1 Corinthians 10:1-13 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. ² They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. ³ They all ate the same spiritual food ⁴ and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. ⁶ Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. ⁷ Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry." ⁸ We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did-- and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. ⁹ We should not test the Lord, as some of them did-- and were killed by snakes. ¹⁰ And do not grumble, as some of them did-- and were killed by the destroying angel. ¹¹ These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. ¹² So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! ¹³ No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?" (Psalm 13) So wrote King David from his sickbed, tortured by painful thinking, yet unable to set it aside. "How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?"

He cried out "Adonai" "LORD" in the Hebrew. Four times David cried "Ad-a-NAH!" Hebrew for "How long?" Literally, "Until when?"

It brings to mind God pouring into King David’s cup as a father would pour milk into a cup for a child, whispering, "Say when." Only, what poured so freely was pain into his mind and disease into his body. David cried, "Enough already! When!" Still God kept pouring, until David was lost in the dreadful feeling of abandonment, in the appalling thought that God had turned his face away.

Scripture says God won’t give you more than you can handle, but that threshold seemed long past for David, so he cried out, "Ad-a-NAH, Adonai! Ad-a-NAH? When, Lord, WHEN?"

This is the cry of all humanity. All of humankind lies in the sickbed with King David. What is wrong with everything – all the sin, the shame, the futility, all the fractured relationships, the suffering children, the rumors of wars, the shadow of death – when put all together, becomes this one, weary, anguished cry. "Until when?"

Isn’t it amazing to find in a 3,000 year-old hymn your own soul’s complaint? You thought it was private and your own, but here it is. The God who had inspired these words clearly knows the real you. And he knows when to say "When."

You look back on times in your life when the pain or confusion or sorrow got so bad that you cried out to God with all your heart, "Where are you?" And he answered? Nothing. (Or so you thought.)

Our hearts naturally lean away from God as it is, with a resistance and stubbornness we cannot begin to justify. So in times of suffering or gut-punching disappointment, people can find the temptation irresistible to declare themselves rid of God and to resolve to move on without him, this God who does nothing when they need him most. Where is he?

The apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians and us where God was for the Israelites. The Israelites were privileged people. They had seen the Lord of the universe blazing a trail for them through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud in the daytime and pillar of fire at night. They had seen water stacked up on both sides as they walked through the Red Sea. Paul refers to this as a special kind of baptism. Every Israelite who went through that dramatic baptism had a reason to think: "I must be one of God’s privileged people. Look at what great things he is doing for me!"

When you wonder where God is, remember that like those Israelites of old, we are privileged people. We are people touched by the grace of God, people who have received a baptism in which God has brought forgiveness and adoption into our lives. The Israelites’ baptism bound them to Moses, their new leader. Our baptism has bound us to our leader, Jesus Christ.

The Israelites ate the spiritual, miraculous food of manna from heaven and drank water from a rock. Yet, even more amazing then that, they drank from the spiritual rock of Christ, who accompanied them. As privileged people they could always say, "We have the Son of God walking with us!"

When you question where God is, remember the privilege you have been given to eat and drink the spiritual food again and again of Christ’s very body and blood. While you are traveling through this plain of sin and through the valley of the shadow of death, you can always say, "I have the Son of God walking with me!"

Yet Paul was warning the Corinthians and us that the Israelites had rejected their privileged, blessed status. They took God’s grace lightly. That is why Paul uses these examples to warn us, "So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!"

"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man." Don’t think that because you are a Christian that you can’t fall into the same sins as the Corinthians and Israelites. Open and secret idolatry to love work more than worship, to love sleep more than prayer, to love self more than sanctification. Sexual immorality of living together before marriage, not working at your marriage, viewing certain movies and websites. Grumbling and complaining, never being satisfied with your situation in life. These were the Israelites’ sins, the Corinthians’ sins, and these are our sins.

So it is always amazing that people complain, "Where in the world is God?" when they become pregnant out of wedlock or are fired from another job for irresponsibility or get a divorce because of adultery: "Lord, how could you?" You don’t need me to point out the irony here. Sometimes life is a mess because we are a mess. We reap what we sow.

Many times our suffering is brought on by our ourselves – our sins, our stupidity, our selfishness. Sometimes the earth opens to swallow the wicked, the snakes kill, and the destroying angel attacks, because it is our fault – our sin, our grievous wickedness.

And yet we all also suffer in ways that aren’t particularly our fault. Car accidents, identity theft, workplace injury, Alzheimer’s, cancer, leukemia in a child, all may poured out upon us. The first thing I want to tell you as you are enduring this outpouring of suffering is that is okay to ask, "Where are you God?"

I understand what makes your heart ask, "Can there really be a God of love?" Yet before you can measure his compassion, my task is to suggest another question, "What is our deepest need?" People who answer that the deepest needs of people are to be wealthy or healthy, beautiful or pain free, will always conclude that God must love some people and not others. If the needs that matter most to you have to do with being surrounded by happy things or by nice people, then if might be fair for you to question the depth of God’s care. However, that premise is faulty. The One Great Need we all share is to have peace with God. Once we realize what our greatest need is, then all other needs are reduced to insignificance, and everything is changed. In other words, look in the mirror.

What if what is wrong with you and with our world is not poor health or lack of wealth or an abundance of unpleasant days? What if what is really wrong with everything is human sin? What if, as Scripture say, it is God that is the wronged one, the disappointed one? What if all that has gone wrong is humanity’s fault, not his, but our minds are so clouded in sin and shrouded in death that we can’t see it? What if when we blame God for things we don’t understand or rage in senseless atheistic hatred at him for not existing … well … what if we’re wrong? What if nothing less than eternity is at stake, nothing less than where we will be and how it will be for us forever?

Then the last thing we really need from God – the very last thing – are sweet and pleasant lives that never confront us with our own true condition.

Instead of asking God, where were you when I had my accident or when my son went to war or when those planes crashed into the two towers, why not ask him, (this time with appropriate humility), where were you when this world was plunged into sin? Where are you when I have sinned against you?

God answers with a crucifixion. God, who exists in sublime independence, chose to enter a relationship with us that would cost him everything and us nothing. For our One Great Need, the Father gave his One and Only Son. On the cross, we witness the greatest miracle in the Bible, the miracle of restraint – when the Father sat on his own hands, doing nothing at all. But how!? How could the one who exploded from heaven, "This is my Son whom I love," possibly hold himself back? Because, you see, he also loved us. And so, even for Jesus, there was a time when there was no miracle, no answer, no help.

Here is a mystery: Where was God when God needed him? See him there, nailed to a tree, crying, bleeding, suffering, dying, and not saying "When" until it was enough … not arching his back and pushing on the nails and shouting his triumph, "It is finished," until it really was and the whole world, full of people like you, was redeemed.

You are God’s privileged people. It is okay for you to humbly ask questions of God. You can ask him why or where are you. It is good that you ask them. I only ask that we move the conversation to this new ground, this hill called Golgotha, where the great human complaint loses all its steam. For there we see blood on the ground. It is God’s blood. It may not be the questions that are changed. Perhaps it is only the heart with which you ask them. For there Jesus stands on the other side of your death, alive with healing in his wings. A woman glances up from inconsolable weeping. He says, "Mary …" and she is consoled.

If this is true – and, my friends, it is – then there are new thoughts for you to think, and God himself will pour them into your weary mind by his own comforting Spirit – that his love is unfailing, that you can trust him, that your spirit rejoices in God our Savior. That is why at the end of Psalm 13, after David has lamented, "How long, O Lord?" he is renewed with a fresh thought, "I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me."

Time and time again in the Old Testament history, Israel sinned and deserved to be blotted out of God’s book. But God was faithful and he gave his people the Promised Land and the Promised Savior.

You are God’s privileged people. Yet within each of us lies the power to self-destruct. God is faithful! When you are tempted, God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. God is faithful. He lets us know our weaknesses. He tests us, but he does not break us. He tries us, but he does not leave us or forsake us. He leaves us always stronger than we were. Every time you face a temptation, he provides a way out. Every time a trouble comes into your life, God gives you a way to get through it. If we’ve sinned, we can come back. When we’ve slipped and fallen, this faithful God has seen to it that the blood of his Son cleanses us from every sin. Through all these trials God wants to lead us to the cross to give perfect healing.

I realize that it seems God has given you more than you can handle, that it seems like far too much for you to take … yet here you are. The miracle is that people who have suffered the most are often the ones singing loudest at Christmas, "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled." Though their lives are in turmoil, they are at peace. Theirs is a heart-pounding intimacy with God; a calm and a strength never dreamed of by people who have never known pain.

There is a depth to these people, not in spite of the things he has allowed into their lives – he doesn’t do it lightly – but because of them. God has taught their knees to bend before the holy child of Bethlehem and their mouths to sing those words: "God and sinners reconciled."

The disciples were getting beaten by the storm on the Sea of Galilee. The wind rose up and battered them. They rowed till their arms ached, past 3 am, getting nowhere. Where was Jesus when they needed him? He was watching and aching, sighing and crying. It is he who left heaven and entered the very center of human distress to pray to his Father from here. And, at just the right time, he was on his way. "It is I. Don’t be afraid."

"Ad-a-NAH, Adonai! Ad-a-NAH? When, Lord, WHEN?" He’s on his way for you. So be strong. Hold on. Endure. "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear." Your God will know when to say "When." Amen.