Meditation on the Text of the Week

Forsaken--for a Reason

But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.'
Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion upon the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.
Isaiah 49: 14—16

How do God's people respond when the forces of Unbelief are so much stronger and pervasive than Belief? That depends upon the circumstances. There are two kinds of such circumstances—and two only. The first circumstance is where the Kingdom of God is confronting widespread and dominant unbelief as part of a missionary beachhead. The ground had hitherto belonged to Unbelief; now the ambassadors of King Jesus are coming to proclaim His Lordship by preaching His Gospel of reconciliation with God.

The second is where the Kingdom had previously been strong and dominant, but is now in declension. The land is once again being laid waste to the ravages of injustice, extortion, corruption, murder, idolatry and dehumanisation. Unbelief is once again ascendant.

Our text is uttered during a time and circumstance belonging to the second category. The covenant people of God had been strong, and they had lived under the blessings of God Almighty. Now, Zion lay helpless, exposed, wasted and ruined. The powers of Unbelief had triumphed and had crushed God's people, whose numbers were shrinking by the day. The destruction of Jerusalem under the hand of the relentless Babylonians was drawing near.

Such, also, is the circumstance of our day in the West. It is a harder condition to cope with. It leads to the lament found in our text: “the Lord has forsaken us”. We are cast off. We are alone.

One of the most painful aspects of this circumstance is that always—without exception—always, the weakness and declension has come about because of our own sin, disobedience, and unfaithfulness. The Lord had indeed deserted us because we first deserted Him. We turned aside from His commandments.

We were wiser than God in our own eyes. We had sought to make a little common ground with Unbelief. We had tolerated, even encouraged, compromises that would gain us the respect of Unbelief—or so our fathers thought, at the time. It is not that they openly turned to Unbelief. Our fathers just wanted to be acknowledged by Unbelievers and respected by them. Therefore, we began by trying to reduce the offence of the Gospel. We tried to stand upon Unbelieving ground and present God and His people in terms and ways that would seem reasonable to Unbelieving men.

The people of God rarely turn to open apostasy; rather they seek their security and rest in syncretism—in blending the beliefs and practices of Unbelief with Belief. They seek a common, neutral ground where they can stand shoulder to shoulder with Unbelief and all together be "reasonable" men.

The desire to appear reasonable, and therefore respectable to Unbelief has been our undoing in the West. Human Reason has been elevated to a position of honour and respect above God and His Holy Word. God and His Word have been made subject to our ratiocinations—we have sought to follow and worship God, but only to the extent that Reason approbates and approves—which is to say, only if Unbelief approves. For it has ever been, since Eden, that Satan has striven to entice God's people to subject God and His Word to “reasonable” examination and testing.

Of course, it is always true that if man tests and establishes God, then his god is no more than an idol. The two driving motives which led our fathers into this deadly path were, firstly, a desire to be respectable in one's own eyes, and, then, a desire to be respectable in the eyes of Unbelievers. Above all, I must appears reasonable to myself—for then I can stand and cloak myself in reasonableness in my urbane discussions with Unbelief.

So, since God's people have been embarrassed by God, and sought to make Him more reasonable, so God has forsaken us. As a consequence, the vice of Unbelief has grown in size and strength to where God's people are being squeezed and crushed on every hand.

But that is not the end. For our text tells us that God will not forget us. He cannot forget us. His love and faithfulness transcend our wretched "reasonable" idolatry. He has inscribed us on the palms of His hands. God has tattooed us on His hands, as it were that He might never forget us.

So, He will come again amongst us. But what will be the sign of His coming? How will we know that our warfare and punishment is over? This will be the sign of our restoration—when we come to hate and utterly reject reasonableness and long instead for the purity and blessing of simple faith and obedience. Trust and obey—for there is no other way.

This will be the sign that He has turned again to His people and regarded their desperate cry—when His people come to abhor the “neutral” ground of reasonableness and stand, once again, in humility before the Living God.