Adam — the "Prototype"
God created Adam as His "test case" or "prototype" for all mankind (the Hebrew word for "man" is "adam!"). How did the Creator make Adam His prototype? By putting the same human brain, spirit, mind and nature in Adam as He would subsequently put in all other human beings. Therefore, God knew that Adam would react to a given situation in the same general manner as every other human being would react to that same situation. As Adam "went" so all mankind would "go."
God designed human nature to be vain, jealous, lustful, greedy, and antagonistic to God — so that when man would learn to control his carnal nature, eternal and Godly character could be developed (Rom. 8:20-21).
So Adam sinned and hid himself from God — precisely conforming to God's specifications. And when that happened God knew that every subsequent carnal human being would likewise sin and hide himself from God. And that's been the history of the human race ever since: cringing before God, hating God, spurning God, hiding from God.
Now let's widen our field of view. Let's look down the corridors of time and generations of societies — and observe man's consistent repudiation of God. God hiding Himself from man? Hardly! It's been just the reverse!
Pre- and Post-Flood Worlds
The pre-Flood world teemed with wickedness and overflowed with violence — Gen. 6:5 is unique in its poetic portrayal of the prodigious depravity of man. Yet the world knew God!
It was only ten generations from Adam to Noah — and human beings had a nine-generation lifespan! Furthermore, Noah was the eighth preacher of righteousness ( II Peter 2:5). For the 120 years during which his servants built the Ark, Noah himself proclaimed God's warning witness. The world heard Noah and the world knew God — but the world despised Noah and the world rejected God. The entire human race at that time "had [knowingly] corrupted His Way upon the earth" (Gen. 6:12).
Little more than 100 years later, man once more renounced God's revelation and leadership. Man didn't want to be distributed around the world as God directed Noah (Gen. 11:4) — so man built for himself a huge tower as a rallying point to thwart God. There was no excuse — everyone knew God — all had heard the heinous firsthand accounts of the monstrous pre-Flood world and all could see the still fresh evidence of God's wrath. All knew God's servant Noah — and all flouted him.
Israel Habitually Rejected God
We think of ancient Israel as God's "Chosen People." Yet God's every revelation of Himself to Israel was met with rebuff and rebellion.
Israel cursed Moses for trying to free them (Ex. 5:21). They told Moses to "Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians" (Ex. 14:12). Israel didn't want to leave Egypt and serve God — they loved the idols and abominations of Egypt too much (Ezek. 20:8) — so God had to pry Israel loose by pouring out His devastating plagues. Even after witnessing the supernatural ferocity of these plagues, God's "Chosen People" wanted to return to Egypt (Ex. 14: 10-12).
With the victory celebration of God's spectacular destruction of Pharaoh's army still ringing in their ears, "The people murmured against Moses" because the waters of Marah were bitter (Ex. 15:23-24). Even after God had made these waters sweet, Israel again murmured, incredibly preferring to have died in Egypt with bellies full of meat and bread than to have obeyed God (Ex. 16:3). After receiving all the meat they could eat, Israel broke the Sabbath in an effort to get more (Ex.16:27-28). Once more Israel got thirsty and this time they were ready to stone Moses (Ex. 17:4).
And, as unbelievable as it sounds, after all they had seen with their own eyes, they asked "Is the Lord among us or not?" (Ex. 17:7) — or, in other words, "Why is God hiding?"
God answered that question in His glory on Mt. Sinai. "And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking" (Ex. 20:18). Here was God "coming out of hiding" — here was God "finally" revealing Himself.
But what happened? "And when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear; BUT LET NOT GOD SPEAK WITH US, lest we die" (Ex. 20:18, 19). Here was man plainly asking God to cut off all personal communication with them. Here was man telling God to get lost! And we have the audacity to ask — why does God hide Himself!
A short time later Israel reasoned that "Moses THE MAN" (Ex. 32:1) had brought them out of Egypt — and since he was missing, the Egyptian gods had better be reactivated to supervise their orgy (Ex. 32:1-6). After once more receiving God's stern correction, and with the full knowledge of God's continuous revelation and awesome Power filling their minds, Israel mutinied on the threshold of the Promised Land: "And they said one to another, Let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt" (Num. 14:4).
Why does God hide Himself? What can we say? Ancient Israel has said it all!
In the Promised Land
When Israel was finally allowed to enter the land promised to Abraham's seed, she continually rebelled. (That's not particularly surprising) The cycle went round and round: Israel forsook God and was conquered (Judges 2:1115), then she cried out to God and was delivered (Judges 2:16) — but a very short time later she forsook God again (Judges 2:17-19). The entire book of Judges tells this amazing story (Judges 3:7-9; 3:12-15; 4:1-4; 6:1-8; etc).
Soon thereafter, Israel completely rejected God's reign over them — demanding a human king "like all the other nations" (I Sam. 8:5-7).
Some 120 years later, Israel's northern ten tribes rebelled against the house of David. Jeroboam, their servant-king, resurrected again the old Egyptian gods, instituted a new priesthood, and changed God's annual festivals — all to protect his own reign, willfully ignoring the True God (I Kings 12:26-33).
The House of Israel rejected those they knew to be prophets of God. Isaiah was such a man. He told Hezekiah that God would stop the besieging armies of Assyria from even touching Jerusalem (II Kings 19) — and that night God killed 185,000 armed men (verse 35). Later, after Isaiah prayed to God, the sun went backwards ten degrees (II Kings 20:11). There was NO DOUBT who Isaiah's boss was! Yet some years later, tradition tells us that Isaiah was sawed in two by his own people (Heb. 11:37).
Likewise the House of Judah rejected the men of God (and she was worse than her sister Israel — Ezek. 23:11). Jeremiah was ordained a prophet from his mother's womb (Jer. 1:5). He was always in the public eye — revealing God's will, way and prophecies. All Judah knew that Jeremiah was God's representative — yet he was held in derision daily, everyone mocked him (Jer. 20:7), and all the priests, prophets and people conspired to kill him (Jer. 26:8).
The House of Israel was taken captive beginning in 718 B.C. by Assyria. Israel had long since forgotten God's Sabbath — and so even their identity was lost. The House of Judah was taken captive by Babylonia in 585 B.C. They retained the Sabbath and kept their identity. But they mongrelized God's Truth so badly, by adding many pagan ideas, (for example, the immortality of the soul), that a new-found religion was born.
The facts speak plainly — at every step in their history Israel and Judah hid from and rejected their God.
The Full Revelation
Whereas in the past God spoke through many forms, fashions and figures, and communicated by various means, methods and manners, He was now ready to pour out the whole story through a Son (Heb. 1:1-2, Phillips). It was exactly 483 years after Artaxerxes' decree allowing the repatriated Jews to rebuild Jerusalem — just as Daniel had prophesied (Dan. 9:25) — when Jesus Christ of Nazareth began His ministry in 27 A.D. It was God Almighty's time to completely reveal Himself. He had become a human being!
As strange as it sounds, Jesus Christ was the very God of the Old Testament — the Everliving One called YHVH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the One who had created the universe (John 1:3; Eph. 3:9). He had walked with Adam, dined with Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, spoken with Moses, and watched over Israel (I Cor. 10 :4 ) .
But this was vastly different — He had now emptied Himself of eternal spirit life and became human flesh, subject to death! (Phil. 2:7) For what reason? To help His beloved creation — to pave the way for His brothers to become joint-heirs with Him in God's Family (Rom. 8:17). God no longer held anything back — here was His full revelation to man.
But He was despised and rejected of men (Isaiah 53:3)! He was beaten so badly that His face emerged more disfigured and His body more mutilated than any man in all history (Isaiah 52:14). That's what happened when God "came out of hiding."
Who called for Christ's blood? Many of the same multitudes whom He had taught and fed for weeks and months and years. They knew He was from God (John 3:2), they knew He could give Eternal Life (Mark 10:17) — they worshipped Him (Mark 7:7). But they also expected that He would drive out the Romans and set up an independent Jewish kingdom immediately. No, they didn't "expect" it, they DEMANDED it. That's why many thousands lined His route into Jerusalem, garnished His path, and shouted praises to "the kingdom of our father David" (Mark 11: 8-10).
The people wanted God on their own terms. And when He wouldn't agree, they shouted, "String Him up! Kill Him!" You doubt? Read on.
The Judean multitudes were stunned when Christ was captured. He was supposed to expel the Romans! The people felt cheated and "taken" — they looked like fools, tricked by the carpenter from Nazareth. Their religious leaders were quick to take advantage by turning the fickle and indignant crowds against their former hero (Mark 15:10-11). It wasn't hard to do.
Those same quiet people, who had sat patiently on the hillsides listening to Jesus for hours on end, had now been transformed into a bloodthirsty howling horde. Simple "loss of face" had galvanized individual human beings into a viciously rabid mob!
Faces flushed with waves of frenzy when Pilate stated: " 'He has done nothing, you see, that calls for death. . .' But they all yelled as one man, 'Away with him! . . .' Again Pilate addressed them, for he wanted to release Jesus; but they roared, 'To the cross, to the cross with him . . .' [Pilate] spoke to them the third time. . . But they shouted him down, yelling their demand that he should be crucified, and their shouts carried the day" (Luke 23:15-23, Moffatt and Phillips).
The God of Israel (YHVH) did much more than manifest Himself when He became Jesus Christ — He unveiled God the Father, His Own Master (Psalm 110:1), the Most High God (Gen. 14:18). Everyone who knew Christ knew the Father (John 14:9).
Something else was also revealed. Something pretty important for us. Under the Old Covenant, YHVH promised the obedient an abundant physical life. And that's all. But now, in the "uncomely" form of Jesus Christ, YHVH disclosed THE Mystery of God (I Cor. 2:7). Christ revealed that human beings can inherit eternal life (I John 1:2; Matt. 25:46). And a quality of eternal life beyond the wildest dreams of any human mind.
Jesus Christ revealed that we are literally to become God ourselves (John 10:34-35). That's right — read it again — God ourselves! The Eternal Creator of the universe — that's Jesus of Nazareth our elder brother — has proclaimed that we are now joint-heirs with Him as begotten Sons in God's Family (Rom. 8:17; I John 3:1-2) ! What will we inherit with Christ? Christ has all things(Eph. 1:22). And so will we (Heb. 2:8)! All things!
And so with the awesome majesty of God's greatest gifts still coursing through their craniums, humanity butchered the body of Jesus Christ. Here was God-hating human nature in the raw. The human race as a whole willfully murdered the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who had sacrificed so much to share His Eternal Life with all men! The mangled mass of flesh and muscle which hung there limply on the stake was all that remained after God had "finally" given mankind the full revelation of Himself.
Here was the complete presentation of YHVH — the God of the Patriarchs and Prophets; here was the first manifestation of YHVH livies Almighty Father — the Most High God; here was the overwhelming disclosure of man's individual purpose in life — to become God himself. Yet man mutilated Jesus Christ their Savior, killed YHVH their Creator, rejected God their Father.
AND, INCREDIBLY, MAN CONTINUED TO ASK, "WHY DOES GOD HIDE HIMSELF?"