How God Has Chased Us Throughout History

 

One of the largest differences that we can see in the Christian faith as opposed to other religious belief systems is the way that the gods of other belief systems are not seeking relationship with their worshippers, but demand obedience as the only way to relationship. This is even true to a certain degree in the Jewish faith system, wherein there are hundreds of purity and ritual laws which are required to be fulfilled in order to show proper reverence to God. Unfortunately, orthodox Jews are missing out on God's plan for them. Christianity is the only faith system that I can think of wherein the relationship comes first and the obedience comes as a result of that relationship. God meets us where we are and encourages us to obey Him because of our relationship with Him, and He has been chasing us in order to establish that relationship ever since creation.

We first see God desiring to spend time with the beings that He created in His image right in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. We see in Genesis two where God acknowledges that man, whom He has created, is a social creature. God says in verse 18 that “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”. God had all of the animals come before Adam, but there was not a suitable helper for Adam to be found among them. So God caused Adam to sleep, removed a part of Adam's flesh, and formed a helper for Adam of the same flesh that Adam was made from. Like with like. And God delighted in the humans that He had made, and He desired to have a relationship with them.

In Genesis 3:8 we read that Adam and Eve "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day", and we are also told that God had a "presence" in the garden. We don't know that He was in a human form in the garden, but the facts that His "presence" was there and that Adam and Eve "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden" seems to indicate that this was more than a spiritual visit; there was some physical manifestation of God in the garden with them. We also see in verse nine of chapter 3 that God was calling to them, wanting them to be in His presence.

As those who recognize that God is all-knowing, we also have to recognize that God knew that Adam and Eve were hiding, and that He knew where they were hiding. He could have walked up to the bushes they were hiding behind and said, "What are you doing back there?", or more directly, "Why are you hiding from Me behind these bushes?" Instead, what we see is God, acting in His omniscience, reacting gently to the stain of sin that He already knew was borne by His beloved creation. He called out to them, drawing them towards Him. Allowing them the chance to come to Him by their own choice.

Of course, due to their sinful state, He could not remain in their presence anymore. Because God is holy, he cannot have sin in His presence. I suspect that a sinful creature cannot exist in the absolute holiness of God's presence without being somehow destroyed by His holiness itself, so God had to remove Himself from them in order to save them from destruction. Maybe this is why God told Adam that if he ate of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that Adam would die. Because if Adam entered God's presence in a sinful state, he could not survive being in the presence of God's holiness. That maybe is was not that God would choose to destroy a disobedient creature, but that the laws of sin and holiness were such that Adam could not possibly survive and encounter with Holy God if Adam was stained by sin. As a result, though God wanted to be with His creation, rather than let His beloved creation be destroyed, God removed Himself from the situation to save His creation from destruction. 

Could the serpent have possibly known that a sinful creature could not exist in God's presence and he used that knowledge to try to destroy mankind, whatever his purposes for that goal may have been? Is this why God chose to let man live in a fallen state outside His presence rather than to allow the serpent to achieve his own goal? We cannot know the answers to these questions until we can ask them of God ourselves, but we do know that God has spent the rest of time since then taking steps to be close to us.

The next time that we see God taking steps to be with man is when He saved mankind through the faith of Noah rather than destroy all of mankind due to spiritual contamination. For simplicity, let's just say that the saga of Noah and the destruction of mankind was due to sin in the world. There is a much more complex nature to this issue and perhaps I will delve into that in another writing, but there is no space in this topic to clarify that. So God saw that the world was exceedingly wicked and that it was growing more so all the time. This is about 1600 years after the creation story and this is the first time that God will act in a worldwide manner in order to salvage His creation from the jaws of destruction.

We know that God looked on Noah with favour and that He desired to save a portion of His creation through the destruction of the world wide flood through Noah. God chose to have Noah spend around 100 years building a boat and storing up food in order to spend almost a year in the ark. But God was with Noah. In Genesis 7:16 we are told that the Lord Himself closed up the door of the ark behind Noah and the animals, sealing them in and keeping them safe from the raging waters outside. This is God's hand directly acting in the life of Noah in order to preserve Noah, his family and the relationship that God had with humankind.

In the story of  Abram/Abraham we see multiple times where God is acting in relationship with Abraham. (For those who are not familiar with the two names for Abraham, God changes Abram's name to Abraham in Genesis 17) God often talks to and with Abraham. He leads Abraham to new lands and promises to give them to Abraham. And we especially see in Genesis 18 where three men visit Abraham where Abraham greets God as "My Lord". According to the Interlinear Bible by Hendrickson Publishers, this word is "Adonay" H136, which is used as a proper name for God only. So we see God Himself coming to visit Abraham and Sarah, delivering first a timeline of the fulfillment of God's promise to them that they would have a son, and later God walks with Abraham and tells him of His plans to destroy Sodom. Again, this is an example of God coming down and pursuing a close relationship with one who reveres Him.

Further in Scriptures we see how God Himself calls Moses into God's plan, and we read of how God speaks to Moses personally again and again. God and Moses spend 40 days together on top of Mount Sinai, and then do so a second time. God and Moses meet in the Tent of Meeting outside the camp before the existence of the Tabernacle (Genesis 33) and we read that "Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend." (v11a). And all of this personal relationship with Moses is besides the fact that throughout the time of the Israelite's wanderings in the wilderness, the Presence of the Lord was with them all in the form of a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21).

Next, we see God instructing Moses on the construction of the Tabernacle, which was a picture of what would later be the Temple in Jerusalem. The Tabernacle was to be the place where the priests ministered before God and where the people would gather to be in God's presence. In fact, the Most Holy part of the Tabernacle was where God would reside, in the midst of His people. In Exodus 40:34 we see God taking up residence in the Tabernacle, "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." We also see in Numbers 2 that God gives Moses instructions for the arrangement of the tribes of Israel, where they are to camp, in relation to the placement of the Tabernacle, making the House of God the centre of the camp; the first time when God truly lives among His people.

I have to interject here to share one of my favourite parts of Scripture, which is at the end of Deuteronomy, where we read that before Israel entered the land of Canaan to conquer it, God brought Moses, who was not allowed to enter the land himself, up onto a mountain to show Moses the land that God was providing for His people. After having shown Moses the land, we read in Deuteronomy 34:5-6, "So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. ⁶ And He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows his burial place to this day." So God had Moses to Himself in the last moments of Moses' life, and God Himself buried Moses in the place of His choosing. What a wonderful picture of the relationship that Moses and God shared! But, I digress.

The Tabernacle in the wilderness was just a picture, a shadow, of what was yet to come, that being the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The general layout of this Temple was similar to the layout of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, but of course, this was a much grander and more spectacular building in all respects. The point of this building was not to be a spectacle for man, but to be a dwelling place for God to be among His people. We see in 2 Chronicles 7:1 that God's presence filled the Temple in the same way that it had filled the Tabernacle with Moses. In fact, in verse two we see the same language as we see in Exodus 40:35, where the priests and Moses respectively could not enter the Temple and Tabernacle because "the glory of the Lord had filled" the space.

The Temple of Solomon existed for about 400 years from about the 10th century to early in the sixth century BC, when it was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Ark of the Covenant was lost to history. But God's glory had already left the Temple as Ezekiel witnessed in a vision that we find in Ezekiel 10 and 11, and the Temple was destroyed not many years later. God's departure and the subsequent destruction of the temple were a judgment of God on the people of Israel for how they had turned their backs on God as a nation.

The Temple was rebuilt on a more modest scale towards the end of the sixth century BC, but it was completed without the Ark of the Covenant, which was designed as the seat of God, and God's presence was not noted to have ever entered the second Temple. Is this because the Ark was not present, or was the location of the ark not revealed by God because He had no intention of entering the new Temple, I think we have no way of knowing, but God's presence was not noted among His people from that time on, and we even read how there was a period of 400 years before the arrival of Jesus on earth when God did not even speak to His people through the prophets.

Then we have Jesus' arrival on the scene and everything was about to change. This was God Himself, incarnate in human form, to live among His people. To experience pain and struggles as we do, to feel as we do, and to be limited as we are. He experienced gain and loss, hunger and pain and ultimately a painful physical death. God was among us, but most did not recognize Him, because we could not recognize how God in Heaven could join us and walk with us on earth. But this was just a temporary situation that paved the way for a much better situation.

After God the Son was taken up into Heaven to sit at the right hand of  God the Father, God the Holy Spirit was sent down to indwell all who believe on Jesus and His sacrifice. Jesus was limited to one place at a time while He inhabited His earthly form, but the Holy Spirit is not limited in the same way. He can be with all believers at all times. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to lead and to guide us, to remind us of the things that God has said to us, by His written word as well as His spoken word to us. He is here to comfort and encourage us as well as to teach us things of God that we have not fathomed. This is the age in which we now live and this is something that even Abraham, Moses and every prophet and man or woman who has loved God in the past would have loved to experience. To have God with them at any time, always there, always available and always leading them would have been the peak of living in His presence to them. Yet we take it for granted and do not even know how to experience it in the fullness that is available to us. We are so focused on what is to come that we do not appreciate what it is that we have right now.

But as we look to things to come, we await the return of our Saviour as a conquering warrior. It will be a time when Jesus will set things right and He will rule over the earth for 1000 years as our earthly king. Jesus will lead us as we prepare the earth for the arrival of God the Father, who will come at the end of the Millennial Reign of Jesus, when the dead will be judged and God will dwell in the New Jerusalem. He will be the light and the source of eternal life, with us in His presence for all of eternity. This is the ultimate future that we look towards. A future with no pain, no sorrow and no separation from God. We will have the Triune God with us, I believe, in all forms. I believe that God the Father will still be impossible for us to look upon directly, but that we will have Jesus with us in physical form and that the Holy Spirit will still be with us at all times. What a time that will be, and what a wonderful conclusion to thousands of years of God chasing after His beloved creation!

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