II Chronicles 15: 1-7, esp. 2
"Lost and Found"

INTRODUCTION:  It is about 900 BC. The pride, arrogance, and stupidity of Rehoboam son of Solomon split the kingdom about thirty years ago. The results were calf-worship in the North, and in the South, a compromised devotion to Jahweh which gave rise to a series of attempts at reformation. Ten years ago, the grandson of Rehoboam, Asa, a godly man, came to the throne in the South. His reign to date is chronicled in chp. 14. The reward for his faithfulness is the ultimate reward: a revelation of God's character. God, through his prophet Azariah, reveals to Asa in 15:2 a basic, unalterable, and eternal principle which governs his relations with mankind. "If you seek Him, He will let you find Him."

I am interested in that simple, seemingly innocent little monosyllable "let." It reveals volumes about the God we seek and the process of seeking Him. For even those of us who have found Him are still seekers, longing for a fuller revelation of His person.  Therefore hear the words of the prophet:  "If you seek Him, He will let you find Him." It is the most basic principle of the search for God.  I want to look at it three ways this morning:  First to see some Scriptural elaborations of the principle, for it is indeed embedded throughout the sacred text; second, to engage in some theological reflections on the principle to try to uncover its implications for our concept of ourselves and of God and of His salvation; and third, to consider some practical applications of the principle for our own ongoing search.  "If you seek Him, He will let you find Him."

I. SCRIPTURAL ELABORATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE

1. Proverbs 8: 17 -- Wisdom personified says, "I love those that love me, and those that seek me diligently will find me." Wisdom is an attribute of God, who is its source in us. So what Solomon says of seeking wisdom applies to seeking God as well. It should be done with diligence, that is, with sustained energy and focus.  This seeking requires all we have to give it, not because our diligence would make us able to find God, but simply because of the nature of the One we seek.  To seek haphazardly or lazily or casually is not to seek Him; it is the search for a lesser God.

2. Isaiah. 55: 6-7 -- "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found." There is an urgency to this search. Much of Scripture speaks of God's eagerness to receive us, like the Prodigal Son's father in the parable. The misuse of that truth is a kind of presumption in which God becomes a Commodity sitting on our spiritual shelf, which we think we can pull off whenever we feel the need. These passages provide protection against that error. So gracious is our God that many even who seek Him thus are allowed to find Him. But we cannot presume on this. Even when the search is diligent and urgent, He must "let" us find Him. And the day of opportunity, the day of salvation is now. If we harden our hearts, the point will come at which He is no longer going to be there for us. And there is no flashing red light that says, "This is your last chance.  Repent now.  Your heart will become permanently hard with no more chance of repentance in five, four, three, two . . ."  It doesn’t happen that way! Therefore we must recognize the urgency of this quest. It is not one that can safely be put off.

3. Jeremiah 29: 13 -- "And ye shall seek me, and ye shall find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." The search should be not only diligent and urgent but wholehearted. For let not the double-minded man think he shall receive anything from the Lord, being unstable in all his ways, as James tells us.  How could he?  Even if he clung to God with one part of his mind, the other part might fall away from him to morrow.  If you are not seeking the one God with and for the whole person, you are engaged in the search for a lesser God.

4. Amos 5: 4, 6 -- "Seek the Lord and ye shall live." It is a life-or-death issue, quite literally.  He is the living God, the God not of the dead but of the living.  In His Son is life, and that life is the light of men.  “For this is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17: 3).  To find Him is to find life, and that abundantly; to miss Him is to remain dead in your trespasses and sins for all eternity.  Seek the Lord and ye shall live.

5. Matthew 6: 33 -- "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God." The kind of search which God allows to succeed is one that re-orders our priorities.  Finding God will do that.  If it does not, it is something less than God that you have found.

6. Matthew 7: 7-11 -- "Seek and ye shall find." We will not find God for all our seeking, however diligent, urgent, wholehearted, etc. it may be, unless He lets us. But there is a promise, made in the passage from II Chronicles which is our text, and coming increasingly into focus as we move into the New Testament, that He will let us find Him if we truly seek Him.  To respond to that promise by fervent seeking is the very essence of faith, as will become apparent in the next passage.

7. Hebrews 11: 6 -- "For without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." These words are a summary of this whole thread we have been seeing, which adds the crucial element of faith.  Here we see faith both as belief that, belief that He is, and belief in, trust in His promise to be a rewarder of those who seek.  So seek Him diligently and urgently and wholeheartedly, and with faith that your search will be rewarded.  He will let you find him!  It is the personal promise of the Father to all who seek Him through the Son.

II. THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE PRINCIPLE

"If you seek Him, He will let you find Him."  That little word "let" speaks volumes. It speaks, first, of the Love of God. Why would a perfect and holy Being want to be found by such as us?  We can mean nothing but trouble.  The only way such finding could work would involve the blood of His only Son.  If such if we were seeking Him, why wouldn't He just run the other way?  Because He has -- in fact, is -- a kind of love beyond anything we can conceive.  So He lets us find Him.

Second, it speaks of the Greatness of God. He is not such a Being that He could be found by our searching, however diligent, urgent, and wholehearted it might be. His thoughts and His ways are as far above ours as the heavens above the earth. He is infinite and transcendent in power, majesty, and holiness.  Trying to put Him into our puny little minds would be like trying to pour the ocean into a teacup.  We can only know such a Being if He takes the initiative to reveal Himself.  Our seeking could never find Him unless He had first determined to be found. 

When the first Russian Cosmonauts went into space, they came back pleasing the atheist communist state that had sent them by saying, "We did not find God." In one of the last writings before his death, C. S. Lewis commented, "We would really be in trouble if they had." If God were anything they were capable of finding, He would not be the infinite and transcendent God of the Bible. And so I repeat: however diligent our search, He must "let" us find Him, or it would all be in vain.

Third, it speaks of the Depravity of Man. For Paul insists in Rom. 3:11 that no one does seek for God.  There is none that is righteous, no, not one.  We have all turned aside into our own way, and therefore by the works of the law—that is, by our own seeking—shall no flesh be justified.  This is true metaphysically, as we saw above—He is too great to be found by us—and it is true morally as well—He is too pure and holy to be found by our seeking.  He must stoop to our minds in revelation and to our hearts in grace.  But we prefer a God that could be found by us, a God for whose favor we could take credit, chalking our relationship to him up to our own righteousness, our own superior searching.  So Paul is right:  we are not really even seeking God.  Not the real God.  When we do seek Him, it is for the wrong motives, or we are looking for something different--more accommodating and less demanding -- than the God of the Bible. So is II Chronicles 15: 2 an empty promise?  No.  Not only must He "let" us find Him, He does not even wait for us to look.  It is His grace that is behind even your seeking, if it is indeed a true search.  As Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6: 44).  In an even more profound way than many of us have yet contemplated, He must let us find Him; for it is He who is even the instigator of our search.  Be humbled by your unworthiness, but be encouraged by His promise.  If He has put the desire to find Him in your heart, He will not stop until it is fulfilled.

So we see that an understanding of our depravity, the profound depths of our need, has already led us to the fourth point, the Grace and Initiative of God.  The passage that really caps off this whole thread of verses is Isaiah 65: 1. "I permitted myself to be sought by those who did not ask for me, to be found by those who did not seek me." Before we even begin to seek, He has been seeking us.  When we do seek, it is a sign that He has already been seeking us, has already been at work in us drawing us to Himself. Jonathan Edwards used to pray five times a day -- before he was converted.  John Wesley helped to found the Holy Club at Oxford and served as a missionary to the Colonies--before the Aldersgate experience when he first really understood the Gospel of Grace and felt his "heart strangely warmed."  Warasa Wange of the Gedeo tribe of Ethiopia prayed that God would reveal himself, and had a vision of two white men setting up a tent under a sycamore tree near his village. Missionaries Albert Brant and Glen Cain wanted to start work in another, more centrally located village, but were not permitted. So they just happened to end up under a sycamore tree near Wange's village.  What a coincidence!  God let these men find Him.  He did not let them find because of the diligence and quality of their seeking. The quality of their seeking, and its results, are the signs of the great work He was doing to draw them to himself.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ!
 

III. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE

If you seek God, He will let you find Him. First therefore, we should Seek.  It is not hopeless. Even though our diligence and urgency and wholeheartedness are utterly inadequate to the task, we should seek thus because the Object of our search is worthy of such a search.  And we should seek because are not the only ones seeking.  Though we are utterly incapable and unworthy of finding Him, He will let us find Him anyway if indeed we seek Him with all our hearts.

Second, we should Examine Ourselves.  We should reexamine the pitiful lack of intensity in our own search. Edwards and Wesley were such great men of God because they knew how to seek in a way worthy of the Object, both before and after they found Him.  That is a lesson that we should learning with them.

Third, we should Not Grow Weary in Witnessing.  God is already seeking those around us, even as He sought us.  You cannot always tell who is seeking Him as a result.  Sometimes the sign of that preparatory work of the Spirit is running from God.  At least such people are not ignoring Him! And sometimes there is no outward sign at all.  But if we are diligent and faithful in presenting the Gospel, eventually God will let someone find Him through our witness.

Finally, we should Worship.  Surely this little word "let" should full us with awe at the Majesty of the God too big to find and the Grace of the God who lets us find Him anyway.  And surely that awe should find expression.  How could we hold it in?  There is nothing you see that was not made by Him; therefore everything should remind you of His existence, His greatness, His majesty, and His power.  There is nothing that you enjoy that does not come to you by His common or special grace, paid for by the blood of His Son; therefore everything should remind you of His mercy, His love, and His grace.  Let praise for these things be always swelling up in your hearts and always ready to burst from your lips.  Let it motivate you to be present (on time!) for the public worship of the church, and to be always speaking forth the excellencies of Him who called us.  For, if with all our hearts we truly seek Him, we shall ever surely find Him.  He will let us!
 

CONCLUSION:

We love God because He first loved us.  We seek Him because He first sought us.  And He will let us find Him!  Let me close with some lines from the classic poem on His seeking, Frances Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven”:

“Listen to me Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin: the Lord is with you when you are with Him.  And if you seek Him, He will let you find Him.”  Amen.

Sermon by Dr. Donald T. Williams. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD is the author of six books, including Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman, 2006), Credo: An Exposition of the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007), and The Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice Press, 2008).  An ordained minister in the Evangelical Free Church of America with many years of pastoral experience, he has spent several summers in Africa training local pastors for Church Planting International, and currently serves as Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in the hills of NE Georgia, and as a Sunday School Teacher at University Church, Athens.  More material on the search for God and other topics can be found at his website, http://doulomen.tripod.com.