God’s people said, “The LORD has forsaken and forgotten us.” Christ says, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.” (Isaiah 49:14-16)
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series on this topic. See bottom of page for link to Part 2.
The Background
In the Isaiah passage above, Jesus bends over backwards to assure His followers that He will be true to us. And His faithfulness motivates us to be true to Him and love Him. Though people can be fickle and false, God is steadfast. Christ-centered interpretation is the right way to read these verses and the whole Bible.1 Isaiah was written near 740 BC, and Chapter 49 is one of the Servant Songs, foretelling Messiah’s coming. Other Servant Songs are contained in Isaiah Chapters 42, 50, and 52-53. The New Testament contains 66 quotations from Isaiah and 348 allusions to Isaiah because that’s how Jesus taught His apostles and us to read and teach the Old Testament. Isaiah Chapter 49 speaks of God including the Gentiles (non-Jews) in Jesus’ wonderful plan of salvation. Now 2.4 billion people worldwide claim to be Christ’s followers.
Have People Let Us Down?
The verses above in Isaiah 49 are important because people have hurt us, walked out on us, and abandoned us. Parents, children, spouses, friends, bosses, employees, and even churches have used, abused, and betrayed us. Sometimes they took what they wanted, then dropped us. This is the tragedy of sin. We grieve the Holy Spirit and hurt other people by our wrongs. Thank God, Christ is not like that! But to our hearts, our invisible Lord can still feel far away, inactive, or disinterested. That’s what the people were feeling in Isaiah’s day. And Christians nowadays can feel insecure, uncomfortable, restless, alienated, rejected, unloved, forsaken, defeated, and depressed. So Jesus provides great promises in these Isaiah verses to put steel in our souls for serving Him in unstable times.
We may be discouraged because we have cried out to God about a problem but not yet seen an answer. Matthew Henry notes three ways that God answers prayer:
•The Lord says Yes and gives us what we ask;
•He says No and gives us something better;
•or Christ says Wait and gives us His best later on.
Our Heavenly Father knows what we need, and His delays are not always denials. The Christian life is simple in some ways, but not simplistic. Often God’s answers to prayer are around the corner, and He wants us to trust Him and hang on.2 Meanwhile, He may have something to teach us now that we will be glad about later.
Great is His Faithfulness
The big issue in Isaiah 49:14-16 and the whole Bible is Christ’s steadfastness. In Lamentations, God’s people were mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. They were overwhelmed with grief. But in the middle of their anguish, God sent Jeremiah to bring them these words of hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion. Therefore I will wait for Him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lamentations 3:22-26)
Our brain can feel like a monkey cage at the zoo, with thoughts and emotions jumping, bouncing, and swinging from one branch to another. Our minds feel anxious, flooded, and unable to focus on getting anything done. One remedy for “monkey mind,” also know as “pinball machine brain,” is to keep on reminding ourselves of God’s faithfulness, instead of listening to ourselves and our endless internal chatter. (For more on how to do this, see Psalms 42-43 and Words of Hope blog posts.)
Can God’s People Feel Forgotten?
King David said: Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)
Remember that Jesus’ true followers in Bible times also felt overlooked. Joseph and Daniel were two of the Lord’s favorite people, wise and strong believers, but they were jailed unjustly. They were tempted to feel abandoned by God. When Job had his children, possessions, and health all taken away by Satan, Job felt deserted by God and complained. Job chapters 3-37 show his painful wrestling with doubt, punctuated with strong affirmations of in Christ.2
Many of the Psalms are laments, expressing the deep sorrow and anguish of the Lord’s people. King David and the other psalmists asked God to intervene in troubling times and to restore them after natural disasters, plagues, and oppression by enemies. The Israelites waited 430 years between Joseph’s arrival in Egypt and God’s rescue in the Exodus.3 They groaned in their slavery, and God heard them and helped them in a powerful way. But waiting on the Lord was hard for them, and it still is for us.
Naomi, in the book of Ruth, lost her husband and both her sons. She was very depressed. She told neighbors, “Don’t call me Naomi (meaning pleasant, sweet, delightful in Hebrew). Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.”4 So let’s not have rosy images of Christ’s followers in Old Testament times. Many had it very hard. That’s why Jesus’ promise in Isaiah 49:14-16 was essential to them, just as it is to us today.
There are more examples also in the New Testament of Christ’s followers feeling forgotten. Martha and Mary were brokenhearted that Christ delayed his visit to Lazarus and didn’t come running to heal him. They said: “Lord, if You had been here, our brother would not have died.”5 The disciples panicked when Christ allowed them to go through a deadly storm, saying, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”6 John the Baptist was Jesus’ forerunner and cousin. In Luke 7, Christ healed a centurion’s servant and raised a widow’s son who had died. When John heard about these miracles, he was in prison on false charges. He wondered why Christ didn’t deliver him. In fact, John was never rescued in this life and was beheaded.7
In all of these situations, the Lord wasn’t being cold or callous, but He was showing us that He usually has a slower way of working things out in His universe than we expect. Kosuke Koyama called Christ the “Three Mile an Hour God” who does eventually help all His followers. But waiting is the hardest part.
Do We Matter to God?
King David said: From birth I was cast on You. From my mother’s womb You have been my God. (Psalm 22:10)
Real Christian believers can feel forgotten. Maybe you feel that way today. We can feel unimportant because we seem so small in Christ’s sight. We seem so undeserving of His attention and care—like a drop in the bucket to God. We can feel passed over when we have sinned too often or too badly. We can feel too guilty or too dirty, and we may fear that Christ wants to abandon us. When everything seems to be going against us, we don’t want God to overlook us. We need to feel seen, heard, and valued by the Lord. That’s how people felt in Isaiah’s day and throughout the Bible.
Thank God, Christ says: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. (Isaiah 49:15-16)
These are not just words, beloved. Christ backed up His words with His life-saving action! He went all the way to the Cross, through the Empty Tomb, and back up into heaven where He now cares for all His followers. And the Lord is not done yet. He says, “I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am.”
Prayer
Lord, thank You that You will never leave us or forsake us. You created us, You love us, and You proved Your love by dying on the cross for our sins. You are alive and reigning in Heaven, and we are eternally Yours! Help us to live today in that life-giving truth. Please heal our hurts from people who have wounded us. We choose to forgive them and trust You to deal with them. Give us Your grace to be faithful and compassionate like You. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.10
Notes: 1 Luke 24:44; John 5:39-40; Heb 10:7; 1 Pet 1:11. 2 See especially Job 19:25-27. 3 Matt 6:8. 4 Exodus 12:40. 5 Ruth 1:20-21. 6 John 11:21. 7 Mark 4:38. 8 Mark 6:14-29. 9 John 14:3. See also John 17:24; Phil 3:20-21; Col 3:4; 1 Thess 4:16-14; 1 John 3:2; Rev 21:3. 10 Deut 31:8; Heb 13:5; Eph 4:32.