This is Spoken Gospel.

We’re dedicated to seeing
Jesus in all of scripture.

In each episode, we see what’s
happening in a Biblical text,

and how it sheds light
on Jesus and his gospel.

Let’s jump in.

This psalm of David deals with the
experience of God’s hiddenness—

those times when life is
so hard God seems absent.

David asks how long God will forget
him and hide his face from him.

His heart is full of sorrow because
his enemies are oppressing him.

These oppressors even celebrate
the bad things happening to David.

When things get this bad, it is common
for us to think God has abandoned us.

Like David, the most natural way we
process our experience is to question God.

We say things like, “Where are you? Why aren’t
you acting? Why are you letting this happen?”.

And if God remains silent, like David all we can
do is ask God to act in our favor.

Despite David’s experience, emotions, and
assumptions, he holds fast to the truth of who God is.

The psalm ends with a confession of trust.

David says that he trusts
in God’s unfailing love.

The word for unfailing love is not really
describing the emotion of God’s love,

but his loyal covenant
commitment to Israel and David.

God has made promises in the past to his people and
David holds onto these promises when
everything else washes away.

He looks back on God’s bountiful
dealings with him and his people—

and it causes him to sing praises
to God even in the midst of sorrow.

The hiddenness David experienced would
also be experienced by Jesus himself.

Jesus was killed on a cross by his
enemies, though he did nothing to deserve it.

But more importantly Jesus also willingly took
responsibility before God for sins that were not his fault.

Jesus allowed our sin to
separate him from his Father.

This is why Jesus cries out, “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?”.

On the cross Jesus experienced a planet’s worth
of divine silence and God’s absence.

But Jesus did this willingly
because of his loyal love for us.

He was forsaken so
we could be accepted.

Regardless of what goes wrong in your life, even
when things are as bad as they can possibly get,

in Jesus we have proof of
God’s eternally loyal love for us.

In Jesus we can know that neither our circumstances
nor our enemies define the terms and the extent of
God’s love. But Jesus’ death and resurrection do.

And if Jesus was willing to die, there is nothing—not
even death—that can separate us from his love for us.

So, I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God
who is loyal and faithful, even through the worst circumstances.

And may you see Jesus as the one who
was forsaken so that we would be accepted.