Psalms 42:5

Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God.

A prescription for a downcast soul

I. Inquiry. “Why art thou cast down?” Many a man is in great spiritual darkness, without knowing, or being able to discover the reason. He has been trying to live rightly, so far as he knows. He has not neglected prayer nor the house of God, and yet God seems to have hidden His face; his peace is gone; his soul is full of harrowing doubts. Christians sometimes forget that they have bodies; and that the condition of their bodies has a good deal to do with the brightness or darkness of their spiritual moods; and now and then a man, through sheer ignorance, persists in some habit of eating or drinking which, by keeping his body in an unhealthful state, correspondingly lowers the tone of his spiritual life. Often the devil which torments him is one that goeth not out but by fasting.

2. Or the cause may lie deeper, in some mental disease--possibly inherited. Cowper.

3. On the other hand, the distress may arise from estrangement between man and God. Peter, when he went out and wept bitterly, was cast down and disquieted as he deserved to be.

4. If you cannot, on inquiry, discover that sin is at the bottom of your disquietude, it may occur to you that God has sent it. Thou art satisfied that the source of thy trouble is Divine; is that something to be disquieted about? Or dost thou fear it will be more than thou canst bear? O reflect that the Father is the husbandman. He is pruning thee that thou mightest bring forth more fruit. Dost thou forget Him who was made perfect through suffering, and who was in all points tempted and tried like as thou arty Why art thou disquieted? Is it because thou canst not see the end thy God has in view in thy trial, or wilt thou forget that this “light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh out for thee a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”?

II. Remembrance.

1. The psalmist remembers his own experience. Ah, how often we need the psalmist’s admonition to his own soul not to forget all God’s benefits. They will crowd, at the summons of memory, thickly down to the very edge of to-day’s trouble, like the cloud which followed the Israelites down to the merge of the Red Sea; and like that cloud will send light over the troubled waters through which lies the line of march. To-day’s trouble will be lighter, and to-day’s outlook more hopeful through the remembrance of the blessed past.

2. But this remembrance of the psalmist also takes in God’s dealings with His people. No one has such a range of history at his command as the believer who is in trouble; since the history of God’s children is largely made up of trouble, and as largely of God’s deliverances out of trouble. Sometimes a man is so engrossed with the pleasure and business of the present, that memory has no chance to do her work, and he is in danger of forgetting God’s benefits altogether; and so God leads him away alone, whither he does not like to go, but where, cut off from the occupations of the present, he has opportunity to survey the rich and fruitful past, and to grow grateful amid his sorrow. Yea, often the very land of exile is the land of precious memories. Men of old have had their faith, their courage, their patience tried sorely in the very places where our faith and courage and patience are tried; and their experience of God’s saving goodness and power calls on us to remember that the God of salvation is the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

III. Hope.

1. This hope is in God. Trouble opens a man’s eyes to the need of a personal God. True hope, the psalmist’s hope, would say, “This loss is God’s work; I am God’s child; this is God’s discipline; through this He may be working out for me something far better than worldly prosperity. The best thing I have left, the thing to which I anchor my present and my future is--God is mine. This matter is all in God’s hands, and whatever he may do with me or with my fortune, whether He give me back my prosperity or not, I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”

2. This hope is a different thing from faith, while the operations of the two are nevertheless closely allied. When a physician gives to a sick man a remedy which for the time increases his distress, he does not realize nor feel that the work of restoration is going on; and in the dark places of Christian experience through which God causes a man to pass in the course of His discipline, the man does not always realize that God is doing a beneficent work upon him, or how He is doing it. Then hope comes in. “If we hope for what we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)

Despondency

I. The unreasonableness and virtual impiety of the over-anxious, foreboding spirit manifested by so many.

1. This spirit is rebuked by your whole experience. The vast preponderance with you has always been on the side of happiness. If you have been long of this foreboding habit, not one in a hundred of the sorrows that you have apprehended has reached you. Those, also, that have overtaken you have been lighter than you feared.

2. What can your anxiety do for you? Can it avert what you dread? No. But it may hasten it. In many respects, our health, our outward well-being, and that of our household, are committed to our own keeping, and can be safely kept only by a self-collected mind and a quiet heart.

3. Sorrow in prospect is much more bitter and grievous than it is in actual experience. Every trial comes with its alleviating circumstances, its mild preparatives, and abounding consolations. Sickness summons sympathy and patience for its ministers. Unmerited disesteem fortifies itself by the testimony of a good conscience. Poverty moves on under the guidance of health and hope. Bereaved affection meets the risen Saviour at the grave-side.

4. Why do you dread aught that can befall you, when none of these things can take place without your Father? Under Him, all things will work together for your good. Lean, then, as children upon His arm, and commit yourselves as children to His keeping.

II. Inculcate the lesson of implicit trust in a wise and paternal providence.

1. An unexplored future is before us. But, as Christians, we have every possible ground for trust and hope; for that unexplored future is in the hands of our Father.

2. We have under God one object of hope continually in view, namely, the growth of our characters; and this is the great end for which, were we wise, we should desire to live. Does He send outward favours and mercies? It is that gratitude may engrave His image on our hearts, and write His law on our lives. Does He remove from us cherished blessings? He takes gifts which we were in danger of loving more than the Giver. He takes wealth that bound our souls to the sordid pathway which He bids us leave.

3. Heaven and eternity, brought to light by Jesus, re-echo the exhortation--“Hope thou in God.” Have we the testimony of His love within? Are we living by the law and in the spirit of Christ? Have we the consciousness of pardoned sin and of souls at peace with God? If so, however heavy our outward burdens or sorrows, we may well ask, in self-rebuke, “Why art thou cast down?” etc. (A. P. Peabody.)

Disquietude and hope

I. David’s disquietude.

1. God’s forgetfulness.

2. His own mourning.

3. Enemy’s oppression.

II. David’s hopefulness.

1. God is.

2. God is mine.

3. God will yet be praised by me. (Homiletic Review.)