True story:
An accountant with a PhD, a man and his wife were immigrants from China some years ago. Invited to church, they became involved with the congregation. Shortly after, though, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. She affirmed faith in Christ and was baptized. A few weeks later, she died. He also confessed Christ but was never really certain.
One Sunday, he was in church. He didn’t know what the pastor was preaching, but he suddenly felt an urgency within himself. In his words, ‘My faith was weak. I needed to know.’ So he cried out in his heart, ‘God, if you’re real, I need to know. I need you to show me.’
Then, he says, he saw Jesus himself, standing on the church stage, off to one side. Without speaking out loud, they had a brief conversation. He asked Jesus, ‘Can I see my wife again?’
And he understood Jesus to be saying, simply, ‘No.’
‘Can I talk to her?’ Jesus just stood silently.
In desperation of soul, the man said, ‘What do you want me to do with my life?’ And Jesus said, ‘Follow me, and I will show you.’
That encounter transformed the man. He knew Jesus was real, and had a clear and specific call to follow Christ. His faith became real, strong.
A true story like that has a great ‘wow-factor’, but I have conflicting reactions to it. On one hand, I celebrate the encounter with Jesus, and am thrilled that God showed himself so clearly. On the other hand, I think, ‘Why doesn’t God do that more often? If God would give more people that kind of encounter, a lot more people would believe, wouldn’t they?’ As Christians our main task is to let people know about God and to call people to respond to him in trust and belief. The problem is that we are trying to persuade people to trust in a God who remains, to a large degree, in the shadows. Wouldn’t our task be so much easier if God showed up to people the way he did to this gentleman? Why is it so rare for him to do so?
Would not our own faith be strengthened if God made himself more obvious? Someone just this week said to me, ‘How do I know if I am hearing God clearly? How do I know if I’m missing what he wants me to do?’ If only we could see him sometimes, hear his voice, then my doubts would be set to rest. I could trust him more easily, serve him more confidently, tell people about him more boldly.
In Psalm 42, the Psalm writer feels within himself a longing for God. His past experiences of God seem distant, and he is not sure how to answer the question his enemies fire at him: ‘Where is your God?’
You may have felt like that. You remember an experience where God was so present, so real to you, but it was a while ago. You would love to have that experience again but right now you are not sure how to answer the question, ‘Where is God?’
So from an outreach perspective and for our own sakes, we wish for a world where God shows himself, where he speaks without ambiguity, and where he acts with fairness; that is, where those who honor him are blessed, and those who do not, get punished. In such a world, all doubts would be removed, and the kind of faith God seems to desire would be evoked in people.
Wouldn’t it?
The Bible describes exactly that kind of world: it is the story of the people of Israel in the Old Testament book of Exodus. It is a remarkable period, where God steps out from behind the curtain for a time.
The people of Israel had grown from a small clan of seventy to a nation of many hundreds of thousands, but they did so while living in Egypt as an enslaved people for almost four hundred years. When the time was right, God stepped in in dramatic fashion and effected their deliverance through Moses. In that event, and the period immediately following, God made himself more obvious than at any time before or since.
In the ten plagues that devastated Egypt God let loose such a display that not one but two nations were utterly convinced of his reality and his power. Both the Egyptians and the Israelites knew that the LORD was God. He parted the Red Sea, and Israel walked through on dry land. God miraculously provided food and water for them in the desert. But even if the miracles were not enough, God visibly manifested himself to them. There was a pillar of cloud in the day that turned to fire at night. While they were camped, the pillar remained in the center of the people. When they were to move, it went before them. If someone asked them, ‘Where is your God?’, they could simply point and say, ‘He’s right there.’
He came down to Mount Sinai in fire and smoke, with thunder and caused the mountain to quake. When God spoke to Moses in the ‘Tent of Meeting’ and later the Tabernacle, the pillar of cloud would hover at the tent. After speaking with God, Moses’ face would radiate with light so much so that he had to cover it up with a veil.
He showed himself plainly. God also spoke clearly.
His will was clear, with no gray areas. God’s instructions went down to the mundane issues of hygiene and cooking, how to treat slaves and neighbors, what kind of worship practices to engage in, and when. He told them exactly when to break up camp and move on. He gave them something called the Urim & Thummim, a means by which they could determine God’s will if there was some question.
Do we often wish God would make his will more clear? Well, to the Israelites, he did. Everything was spelled out.
God actually spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with a friend, the Bible says. In fact, the Israelites, terrified, said, ‘Let him talk to you. If he talks directly to us, we’ll die.’
And God instituted a system of absolute fairness. We sometimes hear the objection that ‘bad-things-happening-to-good-people’ is an argument against God, as if ‘good-things-happening-to-good-people’ and ‘bad-things-happening-to-bad-people’ would make faith more likely. Again, that is what the Israelites experienced. God laid things out so clearly: ‘Obedience and faithfulness will result in blessing.’ He essentially said. ‘You will prosper. You will enjoy good health and long life. You will have divine protection from enemy peoples. Crops will be plentiful. You will have security. On the other hand, disobedience and unfaithfulness will result in curses: you will experience famine and poverty. Your enemies will defeat and oppress you. You will live in fear. Livestock will be sterile. In other words, good things will happen when you do good; bad things will happen when you do bad.’
That is exactly the world many ask for: God’s will clear. God’s presence obvious. Goodness rewarded, and sin judged. Surely such a world would inspire real faith.
It is astonishing what happened in Israel. Even while Mount Sinai shook with the very presence of God, they built idols at the foot of the mountain and began to worship them. They consistently grumbled and complained to God and about God. They flagrantly disregarded direct commands of God.
Did God’s fair system of rewards for obedience and punishment for disobedience have good results? Within a generation, the people had disintegrated into a state of anarchy, and the rest of the Old Testament is the history of the playing out of the promised punishments.
Did clarity of God’s will lead to greater obedience? No. They stayed put when God said ‘Move’. They attacked when God said, ‘Don’t attack.’ They almost tripped over themselves trying to find ways to break God’s commands. And these the people who had seen with their own eyes the plagues in Egypt, the parting of the Sea, the miracle of water from the rock, and the very glory of God!
It seems that God making himself obvious had the opposite effect we might imagine. Rather than foster faith, it resulted in rebellion.
‘Yeah, but that was in the desert! Hardly ideal conditions.’ Good point. What if conditions were ideal? Fast forward about five hundred years. The Israelites are firmly established in their own land. During the reign of David, a godly king, Israel’s territory expands and they do prosper. When David’s son Solomon comes to the throne, Israel’s greatness is at its height. The nation is wealthy. Other nations pay tribute to Israel. The people are secure and safe.
God himself appears to Solomon and promises great blessing if Solomon honors God. Solomon begins his reign by building a magnificent temple to God, a project that takes seven years to complete. For seven years, the energy and resources of the people are God-focused.
At the service of dedication, God again shows up in a dazzling display of his power. His glory descends and fills the temple so that no one could even go inside. As one the people fall face down and worship with joy, and they decide to carry on the worship celebration for seven days more. With God at the center, it is the high water mark of Israel’s history politically, economically and religiously.
Surely now, Israel would get it. Unbelievably, Solomon himself leads the people to the worship of idols, and the history of Israel after that point is a long decline into paganism until at last God brings his promised punishment on them and they are conquered and exiled.
When God parts the sky and breaks into our world in an undeniable display of glory and power, it doesn’t seem to evoke faith.
Consider it from God’s perspective: As we read through the Bible, we discover that what God wants primarily from people is to be loved. Obeyed, yes, but even that obedience is to be a loving response to his goodness and his own love for us. Worshiped, yes, but the worship of adoration, not just humility.
God’s demonstrated power did not evoke Israel’s love,. however. It evoked fear, and fear, in its turn, evoked rebellion, as it always does.
When Jesus came, God entered the world with his power cloaked, obscured.
In Jesus, God approached humanity in a manner that did not instill fear. Jesus showed divine power with his miracles, but without the thunder and fire of God’s Old Testament appearances. Jesus spoke, but with a human voice, not one that caused people to fall prostrate on the ground. And yet, then many people didn’t believe him: ‘Where’s the power?’ they said. ‘Show us a miracle!’ Jesus often demurred when there came an undue emphasis on his miracles. He knew from Israel’s history that miracles did not produce the love and faithfulness God desired. Anyway, his miracles did not convince people. Some attributed them to Satanic power. Others just wanted miracles in order to see Jesus ‘perform’.
So apparently, for God to ‘remove all doubt’ and reveal himself with no barriers – in Egypt or in Solomon’s reign or even through Jesus – does not remove doubt, does not cultivate the love and faith he seems to desire of us.
There are three things that factor into this equation for me, in terms of my own faith:
The first is the observation that by obscuring himself, God automatically creates the need for faith on our part. The Bible reveals that somehow our faith means a great deal to God. To trust God when doubt is possible. To choose obedience when the outcome isn’t clear. The classic example of this is Job, and also Hebrews chapter 11: a litany of people who, by faith, trusted God for what they could not yet see.
God does not dump himself or his kingdom on us. He calls us to seek.
So rather than mowing down our doubts by making himself blatantly obvious – which we see from Scripture does not work anyway – he woos us, makes overtures to us. In CS Lewis’ words, he gives us the scent of a flower we do not yet see.
The second thing is – and I have already said it a dozen times this morning so I will not describe it here – that what I assume will produce or strengthen faith probably won’t.
Third, if God gave me a moment of clarity now, would that help me much? I think not. I have had moments of clarity. There have been a few – precious few, but a few nonetheless – a few moments where I have known God: his direction was clear, his presence almost palpable, and I knew that God was real and good.
But then later I find myself doubting or wondering.
In Psalm 42, David remembers experiences of great worship, but now is downcast, wondering where God is. If God blazed into my life, or stood on the stage as he did for the man I spoke of earlier, that would carry me for a season, but I would inevitably need another vision somewhere down the road. My life of faith would end up being a life of addiction, looking for my next hit of God to carry me.
God does not want that for me, or for you, nor did he want that for Israel.
Philip Yancey makes this insightful observation:
The very clarity of God’s will had a stunting effect on Israel’s faith. Why pursue God when he had already revealed himself so clearly? Why step out in faith when God had already guaranteed the results? Why wrestle with the dilemma of conflicting choices when God had already resolved the dilemma? In short, why should the Israelites act like adults when they could act like children? And act like children they did, grumbling against their leaders, cheating on the strict rules governing manna, whining about every food or water shortage.
As I studied the story of the Israelites I had second thoughts about crystal-clear guidance. It may serve some purpose – for example, to get a mob of just-freed slaves across a hostile desert – but it does not encourage spiritual growth.
God wants to cultivate maturity and maturity requires trust, obedience, and faith.
To the man whose story I told earlier, God graciously stepped out from behind the curtain and revealed himself. As you know, most often he does not, and that reality means that faith will struggle, or even that some may reject or ignore God entirely.
There are also three implications of God’s hiddenness, God’s silence. The first is for us as individual Christians. That God is often somewhat obscured does not necessarily mean a deficit on your part. Often we think that if we only tried harder, God would seem closer, that if we were better Christians, we would sense him, hear him better.
But God is somewhat veiled not because he is waiting for us to measure up but because he is drawing us deeper into faith. God is actually encouraging us into faith by his very silence and hiddenness, much like the parent who sends her crying child into his first day of school.
Be encouraged. The faith deepened by seeking is of greater substance than the so-called faith that is weak because it never had to exercise its muscle, never had to stand on its own.
The second implication is for seekers. Some of you may be exploring Christianity, and perhaps you’ are waiting for all the answers before you accept it. A warning: you will never get all the answers you seek. God does not cross all T’s and dot all I’s. Spiritual life is like natural life: None of us is born into adulthood. So it is spiritually: we begin with an infant faith that we nurture into maturity, and that maturing happens through a life of seeking, of some struggle, of learning trust.
I invite you, if you have reached a critical mass of understanding, to trust God for what you do not yet know. If only 51% of your questions have been answered do not be ruled by the 49% minority. Step over the line. If you have been at church for any length of time, then you know that it is through Jesus Christ that one is born into spiritual life and begins to draw near to God. (If you have never taken that step, do it today, and tell someone, so that people can help you explore that further.)
Third and finally, this has implications for us as a church, too. We exist, we say, not only to know Christ, but to make him known. That is, if people are going to know the reality of God, it will not be because God steps onto the stage, or blasts into their life with fire and thunder. It will be because we are making him known to them. If people complain that there’s not enough evidence to warrant belief and faith and trust in God, it is because we have not ourselves been that evidence. Nothing is a greater priority for the church than to actively and urgently make Christ known. Your small group needs to be thinking about that. The choir needs to be thinking about that. Our youth and kids need to be thinking about that. Certainly your preachers and leadership needs to be thinking about that.
Because the truth is that when God reveals himself, ninety times out of a hundred, he will do it through Christians. Through you.
Many of you quietly go about being a witness for Christ in your workplaces and neighborhoods.
As Christians increasingly make that an urgent priority and reallocate more of our time and resources to a ministry of outreach, what that means is that fewer people will have to ask, ‘Where is God? I don’t see him.’ Instead, they will look at you, and me, at us, and say, ‘I see the reality of God.’
Amen.