Sheltering Under Pressure |  Psalm 142

Like many of us, David struggled with discouragement, despair, and depression. But in the darkness of a wilderness cave, he found a sanctuary where he could sort out the shattered fragments of his life. He recorded his honest emotions in a journal, and they provide a prescription that has never lost its power or richness.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, the headline read the Coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis, anxiety and depression are rising.
And according to a Kaiser Family Health Foundation poll, nearly half of Americans report the Coronavirus is harming their mental health.
A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000% increase in April compared to the same time last year.
Last month, 20,000 people texted that hotline, the fear of contacting the disease, the loss of jobs, the isolation from our friends and for Children from their classmates.
The collapse of our economy has many Americans afraid in despair and for many depressed and then we turn on our televisions and we watch one of the most heinous crimes in our history.
As a white police officer puts his knee into the neck of a black man and holds it there until he has snuffed out his life.
I do not have words in my vocabulary to express how angry and upset I am over this.
That should never happen any place on God’s green earth, let alone on American soil that police officers assault was not just an assault upon George Floyd, it was an assault on all of us and especially on other good and, and, and proper police officers whom we love and treasure and support.
I’m grieved and I’m appalled that this could happen in our country. God help us and God forgive us.
And then activist groups seize upon the moment and send in their anarchists to burn down the city.
So is it any wonder that we’re depressed? We’re all under pressure and it’s palpable.
So once again, we turn to the Psalms and David was also a man who understood pressure, a different kind to be sure.
But he was a man of vision, a wise military and governmental leader, even a man gifted in music and poetry and dancing.
But he dealt with pressure both before and after he became Israel’s 2nd King.
As a result, like many people who love and trust God, David struggled with discouragement and despair and depression.
He especially coped with the, with the turbulent emotions.
During his fugitive years, David was fleeing for his life from the wrath of King Saul and he had to bolster strength and courage through devastating days of fear, facing many of these things alone.
He he turned for solace to music and worship as well as the comfort of writing about his feelings.
In fact, students of the Psalms believed that David wrote at least eight different Psalms during the years that he was running away from Saul.
The superscription beneath the heading of our Psalm.
Psalm 1 42 tells us we’ve come to a contemplation of David a prayer when he was in the cave and David was running away from the most powerful man in his world, nearly always outnumbered and without the support of anything close to the armament of his enemy.
In fact, on one occasion, Saul had over 30,000 men looking for David.
As we examine this episode of David’s life here in Psalm 142, he has finally stumbled across a refuge and he’s found a sanctuary in the midst of the wilderness.
He’s come to a place where he can lay low, pour out his heart to God and sort out the shattered fragments of his life.
He’s found a cave and he’s entered the darkness of the cave of despair.
It helps us to follow David’s story.
If nothing else, we can discover that we aren’t the only ones who have experienced discouragement.
And one of the reasons we wear out the pages of the Psalms is that it helps us simply to know that somebody has gone this, gone through this before us.
Even thousands of years before us, we comfort in recognizing the emotions we’re feeling here and now displayed in a man who lived so long ago, what a treasure we have in our hands.
David preserved all these honest emotions and wise prescriptions.
He maintained an invaluable journal that has never lost its power or its richness.
And David went beyond simple journaling, he went beyond simply recording for us the events of his life, he wrote out his prayers to God and he kept an account of God’s workings here in our Bibles.
We can actually chart the course of David’s life as he moves through the series of crises and emerges victorious on the other side.
As we find David, he is now seeking solace in the cave of a.
It’s interesting to place the Psalms and the historical books of, of David side by side and seek the full context of what’s going on in the Psalm.
We can discover for example, how Psalm 100 and 42 seems to flow from the life of David from the historical part in First Samuel.
Here’s what we read. David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of a.
So when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him and everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, everyone who was discontented, gathered to him.
So he became captain over them and there were about 400 men with him. And what was happening?
Most scholars believe King Saul had levied a tax on the people of Israel.
It would then be clear that people were flocking to this cave of a to be with David in their anger and rebellion over the unfair taxation they were poor people.
They had very little and many of them were the very people who had insisted before God that they needed a king.
So be careful what you pray for. Saul, was that king?
Many others of the 400 men, no doubt were old friends of David who gathered to lend their support to him.
Goliath’s conqueror was still admired by most citizens of the nation of Israel and his word leaked out concerning their hero’s flight.
More and more of them decided to join David in his hiding place.
In fact, in the next chapter of first Samuel, we discovered that the number grew from 400 to 600.
Now, needless to say this cave was no foxhole on the side of the hill.
It was a huge cavern with a 40 ft opening.
So we have David fleeing his problems, fleeing saul fleeing life.
Finally, he’s come across a place of respite and suddenly there are great crowds of people flowing toward him from every direction.
What kind of people are these? Well, not exactly the best or the brightest.
These are the debtors, the troublemakers, the discontented who are flocking to the side of David.
How do you think he feels about all this company?
Now, keep in mind, David is sick and he’s discouraged.
I believe he sought a cave, not only for safety but also for solitude.
The fact is that misery doesn’t always love company.
And the last people we want to be with us in our despair, are those with problems to match our own.
And that’s why I can’t imagine what this massive social call must have been like for David, I mean, he’s struggling just to cope with his own turbulent emotions.
And now all of the outcasts of Israel are straggling to a side in the cave of Abdula.
So David having entered a cave to be alone, finds himself surrounded by the most distressed citizens of Israel.
I imagine he has taken a hard look at his life and his place among the people of Israel before coming to his journal to write this, Psalm.
David is introspective. He’s emotional and very transparent with those emotions.
His feelings flow out in the Psalms and music and praise and tears.
We began the Psalm with the discouragement of David.
Maybe you’re among some that I’ve met over the years who think Christian shouldn’t show emotions.
Some believers seem to have adopted that very peculiar notion Christian deportment according to the grim stereotype is a calm, plain vanilla demeanor characterized by a pleasant smile that never wavers.
Even when the lions are chasing us around the Roman arena, supposedly putting on a happy faith is the visual proof of Godliness.
But David, a man after God’s own heart vented his emotions in violent colors and operatic crescendos. We wince.
When we read some of his work, you need only take a close look at the Psalm before us, the journal entry never denies honest emotion.
There can be little doubt that the author is a man whose very soul is in distress.
So let’s take a closer look at the discouragement of David. First of all, he feels disoriented.
Psalm 142 and verse three says, my spirit was overwhelmed within me.
David confesses to us in Psalm 142 verse three, that his spirit within is overwhelmed.
The Hebrew words literally mean the muffling of my spirit. What vivid terminology have you ever felt?
A muffled spirit? David has come to a place where he has begun to distrust the powers of his own judgment.
He’s no longer certain where to turn or what course to take.
Life has become a great flood rushing in upon him and he struggles to stand firm against the current David’s muffled spirit is a picture of disorientation.
He is pursued by two armies, one made up of soldiers and the other of sufferers.
His life is entangled in a knot of problems which thread should be loosened first.
If you read his story, you discover that he has recently made a serious mistake.
His entanglement has distracted him from the will of God for a period of time with tragic results as punishment for harboring his prey.
Saul slaughtered the village of knob which cared for David during his prodigal journey from God’s will.
And David realizes that he is spiritually responsible for the mass slaying of an entire village.
He’s nearly driven insane with guilt.
He’s entered the darkened depths of the cave to contemplate the darkened depths of his soul.
But the crowd will prevent the solitude his grief.
Now craves, I’ve often imagined David slumped within the silence of the cave.
His head in his hands, reflecting on the place to which his life has brought him.
Shadows flicker at the edge of his vision and he hears the approaching echo of voices.
His gaze travels to the passage of the cavern.
There, a rough assortment of people is beginning to swell the passage way.
They’re shouting about taxes and family problems and 1000 other worries. David closes his eyes with a sinking heart.
He puts his head further down in his hands and he whispers, oh Lord God, what now, what would you have me to do?
He feels lost and disoriented, but that’s not the only emotion he’s feeling. He also feels deserted.
We come to the fourth verse of our psalm. In my estimation.
It’s one of the saddest verses in the Bible. Here’s what David writes. Psalm. 142 verse four.
Look on my right hand and see for there’s no one who acknowledges me, refuge has failed me.
No one cares for my soul. Can you imagine any words more desolate or despairing?
This is the same David who wrote in Psalms 16 8.
I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
There had been a time when he felt the Lord God always at his right hand.
If God was for him, who could be against him, life was rewarding and victorious and no matter where he was or what he was doing, the Lord was always there.
But the pit into which his soul has plunged is a dark one.
He sits in one most appropriate most symbolic place for his mood, a cold foreboding cave.
And even with a mob of supporters closing in, he is more convinced than ever that nobody really cares about him.
They care about what he does for them, for the defeating of giants and the fighting of battles, but they don’t care about him.
He’s alone in terms of people.
Have you ever felt alone in a crowd of 400 may seem like a contradiction in terms.
But anyone who has ever been lonely will confirm that the greater the number of people present, the more intense can be the feeling of loneliness.
That is why large thriving cities are pockets of despair and alienation.
A cave filled with the echoes of demanding voices can be lonely too.
And the Psalm suggests to us that David saw the friendly mob and felt the fundamental difference between them and himself.
Suddenly his sense of isolation was a knife in his heart.
No one knew the depth of his emotions no one cared what he felt, no one cared how he suffered.
I don’t know if you know it, people, but problems tend to isolate us.
I’m the kind of individual who is certain to turn inward when the problems come.
Like a turtle, my head snaps quietly back into the thick protective shell.
I want to sort it all out for myself without outside interference.
The tendency is to seek the nearest cave that might offer protection from the world and its questions we believe no one else has ever experienced such a problem as the one we’re facing or such as our feeling.
So we bury ourselves in a cave scripture.
Commentator Alexander mclaren offers this description of the process.
He writes the soul that has to wade through deep waters is always to do it alone.
We have companions and joy but sorrow we have to face by ourselves.
Unless we have Jesus with us in the darkness, we have no one.
It matters not how many people are around you, how how many people are crowding you?
You may be in the center of 1000 people, but you believe you’re hopelessly isolated.
Elijah suffered from this misconception. It was he against the world.
He was firmly convinced that he was the only prophet left who believed in God.
And it took the Lord to remind him that he the creator was still in control and that there were a few 1000 more soldiers in God’s army than the prophet had calculated.
So David feels disoriented and he feels deserted, but he also feels depressed. In verse six.
David says I am brought very low, come to a very sensitive topic for contemporary Christianity.
I’ve actually heard preachers claim that if you’re in a state of depression, you can’t be a Christian, real Christians.
They say don’t experience depression. So my first question for these preachers is whether they’ve read all the Bible or not.
I mean, how are we supposed to approach Elijah who was depressed?
How are we supposed to understand Jonah who was depressed? And what about Moses? He too faced depression.
Then we come to the matter of King David, a man deeply loved by God, a man of profound spiritual experience and wisdom who also grappled with depression throughout his life.
The word David uses for depression interestingly enough is the word for indentation. He applies that condition to his soul.
Therefore, David is saying I am suffering from an indentation in my soul.
I am depressed as a pastor, I’ve occasionally counseled believers in the midst of depression and I know what a heavy burden it is for people to be brought very low.
I’ve known people who have suffered such intense depression that they eventually ended their own lives.
They looked into the future and saw nothing but emptiness and hopelessness and despair, heartfelt expressions of hope or encouragement were no longer enough to reach them life simply didn’t seem worth living and they chose to forfeit the precious gift of life.
If you happen to be in that place right now, as you listen to this message, let me say to you don’t do that.
God has a plan for your life. And what you’re contemplating is not a part of that plan.
There is help for you, even as there was for David.
David felt a depression that may have approached such a zone of desperation, all of his hope and joy were gone.
His thoughts turned inward at one time, the problem had been a simple one.
The king was hunting him down to kill him.
But now David’s plight was something more abstract, something considerably more complex.
David had allowed his circumstances to drive him inward instead of upward and he had come to fall back on his own resources and those resources were now spent the well had run dry.
There was nowhere else for David to turn. He no longer sensed the presence of God in his life.
But did this mean David was no longer a child of God?
Of course not believers do indeed enter the dark cave of depression at times.
And this is particularly true of Godly leaders.
These are men and women who dwell in the world of momentous expectations and great ponderous burdens of responsibility.
They wear the mantle of greatness with unease and quite naturally, great expectations can lead to great depression.
So David is in this cave and he feels disoriented, he feels deserted, he feels depressed and he feels defeated.
Once again, verse six of Psalm 1 42 deliver me from my persecutors for they are stronger than I, they were the better team today.
How, how often have you heard athletes express that sentiment after losing a game or coming up short in a contest?
Lots of times, I’ve often felt it somewhat cruel to force professional athletes to endure press conferences when they lose.
I mean, these men and women put forth incredible effort on the field of play often sacrificing their own bodies in their search for victory.
And when they do win, of course, they enjoy talking about their experiences to journalists and fans afterwards.
But who doesn’t like basking in the glow of victory.
It’s really hard to watch athletes try to grapple with the reality of defeat with cameras and microphones pressed to their faces.
I mean, what can you say when the final score already says it all, what excuses can you offer when no excuses are accepted?
The reality is nobody likes grappling with their own defeat, including David and in the grip of his low spirits.
David cries out to the Lord in verse six, deliver me from my persecutors for they are stronger than I.
He turns his focus to his enemies like a football player on the losing end of the Super Bowl.
He can only say they were the better team David is in a place where he can see nothing but grim prospects.
He’s wearing dark glasses that tint the entire world in shades from gray to black.
He does what most of us do when we’re feeling low, he sits within his cave with a yellow legal pad and proceeds to take inventory of his life.
Placing each element in one or two columns marked good news and bad news.
And when he gets to the bottom line, he takes a look and concludes, I’ve got some bad news and some more bad news.
Nothing good seems to be visible through the dark glasses in a dim cave.
The assets are zero and the liabilities are endless.
One of those itemized listings would have read, my enemies are stronger than I am and you can be sure that’s a man’s depression talking.
David would like to be counting his blessings. If only he knew where they went.
Depression is not the best venue for formulating objective conclusions. Sober reasoning is impossible.
David goes on to compare himself to a man in prison in verse seven.
And so he is, he’s a prisoner of his own perspective.
He has locked himself into the dungeon of despair and thrown away the key.
We can only be thankful to God that he made his escape.
We’ve been going down down into the cave, but now we’re gonna take a journey upward.
We’re gonna see how David defeated his discouragement. There can be no doubt that discouragement defeated David.
There had been a time when he had sent a stone into a giant’s head.
Now, he had encountered a giant that could get into his own head.
But for the people of God, there is never a pit too deep to escape.
There’s never a cave too dark for God’s light to illuminate.
And finally, as the scriptures attest David defeated discouragement, he traveled a path to liberation from the imprisonment of his mind.
He left a map for all of us who follow.
When we feel hopelessly lost in our despair, we simply need to listen to the word of God.
First of all, David verbalized his problems to God. Look back at the beginning of the psalm.
I cry out to the Lord with my voice. Verse one verse five, I cried out to you.
Oh Lord, verse six, attend to my cry.
Perhaps David is a man after God’s own heart because he’s willing to share his own heart with God.
He pours it all out before his father, especially during times of despair and discouragement.
Prayer should be a time of no holes barred straight ahead. Communication with God.
We cut to the root of the problem and we’re not afraid to name names.
And when that happens, we feel a tremendous sense of unburdening ourselves before the most intimate friend imaginable.
God is listening. He cares.
He responds and we can tell him anything at all cast human logic and bureaucratic conventions aside, God has said we are to cast all of our cares upon him, period.
And if we hold back any burden, we short circuit the healing process that he is so eager to bring about within us.
I found an enthusiastic endorsement of that truth in an unlikely place. An airline magazine during a flight.
I was thumbing through the usual pages of advertisements when I came across a little article on a topic that interested me called Journaling.
I went on to read the following. Here’s what it said.
Battling illness and pain with pen and paper may be unorthodox, but it may also spell relief.
People who write for 20 minutes a day about traumatic events, reduce their doctor visits, improve their immune system.
And among arthritis sufferers use less medication, have greater mobility.
Says James W Pen Baker, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin who has conducted studies on the topic.
Why the relief he writes, suppressing negative emotions can weaken the immune system and arouse your fight or flight system churning up blood pressure and heart rate.
Writing about conflict or trauma helps organize the experience and the net effect is that people can move beyond the stressful event.
The author quotes another phd Mark Lamb, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit.
This scholar theorized that the positive results of journaling have something to do with the nature of pain.
Writing about stressful events relieves the emotional part of pain.
That’s when the patient says I can still feel it but doesn’t bother me as much.
It is interesting to me that as science stumbles along in the modern world, it tends to come across truths that are in the word of God that have been there for thousands of years.
This particular article concluded that it’s important for us to honestly express the issues of our lives.
That’s what the Lord has been trying to tell us all along.
If a candid journal can be a healthy thing, how much more an honest prayerful expression can be.
In fact, when I journal, it’s simply my prayers written out in longhand, written out in my computer, I write them out.
I tell God what’s going on in my life.
I started doing that during my bouts with cancer and I discovered the power of expressing what’s going on in your life to God in terms that you would, you would never be embarrassed about to show anyone bring your concerns before the Lord insert Almighty God into the equation of that Mad magazine article with all of its research experts and the effectiveness of what they’re prescribing.
And you will see that God is much better than any journal when you bring your problems to Him in prayer.
When you find yourself within the dark cold walls of the cave, feeling isolated and depressed, aren’t you glad you have a God whose patience has no limits whose love can never be exhausted and whose tender mercies never come to an end?
Aren’t you glad you can write down your thoughts? Lift up your voice and say, Lord here, I’ve expressed it.
This is exactly what I’m feeling and I know I can offer it to you without fear or shame.
When you do that, when you, when you follow that process, God begins the process of recovery.
So the first thing David did was verbalize his problems to God. Then he recognized his presence before God.
He says in verse three, when my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then you knew my path.
David has verbalized his problems before God.
He has unrolled them as if they were a great scroll holding all the secrets of his mind and heart.
And suddenly he makes a startling realization all this time. He has been pouring out his heart.
God was already at work with David on his discouragement every moment, David felt overwhelmed by problems.
God was busy dealing with them. Every second, David despaired over the lack of God’s presence.
God was right there as close as ever.
God knew about David and his depression and every single problem he’d ever had or would have in the future.
And God knows our term for that is omniscient.
It means He knows every detail of your life and your feelings. So David verbalized his problems to God.
Then he recognized that God was present with him. And then he began to realize his provision in God.
He says in verse five, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.
David has remembered he’s praying to the creator of heaven and earth.
Now he begins to rejoice in the provision that God has made for him.
I remember an old preacher who once commented unforgettably on this verse, he said, there’s no living in the land of the living, like living on the living God and the land of the living is not a reference to eternity or heaven.
It’s just a reference to living right now. Aren’t you glad?
The Bible has been written for people who are living in the land of the living.
It’s about so much more than pie in the sky and the sweet by and by the Bible is written for the rough rou routines of life.
The nitty gritty of the here and now it is intended to help those of us who rise early every morning and drive to work and punch the clock to face genuine challenges.
Its pages are filled with real life solutions for real life problems. So David verbalized his problems to God.
He recognized his presence before God and he realized his provision in God.
And then he resumed his praise to God verse seven.
He said, oh God, bring my soul out of prison that I may praise your name.
The righteous shall surround me for you. Shall deal bountifully with me.
David has moved from the depths to the heights in these few verses and he is ready to praise God again.
Prayer will do that for us. We can pray our way right through the pressure.
David began the psalm with a sigh and he’s gonna end it with a song.
We can pray our way right through the sickness.
We can pray our way right through the crisis and the losses and the fears.
And if we will only come before him, honestly, he’ll meet the needs in our lives.
Every one of them, David has traveled from prison to praise.
He recorded the journey in his masterpiece known as Psalm 142.
And I like to imagine that he wrote a sequel.
I enjoy picturing him recording the final word of Psalm 1 42. Then turning the pages of his journal to begin.
Psalm 57. Another psalm written in that cave.
This piece is a teaching Psalm of David when he fled from Saul into the cave.
Most scholars believe that Psalm 57 was written at the same time or in the same setting as Psalm 1 42.
But this one is much more like a song.
It’s closer to the hymns we sing in joyful worship of God. It’s structured in two verses and one chorus.
Here’s the chorus of Psalm 57. Psalm 57 5 be exalted. Oh God above the heavens. Let your glory.
Be above all the earth. We know those, those words. We, we sing those words, don’t we?
And we can just imagine David’s beautiful singing voice.
The first voice to sing so many of these immortal psalms echoing through the cold stony walls of the cave.
A beautiful melody dispersing the darkness in an echo chamber.
It doesn’t take a loud voice to be heard for many miles. Be exalted. Oh God above the heavens.
David begins to sing. Imagine the setting.
The voice is clear and beautiful and soulful as it befits a singer who has known years of deep turmoil.
Nothing but the one voice can be heard in those rocky corridors and then suddenly another voice joins him in unlikely harmony and the duet continues along and just like that one by one, a choir of 400 singers is lifting one mighty choral voice together.
There has never been such a concert in all of history and there may never be another unless it will occur in a Roman colosseum or a, or a German prison camp in a place where music and hope and laughter were thought to have been cast out forever.
It is the music of the miraculous in a cave of exile.
David and his choir pour out a song of praise. Their concert hall is a natural geological sound chamber.
One whose acoustics were designed by God long ago for this very earth shaking despair breaking moment.
The people sing on praising God.
Their voices penetrating the massive stone of the natural ceiling to drift to the very portals of heaven.
And perhaps even the angels stop to listen, be exalted. Oh God above the heavens.
I can almost see it in my mind.
I can feel it in my heart in the midst of his despair, surrounded by the off scouring of the earth.
David begins to realize his hope is in God and his one singular voice begins to pour out his soul to God.
I things so.
Oh, I think so. Yeah.
Oh, things or oh oh I Yeah.
Oh no, no wins on before we say our final goodbye to this week’s worship service.
Let me remind you that in the midst of all of the things we’re experiencing right now, you really need God.
And if you don’t know God in a personal way, if you’ve never received his son, Jesus Christ as your savior, perhaps God has brought you to this place for such a moment.
Maybe the emotions you’re feeling in your heart and soul maybe may be edging into what might be depression.
Maybe these are the things that you’re trying to deal with in your own strength without any help from outside.
I promise you what we’re dealing with right now is a God sized problem and you cannot do it in your own strength.
If you don’t know Jesus Christ, will you receive him?
Will you pray this prayer in your heart, dear God. I need Jesus Christ in my life.
I want to accept him as my savior in this service.
Today, I want to ask Jesus Christ to forgive me of all of my sin and give me the gift of eternal life which he is promised in his word.
Lord Jesus, I believe you are the son of God. I believe you are the risen Christ.
I believe you are the savior of the world.
I want to make a decision today to receive you into my life.
Lord Jesus, come into my life and take up your residence in my heart and guide me through life and especially through these days.
And if you make a decision like that, there’s a place on your screen where you can record that you have prayed to receive Christ.
I hope you will do it.
We have people ready to talk with you and deal with you and help you.
Most of all we want to pray with you.
So what I’m going to do is pray and then Michael is going to sing us out and we’ll be on our way once again, thank you for joining us Shadow Mountain online.
Now, father take the word of God and use it to change our lives.
Bless those who are praying right now and have prayed to receive you as savior.
May this be the beginning of new days for so many people who are listening to this service.
And Lord Jesus Christ get glory to your name and all of this, may your name be praised as our prayer.
And we thank you for another good day in church here at Shadow Mountain in Jesus name.
Amen in Graves Palms.
Don’t sound and say red slime and I months was long but around but we spend a lot.
But now I see Lawrence beret then talk and told by I to you when just little rain.
So I still she no, those in Scotland, France, the sink only pray.
But we.