The Silence of God (Part 1)
Download MP3Our scripture this morning comes from Psalm 42. Please listen carefully, for this is God's word. 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?
Melissa Brown: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 procession to the house of god, with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Melissa Brown:My soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Herman, from Mount Mazar, 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?
Melissa Brown: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, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. This is the word of the Lord.
Matt Francisco:Pray with me. Father, these people that have gathered here this morning have not come here to hear from me. The best that I can do is offer them advice. We're here to hear from you because your name and your renown, those are the desires of our hearts. So we say to you this morning, like Simon Peter did to Jesus, where else would we go, Lord?
Matt Francisco:You have the words of eternal life. So we pray by the power of your holy spirit, you would bring life according to your word this morning, that you would speak to your children, for we are hungry for a word from you. Pray these things in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen. A couple of weeks ago, I was watching the 1987 cinematic masterpiece with my family, The Princess Bride.
Matt Francisco:And if you have not seen this movie, shame on you. You should probably leave now and go watch it. It is beautiful. In the beginning, Princess Buttercup, she has been kidnapped just before her wedding day by this mysterious Man in Black. She tells the Man in Black that she hopes that he dies and he's cut into a 1000 tiny pieces.
Matt Francisco:The Man in Black says, why are you spewing this venom at me? And she says, because you killed my love. The man in black says, it's possible. I killed lots of people. But we know something that she does not know.
Melissa Brown:In a
Matt Francisco:beautiful piece of dramatic irony, Buttercup was only going to marry the evil Prince Humperdink because she felt Yes, that was his name. Felt that life was no longer worth living because her long, adored love was gone. But unbeknownst to Buttercup, the man before her, this man in black, was her decidedly not dead, long lost love, Wesley. You see, Buttercup felt the way that she did because the story she had told herself, A story about herself, her life, her love, and her future. A story that had been created by interpreting her present experiences in light of her past experiences to make an educated guess about the future.
Matt Francisco:In this story, it shaped every aspect of her life. But was it true? No. It was all built on a lie. When Buttercup learned that this man that she loved, this man that she long thought dead was actually alive, it changed everything.
Matt Francisco:And a new, true story supplanted the old, and it changed everything she thought about herself, her life, her love, and her future. One of the most fascinating recent discoveries in neuroscience is that our feelings are actually less reactions than they are predictions. In other words, it may seem to us like we see something or we hear something, and then we respond, but that's not what is actually happening. We are all inevitably storytelling creatures. Our brains are prediction machines.
Matt Francisco:They create stories by interpreting our present circumstances in light of our past experiences and creating educated guesses about the future. For example, if you have ever set foot outside in the great state of Alabama in any day during the summer, you've probably felt desperately thirsty. Right? And thought, I just need to get inside and get a cool glass of water as fast as I possibly can. And what happens when you finally get that glass of water?
Matt Francisco:You feel like your thirst is quenched. You are immediately relieved. But what has actually happened? It actually takes 10 to 20 minutes for that water to hit your bloodstream. So what is the feeling that you are experiencing?
Matt Francisco:Your brain has made a prediction. It is telling you a story based on its past experiences in light of its present circumstances. You will have your thirst quenched, therefore now you are feeling your thirst quenched. And your brain would have done the same with salt water as it would have with fresh water. And this is key.
Matt Francisco:As your brain is predicting the future, it is also reinterpreting the past. You and I may think that our memory works like a file cabinet or a hard drive on a computer, where every memory is safely stored away for future recollection. But the truth is, is that memory works much more like art, where the act of remembering is itself an act of recreating. And sometimes the stories we tell ourselves when we remember, they correspond to reality, but sometimes they contain distortions or sometimes, like buttercup, outright lies. And so I ask you this morning, what are the stories that you are telling yourself?
Matt Francisco:And what are the stories that you are telling yourself, telling you about yourself, about your life, about your loves, about others, about God, and about the future? And in times like the one that Psalm 42 describes, in times like Chase described, when the world around us seems to be falling apart, when we're spiraling, or when the voice of God has seemingly gone silent, what are the voices that you are listening to to tell you what truth is, and are they true? Psalm 42 and its companion, Psalm 43, these are Psalms of Lament, and they describe a spiritual condition that Martyn Lloyd Jones, to whom, alongside Tim Keller, I am deeply indebted for this particular sermon, referred to as spiritual depression. Times when it feels like God has abandoned us, but God's word tells us that that cannot and can never be true. So this morning, we're going to explore the condition of spiritual depression, the causes of spiritual depression, and finally, the cure of spiritual depression.
Matt Francisco:And this week's sermon is entitled The Silence of God Part 1, because next week, Caleb Chancey, one of our elders, will be preaching part 2 from Psalm 77. And you can kind of consider this the side b to our previous collaboration from 9 lessons and carols a couple of years ago. I wrote a song called Rescue Us and he wrote a choir piece called Silence, because I don't know about you, but nothing screams Christmas to me like shouting, oh God, where are you? Over and over and over again. Let's first take a look at the condition of spiritual depression, verses 1 and verse 2.
Matt Francisco:The psalmist says, 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? For a long time, I thought this was a hopeful picture. There are a lot of songs that are written with this as a line, but a deer is an animal that's driven by instinct.
Matt Francisco:When it's thirsty, it finds a pool of water or a living stream and it goes to drink. So if this deer is panting, it's not merely thirsty, it is actually dying of thirst. Because the flowing living waters from which it is accustomed to drinking have run dry. This deer is in agony. It doesn't know what to do and it cannot go on much longer.
Matt Francisco:And the psalmist says, that's me, God. I am that deer and you are like that stream that has run dry and I don't know if I can go on much longer. His spiritual landscape now feels like a barren wasteland and God feels impossibly far away. He cries out, when shall I come and appear before God? When shall I ever see the face of God again?
Matt Francisco:Yes, he still believes in God, but the thoughts about God that used to comfort him no longer do. He no longer has a sense or a feeling that there's a God there who he has a personal relationship with. He feels forgotten and deserted. And the first time that this happens to you as a believer, it can be completely disorienting. If you grew up like Chase did or like I did or like many of us did, and you don't hear people tell stories like this, you can think this isn't supposed to happen.
Matt Francisco:There must be something wrong with me. But Psalms like this give us hope. And if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you've either walked through a season like this, you're in the middle of 1 right now, or it's coming for you at some point down the road. But as Chase said, our God not only allows for these emotions, He expects them. Praise God.
Matt Francisco:The psalmist says in verse 3, my tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? Then he cries out in verse 7, deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. Verse 10 tells us that he feels as if there is a deadly wound in his bones. He can't understand or explain what God is doing or where God seems to have gone. And his faith is openly being mocked by the people around him.
Matt Francisco:And as verse 9 shows us, he has begun to internalize those questions, those doubts, and those talents. He cries out, God, why have you forgotten me? As his present circumstances have begun to mock his past faith, to rewrite his history, and write a hopeless picture of his future. And sometimes when you and I feel this way, we think that the best thing to do is just to ignore those feelings or to shove them down and pretend like they're not there. Or on the other hand, we simply validate those feelings assuming that they must correspond with reality.
Matt Francisco:I feel this way so this must be true. But the psalmist will not fall on either side of the ditch here. On the one hand, he is completely honest with God. And on the other hand, while he recognizes that feelings are important, he will show us that feelings are not primary. Our feelings are telling us something.
Matt Francisco:But to borrow a phrase from indigo Montoya, you keep using this word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The psalmist does something incredibly insightful here, something that so many of us fail to do in these circumstances. Three times over the course of these 2 psalms, he stops to ask himself in verse 5 and verse 11, why? Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why are you so disturbed within me?
Matt Francisco:And this is not a prayer. Right? What's happening? The psalmist is slowly, curiously checking in with himself, asking what is causing me to feel this way? What are the stories that I am telling myself?
Matt Francisco:And are those stories true? What is causing him and what might be causing you to feel spiritually depressed? Well sometimes the causes of our spiritual depression are primarily about our bodies. They are primarily physical. The psalmist himself says in verse 3 that tears have been his food day and night.
Matt Francisco:In other words, he is not eating. He is not sleeping. And whatever the root of his sorrow is, this is compounding his sorrow. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was a medical doctor before he became a preacher wrote, Does someone hold the view that as long as you are a Christian, it does not matter what the condition of your body is? Well, you will soon be disillusioned if you believe that.
Matt Francisco:Physical conditions play their part in all of this. It is very difficult to draw the line. Did you know that 61% of people who have chronic pain also have clinical depression? I don't think that is a coincidence. Did you know that the odds that you possess the genetic ability to feel well rested after 4 to 6 hours of sleep per night are 1 in 4,000,000?
Matt Francisco:And 33% of Americans report getting less than 6 hours of sleep per night. I don't know about you, but my college experience was a lot like John Mulaney's, where he said college was like a 4 year game show. Do all my friends hate me or do I just need to get some sleep? Our bodies are important. And sometimes the very best thing that you can do for your soul is to go take a nap.
Matt Francisco:Go to sleep. Eat a good meal. Choose a healthier diet. Get some exercise. Get some sunshine.
Matt Francisco:Meet with a doctor to address that medical condition. Get that anxiety disorder diagnosed, or meet with a therapist to help you heal through your capital t or lowercase t trauma. Shout out to our talk back Wednesday night, see you there. The Bible doesn't pit the body against the soul or the spiritual against the physical. That has crept into us from Plato.
Matt Francisco:We were created and will be redeemed as embodied souls, which is why it's important for us to not only take care of our souls, but our bodies. But sometimes the causes of our spiritual depression are primarily about being disconnected from the body. Look at verse 6. The psalmist is crying out from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Mazar. He is incredibly far away from where he described in verse 4, where he would go with the throng and lead them in the procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise.
Matt Francisco:The psalmist is telling us that he used to be very connected to the people of God. In fact, he used to help lead them in worship, but now he is miles and miles and miles away, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. We don't know how he ended up here, but he's longing for those far gone days. Because you and I were created and redeemed not only to have a personal relationship with God, but to be a part of Christ's body. And when we gather together as a body to worship like we are right now, something absolutely amazing happens.
Matt Francisco:Passages like Hebrews 2:12, which takes the words of Psalm 22 and puts it in Jesus' mouth, and Hebrews 1222 through 24 tell us that Jesus himself, he is here right now. He is with us and he is leading us in worship. That as we gather together, it is not just you and me who are here, we are worshiping alongside the saints and the angels in heaven. That is not something that we are promised when we're listening to a podcast or at home. Something supernatural happens here in this place.
Matt Francisco:And as Caleb is going to share more next week, we were created and redeemed to need each other. So a second cause why you might be feeling spiritual depression is disconnection from the body. But a third cause might be unrepentant sin. One of the Psalms says, If I had harbored sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. If you are actively running from God, or if you are putting aside your spiritual disciplines, you're not reading his word or praying, your disconnected feeling from God is actually like a spiritual check engine light.
Matt Francisco:From the God who loves you too much to leave you that way, he is gently trying to draw you back in saying, I have so much more for you. You are drinking salt water and I am the fountain of living water. But while unrepentant sin could be a cause for our spiritual depression, one of the most helpful aspects of this particular song is that the psalmist isn't repenting here at all. We can feel this way even when we've done nothing spiritually wrong, when we cannot find an obvious cause. This is why the cure that is offered by this psalm is so particularly important and helpful.
Matt Francisco:Because the psalmist not only asks, why are you downcast, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? What are the stories that I am telling myself telling me? He begins preaching truth to himself. He begins talking to himself. He reminds himself of God's character, God's past actions, God's promises.
Matt Francisco:And as he does so, he reinterprets his present circumstances in light of those things to write a new true story about his future. Hope in God for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Martyn Lloyd Jones again. Have you ever realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning.
Matt Francisco:You have not originated them, but they are talking to you. But instead of allowing this self to talk to him, the psalmist starts talking to himself. Why art thou cast down, oh my soul? Self listen for a moment. I will speak to you.
Matt Francisco:I've walked through several seasons like this myself, and I can tell you that in times of spiritual depression, yourself is likely to tell you that things have always been this way. You discount all the positive experiences you've ever had, and you make an absolute prediction about the future. They are always going to be this way. Everything complex is reduced down to the simple, and everyone around you is reduced from the complex to the simple. These distortions, they creep into our hearts, and we begin to accept them as truth.
Matt Francisco:You are a failure. You are too needy. That's why everyone leaves. Maybe all those experiences where you thought you felt near to God were a sham. Maybe God himself was just a well crafted joke.
Matt Francisco:Or maybe as Chase said, God exists, but maybe he doesn't love you. What are your automatic, unbidden thoughts? What are those childhood lives that creep up again and again and again? Sometimes when I'm sitting with someone who is struggling in a season like this, I say if if someone came to you and shared with you what you're sharing with me, what do you think you would say to them? In every time people are more kind, more compassionate to someone else than they tend to be with themselves.
Matt Francisco:And sometimes I'll say to them, you know what? If I was the enemy there's a weird way to start a sentence. Right? If I was the enemy, I think that's exactly how I would attack you. And you know what?
Matt Francisco:Sometimes the enemy, he speaks in a voice that sounds a whole lot like our own. And the enemy, he may be relentless, but he is not creative. He's going to bring up these same things, these same lies that we're prone to believe over and over and over again. And the more that we are able to recognize them for what they are, the more quickly and fully we're able to address them with God's truth like the psalmist does here. We're able to say to our downcast souls, Hope in God for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.
Matt Francisco:You see the psalmist, his faith begins reasoning with his fears. His hope begins arguing with his sorrows. And he begins to reframe his story as he remembers. He remembers the truth about who God is, what he has said, what he has done, and what that means for his future. Yes, deep calls to deep as the roar of his waterfalls fall over him.
Matt Francisco:Yes, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me, he says. Yes, wave after wave is submerging me. But the psalmist remembers whose waves are these? The Lord's. And even in the midst of these waves, he says in verse 8, by day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
Matt Francisco:You see, the same Lord and God that has directed his breakers and his waves over this psalmist is the very same God who commands his steadfast love by day and by night as the psalmist is weeping by day and by night. The same God who was with him once, whose love and control and presence he once felt is now with him in these waves. He remembers. And in the Psalms, this word remember means so much more than to bring to mind. It means like what we studied in Psalm 1, to meditate deeply upon God's word until it soaks deep into our hearts and transforms us, until it changes our stories, until it becomes the solid truth upon which we build our lives.
Matt Francisco:That God will keep us for himself. The psalmist remembers. This he calls to mind and therefore he has hope. The steadfast love of the Lord, it never ceases. And his promises never come to an end.
Matt Francisco:And as he remembers these things, as he preaches the truth of who God is to himself, he begins to recognize that his present circumstances are not an indicator of God's steadfast love for him. And so he has hope about the future. Yes, deep may call to deep. Yes, it may feel like God is a long way off. Yes, it may feel like God has abandoned you, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Matt Francisco:God could not be any closer to you than he is right now or any more committed to your good. So when this psalmist says, this is so important, when he says hope in God, it's not a panacea. He is not immediately better. His circumstances, they don't actually change. In fact, the verse after he says, by day the Lord commands his steadfast love, immediately he says again, why have you forgotten me?' Good grief.
Matt Francisco:Are you kidding? But this is why this is so hopeful. This is our lived experience, right? Yes, the psalmist knows that God has not and could not forget him, but he remains honest before God. He doesn't try to dot all of his theological i's and cross all of his doctrinal t's before he comes into the present of God.
Matt Francisco:He just prays. He pours out his soul to God and he keeps coming back again and again and again. We have no idea how long it took the psalmist to write this psalmist to write this psalmist but we know that he had to sing this refrain at least 3 times. And this is so crucial. If you don't feel like you're getting anything coming out of worship during these seasons, Just keep showing up.
Matt Francisco:If you feel like you're not getting anything out of reading your Bible, I promise you, you will not get anything out of not reading your Bible. If you feel like your prayers are bouncing off the walls, keep praying them. If you feel like God's presence is a 1000000 miles away, then tell him that. Tell him how you long for him, how you long to be near him again. If nothing else, talk to the absent God about his absence.
Matt Francisco:Do not ignore these spiritual disciplines. In fact, in these seasons, be more disciplined about them than you ever have before. Three times this refrain comes, why are you cast down, oh my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for again I shall praise him, my salvation and my God. He meditates upon the true story of who God is and what he has done and what he has promised.
Matt Francisco:And so he can say, in spite of his present circumstances, I shall again praise him. This turmoil, how terrible it is, however long it may last, it will not last forever because God is my salvation. And so it is for you who trust in him. You can hope in him. You can trust God to be true to his promises, his character and his word, the truth by which all other truths and all other stories are judged, the truth that speaks when all other voices have seemingly gone silent.
Matt Francisco:But we cannot trust him to do what we want. He is after all the sovereign God, the alpha and the omega. He is in heaven and we are on earth so we should let our words be few. But no matter how dark it gets, no matter how distant God seems or how challenging the trial, we are not without hope. Our god cannot forget us.
Matt Francisco:As the words of Isaiah 491516 tell us. Can a woman forget her nursing child, That she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget. Yet, I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
Matt Francisco:The Lord will show himself faithful to you as your Lord, your salvation, and your God. And while you may walk through seasons where you thirst, or maybe unbelieving friends are taunting you, where it feels like God has abandoned you, or the voice of God has seemingly gone silent, this we can call to mind and therefore have hope. That Jesus wept in the garden and he sweat blood. It did not just seem to him like the voice of God had gone silent when he cried out from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was forsaken so that you and I might know that we would never be.
Matt Francisco:Although he had perfectly obeyed and done nothing wrong, God, it seemed, had turned his face away from him so that he might forever smile upon us. My friends, this is the truest story, that Jesus died for our sins, that he was forsaken by God so that we could be welcomed into the presence of God forever and ever. The Bible is the true story about a love, long lost love, a brave prince who leaves his palace, his throne, everything to rescue the one that he loves. It is the true story about the deeper magic that rewrites every other story and makes every sad thing untrue. This is the truest story that reinterprets all of our present circumstances in light of Jesus' past finished completed work so that we might know that our future is secure and it is glorious.
Matt Francisco:At the end of The Princess Bride, Wesley says to Buttercup, I told you I would always come for you. Why didn't you wait for me? And Buttercup says, well you are dead. Wesley says, death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
Matt Francisco:Jesus was forsaken in our place, but 3 days he rose again, that we might know that even death cannot stop the love of God. All it can do is delay it a little bit longer than we might like. But there will be a day when the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll, and we will scream from all of our being. In the end, every last bit of it was worth it. Jesus, you are worthy.
Matt Francisco:And when he comes to wipe away all of our tears, we will know him as our God, and we will rest and rejoice in his love forever. Until then, brothers and sisters, let us cling to the truth that we have in God's word, And let us say together, it is well. It is well with our souls. Pray with me. Father, I pray for all of my brothers and my sisters here in this room.
Matt Francisco:Whatever lies the enemy might be speaking to them, whatever lies they have been prone to believe, that they would be silenced in the light of your truth. Teach us the steadfast love of the Lord, it never ever ever ceases. That you have loved us far more than we could have ever asked or imagined. And we can rest secure in hope. Because, Jesus, you did everything necessary to bring us into the presence of God.
Matt Francisco:We love you. We pray these things, Jesus, in your name. Amen.
