Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2798
“O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember You from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the Hill Mizar.” Psalm 42:6.
HERE is a common complaint of God’s people and here are two remedies which David, wisely guided of God, administers with discretion. Let us direct our meditation in this order—first, let us talk of the complaint And then, secondly, let us look into the Divine medicine chest and use the remedies provided there.
I. LET US TALK OF THE COMPLAINT “O my God, my soul is cast down within me.”
We do not know what was the precise reason why David’s soul was cast down. Perhaps it was because he had been driven out of the royal city by his own son—the son whom he had petted and pampered and, thereby, made a rod for his own back. We are pretty sure that he was now denied the privilege of going up to the House of God—he could not now join with the multitude that kept holy day. These two things probably worked together to cast down his spirit—his absence from the tabernacle and the cause of that absence.
I am not sure, however, that these two things combined would have been enough to cast down David’s spirit if it had not been for a more bitter ingredient in his cup of sadness. There have been good men in circumstances similar to David’s at that time who, even then, could gird up the loins of their mind and hope to the end. When bitten by that which is sharper than a serpent’s tooth—an ungrateful child—and debarred from the House of God, they have, even then, been able to stay themselves upon the Lord and to rejoice in the Most High God. The real reason of the Psalmist’s distress was, no doubt, that God had, at least to some degree, hidden His face from him and, therefore, the flowers of David’s graces all drooped and his joy, which formerly sparkled in the sunlight of God’s Countenance, was now dim and dark. Troubles may distress the outward man, but they cannot distress the soul of the child of God while he feels the Lord Jehovah to be his everlasting strength. Yes, it sometimes happens that the very pressure which weighs down the scale of his earthly hopes tends to lift up the opposite scale of his spiritual peace! As long as God is with him, trials are nothing, for he casts them upon Jehovah. But once let God withdraw from him for a while and he is troubled—that mountain which seemed to stand fast begins to rock and shake—and to prove the instability and insufficiency of all mortal grounds of confidence.
The causes of our being cast down are very numerous. Sometimes it is pain of body—perhaps a wearing pain which tries the nerves, prevents sleep, distracts our attention, drives away comfort and hides contentment from our eyes. Often, too, has it been debility of body—some secret disease has been sapping and undermining the very strength of our life and we knew not that it was there while we have been drawing insensibly near to the gates of death. We have wondered that we were low in spirits, whereas it would have been a thousand wonders if we had not been depressed! We have marveled that we have been cast down, whereas a physician would tell us that this was but one of many symptoms which proved that we were not right as to our bodily health.
Not infrequently has some crushing calamity been the cause of depression of spirit. Trial has succeeded trial. All your hopes have been blasted, your very means of sustenance have been suddenly snatched from you. While all your needs have remained, the supplies have been withdrawn from you. At other times, it has been bereavement that has brought you
down very low. The axe has been at work in the forest of your domestic joys. Tree after tree has fallen—those from whom you plucked the ripest fruits of sweet society and kindred fellowship have been cut down by the ruthless woodsman—you have seen them taken away from you forever so far as this world is concerned. Or else it may be that you have been slandered. Your good has been evilly spoken of, your holiest motives have been misinterpreted, your most Divine aspirations have been misrepresented and you have gone about as with a sword in your bones while the malicious have taunted you, saying, “Where is your God now?” The cases of depression of spirit are so various that it must be, indeed, a rare panacea, a marvelous remedy, which would suit them all! Yet, when we come to speak of the remedies mentioned in our text, we shall find them suitable to most of these cases, if not to all—and to all in a degree, if not to the fullest extent.
Let us pass now, from the most obvious, to the more subtle causes of soul-dejection. This complaint is very common among God’s people. When the young Believer has first to suffer from it, he thinks that he cannot be a child of God, “For,” he says, “if I were a child of God, would I be like this?” What fine dreams some of us have when we are just converted! We fancy that we are going to sail straight away to Heaven and to have a prosperous voyage all the way! The wind is always to blow fairly for us, there is never to be a rough wave, no storm-cloud is to hover over the ship all the day long—and if there are any nights, the stars will be so brilliant that it will be as bright as day! Or, possibly, we imagine that we have come into a country where everybody will be kind to us, where all circumstances will be propitious to us, where everything will tend to nurture our piety and our own hearts—indeed, will forever get rid of legal terrors and perilous alarms! Oh, silly creatures that we are if we dream thus foolishly! We know not what we are born to in our second birth, for, as a man is born to trouble by his first birth—when he is born a second time, he is born to a double share of trouble! Then, he was born to physical and mental trouble, but now that he is born-again, he is born to spiritual trouble and as he shall have new joys, so shall he also have a long list of new sorrows.