The Lord God called to Adam, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:9
I don’t think for one minute God couldn’t find Adam. With this question, God was giving Adam the opportunity to come out of hiding, to reveal what he’d been trying to keep hidden from God. What He’s really doing is calling Adam to repentance.
He asks the same question of us. Where are you? Where are you at in your life? Be honest with yourself. Come out of hiding and reveal yourself to me.
Until we step out of the shadows, we’ll never be able to have friendship with God. No relationship works when one person is hiding their true self. If someone is hiding in the relationship with God, it is always the human. Because God is not hidden. He wants us to know Him fully. He is not a God of deceit or disguise.
“If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me.” Jeremiah 29:13
Where can we look to find God? How do we find Him when our hearts are desperate for Him?
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. Romans 1:20
God’s power and holiness, His majesty, His lordship are revealed in creation. We see Him in the glorious sunset, the mighty crashing waves, the tender leaf unfurling, the flower budding. All of creation testifies to the presence of a Creator.
But we know God is more than just a magnificent force that set the world in motion. He didn’t create Adam and Eve and set them in the Garden of Eden alone. No, He walked in the Garden with them. He created them, and us, for a relationship with Him. So we need a way to know Him on a personal level. To talk with Him face to face in the cool of the evening.
Our sin made it impossible. But God had a solution for that. Clean up the sin and restore the relationship. He accomplished this through His Son, Jesus.
The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God of heaven. Hebrews 1:3
Jesus represents God exactly. “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). He makes plain the loving kindness of God. He left the glory of heaven and died to cleanse us from our sin because He loves us. Jesus didn’t hide who He was, didn’t conceal what He was doing. His teaching, His life, His ministry were all lived out in the open, where anyone who wanted to come could see and hear for themselves.
Jesus replied, “What I teach is widely known, because I have preached regularly in the synagogues and the Temple. I have been heard by people everywhere, and I teach nothing in private that I have not said in public.” John 18:20
At the same time, not everyone that watched Jesus perform miracles really saw Him. Not everyone who heard Jesus speak really listened to Him. Jesus warned, “Everything that is hidden or secret will eventually be brought to light and made plain to all” (Luke 8:17). His teachings are like the shout at the end of a game of hide-and-seek, “Olly olly oxen free! Come out, before it’s too late, while anyone hiding can come home without penalty!”
We must come out of hiding before the game is over. We must come out in order to see and hear clearly. We are drawn out of hiding by the Holy Spirit. Without Him, our hearts are hard, our eyes are blind, and our ears are deaf. He reveals the Son to us and enables us to understand the words of God.
We know these things because God has revealed them to us by His Spirit, and his Spirit searches out everything and shows us even God’s deep secrets… God has actually given us his Spirit… so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. 1 Corinthians 2:10, 12
When we stand uncovered before God, He covers us with His spotless Lamb. God doesn’t do this so we will go back into hiding, this time behind a Christian life. He invites us to stand courageously revealed. This is a vulnerable place to be. It requires great faith and dependence on God to protect us.
But this is how we reveal God to an unbelieving world. His power to change a life. His loving kindness that rescued us. The hope that lives in us. Jesus isn’t just good news for good people. Or the sprinkles on an already good life. He is the hope in the darkness. He is the bread when our mouths taste only dust and ashes. He is the water when we are dying of thirst. When the Gospel is lived out in our lives, we become the evidence that the Good News is true.