Jesus: The Hidden God

We continue on this week with our sermon series “All About Jesus” where we are looking at how Jesus impacted humanity during his time on earth and how he can impact our lives today as well. Today we focus on Jesus as the “Hidden God.” Our scripture comes from Matthew 13:10-17.

10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15 For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ d

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Please pray with me…

On the week that Jesus had probably one of his most visible moments as he is riding on a donkey with people praising him as he entered Jerusalem, we are focusing on how this was rare for Jesus.

 We are looking at how Jesus was someone who often attempted to stay out of the limelight and also limited the information that he passed on to the people outside of his select group. We can see this beginning with his entrance into the world as a baby.

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Jesus’ birth occurred at a time when people were focusing on other things. There was a census going on throughout Judea. The peoplewere focusing on that instead of on the birth of a baby. Especially when that baby was born to an unwed mother.

We also can sense the hiddenness based off of where he was born. Jesus wasn’t even born in a house or a hotel. Jesus was born in a stable among the animals and was placed in a manger. This would not be the location where we would expect the birth of the Savior of the world to take place.

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Jesus wasborn the son of a carpenter. The Messiah if he was going to be a baby would have been the son of someone with the credentials that would have deserved the birth of someone so important to the Jewish people.

Jesus’ earthly father was someone who worked hard. Someone who most likely had callused hands. Someone that a person would not expect would be having the Jewish Messiah living in his house.

Jesus was from a small town. A town in which scripture states he could not be the Messiah because “nothing good comes from Nazareth.” We can see from scripture that he was known within the town but not as the Savior of the world or even as a Rabbi. He was simply known to the people of Nazareth as the carpenter’s son.

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His future was completely hidden from the people that grew up with him and from the rest of Jewish society. To the point, that we know very little that took place before Jesus was baptized around the age of 30. His childhood was so uneventful that it required only a couple of verses. That is how hidden the Messiah was to the people that were looking for him.

Jesus remained hidden from the religious society just by who he chose to be his followers disciples. Jesus could have gone to Jerusalem and sought out the best of the best but instead he chose those that would not have been known within Jewish society as people with spiritual knowledge. He chose fishermen and a tax collector to be among his disciples. People that other religious leaders wouldn’t have even considered worthy of wasting their time on.

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This is oneof many areas where Jesus was different from the rest of the religious leaders. He wasn’t looking for the best of the best. He was looking for people that would be willing to learn his view of scripture and of God. It would take a special group of people to be willing to accept the differences that he was offering to them.

The twelve who spent the most time with him received the most information. They were traveling with him. They ate meals together. Most likely had discussions by the campfire. Jesus shared most intimately with this group that he had formed to be his students.

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Another difference would be that he was hidden in what we would call spiritual disciplines. He fasted and prayed in a way that did not bring him before the public. We find in Matthew chapter 6 Jesus stating the difference between him and the Pharisees.

He says, “don’t pray like the Pharisees by standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” And in regard to fasting he states to “not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.”

Jesus is saying these things to point out that what we do for God does not have to be done in public. We should do all that we can to show the love of God while also humbling ourselves before those around us and God.

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Another way that Jesus hid himself was the way he spoke to the crowds. He would often use what we call parables in order to hide his meaning for the time being. Parables are short stories that offer spiritual and/or moral answers to situations.

In our scripture reading he explains why he kept the true meaning hidden. It was because most people still had calloused hearts. He may have believed that they couldn’t handle the truth as God would want them to.  They were not ready to believe in him. He felt that he had to leave the message hidden from them in order for them to be able to believe in him at some point.

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The people have had the same information preached to them for so long that they were unable to look outside of their preconceived understanding of what Jesus was saying and doing. Jesus possibly believed that one of two things would happen if he spoke openly to them.

One would be that they would believe him and want to make him king. In John chapter six right after Jesus feeds the 5000 we can see this happening. We have Jesus being concerned that they would try to make him king. He instead chose to leave them before they were able to do it.

The other possibility is that they would try to kill him. It would be more likely that they would not accept what he had to say and choose to try to do to him what they had done to others that rocked the boat.

We can see this reaction when we examine further what happens when Jesus speaks in Nazareth. According to Matthew 13:57 the people took offense to him. The scriptures says “he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”

They end up driving him towards a cliff to throw him over it before he is miraculously able to walk through the crowd without being grabbed. God had to intervene in order to allow him to not be killed before it was time.

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We have the twelve confused by what Jesus was saying in his parables. What Jesus did was after he was separated from “the crowd” he passed on to his disciples the meaning of the parables. He was preparing them to recite what he said and then share what his words meant.

This would have given them the ability to lead the people after Jesus left. They would be able to pass on knowledge others didn’t already have. Jesus was hidden from others to set his disciples up for success later.

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Jesus even kept hidden more information to most of his disciples. It was only three that he seemed to tell and let see all that he had to offer to them. Peter, James and John were Jesus’ inner circle.

Our first reading speaks of what we call Jesus’ transfiguration. It was only Peter, James and John that was able to witness Jesus appearing with Elijah and Moses. Jesus also changed appearance during his visit with these men.

Jesus tellsPeter, James and John in Matthew to not let anyone know about this till after his death and resurrection. There are many times that Jesus does not want the disciples to share what he has taught them.

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Jesus’ eventual deathand resurrection were hidden from most people. It was only those that Jesus was closest too that were made aware of what was to occur and even they did not believe it. They couldn’t believe it because it was not the expectation of what would happen to the Messiah. They couldn’t believe that Jesus was going to die.

He had to keep this hidden from most of the people. After all we know that they would not be willing to listen to him if the crowd knew that he was going to die at the hands of the Jewish authorities.

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The religious leaders had taught them they’re only understanding of what the Messiah was going to be like and what he was going to do. He had to be the hidden God because almost no one would have believed him anyway.

They would not follow a Messiah who was going to leave them before he saved them. They expected Jesus to remove them from their current situation. They had the expectation that Jesus was going to destroy the Romans and put the Jewish people back in charge of the land given to them by God.

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All of this leads to us focusing on the hidden God or what could be called the mystery of our faith for the times that we are in. Nouwen explains it this way, he says that

“The mystery of the spiritual life is that Jesus desires to meet us in the seclusion of our own heart, to make his love known to us there, to free us from our fears, and to make our own deepest self known to us.”

What Nouwen is saying to us is that the closer you become to God, the deeper that you allow God to penetrate into your heart or inner being, the less hidden he becomes. We have more of God revealed to us through our willingness to become closer to him.

The analogy that popped into my mind is of a small child playing hide and seek with an adult. The adult counts and the child hides but almost always in a way that they can be seen. I am thinking of a child behind the drapes with their feet sticking out underneath the bottom of the drapes.

When we begin our journey with Jesus, we can only glimpse a very small part of God. The rest is left hidden from us. What comes to mind is Paul writing to the church in Corinth and he says

“Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.”

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It goes back to Jesus speaking in parables. Those that were not his twelve disciples were not ready to hear the message that the parables conveyed. It is as we grow closer to God that the scales fall off our eyes and more and more of him become revealed to us.

We are able to have more revealed to us by the Holy Spirit when we are willing to allow Jesus to become deeper ingrained into our inner being. It is why we speak in our mission statement of the importance of growing in faith together.

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Revelation chapter 3 speaks of the church in Laodicea (Lau Deek ee uh) that is described as lukewarm, it is neither hot nor cold. We have to be careful as Christians and as a church that we don’t become lukewarm.

We have to be careful that we don’t forget what Jesus has done for us and have a willingness to grow closer to him each and every day. We need to desire to become the person and the church that God desires for us to be.

Let tell you when my faith was most lukewarm, it was during seminary…

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What is hidden from those that don’t believe is how the Spirit is able to work within us and guide and direct us when we allow him. God attempts to help people discover what he desires for them. But many people are wandering through life because they have not yet chosen Jesus as their Lord and Savior and because of that the power offered to each of us by God has not yet been discovered by them.

We not only should be allowing more of God to be revealed to us through spending time with him, but we should desire to share what we know of God with those around us. We need to be willing to spread the message of Jesus to those that God places before us.

It is why the first two other parts of our mission statement state that we will connect with those around us and show the love of God to all  people. We have a message to share. We need to be willing to share it.

This is why we spent three months talking about evangelism, or reaching out to those outside of the church. We offered a model to follow called the BLESS. In case you forgot or missed the series, it began with prayer, followed by listening, eating or entertaining, service, and ended with our Jesus story. We are called by God to share the message of Jesus with those around us.

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Let us be open to having Jesus reveal himself to us by spending time with him while also being willing to reveal God to those that we meet.

Let us pray…