Finding God – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

the scripture for tonight is Psalm 42 and 43 As the deer pants for the water Brooks so my my soul pants for you oh God my soul thirsts for God for the Living God When shall I come and appear before God my tears have been my food day and night while they continually say to me where is your god when I remember these things I pour out my soul within me for I used to go with the multitude I went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise with the

multitude that kept a pilgrim Feast why are you cast down oh my soul and why are you disquieted within me hope in God for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance oh my God my soul is cast down Within Me therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan and from the heights of Hermon and from the hill mzar deep calls and to deep at the noise of your waterfalls all your waves and Billows have gone over me the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime and in

the night his song shall be with me a prayer to the god of my life I will say to God my rock why have you forgotten me why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy as with a Breaking of my bones my enemies reproach me while they say to me all day long where is your god God why are you cast down oh my soul and why are you disquised within me hope in God for I shall yet Praise Him the help of my countenance and my God vindicate me oh God

and plead my cause against an ungodly Nation Oh deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man for you are the god of my strength why do you cast me off why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy oh send out your light and your truth let them lead me let them bring me to your Holy Hill and to your Tabernacle then I will go to the altar of God to God my exceeding joy and on the harp I will praise you oh God my God why are you cast down oh my

soul and why are you disquieted within me hope in God for I shall yet Praise Him the help of my count and my God this is God's word when it comes to physical growth and physical health you've got you've got sort of two kinds of practices or disciplines you've you've got trainers and you've got doctors you have trainers because uh through nutrition and exercise trainers help you get further than you were they they help you make progress physically but when you get sick or maybe injure yourself you need a doctor to get you back on

track so you need trainers to get you forward from where you were you uh need doctors to get you back to where you were physically same thing spiritually There Are Spiritual disciplines that are more like training uh and we've been looking at them we're in a series on the Psalms looking at what are the spiritual disciplines by which you grow into the person God's meant you to be and there are some disciplines that are more along the lines of training they they they tell you uh things like scriptural uh we've been talking about some of

the meditation and prayer and we're going to be continuing to look at them but there are some disciplines spiritual disciplines that are defensive that is they are they're ways of treating problems and difficulties and tonight we're going to look at one this Psalm 42 43 uh a way of dealing with a condition that will come on you if you are in any kind of spiritual pilgrimage at all and if you don't know how to deal with it it can be disastrous it's uh it's not well let me just tell you that this is there's a

condition described here there is a there is a set of causal factors and then finally there are a set of cures there's a condition that is certain to come upon you there are causal factors and there set of cures and this for you to become skilled at dealing with this condition is absolutely critical if you're going to make spiritual progress so let's look let's take a look at the condition what is the condition well verse one gives it in metaphorical form and then verse two explains the metaphor first of all it says As the deer

pants for water books now you just keep this in mind deer aren't stupid they don't wait till they're dying of thirst before they go look for water a panting deer is not just a thirsty deer a panting deer is a deer that's literally dying of thirst and therefore a panting deer is a deer that has come down to the place the riverbed or the streamed where it's used to uh In the Heat of the day uh assuaging its thirst through cool clear streams of water and finds the riverbed dry and you see the psalmist is

saying I'm like the deer and God is like the dry riverbrook the dry riverbed and then verse two explains my soul thirsts for God for the Living God it's not that he doesn't believe in God anymore but the psalmist can't sense God as a living God the the the personal sense of dealing a personal sense that there's a God who's there that I'm dealing with and he's dealing with me the give and take it's gone keep going on the verse When shall I come and appear before God which literally is when shall I see the

face of God and over and over and over again in verse 5 it says hope in God I will yet praise him for the help of his countenance he's lost the countenance of God he's lost the face of God that doesn't mean he doesn't believe there's a God who is everywhere it means that he's lost his relational experience of God's presence he has no more taste no more feel no more sight no more sound of God in his soul you know what we mean by that thoughts about God that used to comfort him sweeten soften

strengthen him they don't resonate they don't they don't they don't strike they're not striking they don't do it anymore when he says what the the pardon me the condition he's describing is he's lost the reality of God not belief in God he's lost the reality of God he's lost the presence of God the sense of God's presence on his heart and in his soul he no longer feels like he's got hold on God he no longer has a sense that there's a God who's there who is's in a personal relationship with he's experiencing it's a

spectrum here he's experiencing spiritual dryness spiritual drought spiritual Darkness spiritual deadness nothing resonates and what's important important to see here is there are other Psalms in which this spiritual dryness and deadness coexists with a sense of guilt there are numbers of Psalms and we'll be looking at one of them in our Series where the reason why uh the psalmist has lost God lost God's uh his presence and lost the sense of God's reality is because the psalmist has done something wrong and therefore the psalmist feels guilt and then he has to confess his sin and

he has to repent but did you notice that's not happening here this this psalmist this speaker this writer is experiencing deep dryness a deep spiritual drought deep spiritual deadness and he's done nothing wrong it's come upon him now this is very important I'm going to this is very important because Americans and therefore Americans who are Christians Americans if something's wrong they want to know who so they can sue them it's in other words nothing should be wrong if something is wrong there's somebody who I can sue and it's the same thing that happens with Christians

who are Americans when something goes wrong like this when I start to experience spiritual deadness and drought and dryness I must be I'm sure there's some button I'm not pushing I'm sure there's something on my Christian to-do list I'm missing and unfortunately we're very moralistic about this it's um I would say one of the reasons why it's tough for Christians to admit to their Christian friends just How Deeply dry they are is because the Christian friends might say what you're experiencing you don't have the reality of God in your life you're not experiencing his presence

you're experiencing spiritual deadness well they say have you prayed in faith have you confessed all known sin have you claimed the promises have you rebuked the devil have you pleaded the blood have you thanked God for all your many blessings surely there'd be nothing wrong if you were doing your entire daily Christian to-do list obviously you're doing something wrong but this guy's not doing anything wrong and he's dying of thirst he's dying of spiritual thirst there is no confession in here there's no I am sorry for my sins I hide them no longer I Repent

it doesn't say that because you see and this is this is the point this condition will come upon you this will happen to you and though of course spiritual dryness and deadness can happen as a result of you doing something wrong that you're violating your conscience of course but the point is it can happen without that and therefore it will happen to you even if you're doing your daily Christian to-do list it will happen to you now the reason why you need to know that here's let me just real briefly point this out to a

few different groups of people that are probably here if you're a newer Christian and one of the joys of redeemer is that there's always so many people around that are new in the faith if you are a newer Christian this is particularly a problem the first time you experience this it can really really freak you out first of all nobody explains it to you nobody tells you it's going to happen secondly now this is this is what I mean by culture I'm sorry if I'm going to be beating up on Americans after I like Americans

I am American I married American I G three Americans I I have I have you know I I you know I'm sort of you know irrevocably American but I'm I'm I'm going to talk to you about some of the downsides of our culture tonight here and what automatically because of the culture in which you were raised you don't expect this thing to happen unless you do something wrong you know unless you are really violating one of the rules or something like that you this this shouldn't happen and when it does happen you freaked out and

one of the big problems is that new Christians in particular on top of everything else you start to doubt whether the whole thing you start to say maybe the whole thing was a dream you know you haven't been with it long enough and there can be a real uh insecurity on top of everything else so if you're a newer Christian you better learn that this is coming and you better learn how to deal with it that's what we're here to do tonight to help you with secondly all of us whether we're new or not uh

all of us really have to be careful about this because in general when spiritual drought happens we do not treat it very well you know a lot of you busy New Yorkers you're really good at working out but as soon as a cold or a flu bug comes along you can't miss work you can't stop anything you can't miss any of your appointments next thing you know you're in the hospital because you're really good at you know in other words you're really good at moving you're good at the positive physical disciplines but you're not very

good at the defensive ones this is true in this case too another stupid metaphor let me give you another stupid metaphor you know if you're an outfielder it used to happen to me all the time actually when I was when I when I did play baseball I was an outfielder it was you know and you're really pulling for your team and next thing you know you see a ball sailing into the Outfield they got a hit and you know that and this is terrible I used to get so demoralized oh no they got a hit

and so and then suddenly I realized oh gosh the ball has just gone by me and it would have been bad for it to be a single but but now it's a triple and that's how it is with spiritual dryness uh it's it's bad when it happens but by and large we boot the ball it comes to us and it's bad enough but because we don't act on it we don't know how to deal with it we don't react the way we're going to see here we should be reacting the singles turn into a triple

you know uh instead of one run scoring three run score on us and that sort of thing uh one more thing there are probably people in this room uh who have been almost have been off the rails for maybe years because you you were Christian you understood yourself as a Christian and one of these times of spiritual dryness came and you couldn't see where it was coming from you didn't do anything wrong you didn't know what was going and and in a sense you misplayed the ball and you see at first this is not you

can see this here this is not a set of intellectual doubts in the beginning it's not a of intellectual doubts notice he doesn't say I don't believe in God he says I can't feel him but if you don't do the right thing with it if you don't treat it properly it will become God will become so unreal to you it'll start to overtake everything including your your beliefs including your your intellect and I I know I continually meet people that I think this is what's happened that years ago they they can remember being Christians and

they still don't know now what they are they they can't completely jettison the Christian faith they can't completely get rid of it yet they have such deep and profound reservations about God about the faith about themselves they're sort of in the Twilight Zone they're not sure whether they're Christians or not nobody is I'm not they can ask me and say am I a Christian I don't know I say and usually it's because years ago this happened and they never got themselves back on the rail and what start out as a kind of subjective existential alien

uh you know sense of alienation from God became something much more uh something much more uh serious ious something much more pervasive and sustained so you need to know how to deal with this condition because it will come now secondly what are some of the causal factors and I I'm using the word causal factors carefully because the things I'm about to tell you don't have to automatically cause this condition but in this passage as I've seen in life as a pastor they tend to go along they tend to be associated with with this condition do

do you understand I'm not trying to say if this happens automatically this will happen but in general these conditions these causal factors tend to be associated with the condition of spiritual dryness spiritual drought spiritual darkness and spiritual deadness number one A disruption of community disruption of community notice verse four I used to go with the multitude I went with them to the house of God with a voice of joy and praise with a multitude that kept a pilgrim Feast then down a verse two verses I mean my God I will remember you from the land

of the Jordan from the heights of Herman from the hill Mazar now here's we don't know why this happened but he used to be in the southern part of of Judah he used to go to the temple he used to regularly be part of the temple worship be part of the feasting be part of the joy and praise but now he's in the northern part he's away from the people of God he's away from the congregation away from the temple away from the worship he's up in the north he's up in uh he's up on

the mountain range uh of of which Mount Herman is the peak but it's a kind of long mountain range and he's in the north and he's away from all that we don't know why we don't know if he was captured we don't know if he was exiled we don't know if he moved there we don't know why but here's the point there's individual Bible study and then there's corporate Bible study Community Bible Study there's individual prayer and contemplation and then there's corporate prayer and praise and they are not the same you need them both again

for example he Longs for he remembers fondly the pilgrim Feast for example what was the pilgrim Feast the pilgrim Feast is something very similar to what we're doing tonight a the feasts were times in which the people of God corporately remembered the Great and Mighty acts of God that he did in order to make them a people so for example the Passover was maybe the prime but one of the feasts and what did you do at Passover the people came together it was a see it talks about a pilgrim Feast they came from all over

the the country and they came together and they re they read the scriptural passages about the Exodus and about the great things that God did and they remembered how he made them a people and and how he saved them by bringing them out under the blood of the lamb and then they recommit themselves and they praise God together now you see it's group Bible study it's group prayer and praise and Americans underestimate the importance of communal spiritual disciplines now here I beating up again I told you this was going to happen tonight but just as

Americans tend to be moralistic that is they tend to say well if something's wrong I must be doing something wrong they're also individualistic over and over and over again surveys show that 80 to 90% of Americans say I can be a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim I can be a spiritual person without going to a mosque a synagogue or a church I can be a spiritual person without being part of another institution I can be a spiritual person a very good spiritual person all by myself 80 to 90% year after

year say that and of course that is totally antithetical to all of Islam all of Judaism all of Christianity and I have to tell you the common sense too how do you know you're right all by yourself H how how can you stay hot all by yourself how can you this man doesn't underestimate it but I'll tell you this we tend to and as a result we fall into very often spiritual dryness because we we want to come as individuals we want to get our little fix we want to get our sermon or we want

to get our our you know our music want to get our fix go home maybe talk to one or two friends we really don't want to make ourselves accountable we really don't want to become part of a regular Community study a regular community prayer big Community small community tight Community we don't want to do that we're busy or we're just private you'll not get away with it and by the way let me just say one other quick thing you say well I'm I go to Redeemer and I'm very active and very busy I want to

tell you as a person who's been a redeemer for a long time in New York City this is probably true of most of the country but especially in New York people are constantly coming and going coming and going coming and going and if you're just here year after year after year you're going to find that if unless you are actively reconstructing your community almost every 2 or 3 years you're suddenly going to be lonely calling from Mount Mazar wondering what where does everybody where did everybody go you can fall into spiritual dryness because you lose

your community they they're gone they leave you have to reconstruct you have to work on the new friendships you have to work on building who are you going to be accountable to who are you going to be talking to about your spiritual walk who are you going to be learning with who you going to be praying with or else number two second causal factor is not just disruption of community but disillusionment at the events of life disillusionment at the events of life where is your god see verse three the enemies of this chapter of this

Psalm are not like the enemies of many other Psalms many the other Psalms have enemies who are after the person's life after the author or the psalmist's life trying to kill him in this case you notice the enemies are taunting him the enemies come along he's living with them so these aren't the same kinds of enemies they're taunting him and they're saying where is your god and it's going to his heart because in verse 9 he asked the same question verse 9 it says I will say why have you forgotten me now what's that question

mean again we don't know the specifics but what we know is very very disappointing disillusioning events are happening so you don't ask that question where is your god unless things are happening that don't fit in don't fit in with the idea of a good loving holy just wise God see what's what's the question where is your god it's like goes like this if he's your God if he really is for you if he's really the god you say he is why is this happening why is this happening and it's not just a question from outside

like in verse 3 and verse 10 it's a question from inside cuz the psalmist himself is saying why have you you forgotten me and of course this is this is a second very very normal causal factor involved with these times of spiritual dryness things go wrong and it's very hard to to very hard to explain very hard to understand they're inexplicable like you just committed yourself to Jesus for the first time in your life and the next two years of your life are the worst that have ever happened the the worst your life has ever

been more awful things have happened and you sit there and you say now you know by the way there some people say well my I committed my life to Christ and everything fell apart why did that happen of course one of the answers is imagine if your life had fallen apart and you weren't committed to Christ but that's not how you think about it you say why would God have allowed that and therefore it's the normal second causal Factor so there's disruption of community disillusionment with the events of life and lastly deprivation physically look at

verse three verse three most commentators miss this but one commentator in particular who was a physician picked it up verse three my tears have been my food day and night ah now think about this for a second notice what he's saying my tears have been my food day and night first of all he's saying I'm not eating tears is all I eating my the only thing I eat is my tears so the first thing you're saying is I have no appetite it he's stopped eating he's lost his appetite a sign of clinical depression but notice

something else he's not sleeping because he doesn't just say my tears have been my food all day my tears have been my food day and night I'm weeping all night and you don't weep all night unless you're if you're asleep so he's not eating and he's not drinking I'm pardon me and he's not sleeping and what does that mean what it means is he's you're not going to be able to deal with the overall condition if you ignore the fact that there's now a physical aspect to it it could be the disillusionment it could be

the the the disruption it could be other things led him to this situation but now you're not going to pull yourself out of it because the physical is the tiredness and the lack of eating and sleeping is aggravating the situation David Martin Lloyd Jones who was a physician before became a pastor preached a very famous sermon on this text on this passage years ago and this is what he says about verse three which is interesting he says does anyone hold the view that as long as you are a Christian it doesn't matter what the condition

of your body is you'll soon be disillusioned if you believe that there are some in whose cases it's clear to me that the cause of their depression is mainly physical on the other hand people who are physically weak are more prone to attacks of spiritual discouragement and depression but if you recognize that the physical may be partly responsible for the spiritual condition and make allowances for this you'll be better able to deal with the spiritual issues now this is extremely important I'll just take a minute or two on this Dr Lloyd Jones is saying something

very important and by the way even though he was British and he preached 50 years ago it's another I have to say it's it tends to be another critique of American culture because American culture is not just moralistic and it's not just individualistic it's and this isn't a very uh familiar word it's dualistic in that it pits the body and the spirit against each other and American Christians tend to when it looks when you look at spiritual discouragement or somebody who says I just don't feel God we have a tendency to ignore the physical but

you shouldn't LY Jones says if you don't see that the physical is very often involved because you've got a physical aspect as well as a spiritual aspect in the early 90s I can't remember what year 91 or ' 92 I had a about two months about eight weeks in which every single sermon was like uh was was Agony because all during the sermon all during the sermon all all the way through I would almost essentially hear a voice saying they're never going to believe you just shut up why would they believe you that was a

stupid point that was unclear just just accusation accusation all through the sermon for about 8 weeks and you know at the time the way I looked at it and Kathy and I talked a lot about this at the time we looked at it and we said well I'm just not praying enough now we look back and it was very obvious to see I was just enormously over tired and see the doctor points out that here in verse three you see that there's an they're inextricably linked listen let me summarize it like this there are people

who say the secular people who say everything is basically physical so if you are discouraged or depressed one-dimensionally it's physical take your medicine there's take medicine it's physical there's another kind of person who reduces everything to moral people from traditional Societies in fact I'm afraid a lot of Christians they reduce everything tomorrow if you're discouraged or you're depressed buck up pull yourself together keep a stiff upper lip stop sniveling okay and then there's a third kind of person who doesn't reduce everything to the physical and doesn't reduce everything to the moral but reduces everything to

the psychological and emotional so if you're discouraged and oppressed well we we're going to listen to you and accept you and listen to you and and support you and listen to you and accept you and listen to you and support you but not listen will you listen the Bible says that you have an emotional aspect so you need friends and you have a physical aspect so you need rest and food and maybe medicine but you also have a spiritual aspect and you need truth and as a result if you have a Christian world view a

Christian view of human nature you should be the least reductionistic the most nuanced the most multi-dimensional the most balanc you shouldn't say buck up you shouldn't just sit and listen or just yell and say buck up and just give the truth or or just you know give medicine but you have to recognize that all of these things are involved all of them are involved and as we look at the cures here which we're about to now you will see an astounding balance that you won't see in any other approach or any other worldview an astounding

balance of both listening to the emotions and at the same time talking to the heart of both listening and figuring out motivation and being kind and supporting but at the same time being tough too this is a fascinating balance here now what are the cures four things that this person does four things this speaker does that you have got to do when this comes on you he pours out his soul he analyzes his hopes he remembers the loving kindness of the grace of God and he preaches sermons to his heart he pours out his soul

he analyzes his hopes he remembers the grace of God and he learns how to preach to his own heart number one one pours out his soul see he says that in verse four therefore I pour out my soul but you know what he's doing that's the whole Psalm let me tell you what's ironic about this he says I don't feel God he says that's his problem I don't feel God I get nothing out of worship I get nothing out of prayer I get nothing out of Bible reading I just don't sense him there at all

and what is he doing in Psalm 42 and 43 it's an eloquent theologically Rich sustained beautiful reflective prayer and meditation in other words and this is the first thing you've got to do if you don't get anything out of worship in this period of time in your Dy time if you get nothing out of worship don't miss it if you get nothing out of prayer don't miss it if you get nothing out of Bible reading don't miss miss it pour out your soul you say but I don't feel anything fine then talk about that if

nothing else talk to God about how you're getting nothing out of it if nothing else talk to God about how much you miss him if nothing else talk to the absent God about his absence so the first thing is do not ignore those spiritual disciplines in fact be more disciplined about them than you ever have been before okay number one he pours out his soul number two he analyzes his hopes now there's a refrain that comes up three times and this refrain this is in some ways the theme that runs right through the passage the

in verse 5 in verse 11 and then in verse 5 of of of 43 almost repetitious not quite I'll tell you about that in a second but it says why are you cast down oh my soul why are you disit within me hope in God three times he does that why are you cast down and disquieted hope in God now this is a question about this question is this a rhetorical question why are you cast down on my soul there are some rhetorical questions that are not after information right if you say to somebody why

did you do that you're not asking for information what you're really saying is that was stupid you know you're just saying that was stupid why did you do that is is a rhetorical question you're not asking foration you're saying you know why why were you so stupid basically is that what he's doing to here is he saying why are you cast down how stupid I don't think so and the C the commentators that I like the most the commentators that I respect the most say he's looking for information he's actually asking himself why did I

get so downcast now you say well wait a minute I thought you said that though he's downcast it's not the result of sin it's not the result of something he's done wrong right and yet he he's still doing some self-examination and what is he looking for he's looking for his hopes he says why am I so cast down it's because I put my hope in some things that are now letting me down even though as I said spiritual dryness can come upon you without you sinning to cause it however spiritual dryness is a perfect time

to examine your heart because spiritual dryness reveals inordinate love false hopes perfect example of this is in Psalm 1 uh pardon me Psalm 3 Psalm three is about when David was on the run for his life because his favorite son the son that he loved the most Absalom had actually pulled off a coup dayah had uh was was uh trying to to take David's Throne was now trying to hunt him down and kill him so he could have the kingship and there were two things in David's life that had been the source of his glory

now the word Glory literally means wait it means significance it means something that makes you matter wait weightiness and the two things that were David's Glory were number one the love of his son and family and number two the love and acclaim of his people and he lost both of them and yet right in the middle of Psalm 3 verse three it's a short song he says this but you oh Lord are my shield my glory and the lifter of my head pretty famous verse but do you see what it's saying you oh Lord are

my shield my glory and the lifter of my head and what he's doing at that point is he says my son used to be my glory my people used to be my glory I've lost them and it hurts me but I'm not devastated because what I am doing in this moment is I am relocating my glory I'm relocating my glory in you your approval your smile your love your support I've got that and if I've got that then I won't be devastated by the loss of anything else I will lift up my head anyway that's

what's happening here do you know that what he's saying is I see that one of the reasons I'm so downcast because of the events of the life that you know have made me wonder and all the other things that have happened is I see there's certain things I've been putting my hopes in again we don't know what they are he doesn't say what they are verse in Psalm 3 it's easier to discover what those things are because in verse in in Psalm 3 you have example of David and Absalom and and how he's lost his

kingship and he's lost what his his his son's love here you don't know what it is but I can tell you this in times of dryness that's when to look what is it that you really hope in what is it that is your real significance what are the things that you really rest in don't rest so much in them relocate your hope shift your hope and that's what he's doing it's very very profound during times do you know the difference between during times of spiritual discouragement and dryness he's not repenting he's not beating himself on

the chest saying oh I must be doing things wrong I guess I'm not praying enough I'm not reading my Bible enough maybe I'm maybe I need to do this and maybe I need to do more this no but what he is doing he is doing he is doing self-examination at a profound level he sees things that he puts his hopes in which are not going to be able to sustain his soul unless he hopes in God so he pours out his soul he analyzes his hopes thirdly he remembers the loving kindness of God you notice

how down here in verse five verse 6 he says my soul is cast down therefore I will remember so he is he is very very deliberately thinking about something remembering something but he's not only thinking about God in general verse 8 the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime and the night his song will be with me a prayer to the god of my life the commentators say this he is thinking about God's loving kindness which is the Hebrew word Cas which means Covenant faithfulness unmar Grace uncond conditional love and he's thinking about

his entire life he's thinking about the history of redemption that's the Bible and about he's seeing the grace of God in and all of that he's thinking about his his own personal history all of his life and he's thinking about the grace of God and he's turned it into a song you know why by the way because the heading of this though we didn't have it printed this is not a Psalm of David this is a song of one of the sons of Kora and First Corinth 1 Chronicles 6 tells us the sons of Kora

were professional musicians full-time artists notice this one happens to be a string instrumentalist because at the end he says I'm going to pick up my harp again someday and what he's doing is he is turning the grace of God into a song that he sings to himself even at night now lastly he's remembering the grace of God he's reanalyzing his hopes he's pouring out his soul and and then he finally this is the key in a way he takes all that and what does he do he has learned to preach to his heart notice the

three refrains are not prayers he's not talking to God he's not saying why am I cast down oh my God nor is he talking to us he's saying why am I so cast down oh my people but he's saying why are you so cast down oh my soul and Dr Lloyd Jones in his famous sermon says this is the key you'll never get out of spiritual dryness unless you learn how to do this he's listened to his heart he's poured his heart out he's analyzed his hopes he's thought about the grace of God but at

one point he stops listening to his heart and he starts talking to his heart why are you cast down on my soul look at this do you know how to do that don't you in times of spiritual dryness and discouragement every morning you wake up and your heart is talking oh my gosh oh my gosh oh know no it's terrible it's terrible it's terrible at some point you have to grab your heart and say listen Heart shut up and listen do you know do you know when to do that do you see the balance here

this is not buck up but this is not just listen and listen and listen and I I'm sorry to be so self-referential but I can't help it this guy has learned to preach now I know something about this and let me tell you it takes a lot of listening to be a good preacher if you want to preach to people in New York you want to preach to people in Bombay you want to preach to people in London it doesn't matter but wherever you go you can't just walk in and say I know what I'm

doing you have to listen to them you have to live with them you have to you have to find out what their hopes are what their fears are what their strengths are what their weaknesses are so that you can build up their strengths and you can you identify your weakness their weaknesses but you have to do lots of lots and lots of listening but at some point you turn and you say now listen and if you've done your listening well they'll do their listening well it's very hard to learn how to preach to a group

of people if you have listened to your heart so that you found its false hopes you know you really listened carefully at some point you have to turn around and you have to learn how to preach the grace of God to yourself you have just like I've had to learn how to find illustrations that ring your bell you say oh I get it you have to learn illustrations that ring your heart's Bell but it's some point you have to learn do you know how to do this after you've listened and listened do you finally turn

around and say now listen self just shut up and you listen to me you take yourself in hand you say why are you like this you've forgotten this you've forgotten this You' forgotten this do you know how to do that that is an absolutely essential skill and you have to and what will the result be what's fun is notice the realism of this Psalm he doesn't say say hope in God I I do now praise him that would be denial nor does he say hope in God I'll never praise him that would be despondency he

says hope in God I will praise him and if you look carefully you'll see a progression I don't have the time to trace it out but you'll see that bit by bit by bit he starts in the dumps he moves himself up because you know in verse five he says hope in God for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance which simply means all I want is to see him come back but by the time he gets to the very bottom it says hope in God for I shall yet Praise Him

the help of my countenance which is his way of saying I can feel him already beginning to lift up my face lift up my heart lift up my spirits the results will happen slow but they will happen okay last point I don't know how he preached to his heart about the loving kindness of God about the grace of God God but we've got a resource he doesn't have I just told you it's very hard to learn how to preach because you've you've got you've got to listen so that the people will listen to you if

you listen to them well they'll listen to you if you haven't listened to them well then the things you say we're just going to bounce right off and they're going to say that was boring or stupid or offensive but let me tell you a way to preach the gospel to your heart with a kind of uh vividness and effect iess that he didn't have the biggest problem during times of dryness is you say I think God has finally given up on me he's not there makes sense I'm an idiot I've been a failure I'm inadequate

he's abandoned me no says the psalmist to the heart I will yet praise him he's a loving kind God he's a gracious God he will not abandon you well how do I know here's how you you and I know here's something you can use in your heart read Psalm 42 to 43 and listen to the one who really said I thirst who really said I'm dying of thirst read it and hear the one who said my God my God why have you forgotten me read it and think of the one whose enemies taunted him where

is your god let's see if God will come and save him don't you see Jesus Christ really experienced not just the loss of the feeling of God he lost God even though he was trusting God he he had the ultimate thirst the ultimate Cosmic th thirst he was really forgotten by God he was really forsaken by God he really experienced The Thirst of God why so that in spite of your failures and inadequacy God will never give up on you God treated him and punished him and gave him the things we deserve so we can

receive his commitment his love unconditionally and that's what you have to say to yourself and if you say that to yourself if you preach Christ to yourself you'll get out of the you'll get out of the trough and you'll be better for it you will have grown what's interesting is when you deal with spiritual dryness properly you don't just get back on track when you do get back on track you find yourself having you you get back far down the path far further ahead far humbler far happier far stronger than you were before I dare

not trust the sweetest frame but wholy lean on jesus' name in Christ the solid rock I Stand On Christ the solid rock I stand all of the ground is sinking sand let's pray father we ask that now in the Lord's Supper you would make it real to us what your son did we pray Lord for those of us who are spiritually dry right now that the this actual Sacrament will be part of the remedy we pray that you would uh help us though most of all to expect recognize analyze and treat our own hearts and

the hearts of those around us so that we can grow in Grace in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus in his name we pray amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit www.gsp.ro