Have you ever felt like Isaiah, "Truly, you are a God
who hides himself"? There are times
in my life when it seems I simply cannot find God, cannot hear His voice or see
His face. The nation must have felt like
that at this particular moment in its history.
God had promised great things, and was promising great things, that the
nations would come to Israel and confess that there was no other god but
Yahweh, but they were in exile. If such
things are true, if He indeed spoke this word of prophecy, then where was He
and where was there any evidence of Him or His love for the nation? Sometimes we're simply looking in the wrong
places for Him. We look in the usual
places and we look for the usual signs and cannot find Him anywhere and then suddenly
we realize He is hiding in plain sight. Sometimes
we miss Him until it's too late. The star
rose over Bethlehem, the wise men came, and yet no one could be bothered to go
and see the king. They wanted a
different king.
The first words God spoke were, "Let there be
light." That light, however, wasn't
the focused lights of the sun, moon and stars, those were created on the fourth
day. What was this light? Jesus says here that He is the light of the
world, is he referring to that light? Some
rabbis teach that the light created on the first day was hidden in the Torah
itself. In other words the Word of God
contains the light of that first day but it is hidden in Torah, just as Isaiah
spoke about God hiding Himself. Jesus'
declaration that He is the light of the world validates the rabbinic teaching
if He is indeed the Word. The light, He
says, is no longer hidden but revealed in Him.
That star, that light that guided the Magi, was the beginning of the
epiphany. The light of that star no one
had ever seen until the birth of Jesus when it appeared, pointed to Him before
He was able to point to Himself. Now, He
has spoken that the hidden light is revealed and it is also revealing.
Paul says that his stewardship is "to make the word of
God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed
to his saints." Three times in this
passage Paul uses the word mystery. Going
back to the rabbinic teaching of the previous paragraph you can see that the
light was hidden in the Word, it is a mystery to be sleuthed out of the
Word. That doesn't mean that the whole
is unimportant, all the Torah points to and reveals this mystery but until
Jesus came and died on the cross the mystery was unintelligible. Paul says first that the mystery is Christ in
you, the hope of glory. What a marvelous
mystery! Jeremiah foretold that didn't
he? When he said that God would write
the Law on their hearts and give them a new heart, he was talking about this
reality. When Joel wrote that God would
pour out His spirit on all flesh, he was pointing to this. Next, Paul says that Jesus Himself is the
mystery. Isaiah pointed to Him, Daniel
pointed to Him, Zechariah pointed to Him, Moses pointed to Him, Malachi pointed
to Him, as did all the prophets and the psalmists. No one, however, understood Messiah would
suffer and die and no one understood less than Paul himself. Come to Him as a little child and receive Him
anew.
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