When it Feels like God is Far

Introduction

Good morning everyone! This morning we will be wrapping our series on the Psalms - Be Real.

Last week Pastor Robby took us through Psalm 139 and helped us to see that God is always present in every facet of our life.

Sometimes, though it doesn’t feel like that. This morning, we’re going to look at Psalm 10.

David has written this Psalm reflecting on a difficult time in his life. He had just slayed the giant in that famous story of his battle with Goliath. In other words, he just had a front row seat to the power of God. Yet, because of the change in his circumstance he now feels that God has hidden himself from him.

If you’re familiar with David’s story you know that he became very popular after he killed Goliath. He was lauded as a the hero of all of Israel. The people shouted in the streets that Saul, the current king of Israel killed 1,000s in battle and David 10,000s. David’s success caused jealousy to rise up in Saul who sent his army out to kill David.

While David was on the run for his life from Saul and his army was the exact context in which David wrote this Psalm.

Psalm 10 1-11

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, “There is no God.” His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.” His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under his tongue are mischief and iniquity. He sits in ambush in the villages; in hiding places he murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless; he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket; he lurks that he may seize the poor; he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net. The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might. He says in his heart, “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

When you are surrounded by injustice, it is normal to feel like God is far away.

Any number of things can make it feel like God has abandoned us. Maybe someone we love is deathly ill or has just recieved a grim diagnosis - that can feel like God is far away. Maybe there has been a death that rocks your faith. If things aren’t going well at work and you may just lose your job - that can feel like God is far. When someone you loved and trusted betrays you - it can feel like God is far away. When you turn on the news and hear of another tragedy - it can feel like God has abandoned us and left us to our own devices. When there is a gross miscarriage of justice - it feels like God is gone for good. Why is that?

It’s because God embodies perfect justice, perfect goodness and he created us to have a sense for how things ought to be. Whenever we as humans sense that good, or love, or justice, or even beauty is absent we begin to have the notion that God is absent.

This is something that leads many away from Christianity. It is difficult for us to wrap our mind around the fact that an infinitely good God could be in control over a seemingly infinitely bad world!

When I was in college I volunteered with the youth group at the church I attended. One of the things I did was co-lead a bible study for high schoolers on Sunday evenings. My co-leader was a woman named Renee. Renee was in her late 20s; she was a journalist documenting the stories of missionaries across the globe. Renee was also one of those people that no one could say anything bad about. She had a smile that could light up a room, she was always encouraging others, and had a contagious sort of kindness that inspired you to be a better person. Renee and her husband, who became a quadriplegic after an accident when he was a teenager, organized an annual handicap accessible day at the lake so that anyone with disabilities could fully enjoy nature together. She was just one of those people who you felt like really understood what it meant to follow Jesus. She was a truly good person.

Renee loved to run triathlons. She ran cross-country and track in college and just in the past few years she began to bike and swim. In April of this year, while riding her bike she was hit by a car and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

When I heard the news I felt like goodness itself was removed from the world. I was crushed with sadness and overwhelmed with confusion. All I could pray was “Where are you God!?”

Like me after the death of my friend, David cries out to God in the midst of his pain and confusion. “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Ps 10:1).

God is powerful, and scripture tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful. We get an image of what happens when we pray in Revelation 8:4–6 “the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them.” The fire that the angel places into the altar represents the purification of the prayers before the result from the prayers are returned to Earth.

So, while it is necessary at times to simply cry out, “God where are you!?” there is reason to call on God to return his presence in a tangible and to rectify the situation. As we read on you will see that this is exactly what David does.

Psalm 10:12-15

“Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”? But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his wickedness to account till you find none.”

Even when God feels absent, he is still powerful.

Remember that at this moment, David is on the run for his life from an entire kingdom’s army. He finds himself sleeping in caves, facing the danger of wild predators and bandits, he is at the mercy of nature. Calling on God this way is a profound act of faith. He knows God is powerful, even though he doesn’t feel like God is there.

I think the most clear picture of this principle is the story of the Israelites escaping slavery from Egypt.

Jewish scholars estimate that the time between the start of Egyptian slavery and the moment in time when the slaves crossed the Red Sea and were free from the Egyptian pursuit was around 90-120 years. We know that for that time the Israelites continued to cry out to God for freedom from their captors.

Imagine how abandoned you might feel by God if you were in the shoes of the Israelites. Imagine if all that you have known your whole life is slavery? And not just that, but it was all that your parents knew and all that your children knew. Yet despite their feeling of abandonment they had faith enough to call out to God and ask for him to intervene. What is God’s response here? Well, we know the rest of the story. Moses was raised up and the Israelites were led to freedom - to a place God had prepared for them. God was doing powerful things despite the seeming abandonment.

During that period of slavery, that century long time of despair, the people continued to call out to God even though it seemed to them to be fruitless. Here is how its put in Exodus 2:23–25 “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”

Hear that final verse again: God saw the people of Israel - and God knew.

When we cry out to God in the midst of feeling abandoned, when we cry out to God when it feels like all good has been taken away from us - he sees us and he knows us. There is something powerful in the fact that in the midst of our suffering God sees us, and it is even greater that God knows us.

God knows our pain in two ways. God knows our pain because he created us. He knows every fiber of our being. But it does not stop there. God intimately knows our pain because God experienced our pain. When God descended onto the earth in the form of a little baby named Jesus, he was not protected from the pains of this life.

When Jesus’ closest friend died, he wept. This is recorded in the story of Lazarus. Of course, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and he knew that he was going to do that even as he grieved his death. Why did he cry then? I imagine it has something to do with the fact that it felt wrong to him. Death was not God’s original plan for humanity, Jesus was sad to see those he loved be deprived of good.

And most of all when Jesus went to the cross and suffered the most unjustly that any human has suffered - he felt it all. Shortly before being arrested, Jesus was in such stress that he began to sweat blood. As his body was broken apart and beaten for our sins he was not spared the pain. And as he was on the cross taking his final breaths - looking down and seeing his mother weep - he felt the same why you and I probably would have felt. Abandoned by God. HIs prayer on the cross was this Matthew 27:46 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

God knows the pains and struggles that you and I go through because he went through them himself.

And despite the fact that he suffered, he did not lose his power. No, the power of God that was moving in the resurrection of Christ - the ultimate image of justice, the thing that communicates to us that all wrongs will be set right and good will be restored the earth - is the same power that is working today.

Psalm 10: 16-18

“The Lord is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land. O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.”

When God feels absent, it is helpful to proclaim what you know to be true.

While our emotions color the lens through which we view reality, they do not change reality itself. In these verses of the Psalm, David calls on God to return to him. He asks God to show up and bring that which has strayed into chaos back into order.

How can he do this? How can he call on a God who just a few moments ago he said was out of view? It’s because David recognizes that what he feels about God in a given moment does not change the truth about who God is.

And the truth is this - even when we don’t feel like God is at work, even when we can’t sense that God is present, even when prayer and worship and going to church feel like a waste of time and energy - God is present. I don’t know the situation that each of you are in, but I do know this: God is there with you, at work for good. Jesus says this very thing in John 5:17 “But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Why is it useful to proclaim the truth we know even if its different than what we feel to be true? Because when we focus solely on our emotions they distort reality to a point where it is unrecognizable.

Are emotions then bad? Not at all! Jesus felt emotions. God created each of use with emotions. But like many things which God gave us, it is our responsibility to be wise with them.

What then can we do when we feel like God is absent?

First, we can follow the pattern of this Psalm

Ask God where he is

Ask God for help

Proclaim in faith what you know to be true

Second, we can follow the lead of Jesus. Jesus focused on the problems other people faced, not his own. When Jesus saw people suffer, he was moved by compassion and took pity on them. Consider this story: Mark 4:35–41 “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Clearly, Jesus, who was napping, was not so concerned about the calamitous storm. Maybe you or I would rolled over and gone back to sleep muttering something like “Hey, I’m God its going to be okay…” Jesus’ approach is different. When faced with other’s fear Jesus goes to literally extraordinary lengths to help calm them.

Third, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. A man once pleaded to Jesus “I believe, help my unbelief!” This seemingly duplicitous appeal is probably where we find ourself. Scripture promises in Hebrew 12 that Jesus is not only the founder, but the perfecter of our faith. This promise carries with it the implication that our faith is not perfect. This is especially true when we think, “God I know you are supposed to be there, but it feels like you’re not.” If we would just add on “Help me to know you are there,” I am confident that God will help us.

In her 1875 book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life Hannah Whitall Smith wrote this: “The chief temptation that meets the soul and assaults at every step of the pathway is feelings. Because we do not feel God has taken us in hand, we cannot believe He has. We put feelings first, faith second and fact last although God’s invariable rule in everything is fact first, faith second and feelings last of all.”

Fact (that is truth) first, faith second, and feelings third. To put feelings only behind fact and faith does not relegate them to a place of unimportance, instead it places them in a place of prominence. We do not ignore our feelings but we process them in prayer and in the relationships we have through the church.

Scripture is our guide to truth. God divinely inspired every word in scripture and the Holy Spirit has carefully guided the church through the process of getting the bible we have today. There can still be a question though: how can we be certain of it’s truth? How can we know that God is king forever and ever, that he is in control, that he will hear the desire of the afflicted and bring strength when we are weak?

After all, sin is the thing that separates us from God and you might know this morning that you are a sinner. Well, through Jesus’ death on the cross he took that which was the punishment due for us. And that is not just limited to whether we go to Heaven or hell, but it is all of the consequences for sin. Because Jesus was abandoned by God on the cross, we will never be abandoned by Him. Because Jesus cried out to God and was not rescued, we can cry out to God and be rescued.

It is a certainty that we will face times in the life where it seems like all the good has been sucked out of this world. But it is just as true that in those times we can cry out to God knowing that he is powerful to rectify the situation. We can have confidence that God has not abandoned us even though it feels like. God is king forever and ever.