Video Transcript: Other Biblical Characters

Welcome back to mental health integration. We're going to continue talking this  time about other biblical characters who work through mental health issues.  Now in the last section, we covered Saul and David. We talked about how  they're incredible, how those two are just juxtaposed next to each other. David  looking so different from Saul in the way that they both handle depression. Now  we're going to talk about some other characters in the Bible, because those are  not the only two. There's actually tons of characters in the Bible who talk about  depression, and we're going to start right here with Psalm 42 I always knew this  just because of the song, but Psalm 42 written by the Sons of Korah, and there's a little bit of debate as to who the Sons of Korah were, whether It is around the  time of David, when there were a number of musicians who were sons of Korah, who are around David, or whether it's actually in the captivity, or whether it's  David himself. So either way, looks to me like, well, it's Sons of Korah. It doesn't  say David, so let's jump into the psalm, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 actually make  up one big piece of work. So we're going to treat them as one whole Psalm 42  As the deer pants for streams of water. So my soul pants for you My God. My  soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God? My  tears have been my food day and night. When people say to me all day long,  where is your God? These things I remember, as I pour out my soul how I used  to go to the house of God, under the protection of the mighty one, with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why my soul are you downcast? Why  so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my  Savior and my God. My soul is downcast within me. Therefore I will remember  you from the land of the Jordan heights of Herman from Mountain Mizar Deep  calls to deep and the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have  swept over me by day, the Lord directs his love at night, his songs with me. A  prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?  Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by my enemy, my bones suffer  mortal agony, and my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, where is your  God? Why my soul? Are you so downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put  your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. That's Psalm  42 and we'll break that apart with Psalm 43 in just a moment, I just want to hit  you can see some the agony, the brokenness described here. And he says, My  My tears have been my food day and night. You can see this person, if this is  during the captivity, this is, you know him in Babylon, just weeping, missing his  homeland. There are also some commentators who say this might be during the  time of Absalom, where, you know, a lot of David and his crew are on the run,  trying to save their own lives. Where he's saying, I miss where I was. I'm not me  anymore. I'm so brokenhearted with that we're going to jump into Psalm 43  Psalm 43 vindicate me My God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful  nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. You are my you  God are my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about 

mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Send me your light and your faithful care  lead let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place  where you dwell. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God My joy and my  delight. I will praise you with the lyre, Oh God, my God. Why my soul? Are you  so? Are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. We see over and over. The Psalmist  talk about how this hurts, right? We see that phrase repeated throughout the  song, why my soul so downcast? We also see him reject his former notion of  God, God. Why have you abandoned me? Where are you? Because we see it  just hurts. And as we're walking through some of these other sections, we're  going to see this over and over again. It's not just one or two characters. There's a lot of characters that struggle with depression in the Bible. So let's look at  another one Job 1:13, we're going to walk through a lot of job one now, one day, when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest  brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said the oxen were plowing and  the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and made off with  them. They put your servants to the sword, and I'm the only one who's escaped  to tell you, while he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, the  fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you, while he was still speaking,  another messenger came and said, the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties  and swept down on your king, on your camels, and made off with them. They  put your servants to the sword. I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.  While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, Your sons  and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the older brother's house,  when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four  corners of the house. It collapsed on them, and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you, we're setting up the story of Job. Job, it said  was one of the most righteous people on the planet. And then Satan comes to  God and says, Have you seen Job? I bet he would just, I bet he would disown  you if you just took away what he has. And God says you can do with him what  you want, but don't touch his health. And so Satan destroys his life. And this is  that statement of him destroying his life, and then later he takes his health too.  But interestingly enough, Job stays on believing for a time. Let's look at it. At this Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head, then he fell to the ground in  worship and said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will  depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord  be praised. In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. The  song was made famous, you know, blessed be the name of the Lord, about all  of the loss that Job goes through, and how he still named God and said, I will  still praise God, and I will still believe God, and he is still doing good things,  even though he had gone through an awful, awful, awful situation. But it doesn't 

last forever. In fact, life wears down on Job until he also is suffering, until his  depression really sets in. And see that here, after this Job, opened his mouth  and cursed the day of his birth. This is in Job 3. May the day of my birth perish  and the night that said the boy is conceived. That day, may it turn to darkness,  may God above not care about it, may no light shine on it. May gloom and utter  darkness calm claim it once more, May a cloud settle over it, may blackness  overwhelm it. That night may thick darkness seize it, May it not be included  among the days of the year, nor be entered in any months. May that night be  barren, may no shout of joy be heard in it. May those who curse days curse that  day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan, May its morning stars become  dark, may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn, for it did  not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide the trouble from my eyes. Why did I not perish at birth and die as I came from the womb? Why were the knees to  receive me and the breast that I might be nursed for now, I would be lying down  in peace. I would be asleep and at rest with kings and rulers of the earth who  built for themselves places now lying in ruins, with princes who had gold, who  filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a  stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day. There the wicked  cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest. Captives also enjoy their  ease. They no longer hear the slave's driver shout. The small and the great are  there, and the slaves are freed from their owners. Why is light given to those in  misery, the life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not  come, who search for it more than a hidden treasure, who are filled with  gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man  whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in. For sighing has become my  daily food, my groans pour like water. What I feared has come upon me, what I  dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest, but only turmoil. We see Job here. He has experienced this incredible loss, and after that incredible loss, he immediately says, Blessed be the name of the Lord. But  it continues, and he is worn down through the process. At this point, Satan has  affected him with sores and boils, and it has become too much. He can't handle  the pain anymore, and he's not cursing God, and he's not cursing his family, but  he's saying I don't want to live anymore, and I wish that I had never been born,  and it would be so good if I didn't have to go through this anymore. We can see  Job wish death upon himself, and he doesn't actively attempt suicide or anything like that, but we can see this ideation starting to set in. I wish that I wasn't here. I wish that I was dead. This is too hard. This is too painful. In the case of Job, he  is mourning his entire family. I mean, he lost everything that day, right? He lost  his sons and daughters. He lost his living he lost everything but his family being  just huge, huge loss. And then his wife said, Why don't you turn and curse God?  And he says, No. And now affected with boils, and sitting trying to get rid of  those boils with pot shards and sitting in dust and ashes. He sits and says, it 

would be better if I had not ever been born. I can relate to this. I can relate to  thinking I wish I had never been born. This is so hard and so so painful. And like  we talked about in the section on suicide, this is because there's an acute point  where we can't see that acute pain. Sometimes we just want escape from that  pain. Right? When your finger hurts, all you can think about is my finger hurts so bad. When you have a broken bone. All you can think about is, my broken bone  hurts so bad when you have mental pain. All you can think about is, this hurts so bad, but what you can't see is, well, I take two Tylenol and this is going to be a  little feel better in like an hour, or my broken bone is going to be completely  healed in six weeks. Or in the case of mental pain, this might last a while, but it  doesn't last forever, and I will get better, and I will be able to improve. And it's  that loss of perspective that makes this pain so much harder to deal with. And  we see it all over the place, right? We see that with Job right here. He does not  know that his life will ever get better. He does not know anything except that  right now everything hurts, and he's trying to mourn his entire family, for the  most part, that is lost. So we see that pain broken out over a duration of time. It  creates hopelessness. And I want you to see this, because this isn't like this is,  you know, some person who has lost hope just randomly, Job was said to be the most righteous person on the planet. God said, Have you considered my  servant Job? And in that place, he's the one who's now saying, I wish I never  had to live. I wish I had never been born. Now let's continue. In Numbers, the  rabble with them began to crave other food. This is while the Israelites are in the wilderness. This is the story of Moses and how he is actually struggling with his  own depression setting in because he's dealing with so many of the Israelites for so long. Once again, in Numbers 11, the rabble with them began to crave other  food. And again, the Israelites started wailing and said, If we only had meat to  eat, we remember fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, melons,  leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite. We never see  anything but this manna. The manna was like coriander seed and looked like  resin. The people went around gathering it and then ground it in a hard mill or  crushed it in a mortar. Water, then they cooked it in a pot or made it into loaves,  and it tasted like something made with olive oil when the dew settled on the  camp at night, the manna also came down. Moses heard the people of every  family wailing at the entrance to their tents. The Lord became exceedingly angry, and Moses was troubled. He asked the Lord, why have you brought this trouble  on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of  all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give birth to  them? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms as a nurse carries an infant  to the land you promise on oath to their ancestors, where can I get meat for  these people? They keep wailing to me, give us meat to eat. I cannot carry all  these people by myself. The burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you're  going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me. If I have found favor in your 

eyes, and do not let my face me face my own ruin. We see Moses here, and  he's just overwhelmed by the people. They're screaming, meat, meat, meat.  We've had nothing but manna for months and months and maybe years and  maybe years. And Moses says, I can't take this anymore. These people want  

things all the time, and you put me in a situation that is untenable. You put me in a situation where I am the mediator between me and you, but I don't know how  I'm supposed to mediate between me and you when they want things all the  time and I can't meet their needs. I am powerless in this situation. I don't want to do it anymore. I wish I was just dead. And this, once again, is Moses, who, if you look at the Hebrew manuscripts, are largely considered one of the heroes of  Israel. The Exodus stories is the central story in the Old Testament, because it's  the story of escape from Egypt that built the house of Israel. And here it is, the  person who actually saw God face to face, who met with God every day in his  tent, who followed the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud is saying, this is  completely untenable. I'm so done with this. You can just kill me. Now, once  again, this is not just someone who wants to die because life is hard. This is one of what we would consider like the holiest people in the Bible, right? This is one  of the faith heroes, and he's saying it's too much. And we see this again and  again. It's not just like random people that struggle with depression, it's actually  some of the biggest heroes in the Bible that continue to struggle with depression and even suicidal ideation that continues again, Jeremiah 20:14-18, Cursed be  the day I was born. This sounds familiar. It sounds just like Job. May the day my  mother bore me not be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought me, brought  my father the news who made him very glad, saying, a child is born to you, a  son. May that man be like the towns the Lord overthrew without pity? May he  hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon, for he did not kill me in the  womb, and my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever  come out of that womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame? We seen Jeremiah, and it is in some ways the same as Job. Why do I have to  go through this? Jeremiah is not witnessing his own family die. He is witnessing  Israel be taken into captivity. He's witnessing the Babylonians conquer Israel,  and he is witnessing the people being taken to exile. He is, in fact, one of the  prophets, prophesying as this is about to happen and as it happening, and  which is why he's called The Wailing or weeping prophet. Often is because he's  in the midst of it. He's not telling him a day along the way where this could  happen. He is actually telling him this day when it does happen. And in this he's  saying, I do not want to do this anymore. The Depression set in. I wish I had  never been born. And we see this with depression a lot, right? I just talked about it with my own bipolar disorder. I wish I had not been born. This is too too hard,  too acute. I can't see the end of this. And if we saw the end of it, it might be  easier, but it just lasts so long, right? This keeps going. Now Ahab told Jezebel  everything Elijah had done and how he had killed the prophets with the sword. 

So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, May the gods deal with me. Be it  ever so severely. If by this time tomorrow, I do. Not make your life like one of  them. Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba and  Judah, he left his servant there while he himself went a day's journey into the  wilderness. He came to a broom Bush, sat under it and prayed that he might  die. I have had enough, Lord. He said, Take my life. I am no better than my  ancestors. Then he lay down under the Bush and fell asleep. This is Elijah, one  of the primary prophets of God, and this is after he kills all the prophets of  Jezebel. She had built this entire congregation, this massive group of prophets  who were prophesying, and none of them were prophets of the Lord. And Elijah  puts them all to the test. And when he puts them to the test, he destroys them  all. And Jezebel comes after his life, and having his life sought after, he says,  God, this is too much. Let me just die after this, God meets him with bread and  with water and rest. After a few days, he recovers his strength, and he begins to  move on. These are heroes of the Old Testament. And these aren't the only  people that we see struggle with depression. We see Jesus in the garden  sweating blood, saying, Father, please take this cup from me. We see Paul talk  about how there was all sorts of things that he went through, and how  sometimes they had wished for death because it was just so incredibly terrible.  We see that Judas Iscariot actually dies by suicide. We see Samson actually die by suicide. We see Saul actually take his own sword and run himself through  though he was mortally wounded, like we talked about in the last section. In the  story The Bible doesn't mince it's a history book, right? This is a book about how God interacts with us, and how we experience God in the midst of our whole life. And so the wholeness of life is wrapped up in the Bible, and that includes  depression, that includes suicide, that includes the darkest things that we go  through. And it may not have the verbiage to say this was schizophrenia and it's  just this other problem. This is how it meant. But it's good to know that the  characters in the Bible weren't immune to suffering. In fact, if we want to look at  the Bible, we'd say, wow, people suffer a lot. Maybe we actually have it really,  really good, because we haven't suffered like all those people that we're talking  about in the Bible, because our heroes in the Bible, Joseph ends up as a slave,  and then in Egypt, David ends up being chased his entire life by Saul and then  by Absalom. We see characters all over the Bible go through these intense  sufferings. We see the characters that we just talked about. You see all of these  incredibly hard situations, and people continue trying to work through them, and  sometimes they fail and sometimes they succeed. And if the Bible teaches us  anything, it's that all of life is in bounds for God, that there is nothing out of  bounds. There's nothing that is too big or too dark, there's nothing that he says, I will not come anywhere near your issues because that is just awful, no matter  what you're going through, no matter how hard depression is or any of these  things, it's not too big, and God's in the middle of it. So we will continue to move 

forward, but please keep this in the back your head, that the Bible is full of all  these characters going through all of this stuff. And as we move forward, we're  going to start looking more and more at actually bringing together the theology  with the practical. And this has been kind of separate thus far. We've been  treating them almost as two tracks, but now we're going to start melding the two  of them. We're going to start seeing the two of them meet up and say, Okay,  well, what does this actually mean, and how does this actually work together?  And that is one of my favorite things. So I'm excited to go on this journey with  you. Thanks.