“Can I Hide From God?”
Psalm 139:1-12
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Introduction: When Tyler was in fifth grade, he decided to run for Treasurer for the Student Council. One of his friends decided to run as well. One of the requirements for running was they had to give a short speech. Tyler worked hard and wrote a nice speech. The day he was to give it, for some reason his friend asked him to read his speech. Tyler read it; it was brief; one of his points was: “I will make a good treasurer because I am good at finding things.”…. Tyler immediately encouraged his friend he needed to change this part of his speech.
There are times in our lives when we want to hide. Maybe we hide because we are embarrassed. Maybe we hide from someone we have done something against, or who has done something against us to avoid further conflict. Maybe we hide from the IRS if we have failed to report everything on our taxes. And sometimes we try and hide from God. Our question this morning is: CAN I HIDE FROM GOD?
I. Hide-N-Seek Can Be Fun-
a. Junior High Camp- When I was in college I worked with the
Junior High group at the Crystal Cathedral. Junior Highers are actually one of my favorite age to work with. While they have some definite challenges about them (such as a short attention span, they are very emotional, and they can have an attitude), they are also very teachable and are just at that age where they can do great things with their lives.
One summer I was told by the Director of the Crystal Cathedral Day Care that she wanted to run a Junior high summer camp. The kids would be there from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Would I like to run the camp? Well, in my desire to have a job I said “yes,” not realizing what I was getting myself into. Think about that, 12 hours a day with Junior highers. On top of this, the budget was small, so we only had money to go on one or two outings a week. (We went horse back riding, and to the beach, and to the park, and to the amusement park), but what to do the other days and all the other hours I would have them?
This became quite the challenge, since Junior Highers are challenged in trying to entertain themselves. SO, I had to get very creative. I played some regular games (such as ball tag or trivia or board games), and we also played Hide-N-Seek. Game 1- The kind we played was one person would hide, then the others would look for him or her. When you found the person hiding, you hid with them. So slowly people would disappear, until there was only one person left. That person became the next person who would hide. Game 2- But in my creativity, I also developed a new hide-n-seek game called “Find the penny.” In this game, we were all in a small room; then I would turn off the lights so it was dark. Everyone was scattered around the room, then someone would throw a penny. You would hear it bounce off the wall, then off a table or chair, then it would land on the ground. Everyone would scatter around the room until the penny was found. The person who found the penny got to throw it the next round. LIKE I SAID, I HAD TO GET CREATIVE. Hide-n-seek can be fun.
b. With my kids- As a parent of 2 kids, I have also had my moments
of playing hide-n-seek. It seems for some reason that it is one of their favorite games. Actually, it starts when they are very young; when you play peek-a-boo with them. This is actually a form of hide-n-seek. You hold something in front of their eyes so that they can’t see you, then you lift the cloth and of course say: “Peek-a-boo.” And of course you have to have that right voice. Everyone seems to use it. J
Then when kids get older they want to play the actual hide-n-seek game. I’m not sure what is so attractive about the game, but kids love it. My kids loved to play it when they were younger. The problem with playing it in our house is that we have a small house, and not many places to hide. Of course for them, as they are smaller, they had many more places they could hide. But for me, well, I was quite limited to where I could hide. I couldn’t hide under the bed, or in a stuffed closet. I had to hide in the shower, or behind a door, so it wasn’t too hard to find me; maybe that’s why they liked playing with me so much.
Hide-n seek however, isn’t limited to a game. It is part of our lives.
II. God can and does find us- (Genesis 2:15-3:15; Jonah 1:1-3:5)
We too like to play hide-n-seek with God, only when we hide from God it isn’t a game. Well, maybe for us at first it is. It is a game to us because we think we can hide from God. We play this “game” in many ways: maybe we stop going to church, thinking that if we are not at church, then God doesn’t know where we are or what we are doing. Or maybe we play hide-n-seek by not praying any more. Maybe we feel that God isn’t answering our prayers, and we get frustrated thinking that prayer doesn’t work. So we stop praying, and in our stopping, we are hiding from God.
a. Adam and Eve- The first time this happened was with Adam and
Eve. Of course you know the story, but let me recap it for you. Adam and Eve have been given each other as partners. They have each other, and they have God. God has blessed them with animals, and the Garden of Eden. God has given them everything they need, and even many things that they could want. However, God gives them one rule: Genesis 2:16-17, “And the Lord God commanded the man: ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.’” God gives them this command, but with a reason: IT WILL LEAD TO THEIR DEATH.
Again, we know the story, that the serpent comes and deceives Eve, and she eats of the fruit, and she tells Adam about it, and he eats of the fruit. Then the scripture tells us, in Genesis 3:7- “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Then they hear God in the garden, and verse 8 tells us: “…and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” SO, here we have the first hide-n-seek game. The choice of hiding spots is amongst the trees. One that has been used many times since.
God calls out to them, “Where are you?” Here it seems that God is fooled by their hiding, but in truth God is calling out to them to give them the opportunity to come clean and to confess. And we see as the passage goes on that Adam does confess to God what happened. But there was still punishment for their actions, for their actions were great, in that they brought sin and death into the world! They hid because they knew they were guilty. They hid because they were trying to avoid the inevitable punishment from God. But in the end, while there was punishment, God established the depth of His love by talking about the coming of the Messiah, who would crush Satan, and in this act would defeat this condition of sin and death.
b. Jonah-Another occasion where we see hide-n-seek in play with
God is in the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of God. Jonah was told by God to go to the city of Nineveh because of their great wickedness. But Jonah didn’t want to preach to Nineveh; Jonah didn’t want to see them saved. So the hide-n-seek game begins. Jonah 1:3 tells us of this, “But Jonah set out to FLEE to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Jonah gets on a boat that is sailing to Tarshish. His goal is to get “away from the presence of the Lord.”
The Lord decides to play Jonah’s game of hide-n-seek. To flush Jonah out God sends a mighty storm upon the sea, and the ship was being tossed about, and was on the verge of breaking up. The captain comes to Jonah and asks Jonah to call to his God, so that they will not perish. Jonah realizes that he has brought this on the people of the boat, and tells them to throw him into the sea; Jonah knows that God has found him.
Even in the midst of Jonah’s rebellious spirit, God shows the depth of His love by providing a great fish to swallow Jonah up and save him from drowning. The fish delivers Jonah onto the shore safely. God again calls out to Jonah to go to Nineveh, and this time Jonah does not try and hide, but goes to Nineveh and preaches God’s word to them. We read of the result in Jonah 3:5- “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” This act was an act of repentance for their sin.
III. God’s finding us is a good thing- (Psalm 139:1-12)
a. Psalm 139- So we see that Adam and Eve couldn’t hide from God;
that Jonah couldn’t hide from God; BUT CAN WE? Psalm 139 gives us great insight into this question…The wonderful aspect of Psalm 139 is that it helps us to understand that we cannot hide from God, but it is done not in fear (like Adam and Eve), or anger and willfulness (like Jonah), but in adoration and praise. The language is a beautiful tribute to who God is…
Verse 1- “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me...” The psalmist acknowledges that God knows him, and then goes on to talk about how God knows him. “2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.” The Lord knows our thoughts, our ways, where we will be going, what we are going to say. But again, for the psalmist this is not a negative thing. The psalmist goes on to talk about how the Lord is even there to help keep us in line:
“5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.” This laying His hands on us is not to harm us, but to protect us and to provide for us. In all of this understanding, the psalmist reflects: “6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” The psalmist then gives his realization that we cannot play hide-n-seek from God, as he says: “7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” We see here that the Lord is in the heavens, which wouldn’t be a surprise to us, but the Lord can also find us in the depths, on the far side of the sea, in the darkness AND in the light. There is nothing that can hide us from God; no place we can go that the Lord can’t go. God is the ultimate Hide-n-Seek player!
b. Hiding through change- Example: WITNESS PROTECTION
PROGRAM- The United States Federal Witness Protection Program is a witness protection program administered by the United States Department of Justice and operated by the United States Marshals Service that is designed to protect threatened witnesses before, during, and after a trial. In the United States, the Witness Protection Program' (also known as the Witness Security Program) was established under Title V of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, which in turn sets out the manner in which the United States Attorney General may provide for the relocation and protection of a witness or potential witness of the federal or state government in an official proceeding concerning organized crime or other serious offenses.
In this relocation, people often have their names changed, they are relocated to a new state, and their lives become totally different. They are in hiding, even though they are living in plain sight! Sometimes we think we are in the witness protection program in trying to hide from God. We change our identity by becoming someone we were not created to be by God. When we live in sin, we are not who we were created to be. When we seek out the world instead of God, we become who we were not meant to be. In essence, we are changing who we are, and thinking that our actions are not visible to God!
But if we remember that God knows when we sit down and when we get up, God knows what we will say, or where we will go, then we realize we cannot hide from God, even if we try to change who we are. And if fact, why would we want to change who God created us to be? When we do, we will always feel that something is wrong with our lives, missing in our lives.
Conclusion: I find it an interesting concept that people try and hide from God. I believe this is because people don’t understand who God is. Yes, God is the judge, but we are told in Romans 8:33-34, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” While God is the one who can condemn us, instead of condemning us, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to die for us so that we could be forgiven. Why would we want to hide from the one who could forgive us?
In God we have great possibility. In God we can overcome all things. As Paul says, it is in God that our weaknesses are made into strengths. It is in God that we can do all things. God is a God that plays hide-n-seek with us, because God will always seek us out. He won’t force us to change, or coerce us into doing what is right, but He will come to us to give us the opportunity to do the right thing, just like He did with Adam and Eve, and Jonah, and so many others.
If or when you are hiding from God in any way, then know that God is there, seeking you out, ready to help you move to the place you need to be. Instead of hiding, confess, and turn back to God. You will be glad you did. Amen.
Psalm 139:1-12
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Introduction: When Tyler was in fifth grade, he decided to run for Treasurer for the Student Council. One of his friends decided to run as well. One of the requirements for running was they had to give a short speech. Tyler worked hard and wrote a nice speech. The day he was to give it, for some reason his friend asked him to read his speech. Tyler read it; it was brief; one of his points was: “I will make a good treasurer because I am good at finding things.”…. Tyler immediately encouraged his friend he needed to change this part of his speech.
There are times in our lives when we want to hide. Maybe we hide because we are embarrassed. Maybe we hide from someone we have done something against, or who has done something against us to avoid further conflict. Maybe we hide from the IRS if we have failed to report everything on our taxes. And sometimes we try and hide from God. Our question this morning is: CAN I HIDE FROM GOD?
I. Hide-N-Seek Can Be Fun-
a. Junior High Camp- When I was in college I worked with the
Junior High group at the Crystal Cathedral. Junior Highers are actually one of my favorite age to work with. While they have some definite challenges about them (such as a short attention span, they are very emotional, and they can have an attitude), they are also very teachable and are just at that age where they can do great things with their lives.
One summer I was told by the Director of the Crystal Cathedral Day Care that she wanted to run a Junior high summer camp. The kids would be there from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Would I like to run the camp? Well, in my desire to have a job I said “yes,” not realizing what I was getting myself into. Think about that, 12 hours a day with Junior highers. On top of this, the budget was small, so we only had money to go on one or two outings a week. (We went horse back riding, and to the beach, and to the park, and to the amusement park), but what to do the other days and all the other hours I would have them?
This became quite the challenge, since Junior Highers are challenged in trying to entertain themselves. SO, I had to get very creative. I played some regular games (such as ball tag or trivia or board games), and we also played Hide-N-Seek. Game 1- The kind we played was one person would hide, then the others would look for him or her. When you found the person hiding, you hid with them. So slowly people would disappear, until there was only one person left. That person became the next person who would hide. Game 2- But in my creativity, I also developed a new hide-n-seek game called “Find the penny.” In this game, we were all in a small room; then I would turn off the lights so it was dark. Everyone was scattered around the room, then someone would throw a penny. You would hear it bounce off the wall, then off a table or chair, then it would land on the ground. Everyone would scatter around the room until the penny was found. The person who found the penny got to throw it the next round. LIKE I SAID, I HAD TO GET CREATIVE. Hide-n-seek can be fun.
b. With my kids- As a parent of 2 kids, I have also had my moments
of playing hide-n-seek. It seems for some reason that it is one of their favorite games. Actually, it starts when they are very young; when you play peek-a-boo with them. This is actually a form of hide-n-seek. You hold something in front of their eyes so that they can’t see you, then you lift the cloth and of course say: “Peek-a-boo.” And of course you have to have that right voice. Everyone seems to use it. J
Then when kids get older they want to play the actual hide-n-seek game. I’m not sure what is so attractive about the game, but kids love it. My kids loved to play it when they were younger. The problem with playing it in our house is that we have a small house, and not many places to hide. Of course for them, as they are smaller, they had many more places they could hide. But for me, well, I was quite limited to where I could hide. I couldn’t hide under the bed, or in a stuffed closet. I had to hide in the shower, or behind a door, so it wasn’t too hard to find me; maybe that’s why they liked playing with me so much.
Hide-n seek however, isn’t limited to a game. It is part of our lives.
II. God can and does find us- (Genesis 2:15-3:15; Jonah 1:1-3:5)
We too like to play hide-n-seek with God, only when we hide from God it isn’t a game. Well, maybe for us at first it is. It is a game to us because we think we can hide from God. We play this “game” in many ways: maybe we stop going to church, thinking that if we are not at church, then God doesn’t know where we are or what we are doing. Or maybe we play hide-n-seek by not praying any more. Maybe we feel that God isn’t answering our prayers, and we get frustrated thinking that prayer doesn’t work. So we stop praying, and in our stopping, we are hiding from God.
a. Adam and Eve- The first time this happened was with Adam and
Eve. Of course you know the story, but let me recap it for you. Adam and Eve have been given each other as partners. They have each other, and they have God. God has blessed them with animals, and the Garden of Eden. God has given them everything they need, and even many things that they could want. However, God gives them one rule: Genesis 2:16-17, “And the Lord God commanded the man: ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.’” God gives them this command, but with a reason: IT WILL LEAD TO THEIR DEATH.
Again, we know the story, that the serpent comes and deceives Eve, and she eats of the fruit, and she tells Adam about it, and he eats of the fruit. Then the scripture tells us, in Genesis 3:7- “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Then they hear God in the garden, and verse 8 tells us: “…and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” SO, here we have the first hide-n-seek game. The choice of hiding spots is amongst the trees. One that has been used many times since.
God calls out to them, “Where are you?” Here it seems that God is fooled by their hiding, but in truth God is calling out to them to give them the opportunity to come clean and to confess. And we see as the passage goes on that Adam does confess to God what happened. But there was still punishment for their actions, for their actions were great, in that they brought sin and death into the world! They hid because they knew they were guilty. They hid because they were trying to avoid the inevitable punishment from God. But in the end, while there was punishment, God established the depth of His love by talking about the coming of the Messiah, who would crush Satan, and in this act would defeat this condition of sin and death.
b. Jonah-Another occasion where we see hide-n-seek in play with
God is in the story of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet of God. Jonah was told by God to go to the city of Nineveh because of their great wickedness. But Jonah didn’t want to preach to Nineveh; Jonah didn’t want to see them saved. So the hide-n-seek game begins. Jonah 1:3 tells us of this, “But Jonah set out to FLEE to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Jonah gets on a boat that is sailing to Tarshish. His goal is to get “away from the presence of the Lord.”
The Lord decides to play Jonah’s game of hide-n-seek. To flush Jonah out God sends a mighty storm upon the sea, and the ship was being tossed about, and was on the verge of breaking up. The captain comes to Jonah and asks Jonah to call to his God, so that they will not perish. Jonah realizes that he has brought this on the people of the boat, and tells them to throw him into the sea; Jonah knows that God has found him.
Even in the midst of Jonah’s rebellious spirit, God shows the depth of His love by providing a great fish to swallow Jonah up and save him from drowning. The fish delivers Jonah onto the shore safely. God again calls out to Jonah to go to Nineveh, and this time Jonah does not try and hide, but goes to Nineveh and preaches God’s word to them. We read of the result in Jonah 3:5- “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” This act was an act of repentance for their sin.
III. God’s finding us is a good thing- (Psalm 139:1-12)
a. Psalm 139- So we see that Adam and Eve couldn’t hide from God;
that Jonah couldn’t hide from God; BUT CAN WE? Psalm 139 gives us great insight into this question…The wonderful aspect of Psalm 139 is that it helps us to understand that we cannot hide from God, but it is done not in fear (like Adam and Eve), or anger and willfulness (like Jonah), but in adoration and praise. The language is a beautiful tribute to who God is…
Verse 1- “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me...” The psalmist acknowledges that God knows him, and then goes on to talk about how God knows him. “2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.” The Lord knows our thoughts, our ways, where we will be going, what we are going to say. But again, for the psalmist this is not a negative thing. The psalmist goes on to talk about how the Lord is even there to help keep us in line:
“5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.” This laying His hands on us is not to harm us, but to protect us and to provide for us. In all of this understanding, the psalmist reflects: “6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” The psalmist then gives his realization that we cannot play hide-n-seek from God, as he says: “7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” We see here that the Lord is in the heavens, which wouldn’t be a surprise to us, but the Lord can also find us in the depths, on the far side of the sea, in the darkness AND in the light. There is nothing that can hide us from God; no place we can go that the Lord can’t go. God is the ultimate Hide-n-Seek player!
b. Hiding through change- Example: WITNESS PROTECTION
PROGRAM- The United States Federal Witness Protection Program is a witness protection program administered by the United States Department of Justice and operated by the United States Marshals Service that is designed to protect threatened witnesses before, during, and after a trial. In the United States, the Witness Protection Program' (also known as the Witness Security Program) was established under Title V of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, which in turn sets out the manner in which the United States Attorney General may provide for the relocation and protection of a witness or potential witness of the federal or state government in an official proceeding concerning organized crime or other serious offenses.
In this relocation, people often have their names changed, they are relocated to a new state, and their lives become totally different. They are in hiding, even though they are living in plain sight! Sometimes we think we are in the witness protection program in trying to hide from God. We change our identity by becoming someone we were not created to be by God. When we live in sin, we are not who we were created to be. When we seek out the world instead of God, we become who we were not meant to be. In essence, we are changing who we are, and thinking that our actions are not visible to God!
But if we remember that God knows when we sit down and when we get up, God knows what we will say, or where we will go, then we realize we cannot hide from God, even if we try to change who we are. And if fact, why would we want to change who God created us to be? When we do, we will always feel that something is wrong with our lives, missing in our lives.
Conclusion: I find it an interesting concept that people try and hide from God. I believe this is because people don’t understand who God is. Yes, God is the judge, but we are told in Romans 8:33-34, “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” While God is the one who can condemn us, instead of condemning us, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to die for us so that we could be forgiven. Why would we want to hide from the one who could forgive us?
In God we have great possibility. In God we can overcome all things. As Paul says, it is in God that our weaknesses are made into strengths. It is in God that we can do all things. God is a God that plays hide-n-seek with us, because God will always seek us out. He won’t force us to change, or coerce us into doing what is right, but He will come to us to give us the opportunity to do the right thing, just like He did with Adam and Eve, and Jonah, and so many others.
If or when you are hiding from God in any way, then know that God is there, seeking you out, ready to help you move to the place you need to be. Instead of hiding, confess, and turn back to God. You will be glad you did. Amen.
posted by Logan's Blog at 11:48 PM
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