The hiddenness of God
Series: Metamorphosis | Bible text: Isaiah 45:15
Isaiah says: «Yes, Lord, you are a God who keeps himself hidden, you God and Saviour of Israel.«We all experience the hiddenness of God, often just when we need Him most. What is important to persevere in such times and to give our faith a boost? In this respect, too, Jesus can become an example for us.
Last Sunday in the sermon, a woman from Humlikon was quoted as saying the following in the documentary on the 1963 plane crash: «Before the departure, the whole village was in excitement. The whole week and also the evening before departure they had all prayed for a good flight and then – this cruel crash..» And further: «Since that moment, I have not prayed once.» Why does God hide when we need him most? C.S. Lewis also asked himself this question after his wife died of bone cancer after a short marriage: «And where is God? That is one of the most disturbing symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you lose the feeling of needing him, you are welcomed with open arms. At least that is how one feels. But if I go to him in desperate need, when all other help fails, what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and from inside the sound of double bolts. Then silence. You might as well leave. The longer you wait, the more insistent the silence becomes.«This is said by a man who found his God in Jesus Christ and became one of the most famous apologists of the 20th century. Perhaps you are one of those people who say with Bertrand Russel: «I do not believe in God. He has not given me any proof.»
Behind the scenes
Isaiah 45:15 (HFA) says: «Yes, Lord, you are a God who keeps himself hidden, you God and Saviour of Israel.» The statement that God is a hidden God runs deeply against the grain for me. I want to experience, touch and see God! God can also be experienced. And yet HE says of Himself that He is a God who keeps Himself hidden.
Job was really overwhelmed by strokes of fate: he lost his ten children, his health and all his possessions. In the midst of his suffering, sitting in the ashes and scratching himself with a potsherd, he tries to understand God. But God remains silent. We all often feel something of the absence of God precisely in suffering. Why does God not respond when we pray to Him?
Job has the impression that God is far away or even meets him as an enemy. «O God, tell me: Where have I been guilty? What sins have I committed? Where have I broken faith with you? Why do you withdraw from me and consider me your enemy?» (Job 13:23f HFA). «If only I knew where to find him and how to get to his throne! I would state my case to him and give all the reasons that were in my favour! I would know what he would give me in reply, and understand what he would then say to me»(Job 23:3–5 HFA). Job gives vent to his disappointment. It pains him that, like a bird, he keeps flying into a window and injuring himself.
What Job did not know about, but we do, are the first two chapters of the Book of Job. There Satan appears in heaven before God: «Job is your favourite. You have blessed him richly with everything imaginable: Family, health and many possessions. Take these things from him and you will see that he renounces you..» Satan is given some leeway, but he is not allowed to touch Job’s life. If Job had known that it was actually about a confrontation between God and Satan, the chief accuser, it would have been easier for him. Behind the curtain, God was there all the time!
This frame of thought is an important emergency nail for us. Especially when it is through inexplicable depths, we need to keep Job 1+2 in mind. God also sometimes keeps Himself hidden in our lives to give a boost to the quality of our faith, ass we trust and believe in this God, even when we are not well. Job’s friends concluded: «God punishes you. Whoever this happens to must be a great sinner.«We learn: Especially when it comes to suffering from the hiddenness of God, our conclusions are often not correct. God is and remains there, very close, only not visible and tangible for us. «Yes, Lord, you are a God who keeps himself hidden, you God and Saviour of Israel.» The hidden God is also the Saviour. God saves through, especially when we suffer from his hiddenness.
We must learn to look through the horizon. David did this: «Many say of me: He has no help with God. But you, O LORD, are my shield; you are my glory, and you lift up my head.» (Psalm 3:3–4 LUT). Jesus also travelled with this frame of mind: «He was willing to die the death of shame on the cross because he knew what joy awaited him afterwards. Now he sits at the right side of God’s throne in heaven!»(Hebrews 12:2 NLB). Dietrich Bonhoeffer said shortly before his execution: «That is the end. For me, it is the beginning of life.» Bonhoeffer suffered from the fact that God did not intervene, at the same time he knew that it was the beginning of life.
God’s new ways
In 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar stood before Jerusalem. The 18-year-old King Jehoiakim surrenders the city to him without a fight. The Temple is robbed and the vessels transported to Babylon. A year and a half later Jerusalem is destroyed and the people deported. It is the end of the state of Israel. A thought had taken root in the minds of the Israelites, told to them several times by the prophets: «I am your God! Who else is such a strong God?«Nevertheless, Nebuchadnezzar is now building his world empire. Into this situation there are prophets who say: «The haunting will soon be over. A little patience, a little faith. Our strong God will get a grip on it again. There have always been ups and downs among our people.» (cf. Jeremiah 27:14–16). Jeremiah, on the other hand, speaks of 70 years of captivity in Babylon and that they should seek the best of the city (Jeremiah 29:7).
The vexation of this message lay in the fact that God does not demonstrate his power. A strong God chooses a path that was hitherto unknown to God’s people: the path of weakness. Why would God have such an insane idea to withdraw his power and keep it hidden? It was the beginning of a story that has its climax at the cross of Golgotha. There God withdraws his power completely. He was so weak and so small that he dies. The prophets of that time had a clear theology of God’s power and miracles. But Jeremiah says: «No, God is breaking new ground.»
God often chooses a path of weakness, and he expects us to do the same. To the suffering Paul he said: «My grace is all you need. My strength is shown in your weakness»(2 Corinthians 12:9 NLB). The life of a follower of Jesus is also often about loss, renunciation and dying because it is deeply part of God’s nature. At the same time, he must know that God is a God with whom no prayer falls to earth, but is brought before God in bowls. But God does not answer every prayer as we expect.
About Paul and his team it says: «They strengthened and encouraged the believers to hold fast to the faith and explained to them once again that we all have to come through many tribulations into the kingdom of God» (Acts 14:22 NLB). According to God’s plan, a person must go through many tribulations before entering His kingdom. It is very helpful to be guided by this truth, especially in difficult times. Do you ask yourself if you want to be on God’s side? Of course, yes, but please not because you have the impression that Christians are better off in this world when it comes to career or money or family or some other things. What could be more beautiful for a person than to find in God his Saviour, his goal, his counterpart? But please do not expect that God will then bed your life on roses. Christians must learn to live for and trust in this God who sometimes seems absent.
God’s plan of salvation
Jesus also lived in the tension between the hiddenness and presence of God. On the way to Golgotha, Peter cuts off the ear of a Roman soldier named Malchus with his sword. Immediately Jesus commands Peter to sheathe the sword and then asks two questions: «Shall I not drink from the cup which the Father has given me?»(John 18:11 NLB). And: «Do you not know that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us and he would send them immediately?»(Matthew 26:53 NLB). Jesus knew that his Father is there and that an army of angels is only waiting for the command. So he freely allows the hiddenness of God. Jesus then heals the ear, only to be taken captive. Jesus refrains from intervening powerfully. A few hours later, our Saviour hangs on the cross and the criminal at his side says: «So you are the Christ? Prove it by saving yourself - and us with it!»(Luke 23:39 NLB). We want to see something, then we believe. God has chosen another quality of faith, which is: not seeing and yet believing. The crowd screamed: «[…] Well, if you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross!» (Matthew 27:40 NLB). With this they said: If he comes down, we believe it is the Son of God.
Some time later, the cry echoes: «My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?»(Matthew 27:46 NLB) over Golgotha. This is paradoxical: God becomes human and part of this world in Jesus. People could see him, touch him and hear him. God breaks through the hiddenness in Jesus. On the other hand, Jesus is so abandoned by God that He cries out. The abandonment of Jesus has to do with the fact that he bore all our guilt and sin (= not trusting in God). The hiddenness of God has a connection with sin and is a concession to this time on earth. Our guilt and sin create a separation between God and us. If we go through this time trusting in God, we will be overwhelmed by the presence of God in eternity!
Our salvation in the hiddenness of God comes in Jesus Christ, who was separated from his God and Father. The answer to the why question «My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?» reads: «For all of us!«So that you and I will never again have to suffer this deepest hiddenness of God! Jesus was forsaken so that we would never have to be alone again, so that we could experience God’s presence. This is the Gospel.
The future of those who hold on to Him in spite of God’s hiddenness looks different. They will one day come from faith to sight and know in one fell swoop: It was worth it a hundred times over!
Possible questions for the small groups
Read Bible text: Job 1+2
- When in your life have you most painfully perceived the hiddenness of God?
- What would you say to the woman from Humlikon?
- To what extent can the story of Job give us a framework for thinking about such times?
- Why was Jesus abandoned by God on the cross? What does this have to do with us?
