Spiritual Depression: Cure #4

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

Well, we all know that in different relationships you have different levels of communication, right? You do not talk to your wife or your husband the same way that you talk to a work colleague. The depth of communication is different. When you sit on a bus or a train and someone sits next to you and you end up having a conversation with them, that conversation by and large is very vague. It’s very general, and you don’t tend to dig into private or intimate matters. But when you speak with a husband or a wife or a best friend, you are more inclined to open up your heart and share of the deep intimate realities of life. You get into the specifics with someone you love and trust, don’t you? But with people you don’t know, you don’t get into specifics. You tend to stay in generalities.

When we deal with spiritual depression, one of the problems is we often end up interacting with God like we would with a man on a bus. What I mean by that is we stay in generalities. We don’t get into specifics. And we love to stay in the vague because we tend to think that there is a form of safety and protection when we stay in generalities. And one of the dangers so far in what we’ve seen is that most of the cures have been very general. The first rung, if you remember, was, “I cry out to the Lord.” Now, that’s a very personal action. But if you think about the second and the third, the second rung was that we consider what God says about himself in the Word, rather than trusting to our feelings. And so we speak about the God of the Bible, the character of the God of the Bible. What is he like? Now, the third rung was God’s works must be pondered upon, and we thought about the fact that God’s works were holy, and powerful, and redemptive. But here’s the problem with those two cures. They’re good cures, but part of the difficulty is they’re general. And here’s what I mean by that. When I’m spiritually depressed, I can take a generality like, “God’s works are holy,” and say, “Yes, that’s true for everybody else.” Or, “God’s works are powerful and he’s able to help,” and I agree that that’s true, but I’m an exception. And you see, the danger of generality and vagueness, holding things at a distance like a man on a bus, is that we don’t specifically apply it to ourselves. We’re happy to apply it to every other person we know. It’s true for every other believer, but it’s not true for me. And we must learn, and this is our 4th cure, we must learn to press into the specifics of God’s works as they apply to me, and this is what Asaph does.

He’s just finished, in verses 11 through 15, focusing upon, you might say, the general characteristic of God’s works. They’re holy, they’re powerful, they’re redemptive. But he doesn’t stop there. He now presses deeper, he presses further to not just say God’s works are good, but to press into the reality of what he said in verse 15. So in verse 15 he said, “You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph.” Asaph remembered, he pondered, and he meditated on the redemptive works of the Lord, but he does not stop there. Because he’s not sufficiently content with just a God who redeems. He needs to press into the specifics of a God who redeems me, a God who works redemptively for me, and it flows directly out of the statement, “the children of Jacob and Joseph.” You see, he could have said, “You redeemed Israel out of Egypt.” But he says, “You redeemed the children of Jacob and Joseph.” And who is Asaph? He’s a son of Jacob, isn’t he? And so it’s almost like a covenantal code word for, “You redeemed sons like me out of Egypt.” And he’s going to press into that reality.

And he does that by taking one specific moment. It is many moments of redemptive power by God on behalf of Israel, right? You can think of the plagues. Ten almighty displays of power and strength and holiness and redemption as God saves His people out of the clutches of Egypt, but he doesn’t go there. He goes to the sea. He takes us to the Red Sea. And what’s interesting is when we tend to think about the Red Sea, we often tend to think about the Egyptian army, don’t we? We think about the Egyptian army pursuing them, and it’s the Egyptian army that causes the problem. And yet, you’ll notice there’s no mention of Egypt, there’s no mention of Pharaoh, there’s no mention of chariots, there’s no mention of warriors. There’s only mention of waters and nature, and you have to ask yourself the question, why? Why does Asaph press particularly into the sea that lies before the people? Well, the reason for that is that it is the sea that is blocking the people from entering into the blessing of the Promised Land. You see, even if Egypt wasn’t chasing them, they would have the same problem, wouldn’t they? How can they enter into the blessed joy of the Promised Land when there is a sea stopping them? And so he focuses upon the sea because in picture language, the sea, for Asaph, represents all of the troubles, all of the difficulties, all of the problems that block, that seem to get in the way of his entering into the joyful promises of God.

The commentator Plumer captures it like this. He says, “Who is more lawless, less controlled by reason than the waters and lightnings? These waters and seas are emblems of overwhelming distresses and calamities, and these are under the control of the Almighty and, at His rebuke, they will flee away.” And you see, what Asaph is going to do is he’s going to press into God’s holy, mighty, redemptive power as it’s displayed as he, in a sense, goes to war with the sea. And the language we get is like this cosmic nature battle picture. And so as God advances with His people in verse 16, at the head of His people, the warrior king, as God advances, what do the waters do? They tremble with fear. They’re terrified before the presence of God, that even the very deep of the sea trembles before the approach of God. In verse 17, we’re told that the clouds begin to pour forth water and the skies give forth thunder. The lightnings light up the world. The earth trembles and shakes. It’s the picture of all of creation quaking in the presence of its creator, bowing down before He who made the heavens and the earth. It’s the picture of a warrior who cannot be resisted. And the wonderful thing is what Asaph is saying is, “This is what God did for me.” As a seed of Jacob, as the offspring of those people who walked through the Red Sea, “This is what the Lord did for me in redeeming me.” He would even part the Red Sea. He would even push back the oceans. He would remove every obstacle before the people of God so that they might enter into the blessed promises of God.

And yet notice what Asaph observes in verse 19. He says, “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” What’s he telling us here? He’s telling us that in the midst of this immense obstacle sitting before them that they must look at and see with their eyes, they recognize by faith it is God who is at work. Because who can’t they see on the day of the Red Sea? They can’t see the Lord, can they? They can’t see the Lord parting the sea. They must just believe by faith that it’s the Lord, and they must walk between these immense walls of water on the left and right, trusting that God is indeed holding the waters back and will hold them back. You realize it was a long journey through the Red Sea? We tend to think of, like, the parting and a quick jog across and then the water coming back again. I remember I measured it out once. And I can’t remember exactly how far it was, but it was something like a 12-hour journey. It was a huge journey—it’s a big body of water. And when you take into account that you’re traveling with children and elderly and stuff, it’s a long hike. You’ve got mothers with brand new babies, and you have to get them through. You don’t have e-scooters to just zip through. It’s gonna take time. And you imagine that whole time to your left and right is an enormous body of water that you know should not be there, because water does not stand on its own accord as a wall, does it? And by faith, we’re told, in Hebrews 11:29, by faith, the people of God crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. Every step was a step of faith, trusting in their God despite what they saw with their eyes. And do you see what Asaph is recognizing here? It’s not just that God removed the obstacles, it’s that God removed the obstacles and we trusted God by faith to do so. We ignored our human senses, our human faculties that sought to lead us astray, and we set those aside, and we believed the word of God because God told us to walk through on dry ground.

Asaph’s saying, “My hope is not just that God redeems, but that God redeems children like me.” And do you hear the difference in those two statements? When you’re spiritually depressed, it’s good to say, “I have a redemptive God.” But it’s not far enough. We have to be able to say, “I have a God who redeems me. I have a God that redeems covenantal children like me.” And so it’s not enough, brothers and sisters, just to meditate and ponder and remember a God who works. Because a God who works doesn’t necessarily work for me. And when you’re depressed, you will find every excuse to believe God doesn’t work for you. And you need to back yourself into a corner so there’s no wiggle room, so you can’t wiggle out, “Because there’s only one me,” Asaph says. And I am a son of Jacob, and therefore, the Lord redeems me. And we must learn, likewise, to meditate upon the specific redemption of God for me.

You see, there’s a temptation for us in life. There’s a temptation for us in life to join Asaph on rung 3 of the ladder, and to know excellently all of the works of God, and to know that there is a God in heaven who saves anyone that would call upon Him, to know that there’s a Father who providentially cares for His children, and to believe that there’s a God who works all things for people’s good, and to believe that anyone that believes Jesus is the Christ is a Son of God, and know all of those things in our head, and we can believe all those things in our mind, and yet say, “But not me. That’s fine for everybody else, but I’m too far gone.”

I think of John Bunyan. You remember that wonderful book, Pilgrim’s Progress? If you’ve never read his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, I would highly recommend it. In his book, you get the autobiography version of Pilgrim’s Progress. And he tells of a time in his life when he became convinced that he had, in fact, committed the unforgivable sin. He had blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, and for an extended period of time, he walked around saying, “It’s too late. It’s too late for me.” And the devil said to him, “It’s too late for you. Anyone else can be forgiven, but not you.” And every verse he read that spoke of the grace of God, he would say, “Oh, yes, for everyone else, but it’s too late for me.” And similarly, we can do the same. As spiritual depression kicks in, we can begin to say, “Yes, God smiles upon His children, but not me.” We too must learn to step onto the 4th rung of the ladder, to move from generalities to specifics.

Now, how do we do that? How do we do that? Well, we could join Asaph, because all of the Old Testament redemptions are our story, aren’t they? As the people of God, we can say, “I am a son of Abraham. I am a daughter of Abraham.” And so, the redemption of God’s people is the redemption of me, and I share in that. We could do that. And yet, why look to the shadows? Do you remember the Book of Hebrews says that the Old Testament things were like shadows, that Christ is the reality? Why look to something small like God parting the Red Sea? Why look to something small like God plucking Israel out of Egypt and settling her in the Promised Land when we can look to redemption accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ?

I mean, consider it, brothers and sisters. When God, our triune God, was complete and perfect in eternity past, needing nothing, completely satisfied in Himself, He elected a people in love. And when He was in perfect fellowship within the Godhead, He decreed to send His Son to be put to death. Ponder on the fact that for thousands of years, God endured the ridicule and hatred and wrath of mankind as He patiently waited to send forth His Son at just the right time. Think about the fact that Christ came. God Himself, brothers and sisters, took on human flesh and dwelt among us, and experienced all of the pain of this world and the misery and death and sickness and sorrow. It’s safe to assume that He buried His own earthly stepfather, Joseph. He looked at the tomb as Lazarus lay dead, stinking. He grieved over the pain and heartache of being rejected and hated and scorned by men. He sat under the wrath of God for your sin and my sin. He bore the penalty of sin and death and judgment. And he was raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit of God, and he has ascended and he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And one day, he will come again, and one day, he will gather His people together. This is something to think about, isn’t it? Will you ever run out of a theme to think about when you think about the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ? We will spend eternity marveling at it.

And it’s striking when you think about some of the New Testament passages in light of this. Do you remember the moment when Jesus dies, and it’s recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and some of the others, too. Matthew 27. Do you remember when Jesus dies, what happens? Several things happen all of a sudden at once. The temple curtain, it doesn’t disappear. God could have made it disappear so that it couldn’t be stitched back together, but it doesn’t disappear. What happens to it? It gets split, doesn’t it? That’s a striking imagery to a certain body of water, isn’t it? It is split so that man might have access to the blessing of knowing the Lord, and the ground shakes. Earth trembles in the presence of God’s judgment and before its creator’s bowed head. And in Revelation 20, when Jesus returns, we were told when we studied it that the sky disappears, the sea runs away, the earth trembles, everything shakes, everything quivers. Why? Because the Almighty has come. Do you see this connection here of the trembling of creation before the almighty redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ being accomplished and fulfilled?

And yet, brothers and sisters, there’s a massive danger here because everything I’ve just said is a generality. It’s a glorious generality, but it’s a generality. Yes, God decreed salvation. Yes, God sent a Son. Yes, God’s Son died for sinners. Yes, Christ was raised for believers. Yes, Christ lives in heaven for believers. And yes, one day Christ will return. And yet, if you are truly in the depths of despair, you will wriggle out of that and say, “It’s true for everyone else except for me.” And so it’s not even enough just to meditate upon the cross and the atoning work of Christ. We must press deeper by faith to see that this is what God has done for me, that God has done this work to atone for me. To lay hold of the redemption accomplished, not just for sinners, but for me.

And Paul does this in his epistles. He writes to people and he says, “And we have obtained the peace of God. And we have been reconciled to God. And we have been made alive in Jesus Christ. And we are seated with him in heavenly places.” Do you see? He’s not saying people. He’s not using the third person. He’s using the first person, we. And he also uses me in 1 Timothy. I preached on it not so long ago. Do you remember? “This is a faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” Do you hear what he does there? Generality: Jesus came to save sinners. Specificity: he did it for me. And we have to learn how to press deeper.

It’s the Pauline logic of Romans 8. Turn to Romans 8 with me for a second. In Romans 8:31: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Do you see the logic of the Apostle Paul here? Who can be against us? Who can bring a charge against us? Who can condemn us? Well, the answer to that is lots of people, because they do. The devil does that all day long. Your own conscience does that. When you’re depressed, your entire being does that. And yet Paul can say, “No one.” Why? Because Christ died for me. Because God gave up His Son for me. Because God’s justified me. And the logic here of the Apostle Paul is, since God has done all of these things for me, I can have confidence that He will give me everything I need. He will open up the Red Sea for me to enter into the Promised Land. And we can use this against the devil, and we can use this against our depression, and against our despair, and against our doubts. We have to learn to be able to say, “This is what the Lord has done for me. This is what He’s done for me.”

Consider. I mean, when the devil comes and he says, “No. I know of the work of Jesus too, but not for you. I know of redemption. I know more about Jesus than you do,” the devil could say, “But He hasn’t done it for you.” You can say, “Yes, He has, because I know whom I have believed in. This is what Jesus has done for me.” And you preach that to yourself every day.

So how do you practically do this when you’re struggling? Because that’s when it’s hardest. It’s easy to say these things when you’re feeling chipper, when you’re having a good day. But when times are blue and the sky overhead feels like bronze—how do you do this?

Firstly, never stop at the works of God in a generality. Never stop in the third person. This is what He does for people. You must always seek to ask yourself, “What has God applied to me? What has God applied to me?”

Second, a practical thing you can do is to write down your testimony. Write down what God has done for you. Do it when you’re feeling good, and read it when you’re feeling glum. And write it again. Force yourself to sit down and say, “I will record what God has done for me in my life.” Record the works of God in your life.

Thirdly, when you can’t convince yourself, tell your story to somebody else. Because when we speak to ourselves, we are our greatest depressed critics. But as the saying goes sometimes, fake it before you make it. You’ve heard that before. When you’re down, speak of the works of the Lord, the way He’s been at work in your life to someone else.

Fourthly, remember what we might call the gospel faith tense. By tense, past, present, future, I mean. The gospel faith tense. The scriptures constantly say to us, “God has saved you,” past tense, “God is saving you,” present tense, “and God will save you.” These three tenses are always at work within you. God has, He is, He will. And when the devil turns up and says He isn’t, and when your soul tempts you to despair, you can say, “He has. I may not be feeling it right now, but He has. And therefore, because God never fails to finish a work, He is. And because He is, He will.” Lay hold of those three tenses.

Fifthly, ensure you have actually believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because something you must not look over is that this comfort, this hope, this assurance is only afforded to those who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no comfort, there is no gospel hope for those that have not put their faith in Jesus Christ. Take yourself back to the Red Sea for a moment. If you decided not to trust in the Lord as you stood before that watery grave, what would you do? You wouldn’t walk in, would you? And what would happen? You would have peace for a time, until the Egyptian army found you, and they would kill you. And so it is, my dear hearers, for you. You are faced with an object of faith before you. You are faced with the Lord Jesus Christ and His perfect redemption, and God says to you today, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Christ and you are a son of God.” That’s what He says to you today. And you’ve got two choices. You can believe or you can perish. There is no third option. And everything I’ve said today is impossible because you cannot, in spiritual depression, look to the comfort of God unless you can say, “He did it for me.” And so my exhortation to you unbelievers is believe in Christ so that you can say, “He did it for me. He did it for me.” And children, the Lord gave you promises. He gave you promises that He would save you if you would call upon Him. And so if you’re a child, a child of the covenant, accept the promises. Don’t say, “He does it for baptized people.” Say, “He did it for me, and I accept the promises.”

Maybe you’re one of those ones who never has a low day. You know, our deacon and I were talking the other day. He went to a wedding anniversary, and he was telling me that the guy there said, talking about things like depression, “Oh, you just get over it. It’s an easy fix. You just get over it, not a problem.” Now, people who are chipper—there are these people around. It might surprise you, but they’re just like, “The sun is always shining, even when it’s a hailstorm. The sun is still shining on the other side of the hailstorm.” How do those people—what do they do with this? How can you help a struggler, a fellow depressed person?

Firstly, remind them of their story. Now, you need to know them, but remind them of what Christ has done for them. If you know them well, you can remind them of a lot more, can’t you? You can remind them of what God’s done in their life. You can remind them of where they used to be.

The other thing you can do is ask them lots and lots of questions. Don’t seek to just tell them God loves them. It’s quite ineffective with a depressed person. But the power of questions is amazing. What has God done for you in the past? In what way have you seen God’s hand? Where were you before you joined the church? What were you like before God redeemed you? Have you been baptized? Then what does that mean? It means you’re a child.

Thirdly, and maybe this is one of the most important, you need to use the logic of the Bible. Let me give you a couple of examples of this. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Now, what’s the biblical logic here? You’re sitting with someone who’s suffering, who’s brokenhearted, and Psalm 34:18 says, “God is near the brokenhearted.” What can you now say to this person? According to Psalm 34:18, though you may not feel it, God has never been nearer to you than He is right now. That’s the logic of the promise of Psalm 34:18, isn’t it? And the wonderful thing about this is you don’t have to say to them, “Don’t you know that God’s near to you?” Which comes like a rebuke in the midst of darkness. But you can say, “What does Psalm 34:18 mean when you’re brokenhearted?”

A second example of this is Philippians 1:6. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” What does Philippians 1:6 mean for your life? You confessed your faith. You believed in Christ. What does that mean? That means regardless of what your heart cries and your doubt despairs, regardless of the lies of the devil in your heart, God is never gonna quit. He’s not finished with you. See why? Because the devil’s shouting in your ear, “God’s failed you. God’s failed you. He doesn’t want you. So just give up. Just kill yourself.” And you can say, “The Lord never fails to finish a job.” He never fails. He never leaves a stone unturned. He always completes that which he begins.

Brothers and sisters, we can be very tempted at times to live in generalities. It’s easy. It’s safe. We need to learn to press into the specific application of what God has done to me in His applying of all the benefits of Christ. We need to enter into the first person reality of the gospel. And here’s the thing, if Asaph can do that with the Red Sea, how much more can we do it with the fulfillment of the Red Sea? The writer to the Hebrews, he uses similar logic. He says, “If the blood of bulls and goats was used by God to cleanse consciences, how much more the blood of Christ?” You think about it, by faith, those Old Testament believers, they brought their lamb, they sacrificed their lamb, and they believed in a promise. They believed in a redeemer, and they were saved with a lamb that is good for nothing. It doesn’t save anyone. It can’t carry your sin. Well, if that’s true of a lamb, how much more the Lamb? And it’s the same thing here. If Asaph can look to the Red Sea and find hope in the midst of darkness, how much more you and I when we look to the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ? May God grant us, brothers and sisters, to truly know the first person reality of the gospel.