Praise Him Again (Psalm 42)
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Vital faith is born of grief accompanied by the rich hope found in remembrance of God’s past faithfulness. Acute sadness, pointed pain; a Gethsemane of the soul is the landscape from which the truest fruit of our hearts springs forth – fruit just like this psalm.
Here we find honest asking in the midst of sorrow; a tumultuous restlessness that feels like anxiety. Why are we like this if we trust in God? According to John Calvin,
“David here [in Psalm 42] represents himself as if he formed two opposing parties. In so far as in the exercise of faith he relied upon the promises of God, being armed with the Spirit of invincible fortitude, he set himself, in opposition to the affections of his flesh, to restrain and subdue them; and, at the same time, he rebuked his own cowardice… We can only be competent witnesses to our brethren of the grace of God when, in the first place, we have borne testimony to it in our own hearts.”
We can find ourselves like the man in Mark 9 who came to Jesus with his demonized son, crying out, “I believe, help my unbelief!”
Our wrestle with unbelief – our fighting to hang on to faith – doesn’t evidence a lack of faith, but rather the presence of it. It doesn’t indicate a dead faith, but an alive faith that longs for the restoration of all things. It doesn’t indicate abandonment of God, but trust in Him. Struggling in God’s direction means that we believe that God can do something to help us in our struggle.
This fight, built on the belief that God can do something to help us, finds its foundation in the reality that God has helped us before. The remembrance of God’s former help is what enabled David, in his hardships, to cling to His promises. Past faithfulness fuels future hope that sustains us in present pain. Joy will return; relief will, too. It is not hard to imagine the Lord Jesus, when tempted to despair, reasoning with His own soul in this way and confidently believing that, though sorrow threatens to steal His song, one day He will praise God again with a heart of gladness.
And we will, too.
Sometimes our suffering is due to the sins of others against us or simply the cost of living in a fallen world. Other times, the difficulties we face are, in fact, the fallout of our own sinful choices.
In these moments, we feel the waves of God’s judgment. Christopher Ash says that the phrase ‘deep calls to deep’ “suggests a darkly liturgical calling, to and fro, as one abyss calls to another abyss to drown this believer in the waters of judgment.” The roar of God’s waterfalls is a reference back to the great flood of Noah’s day. These waves – these breakers – show God’s judgment for sin. And God’s judgment does come for sin. And apart from the grace of God in the Lord Jesus, it comes for us.
Psalms like these are a help to God’s people because they give us language to fulfill the command given in Psalm 62 to “pour out (our) hearts before God.” These songs were not written to us, but they were written for us. And even more than being for us, they are songs that were perfectly sung, perfectly obeyed, perfectly lived out, and perfectly fulfilled by the Lord Jesus, the perfect One.
He is the one whose soul was thirsty for the living God, who longed to (re)appear before God. He is the one in Gethsemane, and the one on the cross who bore the scorn of the unbelieving world. He is the one who remembered the glorious songs of praise that have always been sung in the heavenlies – who heard the multitude of angels keeping festival. He is the one who bore the weight of all of the breakers and waves of God’s judgment for sin. He is the one who mourned because of the oppression of the enemies of God. He is the one who experienced something of being forsaken by the Lord. And He is the one who the God of covenant love resurrected in power, triumphing over the enemies of God and His people.
If this is who the Lord Jesus is, then His song of hope can become ours, because we have become His.
So…hope in God.
Praise Him Again.
He is your help, your refuge, your strength.
And whether it’s day or night, you have a song to sing.