“1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. 2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? 3 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles. 4 Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God. 5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God” (Psalm 43:1-5).

     The word worship is from the Hebrew word shachah (shaw-khaw') in the Old Testament and the Greek word proskuneo (pros-koo-neh'-o) in the New Testament. The Hebrew word shachah means to bow down or prostrate one’s self. The Greek word proskuneo means to kiss the hand. Proskuneo was the word originally used for what a dog does when it licked its master’s hand. In the Mid-East, worship was expressed first by falling to the knees and touching the forehead to the ground before the one being reverenced.

     In worship that is more intimate the individual was allowed to kiss the hand of the person being reverenced. This form of worship signified submission to the sovereignty of the individual being reverenced and recognition of his absolute authority over the life of the subject.

     All of this seems so foreign to Westerners. We have been taught all our lives that our government and government leaders are elected to serve the people (and rightly so). However, God deserves our humility before Him, our adoration, praise, thanksgiving and worship. He deserves that because He is God. He deserves that because He is our Sovereign Creator. Adding to all this, He deserves our worship because He is our Redeemer and the Lover of our souls.

     However, what God deserves and what God gets is usually two different things. We live in the middle of the human predicament of a fallen creature. In the fall of mankind, the acme of God’s creation became marred with the acne of sin. We live out our existence in this human predicament under a curse. When we walk on a pathway with many stumbling stones, we often spend most of our time looking down in order to keep from falling on our faces. We need to look down occasionally, we need to look out regularly, but we need to look up consistently.

     The difficulties and problems of life tend to preoccupy us. They keep us from looking up to God. Therefore, God must allow us to stumble occasionally to our knees. On our knees, we see ourselves in the hopelessness of trying to get through this life without Him. On our knees, we are forced to stop, even in a moment of anguish and pain if necessary, and look up and think about what is available to us in our relationship with our Redeemer, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

     This is where David is at in Psalm 43. He has fallen into a pit of the miry clay of despair and desperation and he is up to his neck in trouble. The more he tries to get himself out, the deeper he sinks. In his hopeless despair, he looks upward and cries out to God. Why is it that we so often find ourselves in such states of desperation and depression? Why do we have Psalm after Psalm dealing with the same thing? Because we will not learn that living in humble adoration and dependence on God and in fellowship with Him is the only hope of joy in this world. Nothing else can fulfill us and nothing else can provide the inner peace that only comes from knowing God personally and intimately and living in fellowship with Him. We forget that fact and so, once again, we find ourselves up to our necks in the pits of despair, desperation and anxiety with depression slowly devouring our last ounce of hope.

     When we find ourselves in the pits of despair and depression what do we need to do to escape? Is worry the answer?

“1 <<A Song of degrees for Solomon.>> Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:1-2).

     Psalm 43 gives us by example seven steps to the restoration of the joy of our salvation. The main reason so many Christians spend the majority of their lives in the pits of despair and depression is because they are either ignorant of or unwilling to follow the formula that God gives over and over again in His Word.

1. We need to acknowledge our fallen condition.

“Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man” (Psalm 43:1).

     Yes, the world is full of “deceitful and unjust” men. However, the one we need to be delivered from the most frequently is the one staring back at us in the mirror every morning.

“9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

2. We need to declare our dependency on God.

“For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off” (Psalm 43:2:a)?

     We need to ask God to reveal to us what He already knows about why we are in the pit of despair. There are two main reasons why Christians should deal with their depression.

A. Because they will spend their lives in misery and unhappiness
B. Because they are such a poor testimony to what a real Christian life ought to be as they seek to restore the image of God in their lives and as they seek to reflect that restored image to a lost world.

3. We need to address the issue of our despair to God. There are certain principles we must be clear about before we can ever hope to enjoy our salvation.

“Why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy” (Psalm 43:2b)?

     Why does God cast us off? Because Christ must take us to the low ground of the conviction of our sinfulness before He can take us to the high ground of fellowship and joy.

     “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever, and if you are not doing so you are a sinner of the deepest dye, whether you know it and feel it or not.” (Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, page 30)

     Imagine the worst sins you can think of: murder, rape, homosexuality and child molestation (to name a few). We are self-righteous when we think we are better than the people who commit such acts when we know within our hearts that apart from the grace of God we would be doing the same things. Knowing God and living for Him should be the greatest source of joy in a Christian’s life. If it is not, there is a serious spiritual problem.

4. We need to cry out to God for direction from His Word of restoration. There are certain things Wilderness Christians frequently do not want to know; yet they are essential to the restoration of joy.

“O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles” (Psalm 43:3).

     They do not want to know definitive doctrinal truth. This type of preaching is often called “legalistic.”

     “The most comfortable type of religion is always a vague religion, nebulous and uncertain, cluttered up with forms and ritual . . . There is nothing so uncomfortable as clear-cut Biblical truths that demand decisions.” (Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, page 44)

     They do not want to know that the majority of their miserable existence is due to their own unbelief.

“Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 4:6).

     They do not want to know that there is no difference between sin and sin in God’s eyes. Therefore, they tend to dismiss the so-called minor sins of omission and the minor sins of the heart as inconsequential to God and to their fellowship with Him.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23).

5. We need to return to the altar (the place of repentance, confession and forgiveness).

“Then will I go unto the altar of God” (Psalm 43:4a).

     The “altar” is where we meet with God and God meets with us. If we want the joy of our salvation restored, we cannot neglect the Altar. All sin must be dealt with at the altar. There is no other place to deal with sin. The altar is the place where God is propitiated. Blood sacrifice propitiated God and forgiveness is given at the altar (I John 1:7). Today, the Altar is at the feet of Jesus.

“7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:7-9).

     This must precede true worship. Worship must flow through a clean vessel before it is acceptable to God. We cannot expect God to restore the joy of our salvation until we are willing to return wholly to Him in obedience and faithfulness (body, soul [mind] and spirit [will]). Repentance, confession and forgiveness of sin are all required in our spiritual cleansing to restore us to fellowship with God.

6. We need to return to God in order to worship and praise.

“Unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God“ (Psalm 43:4b).

     Biblically, fellowship is more than enjoying the company of another. Fellowship is joining all that you are to another and all that he is to you (synergy). In that synergetic union, worship and praise flows freely as the believer fully understands both the blessing of that union and the reality of what God provides to the fellowship compared to what the believer provides.

7. We need to learn to practice Soul Talk by rebuking our inconsistencies with the Word of God, confronting our temporal problems with our eternal hope and resolving to restore both our hope in the Lord and the joy of our salvation (Psalm 43:5).

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God” (Psalm 43:5).

     “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” (Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, page 20)

     Soul Talk is rebuking our deceived fallen nature with the truth of God’s Word about Who God is and His sovereign purposes in our lives. Soul Talk involves the individual in confronting the reality of his faith and asking himself the question, “Do I know the God of the Bible personally, intimately, theologically and do I practically live in fellowship with the God I know?”

     Soul Talk transposes our attention from the seemingly overwhelming problems that are consuming our joy to the omnipotence of God and our eternal hope in Him. Soul Talk changes our focus from self to God, from the temporal to the eternal and captivates our carnal way of thinking transcending our problems and changing our countenance.

“3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) 5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled” (II Corinthians 10:3-6).

     If you are spending the majority of your life wandering in the despair of the Wilderness Christian experience, you need to deal with your unbelief and return to the Lord. Your despair is visible to everyone who sees you. Your countenance is your testimony to the world that this Christianity thing does not work. The reality is that is does not work for you because your life is not consumed with maintaining your relationship with the Lord. As we live before God, we must never forget that the majority of our attention must be directed towards Him. Fellowship with God will be evident in our countenance just as it was in the face of Moses when he returned from Mt. Sinai. Being with God changes both ourselves and those we encounter in our lives.

“29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. 30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him” (Exodus 34:29-30).