Grace, Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Our text today comes from the book of 2nd Corinthians, chapter 4. “Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:1-6) Thus far our text.
Dear Friends in Christ, when I was a kid, my brothers and I used to play hide and seek. I am sure all of you have played it. Everyone goes and finds a hiding spot while another person goes out to look for them. I always liked to be “It” because it was easy to find my brothers. They would do there best to hide, but there was always something that gave their hiding spots away. There was always a way to find them. Maybe one of them would be partially visible, or maybe you could hear them whispering. In any case, it was impossible for them to hide perfectly. It was impossible for me the great hide-and-go-seeker to not find them.
Our Gospel lesson says the same thing, with a little bit of a twist. In our lesson, Satan is trying to hide the good news about Jesus. He is trying to cover it up as best he can and to prevent us from seeing, hearing, and believing it. He is trying to keep us from finding Jesus using deception, sin, pain and suffering. Through these things, it is difficult to tell if Jesus really is there or not. It is difficult to tell if Jesus actually existed or not. It is difficult to believe the Gospel.
In the world we see all sorts of other things besides Jesus. We see murder, and war. We see hunger and pain. We see sickness and death. We see these things as we watch the news. We see these things as we look at our own lives. Sin is everywhere, and at times it seems like the Gospel is nowhere like it is hidden.
With all of these bad things going on, we wonder, “Where is God? Where are all of those wonderful promises that God had made to us? Where can we look for comfort and hope when all we see is pain and suffering? Is God hiding from us?
Sometimes, it seems like God is hiding and we are only left with pain and suffering. Every where we look we see this pain and suffering. Many of us daily deal with this. Perhaps we have a loved one who is sick, or dying. Perhaps there is someone we know who has faced a terrible tragedy. In my time here, just over the last year, I have seen many who have to struggle with pain for a loved one. Almost all of us here have had to deal with some sort of physical struggle, one which leaves us asking, “Is God hiding from me?”
But God is not hiding himself. Instead it is our sin that takes our eyes off of him. It is our sin that separates us from him. Our text says: “the god of this age is blinding many from seeing the truth of the Gospel.” The god of our age is Sin, it is Death and it is the Devil. Those things are blinding our eyes from seeing the gospel clearly, from knowing where and how God works. It is those things that makes it seem like God is hiding.
This is all the work of Satan. He takes great delight in our suffering with sin and death. He loves watching us struggle. He loves it when we doubt that there is a god. Satan loves that we often times wonder if God is hiding from us, or that God doesn’t care about us.
He loves it when we have those doubts, because it makes it easier for us to trust in something else. When we doubt in God, when we think he is hiding from us, we think we have more authority in our lives. We think we can decide what is right and wrong for our own lives. When we think God is hiding from us, we think we are free to sin as we please. Millions of people today struggle with this. It leads to abortions, it leads to sexual immorality, it leads to idolatry. Most importantly, it leads us to the false assumption that we can do whatever, and not get caught! If God is hidden, we are free to be our own God.
This is what we want. We want to be in charge of ourselves. Because we want to be our own boss, we often times our selves hide from God. We are afraid of God, so we pretend like He isn’t there. We know that God is just, and that God is holy and that we are not. We don’t want to come into his presence because we know that we are incomplete. Each and every one of us has sinned. Each and every one of us has failed to fulfill what God wants us to do. Instead we are continually falling short of what he wants from us. We don’t love our neighbors. Instead we bicker and fight. Instead we complain about them to others. We don’t even love God himself. Instead we criticize him for the way He handles things. We hate him because we think He is making us suffer though this life here on Earth.
We don’t want to be in God’s presence. We want him to hide, it is safer for us if He is not around. We would rather be separated from him. But separated, where can we look for help? Where can we look for hope, in whom can we trust?
But God did not hide himself. There is hope. Even as Satan tries to hide God from our eyes, God makes such a loud and bold proclamation that we cannot miss what he has to say. We cannot miss the Gospel, because it is all around us. We hear this message here at Mt. Calvary. It is here and in other churches that the Gospel is boldly proclaimed to all who would hear it. And that message is this, as our text says. “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Jesus Christ, the man who came and lived among us was also true God. As true God he fully paid for all of our sins by dying on the cross. That is the Gospel, Jesus Christ Crucified for all your sins.
As I said, that message is what is preached here at Mt. Calvary. That is the very reason that I have been here for the last year. To preach the Gospel to you, and to learn how to better preach it in the future. I have loved getting to know you, but more importantly I have loved telling you about Jesus. That is what Vicars and Pastors are supposed to do! St. Paul even talks about it in our text today. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” As my time here comes to a close, that is what I pray has been proclaimed to you. I have loved being here, and will take many fond memories with me. But unless I did my best in preaching the gospel, none of it was worth anything. It is the gospel that unites us. It is in that Gospel that we put our hope.
And it is not only through the hearing of God’s word that we receive the Gospel. There are other means by which we get the good gifts of God. God does hide, but God hides right where he has promised to be. God hides much like my brothers, where we can always find Him. God is hidden in Bread and Wine, which when we eat it, we receive the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ for our sins. God is hidden in water as a baby receives the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism. There God is hidden right where we can find him. We have access to God, we can come into contact with Him. Satan cannot keep us away from Jesus.
Because we cannot be separated from Jesus our sin has been hidden, because it has been covered in the blood of the lamb. No matter how hard anyone looks, they cannot find a sin that Jesus will not forgive. Jesus Christ died, to hide our sins away for ever. Now we are free from them. No longer do we need to hide ourselves from Him, because we have forgiveness. As our text says, the God who said, “Let there be light” is the same God who says, “Let your sins be forgiven by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Just as my brothers were never really hidden away from me, so too is God never hidden from us. He is always right where he promises to be. We know and we can trust in the ministry that God has given to us, Word and Sacrament. As I head back to Ft. Wayne tomorrow, I will take great joy in knowing that we all share in this Gospel message. We all have the promise that God will not hide from us, and that we cannot hide from God.
