God, Why Don’t You Make Yourself More Clear?
Psalm 19
Why doesn't God make himself more clear? Is it because God is too great to be knowable? Because the problem is you? Because hiddenness supports faith? Because God's clarity is relational?
The answer? It's not a fair question—because trivia is the wrong way to think about God.
Ground Rules for Big Questions
Before diving into the main question, there are three ground rules for our entire "God, Why?" series—five weeks of wrestling with big questions people actually asked.
Ground Rule 1: God is a person, not a concept.
We can know facts about John Laws, Beyoncé, or Mr. Beast, but most of us don't actually know these people. They're celebrities. Concepts. We know about them, but we're not in genuine relationship with them.
It would be a waste of this sermon series if you finish with more concepts about God but aren't better friends with God. God desires relationship. He's not a trivia game to master—he's a person to know.
Ground Rule 2: Discipleship is about faith, not trivia.
I made this mistake in high school. I thought I was a good Christian because I knew lots about Christianity. I aced the youth group Bible trivia games. I knew all the answers. But discipleship isn't about trivia. It's about faith—knowing about God, yes, but loving him in relationship, having communion with him, and following him as king. At that time, I wasn't doing as well as my fact recall might have suggested.
Ground Rule 3: Faith formation is inefficient
We like things quick, simple, and easy. Our culture trains us to find efficiency in everything. Henry Ford's assembly line made efficiency famous—stand still, steering wheel after steering wheel installed, over and over. Our industrialised economy was built on efficiency, and it has seeped into everything in the Western world.
In 1915, a Christian newspaper editor named W.A. Hobson said, "Efficiency in Christian service is the true test of orthodoxy. Evangelism and efficiency are the two great fundamental things in the teaching of Christ and his apostles."
Hobson was completely wrong
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God is not an industrial-level factory efficient being. And our faith that he forms in us is not factory-level efficiency either. That's not how we grow as Christians. It's only a small gap between Henry Ford and ChatGPT. We ask questions, we want instant answers. Google takes 0.013 seconds, and if it takes longer, we worry the internet collapsed.
Sometimes we can get frustrated that God isn't more like AI. Why bother coming to church, listening to a sermon, reading the Bible, wrestling with big questions, journaling, sitting in silence with God when we have instant answers at our fingertips?
It sounds silly, but it's how we're naturally trained to think.
Christian discipleship is not efficient. God is a person, not a concept. Discipleship is about faith, not trivia. And faith formation is intentionally and purposefully inefficient.
What God Has Done
With those ground rules in place, here are some of the questions we’ve received for this sermon series:
If you're real, what signs or evidence can I see around me?
Why are there many signs performed by God before but not so much now?
Why can't I hear what you want me to do in my life?
Nature, Scripture, and Jesus
What has God already done to make himself clear?
Psalm 19 starts with: "The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands." Day after day, night after night, creation pours forth speech without words or sound. Theologians call this general revelation—it's open to everyone, generally available.
The psalm continues: "The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart." God gave special revelation—his words, commands, stories, statutes, and laws—to his people, the family of Abraham. They had access not just to general revelation but to God's specific communication. They wrote it down and kept it so they could return again and again to be reminded: this is who God is.
Nature, yes. Scriptures, yes. Then came Jesus. "In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being."
As if the Milky Way wasn't enough, God gave us revelation of himself to Abraham. As if that wasn't enough, he then sent his son.
How can we know God is real? What clarity can we have that he exists and is who he says he is? We can look at the world. We can read the scriptures. And we can particularly read the gospel stories of Jesus, his own son. There is there and we can investigate it. We can see what God has done.
What God Isn't Doing
Why are there signs performed by God before to make people believe but not so much now?
Wouldn't it be great for evangelism if we saw more miracles? These things make people believe, right?
It's a good question, but it has a faulty assumption: that signs make believers.
In the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Ten, fifteen, twenty thousand people—however many were there—saw a miracle, tasted the miracle, partook in the miracle. So of course, when Jesus left, they followed him. They wanted more.
When they found him, Jesus said, "Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill."
Jesus told them to work for food that endures to eternal life. He told them, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink my blood, you have no life in you."
This is fun for a lot of reasons. One of the things I love about this is that Jesus makes it harder, not easier, for people to put their faith in him.
"On hearing this, many of his disciples said, 'This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?' From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him."
It's really easy to think that if only there were more signs and wonders, more miracles, of course people would follow Jesus. But historically, it's not true. People can see signs and wonders. They can taste the magical food. They can have their fill of the meal that fed 20,000 people and still walk away and not trust in Jesus.
Judas didn't just see Jesus do miracles—he performed miracles. All of the disciples healed the sick, fed the poor, cast out demons. Judas then turned his back and did not trust Jesus long term. Miracles haven’t stopped. I've seen things I can't explain. I've heard stories I absolutely believe are true. I believe God does supernatural, miraculous things even in suburban Sydney.
But God doesn't owe us any miracles. And there's no guarantee that just because you see a miracle, you wouldn't choose to explain it away and walk away—just like the disciples did, just like Judas did.
God's Plan for Your Life
Why can't I hear what you want me to do in my life at some stages?
What school should I send my kids to? What uni should I go to? What should I study? Should I go out with someone or stay single? Should I get married? Who should I marry? How many kids should we have? What job should I take?
There are lots of decisions we make. Wouldn't it be great if we got a clear telegram from Jesus at every one of those points?
You've probably heard the phrase that God has a plan for your life. It's kind of true, but it's not in the Bible—not in that way. God's not sitting there with an itemized timeline going, "All right, if they pick Wollongong Uni over UTS, they'll be fine. Oh wait, they picked UTS? That stuffs everything. What are they going to do now?"
Sometimes we think God works like that—that he's got this plan and we either fulfill it or completely stuff it up. It's not what the Bible says. God doesn't work like that.
But he does tell us what to do.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."
"Live by the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."
What does Jesus want you to do at this stage of your life? Love God. Love others.
Which uni does he want you to go to? Well, can you do love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Great. Go for it.
He tells us what to do and gives us freedom with a lot of our choices. In some ways, that can be more stressful. But hopefully, it's also a little less stressful because it doesn't actually matter as much as we think.
Love God, love others.
That's the plan Jesus has for your life.
Again, it's a great question with a wrong assumption—that there must be one specific thing you have to do now, one decision God wants you to make, and you just need to know what it is. No. That's a faulty premise. He gives you a broad canvas to paint on and says love God, love others, grow in the fruits of the Spirit, and go nuts.
What God Is Doing
Why is God so silent?
Bertrand Russell, one of the most famous atheist philosophers of the 20th century, was once asked what he would say if he died and appeared before the God he didn't believe in. His answer? "I would say, 'God sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself?'"
It's an interesting question because it presumes God is the one hiding and we're the ones seeking. But the Bible tells a different story. "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost."
God is not a hidden God. He's not a distant God. He's not a disinterested God. He's a God who comes to seek and save those who are lost. If you're listening and you feel disconnected, distant, far away—God wants to know you far more than you want to know him, even on your best days.
Paul says in Acts, "God is not far away from any of us." We're the ones who get distracted. We're the ones who get caught up. We're the ones who often treat God as outside, hidden, when actually he has come to make himself known.
John Dickson, Australian author and historian, says this: "Despite the sixth sense that many of us have that there's probably a larger spiritual reality to be reckoned with, our society appears to prefer experiencing the smaller things of life with the other five senses."
God is not hidden. He is not silent. And yet sometimes we just can't get off our screens.
He is making himself clear. But sometimes we're chasing that promotion more than we're chasing him.
He wants to be known. Yet sometimes we're more interested in being known by others—either online or in the real world—rather than actually coming to him.
God is not silent. He's not hidden. He's revealed himself in his world. So study the world. Study the best of nature, science, and sociology. Find how God has revealed himself in the world and in communities.
He's revealed himself through his word, the Bible. So read it, study it, learn it off by heart.
He's revealed himself through his son, Jesus. So start with the gospels. Consider what Jesus says and does and whether this helps you make sense of the world.
And God has revealed himself through his Spirit, who lives with and in those who are Jesus' disciples, so that we may live by the Spirit and live lives that love God and love others.
"Ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks will receive. The one who searches will find. The door will be opened to the one who knocks."
The Challenge
God is not the problem. He's made himself clear through creation, scripture, and Jesus. He's not sitting with an itemized life plan waiting for you to guess correctly. And he's certainly not hiding.
We're the ones distracted by screens, promotions, and the smaller things of life.
So the challenge is simple: study the world, read the scriptures, consider Jesus, and live by the Spirit. Ask, search, knock.
It won't be efficient. It won't be instant. But God is a person, not a concept. And knowing him is worth the inefficient, lifelong journey.
Soul Revival Church gathers across the Sutherland Shire and Ryde.
This is Part 1 of our "God, Why?" series exploring five big questions.