When the Presence of the LORD Departs

 By Jason Lovelace

 

Key Scripture:

Numbers 14.40-45 – 40And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, “Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned.”  41And Moses said, “Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the LORD? but it shall not prosper.  42Go not up, for the LORD is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies.  43For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD, therefore the LORD will not be with you.”  44But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the camp.  45Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah.

 

Joshua 7.1-5 – 1But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.  2And Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is beside Bethaven, on the east of Bethel, and spake unto them, saying, “Go up and view the country.”  And the men went up and viewed Ai.  3And they returned to Joshua, and said unto him, “Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai; and make not all the people to labour thither; for they are but few.”  4So there went up thither of the people about three thousand men: and they fled before the men of Ai.  5And the men of Ai smote of them about thirty and six men: for they chased them from before the gate even unto Shebarim, and smote them in the going down: wherefore the hearts of the people melted, and became as water.

 

Judges 16.20-21 – 20And she said, “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.”  And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself.”  And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.  21But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.

 

I Samuel 16.14 – But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.

 

I Samuel 28.5-6 – And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.  And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

 

At Mammoth Cave National Park, in Cave City, Kentucky, on the basic, Mammoth Passage Tour, there is a point in which the Cave Guides and Park Rangers turn off all of the lights in Mammoth Cave.  The darkness is so deep that a person cannot even see his or her and front of his or her face.  The Cave Guides and Park Rangers do this to give the tourists a small taste of what cave exploration was like when Mammoth cave was first discovered and explored many years ago.  There is also something very similar to this “lights out” experience and being totally and completely lost.  Have you, reader, ever felt that kind of darkness, that kind of lack of the presence of spiritual light in your life?  Has there (or is there now) been a time in your life where you were totally and completely cut-off from the people that you loved the most?  How is all the lights being off in a cave the same or similar to the lack of the presence of the LORD God in one’s life?

 

Where the Spirit of the LORD is…

Just what is the Spirit of the LORD?  And what does the Spirit of the LORD have to do with being alone or in spiritual darkness?  According to the Bible, the Spirit of the LORD is another title for the Holy Ghost.  The Holy Ghost, in turn, according to Acts 5, is God, and one part of the Trinity, as described in I John 5.7.  II Corinthians 3.17 says that “…the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  Jesus, according to John’s Gospel, calls the Holy Ghost the counselor who will teach and lead his followers into all truth.  Basically, the Spirit of the Lord is the Holy Ghost, and wherever the Holy Ghost resides or lives, there will be freedom, understanding, and peace.  The good news is that EVERYONE who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour is given the promise of the Holy Ghost.  The Holy Ghost lives inside everyone who believes, from the youngest child to the oldest saint.  As Paul States in his letter, the Holy Ghost brings “the peace of God that passeth all understanding,” and he “shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4.7)

 

Like a Cat Without Whiskers

It is said that when a person cuts off the whiskers of a cat, that the cat will act in a similar way as a blind man.  The whiskers of a cat are one of the ways that a cat uses its senses, and to cut them off is like placing a blindfold over a person.  It is hard for a cat to move if it does not have its whiskers!  In the same way, a person who has had the experience of the presence of the Holy Spirit is usually equally lost and bewildered when the Presence of the LORD departs.  Case in point is a student friend of this writer who was in Mexico, named Joseph.  Joseph went to Mexico to finish his studied in Spanish, and also to study to become a teacher of English as a Foreign Language.  Joseph relates that, while in Mexico, he was invited to go to a church that turned out not to be a Christian Church.  While at this church, when the speaker was speaking, Joseph said that he could not understand one single word of Spanish that the preacher at this church was preaching.  In fact, Joseph also told how even when talking with the pastor after church, the words to him were gibberish:  he could understand not one word of what he was hearing, and Joseph is fluent in Spanish now, and was then, too!  Yet, ten minutes after he left the church with his Mexican friends, Joseph’s complete understanding of Spanish came back.  Joseph said, “It was like coming in out of the cold, and having a warm blanket wrapped around me!  The sense of the vacuum that the Holy Ghost had left was eerie and disturbing!”  For Joseph, the experience was the same as a cat not having its whiskers!  His senses and his ability in using the Spanish Language left him when he went to the cult-church, but when he left that place, the Spirit of the LORD returned, and with it, came Joseph’s Spanish-speaking abilities! Yet, what Joseph had done was out of innocence, as he had been invited o this church by his friends, and told it was a Christian Church.  Imagine the utter horror of willingly causing the Spirit of the LORD to depart!!!  In such a case, what do you suppose can and will happen when someone willingly rejects the Spirit of the LORD?

 

Humiliated and Chased Away

In the Scripture references for today, we see what can happen on the field of battle when the Spirit of the LORD has departed.  In four of these instances, the Israelites and Samson ended up being beaten, captured, chased away, and utterly humiliated.  In Samson’s case, it ended his freedom, and with the loss of his physical vision.  The Bible states time and again that when people follow the LORD, and trust in his word and his promises, that their enemies will flee from them in every direction.  However, just the opposite is true, as well:  when people reject the LORD and cast off his presence through his Spirit, their enemies will chase them away in every direction, and their hearts will melt with fear.  Such is the case in each and every one of the Scripture references for this particular lesson.  Friend, without the presence of the Spirit of the LORD, you really can do nothing.  You may turn to everything known to man under the sun.  You may turn to drugs, to sex, to alcohol, to false religion and belief, to money, to fame and power, but the end result will be a person who is bound by fear and heading towards total defeat and humiliation.  Think of all the great sports stars who’ve been brought down by drugs.  Why is it that these great and talented folk decided to try drugs instead of competing on their own physical and athletic merits?  Think about the famous rock stars or actors/actresses whose lives have been totally wiped out by chemical addiction.  Why is it that these people turned to such avenues?  Further, think about how many modern celebrities have been married multiple times.  Again, why is it that these people, with so much wealth, so much fame, so much power, have such messed-up, ruined and peaceless lives?  The reason is, there is no Presence of the Spirit of the LORD.  Each and every one of these people will very likely deny totally the truth of that fact, but the symptoms are there for all the world to see, and if one has eyes to see and ears to hear, the remedy is all too easy to render.

 

Why Does the Spirit of the LORD Depart?

There really is only one reason that the Spirit of the LORD, his presence, and his peace departs:  Sin.  The reason why the Children of Israel in Numbers – following their rejection of going into the Promised Land, then sudden change of heart – were defeated and chased away from Canaan and left to wander for forty years is precisely because the Spirit of the LORD was not present with them.  The reason why Joshua and the Israelites suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the tiny City-State of Ai is because of one man’s sin.  The only reason Samson was subdued is because he transgressed the Lord God’s command and sinned when he told Delilah the secret of his strength.  The reason why King Saul was troubled by an evil spirit and heard nothing from God is because he had sin in his life that he never repented of. Friends, it is the same for us today.  If we sin and carry it around, the Spirit of the LORD will depart.  Why?  The reason is because God will not share space with sin.  Either the sin has to go, or God, and his presence through his Spirit, must go.  There can be no middle ground.  Paul writes in this 1st Corinthians 10.21:

 

“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils:  ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”

 

Friends, it is abundantly clear:  God and sin cannot and will not cohabitate.  God will not share pace in a person’s life with sin, and this is especially true for a Christian. 

 

The End Result

The end result of living a life without the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD is always death. In our passage from Numbers 14, the Israelites of the Generation that first came out of Egypt all died in the wilderness, forgotten, unrecorded, and remembered only as a footnote to the Bible as a reminder of how not to live.  Only two men – Caleb and Joshua, who were faithful to God – were allowed to enter into the Promised Land.  In Joshua 7, three dozen Israelite Soldiers were killed as a result of trying to fight without the presence of the LORD, and the man who sinned and caused such trouble to Israel was also executed, his family and possessions burnt with fire.  Samson, though he was able to avenge himself of his enemies, was utterly humiliated and ended up dying in a way that was less than God’s best.  Worst of these, is Saul.  King Saul was full of the Spirit of the LORD when he first became king of Israel.  However, because he refused to give up his sin, refused to confess and turn back to God in repentance and humiliation, King Saul and all of his sons were killed.  The end result of rejecting the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD is always death, and it can be not only death for the individual, but also death for the nation. Look at Israel and Judah in the Bible.  How many times did they reject the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD, only to be defeated, and enslaved?  The end result was Assyria conquering the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, and the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 536.  Further, every other kingdom of the world, and every other ruler of the world, that can be found in history has passed into dust and ashes when the Presence of the Spirit of the Lord is rejected.

 

A Dire Warning

In these post-modern days, a great danger is on the horizon.  The United States of America – long the defender of freedom and the bastion for Christian Ideals and Religious freedom – is slowly but surely rejecting the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD.  Since the landmark US Supreme Court case in 1962 that outlawed prayer in public school, the United States has slowly but surely rejected God and cast away the Presence of His Spirit in ever-increasing frequency.  The freedoms that citizens once had to freely and openly express faith in Jesus Christ are day-by-day being eroded, so much so that homosexuality is now protected with greater severity than Christianity.  The danger here is that the United States has long been protected, blessed, and strengthened by the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD in the past.  Case in point is the US involvement in World War Two.  The USA, in 1941, was still coming out of a deep economic depression that had crippled it in the decade before.  It was the first time in the history of the world that a nation in severe economic depression was able not only to fight a war and win, but come out economically stronger than it was before.  This can only because of the blessings of God on the United States of America.  Unfortunately, in the years since, times have only changed for the worse in the USA.  No longer is God respected, even by out-and-out sinners, but instead he is mocked day after day after day by a media bent on erasing any vestige of Jesus Christ in the airwaves and in US Culture at large.  Unless the United States turns back to God, repents of its sins of recognition of homosexuality as a normal and healthy lifestyle, the killing of the innocents in the form of abortion on demand, the drunkenness from the open sale of alcohol, and the total disregard and mockery of God in the public forum the USA will crumble just as surely as greater and nobler civilizations have passed into the dust and ashes of history.  For the USA, it is now or never.

 

Darkness as in a Cave or Light as in a Summer Day?

The question now, is, reader and friend, what about you?  Do you have the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD?  Do you have that peace that passes all understanding?  Do you have the guidance and the promises that the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD offer?  Do you have hope for tomorrow, strength for the day?  Have you long rejected the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD, relying on yourself and your own strength instead?  Do you have fear about the future, fear in the daytime and in the night?  Do the smallest troubles give you unending stress and cause you to turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, tobacco, or some other fill-in that really doesn’t satisfy?  Is the darkness around you akin to the darkness of a cave, insomuch that you cannot even recognize your own hand when it is a millimeter away from your nose?  The good news today is that you, friend, can have the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD.  Jesus says time and again in the bible that he will never leave us nor forsake us, and this is absolutely true through the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD!  You can have peace, assurance, and hope for eternity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!  Jesus Christ stands and waits to give you His Peace, His Grace, His Forgiveness, Eternal Life through Him, and His Real Presence through the Holy Ghost.  However, an offer never becomes a gift unless it is received:  receive Jesus Christ today, and come to know the peaceful and glorious presence of the Spirit of the LORD!

 

Prayer – Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day!   We praise you, dearest LORD for your presence through your Holy Ghost!  We pray and we ask, Father, that if there is anyone here today who is seeking that Light in the spiritually dark cave, that they will come to you today, Lord.  Help us all to remember that giving in to sin is rejection of the Presence of the Spirit of the LORD.  Help us to remember, Father, that to reject the Spirit of the LORD is to invite fear, humiliation, defeat, and ultimately death.  We praise you, and we love you, and pray all these things in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, Amen.

 

Verse of the Day

“…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

– 2nd Corinthians 3.17