THE CONCEALMENT OF GOD
Isaiah 45:15. Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
This is one of many similar declarations (Psalms 18:11; Psalms 97:2; Job 37:23; Exodus 33:18-23). All this concealment proceeds, not from any unwillingness to disclose His greatness, but rather from the fact that, since this greatness is divine, it could not be endured by human vision. Mysteries are necessary portions of the dealing between finite beings and the Infinite, and are forced into God’s dispensations by His unmeasured superiority to the work of His own hands. [1426]
[1426] Suppose God to make a full and adequate revelation of Himself: there is a point in the examination of that revelation at which man’s understanding must fail; for man’s understanding, at the best, is finite. God is infinite. The finite cannot grasp the infinite; and therefore there must be a point at which the power of the finite understanding that would take in the infinite communication must cease, and at that particular point there would be a horizon to man’s perceptions of truth. That is, to us there would be a point at which the revelations would cease to be explanations, and a man’s view would be bounded, and a mystery would commence. For what is a mystery! A mystery is & revelation unexplained; a truth told distinctly, but net reasoned upon and explained; a truth so told that we can boldly say what it is, but not how it is. The personal existence of God, as declared in Holy Scripture, is a mystery; it is a revelation unexplained, a statement unreasoned; and it presents a horizon to the human understanding.
In philosophy, facts hold the place which revelation holds in religion. Experience gives the philosopher his facts, and facts bring him to a point where he must confess mystery. Where is the metaphysician that hath ever explained the action of mind upon matter, and the ready movements of flesh and bone at the secret bidding of the mysterious visitant within? And where is the anatomist who hath discovered its origin with his searching knife? No; there is a mystery in it. For a mystery in philosophy is a fact unexplained, as a mystery in religion is a revelation unexplained.
Take another instance. Much has been discovered, and much has been demonstrated, in the science of astronomy. The motions of the heavenly bodies have been made matter of calculation amongst men; the results proving themselves true by periodical returns of infallible observation. But there is a point at which we reach a mystery here. Upon what do all these calculations depend? Upon what do all these motions rest? Upon a quality which Sir Isaac Newton baptized; he gave the mystery a name; he called it “gravitation.” Grant gravitation, and we can reason about the solar system. But what is gravitation? Who can explain that?—M‘Neile.
Our text seems to breathe the language of admiration and praise: [1429] it confesses God mysterious, but at the same time its tone is that of grateful acknowledgment. We wish to examine the fact that the God of Israel is a God that doth hide Himself, and to prove that this concealment should move us to admiration, thanksgiving, and awe. Consider—
[1429] That God should disclose thoughts of mercy so vast and far-reaching affects the prophet’s mind powerfully. He pauses to say, “How little had I known of God before! Thou art a God that hidest Thyself!” How long the world had lain in darkness, ignorant of these glorious plans of God for its ultimate conversion! Surely the God of such promises should be known by this one great name, “The God of Israel (His own spiritual Zion) the Saviour!” He wears this name most worthily!—Cowles.
Compare Romans 11:33.
I. GOD’S HIDING OF HIMSELF WITH REGARD TO HIS OWN NATURE AND PROPERTIES.
We know nothing of God in Himself; we know Him only in His attributes, and His attributes only as written in His Word and shown in His works. But when these are studied most carefully, God remains even then the greatest mystery to man; we know not what God is, nor how He subsists. [1432] Even where God makes announcements of His nature, they are such as quite baffle our reason. For example,—
1. The doctrine of the Trinity.
2. His revelation of Himself as “the Saviour.” What mysteries are involved in the Incarnation and the Atonement!
3. The application of redemption to the individual, by the operations of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is a fact, but who can explain it to us?
[1432] H. E. I. 2229–2224, P.D. 1501–1502, 1525.
There is nothing that should surprise us in this, if we would but observe how little way our reason can make when labouring amongst things with which we are every day conversant; but we should expect that it would be altogether incompetent to the unravelling the incomprehensible. It will also be evident that we are a mystery to ourselves; that every object around us baffles our penetration; that there is not an insect, a leaf, an atom, which does not master us as we attempt to apprehend its nature and its growth.… If, then, making trial of our powers on the commonest objects by which we are surrounded, we feel ourselves defeated in our philosophy by the worm or the water-drop; can it be rational, when we turn ourselves to the study of God, to expect to find the Almighty a being which we may thoroughly comprehend? It is enough that we observe the most gifted of our fellows applying themselves assiduously to the commonest facts, the most familiar occurrences, and yet able to do nothing more than trace a connection between cause and effect. We ought to be convinced that we possess not the capacity which can allow us to embrace the wonders of the Deity. So that not only the stars in their rushings, and the waters as they flow in their tides, but every sand-grain and every bubble, and every beat of the pulse, and every blade of grass, and every floating insect, all join in preparing us for the fact that the God of Israel must be a God that hideth Himself.—Melvill.
It seems unnecessary, after thus considering what God has hidden with respect to Himself, we should dwell at any length on what He hath similarly hidden in the works of nature. Everything within, above, and around us, is matter of inscrutable mystery. [1435]
[1435] We stand in the midst of a mighty temple, the whole visible frame of nature rising around us, like the walls of a gorgeous sanctuary; and we gaze on the beautiful arch of heaven, on the sun walking in his brightness, on the moon, and the stars, and the dark cloud of thunder; but what know we of this magnificent array? What account can man give of the hidden springs of such vast machinery? Who will tell us what is that light which makes all things visible? Who will explain that secret wondrous energy which retains, century after century, so many worlds, each in its separate orbit? Whose penetration is not utterly baffled by the growth of a blade of grass, by the falling of a stone, by the floating of a feather? When asked, we state reasons, and assign causes, but this is only a shifting of the difficulty. It were easy to talk of the gravity of matter, and the laws of nature: philosophy is at fault: the learned man knows little more than the savage of the amazing processes which go on daily in the laboratory of nature: while he may be sitting on the lofty pinnacle of science, a child shall propose questions which shall perplex and confound him, and bring him down from his lofty eminence, and force him to the humiliating confession that what can be discovered by man bears no proportion to what is hidden by God.… There is nothing teaches us our own ignorance as knowledge when pushed to its utmost limits. In enlarging the sphere of light, you equally enlarge the surrounding sphere of darkness.—Melvill.
What we would ever maintain in respect to all this concealment of the Deity is, that it should summon forth our thankfulness. It prevents great evils, and secures great blessings:
1. What food would there be to human pride, if reason availed even to the finding out of God!
2. If God did not thus hide Himself, there would be no reason for faith, and consequently none of the glory we render to God when we exercise it, and none of the moral advantage which flows to us from the being required to lean constantly on an invisible staff.
3. We could not then have that conviction that in the Bible we have the Word of the living God which now arises from our perception that the obscurity, of which some complain, is the result of the sublimity of the disclosures there made to us.
4. The wonders of nature, had they been completely unveiled, would soon have ceased to interest and to call forth our admiration and praise; whereas, by being partially hidden, they are made to contribute to the glory of their Creator. [1438]
[1438] If God had bared the secrets of creation, so that we could exhaust the store-house whose very threshold we are now scarce able to pass, is it not evident that the familiarity would have generated indifference to the skill of the mighty Architect; and that the mere fact that there was nothing to find out would have made us unobservant of the broad impress of Divinity? Under the existing arrangement, as we may term it, of God’s hiding Himself, creation ministers perpetually to our awe and admiration of the Creator; every new leaf, as it is turned over by the intelligence of industry and the guidance of inquiry, presenting a new witness to the wisdom and power of Deity, whilst at the same time it tells out the inexhaustibleness of the volume; so that continually learning, and yet continually finding there is more to learn, we pass on from stage to stage, climbing (so to speak) the magnificence of God, only to know that what appeared the summit is but the basis of a loftier mountain; and thus compelled, as marvel on marvel crowds the vision, to exclaim—oh, not with the tongue of regret and murmuring, but with the tongue of worship and rapture—“Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour!”—Melvill.
II. HOW GOD HIDES HIMSELF IN REGARD TO HIS DEALINGS WITH HIS CREATURES.
1. God conceals much in the dispensations of His Providence; He does not lay open the reasons of His appointments and permissions. But besides the moral discipline that is thus secured for us, will not the ultimate solution of all those mysteries gain more glory for God, than if the whole course of Providence had been made plain from the beginning?
2. God hides from His creatures the day of their death. But this concealment is in many ways a blessing to the individual and to society.
3. God has hidden much from us respecting the nature of a future state. He has given much to exercise faith and occupy hope; but if the veil had been more fully withdrawn, what would have become of a state of probation, with all its present and permanent blessings? [1441]
[1441] H. E. I. 2178, 2179.
4. God has hidden from man the future history of this world. But by means of prophecy this hiding of the Deity has been made to minister peculiarly to our advantage. [1444]
[1444] Prophecy is the standing miracle of centuries; a miracle so wonderfully constructed, that time, which might be thought to weaken every other, adds only fresh strength to this. The far-off day of its delivery is as surprising as the fact of its fulfilment; but it is clear that the wonder of prophecy is dependent on the combination of our iguorance and of God’s knowledge of the future. It is by His displaying His own acquaintance with that which He has hidden from His creatures, that God makes the hiding to put forth the greatest strength against infidelity; indicating from the very beginning the knowledge of all things proves His own omniscience and His sovereignty. So that if the future were open to man’s expatiation, there would remain no place for prophecy as the distinct prerogative of Deity, and it would remove altogether that attestation to the truth of Christianity which, growing and strengthening as time rolls on, resists, like a rock, the advance of scepticism.—Melvill.
5. God has hidden from us the results of our own actions. But this is palpably to our advantage, for thus we are reminded, as we could not have been in any other way, of our dependence upon God, and the necessity of acknowledging Him in all our ways. Especially is this a blessing in the workings of benevolence. We are thus led to carry on our operations in the best possible spirit, in the consciousness that we are but instruments in the hand of God. Besides, it is this very hiding which enables us to honour God by our performance of duty. It were comparatively nothing to labour with the certainty of success; the trial of obedience lies in the being summoned to labour when we cannot be assured of success: and if we prosecute the enterprise, in spite of all that is disheartening in the hiding of results, we glorify God by that best of all offerings—a simple and unquestioning conformity to His will: our own obedience being of a far higher cast than if we were stimulated by the known amount of success, is nothing less than a fresh proof that we should praise God under His character of “the God that hideth Himself.”—H. Melville, A.M., “The British Pulpit,” vol. iii. pp. 142–152.
That God is a Saviour is a declaration written in lines of light on every page of the Book of Revelation. What, too, is history, with all its dark passages of horror, its stormy revolutions, its ceaseless conflict, its tears, its groans, its blood, but the chronicle of an ever-widening realm of light, of order, of intelligence, wisdom, truth, and charity? It is a tale of slow, patient, but persistent and victorious progress. Yet there is a destroying power at work in the universe on a scale of enormous magnitude, and to most men the dominant feature in this vast universe seems to be confusion. Shocks and shatterings cause more noise and make more show than the germinations, the uprisings, the upbuildings. The earthquake is long remembered, the soft springing of the corn passes unnoted by. Hence to most men God is hidden. If they believe there is a God, they think of Him merely as the Judge, the Avenger, the Destroyer, not as the Saviour.
But why should God hide Himself? If He has purposes of mercy always before Him, why does He not make them abundantly plain to all mankind? Why leave the world to groan and madden under the terror lest a malignant tormentor should be master and ruler of, at any rate, this lower sphere?
I. The reason lies partly in the essential mystery of the Divine nature—a nature whose judgments must remain unsearchable by man’s limited intelligence, and whose ways must be past finding out; His nature and methods we can grasp just as an infant can grasp the thought and purpose of a man (Job 11:7; Romans 11:33).
II. God hides Himself through His patient, deep, and far-reaching method in the government of mankind. He is governing us as free beings on a profound and obscure but benignant method; the aim being to train us to govern ourselves in the light of His truth and love. The only way to govern in freedom is to allow full play to freedom. We are free to try our paths and see where they issue. But when men go astray by the very misery that succeeds their sin (Luke 15:14), God leads them back to Himself and proves that He is the Saviour.
III. The day of the Lord is a long day. His methods work through generations. Consider the years of the right hand of the Most High, and understand how His way must be hidden in each brief generation; while in the generations in which His hand is on the world in judgment, the darkness in which it is buried must be profound indeed.
IV. God hides Himself behind the fatherly chastisement with which He exercises and educates the individual human soul. It is in the nature of chastisement to hide for a moment the wisdom and the love of the hand which administers it (Hebrews 12:11).
V. There are seasons of darkness in which God seems hidden, which are among the most sacred and salutary experiences of the soul. By them God is drawing out and drawing up its deeper longings and aspirations, exercising its patience, and kindling its hope (H. E. I. 1645–1648, 1656).
VI. God hides, must hide, much of His method, but while the Cross stands as earth’s most sacred symbol there can be no utter hiding of His love. He has set the Cross in the midst of us as the sign how much He cares for us. Whatever we suffer, while that Cross abides, we can say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”—J. Baldwin Brown, B.A., in the Christian World, September 19th, 1879.
When Divine manifestations are described in Scripture, two symbols are used, fire and cloud, symbolising light and darkness. The import of this is that we may know God in part, but cannot fathom His perfections. As an old philosopher said, “Nothing is at once so known and so concealed as God.” This union of the knowable and unknowable in God is set forth in the text.
Looked at in connection with the context, the words express astonishment and admiration at the mode in which God fulfilled His purposes through Cyrus. The obscurity of His ways, the incomprehensibility of Providence, is the subject.
I. The Lord is a God that hideth Himself. His dispensations, though always wise and merciful, are often mysterious. This is in harmony with both reason and experience.
1. From the nature of God, and from the character and situation of man, reason would conclude that the ways of Providence must often be incomprehensible. For God’s wisdom is infinite, His ways above our ways. How can mortals comprehend His counsels and purposes? It is the very height of folly, of profane arrogance, for men to summon the All-Wise to their tribunal. We cannot tell the end He has in view, nor assign reasons for His procedure, nor foreknow the effect of His action. If God were not incomprehensible, faith would lose its value.
2. Experience proves that God hides Himself. Why does He suffer wickedness to prosper? Why does He afflict His own children? Why does He cut off the child and the youth? Why do men of eminent usefulness die prematurely, and worthless men live long?
II. Though God hides Himself, He is the Saviour of His people. His inscrutable ways are connected with the salvation of His children.
1. Think of the attributes of God. His love wonderful, His power unlimited, His care incessant, His wisdom infinite. Can He err, or be cruel?
2. Remember His promises. “All things shall work together for good,” &c. In times of darkness and suffering the promises apply.
3. Look at experience. Your own. How has God dealt with you? That of others. Reflect on the sufferings of patriarchs, prophets, and saints, and the end thereof.
In conclusion, learn,
1. The guilt and ingratitude of believers when they murmur against God’s dealings. They assume to be wiser than He, and are impatient and rebellious.
2. We may well long for heaven. Here there will ever be darkness; there we shall see light in God’s light. All mysteries will be solved.—Henry Kollock, D.D.: Sermons, pp. 574–580.
This chapter contains a prophecy respecting the deliverance of Israel from Babylon. God promises to anoint Cyrus to be the saviour of His people, and to do great things to enable him to deliver them from bondage (Isaiah 45:1-4). Cyrus was to be thus raised up, not for his glory, but for the sake of Jacob (Isaiah 45:4). Though he knew not God, he was to be an instrument in God’s hands (Isaiah 45:4-5, Isaiah 44:28). God can use any instrument He pleases (Daniel 2:21; Daniel 4:35). Contemplating the predicted deliverance of Israel by such a surprising instrumentality, the prophet is filled with amazement, and exclaims, “Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself,” &c.
God hides Himself in two ways.—
1. In the mystery of His counsel. Instances: His permitting His people to remain so long in such severe bondage, and in the wonderful means chosen for their deliverance. Many similar instances. No one can say beforehand what are God’s purposes in His providences, nor how He will bring them about. History must be their interpreter (Psalms 79:1; Psalms 79:9; Romans 11:33).
2. In His chastisements. At times He withdraws from His people on account of their sins (Isaiah 57:17). Then they seem to be left utterly in the power of their foes (Psalms 42:9). A period of mystery and painful perplexity (Psalms 79:9). But in due time He manifests Himself as “the saviour of Israel.” He uses unexpected means for their deliverance, but those means prove abundantly sufficient (Isaiah 45:17).
In our text a complaint is made which may be repeated in our own day. [1447]
[1447] Most commentators take that view of our text upon which the preceding outlines proceed, but a few incline to that here taken. “The words are an abrupt reflection of the prophet in the midst of the messages he has to deliver. They allude to the strange work of God in breaking down what He had built, the tabernacle of David, and plucking up what He had planted, the vineyard of Israel.” (Birks.) “The words have been variously taken:—(1.) As continuing the wondering homage of the heathen; (2.) as spoken by the prophet as he surveys the unsearchable ways of God. (Compare Romans 11:33.) Through the long years of exile He had seemed to hide Himself, to be negligent of His people (chaps. Isaiah 8:17, Isaiah 54:8; Psalms 55:1) or unable to help them. Now it would be seen that He had all along been as the Strong One (El) working for their deliverance.” (Plumptre.) Though the prophet may have breathed here “the language of admiration and praise” (Melvill and others), the circumstances of God’s people are often such that they may adopt His exclamation as a lament.
I. That the Saviour hides Himself is a thing to be lamented. Grave evils result therefrom. In His Church there is deadness, barrenness, contentions, divisions. Sinners are at ease in Zion. The foes of Zion are arrogant and insolent. God’s kingdom makes no advance in the world. Those who love it are disheartened; their work for the salvation of sinners appears to be at a standstill. A cause of great grief to them. The stoppage of any earthly works is not to be compared with it for calamitousness. The stoppage of works which give employment to thousands is a great loss to a country; but a much heavier loss is the stoppage of the work of grace which gives eternal life. What will become of our children, relatives, neighbours, the world at large, should saving operations be at an end? Nothing can revive it but the coming forth of the Saviour.
II. The Saviour does not hide Himself without a cause. His sovereignty is not the cause of His concealment, nor of His withholding comforts from His people; for it is His delight to dwell in their midst and to bless them. The cause will be found in them. From below, and not from above, comes the mist that forms itself into thick clouds and hides the face of the Saviour from us (Isaiah 59:2; H. E. I. 1644). We see a father sometimes showing his displeasure towards his disobedient child by refusing him his company, and so deals the Lord with His children as long as they continue contented with a low spiritual state, or a state of transgression into which they have fallen (Isaiah 1:15; Hosea 5:15). This is the cause, and this only; not because His people are poor, ignorant, or in trouble.
III. The hiding of the Saviour ought to produce self-humiliation in His people. They ought to inquire into the reasons for their sad and terrible condition, in humble prayer before God (Psalms 44:24). They are apt not to do this; prayerlessness is one terrible result of backsliding (Isaiah 64:7). But until they give themselves earnestly to self-examination, self-reformation, and humble waiting before God, His face will be hidden from them.
IV. The Saviour continues the same though He hides Himself. Though He hid Himself in the days of Isaiah, He was still the “God of Israel, the Saviour.” The sun is as full of light and heat when hid behind clouds as it is when seen in all its glory, and so God is as full of grace and mercy when hiding Himself because of the sins of His people, as He is when manifesting Himself in gracious deliverance. In the day of darkness His people may doubt this (Isaiah 65:15). Nevertheless it is true (Isaiah 59:1). Let them return to Him in penitence, and they will find it true.
V. The Saviour does not intend to hide for ever. He has graciously made the term of the continuance of His concealment from us to depend on ourselves (Hosea 5:15). We are told what will certainly happen if His people turn to Him (Isaiah 54:7-10).
Let us lay these truths to heart. We greatly need that the Saviour should manifest Himself to us. Let us entreat Him to do so. Model prayers are provided for us in His Word (Jeremiah 14:7-9). Let us present them with the humble perseverance that is pleasing to Him (Isaiah 8:17). So doing, ere long He will draw near to us; and when He does so, let us lay hold on Him, saying, “O God, Thou art our God; our souls thirst to see thy power and thy glory, as we have seen Thee in the sanctuary.”—William Roberts: Pregethau, pp. 261–268. Translated from the Welsh by the Rev. T. Johns, of Llanelly.