God how long will you hide your face? Do you even care?

—When God is hidden (pt1)
I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

• Andrew Fountain – Aug 26, 2018

The Problem

• 25 Psalms make some sort of accusation against God
• God is not answering prayers
• Time is running out
• Either circumstances are getting desperate
• or we are losing hope

Psalm 10 —God’s negligence

• Why do you hide yourself, just when you are needed?

1. Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?
   Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
   Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand;
   forget not the afflicted

• God, please be involved!
• Implication that God has chosen to make himself unavailable

Psalm 13 —Has God forgotten them?

• If God seems to delay too long, then this accusation comes
• This is not unintentional, but deliberate!

1. How long, O LORD?
   Will you forget me forever?
   How long will you hide your face from me?
2. How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
   How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 22 —God has forsaken him

1. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
   Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
2. O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
   and by night, but I find no rest.
6. But I am a worm and not a man,
   scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
8. “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him;
   let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

Psalm 44 —God is hostile

11. You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations.
12. You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.
22. Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
23. Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25. For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground.

What is the answer?

• Do you ever feel like this?
• Why are there such shocking worship songs in the Bible?
• What is the answer?

Answers

1. Sometimes our sin’s have got us into this mess

• how long?
• and how severe?
• “In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD, your Redeemer. [Is 54:8]
• For his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. [Ps 30:5]

Answers

1. Sometimes our sin’s have got us into this mess
2. Sometimes it is our own impatience

• Psalm 31:

22. I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.” But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.

Answers

1. Sometimes our sin’s have got us into this mess
2. Sometimes it is our own impatience
3. The complexity of God’s world is way beyond our remotest understanding. We simply have to trust!

Answers

• The fact that God caused these songs to be put in the Bible shows he values our honesty as we speak to him
• The fact that they are still talking to God shows they have not given up on him!
• Where do you take your complaints?
• God responds to prayer

• Next time we will look at a more complete answer