The Hiddenness of Jesus

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

Jesus says that the reason he all so often spoke in parables was so that quote Seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand This question is what Christian theologians for 2,000 years have called the problem of the hiddenness of God Jesus explains in this chapter why he does this, how he does it, what the point is in it. Welcome to Summit Life with author and theologian J.D. Greer, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I'm your host Molly Vidovitch. Today's message is titled The Hiddenness of Jesus, and we've got to ask if God really wanted the whole world to know him Why did Jesus go to such great lengths to hide his accomplishments? It's part of our Kingdom Come series And if you've missed any part of this series you can catch up online at J.D. Greer.com And while you're online subscribe to our email list We'll send you a study guide to go along with Pastor J.D. 's new book that we've been offering on the program You ready to jump into God's Word? Let's go Luke chapter 10, I want to talk with you about a question that a lot of people have I think, in fact I came up on this question just the other day with a college student We were talking and this question came up and that is basically this People ask if there really is a God, if there really is a God then why hasn't he made the evidence about himself clearer You ever asked that question? For example take evolution, a lot of people, smart people, not twisted weird people But just regular people, smart people think that evolution pretty much puts God out of a job and Even if you disagree with what they say you might say well, you know, but why didn't God make the evidence about himself and creation so clear that whenever somebody gets up and suggests a theory of the origin of life that doesn't involve him it just looks ridiculous I mean for example You're looking through the microscope at a cell and you see a little tag in the cell that says designed by Jehovah Right? I mean at that point there's no more discussion Why didn't God do that? God can do whatever he wants to.

Why did he make himself more obvious or on another front? Why is it that New Testament critics are able to present arguments about why the Bible has been corrupted, even forged And even if you disagree with them, you're like, yeah But they ask some really good questions And some of their questions are hard to answer and some of the things they say make lots of Makes lots of sense and so I don't believe what they're saying But why didn't God do this in such a way that there really would be no doubt about it Have you ever thought about it? Why hasn't God made the evidence for himself clear, more obvious? For me It's kind of the question behind all the questions Hey, a famous American novelist, a guy named John Updike said it this way and I love this quote He said all this heaven-storming you people want to do if God wanted his tracks discovered wouldn't he have made them plainer Why would God tuck them into odd bits of astronomy and nuclear physics or I might add Why would he bury it into a story that was written 2,000 years ago in a document? We don't even have the originals of He says this why be so coy if you're the deity in other words if God can do whatever he wants Why wasn't God a little more obvious to the point that nobody could really question? Why didn't why doesn't God speak? Here's I think this is a perfectly valid question Why doesn't God daily speak from the sky a little news briefing John Stewart's got his daily show Why didn't God have his that just says here's how I feel about what's going on there Now, how come you don't have every time you open the Bible a little angel that just hovers over and says this is true This is true.

I mean less people would have doubts, right? How come when a New Testament skeptic or some skeptic at UNC Chapel Hill or NC State or Duke is up there in front of? The class talking about why Jesus didn't raise from the dead How come a 900 foot Jesus doesn't appear next to him and be like this guy is wrong Right there be a lot less unbelievers and why is it that so many? Seemingly smart people come up with different conclusions than we do about the Bible And once had a friend who was falling away from the faith.

He asked me he said if this stuff is really true Why does it seem like all my smart professors rejected? Some of you have asked this question from a different angle. You're like, well, why isn't God more present? Why is it God more obvious when I need him? and no less than CS Lewis CS Lewis one of the greatest in my opinion Christians and writers and Philosophers in the last hundred years.

He said in a really honest confession in his book a grief observed Listen, he said quote but go to God when your need is desperate when all other help is in vain And what do you find a? Door slammed in your face and the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside after that silence You might as well turn away the longer you wait the more emphatic the silence will become There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house.

Was it ever inhabited? It seems so once why is God so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a time in our help It's rubble I'd say for many of you. This has been a question in your mind and it Here's the thing. I don't really hear this here this question ever dealt with much in church But it is a question that runs. It's a theme that runs all through the Gospel of Luke One of the things that you're gonna see happen repeatedly in the book of Luke is you're gonna see Jesus have some golden opportunity to reveal himself So something he could do to just end all the questions and shut everybody up, but he doesn't For example, you might have noticed this as you've been reading through the Gospel of Luke He repeatedly tells people who get a glimpse of his power not to say anything.

Have you did you see that? Luke chapter 4 for example, he cast out a demon and then says don't tell anybody Luke chapter 8 He raises a little girl from the dead and then he says let's just keep this between us Sometimes when Jesus is pushed to do a miracle to prove himself like for example Luke chapter 23 when when when Herod says if you'll do a miracle then I'll believe in you. Jesus does nothing Sometimes when he's asked point-blank to defend who he is, he's silent Or how about this one Luke chapter 8? Jesus says that the reason he all so often spoke in parables was so that quote seeing they may not see and Hearing they may not understand in other words. He spoke in a way that would deliberately keep some people confused Have you seen this? I Mean, I mean, I thought Jesus wanted everybody to know about his power And if so, why did he do that kind of stuff?

Have you ever asked that question? If not, maybe you ought to start reading your Bible with your brain on Right. I mean I got a strong reaction against Christians who mindlessly believe what they're told They don't even know why they believe what they believe. They just believe it because it's the most comfortable thing That is deeply offensive to God You're supposed to read and ask why is he doing that? This question is what Christian theologians for 2,000 years have called the problem of the hiddenness of God When our reading of Luke we're about at chapter 10 and Jesus explains in this chapter Why he does this how he does it what the point is in it and I want to try to deal with this for you Personally again, I have never heard a sermon on this because I think a lot of us are afraid to embrace the hard questions about Christianity but I'll tell you guys this the more I walk with Jesus the less afraid I become a hard questions There's a lot of things about Christianity There's a lot of things about this book that blow my mind that offend me that shatter my thinking But the more I read this the more convinced I become that there is a God There is a true God behind this mysterious mind boggling revelation In fact, I would say this the hardest questions about God are never asked in my opinion by the skeptics The hardest questions about God are always asked by the Gospels themselves That's where you're gonna see here in Luke 10. You're gonna see a very hard question that Jesus brings up I want you to read this with your brain on and ask why why is it that he wants everybody to know who he is?

Why is it that so many why didn't he do it differently? Luke chapter 10. Let me give you the context of this story Jesus is just about his apostles to announce the arrival of his kingdom in the surrounding cities He arms them with the power of miracles. They're able to cast out demons They're able to heal the sick make the blind see what his apostles get a mixed reaction There were some people a fairly large number of people that enthusiastically believed what Jesus Or the message that the apostles preached about it, but a lot of people in the cities reject the message And a lot of the people here's the thing a lot of the people who rejected were the right people if you know what? I mean the people of influence the political leaders the religious leaders by Jesus reaction to this You're gonna see it Luke chapter 10 verse 13. I love this not the I don't love the first part I love the second part. Whoa, do you Khorasan?

What do you best say it up? Those are two of the Jewish cities in Israel the Apostles Had gone to those were two of the cities that were filled with the right kind of people That's where a lot of your religious leaders live. That's where a lot of your your capitals were of power and the capital of education and the capitals of religion For if the mighty works he says Done in you had instead been done in Tyre and Sidon. Those are two notoriously wicked enemy Gentile cities Tyre and Sidon if the works that have been done in you Khorasan and Bethsaida had been done in those Gentile cities They would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes and you Capernaum Capernaum was another famous Jewish city that was filled with the right kind of people You who were so full of religious leaders who study so hard to become wise Will you be exalted to heaven with all your impressive learning about God?

No, you will be brought down to hell to Hades Then Jesus says to his apostles the one who hears you you see here's me The one who rejects you rejects me and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me Verse 21 in that same hour. He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit in other words the rejection of these right people by him didn't bother him that much because he knew who he was he knew that God approved of Him and so the rejection of other people even the right people didn't really bother him that much because it wasn't that significant because he Knew who he was and he knew he had God's approval So he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and he said I thank you father Lord of heaven and earth that you have hidden There's your word hidden underline it circle it write it down prick your finger dab it in blood whatever it takes. That's your key word These things you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and you have revealed them to little children Who missed it who missed it the wise and understanding who got it little children now? Is there anything wrong with wisdom and understanding? Of course not the Bible tells you to seek wisdom and understanding read the book of Proverbs. That's what the whole thing is about God wants you to be wise in his word. God wants you to be wise in his world He loves for you to increase in your knowledge in your wisdom. He loves for you to master the earth That's one of the commands that he gave yet the Jewish people who were the biblically wisest people of the day they missed him and The worldly wise people the Greeks and the Romans The ones who had mastered politics and mastered power and the scientific community of the day. They missed him, too This actually this passage actually says God hid himself from them He continues Yes, father for such was your gracious will All things have been handed over to me by my father and nobody knows who the son is except the father or who the father Is except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him Wow You see that the only people who know God are those to whom Jesus chooses to reveal himself Verse 23 then turning to his disciples. He said blessed are the eyes that see what you see.

I Got two questions. I'm gonna try to ask of this text Okay, they're really two different sermons, but I'm gonna try to merge them into one I'm not sure how good I'm gonna do but but I'm gonna try here's the two questions number one Why do the wise and the understanding why is it that they miss God? Why do the wise and understanding miss God and then the second question? I want to ask of this text is how do we find certainty in what to believe about God? Why do the wise and the understanding why is it that they miss God and then? How do we find certainty about what to believe about God question number one? Why do the wise and understanding miss God?

Here we go. I'm gonna give you four logical premises as To what the Bible's answer is to that question number one Because our hearts are naturally blind Our hearts are naturally blind and that is not something that wisdom or understanding is able to overcome The Gospel of Luke repeatedly presents men and women in a natural state of blindness We saw this when Jesus first launched his ministry in Luke 4 and described what it was gonna be like He said that one of his primary tasks was going to be to open the eyes of the blind and yes He was talking about the physically blind But he was talking about something even more significant than that and that was the spiritually blind Those people who were unable to see the glory of God that was all around them The blindness of our hearts was a kind of willful blindness that grew out of our sinful Attitudes our sinful disposition the Apostle Paul would later Explain this blindness a lot more clearly in Romans chapter 1 I don't have time to walk you through it in detail But let me kind of summarize it for you Paul says that the posture of the human heart since the fall has been a posture of rebellion Our hearts have rejected the authority and the glory of God So that Paul says our foolish hearts have been darkened and because they have been darkened He says they are blind to God's goodness and his holiness and his power that is really all around us What Paul means by? Rejected the authority of God is that we don't want God to be in charge We don't want God to rule we want to be a rule unto ourselves that is as natural to us as eating and breathing My my kids first word After daddy, okay after the first word day Their second word is no and for whatever reason that's like their first sentence daddy. No, it's like their subject and verb I know no is not really a verb, but you know, they're using it in a verb kind of way daddy No, because they are born with this sense of I don't want anybody telling me what to do I am a rule unto myself and that's what Paul says Our hearts are in a posture of we don't want God to rule we reject his authority We want to rule ourselves what I mean by rejecting the glory of God is that we don't seek God's glory above all things We seek our own glory and we seek our own pleasure I've told you this before but the word for glory in Hebrew is the word kabod kabod literally means weight So when you give glory to something you are giving it weight to give something glory in the place of God is to give something In your life the weight that you should be giving to God a long time before there's unbelief and disobedience There is the false giving of glory giving things the priority and the weight in our lives that we ought to be giving to God That's how most of us live It's that we give weight to things We care more about obtaining things. We care more about the opinions of others than we do about God that is giving Worship away. So as a result of that posture Paul says our hearts are darkened and that means that our natural state We can't even recognize the truth about God when it's presented to us It's not that the evidence is not there.

It's not that the evidence is not open to us It's that we're not open to the evidence We can't see God because at our core we don't want to see God and In order to really see God Jesus says we have to be given new hearts We have to be given new eyes that are not blind Hearts that can see God's glory hearts that can feel his majesty eyes that can see him where he is around us The example I've used here before but I think it bears repeating this Imagine you got a guy Who's on top of a 50-story building? He's clinically insane. He is certified cuckoo He thinks he's a bird and the guy's standing up there on the ledge of this building and you give him a free choice You're like, hey, man Bro, you can you can jump off this building, but you cannot fly if you jump off this building You're gonna plunge straight to the ground. You're gonna be road pizza This is not gonna end well for you, or you can walk back down here with me to safety Now he's certified insane. He thinks he's a bird every single time 100 out of 100 times. What's he gonna do? He's gonna jump Right say that you had the power though You knew you had some medicine like, you know, it was like in a little needle and you had the power to restore his sanity So right before you ask him the question you stuck this thing in his back You put the medicine in him and his right mind comes back to him and then you ask him the exact same question Okay, man You got a free choice. You can jump off this building, but you and I both know you ain't a bird Or you can walk back down here with me to safety every single time. What's he gonna do? He's gonna walk down with you to safety.

Why same choice? It's that his mindset has been changed. So now he sees things differently what the Bible teaches you is that God the Holy Spirit restores your mind so that all of a sudden your eyes are open you start to see evidence It's all around you like how could I not have seen this before? But it takes a change of the heart to be able to see that kind of evidence You see what I'm getting at it's not that the evidence was not they are not open to us It's that our hearts are in a posture of rebellion. So that colors how we see the evidence and that's why we can't see it Here's the point listen God giving us that kind of sight is grace He doesn't know it to us Does he? Know because we have rejected him so he doesn't owe us even a revelation of himself Imagine you had a friend for example Who stole from you lied about you betrayed you and left town Right within your kid gets married and you don't invite them to the wedding Do they have any reason at all for them to say that's unfair.

You should have invited me to your wedding your kids wedding No, you rejected them or they rejected you. They don't you don't owe anything to them Because we have rejected God. God does not owe us anything Including a revelation of himself the idea that if there really is a God out there Just anybody should be able to find him at any point whenever they want. It's just not true God's revelation of himself to us is grace.

It is a gift that we don't even deserve anymore one of the things that often disturbs me in our Conversations about the evidence for God is that people act like they're doing God a favor if they believe in him As if God is sitting there in heaven. Oh, no, please believe in me, please Please Ashton Kutcher has way more Twitter followers than I do. I need some followers. I need some believers. Please believe in me Please please no, okay From God's perspective. This is God's world whether you believe in him or not doesn't really affect his self-esteem one way or the other He doesn't need you to believe in him at all. If you don't believe in him, that's gonna be your loss not his Number two God will not be found through human achievement because if he could be that would contribute to human pride What's the first reason the wise and understanding miss God? The first reason is that their hearts are naturally blind and that's not something wisdom and understanding can be overcome That's not something wisdom understanding can overcome number two God will not be found through human achievement because if he could be found that way that would contribute to human pride If the way to find God for example, we're through mastering science Then they're really smart scientists would say we found God because we were smarter than everybody else We know God and truth best because we're the smartest and we went to the best schools They would boast That you listen to him talk now and that's pretty much what they talk like in it.

You hear this tone in it It's like I know the truth. I can see things clearly because I went to the best school I went to an Ivy League school and I'm smarter than you. Anyway, I got a higher IQ and I worked harder than you That's why I'm boasting My strength is what enabled me to find the truth if the way to find God was through religious piety then the really religious people would say we found God because we were morally superior to everybody else and They would boast That their personal goodness was what enabled them to find God Listen to religious people talk now. That's pretty much how they talk in it We have the truth about God because we're better than you and because we're more moral than you and that's why we have the truth about God and you don't God says You will not find me through anything that would allow you to boast in fact in this passage. Jesus says God you have hidden these things from the wise in the understanding and you have revealed them of your own choice to little children Yes father for such was your gracious will grace means we didn't deserve it. It was your gracious will nobody knows Who the father is verse 22 except the son and anybody to whom the son chooses to reveal him in other words said in other words Jesus says God people who find you find you only because you Reveal yourself to them. In fact, they didn't really even find you you found them It's not our brilliant intellect that somehow discovers God Thankfully, it's God's gracious love that finds us You're listening to summit life Today's message is titled the hiddenness of Jesus and it's part of our study from the Gospel of Luke titled kingdom come you can find all of the messages online at JD Greer calm and While you're online, you can also learn more about Pastor JD's newest book. What are you going to do with your life? We want to be able to answer that question in a way that shows our life has some significance That is a yearning put into us by God to make a difference and many of those types of causes are good and worthy Endeavors, but for the Christian there is one cause that should outweigh them all if what Jesus said was true what determines a person's eternal future is whether or not they know him and That's why Pastor JD spends so much time teaching about the Great Commission to go and tell We'd love to get you a copy of this powerful book So when you give $25 or more we'll send you a copy of what are you going to do with your life as? Our way of saying thanks for your generous support We'd like to give it to you along with a special edition study guide to go with it This guide will include a few devotionals from Pastor JD Along with a Bible reading guide through many of the passages of Scripture used in the book It will provide you the space to reflect as you read the new book You can also request the book and companion workbook when you make your first donation as a monthly gospel partner Gospel partners commit to regular giving and in a real sense They're the backbone of this ministry if you've been growing through this program diving deeper into the gospel with us Why not join the team today? Give us a call at eight six six three three five fifty two twenty and remember to ask for the book by Pastor JD Titled what are you going to do with your life along with the workbook that number again is eight six six three three five fifty two Twenty or you can give and request the book online at JD Greer calm If you'd rather mail your donation our address is JD Greer ministries p.o. Box 122 93 Durham, North Carolina 277 o 9 and make sure you include a note requesting the book I'm Molly bit of itch inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Pastor JD looks into the Gospel of Luke to answer the question Why do so many well-educated people reject God? Don't miss Tuesday on Summit life with JD Greer Here today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer ministries