mini-series on this during our Bible Fellowship hour, but I know not everybody is here for that, and we have a number of folks who are in other sensual classes, different things like that, but it's depression. We don't talk about depression. And so we're going to talk about that today, hopefully with the purpose of actually encouraging you. OK, but as we've talked about this series, the goal has been to shed light on subjects we do not talk about. So this morning. As I consider this area of depression, I want to cover enough of the subject to help you understand what the Bible says about depression, but it's not the right format to specifically figure out or advise about your personal depression. Can you understand that? So this is not going to be, you know, a counseling session, so to speak, but it's going to be hopefully giving you some tools and helping you understand how we can deal with this when it comes up in our lives. But here's the thing, though. Christians are supposed to be happy all the time, right? I mean, we're saved. We've been rescued from our sins and there's problems, but all we have to do is just look to God and they just go away, right? And of course, we must always be self-sufficient. Isn't that what we tell ourselves? Because if we don't, then we lack faith. On top of all that, some Christians assure us that God never gives us anything that we cannot handle. So if I can't handle it, that's my problem. And by the way, that's not true. All right. What we'll see this morning is that depression is very real, but God also gives us practical principles to help us deal with it. Depression is not the same thing as sadness. Sadness is a temporary emotional response to events or situations. There's lots of things that can make us sad that probably should make us sad, okay? But depression is a lasting, often harmful mental or emotional condition. It doesn't mean that it goes on for years, but it's not something that subsides quickly. And so there are times when we go through it and we come out of it fine, but there might be times when we are really struggling with something. And so I want us to, again, look at these principles. First, we're going to take a look at some examples of depression. And these are going to be scriptural examples. When we go beyond that, we're going to be looking at a lot of scripture. And I just want you to know, I'm going to try to send this out in some way that you can look at. I'm not sure if I'm able to. My technical advisor, my wife, said that I can basically make this into a PDF file. So I will make my slide presentation into a PDF file and send that out by email. All right, so you'll be able to have that. Because there's going to be a lot of verses. And we're going to go through them pretty quickly. But right now, I want us to look at some examples of depression. And you know, this really is one of those situations where misery loves company. I mean, it's like, well, there's some people in the Bible that they were messed up, you know? Praise the Lord, right? They were there for a reason. They're there to instruct. And so here we go. First, Moses, a giant in scripture, right? Moses had gone through a lot just to get the children of Israel freed from Egypt, if you remember. And of course, God did the ultimate freeing, but he used Moses. Then he had to lead what the Lord called a stiff-necked people. You know what that means? That's that, I'm going to set my chin, I'm stubborn, you're going to have to break my neck to move me. That's the kind of people that God called the children of Israel over and over and over again. There were probably many unrecorded times when Moses struggled with his emotions, but God has given us a couple of instances where he's shed some light on this. The first one is Deuteronomy 9-12. And I spoke to you at that time saying, I alone am not able to bear you. This is Moses talking to the people. The Lord your God has multiplied you and here you are today as of the stars of heaven in multitude. May the Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times more numerous than you are and bless you as he has promised you. How can I alone bear your problems and your burdens and your complaints? So here's what Moses is saying here, your problems, all the different troubles that you have as a people, this large group of people, your burdens, the loads that you carry, the things that bring you down, and then your complaints, your quarrelings and disputings. So he kind of covers about everything. And he says, that's all on me. And it's killing me. I mean, that's pretty much what he's saying. So then he goes on. to say something else a little bit later on in the book of Numbers. This is a little bit later on in their history. Numbers 11, verses 13 through 15. Where am I to get meat to give all these people? Well, as soon as you hear that, right? Where are we? We're partway through their journey. The people are complaining. We'll talk about that in a minute, but I want you to see the emotion here. For they weep all over me. Right? saying, give us meat that we may eat. I am not able to bear all these people alone because the burden is too heavy for me. If you treat me like this, please kill me. Kill me here and now if I have found favor in your sight and do not let me see my wretchedness." All right? In other words, I can't stand myself where I'm at right now. Just take me out. Now folks, let's be honest here. You can't get much more depressed than that. Now something should jump out at us right away here. We need to understand something. Moses was never alone. And he should have known that. We just have to be honest about the passage here. In the flesh, yes, it was him and the people. But God was with Moses just as he promised. But let's consider this. Consider how massive a project it was to pack up an entire nation just one time, move them to a new location, and then set up camp again. Just one time. They did that for 40 years. And of course they did that because once they got to the promised land, the people, not Moses, but the people rejected God's plan. All right? So now they're wandering and Moses has to manage this massive amount of people through the wilderness. I mean, we don't often think about sanitation, food, water. Now we know obviously that God provided some of that and that's part of the problem here, not God's problem but their problem, they got tired of the manna. So the people constantly begged Moses to provide meat for them and it just became too much for him, it was the last straw. It was just like, I can't take this anymore, I'm done, I'm spent. So that's a glimpse of Moses' life. How about Samuel? King Saul had once again disobeyed the Lord as we go into this text that we're going to be looking at. And God sent Samuel one final time to tell Saul that he was taking the kingdom away from him. So I want us to see Samuel's reaction to what happened. This is a little bit of their conversation. So Samuel said to Saul, the Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today. And this is from 1 Samuel 15. and has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you. And Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul. And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel." Now that word regretted there is not, you know, I made a mistake or something like that. It was just simply, I'm not dealing with him anymore. I'm moving on. Okay? He had a change of mind as far as what he was going to be doing. So as we're thinking about this passage, Samuel was overwhelmed with grief. I would imagine that he had had, over the years, a relationship with Saul. He had dealt with him a number of times, and I'm sure that there were times that he dealt with him that we don't have recorded in the scripture. But the Lord told Samuel to quit mourning for Saul. Why? It was getting in the way of Samuel's service. It had pretty much just paralyzed him. I mean, he was sad. He said, listen, I've got a job for you to do. We need to move on here. So sometimes it's a matter of, as we can see, just getting stuck, getting caught in some things and having it overwhelm us. And then we're going to look at the person of Saul. And the reason why I'm looking at Saul is because, first of all, he was a mess. But secondly, as we consider Saul, there were some aspects to depression that are not considered good by God, right? Now here's the problem with this. Saul's messed up life, didn't start off that way by the way, goes from 1 Samuel 9-31. I don't have verses for this, it's just going to be kind of reviewing some things, and if you're not familiar with his life, I hope you get something out of this, but the point is, I had a professor that said it like this one time, Saul had no heart for God. David had a whole heart for God, second king, and then David's son Solomon had a half heart for God. And if you kind of think of it that way, you know, where did Saul's depression come from? Well, part of it was because he didn't have any regard for the Lord. Now, there are a few of those chapters that cover David as he intersects with Saul, but primarily 9 through 31 are all about Saul. Saul was preoccupied with pleasing men during his entire reign. And again, I can give you accounts of that. He became emotionally unstable from trying to attain greatness. This is what he was all about. It was all about image. You know, Saul has killed his thousands and David has ten thousands. What? Wait a minute. Stop the presses. I'm the king, right? That's where he was about. That's what he was about. That's where he was at in life. He made poor emotional decisions to try to flex his authority on more than one occasion. At other times, he seemed paralyzed with indecision. Still other times, he went back and forth. Here's an example. He would tell David he was sorry, and he would stop trying to kill him. Then he'd turn around and try to kill him again. He lashed out at people, including throwing a spear at his own son. He also worked against God to keep his rule over the kingdom, which was not his kingdom to keep. The Lord didn't respond the same way to Saul's depression. Once Saul's heart was fully set against God and his plans, the Lord gave Saul over to a menacing, evil spirit." That's instructive, folks. So as we see Saul's life there are some aspects to depression that we can recognize in his life but then there's also some aspects to his depression that give us warning, hey look I don't want to get too deep in this and have it all wrapped up in me. Then we're going to look at Elijah's life, again one of the giants of the faith. It took great faith and bravery to stand against 450 false prophets of Baal and have the people waiting to see who would win. Do you remember that? There were two altars set up and basically Elijah said, hey, whoever wins, wins. You serve that God. He was alone over here, and you know the story about how they doused the altar and everything else. But the point is this, the prophets of Baal lost. The Lord performed an amazing miracle through his prophet, and the people actually executed the prophets of Baal. But word got back to Jezebel, the queen, Ahab's wife, and she threatened Elijah's life. And that was just an altogether different matter for him. That threw him for a loop. And we read about that in 1 Kings 19. If you'll turn with me please to 1 Kings 19. I want to read this account because there's a lot there that's instructive about depression. And there's a lot that we could talk about in this passage but we're going to focus on our topic at hand. First Kings 19, let me read for you the first 15 verses. As I mentioned in the run up to this, and Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. And then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so let the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. That might be where we get the term, you got 24 hours. I mean, that's what she's saying. And when he saw that, he rose and ran for his life and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there." By the way, he's running away from the location of where the sacrifice took place. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. So he went beyond Beersheba, went another day's journey beyond that, came down under a broom tree, and he prayed that he might die and said, it is enough. Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers." Now, if you're looking down at your scriptures, you can see it says capital L-O-R-D. Now, I'm speaking to you, the sovereign ruler of all, the self-existent one. I've had enough. Then as he lay and slept under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat. And then he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you. So he rose and ate and drank, and he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God." Now it's going to pause for a minute. If you are a marathon runner, you want whatever God fed Elijah, right? I mean, this was miraculous on multiple levels. Verse nine, and there he went into the cave and spent the night in that place and behold, the word of the Lord came to him and he said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah? And by the way, God sent him there, right? But that's not the point. What are you doing here? And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. Now, that's not all completely true, is it? Jezebel was after him. But this is depression. Verse 11. Then he said, the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by in a great strong wind, torn to the mountain, and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still small voice. So it was when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly, a voice came to him and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? And then he said, now listen, folks, we've had the wind, and we've had the earthquake, and we've had the fire. And then God just very calmly asked him the same question again, and here's Elijah's answer. And he said, I've been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts, because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, and turned on your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. Nothing changed. Then the Lord said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also, you shall appoint Jehu, the son of Nimshi, as king of Israel, and Elisha, the son of Shaphat, of Abel, Mehollah, you shall anoint as prophet. Now, I added those just to help us understand. God had a purpose for him, right? Again, so much could be said about this passage about the miraculous things that took place, but I want to focus on depression. It hit Elijah immediately after a great spiritual victory. God used him. Now, I understand that I'm reading a bit into the text here. I don't do that very often, but I believe that what happened here was that he's thinking, this is the dawning of a new day in Israel, right? I mean, things are going to be different now. And then this queen, this evil, wicked, nasty queen says, I'm taking you out. He probably wasn't expecting that kind of a response after what had happened. I'm not saying that he was expecting everybody to put them on his shoulders, you know, for he is a jolly good fellow. You know, that is not necessarily what he was looking for, but he wasn't looking for, I'm going to die. Sari is out in the wilderness just completely devastated, spent, and he says I just want to die. That's what he was fleeing from but then he asked for it. Then we have Jeremiah. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. He was grieving over, in the point of the story we're going to look at here, the point of the narrative, he was grieving over Nebuchadnezzar conquering the southern kingdom of Judah and taking most of the people to Babylon. The book of Jeremiah contains the prophetic warnings Jeremiah made against the people of Judah and the rejection of both God's prophet and God Himself. So Jeremiah personally responded to what he saw unfolding. Even the book of Lamentations, which basically we could say it's a poetic form of a book of grievings, a book of weepings. That's really what it means. And so now we're in Jeremiah, the book that Jeremiah wrote, the prophet, and he says this in Jeremiah 15, verses 17 through 18. Why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable which refuses to be healed? Will you surely be like an unreliable stream as waters that fail?" He was speaking in the end here about God, the one that he's representing, the one that he's the mouthpiece for. Jeremiah compared his emotional pain with physical pain. He also wondered whether God would be there for him. Have you ever felt that way when you've been depressed? And then we read another portion here in Jeremiah chapter 20, verses 14 and 18. Cursed be the day in which I was born. Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me. Why did I come from the womb to see labor and sorrow that my day should be consumed with shame? By the way, does this sound like anybody we've studied recently? Job, right? And by the way, you can overlay Job's entire experience over this area of depression, okay? And we covered that just a little bit when we looked at Job. Here, Jeremiah, again, sounds an awful lot like Job, but he wishes he would never been born. I mean, folks, this is down in the dumps, really rough, hardcore depression. So there's some scriptural, spiritual, real people examples, some of whom are what we would call giants of the faith, right? So how does the Bible describe depression? Here's where we're going to be hitting this a little quicker. We'll be looking at several passages in addition to the things that we've already gleaned from the characters because we've seen some characteristics there of depression without. First, And I'm going to have a list of these different things. A weakening and distressed spirit. Psalm 143 verses 3 and 4 and 7 say this, For the enemy has persecuted my soul. He has crushed my life to the ground. He has made me dwell in darkness like those who have long been dead. Therefore, my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. Does this ever describe part of your life? He goes on, "'Answer me speedily, O Lord. My spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me, lest I be like those who go down into the pit.'" So weakening and a distressed spirit. Also, overwhelming anxiety, Proverbs 12, 25. Now it's the first part. This is one of those Proverbs where you have the first part's negative, second part's positive, but they're related. But look at what the first part says, anxiety in the heart of man causes depression. It's just that simple. It's those worries that burden us, that bring us down. It's those things that we're concerned about that can create, that can cause, that can continue depression. So, overwhelming anxiety. And then, persistent sorrow and crying. We see this in Psalm 42, verses 1 through 5. As dear 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? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in the procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. 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. By the way, this is one of the Psalms of the sons of Korah. It sounds a lot like David, but this is actually the sons of Korah who were involved in the temple. And then we see in the same passage, and I wanted to emphasize this, depression and turmoil. I'm just going to read for you verse 11, but verse 5 says a similar thing. 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. Cast down or downcast, depending on what your translation says. And by the way, I think this was the ESV. It means to bend or bow down to be depressed. It's exactly what it means. And then this idea in the New King James of disquieted or here turmoil means to be troubled, to be in an uproar. Have you ever had a troubled soul? Trouble to the point where you just don't know what's going to be happening? That's what the sons of Korah are describing here. Then we have guilt over unconfessed sin. Psalm 32, verses 3 through 4, and I'm missing that one. No, I just, my clicker finger got a little heavy there, says this. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Maybe you've been there. The cause of your depression, the cause of my depression has been that I have sinned, I know I've sinned, and I'm just stubbornly keeping at it or I'm not asking forgiveness for it. Look, it sucks his vitality dry. And then I wanted us to go to Psalm 102. Psalm 102 is a, well, let's just say there's a lot here, which is why I wanted to read these first 11 verses out of this passage. And you can either note or jot down, but like I say, I'm going to kind of consolidate these things in a moment. You know, what we're talking about here, but this is really a prayer of an overwhelmed person. Psalm 102, beginning in verse 1. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my trouble. Incline your ear to me in the day that I call. Answer me speedily, for my days are consumed like smoke and my bones are burned like a hearth. My heart is stricken and withered like grass so that I forget to eat my bread. Because of the sound of my groanings, my bones cling to my skin. I am like a pelican in the wilderness. I am like an owl of the desert. I lie awake and am like a sparrow alone on the housetop. My enemies reproach me all day long. Those who deride me swear an oath against me. For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping. Because of your indignation, your wrath, for you have lifted me up and cast me away. My days are like a shadow that lengthens and I wither away like grass. So what I want us to do is just kind of compile all these things. How does the Bible describe depression? We're going to summarize. Worn out by responsibilities. that can create depression. By the way, some, all, a few, one, you know, any of these things can apply, all right? Any of these things can drive us into a longer term sadness that we struggle to get out of. Worn out responsibilities, by responsibilities, not great. Unstable emotions, poor decisions. Emotional outbursts ranging from anger to weeping. Has that ever characterized you while you're depressed? Number two will come out eventually here. There it is. Overcome by pressure to perform or succeed. Overwhelming fear and anxiety, worry, or sorrow and sadness. That's any or all of those things. Overwhelming fear, anxiety, or worry, or overwhelming sorrow or sadness. By the way, there's a lot of them, so I try to keep these things. Mourning some type of loss or death of a friend or loved one. So it could be a loss of some kind or a loss through death. They're not the same thing. Trouble eating and sleeping. Emotional distress may result in physical pain. Sorry folks, I paused there for a minute because I've been there. I've been to the point where my body has ached because of what I'm going through. Overcome by guilt or unconfessed sin, we read that. Feeling isolated and alone, possibly ignored, even betrayed. And that is related sometimes even to God. And again, these are feelings. Not all of them are based in fact, some are. Possibly despairing of life itself, and then I added doubting God, okay? Possibly despairing of life itself, and even doubting God. So these are all the different things that we saw, I shouldn't say all, these are the things I listed that we saw in the scriptures that describe depression. Now, check this out. This is a clinical description of depression. Three different resources I had line up with this, okay? So as I looked online and did some research, three different resources, you know, they all pretty much said the same thing. And depressed or irritable mood most of the time. I have most of the time listed here because one thing that we don't necessarily come out of scripture is that there's that depth of these emotions or these situations that we're talking about. It's the length of them and the depth of them, not just a time of sadness or a time of loss or something like that, but when it becomes a time-oriented thing, okay, I want to emphasize that. A loss or decrease of pleasure interest in most activities, including previous ones that gave satisfaction. Significant changes in weight or appetite. Possibly even a health, it could be possibly a health issue, right? You got to check that out first, but it could also be depression related. Trouble falling asleep or sleeping too much. Feeling restless most days. Feeling tired, sluggish, or having low energy most days. Again, some of this might be due to an illness, not depression, but if you know that you're going through some emotional things, this could show that. Headaches or body aches without any apparent physical cause. Having feelings of worthless or excessive guilt most days. That's worthlessness probably. Trouble with thinking, focusing, creativity, decision-making. Having thoughts of dying or suicide. Do you see how closely the scriptures match up to this? So man can come up with their definitions and even though it's not a clinical list that we get from scripture, as they say about Ragu, it's in there, right? It's in the scriptures, this description of what depression really is. And we see it demonstrated in real life in people's lives and God telling us about it. So how does the Bible handle depression? How does the Bible handle depression? Again, we're gonna be working through this fairly quickly here. Psalm 34, verses four and six say this, I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. So God hears us in times of need. Psalm 34, 17 through 19, same psalm, a couple different verses. The righteous crowd and the Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. The Lord is near the brokenhearted. He is near those who are depressed. Psalm 3 verses 1 through 3. Interestingly, this is a Psalm of David, it says, this is the title, but it's part of the scripture, when he fled from Absalom his son. Keep that in mind. He has now just lost his kingdom. There's been a coup and it's his own son. Lord, how they have increased who trouble me. Many are they who Sorry about that. Many are they who rise up against me. Many are they who say of me, there is no help for him in God. Well, that's a nasty statement. But you, Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. This just did something to me, folks. He's the lifter of his head. This is symbolic of relief and dignity. It's the opposite of a head slung down low, right? It's the equivalent of us telling somebody, keep your chin up. Do you understand that? This is who David describes God as. 2 Corinthians 7 verses 5 and 6. For indeed, when you came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears." So we get a little picture even of Paul's life of troubles that he was going through. Nevertheless, God who comforts the downcast, guess what that word means? Depressed. Comforted us by the coming of Titus. So not only do we have here God doing the comforting, but also God can also use others to bring that comfort, and that's a key important thing that we need to understand. Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7. Very common verses, but as we think about this by way of depression, think about this. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests remain known to God. And we have a result here. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So he says, don't be anxious. Instead, pray in faith for wisdom from God while giving thanks. God's peace will guard our emotions and our reasoning. What flies out the window when we're depressed? What flies out the window when we're overwhelmed with our circumstances, our emotions, and our thought processes? And God says that if we go to him and we're not anxious, but instead we're praying to him, that he's going to keep, he's going to fix, not fix as in repair, but have a fixed point in our hearts and our minds. He's going to keep our sanity. And all of this is through Jesus Christ. Psalm 42, verses 5 and 8. I love that. It's not the end of the psalm, but I love the end of that snippet in there. A prayer to the God of my life. So what does he say? He's hoping God, he will help you, and he will show you his loving kindness. That word is the Old Testament. He will give you his grace. 1 Peter 5, 6, and 7. Therefore, humble yourselves unto the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. We need to turn our burdens over to God. And then James 1, 5 through 8 says this, I wanted us to get the context here, but what I want us to see here is that we have some responsibilities in this. So part of how the Bible handles depression is that we have to do something as well. We have to go to God, and we have to go to God in faith. As a follow-up to that, Proverbs 25, 28 says this, whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like the city broken down without walls. Now, if you go back to ancient culture, right, we didn't have, you know, Patriot missiles out on the front porch. We didn't have armies and navies to necessarily protect us, mechanize and all that kind of stuff. What we had was we had walls. If the wall of a major city was broken down, it was now susceptible to attack. There was no way to completely stop an enemy from coming in, especially if they were an overwhelming force. The wall was your first line of defense. It was your main protection. So if we don't have rule of our own spirits, in other words, if we're out of control, then we are going to lose our protection. We have a responsibility to have self-control, which includes not just the emotion of anger, which is how this is many times applied, but in all of our emotions. Have you ever maybe just gone into the bathroom and put your hands on the sink and look in the mirror and say, get it together man, or woman. Get it together, snap out of this. That's that whole coaching, talking to yourself, get your emotions together. It happens to us. So we've got to be careful to do our part in all of this. Now, just briefly, I want to go over something. And folks, this is a big topic. I do apologies. We're probably going to go over a little bit today, but I want you to keep with me here. I want us to describe, see how the Bible describes Jesus. And we're going to look at this very specifically. You're like, how are we going to talk about it? We're going to look at this very specifically as related to depression. I'm not saying that Jesus was depressed, but I am going to read exactly what the word of God says. Isaiah 53, verses 3 through 5 and 7. He is despised and rejected by men. This is prophecy, by the way, but it's still truth. This is what happened. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. We didn't respect him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed." He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Folks, when we look at this description of the coming Christ, We cannot miss the gospel message of Christ taking on the punishment of our sin, but we also cannot miss the raw emotion that God's Son would experience on earth. The holy righteous Son of God came to bear our sin and our sorrows, but he did that through his own sorrows. Remember, he left the glory and the spectacle and the worship of heaven to receive this. And then we go on to Hebrews 4.15, for we do not have a high priest, Jesus Christ, not a high priest who would sacrifice something that would temporarily replace our guilt, but sacrificed himself to completely take away our guilt. That kind of a high priest. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. The temptation here isn't referring specifically to Satan's attempts to lure Jesus away from doing His Father's will. That's not exclusively what it is. The author of Hebrews wants us to understand that the one who paid the price for our sin is also the one who understands the difficulties and challenges of life. He experienced it in the flesh. It's the same Jesus who said in Matthew chapter 11 verses 28 through 30, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. So where does that bring us? Okay. I don't know what I'm doing. I just must have hot hand things. I'm hovering over the button and it keeps going. So this is a reminder. How does the Bible describe depression? Right? That's just a visual reminder for you. All those different things. I don't want to try to convince you that depression is real and can even become something we think we can never be free from. I don't have to convince you of that. You've been there sometimes. Listen to this, 77 million people in our country are on antipsychotic medications. 24% and most of those, by the way, are mood altering drugs. Most of those are mood altering drugs. And some of those 77 million people are on more than one drug. 24% of all who are over 18 have consumed alcohol to get drunk at least one time in the last month. 33% of adults have used illegal drugs in the last year. I don't know how the legalization of marijuana sticks with all this. I think this includes all marijuana use, but you get the idea there. And you have to understand, we know this, a certain percentage of drug and alcohol use is to escape depression. So when you think about the tens of millions of people that are on medications, and then you have tens of millions more who are self-medicating, we've got a problem with depression in our country. Not to mention those who simply aren't medicated and are still depressed. And I can go on and on. We could talk about statistics on all different things, including suicides, but we're not going to go to all that. I've made my point. And there are many reasons why the holiday season can also bring about a season of depression. We have loved ones that we might miss. There's loneliness. There's several other things that we've even talked about as far as the biblical reasons for depression, but they might be heightened during this season. So how are we to respond to depression then? Some would say that all depression is sin. I would agree that certain types of depression are always sin. Certain types of depression, certain ways that we allow ourselves to become depressed can be sinful. But we've looked at several situations where God brought comfort or relief, not correction. I believe the Bible indicates that we sin, we miss the mark when we do not respond to God's loving provision for whatever is causing our depression. That's a big difference, isn't there? We are obligated to go to God both in prayer and in the word, and we are responsible for living it out. Sometimes praying or pouring our heart out to God is the answer. So I want to go through these. How are we to respond to depression? I'm sorry about this, I don't know why. Keep in mind that God is near and active in our lives. Don't continue in your anxiety. Right? There's a point in time where we need to break out of it. Pour your heart out to God. Know that God comforts the depressed. Folks, are some of these verses that we looked at, are they coming back? Right? We looked at these scriptures. I don't know what's going on. Pray, don't worry about it. Don't worry about the man behind the curtain. Anyway, pray in faith for wisdom from God during testing. Remember that Jesus came to bear our burdens. Throw your burdens on God because he cares for you. And you've heard this before, but it bears repeating, don't take them back. We might. I don't think we are. We might be good at tossing first, but boy, it's like, oh, I need to carry that some more. Never in the scriptures. Hope in God and trust him for help and grace. Receive the comfort and relief that God sends you, right? That means that you have to be receptive. You have to even be looking for what he is going to be helping you with. Did you notice in some of those times, whether it be the Sons of Korah, whether it be David and the Psalms, that there was an anticipation? Did you see some of that? And lastly, live it out. It may be hard, but so is depression. Sometimes, if we're honest, and of course it's not us, it's that other person, we get kind of comfortable in our depression. Not that we necessarily enjoy it, but we know what it is. Folks, God doesn't want us there. He wants to move us past that. He's a gracious and loving God. Now, I want to be careful to say this. There are instances, and I talked about drugs and things like that, there are instances where we're talking about somebody who has a physical malady. They have a chemical imbalance or something like that. And sometimes there are some things needed. We happen to, in our modern times, have the ability to kind of help things along there, right? But I also believe, and I don't have anything to prove this. I mean, there's been some studies and I didn't go into great detail, but I believe that we can change our minds. Just like if we're pouring a chemical like alcohol into us, And they know that eventually the alcohol will change how our actual brain works. We can do the same thing with our emotions. We can start to reprogram our mind in the wrong way, which is really where depression can bite us badly. So let me just leave us with this. If you take the Bible prescription first, Take it early and often as prescribed. You should be able to avoid the doctor's prescription or not the doctor's prescription. In other words you don't have to be receiving the world's solutions. There's all different ways that God brings us the relief that we can that we need. It could be through his scriptures, it could be through the leading of his word which is primarily through his scriptures that we might have hidden in our hearts, it could be a devotional that we read, it could be the counsel of a brother and sister in Christ, any and all the above. But the point is this, we have some responsibility in all of this but you can see that God also graciously gives us much. We're going to be sad about some things, where even at times, we're going to fall into a longer period of time where we're just struggling. And folks, I've been there. And I'll be honest, you know, I look back at those times really with some shame, and I'm not sure that that's even right. But the question is, When God brought us to the point where he gave us that way out, where he gave us the opportunity to grow past that, did we take it? Or did we just kind of mull our way through it, right? That's the difference. So we've given you some, you know, a description, but we've also given you some things that God gives us, each and every one of us, to be able to pull ourselves through it. It's a tough topic, folks. And again, like I say, I'm sorry we went so long, but I just felt it was really important for us to get a full picture of it so that we can deal with it. Maybe there's somebody here and you're like, man, I never realized the Bible said so much about it. This isn't scratching the surface, but it's certainly not all of it. There's much more there. It's not only instructive, but it's also encouraging. So may you take this and just allow God's spirit to minister to you, and possibly in your life today, there could be some healing. If not, it's some preparation for what might take place in the next days to come. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we saw in your word that the psalmist praised you for your loving kindness." We saw how there was a hunger and thirst for you, that he in essence was starving for you. Why? Because he was in a bad place. There's other passages that talk about that hunger and thirst because of a love for you, and this one was a little different. It was about the detriment, the deficit, I mean, of not having that experience because of what had overwhelmed this person's life. So Lord, I just pray that you will help us to be able to overcome, not in our own strength, But through you and your word, through the help of others, yes we have responsibilities in all of this but it's simply to trust in, place our confidence in, and do what you've told us to do. We thank you that you are near, that your presence is with the broken hearted, the overwhelmed, the deeply sad, the hurting. What a gracious and glorious God. We thank you for who you are and we thank you for meeting us where we are at and for Christ experiencing life as we have without sin but still having that experience. In Jesus name, Amen.