Psalm 42: Desiring God (Part 3)

The Cry Of A Troubled (Yet Trusting) Heart

When we left this psalm at the end of part 2, we noted that the psalmist was drawing from his spiritual reservoir, so to speak. In verse 4, we saw him drawing spiritual strength for the present from his memories of previous spiritual experiences and lessons. Even though he is in a spiritual drought (v. 2) and what feels like chaotic danger now (v. 7), nevertheless he is resolved and determined to keep on trusting God.

The psalmist is exhibiting the virtue of what I like to call “godly defiance.” It is a disposition that dares to defy the world’s cynicism and doubt. When the world would seek to mold and conform your thinking to its mentality, scorning and scoffing at God, the believer dares to defy that line of thinking and keep on trusting. In this psalm, the believer endures mocking taunts from scoffing enemies (v. 3), a dark depression of the soul (v. 5), and the sensation of a spiritually painful torrent like drowning in an angry sea (v. 7) The defiance that withstands these storms is rooted in a knowledge of what the Scriptures say to be true and an experience of God’s character. Note well that this is not some kind of pietistic, naïve optimism. It does not negate or ignore the pain and trial of the moment—but rather, in the midst of the misery, the believer’s heart and mind know their God to be true and steadfast and faithful, and they know his promises to be sure. So the believer defies despair and keeps on trusting his Lord even in the thick of trial.

This is precisely what the psalmist does at the end of verse 5, transitioning from lament to hope in a matter of one sentence! And he does so again at the transition of verse 7 to verse 8.

In verse 8 the psalmist goes to the loving-kindness of God. The covenant love of God, The Hebrew word hesed (חֶסֶד), stands behind that translation: “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love.” What a surprising expression of confidence and faith, right on the heels of the danger of verse 7. In the second half of verse 8, he says, “At night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” In verse 7, he feels as if he might be on the brink of death, but in verse 8, in starkly poetic contrast, he cries out trustingly to the God who is his life.

It is as if the psalmist is saying, “Though I feel swallowed in torrents of death, this is the objective truth of my status beyond and contrary to any circumstantial evidence.” He rehearses truth and preaches to himself, “Day and night, I am surrounded by God’s faithfulness. All the day, morning and evening, I am enveloped in God’s covenant mercy.”

What is this “song” that he refers to in verse 8? Could it be that it is his memory of all those praises being sung to God in worship sticking with him in his darkest hour, which he is now turning around as a prayer up to God? Perhaps. It could even be that the very words of this psalm are his prayer, his song in the night, particularly verses 5 and 11, or verse 9.1

In verse 9, he highlights the person he is speaking to: “I will say to God my rock.” Note how it is not just a rock. Rather, “God is my rock,” this believer says. The piety is in the possessives, which we find replete throughout the psalter: this is my God, my hope, my rock and fortress.

What the psalmist is doing in verses 8 and 9 is reminding himself of the character of his Lord and the fact that this God is good and unchanging, even in the midst of the psalmist’s upheaval, heaviness, and turmoil. He does this even as he rehearses yet more dark realities in verse 10:

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?”

Again, he notes the jeering mockery of his enemies, who suggest that God either impotently cannot or cruelly will not come to his rescue. In verse 9, he gives expression to his own forlorn attitude, wondering why God will not rescue him from his enemy’s oppression. And then, as if to rub salt in the wound, his adversaries came along with their tauntings only to reinforce the dark thoughts he was already thinking. And yet, in all reverence, the psalmist nevertheless bares his soul to God, not holding back the thoughts with which he is grappling. This raw honesty before the Lord drives the psalmist to his conclusion in verse 11, where he repeats that refrain of confidence from verse 5:

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.

What a freedom that is, believer, knowing you can pray to your God like that. This psalmist models it for us: He cries out, he voices his genuine pain and frustration to his Lord, yet at the same time he resolves to trust and praise his Lord because he remembers his Lord’s covenant faithfulness that will never change.

He exhibits a stubborn, dogged resolve to not give in to the goading of his enemies or to his own despair. There is such a thing as “godly stubbornness,” a determination to keep on trusting even as one’s heart is overwhelmingly vexed—yet that vexed heart cries out to the Lord.

The Heart of the Lord

Surely, even as Psalm 42 describes the condition of the believer, Psalm 42 inevitably turns our thoughts to our Lord. Many commentators in examining Psalm 42 draw connections to Psalm 22 as well as to Calvary. It is perhaps at Calvary that we see the disposition of the trusting-yet-agonized soul of Psalm 42 most fully exemplified.

It has been suggested that perhaps the most difficult deed performed by our Savior was when, on the cross, after experiencing the unmitigated wrath of God, drinking the cup of cursing all the way to its bitter end and saying, “It is finished,” he then turned to the God who had bruised and crushed him (Isa 53:5) and said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46).

In Psalm 42, especially in verse 7, we see this believer clinging to a God who is leading him through a situation that he describes as a deadly storm, in which he is nearly drowning. Moreover, the psalmist acknowledges in verse 7 that it is God himself who is in control of this misery that is pounding him: “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me” (emphasis added). The psalmist realizes, like the Lord Jesus, ghastly as it may sound, that behind the crushing that he is experiencing is the sovereign hand of God. And more than that, according to verse 10, the deepest wound is the mocking taunts of the onlookers, suggesting that his God has abandoned him.

Andrew Bonar once commented: “The sorest pang of Christ arising from reproach and scorn was that which He felt when they cast suspicion on the love and faithfulness of His Father, ‘Where is Thy God?’”[2] That is the picture in Psalm 42—it is taking the believer all he has to just hang on to his God in the midst of his situation.

Psalm 42 is a portrait of the Savior who can say, “Father—Father who has bruised me; Father, who has crushed me; Father who has damned me in the place of my people—Father . . . into Your hands I commit My spirit.”

Recall how Psalm 22 begins: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (v. 1). Do you remember how that psalm resolves? “I will tell of Your name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise You” (v. 22). It begins in dereliction; it ends in praise.

Does that sound at all like Psalm 42? “O my soul . . . why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”

Does this psalm have a happy ending? Like almost everything else in this life, it is mixed. The psalmist, and of course, the Christ whom it points toward, demonstrates an amazing faith and a valiant fight. But in the thick of his immediate context of Psalm 42, this is not where the psalmist wants to be.

And so, if we listen carefully, if we watch this psalmist struggle, we see something of the mind and heart of Christ reflected. If we meditate on this instruction day and night, our thoughts about God and life on the one hand, and our emotions on the other hand, will be shaped by God. And we will become like a tree that bears fruit and whose leaves do not wither when the drought of oppression and discouragement and turmoil comes (Ps 1:3).

It is not wrong to want relief and to pray for it. It is even right to pray for the defeat of enemies (Ps 10:15). But more important than any of that is God himself. When we think God’s thoughts after him in the Psalms, this is the main result: we come to love God, we want to see God, be with God, and be satisfied in admiring and exulting in God.

One scholar noted that a likely translation of the end of verse 2 is: “When will I come and see the face of God?”[3] The final answer to that question was given in places like John 14:9, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Revelation 22:4, and 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

That is our desire when we come to this text: that we would see the face of God in Christ. And we see the glory of his face when we hear the story of the gospel of his death and resurrection (2 Cor 4:4). It is “the gospel of the glory of Christ,” even in this ancient song of tumult.

Psalm 42 reminds us that seasons of anguish are no new thing. Take heart, dear Christian: the darkest hour in the history of man’s redemption was just before the resurrection of Christ. And whatever evils may press upon us now, if we are Christ’s, then better days are coming. And if our days are pleasant now, there are still more splendid days yet to come. Your redemption draweth nigh. We shall soon forever be with the Lord.

May it be that the Lord increases our hunger and thirst (Ps 42:2) to see the face of God. And may he grant that desire through the gospel of the glory of Christ.

Having given this text a brief exegetical, expositional, and pastoral survey, we will return one last time for a fourth installment wherein we will consider further implications and applications from this marvelous psalm.

Notes

  1. Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, 4 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 2.524.
  2. A. A Bonar, Christ and His Church in the Book of Psalms (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1860), 139.
  3. Ash, The Psalms, 519.

©Sean Morris. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here. 


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    Post authored by:

  • Sean Morris
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    Sean was educated at Grove City College, Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), and the University of Glasgow (Scotland). He is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as a minister at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN. He also serves as the Academic Dean of the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sean lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Sarah, along with their children and useless beagle.

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