Isaiah 45:15
15 Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
How God Hides
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself. Isaiah 45:15.
We have all had our days of wondering what God was like. When we were very young we pictured Him as a giant. Long ago, that idea filled children with fear; they were told that the thunder was His voice, and that they could never escape His eye, for it could see everything and everyone at once. It was a grand picture spoiled in the painting.
Later, the words “God is a spirit,” became familiar to us; and gradually we came to understand that we could not see God with our eyes. He was henceforth a mystery. You know what a mystery is? A mystery is something hidden, a matter unexplained, something that is beyond our understanding.
The fact that there is this mystery about God made and still makes, good men and women pray. And many times they have written down their thoughts about it. How very beautiful, how magnificent, many of these thoughts are! The Bible is full of them; and our text is just a little bit from what is one of the finest examples of sacred writing in the world. “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.”
1. Where does God hide?
(1) God hides in creation. Did you ever, when you plucked a daisy, examine it? How perfect it was! You had often been told that God made the flowers and you had taken it for granted, but somehow, when you looked at the care and thought that must have gone to the painting of these petals and the forming of the hundreds of tiny florets that make up the bunch we call a daisy, you realized that that flower couldn't have just “growed,” as Topsy said of her little black person. You felt that Someone had taken infinite patience to create that daisy, and it came to you suddenly that that Someone was God.
(2) God hides in history. Some of you are fond of history. When you come to know more and yet more about it, and can go back over long periods, you will see how one nation goes up and another goes down, and how the laws of right and wrong are simply thundered out all through it. No nation can go on acting tyrannically, unjustly and sinfully, and not be punished for it. God is behind everything. He hides, but He is there, and the reward or the punishment will surely come.
(3) God hid in Jesus Christ. God hid in a beautiful way when Jesus came to earth. Jesus worked as a carpenter and He spoke a homely speech, but His words were gracious words, and His deeds were kind and loving. Some people sneered. “Tell us plainly who you are,” they said. Even His best friends found things difficult to understand. They did not realize that God had come to this world. “Show us the Father!” they demanded. And all the time He was sitting with them at the same table.
2. Why does God hide?
(1) He hides for the purpose of making us stronger and letter. It is the boys and girls who fight well when odds are against them who turn out the finest men and women. A wise father allows his children to feel their own weight; he often leaves them to tackle their own tasks even when they are difficult. He knows that will make them great. In every large city there are memorials to fallen heroes and martyrs. They fought on when God was hiding, and now they have their reward.
(2) God hides Himself from us that we may learn to trust Him, that faith may have a place in our lives. Did it ever strike you how much of wonder and mystery there must be in a faithful dog's life? Even his washing and brushing must be a mystery, yet he suffers them at your hands, and loves you all the time. When he is ill, no doubt he wonders why you do not help him. He does not understand that the medicine you give him is to make him better. Yet he trusts that all will be well because you stay by him.
The Bishop of Durham tells of a little book-marker he possesses. It belonged to his mother. A text is worked on the pierced card in blue silk. He says that when he came across it, after having lost it for a long time, he saw first its wrong side, which was just a tangle of confused and crossing threads. Then he turned it round on the “right side” There he read in beautifully clear letters produced by the tangled stitches: GOD is LOVE.
Boys and girls, one day we shall see history and the world and our life as God sees it. And then we shall see that what seemed tangled and confused to our earthly eyes was really beauty and order. And we shall no longer be able to say, “God hides,” for we shall be with Him, and “we shall see him as he is” (The texts of the other sermons in this series are Genesis 3:8; Isaiah 32:2