Walking in God's Presence

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Walking in God’s Presence

Hebrews 1:1-14

“And he is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.  When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

                  The question that has plagued all people of all generations is the question of God.  Who is he? How do we know him? What does He expect of us, and how do we connect with Him?  

                  In the opening statement of Hebrews, we discover that God has spoken to us.  God has not remained silent and distant, so we are left to try and find him.  He has taken the initiative in our relationship. When God created humanity, His purpose was to have a relationship with us in which we would enjoy His presence.  God was present in the Garden of Eden, speaking with Adam and Eve.  He did not remain hidden in the shroud of heaven but revealed Himself and walked among us so that we might have fellowship with Him.  However, instead of rejoicing and celebrating this relationship, humanity rejected God and sought to be independent of God.  When God came to the garden, we hid from Him. God did not break the relationship. We did! As a result, sin brought a separation between us and God. Because of sin, we could no longer stand in His presence, for He is holy and untainted by sin.  As Jesus points out in John 3:19, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” When given the option of fellowship with God, we chose sin and alienation.  

                  Yet even as we abandoned Him, He still sought to reveal Himself to us through His words, which He spoke through the prophets.  In other words, He revealed Himself to us through the prophetic message of the scriptures.  Man did not write the Bible to explain their view of God.  It was written by God through the voice and writings of the prophets as they were guided by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16).  They revealed to us that God is still active in the world, seeking to bring salvation to us from the very choices we made that brought our own destruction.  

                  However, the final word of God did not come through the prophets who spoke for God and about God; it came through His Son.  Jesus was not just a prophet. He was God Himself, the one through whom the world was made.  In verse three, we discover that Jesus was the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s nature.  The word radiance describes that Jesus is the manifestation of the glorious presence of God.  He is the exact representation of God.  That is, He displays the embodiment of God as He really is.  In Christ, we discover the person of God revealed to us.  When Jesus walked upon this world, God was again walking among humanity.  God walked freely among us in the garden, but we rejected His presence.  In Christ, God again walked freely among us to restore our relationship with Him.  Today, in the Holy Spirit, God still walks with us, and He again discloses Himself to us through the message of His autobiography—the Bible.  Yet, tragically, we still reject His presence.  We still pursue our own desires rather than enjoy his presence in our lives.  Just as Adam and Eve hid themselves from God, we still hid ourselves from Him.  Just as Adam and Eve refused to listen to the voice of God, so we continue to refuse to listen to His voice spoken through His Son and the prophets.  Yet, just as God called out to Adam and Eve, He called out to us today.  God desires a personal relationship with us in which we become partakers of His life.  The only question is whether or not we will respond by seeking Him or ignoring Him as we continue to pursue our own desires.  Do we make time to commune with Him, or do we get so involved in our daily lives that God becomes distant and remote?

 

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