Spiritual Depression: It’s Causes and Effects

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

When you go to the doctor’s, you’d be very surprised if you walked in the room, you sat down, and the doctor just immediately said to you, “I think we need to put you on antibiotics.” You haven’t even spoken yet. You haven’t even had a chance to say anything, or he just says to you immediately, “I think we should do surgery.” What would you say? “Well, aren’t you gonna ask me what’s wrong first? Aren’t you interested to know what’s going on in my body?”

Well, what do you expect when you go to the doctor’s? He asks you questions. “What’s going on? Tell me about it. What have you been noticing?” In the old and older days, maybe he would say to you, “Turn your head and cough, and let me put this upon your chest.” And he knocks on your back, and he talks to you through the different things. And children, you may have seen it before, he knocks you on the knee and the foot moves and does a reflex. And what’s the doctor doing? He’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you, right? He’s trying to discern what the problem is.

And you know, we can say the same thing of spiritual depression. It’s tempting when we speak of things like mental illnesses or depression to just go, “Oh, I know the solution to depression. Here you go.” Now of course, the medical solution is very easy, isn’t it? Take a pill. Take a happy pill, and everything will be all okay. Of course, the problem is it doesn’t deal with the problem, does it?

When we come to spiritual depression, we need to not just note its reality like we did last week. We talked about the reality of spiritual depression, but we need to think about the sort of ins and outs of it a little bit. And we have a case study before us. Our brother Ming’s been doing some classes and counseling, and some of his assignments are to take case studies. They’re made-up examples, and his job is to think through how you would help this person. And so we have a case study before us in Psalm 77 with Asaph. And so what I want us to do is to investigate Asaph’s affliction. What is his affliction?

It’s important to go back to the source, isn’t it? To try and figure out what causes the issue. We know this with things in our world. If you go to drink the water, and you find out that the water’s poisonous, what do you do? You don’t take fresh water and dump it in the river where you’re trying to drink. You don’t tip it in the stream and drink. You go back, don’t you? You follow up the stream, and you look up the stream and you see what you can find, and you head back to the spring. And maybe while you’re walking up there, you find a corpse, a dead animal in the creek. And you go, “Well, that’s why my water tastes bad. There’s a dead cow in it.” Well, we used to have this on the farm, not with dead cows, but you’d clean out your water tank, and you’d find all manner of dead animals in it. It would be quite surprising—a dead possum, a dead bird—and you wondered why your water was tasting funny. Well, there’s a very good reason, children. There’s a possum rotting in it.

Well, what do we find as we look up the stream of Psalm 77? What do we see and hear from Asaph?

You know, some psalms, they give us wonderful context, don’t they? You think of Psalm 51. You have that little blurb just under the psalm number in Psalm 51 that says, “After David sinned with Bathsheba.” Well, you know what the psalm is about immediately, don’t you? It immediately tells you. Or the ones that say something like, “While he was running away.” We looked at one on Wednesday at the prayer meeting when David had been betrayed by people to Saul, and so you immediately know what the psalm is about. It’s very helpful.

Other psalms, you can see it very clearly because it’s stated in the psalm itself. So Asaph’s psalm in Psalm 73, that’s a good example of this. Asaph’s going along and he sees, he looks around himself and he sees the rich people getting richer, and the fat people getting fatter, and the powerful people getting more powerful. But there’s a problem for him because they’re all sinners. They’re all bad people. And he begins to doubt God and lay his complaint out to God, and he says, “My foot almost slipped. I almost stumbled in my faith.” And you know what he’s talking about immediately, right?

Well, Psalm 77 provides us with none of this. All we’re told in the introduction is that it’s a song to the choirmaster, and it’s according to Jeduthun, which is probably just a musical term. We’re told that Asaph wrote it. There’s nothing in the introduction to give us any indication as to why. Why is he crying out like this? And when you read the actual words of the psalm, you don’t see anything there either, do you? And so you might be wondering, why are we talking about it then?

Well, actually, I think this is a profound blessing to us. Under the superintendence of the Spirit of God, Psalm 77 has not recorded for us the particular problem that led to the cry of Asaph, and that’s a blessing for us. Why? Because there are so many causes for spiritual depression, and all of ours are different. None of them are the same. And the wonderful thing is, what that means is we’re not bound by a particular type. If Asaph had said, “This was the particular problem I had,” then it becomes harder to apply it to myself because we think to ourselves, “Well, I don’t have that problem. That’s not my issue.” But when it’s left open like this, it enables us to take it wholesale and apply it to ourselves a lot more easily.

But we’re also, in the scriptures, able to see some of the causes of spiritual depression, spiritual melancholy, lowness. We talked about some of the people, some of the examples of people in the Bible.

So, for example, Job. Well, what was the cause of Job’s spiritual depression? Well, it was loss, wasn’t it? Loss of family, loss of health. It’s pain, misery, that was brought about by external factors. It wasn’t something within that had changed; it was external factors.

But what about David? We saw David crying, “Oh, my son, my son Absalom.” What caused David’s situation? It was the death of a loved one, someone that he cherished. It was also a result of his idolatry, because he loved his son more than he loved God and God’s people. And so we see a sin within David that led to this down depression.

What about Elijah? You remember Elijah, after Jezebel says she’s going to kill him, what does he do? He goes out into the wilderness, lies down and says, “Well, it’s over. Lord, just kill me. I’ve had enough. I’m not doing this anymore.” What’s the cause? It’s persecution, isn’t it? It’s threat, it’s danger, but it’s also weariness. He’s just worn out. He’s tired. That’s a legitimate cause of depression. If you burn the candles at both ends, don’t be surprised when spiritual depression becomes your bread.

Now think about Jeremiah, as he sees the oppression of his people, and the sin of the people that he dwells among, and he hears of the judgment and the wrath of God. And he begins to complain and murmur, and he’s filled with a downness because of it. What’s the cause? It’s the people around him. It’s not Jeremiah, who loves the Lord; it’s the people around him that are oppressive around him.

Well, think of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no sin that caused Jesus to be cast down in his heart, but it was the pressure and the stress of what lay before him. The mental load of the thought of bearing the judgment of God caused him deep-seated anguish, didn’t it?

And this reminds us that there’s a variety of different reasons. There’s a variety of causes that can cause our heart to become downcast. And the reason that’s important is because if you don’t understand that, you can wrongly help other people. ’Cause we remember, right? There’s two primary purposes for considering spiritual depression. One, because I need help. Two, because you need help, and we need one another.

And here’s the problem. Some people have said spiritual depression is always a result of your sin. And if that’s the case, then the solution is always the same. Rebuke, reprove, chastise, discipline, right? Other people have said it’s never a result of sin, it’s just a human emotion only, and therefore, what you really need is placebos. You need a pat on the back. You need a cup of coffee. You need an encouraging word. What’s the problem? Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. As we think of John Piper saying, “I just found myself crying and I had no idea why.” Sometimes we don’t even know why we’re sad; we’re just sad. So we need to begin by asking ourselves when we come to spiritual depression, what is causing it? What is behind it? So that we might seek to address it.

And so we wish we could see Asaph’s affliction, but we can’t. But what we can see is what Asaph’s affliction produces. We can see the fruit that comes from Asaph’s affliction, or you might call it the effects. What are the effects of Asaph’s affliction?

Well, Asaph’s affliction produces accusation. We see Asaph’s accusation. Here we focus not so much on the fact of spiritual depression itself, but upon what it produces in his life. The dangerous temptation that is found within spiritual depression, within the heart that is cast down. What must we beware of? What must we guard against?

We see three stages here. We may not know the root, but we always know the fruit, and here we see three stages of that fruit, and it begins in verse 4. He says, “You hold my eyelids open.” You hold my eyelids open. Do you notice the second person? Do you notice it sounds quite accusatory, right? “You hold my eyelids open.” He doesn’t say, “Sleep has betrayed me.” He doesn’t say, “I can’t sleep.” He says, “You hold my eyelids open.” Or in the literal translation, “My eyes you pluck open.” What’s he doing here? He’s laying the blame squarely on the hands or the fingers of the Lord, isn’t he?

You might call it the Job problem. And Job’s a fascinating book to read. It’s hard reading. Most of us attempt to read the first sort of two chapters and then skip to the last chapters. But what happens in the thinking and the speaking of Job as you go through the story? It begins with, “The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” right? But very quickly, it shifts. It goes from that to, “Woe is me. I wish I was never born.” And then it slowly begins to move to an interrogative-natured voice. What I mean by that is it begins to become, “You have done this to me. You have done this to me.”

And what’s really striking about that is, I mean, we don’t blame Job—Job doesn’t get to read chapter one and two. Who did it? The devil. If it was a drama, if it was an opera, and the opening scene was chapter one and two, you would watch the devil in the opera literally going down and causing carnage. And what would you be tempted to scream out to Job, even though you’re not allowed to cry out in an opera? What would you be tempted to yell out as Job’s sitting there going, “God, why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?” You’d be wanting to yell out, “Job, you missed the introduction. I watched the devil doing it.”

Asaph is looking squarely at the Lord his God, and he’s saying, “You did this.” It’s the second person problem.

But the second person problem begins to transition to the third person problem, and with the third person problem comes distance. And we know this in our human relationships, don’t we? When you’re using the second person, what is currently true? You are face to face with somebody else, right? It might not be healthy. You might be having an argument, but currently it’s face to face. Let’s say husbands, wives, you have an argument, and it’s the second person argument. Now, maybe it’s just me and my wife that argue sometimes, but you have an argument, and you’re face to face. It’s “you.” What happens when it shifts and it becomes “he” or “she”? And all of a sudden, you find yourself with a friend and you start saying, “He did this. She did that.” There is now distance. You’ve stepped out of the together relationship, and you’ve begun to speak negatively in the third person of the person over there.

And there’s a danger here, isn’t there? And we see this with Asaph in verses 7 to 9. Notice these words: “Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable?” It’s not “you,” it’s “he.” “Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His compassion?” Selah. It’s the third person as he lays out his complaint against not “you,” but the God over there. He says, “God’s not favorable. God’s not loving. God’s not faithful. God’s not covenantally keeping in His promises. God’s not gracious. God’s not compassionate.” It’s an ominous picture, isn’t it? It’s the temptation in sorrow, in heartbreak, to begin to stand in a place of judgment and questioning of God in the third person.

And still worse is the second person moves to the third person, which ultimately finds its culmination in the first person. Because do you notice in verse 10, it becomes “I.” “I said,” footnote, “This is my grief, that the right hand of the Most High has changed.” See how he’s all of a sudden looked in on himself? It’s no longer “you,” it’s not even “He,” it’s now a completely inward focus that says ultimately my judgment is that God has changed, which is blasphemy. It’s not just heresy, which it is; it’s blasphemy. Why? Because God never changes, says the Lord.

You see, this shift from the “you” to the “He” to the “I” breeds contempt in the heart, and this is the deadly danger of depression. It begins to shift the way we actually think about God. I think Spurgeon captured it quite well. Spurgeon says, “Diseases and tribulations are easily enough endured when God is found of us, but without Him they crush us to the earth. Ah, sad calamity of a jaundiced mind! To see nothing as it should be seen, but everything as through a veil of mist.” That’s what spiritual depression and sorrow threatens to produce. I say “threatens” because it doesn’t necessarily produce it, because the Lord Jesus Christ was sorrowful unto death and yet never sinned, never questioned His Father, never doubted His God. And in spiritual depression, in sorrow, in a downcast heart, there is a peculiar temptation to begin to doubt the goodness of God, to begin to malign Him.

But we need to ask the question: Why does this happen? Why this shift? Why does spiritual depression tend to lead to an accusatory voice that culminates in blasphemy? Well, I think I could give you five reasons as a start.

Firstly, because in spiritual temptation we tend to lose sight of the character of God in the scriptures. Because when we’re spiritually depressed, we are tempted to immediately stop reading this and to become inward-focused, and we are tempted to run to every other source of help and we begin to lose sight of what God clearly says in the word of God, what God clearly declares about His character. How do we get to “God changes” when we all know that the scriptures that Asaph had declared that God never changes? But he’s lost sight of it, hasn’t he? And you and I can do the same.

The second way that this happens is that we end up with what you might call an imbalanced theology. Theology needs to be kept in a whole system, in a unit. You can’t sort of section pieces off and you can’t overemphasize certain parts. Everything’s together as one unified whole. And what I mean by an imbalanced theology is this second person issue. “You’ve done this.” Now, when Job says that, he’s right, isn’t he? In the sense that God is sovereign over everything. But the problem is if you stress that, you create an imbalance which is actually theologically incorrect, because God doesn’t kill Job’s family. God doesn’t snatch away Job’s cattle. The Sabeans do that. God doesn’t send the wind that topples the house over. The devil does. And though we know God is sovereign over everything, if we overstress sovereignty to an extreme degree, we can end up casting God out to be evil. And Asaph’s tempted, and we can be tempted in our despair to begin to have an imbalanced theology in both extremes—that God can’t do anything about it or that it’s all God’s fault that I’m this way.

The third reason I think this happens is that we set our eyes—Asaph sets his eyes—upon his problem and not upon his God. He sets his eyes upon his problem, and he only lifts his eyes in order to accuse God. You see, the person struggling with spiritual depression becomes obsessed with their problem, and all they see is the sorrowful heart. All they see is the despair that wells up within them, and the only time they lift up their head is just enough to lay a complaint or to lay an accusation, and they lose sight of God’s face. You know, when it’s raining, it’s really hard to lift your face up, isn’t it? You know, in the middle of a storm when it’s bucketing down, to look up at the sky is very challenging. But when the warmth of the sun is upon your face or upon your back and the wind and breeze is lovely, it’s easy to lift up your face and take in the horizon, isn’t it? And so too with our souls, brothers and sisters. When depression sets in, it’s so easy to look down and to forget the God that’s looking down upon us.

The fourth reason that people find themselves in this situation is because worship and thanksgiving is replaced with murmuring and complaining. Israel is not unique in the wilderness, are they? It’s gotta be a hard life walking through a wilderness. But isn’t it striking how quickly they begin to murmur and complain? And yet, brothers and sisters, are we very different? When the heart is sorrowful, it’s so easy to find reasons to complain about everything, to murmur about everything, and so that instead of giving thanks to God for what we do have, we murmur and complain about what we don’t have. Instead of worshiping God for His goodness, we complain about what He’s given us. We exchange thanksgiving for murmuring, for sulking, for self-pity, and ultimately that comes from a root of pride that believes we deserve far better than what God gives us. Why do you complain to God? Because ultimately you think God hasn’t dealt fairly with you. If God really knew how good I was and how important I am, He would treat me much better than this.

But there’s a fifth reason, and I think this is maybe the most important and the most neglected, especially in Christian counseling, and that is the reality of an enemy of our souls. Why does this happen? Because the devil exists.

During some of my studies recently, I was asked to read a series of letters by Martin Luther in a book, and it’s a whole bunch of letters written to depressed and suicidal people. You can’t imagine that, can you? Martin Luther, the stalwart of the faith—we think of him fighting theological battles left, right, and center. Well, guess what? People got depressed and tried to kill themselves back then, too. And he wrote 200 letters to depressed people, and what is prevalent in almost all of them is the work of the devil. Because the devil wants to steal believers’ joy and make them doubt and question God. The devil wants us to blaspheme God by calling his character into question. The devil wants us to sin against God because we no longer believe he’s good, and we’ve seen that in the garden, haven’t we?

I mean, you can say what the devil says in so many different ways when he speaks to Eve. One way of seeing it is effectively, “Did God really not let you have this tree? What a miserly God. He’s holding out on you. I mean, I thought you said God was good. I thought you said he loved you. You know, if he really loved you, he’d let you eat this fruit. He’s holding it back from you. Why? Because he knows that you’ll become more like him. He’s selfish. He doesn’t love you. He’s not kind to you. He only really cares about himself.” That’s insinuated in those words, isn’t it? The devil is very busy, brothers and sisters, in your spiritual depression, seeking to get you to disobey God, to doubt God, to question God, and to hate God. And yes, the devil is far more powerful than we give him credit for, and the devil is able to cause the most sinister voices appear in your mind that you would never dream of in a right frame of mind and heart.

One of the most wonderful illustrations of this is in Pilgrim’s Progress. When Christian is walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and as he’s walking along, all of a sudden, out of nowhere—now, this is, you need to understand, this is John Bunyan writing his biography in Pilgrim’s Progress, and if you read his autobiography, you actually read this event taking place in his life—Christian, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, has blasphemous thoughts come into his mind, and he believes he’s blasphemed the name of God and he’s blasphemed the Holy Spirit. John Bunyan literally believed he had done that and that he could never be saved because the Bible says if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you can never be forgiven. And out of nowhere, this voice comes out. But then John Bunyan writes that Christian, he didn’t know that it was effectively the devil whispering in his ear. It wasn’t his voice at all. It was the voice of the devil speaking subtly behind him so that he believed it was his own voice.

Do you realize that happens to us? Not every voice inside of a person’s head is their own. And I can tell you from personal experience, when sorrow overwhelms you and you think about killing yourself, there are many voices inside of your head which threaten to cast you down. And one of the most common things I’ve heard from people that are tempted to commit suicide is, “Voices keep telling me to do it.” And it’s involuntary, and that’s because it’s the devil.

Luther’s very practically helpful on this. He says, “You know, when the devil comes knocking like that, simply tell him that you’re busy and you don’t have time to listen.” What fantastic advice. “And if he won’t listen, call him bad names and tell him to go away.” Now, you might find his advice a bit on the chin, but what’s he trying to get across? You don’t have to listen. You don’t have to put up with it because he doesn’t have a home inside of you. He doesn’t belong because you are a temple of the Holy Spirit. So what does Jesus say? “Get behind me.” What does James say? “Resist the devil.” What does Peter say? “Stand firm in your faith and resist him.” But here’s the problem. Do you know what happens when you resist an enemy? He pushes harder, and the devil will push harder, and you must resist with more faith and with more vigor and with more firmness and not give up for a moment.

So we see this accusation that just wells up within Asaph, and we look at it and we shake our head on one hand maybe, or on the other hand, we sympathize and we say, “I get it. I’ve been there. I know that. That is my lot. I’m there right now,” or, “I’ve been there before.” And it would be such a chagrin for us to move on. It would be such an abominable thing to do for us just to move on. Because you see, ultimately, the aim of the devil is to convince you that God is not for you, but is against you. But what does the Bible say? What does Paul say in Romans 8? He’s for us. He’s not against us. And if God is for us, who can stand against us?

And how do we know that God is for us when you’re in the depths of despair and sorrow overwhelms you? When sorrow, like sea billows, roll, as we sing. How are you gonna know? Because you don’t feel it, do you? You look to the cross, brothers and sisters. How do I know that my Father in Heaven loves me? Because He gave His only Son. “Oh, what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called sons of God” (1 John 3). And what comes in 1 John? He gave His only Son as a propitiation for our sins. You look to the cross because it’s the only rock you can find when sorrow overwhelms you, and you cast yourself upon that rock, and you hold it for dear life in the midst of storms, and it will never fail. And you tie yourself to the cross on the rock, and you just sit there and you say, “I’m not moving till you bless me, Lord.” And He will. For weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning, the Psalms say.

Brothers and sisters, the cross is the response to the accusations that come from within and from without. When the devil roars, we hold up the cross and we say, “Prove it. Here’s my evidence. Where’s yours, devil?” I have the greatest evidence ever given in any court: the cross of my Savior, and thus I know my God loves me, and thus I know my God is good, and His love is steadfast and His compassion is sure. And like a father, He tenderly cares for me. And what does the devil say? “Ha. Look at your frame. Look at your soul. Look at your tears.” And we cry out all the more, “The cross. The cross. It’s my glory.” There is no other way. I look to the cross.

And so we see Asaph’s affliction, and we see Asaph’s accusation. But you do need to see one more thing briefly, and that is Asaph’s address. You see, there is a silver lining in these first 10 verses. You know the silver lining of a cloud people talk about? There is a saving grace, you might say, in these first 10 verses which culminate ultimately in despair and blasphemy. There is a saving grace because who is Asaph speaking to? Verse one, “I cry aloud to God.” He’s still holding on. His face is still looking to God. “I cry aloud to God.”

Spurgeon catches this really beautifully. He describes this, he says, “Death is coveted as a relief for a man in this lot.” Now, you have to understand, if you don’t know the story of Spurgeon, Spurgeon was a man who suffered with deep depression. He speaks of times when he would come home from the morning service and lie down on his study floor weeping, and his wife would come to him and just read the Psalms to him because that was all she could do, and he would just lie there weeping uncontrollably. Okay, so this is from a man of sorrows, and he says, “For a man in this situation, death is coveted as a relief. Life becomes an intolerable burden like a naked man tangled in thorns, slowly bleeding out by 10,000 wounds. And I who wrote these words knows this grief full well.” How’s that for a commentary? But then he says, “This Psalm has much sadness in it, but we may be sure it will end well, for it begins with prayer, and prayer never misses its goal.”

There’s a saving grace here because Asaph’s face is towards God still. There’s still faith. And here’s the thing, brothers and sisters: what did Jesus say? Just a mustard seed. Just a mustard seed of faith is enough to move a mountain. Why? Because it’s not about how big your faith is, and it’s everything to do with how big your God is. And so when you’re on the edge of despair, though you only have a drop of faith left in the bucket, you have enough faith to hold onto God. And so what do you do? Though you’re tempted to deny God, though you’re tempted to accuse God, though you’re tempted to malign Him and to listen to the devil, all you need to do is by faith lay hold of the Lord Jesus Christ, who stands by your side.

Next week, Lord willing, we will begin to unpack the remedies. How do we deal with it? How do we move forward? But for those of you who struggle with this, what I want you to leave with today is this: first and foremost, the solution is faith. Clinging to Jesus Christ as your only hope, because everything else is pointless unless you have that. Because no amount of psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors will be of any avail to you unless you have Christ to drag you out of the pits of spiritual despair. So look to Christ.

And for those of you who don’t struggle with this, my exhortation to you is do not offer people placebos. Offer them Jesus Christ. In every single case of spiritual depression and suicide I have dealt with, the very first thing I do is take a person back to Christ and say, “Let me show you how much your Father loves you.” Always start there. The greatest thing that you can do for a person who’s spiritually depressed is to say to them, “Let me show you how much your Father in Heaven loves you. Let me take you to the cross. Hold my hand. I will be your eyes. I will be your feet. I will carry you. Let us go to Golgotha and see the love of God.” And I tell you, I promise you, that will give a sufferer hope for another day. That will give them comfort to get up the next day and to look to the cross again.

So brothers and sisters, for all of us, look to the cross. That’s the ultimate exhortation of every sermon, but especially today’s. Live in light of the cross.