If you haven't already done so, I invite you to turn in God's Word to the book of Psalms, to Psalm 42. Following the sermon, we're going to respond with the song, It Is Well With My Soul. If I'm not mistaken, Joy was just playing that song and she began, I think, in a minor key. And that's a fit way for representing the sorrows that sometimes attend our confessions of faith. We cry out to God, believing, but belief doesn't of itself take away all of the pain that often attends experience, does it? And this psalm speaks to that. This is a psalm of lament, a psalm of sorrow. Many different kinds of psalms in the Bible, some of joy, some as preparation for approaching the temple. approaching God's presence. But then these Psalms of lament are there especially for us to turn to in times of great trial, doubt, even the feeling of despair, and to be assured that other believers have passed through these waters as well. Let's hear together the word of God. We'll read the entire Psalm. As a deer 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 day long, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I go with the throng and lead them in 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 and my God. My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? 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. Let's go before God and ask his blessing. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your beautiful word. Lord, we thank you for the presence of your Holy Spirit gathering with us as we assemble from week to week to worship and to sit before your word. We ask that by your spirit you would please cause this psalm to be inscribed upon our hearts, to give us understanding, to increase our faith, to correct us as necessary. Lord, that by your spirit you would please renew us, set us in the right way, sustain us again. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. The highest permanently manned United Nations position in the world, straddles a ridge that divides Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and it's called Hotel Hermann. That's in reference to the same Mount Hermann that's referenced in verse 6 of our text. Mount Hermann is actually three peaks that rise up together to roughly equal height, and they stand at about 9,000 feet of elevation. Their great height is part of why that region is heavily contested in the world. It allows them to gather precipitation so that there's a snow cap on the mountain almost the entire year. Mount Hermon is one of, if not the major source of water for the entire region north of Israel. And so you can imagine as that snow sits up there, it begins to melt and throughout the year it's flowing into holes, into pores in the rock and it goes through channels and then down into subterranean caverns and begins to bubble out at the base of the mountain in springs. These springs then run together and they form the mighty Jordan River. If you went to Israel today and you looked at the Jordan, especially in South Israel, you might not be overwhelmed at its appearance. That's in part because today so much of that river is siphoned off into industrial and agricultural purposes. But in former times, it was visibly a formidable river. Over a billion cubic meters of water flow through the Jordan every single year, a massive amount of water. This partly explains why in Joshua chapter 4, when God's people come to the banks of the Jordan River, they are terrified. It's early spring. They're trying to cross, and they have to wait for God to perform a miracle to open it up. They're scared because they would have seen rapids, cascades. They would have heard the thundering, the water bounding beyond the natural banks. That's in early spring. Now come back to that region towards late summer, fall, And the area surrounding Mount Hermon becomes very parched. It dries out, especially on the plateau east of Mount Hermon towards Damascus. At that time, deer in the area, or any other animal really, they have to find natural springs that might not be any larger than a small puddle. And so it's a transformation, two extremes of climate. around Mount Hermon. It's thought that the author of this psalm, Psalm 42, was probably a priest and probably a temple singer who at this time is exiled beyond Israel's northern border. He's living in exile somewhere beyond that border, somewhere in the region of Mount Hermon, and he's thinking back on the Jerusalem Mount, Mount Zion. And here he's instead looking at Hermon outside of the borders of Israel. He's experiencing extremes of the climate and through this the Holy Spirit begins to work and the Spirit inspires him to draw a poetic parallel between the extremes of spiritual experience and the extremes of the climate that he is enduring. What we're going to see this morning is that through Psalm 42 the Holy Spirit instructs but also reminds you how to endure the extremes of Christian life. Not only for yourself, but how you minister to others who are going through those things. Inevitably, this is going to happen in the life of the body. That's part of why we have the Psalms. The Psalms teach us the whole range of spiritual experience. So what we're going to do this morning is first Ask what exactly is meant by drought in this psalm, and then what exactly is meant by deluge, by the sense of flood. We're going to look at those, try to identify them, and then ask this question. We'll spend most of our time on this question. How do we best endure these? Does this psalm teach us how, through faith in Christ, we are to endure the various extremes of our experience? So that's what we're going to do. And first, let's start by dealing with this. What does it mean for a believer to endure seasons of drought? Look at verse two to begin. The psalmist describes three symptoms of the drought that he's enduring. And verse two begins with mentioning the thirst of the deer. I trust we have all experienced thirst, but not all of us have experienced the same degree of thirst. There's thirst and then there is thirst. A great panting, a yearning for something that we believe would bring satisfaction, renewal. Something that would sustain or refresh our life. And when you're thirsty, you feel that you have not got enough of whatever that is. You're yearning. And then the second symptom is weakness or lethargy. It's in the metaphor of the deer. You picture this deer panting. In a season of drought, you watch the animals and they stay almost motionless. They have none of that original vigor that comes with water. And you may experience this in your Christian life. You wonder why things that formerly you could do with great zeal and energy, now you feel you can hardly do. You can barely bring yourself to pray. The energy to take up the scriptures and read because you feel like nothing comes through them. Hebrews 12 speaks about believers who are discouraged, and it describes them as having drooping arms, having weak knees. That is the state of the psalmist in this passage, and maybe that's your state this morning, or maybe it will be. There's a third symptom, and that's a sense of desperation. Look with me at verse three. Desperation is reflected in the words, my tears have been my food day and night. Now that's imagery, obviously, it's not literal, but it describes the person who is so distraught that they can't bring themselves to eat anymore. It's lost all appetite to them. Instead, it seems more satisfying just to cry and cry and cry. These are symptoms of the person who has become spiritually dry, who is in a state of drought, And then we see in verses three and four that certain external factors are feeding into that. This doesn't come entirely out of nowhere. The psalmist mentions two specific external factors that have fed into the sense of dryness. And for him, they are related to the exile that he's probably experiencing at that time. For you, the circumstances will be a little different. But notice in the first place, verse three, the psalmist is being subjected to regular verbal, maybe even physical abuse. It says, they say to me all the day long, where is your God? Is that part of why you're dry or why you have been dry, that there are people in your life, whether relatives, coworkers, so-called friends, who make it part of their aim to discourage your faith? We need the exact opposite of that, don't we? We need people who encourage, who become for us means of refreshment, renewal. Jesus said, out of you shall flow rivers of living water. And that's not primarily for yourself to gulp, that's for other people's benefit. That as a community, as we come together, we flow into one another. But here instead, the psalmist is surrounded by people who are tearing down his faith. And that leads to dryness. You may not have any particular person doing that in your life. Your flesh and the devil are enough of themselves. And maybe in your case, it's a constant refrain, a voice of accusation in your head, accusing you, always wearing you down. And so you feel spiritually dry. A second external factor that we see here in verse four, hear that with me. It says, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude-keeping festival. Apparently, the psalmist has experienced a prolonged period of absence from worship, from being among God's people. And for him, worship is the high watermark of God's overflow. This is where the soul is being refilled and replenished. And he's unable to be at worship. Now in his case, that's the exile at work. He's in captivity. For us, it's going to look a little bit different. You may feel that you are in a virtual captivity to your employment situation, that you'll lose your job if you don't go do work on Sunday. You're not here. Sometimes two, three, four, five weeks in a row, that may be. Or it might be a medical situation. Or simply age, that you're unable to be in the presence of God's people all the times that you would like. Maybe it's military service. But to be away for any period of time from corporate worship is kind of like being surrounded by those silica packets, you know, those desiccant-marked packages that they use to dry out something? And now you've got all these sources in your life of dryness. But I want you to understand something. Of themselves, external factors don't fully explain thirst. Any more than a lack of cups in your house can fully explain thirst. Cups are a vehicle for receiving liquid, but really, the root issue is that you stand in need of God's self-communication. You see this in verse one. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Being in worship is a means, but it is not the end. Being in worship or among those who encourage you, that's a stream bed, but it's not the water that flows through it. You can be outwardly well and in worship, but feel dry as a bone. Some of us have experienced that, perhaps recently. What we need is for the sovereign spirit to flow again into us. And that's something that at the end of the day, you can't control. And so this is part of what it means to experience seasons of drought. In verse five and following, the imagery changes. Look with me at verse five, and you'll start to notice that the imagery changes from dryness to overflow. There's a shift now to flood, to the idea of deluge. And so we need to consider together, what does it mean for a believer to endure the season of deluge, of flooding? Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you experienced this? Many of you older people have. Some of you young children don't yet know what is meant. But you need to understand that these seasons come in your life. That doesn't mean you're not a believer. This was a believer. He's a psalm writer. The Holy Spirit is working in him at this very time. But here, consider his symptoms, the symptoms of deluge. In contrast to that deathly stillness of drought, Here, deluge is marked by violent motion, intense activity, perhaps externally in the events of life, definitely inwardly, a feeling of upheaval. Look at verse five. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? In turmoil. Literally, this Hebrew word is roaring. It's probably onomatopoeic. It's the sound in Hebrew of a roar. Isaiah chapter 17, verse 12 puts it this way. Isaiah 17, 12. Oh, the thunder of many peoples. They thunder like the thundering of the sea. The roar, same word, the roar of the nations roars like the roaring of mighty waters. Here the intense inward emotional energy of a people is manifesting itself in a loud roaring, a groaning, and it's likened to that of the tossing waves of the sea. And this is what the psalmist feels is happening in his soul at that moment. He's yelling, he's crying out to the Lord. He feels overwhelmed, disoriented. There's a loss of footing. These are characteristics of being in a period of spiritual deluge in your life. Look at verse seven. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. Have you ever been out at the beach and seen a wave you didn't expect to be as big as it was going to be? And there's that moment of suffocating fear, especially if you're a small child, and then it falls over top of you. And there's that breathless tumbling underwater, the scraping of the sea floor. And you wonder, am I going to come up in time to breathe again? All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. The psalmist identifies this season of deluge as being marked also by a dread, a dread of dissolution. Dissolution, the feeling of everything coming apart at the seams in your life. Look at this in verse five. You see this in the phrase, cast down. This is a powerful phrase in the Hebrew language. When you compare this to Psalm 43 and Psalm 44 and also to Lamentations 3, you find out that the overlap of usage of this phrase, cast down, can mean either to be forcibly held to the ground by a power not yourself. It's why am I being held down? Or it can mean to be dissolved to the point of annihilation. There's a reason that these words overlap, and it's the powerful effect of water upon things. I was grieved to read about how two years ago, a man fell off the highest waterfall in Massachusetts, fell off the waterfall, and for over a week, rescuers could not recover the body. And that's because of the tremendous force of the water falling down. It wasn't until over a week later that they were able to recover the body, only because of, literally, it had begun to decompose. I don't say that to offend, Somebody might object to the idea of something so gruesome being talked about. But this is the imagery of scripture. This is the imagery that scripture uses when it describes being in the depths. And out of respect for anyone who has experienced the depths of spiritual depression, this is evidence of God understanding how you feel. You feel that you're being broken apart, that your life is coming to an end. Look with me at verse 10, the psalmist identifies, again, contributing factors here. Verse 10, he says, as with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taught me. While they say to me all the day long, where is your God? Why do people say that inane phrase? Words will never hurt me. I think it's a way of trying to shield ourselves from the reality. The reality is that, as the psalmist says, as with a deadly wound, words can cut deep. And here there are people committing injustices, oppression against this believer, and using their words to degrade his faith. But really, this can extend to all manner of harmful experiences, upsetting experiences, disorienting experiences. that feed together to an ultimate sense of deluge. Look with me at verse nine. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? At the very bottom, the feeling of deluge is the feeling, the sense that God's grace has abandoned you to destructive forces that are beyond your control. Life is spinning out of control and you feel underwater and like God is not there. And so we've seen what it means on some level anyway to experience drought and then deluge. Perhaps the bigger question here is what do we do? What do we do when we feel this way or in advance? How do we prepare for these seasons? It's normal in most parts of the world to prepare for the changing of the seasons. If even the animals show so much wisdom, shouldn't we? to anticipate that probably you are always going to be subjected, for as long as you live in this world, to the ups and the downs. So how do we prepare? Look with me at verse 5 and verse 11. Notice that they are almost the same words. There is a repeated refrain in this passage, a certain rhythm to perseverance. Verse 5 says, why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hoping God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation. Now what's happening here? What's happening is a dialogue with the soul. And this is very important. In the depths, in the dryness, God is teaching you through this passage to maintain an intentional, a disciplined self-dialogue of faith. Speaking the truth of God's word to yourself. Not simply waiting for someone else to do that. Now this does involve knowing scripture. If you aren't prepared in advance, then you need to go now into scripture and find God's promises so that you can speak them to yourself, to shut up the mouth, that relentless, repetitive, monotonous voice that discourages. Passages that perhaps the psalmist would have thought of, earlier Psalms of David, Psalm 36 verse seven. How precious is your steadfast love, O God. That word steadfast there, it's his covenant love, a love rooted and bonded in agreement in his truthfulness. How precious is your steadfast love, O God. You will give your people drink from the river of your delights. Right now we're drinking from a small puddle at times, but there's a river coming and it's a promise to sustain us. Likewise, Psalm 37 verse 24. Though a righteous man falls, he will not be overwhelmed, for the Lord is holding his hand. You may not feel it, you're tumbling underwater. But again, the psalmist at this moment is being worked upon by the Holy Spirit. Doesn't feel it, but God's hand is there holding, and God's hand holds you in all of the depths. When you feel so dry, it is the Lord who is giving you just enough and sustaining you. One of the reasons why we need to keep up this dialogue with self, as well as with the Lord, is because this is one way by which we are affirmed in the fact that we're still alive, right? If you are gasping for air, you have not drowned. If you are panting for water, you have not died of dehydration. And so we maintain this speech to ourselves, but also with the Lord because this affirms the reality of faith at work in us. You see this in verse six. Verse six, my God, my soul is cast down within me. See, in the midst of the deluge, he turns himself to pray to God, and this is something that we need to do. Again, to turn to the Lord, as he says, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mitzar, another word for Jordan. When you're in that feeling of exile, being beyond the border, so to speak, then especially call upon God, continue petitioning him. I want to speak to dry seasons in particular. This passage gives us some instruction about how to deal with dry seasons in particular. Look with me at verse two. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? The psalmist is longing to be in worship and in fellowship in places where he will experience God's flow. And so you need to ask yourself this question as you experience dry times or if you wish to avoid them. The question is very simple. Is there anything that can be done to increase the likelihood of having access to the water? Is there anything in your power to make it more likely that you will have access to the source of God's spirit? Now, of course, God is sovereign. He may or may not move in the ways that we wish, even if we use his means. But that's different than knowingly and intentionally avoiding the sources where he tends to flow. Grace tends to flow through very predictable channels. As we already saw, the psalmist longs to be in corporate worship and he longs for the fellowship of those who speak those renewing words. And yet often we place ourselves far away and we're surprised that we're thirsty. Note and remember God help all of us to remember, the Bible does not liken you to a camel. It likens you to a deer. And there's a purpose in that. A camel can go maybe over 30 days without watering. You are not a spiritual camel. You may tell yourself that. You're not. We are all deer. An average buck, 200 pound buck, will drink between three and five quarts of water a day. And they tend to drink every day. Now, in times of great scarcity, it's been heard of that a deer will go over a week without drinking. And that's because in those times, a deer is eating succulents, plants that are filled with some amount of moisture. But I would liken that to the person who is knowingly subsisting on a diet of, say, occasional online sermons, rare relationships with other believers, scant personal devotions. That is a scarcity environment. If even the deer are so wise as to locate themselves near sources of water, why would we do the opposite? In fact, the literature suggests that three miles is about the maximum that a deer will live from a source of water. Now, I'm not telling you that you need to live, say, literally three miles from a church, but the point is this. Wisdom says that we ought to adapt our habitat as well as our habits in order to maximize the likelihood not only of our survival, but our flourishing. And that means knowingly changing our lives to increase fellowship with those who fill us, to be in worship, not only for ourselves, but our families. Every deer leads its young to the water, doesn't it? And if we choose habits of life that have a tendency to take our children away from the means of grace as well, what does this say? So through this psalm, the Lord calls you, use what means are available. And if you simply can't, then trust that he will sustain you. Exceptional circumstances receive exceptional grace. Deluge in particular, what does this psalm speak to that? Look with me at verse seven. Verse 7, deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. The idea that these are God's waves, when we look at God's sovereign hand alone, can be very, very frightening. And sometimes we feel that way. Why is God doing this? We know that he's at the headwaters, right? God is the sovereign source. He decreed all that comes to pass. And yet for the psalmist, that is not fundamentally discouraging when he places it in the context of God's covenant. Because then in the very next phrase he says, by day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. At this moment, he has remembered that all the flood of providence flows through the rock of salvation to God's people. There is nothing separated from the gospel intent of the Lord. Everything comes through his good and kind purpose towards his people. And so it can be beneficial to try to think through how is God using or how does God use the depths of Christian experience for his people. Turn with me to one passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 1. This is one example, I'm sure dozens and dozens could be drawn up, of how God uses the depths for our benefit. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, and you see from verse 3 and 4, blessed be the God of all comfort, that is all true comfort. who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Experiencing extremes is part of your preparation for ministry. How can you comfort someone if you have never been comforted? Well, you're going to comfort them in naturalistic or humanly reasoned ways. But until you go through the depths that require something supernatural to sustain you, it's going to be very difficult to give others that comfort. And so God brings you through these things for the sake of others. Hasn't it in some way edified you to see in the Psalms that here is at least one other believer who has been through the depths already? And then that's what you become for someone else. And there is one who has gone through enough. Maybe even somebody would be foolish enough to argue, as I've probably felt this way before. Oh, the psalmist still doesn't understand my situation. Mine is different. His was bad, but mine is worse. And so we need to remember then that all of the Psalms, in their different ways, point us to the experience of Christ our Savior. Every one of the Psalms points to the truest, in this sense, human experience, that of God come in the flesh. And I ask you, can you remember, did Jesus experience drought and deluge? How? Physically, we can think of instances of both. Did he not go out into the wilderness led by the Holy Spirit for 40 days? We can't imagine that that was all flowing streams everywhere. Did he not on the cross cry out, I thirst, because of extreme dehydration coming from a tremendous loss of blood? But those outward physical circumstances pale in comparison to the spiritual torment, the agony, the monumental dryness, like a desert in the soul that he experienced when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The words of the psalmist, why have you departed from me? And he felt that depth of dryness beyond anything we've known. And he was doing it to redeem us. Likewise, Deluge, Jesus' very baptism presaged his going under the water, so to speak, of the true Jordan of death. His baptism spoke to that. In 1 Peter, Peter talks about and compares, he parallels Jesus' death to the flood that came upon the world in Noah's time. Because again, it's the judgment of God that rested upon Christ, not only in his body, but especially in his soul. Jesus speaks of his death as being the sign of Jonah. Jonah's being three days in the belly of a whale. And these words are in Jonah, and they speak to us then as the sign of what Jesus went through spiritually. Jonah chapter two, verse one. Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me, out of the belly of hell I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The floods surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. It's hard to imagine, but in the moments that Christ was perishing, it was something like a drowning. And yet with the peace, the knowledge, the confidence of God's word that he would look upon the temple. Having been baptized into Christ, we have an outward visible sign of the gospel promise given to everyone who believes. He went through the water. He will come again. You will be restored. And so we hold close to passages like this, our final verse, Revelation 7, verse 17. For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd. On that day, he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. No shepherd pushes his sheep into the river. The Lord will bring us out. He will water us sufficiently. Let's ask that he does even this week. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we go to you, some of us with very heavy hearts, not only for ourselves, but for others whom we love, that we know are treading water. We thank you for a passage like this, where you, by your Spirit, bear witness to the flood of judgment that has come into a fallen world. We confess that this fallen condition is not your fault. Each one of us with Adam have sinned. Every day we contribute to the total flow of destruction in the world by our lack of love. We thank you that you are merciful, that your covenant of grace rooted in Jesus Christ doesn't ask what we have done wrong. It promises what you will do in and through us. It promises what you are for us, a complete Savior. We ask, Lord, that you would sustain your people. We ask especially for those who feel weak, who feel dry, or who feel overwhelmed. God, lift up our brothers and sisters. We ask all of these things in your perfect, your precious name. Amen.