#15 Living the Kingdom Life by Living a Hidden Life (3)

Brother Don Pollen continues our series on having a hidden life with the Lord.

Scripture Reading: Isa. 45:15

III. “Surely You are a God who hides Himself, / O God of Israel, the Savior”— Isa. 45:15:

A. Believers may know God as the almighty One, as the righteous One, as the One full of grace and compassion, but as the One who hides Himself, He is unknown to them.

B. When the only begotten Son came for the purpose of declaring God, He hid Him in a human life—a human life whose appearance was “marred,” a human life that had “no attracting form nor majesty”—Isa. 52:14; 53:2:

1. He came from Galilee, an insignificant province, and from the town of Nazareth, a small town of which it was said by the Jews that no prophet or person of repute ever came from there—John 1:46; 7:52.
2. Thus, when He appeared, people found it hard to believe that God was present in Him—they found it hard even to believe that He was a prophet of God, yet God was hidden within Jesus of Nazareth—cf. Col. 2:9.
3. Also, Jesus of Nazareth belonged to a poor home and grew up to be a carpenter—a very ordinary carpenter, working in a very small way, until He was thirty; who would have ever thought that He was indwelt by the infinite God?

C. If you study the Scriptures carefully, you will see that God has the kind of temperament that dislikes ostentation; He likes to work secretly rather than openly—Matt. 17:1-9; John 20:14-17; Luke 24:13-37; John 20:24-29; Isa. 39:2-8:

1. “Whom having not seen, you love; into whom though not seeing Him at present, yet believing, you exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory”; it is a wonder and a mystery that the believers love One whom they have not seen—1 Pet. 1:8.
2. Since the resurrection of the Lord, the chief discipline for His followers has come along the line of knowing Him as a God who hides Himself.
3. Everything of God’s economy with Christ as its centrality and universality is not in the seen realm but in the unseen atmosphere and realm of faith— 2 Cor. 4:13, 16-18; 5:7; Heb. 11:1; Eph. 3:17a; 1 Tim. 1:4b.

D. When we are most conscious of impotence, God is most powerfully present— 2 Cor. 12:9-10:

1. The God who hides Himself is at work within our lives, and He is working mightily.
2. Our responsibility is to cooperate with Him by responding to His voice within—that “gentle, quiet voice,” that voice that seems so much a part of our own feelings that we scarcely recognize it as a voice at all.
3. To that voice, registered in the deepest depths of our being, we must say Amen, for there, secretly and ceaselessly, the God who hides Himself is working.