Monday, July 6, 2015

A God That Hideth Himself # 2

Isaiah 45:15)

There have been several other great and outstanding instances of the mystery of God's ways in fulfilling His major purposes. All the race had gone from Him and become involved in Godlessness and idolatry. It was universal. How would God meet His own need? Well, He moved to put His hand on one man, and out of that one man He made a nation. In sovereign grace He made that nation His mystery, His secret, among the nations. Israel was God's mystery, God's hidden way. There was always something mysterious about Israel. Paul, in contemplating this method of God and finding it rise up with such overwhelming power, did just what Isaiah did. While writing it down he just interjected a loud and resounding ejaculation: - 

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!" (Romans 11:33).

He might well have added, "Thou art a God That hidest Thyself." Who would ever have thought of the Incarnation, and  that, not in glory, but in humiliation unto offending every expectation of man? Who would have thought of the Cross for God Incarnate as the method and means of solving the greatest problem ever known in this universe? Who would have suspected that it was all embodied in that Man of Nazareth, "the carpenter's son" as they called Him? There was the greatest mystery of God! Did it work? Has it proved to be the way, the only way, and the transcendently successful way?

And what is true as to the mystery of Israel, and the mystery of Christ, is also true as to the mystery of the Church. No natural eye can discern it. No natural mind can explain it. Reduce it to human sense and description and you have lost it, you have got hold of the wrong thing. "God's wisdom (is) in a mystery," says Paul. Try to commend the Church to the world without faith and you have stripped your Church of its secret power! Unless men come right up against inscrutable God Who overwhelms them, that which claims to be His dwelling place is an empty shell.

And we would remind you that what is true in these great epochs of sovereign progress down the ages, these interventions and advents in the history of this world's spiritual life, is true in the life of each one of His true people. Such will be constantly confronted with the how? of impossible situations, in order that they may be compelled to repeated exclamations in the presence of His simple solutions -

"Verily Thou art a God That hidest Thyself."

"Deep in unfathonable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will."

"I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that it is I, the Lord, Who call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel" (Isaiah 45:3)

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(The End)

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