An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Psalm 4:1-11, with the title “God’s Presence,” for Sunday, August 31, 2025. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO:

???DISCUSSION QUESTION???

“Can you recall a specific time when you were really, really thirsty — perhaps more thirsty than you have ever been?”

(You/your group can share your own instances — or also consider opening with the story I use in Point I about John Lloyd Stevens and his men who suffered for two days without water, traveling from Egypt to Mt. Sinai)

This morning we are going to look at the greatest thirst that Man has: our thirst for GOD, from Psalm 42!

CONTEXT:

This week we finish our study on Psalms this quarter with Psalm 42.  For context, Psalm 41 ended with the words: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen & Amen.” It sounds like the end of something — and it IS: it concludes what the Bible calls “Book 1” of the Psalms. If you look just over Psalm 42 in your Bible it should say “Book 2.”

As I’ve briefly mentioned before, we aren’t really clear today on the meaning or purpose of there being 5 “books” in Psalms. According to the Midrash, an ancient Jewish commentary, Moses gave Israel the 5 books of the Torah/Law, and David gave 5 books of Psalms to correspond to them. (Keil & Delitzsch)

But it’s difficult for us to see today WHY the Psalms divided into 5 books, and how, if any, the content varies between the books.

Book 2 ends with another blessing, followed by :20, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Many scholars have indicated that in the first 72 Psalms there seems to be a higher concentration of Davidic Psalms. And then in the last 3 books, while there are still some Psalms from David, there are more from other authors: Asaph, Moses, etc. SO the bottom line is, the “5 Books” don’t seem to “divide up” neatly in any way that we have been able to decipher. Maybe one day one of us will figure it out! But Psalm 42 does start “Book 2” of the Psalms — whatever that means …

THEN we need to understand the immediate context of Psalm 42 in relation to the next Psalm, Psalm 43. They are very similar, almost “going together” (some have suggested they were actually once one Psalm — of course I believe we have it just as God intended. But that just goes to show how much in common they have, that some think they go together.)

— Both use the expression “Why do I go mourning …” (42:9 and 43:2)

— and “Why are you in despair O my soul” is in both 42:5 & :11, as well as 43:5

So these two Psalms do have a lot in common.

Then something from the historical note in Psalm 42 (which is part of the Hebrew text) give us an important spiritual life application: “For the choir director. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.” Many of the Psalms are written for the choir director to lead the people in worship; we are uncertain about the meaning of “Maskil,” many believe it means a “teaching Psalm.”

But it is significant WHO it says authored this Psalm: “the sons of Korah.” The significance of this, is that in Numbers 16, Korah was a leader of the 250 priests who rebelled against Moses. God judged him and had him swallowed up alive by the ground! So Korah was an “infamous” person in Israel, like Judas or Hitler might be to us today — you wouldn’t really want to name your baby after him! And you know how people often sadly “brand” other people as being from “that family”— they are considered tainted by association because of their family history.

So how significant — and instructive to us — that “the sons of Korah” were not “branded” by God as unusable people, just because of their father’s sin. Rather God still used them — even to write Psalms for His word! The sons of Korah wrote 11 Psalms: Psalm 42 here, then 44-49, and then 84-85, and 87-88. So 11 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible were written by “the sons of Korah,” who didn’t have a good family history/background — but God still used them.

I think this point is worth mentioning, because have people in our classes who may have come from a “less than desirable” background, or family heritage. But this gives us all hope: God can overcome that. He can still take us and use us — just like He did “the sons of Korah”!  And what He inspired them to write is one of the most-loved Psalms in the whole Bible, Psalm 42: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” 

OUTLINE

I.  Thirsty For God (:1-2)

II. The Thirsty Situation (:3-4)

III. The Thirsty Preaches to Himself (:5)

IV. The Thirsty Prays (:6-10)

V.  The Thirsty Hopes (:11)

TEXT:  Psalm 42:1-11

I. Thirsty For God (:1-2)

:1 “As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and [d]appear before God?”

Psalm 42:1 starts out with the famous verse: “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for You, O God.”

Of course the picture here is of the deer who is so thirsty, that he pants for water — and the Psalmist says, that is how my SOUL thirsts for GOD.

We ALL know what it like to be thirsty. Next to oxygen to breathe, water is the most necessary thing we have to have in order to live. And if we don’t get it, we are desperate for it.

John Lloyd Stevens lived in the 1800s and was one of the first modern explorers of Egypt & the Holy Land. At one point he had a group of Arabs guiding him from Cairo, Egypt, to visit Mt. Sinai. Unfortunately, the skins of water they’d brought with them were contaminated, and they had to pour the water out. But they still had a ways to go to get to water. He said “for two days we suffered for want of water.” Finally their guide told them they were close to water, and everyone was relieved. But soon the guide looked at some more marks on the land and said, No, we are still 3 hours away from water!  Stevens later wrote:

“For men who had already been suffering for some time, the prolongation of such thirst was by no means pleasant, During those three hours I thought of nothing but water. Rivers were floating through my imagination, and, while moving slowly upon my (camel), with the hot sun beating upon my head, I wiped the sweat from my face, and thought upon the frosty Caucasus (mountains); and when, after traveling an hour aside from the main track, through an opening in the mountains, we saw a single palm tree shading a fountain, our progress was gradually accelerated, until, as we approached, we broke into a run, and dashing through the sand, and without much respect of persons, all threw ourselves upon the fountain. If any of my friends at home could have seen me then, they would laughed to see me scrambling among a party of Arabs for a place around a fountain, all prostrate on the ground, with our heads together, for a moment raising them to look gravely at each other while we paused for breath, and then burying our noses again in the delicious water.”

It’s not hard to picture that, is it? We’ve all had times when we were really, really thirsty for water, and were so glad to get it.  THAT is what the Psalmist is describing here: he is SO thirsty — except that his thirst here is not for water, it is for GOD! 

He says in :2, “My soul thirsts for GOD, for the living GOD, when shall I come and appear before GOD?”

Do you see that THREE-FOLD emphasis there: “GOD … the Living GOD … when shall I come and appear before GOD” GOD/GOD/GOD!

He’s really emphasizing that GOD is the answer to our thirst. HE, and HE ONLY is the One we really need to satisfy us.

— Augustine of Hippo, North Africa, who lived about 300 A.D., wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

— Pascal was a French mathematician and scientist, who made many contributions to society, but one thing he worked on was the nature of a vacuum, an empty space. And being a Christian, he applied that to our spiritual nature, and he wrote:

“What else does this craving (that each of us has), and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

Augustine and Pascal are both saying in different words the same thing that Psalm 42 says here: ONLY GOD CAN SATISFY OUR SOUL. Like Pascal wrote, we “try in vain to fill (that vacuum) with everything around” but it doesn’t work. Only God is the true “water” our soul is thirsting for.

Of course that is ultimately found in Jesus Christ, who said in John 7:38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” Jesus forgives the sin that separated us from God and sends the Spirit of God into our hearts so we can know Him and regain the “true happiness” Pascal wrote about that we lost when we sinned, and have our “thirst” for God satisfied when we worship and acknowledge His presence. 

So first we all need to make sure we have established our connection with God through Christ. Then once we have, we need to purposefully SEEK HIM every day, and “drink” from the well of His presence in worship, prayer, and His word, and experience the satisfaction He has to give us. 

We know we NEED water every day to live — and so many of us discipline ourselves to drink so much water every day.  We may make a goal to drink so many glasses of water, or carry around a jug of water with so many ounces in it, that we have to drink by the end of the day, etc. — because we KNOW how much we need it.

In the same way, we need to realize WE NEED GOD EVERY DAY too — even more than we need water! So let’s make sure that we make time for Him. Start off the day with Him, in His word & prayer. I began this morning by drinking a glass of water because I knew I needed it. And I also started off the day reading and quoting Psalms, and singing and praying to God, because I knew I needed that even MORE than I needed the water!  

Unfortunately, too many Christians act like we don’t need God. We don’t make time for Him every day. We don’t “drink” from His presence daily. Let’s realize: we need God even more than we need water! And let’s come to Him every day and all day — and let Him satisfy our soul’s thirst for Him. “God – God – God” he says. It is GOD we are all thirsting for.

II. The Thirsty Situation

:3 “My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

4 These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.”

— “My tears have been my food day and night” — he’s been crying so much that he feels like all he has to eat is his tears!

— “While they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” So it’s not just a “circumstance” he’s in; there are some PEOPLE who are actively opposing him. And these are NOT godly people; in fact they are taunting him in his faith, saying: “Where is your God?”

That’s hard. It’s like when Jesus was on the cross, and they taunted Him: “Let Him deliver Him now if He takes pleasure in Him, for He said ‘I am the Son of God.’” It’s bad enough to go through something hard; it’s even worse when someone is taunting you and rubbing your face in it! Evidently that’s what was happening to him here.  

— Then :4 is what I call “one of the saddest verses in the Bible”: “These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God.”  The key phrase here is: “I USED to.” Here he says: I USED TO lead the people to the house of God to worship — but NOW he was not. WHY he was not, it doesn’t specifically say. Maybe it was due to his own slacking off. OR it MIGHT be, just reading between the lines, that his enemies were somehow keeping him from worshiping at the house of God. In :9 he asks, “Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” So maybe his enemies had caused his separation from God. We don’t really know. 

But we DO all probably know the feeling he expresses here, that I USED to be closer to God than I am now; that I USED to do some things that I am not doing now.   “I USED TO” are some of the saddest/worst words a Christian can say:

— “I used to go to church every Sunday”

— “I used to read my Bible every day”

— “I used to spend a lot of time in prayer”

— “I used to witness to people”

— “I used to teach a class”

— “I used to serve;” “I used to ….” SO many things.

???DISCUSSION/APPLICATION??? 

You might consider asking your group: “Is there something you ‘used to do’ in your Christian life, that God is calling you back to today?”

The bottom line is, we all have “ups and downs” in our Christian life, what C.S. Lewis called “undulations.” We have times when we feel “thirsty,” when we are discouraged, and/or need to get back closer to God than we are now. In those times, we need to do what the Psalmist does here in the next verse:

III. The Thirsty “Preaches to Himself”

:5 “Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.”

The writer isn’t talking to GOD here, is he? No, he’s talking to himself; to his own soul. The Bible has a number of examples of this:

— Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul …” David’s not speaking to God there; he’s speaking to HIMSELF. He is telling his own soul: “You need to bless the Lord, soul!”

— Psalm 42 is doing that same thing here:“Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God …”.  He’s kind of “giving himself a spiritual ‘pep talk.’” 

??? DISCUSSION QUESTION???

Do you ever talk to yourself??? (Anyone admit to that?!) What are some of the things you say when you talk to yourself?”

(Sometimes I’ll stop and suddenly say: “What are you doing?” or “Why am I doing that?!”)

HERE the Psalmist is talking to his own soul, and he gives himself a good, “spiritual” pep talk:  “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, for the help of His presence.” This is a good thing for us to do. The Psalmist does it here and in other places, and we can benefit from it too. Sometimes we need to “speak to our own soul.” 

I’ve mentioned before how Jerry Bridges famously said we need to “preach the gospel to ourselves every day;” that every day we need to remind ourselves that we are sinners, but that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and that our hope is in HIM and what He did for us. Every day we need that reminder; we need to “preach the gospel to ourselves” every day.

And we also need to “preach” other things to ourselves too: 

— Like David in Psalm 103:1 we can say, “Bless the LORD, O my soul” and tell our own soul: you need to bless the Lord! You need to make sure you don’t forget His many benefits! 

— Like the Psalmist here, when we’re discouraged we may need to say: “Why are you in despair, O my soul … hope in God!” 

Sometimes like here in Psalm 42, we need to “preach to ourself.”  I’ve had several times in my own life when I got good and fed up with myself, with what I was thinking, or worrying about, or doing, and literally looked in the mirror and started preaching to myself!  

That’s what the writer is doing here in Psalm 42; he’s preaching to himself. And we can benefit from doing that sometimes too.

IV. The Thirsty Prays (:6-10)

:6 “O my God, my soul is [a]in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the [b]peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.

8 The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life.” 9 I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning [m]because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10  As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

Now he basically says the same thing he did — only now he’s taking it directly to God. And that’s even better. As we saw in the first verses, we need God more than anything else. “Take it to the Lord in prayer”! That’s what he does here, and that’s what we need to do as well. Sometimes we tell everybody about our situation except God! So don’t “just” preach to yourself, though that’s good; but take it directly to God in prayer.

The situation he describes here in :6 seems to be that he is by the Jordan River, and Mount Hermon. He also mentions “Mt. Mizar;” we don’t know today where Mt. Mizar is; but what we call “Mt. Hermon” is actually a whole range of mountains, so Mt. Mizar may be one of the mountains in that range. 

When he says “All your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me,” it sounds like he’s watching the waterfall in the mountain, and see the waters in their tumult at the bottom — and it reminds him of how God is “working him over” like that spiritually right now! NOTICE he says, “YOUR breakers” and “YOUR waves” — so these things are from God.

It is both interesting and instructive that this same :7 is quoted by Jonah when he’s in the belly of the great fish in Jonah 2:3. So God was working JONAH over then, just like He evidently was the Psalmist here in Psalm 42!

Many of us know what it is like to be “worked over” by God like that. I once had a woman come to my office, and she’d had a bad attitude about someone, and I knew it. In fact I had been praying for her about that. She told me: “Bro. Shawn, God has been tearing me up one side and down the other!” 

Many of us know that same feeling! Of course God is doing it for our good, to refine us and purify us, and prepare for fellowship with Him and for the plans He has for us. But most of us are familiar with what Psalm 42 is describing here. 

Then in :8 he makes a comment about his prayer: “The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; and His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.”  He’s confident that God will hear his prayer, and will be with him. I love that expression: “His song will be with me in the night.” Often it’s late at night, or in the middle of the night, when our problems seem to be the worst — but he says: “His song will be with me in the night.” Even in those midnight hours, we can turn to God in prayer, and He will put songs on our heart. How many Christians have leaned on the songs of God in their darkest hours?  

— In Acts 16 Paul & Silas were in a dark place, cast into prison in a foreign land. It doesn’t get much darker than that. But Acts 16:25 says: “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God.” He gave them songs in the night!

— Not long ago I read about a Scottish Christian about 300 years ago, who was arrested for his faith, and was being led to die — but he sang a Psalm as he went. God’s song was with him in the night.

And His songs can be with us in our dark hours too — if we make sure to turn to Him in those times. Turn to God in prayer. Make sure you learn Psalms and sons you can sing to Him. I keep a hymnal by my chair and often sing them in my prayer times. We need His songs in the night — and in the day —really all the time! Singing to the Lord is some of the best praying we can do, as we go through those “thirsty” times in our lives. 

— In :9 he continues his prayer, kind of “feeling sorry for himself”: “I will say to God my rock, ‘Why have You forgotten me?’ Why do I do mourning because of the oppression of the enemy (so again it looks like his enemies are the cause of him being away). In :10 he repeats how his adversaries “say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” The important thing is, he’s bringing his problem back to God, where he needs to be bringing it, in prayer.  

V. The Thirsty Hopes (:11)

Verse 11 closes the Psalm by repeating :5 ALMOST word-for-word, but not quite — and the difference is important. He says: “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him” — thus far the verse is just the same, but then he closes it a bit differently: “The help of my countenance and My God.”

— First of all, I think it’s interesting that he repeats this same lament he had in :5. Because you don’t usually just deal with your problems just once, do you? Rarely do you just quote a verse or say a prayer and it’s gone. No, that worry or that situation comes back to you again & again, and you toss it over and over in your mind! That’s what’s happening to him here too. Now he’s back in “despair” again: “Why are you in despair, O my soul?” He’s still wrestling with it. But to his credit, when it comes back up again, he turns back to God again too: “Why are you in despair, O my soul? … Hope in God!”  So at least he does the right thing with his problem, he keeps bringing it back to God. So this is a great model for us. Don’t give in; fight the spiritual battle; KEEP ON bringing your problems and worries to the Lord. 

— Secondly he then adds this new phrase: “The help of my countenance, and my God.” TWO important things here:

1) He says God is “the help of my countenance.” When we are going through hard times, it often shows on our face. You can often tell when someone is sad, or worried about something — you can just see it on their face. But he says God is going to be “the help of my countenance.” He believes that GOD will change the expression of his face, from sad to glad. It’s an expression of his hope in God. God’s going to help me! I’ll be smiling soon!

2) Secondly, he concludes the Psalm by saying: “And my God.” There’s not many better ways to close a prayer than that — especially when you are struggling like he is. Call Him “My God.” In our worst times, one of the most important things we can remember is that He is “OUR GOD.” When Jesus was suffering on the cross He said: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus was experiencing the single most difficult trial in all history when He said that, as He bore our sins in His body on the cross — but He still called Him, “My God.”  

We need to remember that too. Even in our saddest, worst, most difficult times, Yahweh is OUR GOD, so let’s remind ourselves of that, like the Psalmist does here — preach to ourselves when we need to! — and especially keep praying and turning to OUR GOD, whose song will be with us, even in “the night,” and who always will satisfy the thirst of our soul. As Psalm 107:9 says “He satisfies the thirsty soul, and the hungry soul He has filled with what is good”!

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