Nothing Can Separate Us
Nothing Can Separate Us by Rev. L. John Gable
May 30, 2021
After listening to these two passages I am almost tempted to say “Amen, that is our sermon for today” and then sit down. Notice I said, “Almost”. It is difficult, some might say pointless, to try to expand on or explain such great and inspiring teaching, kind of like having to explain a joke, but indulge me as I attempt to highlight some of the truths both the Psalmist David and the Apostle Paul share with us in these magnificent passages.
I know you have heard the saying, “You can run but you cannot hide.” How do you hear that? Mostly as a threat, right? We picture a US Marshall on a horse in some old cowboy movie shouting to the bank robber who just got away, “You can run but you cannot hide!” Now that’s a threat!
But what if that same threat was given as a promise, a promise given by a God who knows you and loves you, Who made you and formed you, Who promises to seek you and find you, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, where you’ve been or wherever it is you are trying to hide from Him even now? What if it is that God who is crying out to you, “You can run but you cannot hide”, Who is chasing after you, not to lock you up but to set you free? That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It is pretty good and that’s why we call it the Good News!
The Psalmist David sings this beautiful Psalm 139 not about God but to God, intimately and personally, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, You know it completely” and so on and so on. How do we hear these promises: Are they disturbing to you or settling? Intimidating or cheering? Confining or comforting? Paralyzing or liberating? Using beautiful, poetic language the Psalmist is describing the nature and character of a God who is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, ever-present. A God who has been described as being “the hound of heaven”, One from Whom we can run but we cannot hide.
Admittedly it could be a rather terrifying thought that God sees and knows, not just my outward actions but my inward thoughts? That He knows what I’m going to say even before I say it? I don’t know about you but sometimes I start a sentence that even I know don’t know how I’m going to complete it!
If I didn’t know better this Psalm could intimidate me and strike me as being a terrible threat. The mere thought of being hemmed in , before and behind, by someone, anyone, without any place to flee or hide, high or low, sounds restricting and confining to me, a threat that would plague me, that “I can run but I can’t hide” UNLESS, I was given the assurance that that threat is really a promise that is given by a God who knows me and loves me, Who knew me before I knew Him, Who chose me before I chose Him, Who sought and found me before I even had an inkling to know that I was lost and needed to be found! What if this promise was being given by the One Who knew that we had a need even before we knew it and then did something about it. He didn’t just leave us in our darkness and despair to fumble and flounder and fail for ourselves. He came to us in a way that we could see and know and touch and love and understand, as One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Good Shepherd, Who reveals to us the love of our Heavenly Father, the One He calls Abba, Papa, Father, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, the One who runs to welcome us home at the slightest hint of our turning as the father runs to embrace his prodigal son. If that is the case then suddenly this terrible threat becomes a glorious promise because ours is a God who declares His love for us by saying, “You can run but you cannot hide!”
Consider for a moment where or in what ways you might be trying to hide from God. Theologian Karl Barth said, “The church is often our last hiding place from God.” Like a child playing hide and seek, who is only half hidden under the dining room table, clearly visible to anyone who is seeking her, so our attempts at hiding from God are futile. In his classic little devotional, My Heart-Christ’s Home, Robert Munger writes of our welcoming Christ into our lives, our hearts, our homes, but then only allowing Him to come in to the entry way or the front hallway or the den, but not in to the family room, the bedroom, the office. We keep those doors closed and locked, hoping He won’t enter, hoping He won’t ask, “What’s going on in there?” When God enters our hearts, our lives, our homes, He wants to be invited all in, into our private places as well as the front sitting room. Admittedly, He won’t go where He is not welcome, but neither should we fool ourselves into thinking that He doesn’t already know what’s going on in those very places where we think we are hiding.
Maybe out of guilt or shame or embarrassment we fear that if God really knew me, really knew who I am and what I’ve done and what I’m doing still, He wouldn’t really love me. Let me tell you the truth: He does know you. He knows where you’ve been and what you’ve done and what you are doing still. He has searched you and knows you and He loves you still. He is the One who is calling out: “Come out, come out, wherever you are! Ally, Ally, in come free!”
Friends, this promise is given to us in what is surely one of the great passages of Scripture, Psalm 139, and it is echoes a truth that is repeated throughout all of Scripture, most exquisitely in Romans chapter 8 where Paul extends the very same promise using very different language. Whereas the Psalmist says, “You have searched me and known me”, the Apostle Paul says, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord!” Nothing can separate us from the One who loves us, unconditionally and eternally, from the One from Whom we can run but cannot hide. If ever you need a reminder, a 3:00 am reminder, of God’s love for you, an assurance that “He’s got you”, I encourage you to copy, paste, print, and commit to memory these closing verses of Romans chapter 8, and then hang on to them, because they give us the clear reminder that it is not you who is desperately hanging on to God but God who is hanging on to you.
Paul writes, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things yet to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is perhaps the most compelling statement of faith and confidence and hope made anywhere in Scripture, but how do we know it’s true? How do we know this isn’t just Polly-Anna-ish wishful thinking? Some glimmer of false hope offered to us in our darkest times just to cheer us up and keep us going? The answer is clear, because it is God who is making this promise to us, using Paul’s words.
Starting in verse 31 we pick up his reasoning. He writes, “What then are we to say about these things? What are we to make of all this?” and then he states his case. “If God is for us”, and He is, so it might better be read, “Since God is for us” and how do we know He is? Because He is the One “who did not withhold His own Son, but freely gave Him up for our sakes”. That’s how much God loves us so that’s how we know He is for us.
So if/since God is for us, who could be against us? Only God, but we know that God is for us, so Who could condemn us? Well, “only Christ, and Christ died and was raised for us and is now at the right hand of the Father praying for us”. So if God is for us, who is in a position to accuse or condemn us? No one, except we ourselves if we were to refuse to accept the fact that we have been accepted! Then what about all the bad things that still happen to us? Aren’t those signs that God has rejected us, forgotten us, turned His back on us? No! Again using Paul’s words, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword?” Will isolation or pandemic or loneliness or depression or discouragement or rejection or you name whatever it is that you believe may be separating you from being fully confident of God’s love for you and the answer is still the same. “No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
This all sounds so good but how do we know it is really true? Not only because of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, but also what He continues to do for us, and in us, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Recall last week we looked at Jesus’ teaching in John 16 where He says, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate/the Holy Spirit will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” Following that sermon several of you asked, “How is Jesus’ going away and His sending of the Holy Spirit to our “advantage”?” And the answer lies here in Paul’s teaching. By the ministry of the Holy Spirit, with us and within us, God is always with us, no longer separated from us by time or space or centuries as He would be had He only revealed Himself in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, here for a time but then gone again. So the advantage given to us is that God is always with us because now the Spirit lives within us, which means that “we can run but we cannot hide”, nor would we ever want to, because the God from Whom we will never be separated is the One who seeks us and finds us, the One who searches us and knows us, the One Who loves with a never ending love…and that my friends is the Good News!
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN