Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and followed his suggestions to do evil. They had fellowship with darkness and were found out. Paul told the Ephesians in 5:11-13: And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. 12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. 13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Darkness doesn’t bear any fruit for God and it is a shame to talk about the things that are done. In other words, those things aren’t to be a part of the ordinary every day conversation of the believers. They are to reprove or show the shame in doing the deeds of darkness. In order to do so there has to be a standard for comparison and the standard is Jesus Christ. He is the standard that infuriated the scribes and the Pharisees and his standard infuriates people today.  

Jesus looked into the deeds of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28:  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.  All the outward appearances in the world won’t change the condition of the heart and God knows the reason for the outward appearance, whether it is truly showing the beauty inside or just a cover for the phoniness inside, such as was the condition of the scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus called hypocrites. 

Adam and Eve couldn’t hide from God. Cain couldn’t hide from God nor could the people that lived before the flood. The thoughts of scribes and Pharisees were naked before Jesus as was the woman at the well who wasn’t married and living with a man. In I John 1:5-7 John wrote: This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  There was no darkness in Jesus and if there had been he couldn’t have pointed out sin. It is as John wrote, we walk in darkness when we say we are following him and aren’t; we lie and can’t do the truth of God.  There is no in between. Either we walk with him or we walk in the darkness of sin.

We can’t hide under the cover for he sees us. God found Adam and Eve hiding and banned them from the Garden. Then he set in motion the means to save us from the sin that we bring upon ourselves. Jesus went to the cross and died. He uncovered the evil of darkness in the heart of those who crucified him. They lied to try to convince the people of that day he didn’t raise from the grave. Peter told the Jews that the same Jesus whom they crucified would also save them if they would obey the gospel that day of Pentecost. The same message is for us today.  The blood of Christ cleanses and the only way we can hide from God is in the cleansing blood of his son. He knows our thoughts, our intents, and sees our deeds.  May those deeds be good, done in faith through Jesus Christ rather than the unfruitful works of darkness that will only bring destruction to each one who practices unrighteousness.  There is no hiding from God.

© 03-23-2003 DEC

Revised 08-22-2008

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