Lord, Why Did You Leave Me? Series

Psalm 13: 1 – 6

Lord, Why Did You Leave Me?

1 How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? 2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? 3 Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; 4 Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. 5 But I have trusted in Your mercy; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. 6 I will sing to the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

Have you ever asked, "God where are you? I do not know about you but there are times when we feel that God has abandoned us. When we were first saved we were on cloud nine. The Lord blew our minds as we saw situations after situations in which He did something spectacular for and through us. Now, it seems like He Isn’t around. We turn our thoughts inward to discover if we have done some sin that has caused Him to ignore us.

Can you glean from what we have just read that Job is at this place. It isn’t a good place to linger. I want to first start out by looking at someone who was favored by Almighty God because of his love for Him. Yet we find that even such a man whom it seems God had paid special attention to went through the same agony of feeling that God had abandoned him. Turn with me to Psalm 13.

Our Precious Holy Spirit brings out three things that David displays as responses that we make in times like this. We first find David confused as he questions God in verses 1 and 2. Being in extreme turmoil David calls out to our Holy Father in verses 3 and 4 for answers. Then in verses 5 and 6 he concludes in a step of faith.

Four times David asks ‘How long?’It somehow feels like he is wailing. Have you ever experienced this intense anguish? These four cries of ‘how long’ puts the point of God’s delay in four different categories. The first cry of ‘How long?” deals with God’s covenant Name. He asks, ‘How long Yahweh? Will You forget me forever?’ It seems as though God has forgotten me. It seems as though whatever trouble I’m in God not only isn’t answering my prayers but He Is also totally ignoring me. Have you ever felt this way?

We are not unique in experiencing this type of frustration and heartache. In the book of Isaiah chapter 49 we find a great passage that we need to hold on to when it appears that God has forsaken us.

14 But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.” 15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me. 17 Your sons shall make haste; Your destroyers and those who laid you waste shall go away from you. 18 Lift up your eyes, look around and see; All these gather together and come to you. As I live,” says the LORD, “You shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, and bind them on you as a bride does. 19 “For your waste and desolate places, and the land of your destruction, will even now be too small for the inhabitants; And those who swallowed you up will be far away. 20 The children you will have, after you have lost the others, will say again in your ears, ‘the place is too small for me; Give me a place where I may dwell.’ 21 Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me, since I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive, and wandering to and fro? And who has brought these up? There I was, left alone; But these, where were they?’ ” 22 Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I will lift My hand in an oath to the nations, and set up My standard for the peoples; They shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders; 23 Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers; They shall bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and lick up the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD, for they shall not be ashamed who wait for Me.” 24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of the righteous be delivered? 25 But thus says the LORD: “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible be delivered; For I will contend with him who contends with you, and I will save your children. 26 I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine. All flesh shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”