Derek Wells | A Psalm for the Troubled Soul

Sunday Morning, April 12, 2026

Given by Derek Wells | Pastor of Counseling, Christ Covenant Church

A Psalm for the Troubled Soul
Psalm 42

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Transcript

Let's go to the Lord in prayer once more. 

Lord Jesus, we come to you because you are strong and kind, because you are good to us, oh Lord, because you have called us to yourself. And so, we thank you as we worship you. And we pray, Lord, that you would use the preaching of your Word, Lord, to strengthen those who need to be strengthened, Lord, to convict the wayward, to bring them home, and to grow all of us in grace and knowledge of you. May you bless us now as we meditate upon your Word in Christ's name. Amen. 

Well, please turn with me to Psalm 42. We'll be taking a break from our regular series in Romans, as Kevin is out. We're going to be changing gears quite a bit. We're looking at a very well-known psalm of lament. Now, I was originally scheduled to preach this sermon in February but was unable to do so, and so, this sermon lands in Easter season, and hopefully you'll still find it fitting. 

If the word lament is unfamiliar to you, it is often defined as a crying out before God, a crying out in expression of sorrow or grief or distress. And certainly, having just gone through Holy Week together, we might think of the lament of Christ from the cross, his cry of dereliction where he's quoting Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And there are many psalms like that where we find God's people crying out in various seasons of various moments of their life. And certainly, this psalm is one of the more notable psalms in that regard. It's a beautiful psalm. It's an instructive psalm to us as well. Not only does it capture the pathos of our lives at times, but it contains wisdom that is needed in such times. Now, this psalm is often connected with Psalm 43. You could actually take it as one chapter, but don't fear. We're just going to be looking at Psalm 42 this morning. That's where our focus will be, and we'll allude to Psalm 43 to help inform our meaning. So, let's read Psalm 42. Hear the word of the Lord. 

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. 

When shall I come and appear before God? 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 a 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 downcast, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation, my God. 

My soul is cast down within me; therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon and from Mount Mizar. 

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?’ 

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, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? 

Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”

I was at a funeral a couple of months ago, and I heard a pastor say on that occasion that there are two ways that the Bible speaks. Most of the time the Bible speaks to us, that is instructing us, exhorting us, teaching us. But there are times in our lives where the Bible speaks for us as well, discerning our hearts, and drawing out the hidden depths of our emotions and our feelings. And Psalm 42 is much like that. You can probably feel it as you read it. It speaks to us in many respects, but it can also speak for us as well. It's a psalm that's written by a troubled soul for other troubled souls. And that's the theme of the sermon this morning: a troubled soul. 

Now, you might be here, and you might be thinking, well, you know, it's Easter season. It's springtime, and we have our spring luncheon after the service today. The Masters are going on. That theme of a troubled soul – it doesn't quite seem to fit this morning, or maybe it doesn't even quite fit my season of life right now. I really don't have a troubled soul, I would say. Well in that case, I would encourage you to think of how this psalm might speak to you, that is, perhaps maybe not about this season, but perhaps for a future season yet to come in your life, or perhaps instructing you in helping others who are in a troubled season of their lives. But you might be here this morning, and you might find this passage speaking for you in your present condition and your circumstances. You know, Kevin said this a few weeks ago in the series on Romans. He said, "The Bible knows us better than we know ourselves." You might feel some of that this morning. I hope so. Perhaps we will see it afresh. Wherever you are on the spectrum this morning, my prayer is that this psalm would be a great source of wisdom and a great source of encouragement to us, both in helping ourselves and in helping others as well. 

What do we do with a troubled soul? That's our question this morning. I want us to see three things from this passage. I want to start by looking at the psalmist's condition, and then we'll look at his conversation, and then finally we will look at his conclusion. His condition, his conversation, and his conclusion. We begin to see his condition in these opening verses 1 and 2. He says, “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants for you, O God; my soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” And so, we open with a picture of spiritual thirst. Now, on the surface, these verses might seem like some that would maybe go really well on a coffee mug. You know, you're sitting there drinking your coffee, a peaceful morning, and you have the deer panting for water and all that. Or maybe it stirs up something of a scenic picture in your mind: there's a deer peacefully lapping up water by a stream. Sometimes that's what conjures up in our mind, but that's not this scene at all. A more accurate picture would be one of an animal suffering from dire thirst. Now, I don't know how many of you have seen a deer in dire thirst. You might have to go ask Jim Sutton or Patrick Keaton or one of our resident hunters here. They can probably tell you all about that. I have not seen a deer in dire thirst, but I have seen our dog in dire thirst. Our dog, Carson – she's a bit crazy. She likes to run around in the front yard and just – she just loves to bark it up, you know? And so, she runs around, and she's barking at the UPS man, the FedEx man, the Amazon person, U.S. mail, it doesn't matter, our neighbors, she's no respecter of persons. She will bark at you if you come by our house, and there she is, running around, just barking. And sometimes she comes in after running around, post-barkathon, and she's just panting like crazy. You know, she just needs a drink. And if we are not careful, if we're not careful, if we don't shut the bathroom door, guess where she will go for a drink? Yes, she goes to the wrong water source. And you want to say to her, you know, it's not going to go well for you if you drink from that water source. It's not going to go well for you, but that's where her thirst will naturally lead her. She has to actually be led to the right water source. 

And Psalm 42 does something like that for us. It addresses our spiritual thirst by giving us a picture of a parched and beleaguered soul, yes, but one that is at the right water source. Look at what he says: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” And so, we see something here of a holy thirst, a thirst for God. Now, it might be born of desperation. It might be born of pure devotion, of some mixture, perhaps, in between, but he thirsts for God. The one true God, the holy God, the merciful God, the God of his deliverance, the God of his salvation, the God he worships, Yahweh. He knows that God is the only one who can satisfy his thirst, and he longs to be with God. He says in the latter part of verse 2 – he says, "When shall I come and appear before God?" And so, here we see the context of this passage is one of worship. He longs to appear before God, that is, in the sanctuary in Jerusalem – that place of worship, a place where he can enjoy God's presence and God's fellowship and God's nearness and God's closeness and that of his people, but that's not where he is. He's in exile. We learn from verse 6 he's crying out from the land of Jordan, Mount Hermon, Mount Mizar. Now, we don't know the exact historical setting of this psalm, but we know that geographically he's about as far away as he can get from Jerusalem, from the place of worship. So, you get the picture. He's longing to be close to God, but God quite literally seems to be miles away. Now, in reality, God is omnipresent – he's always with him – but that's not his present experience, and that's the tension of this passage, and it heightens in verse 3. He says, “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” And so, his tears have been in food all day, all night. He's lost his taste for food, lost his appetite. The sadness has overtaken him. He's not eating. He's not sleeping. But the real tension is in the question his tears and his enemies are asking, and that is, “Where is your God?” Look at verse 10. He says, “As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries they taunt me while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” 

Now, we might rightly ask, what has brought this man to this place of exile? What has brought this condition upon him? Could it, after all, be his personal sin? Or could it be judgment as a consequence of his sin? And certainly, Israel's sin landed them in exile at times, and the same is true for us. If we walk in willful rebellion against God and sin against God, we will experience God's rebuke and a sense of separation and estrangement from God that can only be remedied by confession and by repentance before him. You might even think of Psalm 32 as one of those psalms that would speak to that. But his personal sin does not seem to be the focus here. Note that: his personal sin does not seem to be the focus here. The focus is on his enemies, and specifically their taunts, which he says are like a deadly wound to him. And why is it a deadly wound? Well, I wonder if it's because the question functions more like an accusation, as you see: God has abandoned you. So, it seems to me that this passage, it gives us a picture, all of us a picture, of life in a fallen world. It's a look at reality, as we look at life surrounded by the world and the flesh and the devil. In Psalm 42 in great mercy, it seems, in wisdom it's telling us that there will be these times. There will be these seasons in our life where we will hear the taunts and the questions of our adversaries. Now, perhaps those are voices from without, opposition, but probably more than likely those would be voices from within. Those subtle, quiet voices that lurk inside of your heart; the voices of accusation. Where is your God? Now, it could come as a result of a spiritual dry season. You might be there, where God seems to have withdrawn from us, and there's something maybe mysterious about it. We can't quite put our finger on it. Or it could be during a season of spiritual discouragement that is marked by physical suffering, or maybe a prolonged season of unanswered prayers, and we are discouraged. Or it could be what historically has been called spiritual melancholy – what Martin Lloyd Jones famously called spiritual depression in his series, where, by virtue of opposition or some circumstance or perhaps even our temperament, we are prone to discouragement. And so, we find ourselves spiritually downcast. And friends, it should encourage us to know that many saints wrestled with these realities. Luther, Bunyan, Spurgeon, William Cooper, David Brainerd, Anne Steele, who wrote Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul, wrestled with these things. And the question before us, Christ Covenant, is what did they do? So what do we do with ourselves, or maybe what do we do with others who are in this condition of a troubled soul?

And that brings us to point number two: his conversation. Now, two caveats as we move in this direction: what follows does not necessarily address physiological factors that might need to be explored. We all have bodies. They can be frail. They can break down at times. We want to acknowledge that reality. That's not our focus here, and neither is what follows just some kind of self-help talk or some technique we use, employing the power of positive thinking, or some method we use, you know – Serenity Now! – or something like that. No, this is deeper. This is deeper. This is about how this psalmist, as Derek Kidner says, turns his longing into a more resolute faith and hope in God himself. How does that happen? How do we take our longing and turn it into a more resolute faith and hope in God himself? Well, it begins in what some of us might think is a surprising way. It begins with his cry. His cry in verse 6, he says, "My soul is cast down within me." So, he's going to God, and he's telling him his soul is downcast. In other words, he acknowledges his condition. He pours out his soul, as verse 4 says. So, we're not dealing with a man who's just a stoic. He doesn't stifle his emotions. He doesn't minimize his condition or his feelings. No, he acknowledges them. He brings them before God, and he tells him all about it. Look at verse 7. There seems to be, sort of, great freedom even in this. He says, “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me, Lord.” He doesn't hold back. I remember when our kids were little and teaching them to boogie board in the ocean. Now, we'd love to get out there and do that. At a very young age we started that, and they grew up going to the coast of South Carolina, and as they would get the hang of it, you know, that'd be really exciting for me. You know, I’d just kind of push them along, and there they would go, and they would be scared initially, but you know, they would learn to do it, and sometimes I would get a little bit too optimistic, and I would send them on a wave that was just way too big, right? And I’d always realize it too late, like here we go, and I push them, and you think, “Oh man, start praying now.” Wave goes up really high, and occasionally there would be just this flat-out nosedive into the ocean floor, you know? In a moment of panic where you're looking for them, and you can't find them, and finally they come up, and inevitably – the salt water, and there's just tears, and they give you that horrible, painful look as a parent, looking at you like, “What did you just do to me?” They come up all perplexed, as if to say, “What are you doing? Didn't you know I can't handle that wave that you just sent me on?” And sometimes, friends, in our life, in our circumstances, we can feel that way with God. Lord, I cannot handle this wave. You find something similar here in his cry to God. But he goes to God in his cry. 

But notice something. Notice this. He doesn't get stuck there. He says, "My soul is cast down within me." Yes. Does he stop? No. He says, "Therefore, I will remember you from the land of Jordan." So, he cries out to God. But listen, his lament does not lead him toward paralysis. No, it does not. He's going to do something. What's he going to do? He says, “I will remember.” I will remember. And here we see the first glimmer of gospel hope in this psalm. And that is this: what is going to rescue him in this condition? It is the remembrance of God, specifically the truth about God. You know, it's so easy to lose sight of God when we find ourselves in seasons of discouragement or frustration or even depression. But the psalmist says – look at verse 4 – “These things I remember as I pour out my soul.” And so, he's thinking back over times past, “how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts of joy and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.” And he begins to mingle in remembrance with his cries before God, even bringing the past into his present for his encouragement and hope. And so, he is going to remember, but that's also mingled with confession. And we see that in verse 8. It's not necessarily confession of his sins, but it's confession of what is true about God. Here's what he says: “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? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’” Now, note that there is something of an internal dialogue that begins to unfold here. And it's the kind of dialogue where he confesses what is truthful even as he expresses what is painful in his life. Do you see that mingling coming together? In other words, he unpacks the paradox of his soul and his experience, and so many times that is ours as well. Look at what he says: by day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me. He is my rock, and yet why have you forgotten me? You may say, well which is it? Is he your rock, or do you feel like God's forgotten you? Yes is the answer. So, friends, we see that two things can be true at the same time. In this internal dialogue, it captures a great truth for you and for me – that is, we might feel forsaken and forgotten by God, but that does not mean that we are forsaken and forgotten by God. That's his message to us. 

As he dialogues, one commentator I read noted, you think about how he mingles these things together – each lament is followed with a potent gospel sermon. And this kind of dialogue is important for us. It's important for you and for me as we think about helping ourselves or perhaps as we think about helping others. Martin Lloyd Jones said one of the great messages of this psalm, in his series on spiritual depression, is this: the main art in spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. It’s to know how to handle yourself. That's especially true in down times. Now, we may not think that way – how do I handle myself? – but here's what Martin Lloyd Jones says. He says, "You have to take yourself in hand. You have to address yourself. You have to preach to yourself. You have to question yourself. You must say to your soul, ‘Why are you cast down? What business have you to be disquieted?’ And so, we see this psalmist doing just that. He's instructing himself. He's exhorting himself to do what? To hope in God. Exhorting himself to hope in God. And there is this movement, as we look at this psalm, where the focus of his attention shifts. Kris Lundgaard notes this in a commentary on this passage. He says, “His focus shifts” – note this – “from ‘O my soul’ to ‘hope in God.’” So many of us can walk around in our lives, and there's this mantra, “O my soul, O my soul, O my soul.” And what needs to happen is our focus needs to shift to “Hope in God, hope in God, hope in God.” One needs to eclipse the other. And that's what we see here. This pivot happens from his soul to God's saving character. And it begins with an imperative, a command. He says, "Hope in God." He's telling himself to do that, and you say, "Well, Derek, is that going to do me any good just to tell myself over and over again, hope in God, hope in God?" How is that going to work? It's going to work when we see that the imperative has an indicative as well. 

What is the indicative? Well, it hovers throughout these two chapters, 42 and 43. If you're in the counseling world, as I am, any article you read on these passages is going to highlight this, and that is how the character of God just hangs over these passages, both of these chapters. It says he is the living God, verse 2; of steadfast love by day; the one who gives strength and songs in the night, verse 8; he is our rock amid turmoil, verse 9. Psalm 43 goes on to say he is the God of justice. He is the God of light. He is the God of truth. And so, the basis of his hope while he's in exile is God's saving character. That's what begins to envelop him. And the recital of these things begins to reorient his perspective as he anchors his hope in God himself. 

And friends, that brings us to the conclusion. In the latter part of verse 11, he says, "Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” So, he's looking ahead to what is going to happen in hopeful, gospel-centered optimism. I will again praise God. Why? Because he is my salvation. I should note that this is not a magic formula. It's not a method that we run through. No, in context, we need to see two things of what this is. Number one, it is a prayer. It is a prayer of a person who's in exile in this season of trouble. That's this whole passage. It's a lifting up of the soul to God, the upward trajectory of a lament that raises upward toward the Lord. Psalm 43:3-4 captures this prayer of an exile so well, and it's the prayer that you and I need to pray in such circumstances. Here's what it says: “Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me, and let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.” So, he's in this place of exile, and he calls out to the Lord, and he says, "Send out your light and your truth to find me.” You think of being lost somewhere and the light of a helicopter search and rescue mission just shining down on you to find you. Made me think of the rescue operation of the pilot that was down in Iran this week. Now, he had to run and evade, and reading some articles on that, he was constantly assured by one message, and that is this message: “We will find you. We will come, and we will get you.” Now, where was his hope? And you might say, well, his hope was in his training. Well, partially true. But his hope was ultimately in the character, fidelity, and commitment of those who were determined to rescue him. And so, in that hope, what does he do? He sends out his SOS signal. Why? Because he knows that they're determined to find him and that they will find him. And that's this psalmist. And that should be our prayer and our confidence as well. In a season of trouble or discouragement, depression or despair – Lord, send your light, and send your truth to me. As we're suffering under cancer or other things – Lord, it's your light and your truth that is going to rescue me, that is going to save me. Would you find me? I'm in this place of exile. Come, and rescue me. Give life to me, and guide me. 

It's a prayer, but it's also, note this, it's a process. Notice what he says in 43. He says, "Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill" – that is, God's light and truth is going to lead us, is going to bring us out of exile into where we need to be. It's God's light and truth that is going to rescue him. But how is it going to do so? It's going to do so by leading him step by step. Where? To your holy hill, to your dwelling place where I long to be. And so, it's a prayer, and it's a process of following God's light and truth, wherever we find ourselves, and rescuing us, shining light on us, and us beginning to follow. A process of allowing the light of God's redemptive love and truth and his faithfulness to invade – listen – to invade our place of exile. Why? Because he's determined to rescue us. You say, "Well, Derek, how do you know that? You don't know my situation. You don't know where I'm at. You don't know the pain that I'm in. How do you know that?" Well, we see that in full expression in the person and work of Christ. What is the anchor of hope for a troubled soul? For you and for me, it is Christ, for it's Christ that speaks to us in our longing and our spiritual thirst. Friends, it's Christ that speaks to us in this meal that we are about to partake. This is my body. This is my blood. You are thirsty. Drink. As Jesus said to the woman at the well, "He who drinks from this well will thirst again, but he who drinks from the water that I give will never thirst again. It will be a wellspring into eternal life." 

And so, friends, he is our water source. He has taken our sin, overcome death and hell and the grave. He is the fountain of living water that will satisfy our thirst in our hearts. Let that gospel message lead you to him wherever you are this morning, for it's Christ that speaks to us, but it is also Christ who speaks for us in our suffering as well. Sinclair Ferguson says of Psalm 42 and 43, "There is nothing that the author of this psalm experienced that Jesus did not experience on a far deeper level. So, just go back through this psalm – you can hear something of the echoes of Christ, the obedience and faith of Christ, in this psalm. And friends, that means that even in this world of exile, we actually have an answer for verse 2. When shall I come and appear before God? And the answer in Christ is here and now. Friends, we can come and appear before God, because Christ has come and appeared before us. And there is nothing that you and I can experience, no place that we can be, where he is not near to us as our sympathetic high priest who sees us and knows us and has walked that path before and will lead us out of exile. So, let that truth lead you and guide you. Number one, if you're here this morning and you don't know the Lord, let that truth lead you and guide you out of your sins in repentance and faith toward him. Turn from your sins, and turn to Christ, who is your only lifegiving source. Friends, let that truth lead you and guide you out of that groove where you're overtaken with, "O my soul," and you can raise your eyes as you cry out to the Lord and say, "Hope in God," because of what Christ has done for us. Friends, he will lead us out of sin. He will lead us, ultimately, out of suffering. He will lead us, ultimately, out of exile to his dwelling place. Be encouraged in the Lord. Let's pray. 

Our Father in heaven, we are indeed grateful for this truth, the truth of the gospel that we have before us this morning. Knowing, Lord Jesus, that you have overcome our sin. You have overcome death, hell, and the grave for our sake. And we thank you, Lord. We give you praise. We give you praise as we come to your table this morning in thanksgiving and gladness. And we come, O Lord, in a spirit of humility and repentance and faith. We pray that you would strengthen us now, and may we be renewed by fellowship with you, for it's in your name that we pray. Amen.