This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a spiritual depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of feeling abandoned by Him.

Preview: Condition Described… Causes Explained… Cure Prescribed.

I.       The Condition Described (vv.1-2) The dark night of the soul occurs when we sense that we are spiritually isolated and abandoned by God.

II.     The Causes Explained… analyze the reasons…

1. Many explanations and reasons for our dark nights of the soul.
2. First, the dark night of the soul can occur due to our making – our unwillingness to let go of some cherished sin. This is why we regularly take time in corporate worship to confess our sins. 
3. Secondly, our bodies can cause spiritual depression. Fatigue… bodily makeup… some of us are more melancholy and prone to depression.
4. Thirdly, Satan can be a cause of depression. He can afflict the body and heap accusations on a sensitive conscience. The discouragement by the devil.

• However, in our passage the causes of the dark night of the soul are two. Each stanza highlights this double cause.
• The seeming absence of God to comfort us (42:3-4). 
• The presence of those who discourage and oppress us. Unbelievers are persecuting him (v.10). They voice his biggest fear – your God has abandoned you. 

III. The Cure Prescribed.

The Psalms serve as a well-stocked medicine cabinet that possesses specific remedies and special cures for the whole range of human need.

1. Generally: Three times… 42:5, 11; 43:5 – Put your hope in God. The cure: Hope in God, for I shall again praise him. “The cure for spiritual depression is neither to look in at our grief, nor back to the past, nor round at our problems, but look upwards to the living God. He is our helper and our God. If we trust in him now, we shall soon have cause to praise him again.”
2. Hope in the Bible is not some vague feeling of desire or personal wish. We hope for what we wish to happen but not necessarily what we expect. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.” Rather, hope is a believing confidence that expects God to act on your behalf. Ps. 27:13…
3. Specifically, how do you strengthen your capacity to hope in the Lord?
4. Talk to yourself about what you know to be true of God. We tend to look inward at our grief and listen to ourselves. Instead, we must talk to ourselves aggressively about who God is and what He’s done. Whom is the Psalmist speaking to in vv.5, 11, and 43:5? ‘Soliloquy’ or ‘preaching to oneself.’  Thus, every Christian must become a preacher to his/her own soul, using the same method that a preacher would use in a sermon. He rebukes himself and puts his hope in God to give him a “garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair” (Is. 61:3).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his book, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, put it this way. The central cause of spiritual depression, he said, “is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.” The right way to do it, he says, is as the psalmist does in Psalm 42 when he says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?” At some point we must take hold of ourselves and act. This is what meditation is all about.

• Actively remember what is true of your God (v. 6). We tend to look around at our problems. Instead, we must look up and remember who God is. Remember in the darkness what God has shown you in the light. He is the living God (v.2), the God of my life (v.8), the LORD (v.8), God my rock (v.9), and my God. 
• There were two characteristics of our God highlighted in the text that help us during the dark nights of the soul: 
• The Lord’s sovereignty (v.7 – your waves and your breakers are gone over me (Jonah 2:3). The waters of affliction will accomplish their beneficial design in my life. “When through the deep waters I call thee to go…”
• The Lord’s love (v.8 – hesed – lovingkindness, He loves me.) Loving loyalty… 

3.   Rejoice that the Lord sends His Word to rescue us (43:3)… Send your light and your truth. 

Illustration: Christian and Hopeful…in Pilgrim’s Progress.

Conclusion:

So when you are depressed, when your soul is downcast, when the waves are breaking over you and it seems as though God has forgotten you, remember that despair and depression do not have the last word. 

There’s a shadow of another suffering saint that falls across the pages of this Psalm. He was a man of sorrows… He was the One who said in the garden: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (Mt. 26.38). The religious leaders mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now… Where is His God? 

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. If you are not a Christian, get hold of this amazing truth… He was rejected so that we could be accepted. He was condemned so that we could be forgiven. He was forsaken so that we might be welcomed to the Father’s feast and into the Father’s presence. My friend, hope in the Lord.