TPW 49 Saying Goodbye to Depression's Grip

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And I really believe that the sharp rise in depression in our culture is very much tied to the fact that as human beings created in God's image and designed by God for His purposes and for communion and fellowship with Him, we need a day of rest and a day for public and private worship of the triune
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God. Welcome to the
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Prophets and Witnesses. This is Pastor Patrick Hines here in Kingsport, Tennessee at Redwell Heights Presbyterian Church.
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And it's still white with snow all over the place and the temperature's getting up a little bit so it's starting to melt some of the snow, but there is still so much snow.
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And everyone's been playing in it and having fun, etc. I've gotten stuck in my car in several places, but that's okay.
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I made it to church, so all is well. Today wrapping up the series on depression, its causes and cures, and I hope that this has been beneficial.
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Reading Psalm 126 as the intro to this final wrap -up message, depression is a real issue.
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It's something that God's people have dealt with, biblical authors and biblical characters dealt with these sorts of things.
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So I hope that you'll take some of this practical advice and recognize that you are not alone if you experience terrible sadness at times and go through times of great melancholy or just feel really excessive sorrow or feel overwhelmed by it at times.
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There are things you can do, biblically, to deal with these things, but just remember that God is with us through the fires and through the waters and He never leaves or forsakes us no matter how we might feel.
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So I hope that you will find this to be helpful and edifying. Let's pray together, please.
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Heavenly Father, you've been so gracious to us to speak to us the words of eternal life in the
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Holy Scriptures, and Lord, it is truly a blessing, a blessing we often take far too much for granted that we have
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Bibles in their entirety in our own language, and we pray, Lord, that you would teach us from your
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Word this day, that we would receive the truths of what your Word teaches us with faith and love, lay them up in our hearts, and practice them in our lives.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Please take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 126,
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Psalm 126. This is the third and final sermon on depression and the larger series we're doing dealing with difficult problems.
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Psalm 126 is our scripture reading for this morning. Psalm 126, this is
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God's Word. When the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream, that our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with joyful shouting.
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Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them, the Lord has done great things for us, we are glad.
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Restore our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.
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He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
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May God bless the reading of his infallible Word. Last week we considered that there are extremes that we must seek to avoid as we consider what is causing depression in us or in others.
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We want to avoid concluding ahead of time that the cause is exclusively or almost always just physical or chemical, and therefore must be treated exclusively with drug therapy.
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Remember, this overemphasis on medication in our culture goes hand in hand with the atheistic materialistic evolutionary worldview that dominates people's thinking.
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If all human beings are is matter, just a bunch of atoms banging around, with no souls, no sinful nature, then it makes sense that everything wrong with us would be traceable to mechanical or chemical or physical causes, and would therefore have a medicinal treatment or cure of some kind.
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We must also avoid concluding ahead of time that the cause of depression is exclusively or almost always just sinful or spiritual.
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Our brains, like every other organ in our body, suffer from malfunctions at times, and just as there is no direct sinful cause of those malfunctions, sometimes our brains malfunction and there is no direct sinful cause of it because we're committing sin.
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We also want to avoid extremes of believing that depression is all in people's minds, it's all in their imagination, and that therefore we just need to tell them to snap out of it or come back to reality or something like that.
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Sometimes people really do need and can benefit greatly from medical therapy, from drug therapy.
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Sometimes we need a rebuke of sinful behaviors or thought patterns that we are engaged in, in which we need to repent and turn from those bad behaviors.
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Quite often, excessive sorrow, however, is a combination of both physical and spiritual woes in a person's life.
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If a man had a broken ankle, we wouldn't fault him for using a crutch until his ankle healed and he could walk on it, would we?
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We would not look down upon him for using a crutch. It's the same with medicine, which helps to stabilize the extremely depressed so they can begin to work on correcting their thought patterns and work on correcting the way that they do battle against sin, against lies, and against Satan.
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People who have fallen into a well and injured themselves in that fall first need to be given a rope to grab hold of to get out of that hole, and then you can address their wounds.
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As much as I do believe, and I really do believe our culture is very over -medicated because of the worldview that dominates it, everything is physical and chemical, there is no spirit or soul or other part of reality, then it makes sense that there's a drug to fix everything.
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As much as I think that we are over -medicated, the fact is the science is there that people can really be helped by medicine therapy, not just with their brain, but with many other organs in their bodies.
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People take medicine for heart issues and for kidney issues that are not sin -related. The same thing can help with our brains.
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And often also, there are sinful patterns of behavior that a person needs to be confronted with in order to repent of them.
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We are indeed often our own worst enemies when it comes to the downward spiral of depression.
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So please avoid extreme positions when trying to understand why people are sometimes very, very sad or seem to be in a hole of depression in their lives they can't get out of.
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We also saw last week that depression itself is rarely identical in any two people.
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Just as no two people are exactly alike, no two depressions are exactly alike. We looked at five areas of our lives that are affected by depression, our life situation, or can affect depression, our life situation, our thoughts, our feelings, our bodies, our behavior, and we emphasized the importance, particularly, of the way that we think.
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Remember the Proverbs teach, Proverbs 23, 7, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
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As someone thinks in their heart, so are they. We also emphasize that God's Word teaches us, by example, about very sad authors of scripture, how they battled depression.
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They would do two things. They would recall to their minds the goodness and mercies of God.
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In the midst of their darkness, the darkest parts of their sadness, they would take control of their thoughts and say, this
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I'm going to recall to mind. The faithfulness and the goodness of God, His mercies are new every morning.
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Great is His faithfulness. And secondly, self -confronting with questions, and self -confronting yourself with commands.
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Remember in Psalm 42, why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?
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Those are self -rebukes, self -correcting, and then he commands himself, hope in God, for I shall yet praise
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Him. You see, it's a battle. It's a battle and it's a war. I want to recall to my mind the things that don't make me down, the things
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I have to rejoice in in my life, and I need to confront myself with what's true instead of telling myself things that are false.
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This morning is our final message on depression. We're going to look at the condition and its causes in a bit more detail, as well as some more cures for it.
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Now I've given you this morning, the second longest outline I've ever given you. The longest one was last week.
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That was four pages. This one's only three pages. So let's go ahead and start plowing through this. There's two major headings in that outline.
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The condition and its causes, the condition of depression and its causes, and then we'll look at some of the cures. David Murray, in his excellent book on this called
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Christians Get Depressed Too, he lists five key trigger points that, in God's providence, we all ought to look for in our lives.
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These are the five main things that trigger depression in people. The first thing is stress.
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Let's talk about stress for a moment. When architects design buildings, they know how much weight the load -bearing members of that building, the beams of wood or steel, how much they can hold before they will snap.
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In a way, human beings are a bit like this. We can bear some weight, but a little too much can make us snap.
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At men's breakfast, it's inevitable that someone's plastic fork is going to break and one of the prongs is going to go flying through the air.
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It happens every single time we do that. And that's just the way it is. Those things can only take so much pressure when they're cutting into a piece of sausage before they finally snap.
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Rubber bands are designed to stretch some, but to stretch them too far and they will break. We are a lot like that ourselves.
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When it comes to stress, to hardship, heartache, to family and church crises that we face,
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I've always told God I can handle one at a time. As long as you send them one at a time, that's great.
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It's just like climbing a mountain. If you see one rock falling, what do you do? You get out of the way. Right? But what do you do when an avalanche comes?
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Well, it's all going to hit you. You're going to get hit by something. Stress comes in many different forms, like life events like marriage, moving, losses, bereavement, unemployment, the birth of children, sicknesses, et cetera.
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Sometimes we contribute to our own depression by being unbalanced and unhealthy in the way that we live.
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We work too many hours sometimes. We eat poorly and we don't get enough sleep.
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A very well -known reformed scholar who was visiting the seminary that I attended was asked by a student once, what's the secret to longevity and success in ministry?
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And his answer just floored all of us. He said, get eight hours of sleep every night and eat healthy. I thought it'd be, well, spend five hours in prayer and read 75 chapters of the
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Bible. It was, guys, just be healthy, sleep and eat right.
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And I want us all to remember something. All of us in this room, everyone here, I don't care how old you are or how healthy you feel, all of us have a debt that we got to pay this body.
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You have a body bill. You've got to pay it. If you don't pay your garbage bill at your house, if you don't pay your electric bill and you don't pay the water bill, pretty soon the house stinks from garbage.
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It's freezing because there's no heat and everyone's thirsting to death and stinks because there's no water in the house.
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It's the same thing with your body, folks. Remember the word of God, 1 Corinthians 6 .20. You were bought at a price, therefore glorify
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God in your body and in your spirit. It's not one or the other.
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We need to be balanced. We need to take care of ourselves. You got to pay the body bill or your body will shut off.
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Your body won't work if you don't get adequate sleep, if you don't take good care of it. If we don't eat healthy and we don't get adequate rest, our bodies will revolt and begin to shut down.
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And very often an unhealthy lifestyle on our bodies can bring about a very strong propensity towards depression.
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And if we are not conscientious about taking care of ourselves, I want to put this in perspective, we're breaking the sixth commandment.
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The sixth commandment requires all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life.
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And so we need to take care of ourselves. We need to get adequate sleep. We need to have a decent schedule that we try to maintain.
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God is a God of order and not confusion. If there's no set time to go to bed, no set time to anything or any structure in terms of how you care for yourself, that's not a good thing.
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Your body will begin to revolt against you. So that's the first thing, stress. If we don't eat healthy, we're inviting a weak constitution in ourselves that won't be able to handle much stress.
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We'll have a much stronger tendency to get depressed. The second point is psychology.
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We often lie to ourselves and the enemy of our souls, the devil, lies to us as well. Remember, last week, we looked at those 10 false thought patterns that people who are depressed tend to have.
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When we're depressed and down, this tendency to lie to ourselves, to bear false witness to ourselves, and to believe the lies our enemy tells us grows.
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We feel bad and everything we experience becomes bad. Even neutral or positive things will turn them into something negative.
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We will make falsely negative generalizations about everything we experience and we magnify even small negative experiences in our lives and make them far bigger than they are.
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We see the future as nothing but grim and hopeless and we believe that these dark emotions and feelings are indicators of absolute truth to us and of absolute reality.
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Poor thinking patterns are a huge cause of depression and can contribute greatly to its growing worse in a person.
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If we get used to telling ourselves things that aren't true, we're going to start believing them and acting on them.
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And that's lying. That's bearing false witness. Thirdly, sin.
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Now folks, I think this is obviously one of the biggest ones in our culture today. Now, as I said,
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I'm not going to the extreme position. All depression is just caused by sin, but this is a big problem.
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In our over -medicated society, sadly, many unbelievers in the world today, many unbelievers in America today who feel guilty.
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They feel guilty and rightly so because they know that they're bad people. They really just need the gospel.
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They need to hear about Christ. Instead, they're being treated with pills. You have people going to therapists and talking to them and they'll pay them $200 an hour to tell them that they're okay on the basis of no atonement, no forgiveness, no confession, no repentance, nothing.
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And really those people, more than anything, they need conversion, not antidepressant medications.
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The Puritans were very good at telling the difference between depressions caused by conviction of sin brought on by the spirit of God and depressions that were caused by physical problems in people's lives.
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I remember a caller to the radio program, The White Horse Sin, many years ago. I was listening to a tape of an archived program.
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They were going through the book of Galatians and going through the book of Galatians emphasizing the gospel of a free justification by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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When's the last time you heard that on Christian radio? Isn't that sad? And people were coming to Christ because of these radio programs.
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And this poor woman calls into the show and she tells the host, yeah, I've been seeing a psychologist for years and I've been on all kinds of medications and nothing has helped me.
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She was still down and depressed all the time because her problem was she was under the conviction of God for her sin.
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But then she and God's providence started listening to these radio programs and when she heard that in justification
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God legally transfers the righteousness of Christ to the legal account of the believing sinner and that God at the cross legally transferred the guilt of all his people's sins to his son and punished them there.
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This woman was saved and converted and she just called to share that the gospel of Christ had entirely eradicated her guilt and depression.
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And I remember her saying this to think that God would love me enough to give me his perfect righteousness.
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It was what you could tell she was a brand new Christian to think he would love me enough to give me the perfect righteousness of his son.
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That was a love I had always been missing from my life and to know that I was accepted by God because of Jesus' perfect righteousness given to me as a free gift that made every bit of my sadness and guilt and depression disappear.
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And the host of the program you could tell they were just moved by this. I was moved by it. It was a glorious testimony. Isn't it amazing to think there are people that go to psychotherapists and lay on couches and pour their hearts out and are told on the basis of no gospel, no cross, no shed blood, no justice satisfying cross work that they're okay.
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It's so sad. It's tragic. And yet all the while, while people are willing to do that and pay thousands of dollars to people to tell them they're okay, all the while there's the gospel and there's the
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Father calling out to the masses that if they will repent and turn, he will run down the road to meet them.
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And he will put that robe of his son's righteousness right upon them. Right?
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Oftentimes, unbelievers who are depressed are simply ripe to hear the gospel. They are the white wheat out in the fields.
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They just need to hear it and desperately need to hear it. Another thing about sin that can cause depression is sin in the life of a true believer can be a huge source of depression as well.
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If a believer is holding on to some sin and refuses to repent of it, they will lose their assurance.
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They will lose their joy and they will wallow under the heavy and afflicting hand of their loving heavenly
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Father. Always remember that God is a perfect Father. And when we sin and refuse to stop, he will discipline us for that.
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We all had fathers, hopefully, that disciplined us in some way, but he's perfect about it. He does not let his children go away for long down the path of wickedness and unrighteousness.
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He will whip you until you come back. Remember this passage, Hebrews 12, 6, for whom the
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Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives.
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If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chase him?
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King David was not only a believer, he was one of the most extraordinary believers in the history of the world.
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That man's love for God knew no bounds. He was a man after God's own heart, we're told, and he was a man with a very deep love for his
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God. But while he was in his unrepentant sin, he describes it in these words in Psalm 32.
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When I kept silent, you understand what that phrase means? When I refused to let go of my sin, when
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I refused to hide it, to stop hiding it and to confess it. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long.
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David did not have a moment's peace while he was still in the sin. He says, for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me.
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My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity
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I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
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And then he ends that Psalm with this glorious verse. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
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You see what finally letting go, finally repenting, finally owning all of it. I have done these things.
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I have sinned against God. I have shed innocent blood. I've committed adultery. I did all this. I've sinned against God.
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God, please deal with me according to your loving kindness. Deal with me according to your mercy.
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And then it's be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
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If you are a true believer and have unconfessed or unrepentant sin in your life, why?
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Would you want to continue in this? My bones grew old through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me.
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Why live there? Why live and dwell there? Instead, just by repenting, confessing, and forsaking it, you can have rejoice, you righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
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Sometimes Christians are depressed because they refuse to repent of sin, and God is chastening them.
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God is removing their joy, removing the foundation, removing assurance from them.
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Isn't sin so irrational and foolish? Our response is, no, no, no, I like having my vitality turned into the drought of summer and being miserable instead of having peace and joy in Christ.
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I want to be miserable instead. Why do we do that? That's why we need
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Christ, isn't it? Another massive source of sin -related depression, folks, and this is a big one, is idolatry in particular.
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Idolatry in particular can be a huge trigger point for depression. I want you to understand why this is.
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If a person or a relationship in our lives has taken the place of Christ, you will be depressed soon,
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I promise you. Why? Because a fallible, sinful person can never be to you what only
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God can be. No possession, no achievement, no accomplishment, no human being can ever be to you what only
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God can be for you. Even and especially in marriage, it is only when both husband and wife are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness that they will find happiness and joy in their marriage.
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Ironic, isn't it? Those who seek joy will never have joy. Those who make happiness their number one priority will never be happy.
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Happiness and joy are the natural byproducts of knowing God. They are the natural byproducts of seeking
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Him first, of loving Christ, believing Christ, believing the gospel, being justified by Christ, and knowing
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God. Only then will the idols be broken in our lives, and then life begins to make sense.
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If a husband idolizes his wife, or a wife idolizes her husband, they will always be disappointed with one another.
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No human being, and no relationship, and no achievement, and no possession or position can ever take the place of God in your life.
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And if something has, you're on the fast track to being depressed, because it's not going to satisfy you. I was blessed when
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I was an undergraduate to meet some wonderful Christian men. God brought the right guys in my life at the right time.
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And there was a guy named Rich, he had just a huge influence in my life, he was two years older than me, and just was a wonderful, wonderful Christian man.
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And when I got engaged, he told me something. I would just sit at this coffee table at this place called the front room, and just sit there with a pad of paper in front of me, and just write things down.
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This guy said he was so wonderful to me. He said, first and foremost, he said, Patrick, you need to nurture her walk with God, so she doesn't make an idol of you.
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I thought, that's good, I'm going to remember that one. And same thing on the other side, ladies, girls, women, you need to nurture his walk with Christ, so he doesn't make an idol of you.
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Because when that happens, you're not going to be happy, I promise you. But if you're seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things will be added unto you.
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Oftentimes, if people are depressed, it can be that they've got an idol that's captured too much of their heart.
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A relationship, a possession, a person, something other than Christ is encroaching into their heart that can cause depression.
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Because God hardwired us, he designed us to find that satisfaction, that joy, and that sense of contentment and peace only in him.
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What's so remarkable about living the Christian life, and being married in particular, if you're married, when God is first, and our pursuit of God is the number one priority for us, and Christ has no competitors in our hearts, which obviously is impossible perfectly, but generally speaking, he has no competitors in our hearts, marriage is great.
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It's great. Friendships are great. Relationships are great. Work is fine. And for the most part, all will be well.
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Remember how our Lord taught this to us? You know, the Sermon on the Mount, I think one of the greatest recipes for mental health is the
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Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said so many wonderful things in there. He asked those rhetorical questions.
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Why do you worry? What are you worried about? Next time you take a walk, notice every bird out there. Not a one of them lost a wink of sleep last night wondering if there's going to be worms in the ground today.
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None of them did. Why? Because God provides for them. He feeds them. He takes care of them. Look at the grass.
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Look at the flowers. Look at the trees. Look at how God takes care of them. What are you worried about? Stop.
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He says in Matthew 6, 19, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.
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Folks, if your treasures are here on earth, you're going to be depressed. Where moth and rust destroy, and where everything else destroys too, and betrayal and old age and everything else destroys it, death destroys it, where thieves break in and steal.
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Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
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For where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. If your treasure is here in any form at all, you're on the fast track to being depressed because where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.
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And if your greatest love is in this world somewhere, it's somewhere other than at the right hand of God and the person of Christ, your heart is in grave danger because that which is most important to you will be horribly insecure.
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Having your greatest treasure on earth is entirely unsafe and insecure.
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But if your treasure is Jesus Christ and the blessed glory that awaits the children of God in heaven, your treasure is always safe.
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And where your treasure is, there your heart is. And that's why turmoil and stress and the hardships of raising children and all the things that just are joy destroyers.
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But if the treasure of your soul is at the right hand of God, that's where your heart will be too and your heart will be safe there.
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That's why Paul said in Philippians 4, remember that passage? Don't be anxious about anything, but in all things in prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God and the peace of God which passes understanding will guard your what?
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Your heart. Why? Because your heart's in heaven with Christ. Paul said in 2
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Corinthians 4 .18, the things that are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Sin and idolatry in the heart in particular can be a major trigger point for depression because God designed man in his image to only find his satisfaction and his ultimate treasure in him.
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Fourthly, sickness or injury. David Murray wrote this paragraph, I think it was highly instructive.
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He said this, just as the curse on this world and our bodies can cause mechanical, chemical, and electrical problems in our hearts, our livers, our pancreas, our eyes, and other body parts, so we can also have mechanical, chemical, and electrical problems in our brains, which may affect the way we think and even our personalities.
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Many of us have seen friends or loved ones with brain injuries, brain bleeds, or tumors undergo distressing personality changes.
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Nutritionists have demonstrated how certain foods can affect our moods and thoughts, our feeling and thinking.
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Emotions can also be affected by exhaustion, diabetic hypos, exercise, hormonal changes, gland disorders, high blood pressure, and even sunshine.
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Our brains are extremely complicated organs. I remember when I was an undergrad, I took Psych 101, and I was amazed at what this professor was willing to say.
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She said, basically, what's going on in the brain beats me. Nobody knows. All we know is that certain stuff's going on over here, over here, over here.
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We really don't know exactly how it all works, but they're learning. David Murray also said this, treating a depressed person with medication is often no different from my giving my eight -year -old daughter one of her many daily injections of insulin for diabetes.
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I'm not merely alleviating symptoms, but addressing the cause. Depleted insulin due to dying or dead cells in her pancreas.
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If she is lethargic, weepy, or irrational due to low sugar levels, I do not ask her which of God's commandments she's broken or what issues of meaning or idolatry she has in her life.
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Instead, I pity her, weep for her, and thank God for his gracious provision of medicine for her.
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Depression can be caused by sickness, and sickness can be helped, whether it's brain issues and chemical issues, or issues with our organs, or issues with other parts of our body.
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They can be treated with medicine. As much as I've already said I agree with Jay Adams that our world is over -medicated, as I said last week, because of the evolutionary and materialistic worldview and that view of man which dominates.
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We don't want to be on the pendulum and swing all the way to the other direction and think that all depressions are related to personal sin.
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If we do that, we may find ourselves among the Pharisees, who every time we see anyone who's down, ask, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he's depressed?
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Who sinned, this man or his parents? Even something as simple as the weather patterns that we live in can affect our mood.
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One thing I've noticed about living where we do here in Northeast Tennessee is that because of the mountains, it will sometimes become cloudy and stay cloudy for several days in a row.
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Now, honestly and frankly, that's not something I'm used to, having come from Ohio where it's relatively flat. If the sun doesn't shine for three or four days in a row, it makes people down.
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And I've been down before, and I thought, you know what? I haven't seen the sun in three or four days. One reason for the very high depression rates in the
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Pacific Northwest of our country is the fact that it's cloudy all the time, and it rains there all the time.
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In fact, I interviewed at a church in a place called Scapoose, Oregon, and we were told in doing some research, it rains 190 days a year.
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And thought, do I really wanna live where you don't see the sun and it rains constantly? David Murray says that he pastored a congregation in the
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Scottish Highlands for 12 years, and he noticed two things about this congregation. Number one, he said, they were the godliest people
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I've ever pastored in my life. And number two, more people in that congregation struggle with depression than any other group of believers he'd ever been around.
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And Murray kept looking and looking and looking, what is the sin that's causing this? What is their idolatry issue in their heart?
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Finding none, and seeing their great godliness and their piety to work through those things, he finally figured out that it was because of the very long winters and the months on end with very limited daylight hours.
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There is an appropriately named condition for this, seasonal affective disorder, aka
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SAD. The weather can make us down. You don't see the sun for a long time, it can make us sad.
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Fifthly, sovereignty, and I hope that you'll remember this one. I think this is one of the most important. Sovereignty. Friends, brothers and sisters, we also have to recognize that sometimes, sometimes, it simply pleases
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God that we go through a season of depression. There is a section of the
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Westminster Confession in the chapter on God's providence that positively frightened me the first time I ever read it.
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It says, the most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts.
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That they may be humbled and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself.
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And to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin and for sundry other just and holy ends.
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Hezekiah was one of the godliest kings Judah ever had. He was truly a special man.
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But listen to God's word in 2 Chronicles 32, listen carefully to this. But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up.
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Therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and Jerusalem. Then Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart.
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He and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.
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However, regarding the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, whom they sent to him to inquire about the wonder that was done in the land.
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God withdrew from him in order to test him that he might know all that was in his heart.
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I remember being directed by the larger catechism to that passage and thinking, I thought the scriptures promised that God never leaves or forsakes us.
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Yet Hezekiah did not lose his salvation or anything like that. But God in his sovereign providence and mercy will sometimes remove his restraining presence from us.
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His comforting presence from us in order to show us the depth of our own sin. Can we actually become prideful as Christians and start thinking, you know what?
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I am pretty holy. And I do have my act together. And I am better than people.
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And I've not lived a horrible life. And that's why I'm so blessed. And God will say, here, let me give you a peek of what's really in there.
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Let me leave you for a couple weeks and see how you're doing. I used to think that panic attacks were fake until I had three four years ago.
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Sitting at the table, right over there at the manse. I thought, those things aren't real. They don't happen.
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And next thing you know, I was telling Amy, I think I'm about to die. I think my heart's about to stop. I don't know what's going on.
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It was terrifying. And it was, okay, I hear you, gotcha. Please don't let that happen again.
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God has his own just and praiseworthy purposes in doing those kinds of things. Hezekiah, as godly as he was, he became prideful.
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And so God left him. God sent a thorn into Paul's side, a messenger of Satan, to torment him so that he would not become puffed up with pride.
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Are we really that sinful? Are we really that sinful that we can begin to take Jesus for granted?
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The cross for granted? The favor of God for granted? Yeah, we do. We sure do.
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It's not easy to look at your life and see God's blessing and not start thinking things like I have what
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I have and I am what I am because of my own strength. Remember God warned the people of Israel, when you go into the promised land, your heart's gonna get exalted and you're gonna start thinking, by my own ingenuity, by my own strength and power,
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I have acquired this wealth. And God warned them, no, it's not because of that. It's because I gave it to you. But your heart's gonna get exalted and I'm gonna have to humble you and send you off to the nations.
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And it's pretty amazing. He told them everything they were gonna do wrong and they still did it anyway. All of us would prefer, wouldn't we, to be carried to heaven on flowery beds of ease instead of going there by sailing the bloody seas, as that old hymn says.
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But I want you to remember something. I need to remember something myself. We are the pots and God is the potter.
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And his sovereign voice thunders and echoes across the ages of the centuries.
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Do I not have the right to do as I will with my own things?
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God's absolute sovereignty is truly a stronghold for us to lean upon, even in our moments of darkest pain.
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Even in our moments of darkest pain, God's love surrounds us. He temporarily withdraws from us the sense of his loving presence, the sense of his loving favor, and he does it for good reasons.
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He does it for our good. And this includes seasons of terrible sadness at times.
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But please remember the promise of the word of God. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.
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God does not lay on us or withdraw from us so much that we can't bear it. As someone in this congregation,
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I can't recall who said it, but I remembered it, once wisely told me, God's opinion of what I'm able to bear is quite often a lot more than my own.
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That's very true, and that's why we walk by faith, not by sight. The entire
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Christian life seems to be one giant lesson in learning to trust him and to trust Christ and to trust the sure foundation of his promises in scripture.
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And one of the ways that God will teach us how to do that at times is it will please him to take us through a season of great depression and sadness.
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Okay, so those are some of those points of the causes of depression. Second major heading this morning, the cures.
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The first cures for depression we ought to try are simple corrections to our lifestyles. Remember that depression is manifested in our thoughts and feelings, and many depressed people think their feelings dictate truth to them.
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David Murray said this, when a person feels down, he will often do only what he feels like doing and avoid what he doesn't feel like doing.
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For example, if you are depressed and you don't feel like getting up, you won't. If you don't feel like working, you won't.
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If you don't feel like doing the laundry, you won't. If you don't feel that you wanna drink or eat, you won't.
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If you want to drink or eat to excess, you will. A positive step in recovering from depression is to restore order and discipline in your life, regular and orderly sleeping and eating.
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I can't emphasize how important that is. We are biomechanical machines. You gotta put good fuel in there for it to work right.
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Regular and orderly sleeping, eating, and working patterns will rebuild a sense of usefulness and healthy self -esteem.
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It is also glorifying to God who is a God of order, not of confusion. You know, I talk about my father all the time.
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Again, the man has turned out to be so much smarter now that I'm 42 than when I was 18. But he used to tell me all the time
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I'd get sick when I was working in the summer, working 50 hours a week outside doing landscaping, and then go running around with friends and staying up all night, and then go doing it again the next day, and you'd get the flu or get a cold and everything, and he'd say, son, what do you expect?
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What do you expect to happen? Your body needs nourishment. It needs to sleep, and you're not taking care of it.
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It's gonna shut down on you. And so we need to take care of ourselves. That's one of the first cures.
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Think about your own routine. Do you get enough sleep? How do you eat? Do you get adequate exercise, rest, so on and so forth?
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Perhaps we need a better routine, better sleep schedules, to eat more healthy, to exercise some, to rest, to relax, or reprioritize the way we spend our time.
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Are there idols that we need to destroy in our lives? Work, relationships, television, games, money, reputation, fame, possessions, the way we look, so on and so forth.
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Are prayer and reading the Bible priorities for which time is daily allotted and protected?
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If not, that's a massive problem. Our pursuit of Christ and the feeding of our souls from the bread of the
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Word of God must, must, must be a priority for us. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these other things will be added unto you,
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Jesus taught us. Perhaps we need to correct false thinking patterns. Identify falsehoods that you tell yourself.
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No one really loves me. No one likes me. No one values me. No one would care if I died.
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All my failures thus far in life are a foreshadowing of everything that's ever gonna happen to me in my life. Those things are not true.
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They are false. God gives us every reason to be hopeful about the future. Do not believe those things when they come into your heart, from yourself, or from the enemy of your souls.
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Don't believe them. Also, perhaps, you might need to see a doctor and look into medicine therapy for depression.
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Please listen. If nothing that you do, if no changes you make is helping, and you're finding yourself crashing to a halt, uncontrollably sobbing, having panic attacks regularly, or simply in a black hole of depression, of overwhelming sadness that you just can't seem to get out of, you need to go see a doctor.
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If nothing helps, and it's just spiraling down farther and farther, you need to go see a doctor. And you could be greatly helped by that rope, by the lifeline being thrown down to the well.
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A mild antidepressant of some kind could help pull you out, and then you can start addressing things as your levels are made stable again.
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If you've got known sin in your life, which you've grown accustomed to, committing, or compromising with, turn from it.
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That's probably one of the big sources of your depression. God will turn your vitality into the drought of summer until you do.
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Isn't that a great way of describing depression? My vitality has become the drought of summer. Well, why was
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David feeling that way? Because he would not let go of his sin. Declare war on your sins, folks.
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Don't manage or play games with them. Put them to death, kill them, starve them. Touch not the unclean thing.
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Now I have another cure that I want to emphasize very heavily to you this morning as I think it's one of the major causes of depression.
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And I have not seen this emphasized in anything I've been studying on this issue. Another remedy to depression, which
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I've read one author has suggested it, just in one little throwaway sentence, but it needs to be emphasized more heavily.
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Here it is, you ready? Exodus 20 verse 8, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. There has been a collective forgetting of the
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Sabbath in our country and in the church in our country. Everyone is open for business on Sundays now.
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People, especially young people, are expected, are demanded to work on Sundays all the time or they can forget having a job.
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Or they won't have enough hours. And I want to tell you that is vile and wicked that our culture does that.
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And I really believe that the sharp rise in depression in our culture is very much tied to the fact that as human beings created in God's image and designed by God for his purposes and for communion and fellowship with him, we need a day of rest.
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And a day for public and private worship of the triune God. One of the most beautiful phrases in our confessional standards.
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I just love it, love thinking about it. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified? By a holy resting.
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Couldn't you use some holy rest? It's just a beautiful phrase.
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How does Jesus describe the entrance into heavenly glory in Matthew 25? Enter into your rest.
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What's the Sabbath? It's almost like a day of heaven. We need a day of heaven on earth.
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Is the Sabbath day just like any other day to you? If that's how we treat that glorious gift, we need to repent of that wickedness.
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What is the commandment? Remember the Sabbath day? To keep it holy. To keep it set apart from the other six days.
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It's got to be different from the other six days. The Sabbath day is to be set apart.
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It is to be a day that is different from all other days of the week. During the French Revolution, the
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God -hating atheists tried to eradicate the Sabbath by changing all the months into three 10 -day work weeks, so nobody would know when it was
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Sunday. Nobody would know when it was time for church. Other godless empires have tried to change the work week from 10 to 5 days.
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They did that in Rome. Neither of them worked. They were a disaster. Three 10 -day weeks, nine days working and one day off.
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It overworked people and killed their morale. They were exhausted. They couldn't get anything done. A four -day work week with one day off produced incredible laziness.
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Atheists and God -haters, as much as they would like to remake man in their image, will always be thwarted in their attempts to do so.
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We are hardwired by God to need one day for a holy resting all the day, except so much as to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
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Could it be, folks, that maybe God knows what he's talking about and that people really do need to take one whole day off of work in every stretch of seven days?
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Every business in this area, every business in our country, would be doing better financially if they closed on Sundays and gave all their employees a rest.
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All of them would be making more money, and all their employees would be healthier. All their employees would do better work on the other six days.
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Do you know what the Sabbath day also does? It shows the rest of the world that we're not pagans. It shows the rest of the world that there is a
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God who has set us apart. You see, the pagans that lived around Israel, they lived in constant fear of crop failure and starvation.
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We don't have to live in fear. We, as the people of God, do not need to be afraid of one whole day off work.
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We obey our good and faithful God. Pagans worked without resting because of fear, and then you have this moral miracle, this shining light in the ancient world, the nation of Israel.
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These people, unlike all their counterparts and all the nations around them, they rested one whole day in seven.
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No regular work was done on that day at all by the people, at least when they were obedient.
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And then they spent that day in worship of their loving God who assured them, you don't need to work every day.
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I want you to take a whole day and think about me. A whole day and give your body and your soul rest from all your work.
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Remember the glorious illustration of God's goodness and provision in the manna from heaven? Enough manna was given on the day before the
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Sabbath for them to have enough for two days. It was an ongoing illustration of God's faithfulness. You don't need to keep saying,
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I'm going to give you plenty so you've got some on the day that you're going to take off. God is very, very serious about the
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Sabbath day, folks. And just because our culture and most of the church has forgotten it does not make that commandment go away.
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God's saying to you, remember Sabbath day, keep it sanctified. Yes, the tendency is what?
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Make it like every other day, do whatever you want, do your own pleasure, speak your own words, do whatever you want that day. And God's word is saying, keep it sanctified.
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Keep it set apart so that you can rejuvenate, so that your soul can be nourished, so that your body can rest.
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And I want to challenge all of us, be a leader, not a follower. With the Sabbath, engage in that holy resting all that day.
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Not only does God require this of all men, it is good for us. We need to rest and be rejuvenated, spiritually nourished by the word of God and the fellowship of God's people, by the
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Lord's table and by his wonderful presence. Remember the
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Sabbath day to keep it sanctified, to keep it holy. What is the greatest cure of all?
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In the passage that we read this morning, you see those last two verses, if you're still there in Psalm 126, verses five and six.
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Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
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I was asked a wonderful question by a little girl this past week at Good News Club. We were talking about Jesus in the
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Garden of Gethsemane, and we talked about the crucifixion. And we talked about Jesus's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and his prayers and the great drops of blood that came from his forehead as he was anticipating the wrath of God coming upon him.
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And this little girl raised her hand and said, but why would Jesus be punished when he never sinned or did anything wrong?
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What a great question. And I told her, that's right. Jesus was not punished for his sins.
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But in going to the cross, the punishment for all the lies, all the acts of disobedience, all of our failure to love our neighbor, all of our immorality, all of our failure to love
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God as we should, and all the sins that we've committed were transferred to Jesus's legal account in the sight of God.
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That's why he was punished. And use that book of sins illustration, told the kids, if this book is every single sin
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I've ever committed, and this is me, this is my sin, what's gonna happen if I die like this? And they all know immediately, you're gonna go to hell.
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I said, that's right. I am under God's just condemnation. But Christ in agony anticipated, the
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Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all. And he bore the wrath and the judgment and the punishment.
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He was legally treated by the father as if he was me. That's the answer.
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And because of that, I will open my eyes one day in the very presence of Christ, free from all sin.
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That's the ultimate cure for depression and sadness. Those who sow in tears in this life will reap in joy.
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Jesus in that moment, had the iniquities of all his people legally laid upon his body and soul upon the cross.
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And God the father punished him. It says in Isaiah 53, it was the Lord's good pleasure to crush him.
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He was bruised and crushed. And the stripes for my healing were laid on his back so that I could know the wonderful adopting love of God and be his child forever.
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And Jesus knowing our weakness even gave us this so we'd never forget. How could we forget?
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But he said, I want you to do this in remembrance of me and what I did. There are times in the darkness of depression that even the good news doesn't seem to lift our spirits, but we hold fast to it nevertheless.
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As Psalm 30 verse five says, weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Sometimes that night may seem to last for several nights, several months, or even several years, but there will come a day when our eyes will open at last to the everlasting blessedness of eternal joy and pleasure at the right hand of the
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God who redeemed us by the shed blood of his dear beloved son. We are accepted perfectly, eternally, always and forever in him.
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Remember the gospel, dear people of God. And remember the words of the depressed
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Psalmist who wrote these a thousand years before Jesus was born. Psalm 27, 13.
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I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the
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Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart.
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Wait, I say, on the Lord. And in closing, Job, in the throes of unspeakable depression and sadness, even then the gospel was still his blessed hope.
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He said, I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand at last on the earth. And after my skin is destroyed, this
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I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself.
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And my eyes shall behold and not another how my heart yearns within me.
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That longing to at last be free of sadness, free of anxiety, free of sin, free of all the troubles, all the anxieties, all the things that break our hearts in this world, it will one day be gone forever.
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And you can say with the psalm writers, I would have lost heart, I would have lost heart too, unless I believed that I would see the goodness of the
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Lord in the land of the living. So wait for the Lord. Wait on that final day when
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Jesus returns or when God takes you home and all depression will be gone for good then.
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Lay hold of it now. Keep your eyes focused on it and never look away from it. Let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you for the wonderful comfort that your scriptures, your holy word give to us.
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As Paul said in Romans 15, that everything that's been written was written for our admonition that we through the patience and the comfort of the scriptures would have hope, would have that expectation, that certain expectation that when life is over, there will be no more sadness.
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There truly won't be. There won't even be a memory of it. It will be gone for good and there will be eternal blessedness.
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Lord, we pray that that would sustain us in our seasons of depression. In Christ's name we pray, amen.
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This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Bridwell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m.
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sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .bridwellheightspca
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.org. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.