You Can’t Hide From God
(By Noah Icenhour)
I want to open up with Psalms 147:4-5- it says, “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” In Acts 15:18 it says, “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” From just these two verses we can know that God is all-knowing and that there is nothing that he does not know.
Now the main point I want to make in this lesson is that God knows everything and everything that we do. In Hebrews 4:13 it says, “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” This is clearly saying that we cannot hide things from God because all things are in his sight.
From the beginning man has tried to hide their sins from God. In Genesis chapter 3, after eating off the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which they were commanded not to by God, Adam and Eve realized they had sinned and in verse 9 they tried to hid it from God, but God knew what they had done and he punished them.
In Genesis chapter 4, Cain brought fruit as an offering to God and Abel brought the best of his sheep. God respected Abel’s offering but he did not respect Cain’s offering. This made Cain very angry and out of rage he killed his brother Abel. Now when God asked where Abel was, Cain tried to hide his sin of killing his brother from God. Of course God had known what really happened to Abel and he punished Cain.
The last story I want to talk about is in Jonah chapter 1-3. Here the profit Jonah is commanded by God to go preach to the city of Nineveh and tried to run away from God by going to Tarshish. While Jonah was on the boat to Tarshish God caused a storm on to the sea and then the other men cast Jonah from the boat. Jonah was then swallowed by a big fish and stayed there for three days and for three nights. While in the belly Jonah prayed to God and the fish vomited him out. After this Jonah went and preached to Nineveh as commanded.
The point I want to make out of these stories is that Adam, Eve, Cain, and Jonah after sinning they tried to hid their sin from God, but God had known what they had done and punished them. This applies to us today as well. When we sin we have the choice to both confess the sin to God and repent or to try to do the impossible and hide it. Just as we read in Hebrews 4:13, God sees everything open meaning it cannot be covered.
In the story of Jonah after confessing and praying about his sin to God he was forgiven and made thing right with God. If you are currently trying to hide a sin you can confess it and be forgiven just as it says in 1 John 1:9.