OPENING: What do you think the first game is that a child learns? For my boy Jonathan, his 1st game was "hide and seek."
When he was about 1 year old he was sitting with me in the living room and had watched me put his blanket over my head and play "peek a boo." Then with a sly grin he put the blanket over his head.
Realizing what he was doing, I began to say "Jonathan where are you?" At which point, he slowly pulled off the blanket and giggled.
He felt that he had hidden from me because he couldn’t see me.
A friend named Matt told me he used to play "hide and seek" with his brothers and sisters. On the rare occasions that he got to be something other than "it," he sought the ideal place to hide.
One day he thought he had found it.
Up on the hill was their house with a big porch on the front that had a lattice work around the bottom to allow air to circulate under the building. He had found an opening in lattice work and crawled in under the porch pushing aside the cobwebs, smelling the damp earth, as he wormed his way all the way to the other side of the building where he could look out and see his sister still counting to 100.
He delighted in the thought that she’d never find him. No one could ever find him here.
And then it suddenly struck him – if something happened to him, no one would ever be able to find him there. He would be alone and lost forever.
It was suddenly important to him to be found, and he stuck his leg out through the lattice work, hoping that he might be able to trip his sister if she passed by that way.
He wanted to be found.
I. Mankind has engaged in a game of "hide & seek" with God ever since the dawn of creation.
Eve was tempted by Satan, then gave the fruit to Adam to eat. Almost immediately, they felt the shame of sin and so they hid. When God came walking in the cool evening he went to seeking –
“Where are you Adam?” God called out.
And Adam replied: "I heard you walking and was afraid because I was naked - so I hid." Adam’s sin caused him to want to hide from God.
Of course, not every one is so obvious. Take Peter for example. When Jesus was betrayed into the hands of the Jews, Peter had the opportunity he bragged he wouldn’t mess up. He declared that even if everyone else abandoned Him, he would not. But he did. He messed up. Three times he denied Christ, and the last time was when Jesus was being led into the courtyard after His trial. At that moment Jesus looked into the shamefilled eyes of Peter.
From that point on it was almost as if Peter tried to hide from Jesus. He withdrew within himself - hid himself from Jesus in his heart.
Knowing this, Jesus held a fish fry down on the beach and when they were alone, Jesus questioned Peter: “Peter do you love (agape) me?”
To which Peter replied "You know I like (phileo) you.”
Peter really wasn’t answering Jesus’ question. In his shame, Peter tried to hide from the idea of truly committing himself to Jesus again, out of fear of failing again. But though Peter hid, Jesus sought.
People hide from God in many ways.
They hide behind things, behind wealth and entertainment and partying. They’ll hide behind alcohol and drugs. They’ll hide behind busy work, and fill their lives with all kinds of activity
They do all this because they know that if they stop… they have to face what the things about their lives they don’t like. They’ve looked in the mirror and they haven’t like what they’ve seen.
They don’t want to stop
They don’t want to think
They don’t want to face the consequences of their sins.
Like my son Jonathan with his blanket they react to God by saying: “if I can’t see Him - He can’t see me… and He can’t punish me.”
That seems to be the logic of those described in Revelation 6 on the Day of Judgment who cried out to mountains and rocks to hide them. They knew the impending judgment was upon them and they sought to hide from God because they know the shame of their sin.
Sin is terrible task master. Our sins condemn us.
They’re like the jury foreman who declared:
"Your honor, 7 of us find the defendant guilty as charged.
Three of us find him as guilty as they come.
And 2 of us find him guilty from the word go.”
The guilt and shame of our sins cause us to want to go into hiding.
But we can’t hide from God.
Jeremiah 23:24 tells us "Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth?"
II. We can’t be hidden from God… but we can allow our (hidden) sins to shut us off from Him
Ps. 27:9 “Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger”
Ps. 13:1-2 “How long O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?”
Our sins shut us off from God.
When Jesus died on the cross - bearing our sins in His body - He cried out:
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Mark 15:34b
Jesus – the Son of God – was cut off from His Father for the first time in His existence because God could not look upon sin…. He is a Holy God.
Sin must be dealt with in order for us to come into His presence… and the first step in dealing with our sins is to acknowledge that we’ve done them
… admit that we have sinned
… agree with God that what we’ve done is wrong
There can be no comparing our sins with someone else’s
No making excuses about why we failed “this time”
No minimizing the pain we’ve caused God when we said or done something we shouldn’t have
You see, that’s all game playing.
That’s all trying to play our game by our rules.
The game? If God can’t see me (we think) it can’t be sin… and He won’t punish me.
Those who do this (and Christians do it too) are playing a game with God He’s not going to play.
David tried playing the game that way and it didn’t work for him.
He said “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” Psalms 32:3-4
You see there’s a point at which God gets tired of our games. And the game God’ll never play is the one where we think we can engage in some secret sin and then act like God will look the other way.
Back in Exodus 33:1-3 we find God has gotten tired of playing games with the Israelites.
The Israelites have complained and rebelled and disobeyed til God tells Moses that He’ll send angel on ahead to lead the people into the promised land – but He won’t be going with them.
Their sins threatened to cut them off from God.
Moses was so disturbed by God’s threat that he cries out to God:
“If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” Exodus 33:15-16
In essence, Moses is saying “what is life without You… what’s life without Your presence?"
Without God and His presence… it’s all emptiness
· If this building were packed every Sunday and God weren’t here - it would be empty.
· If God weren’t involved in our daily activities our life would feel hollow.
· If God were not controlling our home life and our families they would be filled with emptiness and meaningless.
Without God’s presence there’s an emptiness and hopelessness in life that would cause us to literally cry out - like Moses cried out to God in Exodus and like David cried out to God in Ps 32.
ILLUS: Have you ever taken a child to a babysitter or a nursery? What do they often DO when you attempt to leave? They cry. And they cry because they can’t stand being without your presence.
In Psalm 32:1-4 that’s what David says his life was like when he tried to hide his sins:
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
III. The beauty of God is that He understands the tragedy of sin.
In Psalm 32:5-7, David explains what happened after he confessed his sins:
”Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him. You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.”
You see, God doesn’t play hide and seek
He plays an entirely different game called “seek and be found”
The rules of His game differ markedly from the game we’re tempted to play. Instead of hiding our sinfulness from God this game requires us to admit our sin and to seek God’s forgiveness.
If you’re not a Christian, that means
1. Believing that you’re a sinner and desiring not to live like that anymore.
2. Believing that Jesus’ blood can forgive you of those past sins.
3. And being baptized into Christ - washing away the past – burying the sins that have bound you and then rising up from the waters to a new life in Christ.
But what if you are already a Christian… and you mess up? What if you’ve already repented, confessed Jesus as Lord and been baptized into Him - and then after all of that you sin big time – now what?
The apostle John wrote these words to Christians in I John chapter one.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:8-9
In other words don’t pretend some “holier than thou” religiosity as a Christian. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – including you and me.
Now granted, the longer we walk with Jesus the less likely we’ll fall prey to temptation, but it’s still going to happen once in a while.
Don’t hide the sin, says John.
As Christians we have a promise from God that if we confess our sins…
… if we admit what we did was wrong
… if we admit that there was no excuse for our behavior
… if you acknowledge that we hurt God by what we said or did or tho’t
THEN GOD WILL FORGIVE US!
That’s what David discovered.
When David was willing to confess his sin and come out of hiding, not only did God forgive him of his sins, God changed the game. Now God became David’s “hiding place.”
In other words, when David gave up trying to hide from God, God hid David in Himself.
There’s an old hymn that catches the power of what God does when we stop hiding
A wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord,
A wonderful Saviour to me,
He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
Where rivers of pleasure I see.
He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.
A wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord,
He taketh my burden away,
He holdeth me up, and I shall not be moved,
He giveth me strength as my day.
God wants to take your burden away.
God wants to hide you from the pain of your sin.
ILLUS: But, why do we hide things?
Well, I hide my glasses once in while. Why? Because my nephew’s boy comes over to visit once in awhile (he’s 2 yrs. old) and he likes to get hold of them and bend them out of shape. I hide my glasses to protect them and keep them safe.
Likewise, God becomes our hiding place to:
· To protect us
· Shelter us
· Keep them us
He hides us so that we will lose our fears and gain His comfort.
CLOSE: A father related how one of his son’s favorite games was "hide and seek" - his son always hid. The game always went the same: Dad always counted to 100 by 5’s and then would shout out, “Here comes Daddy to find you Tommy.”
And Tommy would always hide in the same room and the same spot – but of course Dad always went through the motions of looking in just about every other room. He’d go into one of the bedrooms and loudly proclaim “I wonder if Tommy is under the bed?” Down the hall he’d hear the barely suppressed giggles of his child as he lifted up the sheets.
“I wonder if he’s in the closet?” Again giggles from the other room.
Making his way into the bathroom, Dad would say “I wonder if he’s in the shower?” Giggles.
“I wonder if he’s in the toilet?” as he lifted the seat. The giggles were getting louder.
Out in the hallway now, the father proclaimed “I wonder where Tommy could be?”
And at that moment Tommy would burst out of his parents’ bedroom crying “Here I am Daddy, here I am!” and throw himself into his Dad’s waiting arms.
The Father recalled telling his son “But, Tommy, that’s not how the game is played.” But Tommy didn’t care - that’s how he played the game. The object of the game to Tommy was in being found… and then to rush into his father’s arms.
(This sermon is a reworking of one I did 12 years ago called "Hide and Seek" using this same text).
