HIDE & SEEK!

Seek, and you shall be found!

Jun 21, 2025

(“Seek, and you shall find…” My “new” car from the Internet Parking Lot of Insanity!)

Pressure of studies, residential weekends, family and church commitments; the stress of negotiations finding and financing the purchase of a “new” (“pre-loved”!) car, not to mention a few health issues have all conspired to attempt to derail my preferred programme of writing on this blog: I usually aim to post some sort of outcome to my ponderings by mid-week. This time, as you see, I am right up against the First Sunday After Trinity, and the proposed inspiration for the subsequent week!

Last weekend included Trinity Sunday, so I imagine most of you were directed towards consideration of God as Trinity – and rightly so, and to which I hope to return, God willing. The insult to the Person of the Holy Spirit, has made of Christianism an effectively Unitarian, Monist religion, with its excessive idolatry of Jesus the Christ. Unresolved “Father Issues” have rendered any real relationship with Abba, widely controversial, “triggering,” or, at its most offensive, Patriarchal, Misogynistic, Authoritarian and Violent. “Our Father,” indeed!

The Lectionary for this weekend, then, has thrown together an intriguing combination enough to puzzle the most prophetic of preachers. We have, you might say, a pig’s ear of proposed texts: Isaiah 65:1-9, Galatians 3:23-end, and Luke 8:26-39. (That’s a slow-burn joke!)

The Isaiah text is described as an oracle with close similarities and themes to 57:3-13. It’s addressed to those who remained in Israel during the time of exile and who developed ways of worship at odds with those of the LORD as prescribed by Torah. Here, YAHWEH pleads His cause, lamenting that He was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask and to be found by those who were not even looking for Him. This is the heart of the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

In Jeremiah 29:11-14, we read a similar sentiment:

“‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’”

The first two verses of Isaiah 65 read: “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call upon My name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices…’

In the context of what follows (the New Heavens and New Earth v.17 ff) it beggars faithful belief to read and hear the separatist, anti-Christ interpretation of popular preachers, especially of Reformist Evangelical Fundamentalism, among others, who use this passage to justify the separation out of so-called “true believers” (i.e. themselves) from the “unsaved” refuseniks: the former for the joyful reward of “heaven”; the latter for an Eternity of the conscious hellfire of unrelenting torment.

And that’s their idea of a “New heaven and New Earth”!

To Hell with that, I say!

(David Pawson, before his illness.)

See what David Pawson, whose ‘voice’ has been idolised as profoundly prophetic truth, writes:

“One of the main questions I am frequently asked is this: ‘If God is a God of love and of power, why can he not save everyone and take everyone to heaven? … That is a lovely thought – such a lovely thought that many professing Christians have adopted it and even preached it – [like, erm…? Oh, Jesus and Paul, for example!] that one day everybody will be saved and that hell is a non-existent threat…”

“This.” Pawson asserts, “is answered by chapter 65 and many other passages in the Bible.” [1]

Except that that is an egregious misinterpretation of the Gospel. Paul quotes Isaiah 65:1-2 in Romans 10:20-21 not as a separatist judgment between “believers and unbelievers,” “saved and unsaved,” but concerning the situation between (2) Gentiles and (1) Jews. And while many used this as a pretext to denounce Jews for obduracy and blindness (inciting antisemitism in the process) it is clear from Romans 11:1-2a that no-one ends up being rejected! (“I say then that God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.”)

Isaiah 65 is more about discerning those with genuine faith and those with false faith, which is actually faithlessness (often termed “adultery” in prophetic Scripture). And to those who complain that YAHWEH never answers their prayers and seems so aloof and stand-offish, YAHWEH responds that they are the ones hiding behind man-made religion and worship practices dictated by humankind.

(John Goldingay - Fuller Seminary)

John Goldingay observes:

“Yahweh thus sees the self-portrait of the people praying in the previous section as ingenuous. Even if they are loyal worshipers of Yahweh, many of their fellows are not. They are engaged in religious observances that deny any faithfulness to Yahweh… [Do we recognise ourselves, here?]

…They will pay for it…When judgment comes it will distinguish between the two groups. The prophecy’s aim is to encourage the faithful and to push the faithless to changing their ways so that the judgment doesn’t fall on them. It could still be the case that judgment needs to fall on no one.”[2]

The warning is given, as Jesus, himself, reiterated:

20 So then, by their fruit you will recognize them. 21Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’…(Matt. 7:20-22. Berean Standard Bible)

I know whose voice I would prefer to listen to on a Sunday morning – the voice of Spirit and Truth!

Wayfarer

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