Preach the Gospel to Yourself

by Cooper Taylor

As we looked at Psalm 43 this week, it might actually be most useful to pause here for a moment to go back and read Psalms 42 and 43 together before proceeding, as many scholars believe that these two psalms are actually part of the same manuscript as they seem to form a cohesive picture and together address a common problem: the topic of spiritual depression. This is a term used by several authors over the years to describe the major theme addressed by these psalms and keeping that theme in mind will help provide background to this text.

I think if we’re honest, most or all of us would admit that we have struggled with depression at some point in our lives, perhaps most acutely at some point in the last couple of years. That depression might have been physical or spiritual, or likely both as the one often accompanies the other like an unwanted houseguest. We have felt that loss of joy, a loss of meaning in the things that once sparked life within us, a sort of spiritual doldrums where if we do return to the Scriptures, we find them to be little more than ink on thin paper. Oftentimes, in my own experience, I have neglected to even seek comfort and peace in the Word when I find myself in a season of life like that, perhaps trying to white-knuckle through the daily grind in the hopes that I can will myself into feeling better. If we’re not deceiving ourselves though, we know that our own efforts will neither satisfy nor return life to the desert that has replaced our inner life in those times. And it is in situations like this that the Psalmist speaks to us today and provides two paths forward for us when our spirits are empty.

The first thing and most important the Psalmist does is simply cry out to God. Beginning in Psalm 42 and continuing into 43, the author is transparent before the Lord; the One who knows us best, anyway. He calls out to the Lord, pleads with God to meet him in his sufferings and asks that God deliver him from the oppression is is experiencing, both physical and spiritual. If you happen to be listening to this today in the midst of one of these seasons, congratulations, you have already accomplished the first part of what the Psalmist models for us because by going to the Word, you are in essence crying out to God, and pleading with Him to meet you in your need. When you find yourself oppressed on all sides, do as the Psalmist does and cry out to the Lord, read these Psalms physically out loud as a prayer to God and acknowledge that His presence and love are what most satisfy our deepest longings.

Moving forward but staying on this first path, the Psalmist does something surprising. He expresses profound confidence in the Lord. He voices a reliance on the Lord and in verses 3 and 4 we see him expressing a certainty that he will, “Go to the altar of God, to God of my exceeding joy.” In the midst of the throes of spiritual depression, I have never felt that kind of confidence in anything; usually that’s because I was looking for that confidence in myself and not in the “God of my exceeding joy.” Cry out to God but cry out with confidence that he will meet you in your sufferings, as he has throughout the ages to his children.

The second path the Psalmist models for us is that he speaks to himself and to his own soul directly. In verse 5, the author directly addresses his soul, questioning openly why it is cast down and in turmoil. It is this practice of speaking to our own hearts, which we might most clearly identify as “preaching the gospel to ourselves.” It is a phrase that gets thrown around frequently and can be difficult to understand, but when we read this passage, the Psalmist is guiding us to what it looks like to preach the gospel to our own hearts. He speaks openly to himself, reminding himself to hope in God; to hope in him in the midst of his suffering because he will one day be able to lift his head to praise him again as he did before. Perhaps it’s not something he is able to do in this moment, but in crying out to God and preaching to himself, he is able once again to express that holy confidence that the Lord will deliver him, even from this season of pain.

I want to conclude by sharing a quote on the practice of preaching the gospel to yourself, partly because I want that practice to make sense to us, and partly because it is a vital component of how we follow in the pattern of the Psalmist here: crying out to God, expressing confidence in who God is, and then reminding our own souls of the truths about the Lord directly from the Word of God.

The great author Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes in his book Spiritual Depression about the importance of preaching the gospel to yourself, and it is what I will leave you with today: “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in this psalm] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: “Self, listen for moment, and I will speak to you.”