Hide and Seek

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It seems like from the beginning of the time of the human race, God has been playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with the people He calls. "Seek My face," He commands, and our hearts reply because of His own grace, "Your face, Lord, I will seek." And God, instead of then bursting out of the darkness into our lives, laughing and saying, "Here I am!" continues to remain hidden, mostly: Hidden from our experience, hidden from our every-day, hidden from our mundane.

If you look at the world that surrounds us, it would be easier sometimes to believe that there is no God than that we have a loving Father who tenderly watches over our every waking moment and guards us while we sleep. Wars and rumours of wars. Famines and earthquakes. Abortions and infanticides. Ethnic cleansings. Tsunamis. Crime. Neglect. Disease. Sudden and surprising heartbreak. Spousal abuse, child abuse, poverty and starvation. Is this the creation of a loving Father? But still the call goes out from God, like a whisper of breath in our ears, in the midst of the noise and clamor of our warring world: "Seek My face." And in the midst of our sin and confusion, we are surprised and somehow delighted to find our own hearts responding, "Your face, O Lord, I will seek."

In Old Testament times, people were afraid to look upon God, and rightly so.

We already read this morning about Jacob and his face-to-face encounter with the Lord, how he was blessed by God but walked away from that encounter with a permanent limp.



Moses the lawgiver, who had been chosen by God to deliver His people Israel out of their bondage to Egypt, later found it necessary to plead with the Lord for the sake of His people, that His presence would always go with them:

"So the Lord said to Moses, 'I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.' And [Moses] said, 'Please, show me Your glory.' Then [God] said, 'I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.' But He said, 'You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.' And the Lord said, 'Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen'" (Exodus 33:17-23).

The warrior judge Gideon had an encounter with the Angel of the Lord:

"Now Gideon perceived that He was the Angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, 'Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.' Then the Lord said to him, 'Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die'" (Judges 6:21-23).

"You shall not die," God said. But Gideon feared that he would!

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of the Lord when he was called to testify to His people:

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!' And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: 'Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.' Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: 'Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged'" (Isaiah 6:1-7).

So we see that before Jesus came, people were terrified of seeing the face of the Lord. Even though there were some who sought God, they undoubtedly trembled to think what would happen to them if they ever found Him.

And in our own experience, we find it still to be true. How can we know someone so utterly unknowable? How can our eyes see that which is invisible? And we also harbor the illusion that if we can't see God, maybe that means that He can't quite see us. That if we would presume to seek God's face, then that would reveal us to Him, in all of our wretchedness, our sin and despair. "Woe is us, for we are undone! Because we are men of unclean lips, and we dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

Still the Holy Spirit says through the words of King David: "Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice! Have mercy also upon me, and answer me. When You said, 'Seek My face,' my heart said to You, 'Your face, Lord, I will seek.' Do not hide Your face from me" (Psalm 27:7-9).

When the time came that God had ordained before the foundation of the world, He put on a face that we could see. It was a face that would cause us no fear; a face that spoke words of compassion and mercy and comfort to sinners; it was a face that little children loved. Jesus was loved by the sinners and children ... but despised by the religious leaders of His day, the Pharisees, and held in contempt by the governing society of the day, the Romans. But there for a little while God wore a human face and taught us about His kingdom and healed our sick and promised us a home … and then He was gone, so fast that even those who loved Him the most questioned who He even was.

Until the Resurrection. Then the game began all over again. Hide and seek! The risen Jesus would pop into rooms unannounced, and then disappear just like a magic trick. He would walk for miles with disciples, talking about the Bible, and wearing a face they did not recognize, until He revealed Himself and then disappeared again all in the same instant.

Hide and seek.

Where does that leave us now--us seekers of a God who remains hidden and unknowable to the people whose hearts are fixed on this world?

I submit to you that God, having once put on a human face like ours in order to make us sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, now wants us to put on spiritual faces like His, in order to show Whose we are.

Imagine this: an old window pane, the glass thick and wavy, so that you really can't see too clearly to the other side, but it's enough to let some light into the house. You see a figure on the other side, coming closer, but you can't really tell who it is, and the features are all muddled together with your own reflection on the glass. And as the face on the other side comes closer, it gradually becomes clearer, and your own reflected features seem to blend in with the other, to melt away, until the other face is quite close and quite clear.

It's kind of like that with us and our seeking of God: "For now we see through a glass, darkly," says the Old King James version of the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13:12. "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

We read that verse in our New Testament reading for today, and the Apostle Paul (in the new translations) calls that wavy pane of glass a mirror: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known."

A mirror! Was it then our own faces we were looking at the whole time, when we thought we were looking for the face of God?

No, not at all … the whisper of the Holy Spirit still says to our hearts, "Seek My face." And our hearts do reply, "Your face, Lord, will I seek."

Paul uses the image of a mirror one more time in scripture, in 2 Corinthians 3:18. "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Being transformed into the same image! When we behold the face of the Lord, we are transformed--slowly, it is true, but as certain as the Lord's own promise. For Jesus Himself said these words: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened: (Matthew 7:7-8).

"Seek My face," says the Lord. "He who seeks, finds," says the Lord. He who beholds the glory of the Lord will be transformed into the same image.

What is it the world sees when they look at us? Do they see Jesus, or do they see something that looks a lot more like the Pharisees? Are we judgmental and critical and unforgiving, or are we merciful, gracious and kind? I'm just askin'.

The metaphor of a mirror is used one more time in the New Testament, and it bears looking at:

"Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does" (James 1:21-25).

It's like a Christian who goes to church on Sunday morning, and for a moment the mirror is held up to his face, and he says, "Oh, yes! That's who I am." Then as soon as he's gone from the church it's hard to tell that he's a Christian at all, because he's forgotten what kind of man he is.

James says, "He who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues" will be blessed.

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3:18, when we behold in our spiritual mirrors the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed--not that we our transforming ourselves, for as Paul concludes, it is "by the Spirit of the Lord." It's God's work to transform us; it's God's work to recast our own images into His glorious likeness. But we can do our part by sitting before the mirror and gazing; we do our part by seeking His face.

How do we behold God? The same old answers: In prayer and meditation. In the pages of His Holy Book. In loving service to our fellow travelers along this mystifying way. These are our mirrors. By continuing to behold Him, by continuing to seek His face … He changes us into something that looks like Him.

It almost sounds too simple to be true … but can't the same thing be said for our very salvation? Simply believe in Jesus and confess your sins, and you will be forgiven.

"Seek My face," says the Lord. And in the very act of seeking, we will be changed. "Being confident of this very thing: that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).