Word Weld

If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:

Psalm 66:18

We’ve all been given the cold shoulder because someone was unhappy with us. Maybe it was your mom, or your dad. Maybe it was a wife. People use this “silent treatment” as a way of letting you know that something is not right between you. Something is unresolved, something has broken or damaged the typically strong bond between you.

The Word of God is full of hope, encouragement, and support for the Believer. However, there are also grim warnings, and none of these is more terrible than the silence of God. There is nothing to me more awful than the notion that there does come a point where God will leave us alone, by our own will, conscious of it or unconscious of it.

Wait a minute. Are you saying that God can leave us? Doesn’t Hebrews 13:5 say that He will never leave or forsake us? How can both be true? As I often tell my kids when they as teenagers get upset because of a standard or rule we have in place: the reality is that we have not moved, they have. And when God leaves us alone, it is because we have left Him. He is right where He promised He would be, but when we willfully leave Him, there are times He will let us to our own devices. He will, like a human father telling his son, “Ok, go ahead, see what happens,” and then watching from a distance. And like that earthly father, God is always ready, as He was with Peter, to close the distance and pull us up out of the deep, but like Peter, we must go back to Him, and ask for His help. Until that time, we can be as far from Him as we wish to be.

When I think of this concept, the main passage that comes to mind is the story of Saul. Remember how well Saul started out?

The Chosen One

Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath, the son of Aphiah, a Benjamite, a mighty man of power. And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.

I Samuel 9:1-2

Scripture tells us that Saul was a “choice” young man. The word is a form of the Hebrew word bâchar (baw-khar), which means acceptable, chosen, excellent. It says that he was “goodly,” an extremely broad adjective in the original language, meaning that in every way he was of high quality-in looks, behavior, and mind. We see this illustrated both in his humility before Samuel, and in the favor of God which fell upon him as a result.

And as for thine asses that were lost three days ago, set not thy mind on them; for they are found. And on whom is all the desire of Israel? Is it not on thee, and on all thy father’s house? And Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?

I Samuel 9:20-21

Samuel told Saul that all of the desire of Israel was to him. How so? Because the people had demanded that God give them a king, and regardless of his humility, he was the man God had chosen to lead His people. This is shown at the beginning of the next chapter, and throughout chapter 10. It begins when Saul is taken aside by Samuel, who anoints his head with oil, the Hebrew symbol for God’s favor being bestowed.

Then Samuel took a vial of oil, and poured it upon his head, and kissed him, and said, Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?

I Samuel 10:1

Appointed by the Lord, Saul was a man well favored in Israel, a man that the Bible says was good in every way. Samuel later tells Saul that God’s very Spirit will descend upon him, and it does.

After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is the garrison of the Philistines: and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy: And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man. And let it be, when these signs are come unto thee, that thou do as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee.

I Samuel 10:5-7

It was clear that Saul was a good man, a man who feared God and for whom God had high regard. God had such regard for Saul that He would choose Saul to be the King of His people. In addition to his humility, he also proved to be a brave man, fighting in many battles and delivering Israel from its hated enemies, the Philistines.

The Fall

But then the scene changes. Something happens to Saul. Samuel, despite being Saul’s friend and mentor, ominously forewarns of his potential fall in chapter 12. After announcing to Israel that he will soon be gone, he warns them that they must continue to follow God, or evil will befall not only them, but Saul.

Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you. But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.

I Samuel 12:24-25

Rumblings of this change in Saul begin to appear in the chapters that follow, perhaps brought on by the power he enjoyed as King, but we won’t know for sure. I Samuel 14 we follow the story of Saul’s pride beginning to corrupt him, displacing the humility he once possessed. During a battle against the Philistines, he orders that no one in the army should eat anything, until he had been avenged upon the Philistines.

And the men of Israel were distressed that day: for Saul had adjured the people, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies. So none of the people tasted any food.

I Samuel 14:24

As a military leader, this was a terrible order. He knew the men would be in battle for the entire day, exerting themselves greatly, and risking their lives. Taking time to eat during such a prolonged engagement would not only allow them to regain their strength physically, but would keep up their morale. And why did Saul take this unwise vow and order the people to fast? So that Saul could personally be avenged upon his enemies. He was no longer fighting God’s battles, but his own. Pride had started to rot his goodness away. Because of this troubling decision, not only does he nearly execute his own son and heir, but some of the army ultimately ends up so maddened with hunger that they not only break the oath, but also the Law of Moses.

And the people flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen, and calves, and slew them on the ground: and the people did eat them with the blood. Then they told Saul, saying, Behold, the people sin against the Lord, in that they eat with the blood. And he said, Ye have transgressed: roll a great stone unto me this day.

I Samuel 14:32-33

Notice how Saul was responsible for what happened, as King. It was his order, his oath, that had led to the sin of the people. It was their own choice to disregard both the oath and the Law, but Saul was anything but blameless. Yet he places all of the blame upon them, stating “Ye have transgressed,” and then attempting to atone for their sins by building an altar.

But of course Saul’s story gets worse and worse. Following this, he directly disobeys the Lord’s instructions concerning the Amalekites. Now the Amalekites were not a part of the block of people groups that were collectively called “Canaanites,” which Israel was to displace in the promised land. I did not realize this until I had gone back to look at this, but the Amalekites were actually relatives of the Israelites. Genesis 36:12 tells us that Amalek was the grandson of Esau, making the Amalekites a kind of cousin-nation to Israel. Despite this, both Esau’s main descendants, the Edomites, and the subnation of Amalek, despised the Israelites and opposed their return to Canaan in some way. When Moses led Israel back to the promised land, he sent messengers to pass through the land of Edom, and they denied Israel passage, threatening war against their kinsmen if they did (Numbers 20). However, the Amalekites took a more aggressive stance, and came out to fight against Israel as recorded in Exodus 17, leading to the miraculous and strange story of Moses holding up his hands in order to be victorious. Deuteronomy 25:18 tells us that not only did the Amalekites fight openly with Israel, but cowardly followed them, attacking those in the back of the column who were weak or sick. Thus, God swore that he would have war against Amalek “from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16). Saul was to fulfil this oath by destroying Amalek completely, wiping out their nation entirely.

But Saul, as we have seen, was more interested in his own fame and less in performing God’s Word. Not only does Saul refuse to destroy their possessions, he saves their king Agag as a trophy. His pride was mingled with greed, and again he blames all of it upon the people, instead of taking responsibility as the highest ruler in the land. Read about it in chapter 15. As a result, Samuel rebukes Saul, tremendously disappointed in his protege and friend, and knowing that God will no longer bless him. Chapter 15 ends with this doleful statement:

And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.

I Samuel 15:35

Samuel and Saul, once friends, were parted, because Saul had chosen to forsake all that he had once stood by. Fellowship was broken, but as sad as this is, it pales to what would happen next, and the silence and forsaking that was about to happen in Saul’s life.

Deafening Silence

I know that was a fair amount of introduction, but now we are closing in on the point of all of this. Saul, once a bastion of righteous leadership, falls. Pride and power became his gods instead of the God who gave him all the power and prestige he now fights to preserve and increase. God then does something only recorded a handful of times, but something that is critically important: He leaves Saul alone.

But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.

I Samuel 16:14

As I read that verse I notice a couple of interesting things. First, I note that the Lord leaving someone is something against His nature. God is everywhere and in everything (Psalm 139:7-10). So for God to not be somewhere He has to intentionally vacate that place, and just as when the air is drawn out of a container, something fills that vacuum. And where God has chosen to be absent, evil comes to fill it. When God leaves a man, it leaves him extremely vulnerable to evil, but notice that the evil spirit is also “from the Lord,” so it was a direct punishment from God. Now, was the spirit a devil and God ordered it to trouble Saul, or was the spirit a good spirit who was commanded to do things that were bad for Saul, or against him, such as when God sent an angel to kill the firstborn in Egypt, or when God sent an angel to kill Balaam? We don’t know, but we do know that God left Saul, left him to his own devices. And that is a terrible thing.

Unsurprisingly, Saul spirals from this point. His performance in the battle against Goliath and the Philistines was pedestrian compared with his other victories, and was of course completely overshadowed by David the shepherd boy. His relationship with David, who had already showed himself to be a capable warrior and played music expertly for the king, also quickly deteriorates, until he is trying to kill the man who served him best of all. Following this, in his mad attempts to kill David, he also slaughters the priest of the Lord, Ahimelech, along with his entire family. By now not only has he disobeyed God many times, and broken the Law of Moses multiple times, he now has innocent blood on his hands. It is also worth considering that chapter 15:31 is the last time until the end of his life that Saul is recorded to have worshiped or sought out God. Between chapter 15:31 and chapter 28:6, he hardly even mentions God at all, only referencing the Lord in one or two conversations. He did not even realize that God had departed from him; he was so concerned with his own pride and hatred for David that it was not until chapter 28, when he is troubled because of the size of the enemy army, that he even thinks to call upon the Lord once more. But he gets no response.

And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled. And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

I Samuel 28:5-6

The words “the Lord answered him not” to me fall with a terrible gravity. For God to turn his back on someone so completely is not a light thing, nor is it something He does often. I am reminded of another passage, which speaks of the sins of the nation of Israel when they rejected God.

Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.

Micah 3:4

God is merciful and gracious, but there is a point at which He does turn His back. He said in Genesis 6:3 “My spirit shall not always strive with man,” and we realize that a just God, a perfect God, will eventually leave us to our own devices, when we forsake Him. We will be allowed to go on alone.

And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you.

2 Chronicles 24:20

Notice that God did not refuse to answer Saul because He was giving Saul the silent treatment, or wanted him to know that he had done evil. Saul knew he had done evil. God refused to answer Saul because Saul was still far away. He he had made no attempt to return to God. He wanted God to tell him his fortune, but he was unwilling to ask God to forgive him. He was unwilling to repent, unwilling to turn, perhaps unwilling to even face the things that he had done, as I have spoken about before. Most of us know the story: He goes to the witch at Endor in order to summon Samuel from the dead in order to tell him what he already knows! And even then, Saul does not fall on his face and beg God for mercy, but simply falls into depression, unwilling to humble himself before God. And in the hours that follow, he dies with his pride still intact. Good for him. He allowed himself to die, far from God, and forsaken.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

If this sounds familiar, it is because it is. Jesus Himself was forsaken by God, an event so terrible and paradoxical that it is the only time that Jesus cried out from the cross, apart from His dying words. And what a cry that was! For the Son of God, who had been in Glory with the Father, who was one with the Father, to be separated from the Father for even a few moments was enough for Him, God though He was, and all-knowing as He was, to cry out, “Why?“

And why indeed? Because in the end, God must turn His back on all sinners. The lost, including Believers before they accepted Christ, were like Saul. We were separated from God, forsaken. In the end, God would have turned His back on us, just as He did with Saul. Yet Christ came to bear that separation for us, to heal the brokenness of our relationship to God, to take our place as betrayers. He came to turn us back to God, and thus God back to us. We were defiled by our sin, left alone by God to our own devices and consequences, destined for the fire that is not quenched, and the worm that dies not. But Christ assumed this forsakenness for us. Read carefully the following words:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:3-4

Note the emphasis I added to verse 4. He was smitten of God. Despised and rejected by men, and forsaken by God upon that cross, He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows. The grief and sorrow that comes from rejection by God, the forsakenness, the turning away from, is a hard thing for any human soul to bear, but Jesus bore the collective rejection placed upon every human soul. We humans place great emphasis emotionally upon this idea, “and he never looked back.” You see it in books, movies, literature. Not simply a man or woman leaving their family, or their children, or their parents, or their lover, or their country, but that they never even looked back. It is seen as grievous and sorrowful to realize that God did not look back when He turned away. As the book of Hebrews said of the patriarch Esau:

Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

Hebrews 12:16-17

I don’t mean at all to be overdramatic, but I mean it when I say, oh, what horrible words those are! “For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” He found himself in a place too far to return from, a place where his very creator had turned away, and did not look back. And that is the place we were all found: hopeless, forsaken by our Creator because of our sins and rejection of Him, and with no way to repentance. As Jesus said:

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

II Corinthians 5:17-19

Knowing that humanity was so corrupt by Adam’s sin that He could not even be in their presence, God Himself made a way, through Christ, to reconcile us to Him, to be able to return to us. The Son of God came to find us when we were behind God’s back, forsaken entirely, just like Saul or Esau, our prayers unheard, but Christ reconciled us to God on the cross.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

John 6:37

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

II Corinthians 5:17-19

Christ reconciled us (the world) to Himself by becoming a human being and dying the death and enduring the forsakenness that we deserved thanks to our sin. And by rising again as he did on Resurrection Sunday, He ensured that we could be born into a new body free from the taint of sin, rising with Him from the dead, and forever reconciled to God. The word “reconcile” comes from the Latin word reconciliare, meaning “to bring together again; regain; win over again.” We had turned away from God, and He from us, but Christ won God over to us once more, and as a result we have regained God, and with Him all of eternity.

Parting Thoughts

I believe that a great deal more can be said about this topic, but my article is long enough. Nevertheless, I have a few parting thoughts.

When we speak of forsaking and reconciling, we are talking about rejection and acceptance, both physically and psychologically. Human beings are very sensitive to rejection. The way that all men feel when they inquire of a girl for a date or marriage is not the only example of this, though it is probably the most famous. Children desperately want acceptance from their parents, and from their peers. I think this is deeply rooted in the idea that we are all born into a state of rejection. When we come into this world, as Children of Adam we are tainted with the sinful nature that the First Man cursed us with. We come into this world already corrupt, already behind God’s back as it were, and so we constantly seek approval from someone else, even ourselves. But there is no acceptance that will bring us peace, but the acceptance of our Creator, and there can be no acceptance from Him, no reconciliation, apart from Christ. Thank God that no matter how far we have gone from God, He is able with a single step to bridge any distance, from a child who has only disobeyed her parents, to a man guilty of rape and murder, waiting for death in a prison cell, there is no distance too far for God. The only ingredient that we bring to the table is repentance.

Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

Acts 3:19

I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Luke 13:3

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Luke 5:32

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:17

If you are reading this and do not know Christ, do not go any further, do not wait to find out what this all means. Talk to someone, be it a saved friend or family member, a pastor, evangelist, or church layman. If you can’t seem to find anyone, comment on my post and I would be happy to get in touch with you and do what I can. Reconciliation, after all, was why Christ came, but as II Corinthians 5:19 says, He has committed this ministry to us who believe, that others may be reconciled to God. Don’t be like Saul, and let your pride keep you from repentance, or like Esau, who allowed earthly lusts and ignorance to steal from him what mattered most.