Hide and Seek

Well, today I want to talk about something that we can all identify with to begin the sermon. It's going to take us back to our childhood because there's a couple things that we, no matter what country we grew up in, or what state we grew up in, or what neighborhood we grew up in, there's something that we all did in a game that we enjoyed that seems to be a right of childhood.

Parents, I know every parent here has played this game with their children and enjoyed it. I think back to our children. I kind of remember playing this game with them. It's kind of when they're young. I know our young families here who have babies and young children are doing that now or will be doing it soon. And that's the game of hide and seek. Remember hide and seek? Hide and seek. You know, it's something you don't have to have a TV to do and it's not something you have to have a computer to do.

It's something you can do indoors and outdoors. And every child enjoys hide and seek. And they love little babies, right? They love peek-a-boo, right? It's like, oh, you're there and you're not there and whatever. And I didn't go online, but I'm sure the child development psychologist would say there's a lot to learn from hide and seek and what children develop during that time and why it's so appealing and why it's been done down through the ages.

There's a lot of things that children learn in seeking and as you see them grow older, the more intense they become in trying to find who's hidden, the more intense they become in where they can hide so that they can't be found is kind of an enjoyable thing. You know, hide and seek is in the Bible too. And the Bible is not a game, though.

It's not a game. But we do learn a lot from hide and seek and hiding and seeking. And today I want to look at that, hiding and seeking in the Bible. As I even say those words, I know that some thoughts have come to your mind, but let's turn to Isaiah 55 because that's going to be our keynote verse for today. Isaiah 55 and verses 6 and 7 says, Seek the Lord, seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to God, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Seek him. Now the word seek, we use it a lot. You know, hide and seek is there as a game. But seek, you know, when you look at the Biblical term of it, there is a determination in that word. It means seek, but there's a determination in it, there's a zeal in it, there's an eagerness in it.

So when we read in the Bible, seek God, and some of the verses that immediately come to your mind, you know, Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom of God, and all his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. Seek it. Determine to find it. Put the effort, and be willing to put the effort into learning what that means. God tells us, you know, seek his kingdom first. We don't have to worry about all those things, you know, that can get in the way and can distract us.

We don't have to worry about where our next meal is coming from, what's going to happen. God will provide all those things if we seek first. He wants us to put his kingdom and our dedication and our commitments and our effort into doing that, regardless of what's going on in our lives. That that's always the primary, always the primary goal we have and purpose. In Matthew 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, ask and you will find. Knock and it will be open. Seek and you will find. God just doesn't give us everything. You know, he just doesn't open our minds and pour everything into our minds that we need.

He's willing and he wants to give us all those things, but we have to put the effort into it and show him we want those things. We want to find the truth. We want to understand his principles. We want to follow him. We want to apply the principles of the Bible into our lives. We got to put some effort into it. He wants to see us do those things and he will provide when we do. Hebrews 11, 6, another verse that you may have thought the last part of Hebrews 11, 6, says, He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

If we really seek Him, if we really are doing that, He'll be found.

He'll be found. He'll reward us. So seek is well-documented in the Bible. Let's look at a few more verses in there that we don't think immediately. Back in Proverbs, there's a couple of verses that tell us the things that we should be seeking. Proverbs 18, and verse 15, says, The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge. He looks for knowledge. He gains knowledge. The heart of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. He's looking for the knowledge. He searches the Scriptures. He looks through those. He looks to God to do that, and God sees by His diligence, by His determination, by His commitment, that this is what He really wants. Not just something He knows He should do, but something that He really wants. Back in Proverbs 2, look at verses 1-5. Solomon, as he writes, to His Son, and really to all of us, says, If you treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding. Apply your heart. Put the effort into it. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver. Boy, if someone told us that on our property there was a silver bed underneath the thing, we would probably be out digging and looking and seeking. Where is that? Or if we lived in Texas and there was oil under our property, we would be seeking pretty diligently for where that is, or a treasure. God says, the same way, the same effort you put into physical riches, seek wisdom and understanding in the same way. Search for her as for hidden treasures. Then, when you put the effort into it, when you look to do those things, then you will understand the fear of the eternal, and you will find the knowledge of God.

So, seeking is a part of the Bible. How do we seek? How do we seek? You know the answer to those things. We seek God by praying, not just half-hearted prayers, but diligent prayers, committed to Him, talking to Him, pouring out our hearts to Him, letting Him know our weaknesses, confessing our sins to Him, being open with Him, not just so that we can put a checkbox on that day and say, Yeah, I prayed my prayer, but maybe during that time I was thinking about what I had to do that day, I was thinking about something that came up that we had worked on, that we give the time to Him to talk.

When we study the Bible, we really study the Bible. We just don't say, I'm going to read three chapters today, put my 15, 30 minutes in and whatever, and that's it. We actually look at the Scriptures, try to understand those, ask God to help us apply what is in there, and glean the lessons from it. We meditate. David, a man after God's own heart, he thought about God's words. He read them, he knew them, he studied the Scriptures, but then he thought about them, and he understood, began to understand how it all works and how they had to apply into his life.

Sometimes we've asked when a situation is there, when we show God by the things that we do. We are seeking Him. We are seeking His will. We are seeking the knowledge He has. We are seeking the things that He has to offer. Back in Acts 17, we have a group of people that we talk about from time to time called the Bereans, and they were seeking God. It came to them through the Apostle Paul.

As we read through their account here back in Acts 17, and we'll pick it up in verse 10, we find some things of how these Bereans, these Jews that were in Berea, differed from Jews in other parts of the Achaia there, where Paul was talking. When they received the word, they received it differently than many people. We can learn some lessons from the Bereans as we seek God.

As He opens our minds and we try to learn the dedication we have, let's read chapter 17, verse 10-15. Verse 10 says, The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These, verse 11, these people in Berea were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and they searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there and stirred up the crowds. And immediately, the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea, but both Silas and Timothy remained.

And then they brought Paul to Athens. What we see is five short verses, something we can learn about those Bereans. They were different than the people in Thessalonica who received the same word, but just didn't have the effect on them. First, we can see that the people in Berea, it says they were fair-minded. I think in the old King James, or the King James Version, it says they were noble. They were noble.

They were open-minded. They didn't come to that meeting and listen to what Paul had to say with a closed mind, as in, I'm going to believe only what we have always believed. I'm going to listen to what is being said, and I'm going to have an open mind to it. And I'm going to go back then and search the Scriptures. And I'm going to prove what is in those Scriptures.

I'm not going to look on the Internet. I'm not going to go through all these other places to see, because, just like the people in Thessalonica who came later and wanted to disrupt what Paul had been working there, who wanted to take those people away from the truth, we can always find.

There are always people who will take us away from the truth, but where you go is the Bible. You search the Scriptures, and you look at the Scriptures, because Jesus Christ said the Scripture cannot be broken. What's there is consistent from Genesis to Revelation.

The plan of God was formed before the foundation of the earth. It's there in Genesis. It's there in Revelation. It's there in Christ's message. It's there in the prophets of the Old Testament. It's there. And when we read the Bible and when we put it together and we search and we ask, we can find its truth. The Bereans did just that. Their response to the Word of God was far different than those in Thessalonica.

Thessalonica had a closed mind. We want to believe what we've always believed. We have our own ideas. We're going to form our own ideas. And you're not going to change our minds. We're going to believe what we want. And you know, we see that attitude even in the world around us today.

That people sometimes, they don't want to be taught what God wants. They want to teach what they believe and try to make the Scriptures fit what they believe, rather than yielding to God and letting Him give them the knowledge by seeking through the Scriptures, by searching them as the Bereans did. When we seek Him with an open mind, we'll be seeking Him with the humility that the Bereans did. Then He'll respond. Then He'll open. Then He'll begin to open our minds to see what is the truth. God won't reach closed minds. We can close our minds off and we can cut Him off.

We can cut Him off. Just like the Thessalonica did. Just like many of the Jews of that day did. They just simply refused to listen to what God had to say. This is the way it's been and this is the way it's going to be. If we don't have the humility, and if we don't seek through the Scriptures and keep that open mind that God is going to lead us to His truth and then be willing to go there as the Bereans did, then we're going to miss out on something tremendous in our lives.

We had the Bible study here the other day and had some good comments and questions in it. One of the things we talked about was being an example to the people around us. Someone after that Bible study sent me a quote that they heard on the radio, I guess going home from that, and I thought it was a very interesting quote. Whoever it was on the radio said, The only Bible some people will ever read is you. Isn't that a very good quote?

Some people will never know anything about the Bible, but they look at what we do, how we respond, how we live our lives, how we seek God. Because we go out and we tell people, oh, we keep the Sabbath day, we believe this, we believe the Bible, we try to live by everywhere in the Bible, but then they watch.

How are they? Do they really do what they say? Are they really keeping the Sabbath holy for 24 hours when maybe they don't keep any day holy and maybe one hour in church on a Sunday morning is enough for them? Are they really honest? Are they really striving to live by that? Or do they kind of do things that look like the world around us through the week?

Sometimes, the Berean sought, and those who are seeking God, seeking His truth, you know, will look at themselves, will look at themselves and make the changes that they need to make. The Bereans did that. When they searched the Scriptures, they found the truth, and they lived the truth. They made those changes in their lives. And look at the effect it had on the people around them. In verse 12 it says, Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. Because of what they did, the people sought their example, and it was like, they're really committed. They really believe this. They're really living it. They're really doing those things.

And they began to look and see, why is this people happy? Why are they different than the others around us? And when they looked in, you know, not only the Jews in that area, but the Greeks as well believed men as well as women. We can have the same effect on people around us.

It doesn't mean that just because we live our lives, God's going to call everyone, but we can help people to have open minds to God's Word as well by the way that we live. And the Bereans continued to grow, and God put them in there as an example to us, as people who seek. People who seek.

We need to be people who seek. And learn to do it God's way and seek. Where? Maybe we're missing the mark. What it is that we need to be doing closer to God. And how we, our lives, may be falling a bit short from what His intent for all of us is. And that's okay, but when we find those things, and when God opens our minds to see that, be like the Bereans.

Be willing to change. Be willing to adapt to those things and put them into effect in your lives, in our lives. And continue to seek His will. And He will continue to teach. He will continue to grow us and develop us into who He wants us to become. Which may not be exactly what we want us to become or desire to become, but He will grow us into what He wants us to become so that we are useful to Him and useful to each other. Let's talk about hiding. Let's talk about hiding. You know, hiding has a number of applications in the Bible. You know, when we first hear about hiding, it's way back in Genesis.

The first people who hid were who? Let's go back to Genesis 3. We're Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve. Let's go back to Genesis 3. Genesis 3 and verse 8. You know, I love verse 8 because of the things that it tells us about God. Not necessarily the things that it tells us about Adam and Eve, but in verse 8 it says, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

You know, it's a beautiful picture in my mind when I look at that. Here God created, you know, a perfect creation, a perfect earth for Adam and Eve and mankind to live in. And there was God. He was down there looking for man.

He wanted to be with them. He was strolling along the earth. And it shows He wanted a relationship with man. He wanted to see Adam and Eve. He just didn't put them there and then go off to do something else. He was vested and He was committed and He wanted them to have all the things of life. And there He was looking for them. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And Adam and his wife hid themselves. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Now, they were in perfect harmony before that. There was no reason for Adam and Eve. Well, there was a reason. There should have been no reason for Adam and Eve to hide themselves from God. Why did they hide themselves from God? Everything they had, everything they were, everything they ever needed. God had given them. Why would you hide yourself from the one who provided everything? Well, there was one reason. You know what it was. They had something to hide. They had taken to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

They had directly disobeyed Him and that guilt and that separation that comes from sinning and doing things against God's will, made them want to hide from God. They thought somehow they could hide from the eternal God who created the earth and who fashioned it and who walked back and forth on it. And I think back to when I was young. I grew up in a house that wasn't very big. It was 1,000 square feet. There weren't a whole lot of places to hide in that house, but it did have a basement.

I would know when I crossed the line when my mom would say, Just wait until your father gets home. That would be the thing that would just bring terror into my mind. I thought, Okay, push it too far. I would be there.

I would be there because I thought, If I'm not there, if I'm out when he's there, it'll be even bigger trouble. But I was never there waiting at the door for him when he came home. Often I was hiding in that basement. I thought, If I'm out of sight, I'm in the house, I'll be down in the basement, and he can come looking for me. And he did. He never failed. And I think about that. There's Adam and Eve. Because I knew I had done something wrong. I knew I had mouthed off too much or whatever I had done.

And now I look back and know I was getting what I deserved. But, you know, there's Adam and Eve. They had the same reaction. I've sinned against God. I've made an error at what I'm going to do. I'm going to hide from him. I don't want to look at him. I don't want to see him. I think, If I hide from him, maybe he won't even know what I did. Well, they had a lot to learn, right?

Because God knows everything. You know, we can't hide from him. You know, it tells us in the Bible we can go down to the middle of the earth. We can't hide from God. We can't hide what we're doing from him. He knows everything. But Adam and Eve didn't know that at that time. They thought, if we just hide ourselves away, perhaps, just perhaps, God won't notice what's going on.

But he did find them, and he asked, you know, why? Why are you hiding yourselves? Well, we were afraid because we're naked. Ah! God knew immediately. Who told you that? I didn't tell you that. How did that guilt come into your mind? Well, we can learn a lesson from that, too. You know, sometimes I think people. I think sometimes I've hidden from God or thought I could hide from God. Sometimes when you do something and you think, oh, you know, maybe God didn't notice that. Maybe he just didn't pay attention to that. And you learn, he does, how we learn to repent.

And I think that when we hide from God, you know, maybe we know he can see us, but we feel guilty when we don't do what we know we should do. And sometimes we hide from God in different ways than, you know, just hiding out in a garden or hiding out in the basement. Maybe we hide ourselves from him by just being absent from assemblies that he asks us to be in. That we kind of are absent or we kind of tend to not fellowship with brethren a lot.

Kind of, you know, don't open up. Maybe we don't enjoy the fellowship. Maybe we don't want to be around as much as we should be because, you know, God calls us into a life of joy. And he calls us into a brotherhood that should be a source of inspiration to us. The highlight of our week, coming together and being able to see each other.

But sometimes, you know, people don't there. And I find myself from time to time wondering, I wonder if they're hiding. I wonder if they're hiding something. And that can be a very difficult thing to hide, you know, to hide. It's not anything that brings us any peace or anything that we would want to. Let's go back to Mark 4. You know, Adam and Eve had to come to realize there's nothing hidden from God. And we have to realize that as well. We are all human. We all make mistakes. But God is going to bring in. And he wants, you know, we learn from those mistakes. And we are, you know, to come before him and to repent before him.

And he wants to forgive us, but we have to ask for that forgiveness. We have to acknowledge what we've done. Because if we don't acknowledge, we're not going to learn anything from it. Mark 4.22, same verse that's repeated in Matthew and Luke as well, says, There's nothing hidden which will not be revealed. You know, sometimes you see something of someone, you know, and I'm not speaking of anyone in particular here.

And then after the course of time, you kind of think, Oh, I had no idea. They kept that pretty well. They kept that pretty well hidden. You know, what was going on and that was bothering them. And you only find out after there's been a problem that separates them, you know, separates them from the church. They just want to keep it hidden. There's nothing hidden that won't be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret that it should not come, but that it should come to light. God wants us to acknowledge our faults and our weaknesses before Him.

We don't have to hide. We don't have to hide. Let's go back to Isaiah 54. We are in Isaiah 55. We can remember that key verse that says, We seek God. Remember verse 7 says, Let the wicked forsake his way.

Seek God, but you've got to turn from the way when you're seeking Him. You've got to go back to what He wants to do and seek His will. But here in Isaiah 54, verse 7, It says, For a mere moment I forsaken you. For a mere moment, God says, I forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you, says the Eternal, your Redeemer. You know, God, we can be separate from God, but what He wants is us to come back.

I didn't intend to turn to that verse first. Let's go back to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. Psalm 69 and verse 5. You know, David, a man after God's own heart, he made big mistakes and he made little mistakes along the way too. If we can categorize them as big as little, big and little. He says, Oh God, you know my foolishness, and my sins are not hidden from you. They're not hidden. God knows, but He's waiting for us to come forth and say, I'm sorry, I acknowledge it. My sin is ever before me. Forgive me. Put me back on the right path.

Help me. And we've got to take the time to seek that right path and seek God and get back in the right frame of mind with Him. Not to allow the guilt, not to allow the hiding to go on. To the point is, like Adam and Eve did, that they never did come to repentance. You don't ever read that Adam and Eve said, I'm sorry. I acknowledge we were wrong. And they lived a life that was just not fulfilling.

They remained separate from God and were ushered out of the Garden of Eden. And we read of other people in the Bible who were the same way. They never came to the point where they repented of their ways. And it's really turned to God. Back in Isaiah, or forward in Isaiah, Isaiah 3, verse 9, God looks at our hearts, He knows what's in our hearts, He knows when we're heavy laden, He knows when we've done things that we shouldn't have done.

In Isaiah 3, verse 9, sometimes we see that, what God says here. The look on their countenance witnesses against them. Sometimes you see people and they're full of joy. You can tell by the look on their face. They're just happy. Other times you look at people, and you can tell there's something on their mind, there's something going on. They just don't have that vibrance. They just don't have that look of joy. That something is wrong. We wear it on our faces. The look on their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom. They don't hide it. Now here He's talking about Israel who was just in their face with God, just consistently doing things against God.

And they had a look about them that they were just defiant. I won't listen, I won't pay attention, I will just give it back to you, God. But what He says here is, sometimes we can see. Sometimes we can see. I guess if we ever see that on the face of someone, and it goes on, we all have bad days and whatever, we might just out of love ask someone, is everything okay?

Anything we can help with? Because you know sometimes people just need a little encouragement to know that someone cares and someone notices. You know, God notices. And He will urge us to open up. He will urge us. Confess it. Just admit it. Don't try to hide it. Don't try to hide it. What God wants more than anything is for us to become like Him. And sometimes those hidden things are revealed. It can be embarrassing if some of the things are revealed. But God doesn't do it to embarrass us. Why does He do it? He does it because He loves us, because He wants us to be purified, because He wants us to take the help He's willing to give, because He wants us to be in His Kingdom.

And yet those things that beleaguere us, that we try to keep hidden, that we try to withhold from Him, can hold us back. But what He wants more than anything is for us to be in His Kingdom, and He does it out of love for us. Let's look at Psalm 32. Psalm 32, verse 3.

Another psalm of David, labeled here a contemplation. Psalm 32, verse 3. David writes, It says, When I kept silent, my bones grew old, and I just held it all in. My bones grew old, through my groaning all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me, my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I knew I needed to be doing something. I knew I had this problem. I didn't know what to do with it. And your hand was on me. I knew I needed to do something, but I just kept silent. And when I kept silent, when I didn't bring it to you, when I didn't open up about it, my bones became heavy, and my countenance became, like the drought of summer, all dried up.

I acknowledge my sins to you, and my iniquity says, I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. There is joy, and there is life when we go to God and stop hiding from Him, and open up and take the help that He's willing to give us. If we seek that help, we don't want to hide from God.

He's our best friend. He wants and can give us more than anything else can give us, and we can give Him more than we can give ourselves. We just have to yield to Him, and give it to Him, and seek what His is that He wants us to do, and get back. Get back to where He is. Well, that's one concept of hiding. I read in Isaiah 54 where we can hide from God. God can hide from us. The Bible talks about God hiding from us. Now, we can turn to some verses in the Bible here.

Let's go back to Deuteronomy 31. Deuteronomy 31. In verse 16, again, as Israel is about to cross over into the Promised Land, Moses is about to die. Joshua is about to take over the leadership of the congregation of Israel there. Verse 16 to chapter 31, it says, The Eternal said to Moses, Behold, you will rest with your fathers, and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods or the foreigners of the land.

You know when you're dead, Moses, what they're going to do is they're going to go back to some sinful ways. They're going to look at the world around them. They're going to want to do things the way that the world does them, or the world around them does. They will rise and play the harlot with the gods or the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake me and break my covenant, which I have made with them.

What's going to happen, Moses, is they're going to break the covenant. They're going to sin. And my anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them. And they shall be devoured, and many troubles and evils shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, Haven't these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?

I'm going to hide my face from them, because they do things that are wrong. What separates us from God? Isaiah 59, verse 2 says, our iniquity separates us from God. Sometimes we may feel in our lives, God's hiding from us. I don't feel like He's there. I don't feel like He's listening to my prayers. I don't feel that same closeness that I feel, and it's an awful feeling. When you feel that, we go back and we look and say, What is it, God? Why do you feel so far from Me? Why are you hiding your face from Me?

Why aren't you answering prayers? Why don't I feel the closeness? Why don't I feel that vitality and that energy that comes when you're there? In Israel's case, he said, because they will sin. They're going to turn away. They're not paying attention to Him anymore. They're going to go after the ways of the world, and they're going to compromise. They're going to try to mix the ways of God with the millions of the world and try to dictate things that they would like to do, and then apply God's law to their way of life, as opposed to yielding their lives to God's way.

In verse 18, he says, I will surely hide my face in that day, because of all the evil which they have done, and that they have turned to other gods. Now, we can apply that verse to us today. None of us are bowing down to Baal or Buddha or whatever. The gods of this world are the idols, the named idols of this world, but we know that there are many idols in the world besides the Buddhas and the Baals of the world. We all have our idols, and anything we put before God would honor that before we would honor our commitment to God or what He requires us to do.

That's an idol that we put before Him. We can do the same thing when we do that. God says, you know what? I'm going to hide my face from you. I'm not going to be there when you call. Now, there are people in the Bible who felt the distance from God. When they committed heinous sins, Saul was one. We talked about Saul a little bit at the Bible study the other day. He sinned. And in the end, when he was looking for God, he wasn't there.

Where did he go? He didn't think and he didn't repent. He didn't go back to God and say, man, I have really blown it. I have really messed up. I tried to do things my own way. I took matters into my own hands. No, he kept looking for things. And he never did come to the point where he realized God left him and God took him out of that position because of what He did.

And instead Saul went on and he sought the witch, went to the witch of Endor to find answers. How pathetic is that? How pathetic is that? A man who one time had the spirit of God, who felt distant from Him, but then went and started looking to the witch of Endor to find answers. Well, I hope none of us ever come to that point. I hope if we feel distant from God, we will go about seeking Him and not trying to find the answers somewhere else, but realizing all the answers come from God.

Others have done that, too. And sometimes, maybe, when we feel distant from God, we have to look at ourselves and ask Him, is there a sin? Is there something hidden in me that I'm not aware of? Show me! Show me what it is that I'm doing! But you know, like Bereans, when we understand that, or when someone counsels us or tells us what that thing might be, we need to listen.

We need to listen. We need to be open-minded like the Bereans did, were. We need to go back and search the Scriptures, and we need to ask God and seek Him. And then, as it says in Isaiah 55, verse 7 and 8, turn from our way, turn back to His way, because when we seek God, we don't keep doing the things we want to do.

We start doing the things that He wants us to do. I was going to use this verse later, but let's go back to Psalm, Psalm 27. David, in Psalm 27, has a very telling attitude. Here, that we see in Psalm 27, verse 7, he says, Hear, O Eternal, when I cry with my voice, Have mercy on me, and answer me.

When you said, Seek my face, My heart said to you, Your face, Lord, I will seek. Isn't that a beautiful attitude? When you said, Seek my face, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to give you excuses. I'm not going to try to hang onto mine and try to justify my mind, No, that's okay, that's okay, I'm going to go back. And when you said, Seek my face, I'm simply going to seek your face. And that was in his heart.

You tell me, the Bible tells me, Your Holy Spirit guides and directs me, I'm simply going to do it. What a beautiful attitude that is. You think God's going to hide his face from someone with that attitude? No. No, he... That is what he is looking for, that our heart would be right where he is.

So sometimes when we feel that God is hiding from us, and he's just not there and we don't feel that closeness, and it can be a disconcerting feeling, we have to go to work. We have to seek him. If he's hiding, we have to seek why. What is it about us?

What is it about us? Because God doesn't hide, except for a few reasons. One of them is sin. But there's been other men that God has hidden his face from, that it wasn't because of sin, necessarily. We can look at Job. Job went through a tremendous trial, didn't he? He was sick and had things happen to him that we can't even imagine. Lost everything. His children, his wealth, everything disappeared. And then on top of that, when he didn't curse God like his wife wanted him to do, God took away his health.

And he was in misery that we can't even imagine, that he was covered from head to toe in boils. I'm not even sure I've ever had a boil. But I've heard from people who had it, it's a pretty painful thing. And to have them from head to toe has to be excruciating. And yet God said, Job was blameless. When Satan approached him, he goes, look at my servant Job! Find some fault in him. Get over in Job 13. Job 13, we find Job saying this. Job 13, verse 24. As he's talking, conversing with his friends, and going through what he's gone through, he says, why do you hide your face?

God, why are you hiding your face from me? Why do you regard me as your enemy? What's going on? You know, he may have done it the wrong way, but he's going through and thinking, what have I done?

His friends are trying to tell him, well, Job, you're a sinner. You've done this wrong. You've done this wrong. This is this wrong. And Job is analyzing and remembering the thing, no, I don't think those sins are mine. But God, why have you hidden your face from me? He came to understand why God hid his face from him. There was something that God was going to create in him or develop in him that could only come by Job feeling distanced.

So there were things about Job that God would learn when he hid his face from him. Would he turn to other gods like Saul did? Would he go out and curse God like others may have done? Would he give up on God? Or would he consistently have faith in God, even though that trial went on and on and on? And even though some sin of self-righteousness was revealed in Job, Job remained loyal to him.

He didn't turn his back. He didn't curse God. He went the way that Job would have him do. And eventually God revealed to him what the problem was and restored him. David, a man after God's own heart. Yes, he sinned with Bathsheba, but even after that, David many times asks God. It's almost like he's afraid that God is going to depart from him. Let's look at a few verses back here in Psalms. Psalm 13. Psalm 13. And verse 1. It says, How long, O LORD? Will you forget me ever, forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

David was feeling that distance. How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Why are you hiding your face? David never bowed to another God. David remained loyal to God, even in the face of those times when he felt that God was distant. He still looked for him, and he still looked for him, still sought him. Over in Psalm 44, and there's many places in the Psalms, I'll just turn to a few here.

Psalm 44. And verse 24. David says, Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression? Why does it seem like you're not there? Why aren't you aware of what's going on? Don't you see the pain we're in? Don't you see how we're being afflicted? Because sometimes God does answer our prayers instantaneously.

Sometimes he does heal instantaneously. Sometimes he does take away the thing that's afflicting us instantaneously. But other times he doesn't, and there's a reason. Because we do learn faith. We do have our faith perfected through suffering. Just as it says about Jesus Christ, in suffering, He was made perfect. So don't give up on Him. We don't go someplace else and consult other gods. We look to God and commit to Him. Psalm 88. Psalm 88. And verse 14. Why do you cast off my soul?

Why have you just kind of given up on me, it seems? Why do you hide your face from me? I suffer through this. People are against me. The things in my life aren't going right. What do I need to do? And we can go back to Isaiah 55. We can go back to Isaiah 54, verses we've already read, and see. God says, I may hide my face from you for a little while. But He sees how we're going to handle that during that time. Will we give up? Will we go back to our own ideas? Will we go back to our own way? Will we seek our own way? Will we seek another God that's going to give us the answer? Or are we going to keep looking at God and be resolute to follow Him, no matter what the pain and no matter how long? That's the commitment He's looking for in you and me. That's the commitment that He wants us to have. And through those things that we do, when we may feel distant from God, we develop the character. We develop what it is that He wants us to develop. So if God feels distant, it doesn't mean He's given up on you. It may mean that He's perfecting you and looking to see and growing your faith in Him, just like Joseph, or not Joseph Job, just like David, just like others, just like all of us have felt some time. And if we continue to look to Him, He'll be there. He'll be found. He'll be found by us. So we can look at how we seek God. We can see a couple of ways that we can hide from God, not a healthy thing for us to hide from God. We should never hide from Him, never hide from each other. God may hide from us for various reasons, but we seek Him diligently, determinedly. Another aspect of hiding this in the Scriptures and encouraging one. You know, there are times in the Bible that we read how God hides people, hides people for their good. You know, He hid Moses, didn't He? Pharaoh had an edict that all the babies in Egypt were going to be born, and yet Moses survived. His parents hid him, and God watched over that. God shielded that baby from destruction. And when Moses' sister put him out in the Nile River, Pharaoh's daughter found him, and he was raised. He was raised in the courts of Pharaoh. It was as if God hid him from the destruction that was all around him, when all the babies were being destroyed. Later, God hid him, if you will, in Midian. He had committed murder in Egypt. People were looking for him, and for 40 years he was in Midian, as God worked with him and as God perfected him and developed him into what God was going to have him do. Moses had no idea what he was going to do the last 40 years of his life. God knew. God hid him from the forces of Pharaoh who might be looking for him to convict him of what was going on. You know, God hid Elijah. When he fled, remember, God hid him by the brook, and a raven came to feed him. God provided everything he needed to have, but he provided everything that he needed to have that God hid him from the people that were looking for him. Jesus Christ was hidden, too. Let's go back and look at a few cases here. John 8. John 8, verse 59.

John 8, 59.

After a confrontation with the Pharisees here, Jesus Christ in verse 58 kind of inferred, He was the Messiah that angered them. Of course, in verse 59 it says, They took up stones to throw at him. They wanted him dead. How dare He compare himself to the Messiah. Then they took up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

It wasn't his time to die yet. God hid him right in the midst of those people, and he was able to walk out. Even all those people were focused on him. They heard what he had to say. They knew who he was. They watched him. They were committed to killing him and throwing stones on him, and he just sort of passed right by.

God hid him. God hid him from the people. A few chapters over in John 12. We see the same type of situation. John 12, verse 36. Speaking to his disciples, it says, you know, verse 35, he's talking about he will be there a little bit while longer. In verse 36, he says, While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.

If I were in the light, believe it. Believe it. Grasp it. Go after it. Seek it. Develop it. Believe in the light that you may become sons of light. These things Jesus spoke and departed, and was hidden from them. God hid him for a reason. Right there, in plain sight. Last week we talked about some of the signs of the end times, and the things that would befall just some of the signs of the end times.

We talked about watching. One of the things is that we shouldn't be asleep. We should be alert. We should be awake. We shouldn't let ourselves fall asleep during these end times, because the way of the world around us will lead us to fall asleep if we let it. We can go back, and you know the verses in Revelation 3, Revelation 12. Revelation 3, where it talks about the Philadelphia church, the people who persevered to the end, who have kept God's name and have departed from it.

He says, I'll keep you from the hour of trial that comes upon the entire earth. Revelation 12, the latter verses there, talks about how God will nourish his people for time, times, and a half a time from the face of the serpent. You have to remember the last part of the last verse of chapter 12 there. That as he takes them and as he leads them to wherever it is that they will be, it says that there will be a great flood that will come after them.

But the Lord will swallow that flood up. Luke 21, we read it last week. Jesus said, Watch and pray therefore. Keep yourself alert. Keep yourself awake. Keep yourself with the oil trimmed in your lap that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things. And so people will look at it and say, Well, God, is there a place you're going to keep us? Will you hide us away someplace during that time? I'm not going to give you the answer today. I don't know the answer. That's what God is doing.

But the Bible says, it talks about times that God hides us away. Certainly in this lifetime, He does this for us. And we could probably think back in our lives where God has kind of hidden us from some of the things that could have befallen us. Let's go back to Psalm 18. Psalm 17, I'm sorry. Psalm 17. And verse 8. Keep me. Keep me, He says, as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings. Protect me. Let me go like that baby bird that goes under the mom's wings and is hidden from the world around.

Hide me under the shadow of your wings, from the wicked who will crush me, from my deadly enemies who surround me. Hide me, God. Hide me. Psalm 27. We were in Psalm 27 a few minutes ago. Psalm 27. Psalm 27 is a good psalm to read the whole thing here. And to look at it, Psalm 27 verse 4. David writes, Of course, today the temple of God is what He's building in you and me, collectively and individually here.

For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion. The time of trouble, He'll hide me. In the secret place of His tabernacles, He will hide me. He'll set me high upon a rock. When trouble comes, it might be that we learn some things from trouble and go through it in faith. But sometimes He will hide us, or sometime He will hide us from that. Psalm 32 verse 7. Let's pick it up in verse 6. We were in Psalm 32 before. We read verses 3-5. Let's read verse 6.

For this clause, everyone who is godly shall pray to you in a time when you may be found. When we seek you, it's a time where you can be found. There is a time that God says of Israel, you know, they're going to seek me, but they're not going to find me. Now is a time when God can be found.

In a time when you may be found, surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near Him. Even when the flood comes, or floods come, surely in a flood of great waters, they shall not come near Him. You are my hiding place.

You will preserve me from trouble. You will surround me with songs of deliverance. We don't want to hide from God. It's not pleasant when He hides from us. But He says, I'll hide you. I'll hide you. Isaiah 26. Isaiah 26, verse 20. Come, my people. God says, Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourself, as it were, for a little moment until the indignation is passed. For behold, the Eternal comes out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity.

The earth will disclose her blood, and will no more cover her slain. Hide yourself for a little while during the indignation of God. All those verses we can look at and we can know, God has our best interest at heart. God knows who we need to become. He knows what strengths we need to develop. He knows what weaknesses we need to weed out. And we need to trust Him, that He will do that, that that's what His will is. And that we seek Him, we seek Him always.

In good times and bad, we don't go to sleep. When things are going well, we seek Him. We seek Him when things aren't going so well, even more diligently. So we develop the faith in Him, we develop the commitment to Him, the loyalty to Him, the character that He wants us to develop. And maybe you find out that there are things in our lives we need to weed out, and as David said, you show it to me, and in my heart, I'm going to do it.

And in my heart, you tell me God, and I'm going to do it. We don't hide ourselves from God, we take our problems to Him. Now we confess our sins to Him, because He wants to forgive, and we have to learn that when we sin, when we mess up, as we say, we take it to God and we acknowledge it, and we commit not to do that again.

That's what He wants us to learn to do, and to readily repent and accept what it is we've done. God says He's faithful to forgive, and His people are ready to forgive, because we're all part of the same body and the same process that God is working in us, all in different ways, because the ways that He works with me is different than the way He works with you.

We can all appreciate that. Hide and seek. Hide and seek very much there in the Bible. No, there's even a book, a little book in the Minor Prophets, that has to do with hiding. A little book of Zephaniah, because the fourth book from the end of the Old Testament, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Zephaniah. In Hebrew, the meaning of the name Zephaniah is, the Lord has concealed, the Lord has protected.

He's hidden and He's concealed. Zephaniah 2, verse 3, we find hide and seek. In this verse, just like we did in Isaiah 55, verse 7, verses 7 and 8 that we looked at, Zephaniah 2, verse 3, seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, all you humble of the earth, all you who are strong in the faith and growing stronger. Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility, seek those things it may well be, that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger.