Spiritual Depression: Cure #2

*The below transcript was generated and formatted by AI and may not accurately represent the recording.

Well, we have been seeking to understand the reality of spiritual depression. We’ve considered its causes and effects, and last week we began thinking about the cure. And I made the comment to you that the cure is like a ladder, if you remember, and a ladder has various rungs, and you need to take them one at a time if you’re going to use a ladder safely. And last week we considered the first cure, which was seeking God, crying out to God, because there is no cure, there is no help unless we begin by seeking God’s face. And in case you don’t think that’s a reality, if you ever find yourself in the company of a person who is depressed and yet does not believe God is listening, it is extremely difficult to help them. But when they make that first step of seeking God, of crying out to God, the process really begins.

And so we find ourselves on the second rung today. And we’re considering, we’re sort of engaging with that concept that I spoke about when we thought about spiritual depression itself, which is the deadly danger of doubting the character of God. You remember that I said to you that spiritual depression is a state in which we doubt the goodness of God, question the works of God, and ultimately end up, when it’s born in its full fruit, blaspheming God. And so today we’re considering the reality of the doubt that wells up within us when we are spiritually depressed. Or to say it differently, what do we do when we begin to doubt God’s goodness? When we begin to ask the questions that Asaph asks? How do we deal with doubts that feel very true? It’s important to recognize that. I’m not saying the doubts are true, but they feel real. When experience communicates that God has failed us, when our experience and our emotions communicate the deepest of doubts, what do we do?

Well, it’s not enough to just say no. If you think about the questions of Asaph—“Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable?”—well, “No” is not enough. That might be a true answer, but it’s not enough to bring you out of the grip of despairful doubt. And so we need to see through these doubts, and we need to find a cure for them.

The Half-Truth of Speculation

And it begins by considering the half-truth of speculation. The half-truth of speculation, or you might say the half-truth of experience. You know, there isn’t much more real than human experience, is there? I mean, you know this, but why is it that every time in a sermon I say, “It’s like the time when…,” everyone’s ears prick? Have you ever noticed that? As soon as the preacher—or in a conversation with someone—someone says to me, “Oh, it reminds me, it reminds me when…,” and you know what’s coming: a story of their experience. Your attention is immediately grabbed. Why? Because experience, in a sense, is reality. Experience feels very physical to us. It feels very real for us.

This is why it can be very hard when you engage with a charismatic person on a different subject and they say to you, “No, no. No, no, no. Prophecy’s real,” or, “Tongues are real,” or, “Miracles worked by man are real because this one time I met a guy who had his leg grow,” or, “A friend of mine speaks in tongues.” And so the experience is so real that the person can never be convinced otherwise. And you might say to them, “Yeah, but the Bible says…,” and they go, “Oh, yeah, yeah, but you must be understanding the Bible wrong because I’ve experienced this.” It’s a very powerful thing in our life, isn’t it?

Now, this isn’t necessarily wrong—listening to experience. Experience is useful and good, and experience is real. And this is why I’m saying the half-truth of experience. Because there is always an element of truth in our experiences. Because what you are experiencing may be wrong, but you are experiencing it, right? And the same is true with Asaph here. And here’s the problem: spiritual depression latches onto experience here and now as the barometer for spiritual truth, yet human experience is only ever half of the story. Let me say that again. Spiritual depression latches onto experience as the barometer. You know what a barometer is? It tells you temperature or the weather. You can have different types of barometers. It’s a measuring tool. So it is the test for true reality, and yet human experience is only half of the story.

And we need to consider this through these six questions that Asaph raises—these half-truths you might call them. And it’s useful if you see these questions not so much as questions, but if you see what he is saying behind the question. You see, these questions we remember are leading up to verse 10, that you see in the footnote, that God has changed. God’s not the same as He always was. And so in these questions, he is stating something. You know, we do this all the time. We ask a question, but we’re not really asking a question. We do this with our children, right? We ask them a question, but really we’re telling them something. “Can you please go and get me this thing?” Now, what are you saying to them? “Go and get it.” And the psalmist here, he’s making statements. What statements is he making? Well, there’s six of them.

Firstly, he says, “God will never accept me again.” He asks the question, “Will the Lord spurn or reject forever?” What’s the statement? God will never accept me again.
The second one he asks is, “And never again be favorable?” Or you could say, “God will never show me favor again.”
The third one: “Has His steadfast love forever ceased?” What’s the statement? God will never love me again.
What’s the next question? “Are His promises at an end for all time?” Or, God will never keep His promises again.
Fifth question: “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” God will never show grace to me again.
Next question: “Has He in anger shut up His compassion?” Or, God will only deal with me in anger and not in compassion.

Now, you can sit down with Asaph at this point and have a theological discussion with him about these six points he’s raised. What’s the problem for Asaph? The problem for Asaph is this is what he is truly experiencing. He may be wrong, but this is the feeling, the experience that he presently lives under. He may have drawn a wrong conclusion, but in a sense, he’s not lying about his reality. This is how he feels and what he is experiencing. The problem is he’s laid hold of the experience, and he said the experience is the interpretation of God. I interpret God through the glasses of my experience.

Now, children, when I take my glasses off, you’re all very fuzzy, and I can sort of see your faces, but I can’t tell them very well. And so what Asaph’s done is he’s got problems, and he looks at God, and he uses a set of glasses which are the problems he’s in. Which means God looks like a handful of problems. He is using his human experience in order to interpret God. And here’s the problem. When in that frame of mind, you will always find something to support your idea. So for example, if you feel like God is only a God that rejects, you will very quickly find that confirmed in your mind in the scriptures. You know why? Because you’ll find someone like King Saul. And you’ll say, “King Saul had the Spirit of God on him, and King Saul was one of God’s people, and yet God rejected him and never restored him again. See? It happens to people.” And then you’ll look around yourself into experience, and you’ll think about people that you once went to church with. Maybe family members or loved ones, friends, close bedfellows, as they used to call it, who no longer walk with the Lord. Men and women who stood up and professed their faith and said, “I love Jesus. Jesus died for me. I will walk with Jesus Christ.” And now they are in bed with the devil. And you go, “See? God rejects outright.” And the greatest example is Judas, right? He walked with Jesus every day, and yet he was rejected outright by God, and it will be worse for him than anyone else in eternity. It would’ve been better, Jesus says, had he not been born. He received the covenantal sign. He was part of the covenantal community. He received all of the blessings of the covenant, and yet he rejected God, and God rejected him. See? Evidence of rejection.

Well, think of Cain. You know, if you think to yourself with Asaph that the Lord will never be favorable again, and you look at Cain, what happens? Well, he made a mistake. Yeah, it was a big mistake. But what happened when he said to God, “My burden is too much”? God did not show him favor. God said to him, effectively, “Too bad. I will put a mark on you so that no one kills you, but guess what? You’re still under my judgment, and you’re still cast out from my presence.” But even more striking than that is Esau. You remember Jacob and Esau, children? Jacob and Esau, the two twins. And it says one is loved by God and one is hated. Jacob is loved, Esau is hated. And you remember there’s that strange story where Esau comes home after hunting, and he’s very hungry, and he goes to his brother, Jacob, who was apparently really good at making lentil stew. Now, you might not think very much of lentil stew, children. You’ve probably never even had it before. Personally, I don’t think very much of it either. But apparently, Jacob made a really good lentil stew. And Esau comes in starving, and he says, “Give me some of that stew.” And Jacob says, “I’ll tell you what. Let me be the oldest child, and you can have my lentil stew.” And Esau did it. And the New Testament makes a fascinating comment. I can’t remember if it’s Paul or Hebrews, but in the New Testament it says, “Even when Esau sought it with tears, he did not receive it.” Now, what’s the picture there? Esau comes back with tears going, “I want it back.” Remember? He comes for a blessing to Isaac, but it’s too late, and he weeps before Isaac and says, “Surely there’s a blessing for me, too. Please give me a blessing.” And Isaac says, “No.” He says, “I’ve given it all to Jacob.” And you look at that when you’re in Asaph’s shoes, you say, “See? Look, Esau’s begging for a blessing, and he doesn’t even get it. There’s the God of grace. There’s the God of compassion. There’s the God of comfort.”

And we could tell story after story. Think of an old man dying on his deathbed that I read of, of whom his son came to reach out to him with the gospel one last time, and his father simply said to him, “It’s too late for me. I’ve hardened my heart and I cannot believe in Jesus.” And you think, “Where’s the God of grace? Where’s the God of mercy and compassion?” And all of these things, these experiences, they confirm the doubts that are welling up within us.

Well, what do we do when our experience feels so real, and our doubts are so overwhelming, and we begin to interpret God based off our experience? How do we deal with that when then we look around us and other experience confirms what we’re believing in our hearts?

The Whole Truth of Revelation

Well, the half-truth of speculation must be responded to with the whole truth of revelation. How do we deal with this? The first rung of the ladder is to cry out to God. The second rung is to cling wholeheartedly to the whole truth of revelation. And you might think of it like five steps to walk up.

Firstly, we must recognize that our human experience is only ever half of the story. Our human experience and the experiences around us that cause doubt to well up are only ever half of the truth, half of the picture, half of the story. There is another half to the story, brothers and sisters. And one way that sort of helpfully enables us to think through this is just thinking about wisdom literature in the Bible in general. There’s wisdom literature, right? So Proverbs, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes. This is our wisdom literature we call it. And the wisdom literature you can kind of break up into two categories. There is general wisdom literature, things that are generally true. So you can think of a lot of the Proverbs. Pretty much all of the Proverbs is general wisdom literature, and some of the Psalms fit in this category too. So it’s things like, “If you train a child in the way he should go,” what? “He will never depart from it.” And one of you wants to say, “But I know someone who raised up their child in the way he should go and he departed from it.” It’s a general true principle, that if you do A, generally speaking you will get B, right? This is how general wisdom literature works.

The other category is exceptions to all the general rules. So you get all these general rules, and there’s lots of them, and they’re wonderfully helpful, but then we have exceptions. The greatest example of this is Job, right? Because the general wisdom literature will tell you, “If you fear God and walk in His ways, life will go well for you.” And Job says, “I’m righteous, and I’m suffering, and it doesn’t make any sense.” Here is an exception. Ecclesiastes is another wonderful book of exceptions, where Solomon says, “I see someone working really hard, storing up for himself so he can enjoy a good life, and then he dies, and his son is a fool, and it all gets wasted.” And he goes, “It’s vanity. It doesn’t make any sense. This is not how it should be.” And the reason that category is helpful is because when we are spiritually depressed, we recognize we find ourselves in the exception clause most of the time. Now, sometimes that’s not true. Sometimes we are in the general, in the sense that I’ve committed grievous sin and I’m now reaping the consequence of my sin. But often, for Christians, spiritual depression is an exception clause. But we must remember this is only one part. This is only one half of the story. And so the first step, we go, “Wait a second, I’m recognizing that the doubts I’m feeling are only one part of the story.”

And then we go to the second step. We need to provide the other half of the story, right? So the psalmist says, “God will never accept me again. He will reject me forever.” And then you think of Samson. I mean, of all the guys that messed up royally and deserve to be rejected forever, it’s Samson, right? Like, he literally stuffs up everything. It’s very hard to find very much of anything honorable about Samson in the story of Judges. He is the worst of examples for your children. And he ends up with his eyes poked out, locked up in prison, working a grinding mill. And yet, when Samson seeks the Lord, does the Lord reject him? He hears him, he grants his prayer, and he enables him to have victory over his enemies and achieve more in that single final act of God’s acceptance than in all the rest of his life when he was dwelling in sin.

Or consider that the psalmist says, “God will never show me favor again.” Well, what’s the other half of that? What happened to Israel after they had been cast into Babylon? The Lord finally said, “Enough. We’re not doing this anymore. I’m destroying Jerusalem, I’m destroying the temple, and I am removing you from the land.” And yet, seventy years later, the Lord smiled upon His people. The Lord showed favor to His people.

What about, “God will never love me again”? Do you remember Peter? He denied his Savior three times, and yet Jesus seeks him out, doesn’t He? He seeks him out and He says to him, “Peter, do you love me? Do you love me, Peter? Peter, do you love me?” And He restores him by His hand of love again.

Well, consider, “God will never keep His promises.” Well, you could imagine for the generation sitting in Egypt prior to Moses’ arrival, you could imagine saying that, right? It’s been 400 years, and we’re slaves, and we’re oppressed. I mean, does God ever keep His promises? And yet God kept His promise. We can think about the waiting, the thousands and thousands and thousands of years of waiting for Jesus to come. Prophet after prophet, forefather after forefather, generation after generation. He’s coming. He’s coming. And you can imagine people saying, “Well, when is He coming?” It’s the same for us. He’s coming back. He’s coming back soon. And people say, “Oh, give me a break. It’s been 2,000 years and you’re still saying the same story.” And yet the Lord is never tardy. The Lord always keeps His promises.

Well, you think about number 5, “God will never show grace again,” and then you read the Book of Judges, a collection of failures and a collection of the grace of God, in that He would bestow His grace upon His people generation after generation after generation after generation, in spite of their sin, in spite of their enemies, because He is a gracious God.

Or you think about that last one. “Has He in anger shut up His compassion? He is only gonna deal with me in anger. He is never gonna show me compassion.” Now, picture yourself for a moment sitting with King David. You have committed adultery, you have murdered, and you have proved yourself to be far worse than King Saul. That’s the implication of his action with Bathsheba. He has outstripped Saul in wickedness. And the prophet comes to you, and he tells the story, and you condemn yourself by saying the words, “That man should surely die.” And the prophet says, “Behold, you are the man.” Now, at that moment, if you hit pause on the narrative, does anyone in that moment have any reason not to be filled with the doubt that God’s anger is gonna rest on me forever? Because why? Well, the guy I got the throne from, I’m worse than him, and he was cast out forever. And here I sit, and the prophet’s before me, and he’s just condemned me as guilty. It’s over. And he cries out, “I’m a sinner.” And what does God say through the prophet? “I have forgiven your sin.” The Lord did show compassion again.

And so we see this whole other side to the story. What we want to say with these statements is we want to remove the nevers. We want to remove the nevers. So rather than, “God will never accept me again,” the truth is, the other side of the story is, God will accept me again. I may not be there. I may not feel it, but God will show me favor again. God will love me again. God will keep His promises again. God will show grace again. He will not only deal with me in anger. He will show compassion to me. You see, the very doubt needs to be flipped on its head. And so when the doubt says, “God is only going to be angry,” we can say, “No, He’s only going to be angry for a season because His steadfast love endures forever.” And so we turn to the experience of truth, and we see how God deals with His servants. You see, the problem is what the devil will do is he will seek to focus our attention upon one side of the story and blind us to the truth. But we need to widen our vision. So that’s step 2. The first step is we need to recognize it’s but half-truth. The second step is we need to provide the other half of the story.

The third step is we need to call the devil what he is with the word of God. We need to call the devil what he is, a liar, and cling to the whole truth of God’s word because the word of God is the only sure foundation we can rest upon. You see, our experience is fallible. Our emotions are changeable. But the word of God never changes. And when emotions and experience rile within us and cause doubts, we need something solid to hang on to, don’t we? When the sand becomes soft, you need a rock to cling to, and we’ve been given a rock. It’s the word of God. What had Asaph begun to do? He had begun to forget the promises of God. He had forgot that the Lord will never spurn His people. He had forgot that the Lord will never remove His favor from His people. He had forgot that the Lord’s steadfast love endures forever. He had forgot that the Lord’s promises never fail, and that the Lord never lies, and that the Lord is always gracious, and that the compassion of God is new every morning. Brothers and sisters, when the devil causes you to doubt, when he whispers in your ear his lies, do you know what you do? You cry out, “Liar. You’re lying. That’s not true.” Why? Because I’ve read in the word, I’ve seen the truth. When the devil says, “God doesn’t really love you,” just say, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. For God so loved the world that He gave up His one and only Son. Of course He loves me.”

Fourth step, you must cling to the character of God. You see, what the devil is attempting to do in causing you to doubt is he is attempting to malign the good name and character of God. And you must cling to how God presents himself in the Bible. You see, the devil is very clever. We must not underestimate the devil, brothers and sisters. The devil will come to you while you’re in your sin, and he will say to you, “Your sin is not a big issue. Don’t worry about it. Just embrace it.” And then when you embrace it, and you find yourself depressed, he will say to you, “You are the worst sinner in the world, and God will never accept you.” But we must cling to the character of God because the character of God is, “I will turn out no one. If you seek me, you shall find me.” The character of God is, “I do not delight in the death of the wicked.” The character of God is grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy, love upon love. And when we cling to the character of God, we see the lie of the devil for what it is. We must root ourselves in the revelation of God as he reveals himself. Think about Exodus 34 when Moses says to him, “Show me your glory.” What did he expect to see? I’ve got no idea. What did he expect to see when God did that? And yet God does it. What does he do? He turns up and he says, “I will declare my name to you, and my name is, I am the God that is merciful. I am the God that is gracious. I am the God that is compassionate. I am the God who shows love upon a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” You root yourself in the character of God.

And the fifth step is, you put no trust in human experience. Human experience is a reality, and it is true to me. I am cast down. I am spiritually depressed. I am sad. I am broken, but it’s not the barometer of God. It is not something you can depend upon. Because one day I’m sad, and the next day I’m happy. And if you rest yourself upon the fluctuating human heart and experience, you will be blown about in the wind. You trust in God. You trust in the character of God. You recognize human experience, but you never depend on it.

And so we see these five steps that enable us to embrace the whole truth of the revelation that answers the half-truth of speculation.

How to Use This Cure

But you know, brothers and sisters, when maybe you’ve been to the doctor and he prescribes you some important medication, what does the pharmacist do when you see the pharmacist? You hand him your little slip. You wait five minutes while they sort it out, maybe longer. And when they give it to you, what do they say? “Do you know how to take this medication?” And you wanna say, “Yes,” but you say, “No.” And they say, “Well, you need to make sure you take it with water. You need to make sure you take it on a full stomach or maybe an empty stomach. You need to take it two times a day. Make sure you don’t have it with this or you have it with that, or you use it this way, or you inject it in your arm or in your leg,” or whatever. They explain to you how you are to use it. So how are we to use this cure that God gives us?

Well, firstly, the reality is, brothers and sisters, we cannot trust in God’s word, we cannot lay hold of the whole truth of revelation if we do not know it. This is part of the biggest problem, is that spiritually depressed people don’t know God’s word. Now, this is very important because this is something you must primarily do when you’re not spiritually depressed. You must make hay while the sun shines. When times are good, you must farm God’s word to fill up your barn so that when you are down, when you are struggling, you have something to eat. You have something to use. You see, part of the problem is when you’re down, when you’re struggling, when you’re spiritually depressed, it becomes insanely hard to dig into the scriptures and look for the right places and to read God’s word. And people will say things like, “I try and read God’s word, but there’s just… It’s like an iron book. There’s just nothing there.” And the problem is they’re trying to draw from what feels like a stone when they should simply be going into their barn and getting the stores they left there. You think about it from the farming analogy. When it’s drought, you can’t store up, can you? You struggle to even scratch an existence. But if for the seven years of rich harvest beforehand you’ve been storing up in barns and in storage cities, grain, then what? When the drought comes, you’ve got lots of stuff to eat. And so we must be busy consuming the word of God and looking for promises, so that when we hit rock bottom, we have promises to draw upon, so that when you’re faced with a crisis, the word of God bubbles up within you. As the devil seeks to prick you, the word of God comes out and blows up in his face. Brothers and sisters, we cannot avoid spiritual depression if we neglect God’s word. And when we end up in spiritual depression, it will be almost impossible to get ourselves back out again. It will be with much effort. So we must store it up in good times and remind ourselves in the bad times.

And as helpers, for those of you that don’t struggle with this sort of thing, as helpers, we must remember the thing we offer people is the objective truth of God’s word and the gospel, not the subjective experience which so helped John or Sue. You know, we’re tempted to do this. We’re tempted to focus primarily on my story or on that person’s story. Now, those are useful, but if that’s all you offer someone, you leave them without hope. What you must bring them is a rock. I mean, what kind of person would you be if you went to a person drowning and you said to them, “Well, when I was drowning, I used a life ring.” Well, it’s like, “Well, thanks very much. How about you throw me the life ring?” And so you find yourself with a person that’s broken, and what you do is you give them the word of God. You give them the character of God. You give them a rock they can stand on, and you say to them, “I know it doesn’t feel this way. I know your experience says the opposite, but look to the sure word of God and call the devil a liar.”

Secondly, you need to know who’s speaking. You remember in the New Testament it says that the devil can appear as an angel of light? Now, a person with spiritual depression has very, very bad ability of discernment. A person that is cast down will interpret almost everything wrongly. They will see the gracious hand of God as evil and the offer of the devil as love. You must learn to discern between the voice of the devil and the word of God. Because otherwise, he who appears as an angel of light will very quickly deceive you and lead you into a hole. And the only way to do that is to do what Martin Luther speaks about in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. You remember what he says? Our enemy’s great. What does he say? “One little word shall fell him.” Now, some Luther scholars spend long times debating what that little word is. One says it’s the word “liar.” Luther’s talking about this, isn’t he? One little word shall fell him. One verse, one phrase. He cannot stand up to the scriptures. Why does the devil flee Jesus in the wilderness? Because he holds forth the word of God. Of all the people in the world that could have held up his human experience, it was Jesus. But he doesn’t. He turns to the word and he says, “God says, God says, God says.” And when he’s upon the cross, he says, “God says.” And he clings to the scriptures, and we must do the same.

Thirdly, you must preach the word of God to yourself every day in the face of your experience. Every single day, preach to yourself God’s word. Sing to yourself every day God’s word, God’s hymns, God’s spiritual songs. I mean, I just so delight in the hymn, “Jesus Loves Me This I Know, for the Bible Tells Me So.” Jesus loves me. Yes. Jesus loves me. Yes. Jesus loves me. And brothers and sisters, when you’re low, maybe that’s the only hymn you’ve got left, and sing it with all your heart. And if you’re embarrassed, sing it in the shower, ’cause no one can ever hear you in the shower. And sing it with your heart and your gusto, clinging to God. Silence the inner voice of doubt with songs of praise, with lament, with the Psalms. And can I say, this is why good songs matter. This is why we sing songs which are rooted in the scriptures. Because when everything else fails, hymns are the theology of the soul, and they will flow out. And can I tell you from personal experience, when you are in the pits of despair, it is only Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs that will drag you back out. Feed upon good, rich, theological music that will fuel your soul.

Brothers and sisters, the story of experience is true. It’s very true. But it isn’t the whole truth. And the greatest story of that is found in the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord, isn’t it? As Jesus hung upon the cross, his human experience was one of rejection, curse, shame, misery. Jesus could have said—Jesus is the only one that could truly say in his humanity—“The Lord rejects me. The Lord is not favorable. The Lord does not love me. The Lord’s promises have failed. The Lord’s grace has been forgotten. Anger, not compassion, is how he deals with me.” Jesus could have said those words, couldn’t he? And yet, in the midst of the rejection of Jesus Christ, his Father in heaven would look on him with approval and say, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased. That’s my boy. He’s doing our will.” And he could say, “We’re keeping our promise. We’re keeping our promise.” And he could say, “Here is the display of grace. Here is my compassion. Here is my mercy. Here is my love.” Simultaneously, in the cross of Christ, he is experiencing deepest reality of spiritual depression that is possible, and being overwhelmed with the grief of that, and yet simultaneously is experiencing the overwhelming love of his Father in heaven, and the approval and the acceptance of God because God accepts his sacrifice. God is pleased with his offering, and God vindicates him by raising him from the dead. And if it’s true for Jesus, it’s true for you.

Brothers and sisters, you may feel rejected, but you are accepted. You may feel unfavored, but you are favored. You may feel unloved, but you are loved. You may feel that God’s promises have failed, but they never fail for you. You may feel that grace is forgotten, but God’s grace is always sufficient for you. You may feel God’s anger, but his compassion is upon you. So do not despair. Look to God because his mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my Father.