Aftter All This Time, You Still Don't Know Me"

There are some things in life which you do not have to seek. You do not have to seek the sun. It seeks you out and is there waiting for you when you waken in the morning. You do not have to seek for the air. It seeks you out, and filters through the fine filaments of your lungs without your being so much as aware of it.

This is true likewise of God. You do not have to seek Him out: He seeks you. To Job’s pathetic outburst “Oh, that I knew where I might find him!” (Job 23:3) the Bible returns the answer: “He [is] not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:27-28). When we are told, as we sometimes are in Scripture, to seek the Lord, this does not imply that by our searching we can discover Him, but simply that we may be ready, as was Moses, for the divine disclosure.

Where is God to be found? Precisely where you are at this point in time and space. That is the truth which emerges from our text.

1. Note that God can be found in the most unlikely place.

Not in the sanctuary did Moses meet Him, but in the desert; not in the temple, but in the howling wilderness.

“It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason. Comfort thyself. Thou wouldst not be seeking Me hadst thou not already found Me” (Blaise Pascal).

2. Note that God can be found in the most unexpected place.

Moses was in the strictest sense “wool-gathering.” He was tending the sheep of Jethro, the father of Zipporah his wife. Moses was at the time an outlaw living with in-laws. He was immersed in domestic duty. There was not, so far as we know, in his mind and heart the slightest anticipation that his hour of destiny was approaching and that he was about to encounter the living God.

3. Note that God can be found in the most uninhabited place.

The religions of the world have often sought to interpose representatives of one kind or another between the soul of the ordinary man and his Maker. Moses met the Most High in utter solitude. No priestly intermediary was necessary. No mystic ritual was required. No cabbalistic incantation was called for. God confronted Moses personally and directly, conversing with him as a man talketh with his friend.

John 14 in Context

Jesus has foretold his death to the eleven disciples (Judas has been dismissed) and foretells Peter’s denial of him three times all the while Peter protests. saying he would even lay down his life for him. Jesus rebuff by signifying when his denial would be complete. Jesus’s end neared, and no doubt the disicples feared for his life, but their own. The last days of Jesus’ ministry focused on preparing himself and his disciples for his impending death by crucifixion. Beginning with chapter twelve until his arrest in Gethsemane, he desired for them to know him intimately, and thus, empowering them to carry on in his name. Jesus’s words to his disciples were simple: (1) Settle your heart and (2) Believe in me and my promise to you. Thomas interjects with the question of location,

Related Media

Related Sermons