5 Things God Can’t Do – 3) God Can’t Abandon you. Ps 22
Gladstone Baptist Church – 16/1/05 pm
(Adapted from “When you Feel Abandoned” – By David Elvery)
We are at the halfway mark of a series looking at 5 things that God Can’t do. We’ve looked at the fact that God can’t lie. It is against his nature. He is truth and if He is to be God, then he has to be truth and tell the truth. He can’t lie because if He did, He wouldn’t be God. Last week we looked at the fact that God can’t want your worst. He is like a perfect Father who wants the very best for you even when you are a spoilt selfish kid who grieves Him and hurts Him time after time after time.
Tonight, I want you to grasp a hold of the third thing God can’t do. He can’t abandon you.
Have any of you ever felt abandoned? When I was growing up, I don’t ever really recall being abandoned as such. But I do recall several times being left places by my parents – by mistake!!! Often this occurred at church when they had driven separate cars and each thought that I was in the other car going home. I don’t think there was any sinister intent in me being left behind – but you never know. It may have just crossed their mind that if I spent more time at church, maybe somehow I’d be a better boy. Maybe they were hoping that I would be adopted into someone else’s family. Thinking back on it, it did happen a little too frequently!!!!
Have you ever watched as your lift drove off down the street? What did you feel – desperation, panic, abandonment. What are you going to do now????
Rejection or abandonment by people is a fairly common experience. Friends leave us, family have feuds, even marriages break down. Those feelings of abandonment often cut deep, cut hard and cut long.
As if that isn’t bad enough, what about being abandoned by God? Have you ever felt that God has left you? You know what I mean – you are in desperate need and he seems to have just abandoned you. It may have been that you were ill or maybe had a friend or a parent or child that was desperately ill and you were crying out to God, asking him for help. Maybe it was a situation at work or school that was just too hard to take - maybe you were in a new school with no friends and just hated it; maybe there is conflict at work and you can not cope and you were praying to God that he would deliver you from that situation, but you heard nothing. You were desperate for an answer and prayed day and night, but to no avail.
What do you do in these situations when God is silent? When you are suffering and he just doesn’t seem to care. He just seems to be on holidays or avoiding you or worse still - maybe he is just a figment of our imagination. Do you ever feel like that?
It doesn’t seem fair does it. I mean Think back to the Old Testament and the people of Israel. God was with them. He delivered them and they praised God for it. They only had to cry out to him and he came running to save them. They only had to trust him and he delivered them. Its all well and good for them, but what about me?
Have you ever thought like this? You feel like you are not even worth enough to worry about. You must be one of the lowest of all people for God not to care for you – you must be scorned and despised. No come to think of it, that is even too important, it is as though you were a worm – not even a human being – not even that important.
How do you feel when this sort of thing happens? Does it shake your faith? It is difficult, because here I am a Christian who trusts in God. I have faith, but what a witness I am turning out to be. … my friends all look at me and laugh - All they see is a person who believes in something that can’t be seen or proven – a person whose prayers are not answered, whose “loving” and “caring” God seems to have abandoned them. They only see me continuing to suffer and snicker at my misplaced trust.
A pre-kindergarten teacher found an exciting new thing for the Sunday School class. The teacher wrote a song about popcorn, taught it to the children, and had them crouch down on the floor to sing it. At appropriate points in the song, all the children would "pop up." The teacher soon had them "popping" all over the classroom.
One day, the popcorn song was in full swing, when the teacher noticed one child remained crouching on the floor while the other children "popped" all over the room. "Why can’t you ’pop like the other children?" The little child replied, "I’m burning in the bottom of the pan."
While the world goes merrily along around us, we can be burning in the bottom of the pan. Where is God when this is all going on? Where is he when we need him the most?
Does he expect us to go it alone? Surely not … isn’t he a sovereign God who brought us into the world and nurtured and protected us throughout our entire life. Surely he doesn’t repay our loyalty with isolation. We need him most when trouble is near us and there is plenty of that …
When faced head on with our biggest problems, they look so scary. Like a herd of bulls encircled around us ready to trample us to smitherines. Or like a pride of roaring lions ready to rip me apart. How do you feel when faced with your suffering, your problems, your anguish alone? Do you feel empty and drained? You are so uptight, your body feels as though it is tied up in knots. Its as if every bone in your body is out of joint. Your heart melts like wax – you don’t have any courage left – it is gone. You just don’t have the energy to keep going, you are ready to die.
I guess most of you can relate to some of this. The pain of suffering is real and can’t be underestimated. The feeling of being abandoned is intense and is not to be belittled and so is the guilt that we are somehow failing in our faith because of our doubts. But let me assure you that you are in good company here because all that I have just said above is a paraphrase of Psalm 22. King David wrote it Why don’t you open it up with me now and we’ll read it together. As we read, you can follow through these feelings and see if you can relate to David.
Ps 22 [Abandonment] My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? 2 [Avoidance] O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. 4 [Cares for others] In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5 They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
6 [Worthless] But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. 7 [Laughed At] All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: 8 “He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”
9 [Lack of Loyalty] Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast. 10 From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
12 [Pressure from Enemies] Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. 13 Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.
14 [Exhausted] I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
DAVID felt Abandoned. Have you ever felt this way? As we were going though it, did it remind you of anyone else? Who else quoted this Psalm? Jesus on the cross. Matt 27:46 tells of Jesus quoting the first verse of this Psalm. JESUS felt abandoned too. He felt rejected and in a real sense he was as he carried the sins of the whole world on his shoulders.
I don’t think we often grasp the consequence of Jesus quoting of this verse. You see, the psalms in the bible were used as hymns in the synagogues. This was why they were written in the first place. Psalm 22 would therefore have been well known by those people standing around the cross and all the imagery of the psalm would have been brought back to their minds. Some may even have started to sing it in their minds. And if they had – what an amazing revelation would have been given for Psalm 22 speaks of Christ’s crucifixion in vivid detail. Listen again to some of it in the light of Jesus on the cross.
The Mocking CROWD: PS 22:7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: "He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." – See Matt 27:41-42
His ENEMIES Pressing In : PS 22:12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. - A picture of Jesus’ enemies hovering around the cross
A Picture of EXHAUSTION : PS 22:14 I am poured out like water,and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax;it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd,and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. – A picture of the exhaustion and suffering of the cross. His joints are pulled apart from hours hanging on the cross. He is dehydrated and thirsty. His heart is broken. He can no longer function as a human being for his bones, heart, strength and tongue fail him.
Attacking DOGS : PS 22:16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. – Dogs was a common name the Jews used for the Gentiles (i.e. the Romans). They pierced Christ’s hands, they divided his clothing among themselves (Matt 27:35)
What a picture of the death of Christ – What a prophecy – accurate, detailed all written 1000 years before the event – before Crucifixion had even been invented. Christ knows what abandonment feels like for he was there – he felt it, he endured it for us. He understands what you are feeling – trust me.
But the FEELING of abandonment is only half of the Psalm. When we examine these words spoken by Jesus on the cross, we often leave it there, believing that that the full meaning of His words were wrapped up in misery and the depression of being abandoned, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Jesus didn’t only quote the first line of this Psalm when He hung on the cross. He also quoted the last line of the psalm. Vs 31 “For He has done it” or literally “It is finished” Jesus was living out ALL this psalm, not just the first half of it.
So what is in the second half of the Psalm I hear you ask? The writer of the Psalm interrupts his grans in Vs 19 with a call of hope “But You, O LORD don’t be far away.” He knows that only God can save him and that his hope rests on God and God alone. So he begins a final urnest prayer to God – a prayer of FAITH and trust that he would deliver him from death, and from his enemies that encircle him. Read vs 19-21.
19 But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver my life from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
And then the mood changes completely from a song of mourning to a song of thanksgiving and praise. Read vs 22-31. The Psalmist sees through the tunnel of despair that he is presently in and sees a light at the end of the tunnel – The light of God. The light of HOPE.
22 I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you. 23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! [Why?] 24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
Even when David felt as though God had totally abandoned Him, David comes to realise that although He feels this way, that is not the case. The FACT is that God has not hidden his face, he has not left us wondering where He is. He is there, in our suffering, in our pain. Because God can’t abandon you – That’s the good news here.
When Moses was dying and he was handing over the reigns to his protégé Joshua. He gave him this commission … (Deut 31: 7-8) “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the LORD swore to their forefathers to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. 8 The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
God was going to be with the people always. He wasn’t going to abandon them half way through their journey. He wasn’t going to leave them in the lurch when the going got tough. No. God loved them too much for that. He was there for them when everything else seemed hopeless. And God is there for us when everything else seems hopeless. When our enemies surround us, when all hope is gone. God is there because God can’t abandon us.
Isaiah wrote … Is 43:1-3 “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. 3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;”
No matter what you are going through today, God is there.
The very last thing Jesus said to us before he returned to heaven after rising from the dead is this … Matt 28:18-20 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in a the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
During the Second World War the US Army was forced to retreat from the Philippines. Some of their soldiers were left behind, and became prisoners of the Japanese. The men called themselves "ghosts", souls unseen by their nation, and were forced on the infamous Bhutan Death March, forced to walk over 70 miles, knowing that those who were slow or weak would be bayoneted by their captors or die from dysentery and lack of water. Those who made it through the march spent the next three years in a hellish prisoner-of-war camp. By early 1945, 513 men were still alive at the Cabanatuan prison camp, but they were giving up hope. The US Army was on its way back, but the POW’s had heard the frightening news that prisoners were being executed as the Japanese retreated from the advancing U.S. Army.
Their wavering hope was however met by one of the most magnificent rescues of wartime history. In an astonishing feat 120 US Army soldiers and 200 Filipino guerrillas outflanked 8000 Japanese soldiers to rescue the POW’s.
Alvie Robbins was one of the rescuers. He describes how he found a prisoner muttering in a darkened corner of his barracks, tears coursing down his face. "I thought we’d been forgotten," the prisoner said.
"No, you’re not forgotten," Robbins said softly. "You’re heroes. We’ve come for you."
Often in life we can start to give up hope, to feel that God has forgotten us, abandoned us to dark and hurtful experiences, but the cross of Christ reminds us, "No, you’re not forgotten" and the resurrection gives us the assurance that some day we too will see our rescuer face to face and be liberated from the distresses of this life. When he returns we too will hear him say, "I’ve come for you."
How do we know that God is with us always? He’s said so and God can’t lie – we learnt that 3 weeks ago. How do we know that God will never abandon us? He said he would always be with us because we are his.
If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Lord tonight, you may well feel abandoned by friends and by God. You don’t feel God’s presence – But I’ve got news for you – He is there. He is waiting for you to reach out and grab his hand. His help, His strength, His comfort, His love is just a prayer away. But you need to reach out and take what He offers.
If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord – you may still feel abandoned by God. David did. His feelings were real – they were intense. But the feelings were not the same as the facts. David felt abandoned, but He knew that in reality that God hadn’t left Him. That God hadn’t deserted Him. That God was walking his journey with him – difficult as it was. Many of you know the poem foot prints. I think it sums up a lot of what we have been talking about tonight …
One night a man had a dream. He dreamed He was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from His life. For each scene He noticed two sets of footprints in the sand. One belonging to Him and the other to the LORD.
When the last scene of His life flashed before Him, He looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of His life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times of His life.
This really bothered Him and He questioned the LORD about it. LORD you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.
The LORD replied, my precious, precious child, I Love you and I would never leave you! During your times of trial and suffering when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.
Are you feeling today that God has abandoned you? Those feelings are real and powerful aren’t they. But the facts are different to the feelings. God can’t abandon you because He loves you too much. God can’t abandon you because He has paid such a high price for you already to leave you. God can’t abandon you because He has promised to be with you to the end.
So hold onto that hope. As we close, I want to play you a song. Sit and look and listen. Drink in the truth of these words in the light of what we’ve learnt tonight.
