30. Christ Cannot Be Hid
30
Christ Cannot Be Hid1
And from thence [Christ] arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet.
—Mark 7:24–25
“But he could not be hid.”
1. Christ desired not to be hid from this woman; He was seeking her, and yet He flies from her. Christ, in this, is such a flier as would gladly have a pursuer.
2. Faith finds Christ out when He is hid. “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself” (Isa. 45:15). But faith sees God under His mask and through the cloud, and, therefore, faith adds, “O God of Israel, the Savior! Thou hidest Thyself, O God, from Israel, but Israel finds Thee.” “Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation” (Isa. 45:17). God casts a cloud of anger about Himself; He makes darkness His pavilion and will not look out. Yet Job sees God and finds Him out many hundred miles: “Yet in my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:26).
3. Reason, sense, nay, angels, seeing Christ between two thieves dying and going out of this world, bleeding to death, naked, forsaken of friend and lover, may wonder and say, “Oh Lord, what art Thou doing here?” Yet the faith of the thief found him there, as a king who had the keys of Paradise; and he said in faith, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
4. Faith sees Him as a witness and a record in heaven, like Job (Job 16:19), even when God cleaves his reins asunder and pours out his gall upon the ground (Job 16:13). Believe then that Christ frowns that He may kiss; that He cuts that He may cure; that He makes the living believer’s grave before his eyes and has no mind to bury him alive. He breathes the smoke and the heat of the furnace of hell on the soul, when peace, grace, and heaven are in His heart. He breaks the hollow of Jacob’s thigh so that he must go crippled all his days, and it is His purpose to bless him. Whereas we should walk by faith, we walk much, even in our spiritual walk, by feeling and sense; we have these errors in our faith. We do not make the word of promise the rule of our faith, but only God’s dispensation.
1. Trial and Triumph, sermon 2.