sermonette: He Will Never Forsake Us!

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 09-Apr-94; Sermon #123s; 16 minutes

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The song that we just sang has somewhat to do with the sermonette that I am going to give today as it talks about a man who was in certain distress and the only one he could turn to was God.

We have just passed through a season of the year (speaking about winter time) that we within the church traditionally get discouraged. And during the days leading up to Passover and even through the Days of Unleavened Bread, and really any time of the year, we can get distracted and discouraged. Like I said, discouragement is not confined to just these two times—winter and the time that leads up to the holy days.

Now, Satan is out there, he is playing his tricks. He is working on our attitudes. He is trying to make us impatient. He is trying to get us to do something foolish, trying to somehow derail us from the road that we are on, I should say the railroad that we are on, the track. He is trying to get us off the track. (I do not want to mix my metaphors there.)

And too often he succeeds. And it is not because we are weak or anything like that. It may be just because we are discouraged or maybe we are not paying complete attention to our spiritual lives. There is something there that is bugging us or something, like my family, we have been looking for a house the last couple of months and that has been a real sense of distraction to us. It just gets our minds off of what we should be doing and thinking about. But that means that we have also got to do our part to keep our minds focused during times like that.

On top of that, maybe what he does is he tries to make us feel that God has deserted us or that God has quit answering our prayers, that He is not doing what we feel that He should be doing, that He has just forgotten us or forsaken us for some reason.

So my questions today are: Will God forsake us? Does He ever forget us? I think what we need to do is take a look at what God thinks about each one of you and see that He promises that He will never leave us or forsake us.

Let us first go to Isaiah 49, verses 14-16. My New King James here has as a title over this section:. God Will Remember Zion.

Isaiah 49:14 But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me."

We know that Zion in the Bible is often seen as a type of the church and the church here, if that is indeed what Isaiah is speaking of, the church feels like God has turned His back. Let us go and see how God responds to this accusation that the church makes, that Zion makes.

Isaiah 49:15-16 "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget [meaning women would forget their children], yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me."

We see two things from this passage. The first thing is that God would as much forget us as a woman would forget her own child. Now, you know how strong a feeling mother love is. How could a mother ever forsake or forget her own child? And God says, even if a woman would forget her child, I would never forget Zion. And to back that up, He says, "I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands."

This is an interesting idiomatic expression in the Hebrews. What it means is that I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands. It can even go so far as mean, I have tattooed you on My hand. It is almost like our own expression, I know you, or I know them, or I know the way like the back of my hand. It means the same thing, that I will never forget this. The Companion Bible says the word connotes permanence and that just backs up the idea that He will never forget. So how could God forget a permanent part of Him? It is right there on His hand.

Now, what the Jews thought that this verse meant was that God had the schematics of Jerusalem inscribed on His hand, that He had a map of the city on His hand and what He could do is find His way through Jerusalem just by looking at His hand. Now that may or may not be what it is, but He was so close to it that He kept it right there on the palm of His hand.

Let us go to Zachariah 2. This is a well known verse. If you do not know the verse, you will know at least the expression.

Zechariah 2:7-8 "Up, Zion! Escape, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon." For thus says the Lord of hosts, "He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye."

What we are really getting at here is the phrase "apple of His eye." But historically, the context is that the Jews—most of the Jews—were still in Babylon at this time. Zechariah was a prophet that was sent to Judah while they were building the Temple. And if you know anything about the history there, less than 50,000 Jews who were in Babylon actually returned to Judah when Cyrus put out his decree. So there were still several million Jews back in Babylon that had not left.

The reason for this is that they have gotten used to Babylon. Probably the biggest reason was, knowing some of the Jews, they were making good money. They did not want to uproot themselves. Seems like wherever Jews go in, they seem to be able to, they have a talent for making money, for being the banking people of a community. It just seems to be a talent that they have. And, you know, I do not mean it to be anything anti-Semitic or anything. They just seem to have an ability in that regard. And we find that happened in Babylon. They had become entrenched in the business there and who wanted to go to backwater Judah? I mean, there was nothing there. The biggest city had just been completely razed 70 years ago. There was nothing there. It was just a country of villages, nothing like the metropolitan area of Babylon.

But God still loved them. They were still the apple of His eye and metaphorically, this means a thing most cherished, or a valued possession, or a thing that one places the highest value upon. Now, God calls Zion, which is we know, the Israel of God, the bride of Christ, His most valued possession. Maybe you will remember in Malachi 3:17 He is talking about the ones who fear Him and the ones who speak on His name. He calls them My jewels or My special treasure. This is like a companion scripture to that.

So how could He possibly forget or forsake what He treasured most highly? It is just beyond anybody to think that here, call it a pile of jewels, that person could forget that they have that in their hands, going back to the other expression that He has got them inscribed on the palm of His hands. It is like God has His most special treasure, His most special jewel, right there in the palm of His hand. He cannot forget it.

In Hebrew this term, "the apple of the eye" is actually "the little man of the eye." You might wonder why. What does that have to do with it? Well, the way they got that is, and this is kind of interesting, that what it is is the reflection that another person sees when he looks into your eye. So if I went up close enough to you and looked into your pupil, I would see myself in it. And that is the expression here. That we are so close to God or He is so close to us, that if we were to look up into His face, we would see ourselves because He is that close to us. So we would see our own reflection looking into God's eye.

Another angle on this verse. It says that if someone "touches you." It is not just a touch, it is not a kiss, it is more like smack. That is what He means. If someone harms you, it is like touching the pupil of God's eye. Now, you know, the pupil is the most tender, the easiest damaged, and the most important part of the eye. That is where the light comes in. Have you ever been poked in the eye? Does not feel very good, does it? You take it personally, do you not, if someone poked you in the eye? You know, it is an insult to be poked in the eye. Is that not what Larry, Moe, and Curly did? I mean, they were insulting each other by poking each other in the eye. Well, God takes it personally when someone or some circumstance causes us harm or pain, because He says that is like poking Him in the eye—and He means it. He will take it personally and He promises to take vengeance. It hurts, it hurts him.

Let us go to the scripture that I kind of alluded to earlier. Hebrews 13, verse 5. Most of you can probably quote the scripture.

Hebrews 13:5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said [and this is the part I am getting to, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

This is one of my favorite scriptures in all the Bible—at least this last part of it. It is so brim-full of confidence and promise, and it really shows how close God wants to be with us. It is almost to the point where God is trying to persuade us that He means what He says. The reason I get this out of it is because of the way the scripture is actually worded in the Greek. Now, He should not need to be so emphatic, yet, He does it, I think, to really show us, to really emphasize how much we mean to Him.

Now, this is that verse, I do not know if there is any other place in the Bible that does this, but it strings together five straight negatives. Each one reinforces the next negative to make it more emphatic. It is not like in English where if you say he "can't not be here" or something like that, that means actually he is here; where two negatives make a positive. But in Greek, it does not work that way. In Greek, every negative that you add on to another negative makes it even more emphatic.

So this verse actually could read, "I will never, never, never, never, never leave you." It actually reads literally, in the original, "I will by no means let you go, nor by no means will I not forsake you." Now, that sounds like He is going to forsake us the way we would read it. But actually there are five negatives there. "I will by no means let you go, nor by no means will I not forsake you." Or "I will never leave you, no, I will not forsake you," depending on which way you want to translate it.

Can He make it any plainer that He will not forsake us when He uses such an emphatic verse? Well, He actually goes one step further. Let us go back to Psalm 23. Now, I know you all know this one by heart. Maybe some of you know that Psalm 23 is really just an expounding of God's names or attributes and it is told from the viewpoint of a spiritual sheep.

Now, maybe you want to quickly write these down. I do not know. But verse 1, "The Lord is my shepherd." That is Yahweh Roi. That is exactly what it means, the Lord is my shepherd "I shall not want." That is Yahweh Jireh. It means God will provide. Verse 2. "He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters." That is Yahweh Shalom. God is peace. Verse 3. "He restores my soul." That is Yahweh Ropheka, the God who heals you. And the second part of that, "He leads me in the path of righteousness for His names' sake." That is Yahweh Tsidkenu, God our righteousness, the Lord our righteousness.

Verse 4 is what I was getting to.

Psalm 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me [that is exactly what I wanted]; Your rod and your staff they comfort me.

That is actually Yahweh Shammah, and it means "the Eternal is here" or actually "the Eternal is there" and it means He is with us.

In Ezekiel 48, verse 35. This is the last verse in Ezekiel. It says, talking about the Temple in the Millennium,

Ezekiel 48:35 All the way around shall be eighteen thousand cubits; and the name of the city from that day shall be [Yahweh Shammah]: THE LORD IS THERE.

Now just as God lives in His Temple and He promises to live in His Temple in the Millennium, He promises to be there. We find that in Psalm 23. He is with us now so He is there.

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Not only do we have Him with us, He is in us. And if He is in us, how can He forsake us? He is only a thought away, you know, through the Holy Spirit. He has given us access to His very throne room in heaven. So whether He is in us or we are there with Him in prayer, we are with Him and we can go there for comfort and help in time of need.

So my question is, how can we have any discouragement when we have all this going for us? God is with us. He is in us so He can never forsake us.