Psalm 42:11; Daniel 6:26
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
For he is the living God, and steadfast for ever.
GEORGE MÜLLER (1805-1898): Is there ever any reason to be downcast?
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): It cannot be doubted but that temporal afflictions will produce a very great dejection of mind: for though sometimes grace will enable a person to triumph over them as of small consequence, yet more frequently our frail nature is left to feel its weakness: and the effect of grace is, to reconcile us to the dispensations of Providence, and to make them work for our good: still however, though we are saints, we cease not to be men: and it often happens, that heavy and accumulated troubles will so weaken the animal frame, as ultimately to enfeeble the mind also, and to render it susceptible of fears.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): “Why art thou disquieted within me?” This may be taken as an enquiring question: Let the cause of this uneasiness be duly weighed. Our disquietudes would in many cases vanish before a strict scrutiny into the grounds and reasons of them. “Why am I cast down? Is there a cause, a real cause?
GEORGE MÜLLER: Actually, there are two reasons, but only two. If we were still unbelievers, we would have a reason to be downcast; or if we have been converted but continue to live in sin, we are downcast as a consequence. Except for these two conditions, there is never a reason to be downcast, for everything else may be brought to God “by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,” Philippians 4:6.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): The grand remedy for all unbelieving fears is simply to fix the eye upon the living God: thus the heart is raised above the difficulties whatever they may be.
JOHN COLLINGES (1623-1690): Consider but this—how much there is of God in the affliction. Came it not without God’s knowledge? Why art thou troubled, then? Thy Father knowing of it would have stopped its course if it had been best for thee. Came it not without His command? Why art thou troubled? It is the cup that thy Father hath given thee, and wilt thou not drink it? Is it thy Father’s will that thou shouldest suffer, and shall it be thy humour to rebel? Why dost thou murmur, as if he had done thee wrong? Is it in measure, ordered with care, by the physician’s hand? And a little draught, proportioned to thy strength; measured out according to the proportion of strength and comfort that He intends to measure thee out, to bear it withal? Why art thou cast down? Why art thou disquieted? Is the end and fruit of it but to make thee white, and purify thee? To purge thy sin past, and to prevent it for the time to come? Lift up thy head, Christian! say to thy soul, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?” Meditate what there is of God in the cause of thy disquietments.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): If God be thine, why this dejection? God is faithful. God is love. Therefore there is room and reason for hope.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): “Hope thou in God.” I shall show thee what a powerful influence hope hath on the Christian in affliction, and how. First, it stills and silences him under affliction. It keeps the king’s peace in the heart, which else would soon be in an uproar. A hopeless soul is clamorous: one while it charges God, another while it reviles His instruments. It cannot long rest, and no wonder, when hope is not there. Hope hath a rare art in stilling a froward spirit, when nothing else can; as the mother can make the crying child quiet by laying it to the breast, when the rod makes it cry worse. This way David took, and found it effectual; when his soul was unquiet by reason of his present affliction, he lays it to the breast of the promise: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God.” And here his soul sweetly sleeps, as the child with the breast in his mouth; and that this was his usual way, we may think by the frequent instances we find; thrice we find him taking this course in two Psalms, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43.
GEORGE MÜLLER: We find the expression “the living God ” many times in the Scriptures, and yet it is the very thing we are so prone to forget. We know it is written “the living God,” but in our daily life there is almost nothing we lose sight of as often as the fact that God is the living God. We forget that He is now exactly what He was three or four thousand years ago, that He has the same sovereign power, and that He extends the same gracious love toward those who love and serve Him. We overlook the fact that He will do for us now what He did thousands of years ago for others, simply because He is the unchanging, living God. What a great reason to confide in Him, and in our darkest moments to never lose sight of the fact that He is still, and ever will be, the living God.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): The Lord—He, and He only, is the true living God, Jeremiah 10:10—Not a dull, dead, senseless God, such as the gods of the nations are; but a God of life, and power, and activity to watch over you, and work for you.
CHARLES SIMEON: Expect deliverance from Him—To what end has God given us such “exceeding great and precious promises,” 2 Peter 1:4, if we do not rest upon them, and expect their accomplishment? The refiner does not put his vessels into the furnace, to leave them there; but to take them out again when they are fitted for his use. And it is to purify us as “vessels of honour,” that God subjects us to the fiery trial. We should say therefore with Job, “When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold,” Job 23:10. It was this expectation that supported David: “I had fainted,” says he, “unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” Psalm 27:13.
HUDSON TAYLOR (1832-1905): There is a living God. He has spoken in His Word. He means just what He says and will do all that He has promised.
C. H. MACKINTOSH: He knows all things, and can do all things. Nothing can escape His vigilant eye; nothing is beyond His omnipotent hand. Hence, therefore, all those who can truly say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” may add, without hesitancy or reserve, “I shall not want.” The soul that is, in truth and reality, leaning on the arm of the living God can never—shall never, want any good thing.
GEORGE MÜLLER: And through all our times of need, difficulty, and trials, we may exercise faith in the power and love of God. Put your hope in God. Please remember there is never a time when we cannot hope in God, whatever our need or however great our difficulty may be—even when our situation appears to be impossible, our work is to “hope in God.” Our hope will not be in vain, and in the Lord’s own timing, help will come.
