Hebrews 13:5 –Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
Who’s God talking to? Everyone?
God first told this to the Jews in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 31:6 – 6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
So Moses was letting the Jews know who were getting ready to take the Promised Land, God would be with them. Why? Because this is the generation that was ready to serve Him, after the last one had died in the desert for their disobedience.
God is not telling just anyone that He will never forsake them, just those who are His children. Being Jewish clearly didn’t count for being His children, because a generation died out in the desert. Not only that, but only ten verses later after verse six He tells Moses that the Israelites are going to rebel.
Deuteronomy 31:16-18 – 16 And the LORD said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. 17 And in that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and calamities will come on them, and in that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come on us because our God is not with us?’ 18 And I will certainly hide my face in that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods.
Contradiction?
No. It concludes a very important fact. The people who took the Promised Land as a whole knew the Lord and He wasn’t going to leave them or forsake them. The future generations after them are not the same people.
God will not leave or forsake those who have chosen Him. He will not forsake His children.
What if you’re not His child? In verse 17 it indicates if you don’t know Him, He’ll hide His face from those people and they will be forsaken.
The message for us is be God’s child. We are in the church age and we are to accept Jesus as our Savior to be His child. If we become His children, He will not leave or forsake us. It has nothing to do with works or even poorly serving Him. This is about being His child. The problem with many people is they are serving a God that’s not the God of the Bible. The Israelites later on were prostituting themselves off to other Gods. God hid his face from them.
Seek the one true God and His Son. The one you read about in the Bible. Then He will never leave you or forsake you.