- Not Forsaken
Psalm 9.10
And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee:
For Thou, Lord hast not forsaken them that seek thee.
Even though this promise is spoken in the past tense and so is not a certain guarantee that this will hold true in the future, it is taken as a promise since it is repeated in other Scripture passages. The essential promise is: God will never forsake, abandon, or leave you alone or helpless or defenseless. You can count on Him to always be there when you need someone.
The promise, however, is conditional: if you seek the Lord, then He will not forsake you. If you are truly seeking the Lord, to know Him, to be with Him, to enjoy His presence, to love Him, and to trust Him, then you will be taught the way to approach God in righteousness and without sin. Once you have been accepted into His presence by faith in Christ you are a seeker, you are forgiven and you are declared righteous. Then you have the promise that He will never forsake you. You are free to forsake Him and no longer seek Him, but who would want to do that? Psalm 105:4: “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!” Another promise for seekers is in Isaiah 26:3: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you.”
It is true that his God had appeared to forsake Jesus of Nazareth on the cross, and it felt to Jesus that this was so. How, then, does this promise hold for Jesus and the cross? The sin of the world was upon the body of Jesus of Nazareth at that moment, and since God can have nothing to do with sin He must forsake the one on whom the sin is resting. The wrath of God is upon His Son but not His presence to bless. The very absence of God is the punishment for sin. God the Father had forsaken him, contrary to His promise, but God had not forever forsaken him as the sin was taken away in death and the person rose from the dead to be reunited and restored into an intimate relationship with God once again. But because of that forsakenness of Jesus, we can be absolutely sure that He will never forsake us. Hebrews 13:5: “He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’”
The forsakenness is not forever, and if it ever feels to us like God has forsaken us that feeling will not last long. God will keep His promise and He will not forsake you. He has bound himself by oath: He is not free to ignore us.