When you think you have been abandoned by God
“The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, ‘The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.’ Then Gideon said to him, ‘O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian’” (Judges 6:12-13).
I don’t think we can imagine the pain and scar of those who are being abandoned by their loved ones, especially if their loved ones are their parents when they were growing up, their boy/girlfriend when they were dating and/or their spouse when they are married. In such a shock and wound, can we still believe that God is with us?
When we look at Judges 6:12-13, we see Gideon who thought that God abandoned the Israelites. The reason he thought so was because God gave the Israelites into the hands of Midian for seven years (Jdg. 6:1) so the Israel was brought very low (v. 6). The Israel was brought very low because when Israel was sowing, the Midianites came up with the Amalekites and the sons of the east and went against the Israelites and destroyed the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and left no sustenance in Israel as well as no sheep, ox, or donkey (vv. 3-4). And because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds (v. 2). So the Israelites cried out to the Lord (v. 6) and this was what He said to them through a prophet: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors, and dispossessed them before you and gave you their land, and I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But you have not obeyed Me’” (vv. 8-10). Then one day, an angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon the son of Joash, who was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it from the Midianites (v. 11): “he LORD is with you, O valiant warrior” (v. 12). At that time, after Gideon had asked two questions to the angel of the Lord (v. 12), he said that God abandoned the people of Israel and gave them into the hands of Midian (v. 13). I want to think about these two questions that tell us why Gideon thought God had abandoned the Israelites.
The first question was this: “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us?”
Look at Judges 6:13 – “Then Gideon said to him, "O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? …” When the angel of the Lord said to Gideon, “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior” (v. 12), Gideon said to the angel of the Lord, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” (v. 13) Here, "all this" refers to the very low life of the Israelites (v. 6) due to the very cruel Midianites (v. 2) who oppressed the Israelites for 7 years (v. 1). In other words, Gideon thought that because the Lord wasn’t with the Israelites, the Midianites were dominating them for 7 years and the Israelites were very low. And he thought that God wasn’t with the Israelites because He abandoned them (v. 13).
I think what Gideon said makes sense. If we think logically with our limited intellect in Gideon’s perspective, I think we could have thought the same that God had abandoned the Israelites. Indeed, we can ask God, ‘O God, if You are with us why are we agonizing ourselves in a poverty.’ The reason is because we think that if God is with us, we shouldn’t suffer the poverty. We can surely ask God, ‘If God is alive and loves us and He has saved us even by giving His only begotten Son Jesus to die on the cross on behalf of us, then how can God allow us to suffer in poverty?’ And we can doubt whether God is with us or not. Of course, this question and doubt presuppose that we aren’t aware that the suffering and poverty we are going through is a discipline of God's love for our sins. Because we aren’t aware of our sins, but only the consequences of our sin that we ask God why all this happened to us if God is with us. But there is at least one very important fact that we don’t realize here. It is the fact that God is with us who have sinned against God and are receiving the God’s discipline. In other words, we don’t realize how great God’s grace is that the holy God is with the unholy sinners like us. God called Gideon "valiant warrior" (v. 12) even though his family was the least in Manasseh, and he was the youngest in his father’s house (v. 15) and give him a mission: “Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian” (v. 14). In other words, God showed his grace by being with Gideon (v. 12) and raised him as a judge in order to save the Israelites from the Midianites (v. 14). Isn’t this God’s great grace that the Lord considered us faithful, appointing us to his service (1 Tim. 1:12) even such useless sinners like us? By this grace, the Lord disciplines us in love for our sake because He is treating us as his sons and daughters (Heb. 12:6, 7, 10). God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness (v. 10). As a result, "all this happened to us" (Jdg. 6:13).
The last and second question was this: "And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’"
Look at Judges 6:13 – “… And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” Gideon heard through the prophet whom the Lord sent saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. 'I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors, and dispossessed them before you and gave you their land” (vv. 8-9). So Gideon said to him, “And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?'” (v. 13) Here, “all His miracles” refer to all the miracles that God had revealed by delivering the Israelties out of Egypt through Moses and led them into the promised land of Canaan. From Gideon's point of view, if God was with the Israelites, then where are the miracles that had appeared in the past when the Lord brought their fathers out of Egypt and brought them into the land of Canaan in the midst of suffering of the Israelites by the Midianites? In other word, Gideon was asking God why He didn’t do any miracle to save the Israelites from the hands of Midian. Gideon thought that because the Lord was not with the Israelites, they were oppressed by the Midianites for 7 years (v. 1) and became very low (v.6). And he thought that the reason why God wasn’t with them was because God had abandoned them (v. 13).
I think what Gideon said make sense. If we think logically with our limited intellect in Gideon’s perspective, I think we could have thought the same that God had abandoned the Israelites because in Gideon’s perspective there were no miracles which his fathers told them about God’s miracles that He showed during the Exodus. Like Gideon, we can think that God has abandoned us when we are going through suffering and there is no deliverance from God. In other words, we can think that if God really is with us, then He must do the miracles in our lives, delivering us from our pain and poverty, and leads us. This is what we ask God and expects Him to answer but if there is none, then we can think that God is not with us and He abandons us. But there is a very important fact that we forget. That very important fact is the biggest miracle is that Jesus died on the cross and gave us eternal life. But it seems like we forget about this greatest miracle in our lives and continue to seek out other miracles. In other words, despite God's best miraculous salvation already given to us in Jesus Christ, we are asking for and looking for additional miracles. For example, even though we have already experienced God’s forgiveness of our sins and received God’s salvation in Christ Jesus, we keep seeking other miracle of solving our problem of suffering and pain. But if there is no miraculous deliverance from the Lord, we get discouraged and even blaming on God and think that God has abandoned us. And we commit a sin of abandoning God. The problem is we don’t realize the fact that we must humbly repent our sins as we look to Jesus on the cross in faith even though the suffering that we are going is the consequence of our unrepented sins. How can we expect miraculous salvation of God when we are going through the consequences of our unrepented sins? We must first confess our sins and repent. In other words, we must first confess our sins to God with the assurance of forgiveness of our sins as we humbly trusting in the merit of the cross of Jesus. In doing so, we will experience God's miraculous salvation work in God's way in God’s time according to God's will.
How can we overcome the pain of our hearts when we think that we have been abandoned by a loved one? Especially when we think that we have been abandoned by our beloved God, how can we endure the pain of our heart and overcome it? Obviously, our God is Immanuel God, and if God is with us, why are we suffering so much pain and poverty? Why doesn’t God show His miracle and deliver us? Maybe God doesn’t love us anymore? What should we do when we think we have abandoned by God? We can cry out to God like a psalmist: “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?” (Ps. 22:1-2) At the same time we must think of Jesus' words of crucifixion to Heavenly Father: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46) By faith, we must humbly look to Jesus Christ who bore our sins and died on the cross and receive God’s full wrath and was forsaken by His own Father God. We who are forgiven because Jesus was forsaken by His Father God must confess and repent our sins instead of thinking that God abandoned us when we are going through the consequence of our unrepented sins. In doing so, God will solve the problem of our sins before the problem of our suffering, and then He will solve the problem of our suffering as well. God will save us. The reason is "Salvation comes from the Lord" (Jonah 2: 9).