Welcome to Trinity Sermons. Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to love Jesus,
live like Jesus, and lead others to Jesus. And today we are continuing our series called
Summer Playlist and reading about one of the Sadder Psalms, Psalm 42. Rob talks to us today
about spiritual depression and how we can work through, alleviate, and even treat this
depression. We hope you learn from and find some hope in today's message. God bless.
Today's reading is from Psalm 42. As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants
for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet
with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long,
where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I used to go to
the house of God under the protection of the mighty one with shouts of joy and praise among
the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed with me? Put your
hope in God, for I will praise him, my Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me.
Therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon from
Mount Mizer. Deep calls to deep. In the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers
have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, 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 must
I go about mourning oppressed by the enemy? My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt
me, saying to me all day long, where is your God? Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so
disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my
God. The word of the Lord.
Well, most people associate singing with happiness. I mean, there's, you know, that's why people
say I'm so happy I could sing. And it's true. A good number of our songs are happy songs.
They encourage us. They lift us up. Even the song that we just sang this morning. This
is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior all the day long. That sounds like
a pretty happy song. And yet there are other types of songs out there. A whole other category
of song that you would call a sad song. If you go to Spotify and you search on Spotify
for sad songs, you get a whole bunch of very interesting playlists. Playlists with titles
like Sad Crying Mix, Most Depressing Mix, Sad Country Mix. They aren't all country songs
sad, but Classics for Crying, Crying Myself to Sleep Mix, Moody Mix. For some reason,
human beings like to write sad songs. They like to sing sad songs. And they like to listen
to sad songs. Songs about heartbreak and loss and loneliness and regret and depression.
There's a singer called Lana Del Rey. A few years ago she wrote a song called Summertime
Sadness. And that song seems to trend like every summer ever since. Because people seem
to instinctively know that even though it's sunny and bright outside, we can still feel
sad on the inside. And there's been a bit of research about why we like to listen to
sad music. It seems like sad songs actually help us to realize we're not the only ones
who feel this way. Obviously other people out there feel this way and that makes us
feel good. And the sad music actually enables us to process some of our sad emotions along
with the music. Well this summer we're going through a different kind of playlist. We're
doing a teaching series called Summer Playlist. And we're looking at a very ancient playlist
of music. It's found right in the middle of your Bibles. It's called the Book of Psalms.
It's 150 tracks of all different sorts. But if you open up your Bibles and you start to
look through those Psalms or start to listen to them, you're going to realize something
very quickly. And that is a lot of these songs in the Book of Psalms are sad songs. Which
means that people have been writing sad music and singing sad music for thousands of years.
In fact there is a type of psalm that is called a psalm of lament. And these songs again have
been written for thousands of years and they express sorrow and grief and depression and
anger at what's going on in their lives. Over 40 of the songs in the Book of Psalms, there's
only 150 of them, are sad songs. So anyways today we're going to take a look at one of
those songs, the one that JP just read for us. And that is Psalm number 42. And it's
actually really important that we do this because traditionally the church has not always
done a good job when it comes to talking about sadness and you know that spiritual sadness
we sometimes feel or spiritual depression. Now that phrase, spiritual depression, was
coined by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. And this is Dr. Jones here. He was a Welsh minister
but before he became a minister, this is during the most of the 1900s, he was a doctor. So
as both a doctor and an amazing preacher and teacher, he was the minister at Westminster
Chapel in London, he came up with this idea of spiritual depression. In fact his best
selling book is a book called Spiritual Depression. And so according to Martin Lloyd-Jones, spiritual
depression is not only a feeling but it is a state of mind. He goes on to say that it
is a disease of the soul, this feeling of discouragement, this lack of joy. Now some
of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know what it's like to lose your zest
for life. You know what it's like to have even the smallest tasks seem absolutely overwhelming.
You know what it's like to kind of lack the energy to kind of get out and live your life
the way that you want to. But what he's talking about and what we're talking about, it's not
just oh I've got the blues today or I'm a little bit sad. It is something deeper. It's
something that kind of lingers longer in our minds and in our hearts. And it may come because
of some traumatic experience that we went through or it may come for no apparent reason.
But when Martin Lloyd-Jones looked at Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 by the way, which were originally
one song, they got split up later, he saw all the signs of someone who's going through
a period of spiritual depression. Which may be surprising because the Psalm itself is
written by a worship director, a worship leader. Right at the beginning of the Psalm, if you
were to open your Bibles you would see that it says this is for the director of music,
a song by the sons of Korah. The sons of Korah, you probably haven't heard of them, but back
in the day they were big. They were a worship team that led worship all around Israel. They
would lead worship in the temple. They would lead worship in big festivals and in big processions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the sons of Korah. Woo! The crowd would go crazy. Everyone loved the
sons of Korah and they loved to lead worship. But you might say that does not make any sense.
How could a worship leader of all people suffer from depression? They're always happy. They're
always on stage. They're always got a smile on their face. They always seem so full of
energy. They can't possibly be sad, but of course they can be. And so can you and so
can I. And that is a good reminder for all of us that no matter what someone looks like
on the outside, we don't know what they're feeling on the inside. And so today it's time
for a little bit of summertime sadness. Let's look at Psalm 42 and let's ask a few questions
or let's look at first the truth of spiritual sadness, the triggers of spiritual depression
and the treatment for spiritual depression. I should let you know that we've got a little
cheat sheet here that we've handed out to everyone to help you take some notes as we
go along. This is actually a pretty important topic. So we want you to get the most out
of this as possible. So first we got to start by talking about the truth of spiritual depression
because for many people, depression is something that they question, something they doubt,
something that they criticize and mostly because they've never experienced it themselves or
they, they just don't understand it. So that's why one of the biggest false hoods out there
is that people go around saying depression isn't real. It's not something that really
happens. It's all in their head. It's all made up. It's just their imagination. But
according to the Canadian mental health association, we read that depression is a mood disorder
that's going to affect one in eight Canadians at some point in their life. We read that
6.5% of Canadian youth experience major depressive episodes once per year. And that's not just,
you know, teenage moodiness. That's a real depressive episode. We read that 7% of senior
citizens will feel the same. Women experience depression twice as much as men do. And if
you already have an underlying illness or a chronic illness or disease, chances are
one in three that depression is going to be something that gets laid on top of that for
you. It just seems that human beings are very, very delicate creatures. And the Bible says
as much, the Bible says that God created our inmost being, our mind and our heart and knit
us together with such precision and intricacy. We're fearfully made. Yes. We're wonderfully
made. Yes. And that delicate balance is amazing. Yes. But at times that balance can be thrown
off, can be thrown off by stress, thrown off by major life changes, thrown off by addiction,
thrown off by hormones, by our age, by all sorts of things. Substance abuse can throw
off the delicate balance of our minds and our hearts. Even just our biochemistry, managing
that, if you've got serotonin levels that are too low, then that's going to make it
difficult for you to sleep. And that actually affects our mood. If you've got norepinephrine
levels that are too low, then that creates fatigue and that affects our mood. If your
cortisol levels are too high, then that increases your fear and anxiety. And all those things
can kind of lead to times of sadness, despair and depression. All that I'm trying to say
is our brain is a really complex organ and there's a lot of beautiful stuff in there,
but it's also, there's a lot that can go wrong and be affected and disrupted. And to deny
this is wrong. And to deny it is actually not helpful for people who actually do struggle
with depression. So that's the first falsehood, the falsehood that, hey, it's not real. A
second falsehood is that therefore, you know, Christians can't really struggle with depression,
right? Because as the argument goes, if we are Christians, if we've given our life to
Jesus, life's problems will automatically be solved, right? Right? You will always be
healthy. You'll always be wealthy. You'll always be happy. You'll just cruise through
life and when you come to church, you'll have a smile on your face and you'll say, how are
you doing? I'm doing good. How are you doing? I'm doing good. You good? I'm good. You good?
I good. We're all good. Everybody's good. But come on, people of faith get depressed,
right? Just read through the lyrics of some of the Psalms. Why my soul are you so downcast?
I'm worn out from all my groaning all night long. I flood my bed with weeping. My God,
I cry out to you by day. You do not answer. My eyes grow weak with sorrow. My soul and
my body with grief. I'm overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. It's true.
This gives us hope and joy and strength, but it is phony and wrong to pretend that we feel
that way all the time. For many people in our world, becoming a Christian doesn't make
life easier. It makes it harder. It means more stress, more danger, more isolation,
more rejection. So it's a falsehood to say, Christians can't experience depression. It
just doesn't make sense. And that brings us to the third falsehood we have to address
is that is that for some reason, therefore depressed people are less spiritual. If you
were really spiritually mature, you wouldn't struggle with sadness and depression. But
come on, think of heroes of the faith. David, a man after God's own heart, obviously struggled
with deep sadness and sorrow at times in his life. Think of Elijah, the great prophet clearly
had suicidal ideation from time to time. Think of Job, who we are told was the most righteous
man on earth at the time. And yet in that same story, he curses the day that he was
born. Think of the apostle Paul, who said that he despaired even of life at one point.
Another notable preacher, it was a Charles Spurgeon who was called actually once the
prince of preachers in the late 1800s. He was just so well known for his sermons and
his writings. And, and yet he confessed to his own congregate congregation. He said,
I have been in the depths, which I hope none of you ever go. There are dungeons, he said,
beneath the castle of despair. So for this reason, we should never stigmatize people
who suffer from depression or sadness as being less spiritual than others. So that's the
truth about spiritual depression. But now let's talk about some of the triggers. What
are some of those things that happen in our life that cause the depression to erupt? Psalm
42 actually gives us some of these triggers. And I should say what I'm talking today is
not from a medical perspective. I'm not talking to you from a clinical perspective. I'm not
a psychologist. I'm, I'm a preacher. I'm looking at what these possible spiritual triggers
might be as we read them in Psalm 42. Okay. The first trigger that seems obvious is that
depression can hit you when your hopes get dashed, when hope fails you, when life disappoints
you. You know, sometimes in life we, we want to be here, but we're here. Uh, we wish we
were there, but we're stuck where we are. And, and that sense of disappointment of not being
where you want to be or doing what you want to do can really, really beat you up and leave
you feeling flat. The writer of Psalm 42, he says as much, but you kind of got to read
between the lines. He says, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for
you, my God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. And then he says, when can
I go and meet with God? And what's he talking about there? What he's talking about is again,
he's a worship leader. Where does he want to be? He wants to be in Jerusalem. He wants
to be leading worship. He wants to be doing what he does best, what fulfills him. And
for some reason he can't be there. He can't do what he wants to do. Now some scholars
have hypothesized that it's because he was on the run with David. David had to flee Jerusalem
during his time as a, as an upcoming King. And as a result, uh, the sons of Korah also
maybe got exiled from Jerusalem and find themselves now on the outside looking in and he's stuck
and he doesn't want to be where he is. He wants to be there. He's thirsting to be back
in the temple. He's longing to be back doing what he loves to do, doing something else,
but he can't do it. And hope that is deferred makes the heart sick. Cause we read in Proverbs
and some of you know is exactly what he's talking about. You wanted to be in a certain
relationship and you're just not there. You wanted to be somewhere in your career and
you're just not there. You wanted to have saved so much money by now, but you're just
not there. You wanted to have moved on in some way. You wanted to have, have a job by
now, moved out of your parents basement by now. You wanted to finish your degree by now.
You had goals, you had aims, you had aspirations, but they're just not happening. You're not
where you want to be. And that can weigh on you. And it can be a trigger for spiritual
depression. So that's the first trigger when hope fails you. But secondly, when people
criticize you, look at this, when you are criticized, attacked or beat down by the people
around you, that can really make you question who you are. When they say mean and nasty
things to you. Look, look at the Psalmist. He says, they say, who are they? Well, his
enemies, his critics, they say, where is your God? And my bones suffer, mortal agony is
my foes taunt me. And he says, why must I go about mourning oppressed by my enemy? When
we're criticized, you know what it does? It erodes our sense of self-esteem. That can
lead to depression. It makes us feel rejected and isolated. That can lead to depression.
People are mean. People can be nasty. Frederick Nietzsche said that man is the cruelest animal,
whether it was some bully at school that got you really depressed or whether it's a coworker
who's so competitive or whether it's a spouse who is verbally abusive to you or criticism
can trigger that feeling of depression. Another trigger though, is when problems overwhelm
you. Now we all have problems. One problem here, no problem, no problem. I can handle
a problem here and a problem there. But sometimes it rains and then sometimes it pours and sometimes
your basement just gets flooded like it did a couple of weeks ago. When, when problems
keep coming at you, one problem after another, a relationship problem, a career problem,
a financial problem, a health problem, pretty soon we feel like we are overwhelmed. And
it's when too many things come at us once that it can lead to depression. The Psalmist
gets at this when he says deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves
and your breakers have swept over me. He's using this metaphor of waves and breakers
and water because it gets at what we're talking about. Have you ever walked in the ocean and
been knocked over by a wave? That's not so bad. But when you're trying to get back up,
another wave hits you and now you're kind of tumbling and then another wave and now
you're like losing your orientation and pretty soon you're gasping for breath and you're
being pulled back out to sea, right? We can handle a problem, but when lots comes at us
at once, then we are in that space where we can lead to sadness and depression. There
is in fact is this stress test you can do called the Holmes and Ray stress scale. And
it says that according to their findings that if you score between 200 and 300 on this test,
then you are at high risk of a nervous breakdown or some deep, deep depression. And so for
example, the death of a spouse is a hundred points in one year span, a hundred points,
divorce 73 points, retirement 45 points, pregnancy, buying a house, starting school, moving, trouble
at work, vacation, Christmas, it goes on and on. All of these things have a point value
and we can tolerate some of it, but when too much of it comes and the waves keep coming,
then we're overwhelmed. Another trigger can be when the past reminds you. Now lots of
times our memories are very encouraging and they actually cheer us up in times of sadness,
but in the case of this guy, it was actually the past that was pulling him down. He was
remembering better days, what used to be, what life was like before. He says, Oh gosh,
I remember, I remember how it used to be. I used to go to the house of God and we were
under protection. We didn't have to run for our lives. We were protected and there'd be
shouts of joy and we get to lead the worship among all these people. Oh, those were the
good old days, the good old days. When I get together with some of my friends from high
school, we're always reminiscing about the good old days, remembering back to high school,
the stupid things we did, telling stories and laughing at it. And that can be good,
but it was Warren Wiersbie says, he says the past should be a rudder to guide us. Can't
be an anchor that holds us back. And so the lesson is if you think life as it is right
now is always going to be this way and never going to change, then you're heading for a
crash because life changes. The way things are going to be tomorrow is not going to be
like it is today. And the way it is today is not like it was before. It's longing for
another time, longing for another situation can trigger that feeling of depression. Finally,
depressive feelings often spiral and increase when we're preoccupied with ourselves. When
all your thoughts are focused on you. Psalm 42 and Psalm 43, we come across the words
me, my, and I 51 times. And that's okay because God is interested in all your me's and my's
and I's, but the word God is only used 21 times. So that's a little bit out of whack.
And when we focus too much on ourselves, man, if you're always looking at yourself, it can
lead to this self-criticism. It can really throw us off balance because we're often losing
our perspective and it magnifies the problems that we have in our life and the negativity
can increase and depression can intensify. So here's the triggers. These are the system
triggers that seem to be hinted at in Psalm 42 that when hope fails you and people criticize
you and problems overwhelm you, the past reminds you, and when everything is about you, you
could be headed for a time of depression. So these are warning signs that we should
all be paying attention to. But let's end, not by talking about the truth of it or the
triggers, but let's end by talking about the treatment of our spiritual depression. How
do we alleviate the symptoms? How do we raise ourselves out of depressive moments? Many
times we try to just do it on our own. We treat our depression by drinking too much
or eating too much or doing drugs or whatever. Sometimes, actually I read that 35% of people
who are depressed say they solve it by watching TV. Those aren't great treatments. Obviously,
doctors have medical treatments and psychologists and psychotherapists will have their treatments.
But again, spiritually speaking, spiritually speaking, the psalmist suggests a few treatments
that we can take with us today based on what he said. First, tell yourself the truth. Did
you notice how the psalmist is always talking to himself? He writes, oh, my soul, why are
you downcast? Why are you, as if he's talking to us, why are you so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God. He's talking to himself. He's saying, hey there in their soul. Hello,
anyone home? I'm talking to you. Listen. Put your hope in God. Don't listen to what they're
saying. Are you listening to me? Hello, anyone home down there? And he's talking to himself.
And according to Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, this is exactly what we should do. He writes, we
must talk to ourselves instead of letting ourselves talk to us. Most of our unhappiness
in life is due to the fact that you're listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.
Rather than listening to those discouraging thoughts, we should be speaking God's truth
to ourselves. Somebody after the first service said, I've heard it said this way, Rob, that
we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. As soon as those inner voices start dragging
you down, say, no, no, no, no, shut up. Listen. Listen, soul. Don't listen to him. Listen
to me. I'm a child of God. I'm made in God's image. God loves me. God's never going to
leave you. This is a strategy. We need to preach to ourselves. We need to talk to ourselves.
That is one of the first treatments for spiritual depression, to remind ourselves about God's
truth. The second thing though is to train our eyes on Jesus. Psalm 42 ends with this
line, put your hope in God for I'll yet praise him, my savior and my God. He's changed his
focus by the end. He's no longer focusing inward. He's focusing upward. He's taking
his eyes off himself and instead training his eyes on God, the savior. Now the Psalmist
doesn't even know what we know. We know that God is such a savior that he sent his one
and only son because he loved the world so much. He sent his one and only son so that
all that believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. Everyone would be saved
through Jesus. So you see, if we train our eyes on Jesus, we train our eyes on our savior
in times of sadness, that can lift us out of despair. Corrie Ten Boom, who found herself
in a concentration camp, she didn't fall into depression. Why? Because she said, if you
look around, you're going to be distressed. If you look within, you're going to be depressed.
But if you look to Jesus, you'll be at rest. So to treat spiritual depression, tell yourself
the truth, train your eyes on Jesus. And finally, think about the future. Both Psalm 42 and
Psalm 43 are sad songs, but they both end with hope about the future. Put your hope
in God for I will yet praise him. This isn't the end of the story yet. There's still more
to come yet. Paul puts it this way. He says, I focus on one thing, forgetting the past
and looking forward to what lies ahead. So friends, whatever's happened in the past,
it's the past. It cannot be changed. But when we focus on the future, gives us hope, gives
us peace, gives us assurance. We know how the story ends. Depression works by saying, you're
stuck in this moment and it's always going to be that way. But the gospel tells us, no,
it's not always going to be this way. God has prepared a place for you. God has a future
for you. Keep your eyes on Jesus and think about your future. That can help lift us up
out of our momentary struggles. So that's why we sing sad songs, because summertime
sadness is a real thing. We get sad. Depression is real. If you are experiencing some of this
deep sadness we've been talking about today, one thing I'd like to offer you is why not
reach out to Trinity? Why not email us at care at trinitiestreetsville.org and maybe
we can connect you with the help that you need. Maybe we can pray with you or put you
into a community of people who can walk with you. But in the meantime, tell yourself the
truth, train your eyes on Jesus and think about your future. Amen.
Thanks again for listening today and we hope you found the sermon both helpful and hopeful.
Come back again next week as we continue singing our way through the book of Psalms. Today's
sermon was taken from the July 28th, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville in
Mississauga, Ontario.