HOW DO I FIND GOD - IS HE HIDING?

THE QUEST FOR GOD

"Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"—Job 23:3

"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."—John 14:9

These words of Job are found in the third and final cycle of his controversy with his friends. Eliphaz had delivered his last speech. It was briefer than his earlier ones, and was direct, blunt, and even brutal. Maintaining his posi­tion that Job's sufferings must be the result of Job's sins, he described the kind of sins which would be likely to produce such suffer­ings; and by implication attributed them to Job, though he had no evidence. It was all speculative, and entirely false. His speech ended with advice to Job in a passage of great beauty, the first sentence of which expressed the whole of its appeal:

"Acquaint now thyself with Him."

In his reply, Job ignored the charges which had been brought against him, and replied to the advice thus tendered. He tacitly admitted the excellence of the advice, but immediately, in the words we are considering, revealed the difficulty of which he was conscious. Bluntly Eliphaz had said, Get to know God, and all will be peace. Job replied in effect, that is the difficulty. How am I going to do it? And in these actual words, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him!" It is one thing to tell a man to acquaint himself with God, but quite another to show him how he is to do it.

"Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"

That was the language of a man who had underlying convictions about God. It is con­ceivable that such a question might be asked frivolously. Yes, it is evidently possible for a man of brilliant intellect to write the account characterized by such lack of seriousness is hardly worth attention. Job's query was not in that spirit. The context shows how conscious he was of the fact and presence of God. He knew He was at work, but declared that He was hiding Himself. Moreover, he was convinced that if he could find Him, "He would give heed" unto him; and that "the upright might reason with Him." In spite of this double conviction of the fact of God, and of the justice of God, his difficulty was that he could not reach Him. In language of strange poetical beauty, and yet lucid declaration, he described his quest after God. He said, "I go forward, but He is not there. I go backward, but I cannot perceive Him." I am conscious that He is at work, and I turn to the left, but cannot behold Him. He is on the right hand; I know He is there, but He is in hiding, and I cannot see Him. On the earthly level he turned in every direc­tion, forward and backward, to the left and to the right. An old Puritan writer quaintly observed, in commenting on this, "Job, you have gone forward and backward, and you have looked to the left and you have looked to the right. Why don't you try looking up?" The comment is suggestive, but Job would still have said he could not reach Him.

That is an abiding human consciousness when men seek for God on the earth level. They may be perfectly sincere. Their search, like that of Job, may be the result of pressure and tribulation and suffering; or it may be the search of the intellect for the solution of the riddle of the universe. God is not denied; indeed, there may be conviction that He is; but He cannot thus be found. Man cannot make contact with God by any action which is earth­bound. On a low level of illustration, we may refer to people who tell us that they find God in Nature, and therefore have no need for the activities of worship. This is not true. They may see the evidences of God in Nature, for all creation is the vesture of Deity, wrought in beauty, and radiant with glory; but God is never found in Nature in such a way as to satisfy the deepest necessity of human life.

This cry:

"Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"

is ultimately a revelation of the necessity for some special revelation of God to the spiritual side of the nature of man. In an earlier cycle of the controversy Zophar had said to Job:

"Can’st thou by searching find out God?" Now when his friend Eliphaz advises Job to acquaint himself with God, Job in his answer is but ratifying the difficulty as expressed in the earlier question of Zophar.

From this revelation of human necessity, as expressed in the cry of Job, we turn to the answer of Jesus. Many intervening centuries had run their course, and we find ourselves in an upper room with a group of men of our own humanity, men who have also known this desire of the spiritual life for God. In the midst of them there was One, a Man of their humanity, looking with human eyes at them, as they are looking at Him. Nevertheless, He is the One in Whom all the eternal came into visibility. That is the meaning of the Incarna­tion. It was not the beginning of anything new in the eternal facts, but the shining forth of these facts upon human life. In this company there sat a quiet man, with a Greek name; and I hear him say exactly what Job said, if in other words, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us."

Much has been written about what Philip really meant. It has been suggested that he was asking for some such outshining as had been given to Moses; that he was requesting a supernatural manifestation. I do not think anything is gained by discussing this matter. The one certain thing is that Philip was seeking some vision which would certify God to his soul. Again it was an ele­mental cry of humanity in the measure in which humanity has lost its consciousness of God.

To that cry the answer of Jesus was given in a clear, unequivocal declaration, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

That affirmation might be considered in many ways. I choose one only. Let us go back to Philip. When Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long time with you, and Dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," He was asking Philip to look back over the period in which he had been with Him. Philip was one of the first disciples, and he had been with Jesus through the whole period of His public ministry. We have the account of four occa­sions in which he is seen in personal contact with Him.

The first was when Jesus sought him at the beginning, "Jesus findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Come and travel with Me." That is when he first saw Him. "He that hath seen Me."

Then much later in the course of our Lord's ministry, when the multitudes were thronging upon Him, and He was moved with compassion, it was to Philip that He talked. To him He said, "Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat?" He was not asking Philip for information, for John says, "This He said to prove him, for He Himself knew what He would do." The issue was that Philip saw Him that day feed the multitude. "He that hath seen Me."

Then Philip was the man to whom the Greeks came with their request, "Sir, we would see Jesus." After consultation with Andrew, they came and told the Lord. Philip listened to that marvelous answer of Jesus, beginning with the declaration, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit"; and continuing presently He cried, "Now is My soul troubled"; and later, "Now is the judgment of this world." Of course the whole of this answer should be read. These sentences are sufficient to show that our Lord was facing His Cross, and in spite of His experience of sorrow, saw through to its triumph. Philip was watching Him then. "He that hath seen Me."

Now in the Upper Room, certainly not long after this revelation at the coming of the Greeks, he had seen Jesus gird Himself with a towel, and bend in the attitude of the Master and Teacher (John 13:13), showing His love until the end (John 13:1) which has not happened yet even for us or him and wash his feet. Two things He taught him that night was His separation of the sheep and goats as well as the final washing that needs to be done for every man before entering the presence of the Father into the New Jerusalem. Thus he had seen Him. "He that hath seen Me."

Now He said, "Dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." In all these things the Father was seen, seeking the man, meeting the hunger of the crowd physically, and lifting the action into the realm of the spiritual in teaching; finally facing and moving towards the infinite mystery of pain through which humanity could be ransomed and redeemed; bending until He took the place of a bond-slave, serving a group of men who believed in Him.

After uttering these things He gave Philip proofs of the claim He had made, declaring that the words He uttered were from the Father, and the works He did were the works of the Father.

At this point it may be best to remind our­selves that all through the revelation of our Lord found in this Gospel according to John, the words and the works are in mind, and always the words are treated as ultimate; and the fact is emphasized that these were from God, and that the works were also the works of God. He then appealed to Philip and the rest in the words, "Believe Me . . . or else believe Me for the very works' sake." The first line of proof was Himself. "Believe Me" was a call to the consideration of His personality. "Or else," that is, if you cannot rise to the higher level of the understanding of My per­sonality, then "believe Me for the very works' sake."

This challenge is an abiding one. If we will consider the Man Jesus, as He is revealed in the New Testament, we are inevitably brought face to face with the fact that through the human, something other than the human is forever shining round about us. Let us take up the New Testament with its presentation of the Person of our Lord, in these Gospel narratives, and open it at any point, and then carefully look at Him. We may find Him in Bethesda's porches among the derelicts. We may find Him with the children in His arms. We may find Him in the midst of the rulers with a sin-smirched woman in the midst of a watching crowd. Wherever we find Him—if I may adopt a mathematical method—let us project the lines from Him into infinitude, and we shall find we are seeing God.

We may see Him on a day when His eyes are flaming with fire, and His words are hot as the burnings of Gehenna against hypocrisy. That is God. We may see Him when those selfsame eyes are wet with tears. Twice over we so see Him. Lazarus was dead. Martha and Mary were in trouble. Jesus wept. That is God. That is how God feels when we are broken-hearted in the presence of the death of our loved ones. Again we see Him with heaving breast, sobbing in His grief. Jerusalem was doomed, but His heart was breaking as He pronounced the sentence. That is God.

John, in the prologue of his Gospel, declares

"We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Thus, to the cry of humanity,

"Oh that I knew where I might find Him!"

"Show us the Father and it sufficeth us";

the answer is full and final, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." On an earlier occasion our Lord had said, "All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father; and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him." In connection with that affirmation He uttered His great call, "Come unto Me . . . and I will give you rest." On this same occasion He said, "No one cometh unto the Father, but by Me." He answers the quest of the soul after God, and so brings it to the place of perfect rest.

The question may still be asked by honest souls, how are we to know that these things that Jesus is reported to have said are so? In an earlier period of His ministry He had uttered the revealing words, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God." He thus declared that there must be first of all a utmost determination to do the will of God; and then that the proof that He spoke from God would be found. When there was obedience, there would come the demonstration which would satisfy the soul that the things spoken were of God. The man who wills to do the will of God is the man whose moral intention is what it ought to be, for the will of God is always that of holiness. I do not say moral achievement. Our Lord did not say that if men would do the will of God they would understand; but if they willed to do it.

Merely intellectual interest will never find God, even in Jesus. Job and Philip were seek­ing God, because they were convinced of His government and His justice. They were there­fore ready for revelation. Revelation did come to Job subsequently partially, but never fully. To Philip it was given in all its fullness in the Person of our Lord.

Thus, the way in which the human soul can find the answer to its search for God is revealed.