While We Were Still Reaching

Key Scripture Passages: Acts 17:26–28 · Exodus 34:29–32 · Ephesians 4:20–24

Some things are already there before anyone notices them. A rough stretch of road gets repaired overnight. You drive it the next morning, and the drive is smoother than it was, and you think nothing about it at all. The repair was already there and already affecting the drive before you knew there was anything to know.

That raises a question worth carrying into three passages. If God is at work in a life, does that work have to be recognized in order to be real?

Three passages sit beside one another this week. 1) In Acts 17, Paul tells people who do not know the God he is describing that He is already near while they are still reaching. 2) In Exodus 34, Moses comes down from a mountain after speaking with God, and something has visibly changed about him that he does not know. 3) In Ephesians 4, Paul writes to people who have heard about Christ and been taught, and places something that happens to them between two things they do. Nearness that does not wait for recognition, change that arrives before awareness, and real answering that happens inside something already underway.

Prayer

Father, help us notice what these passages reveal about Your nearness and Your work. Give us freedom to receive what You show us with gladness rather than anxiety. Amen.

Movement 1 — Near Before He Is Recognized | Acts 17:26–28

Context: Paul is in Athens, a Greek city full of shrines to many gods. He begins with something already present in their city and tells them about the God they do not yet know. He is not saying these listeners already know Him. He is saying something about God that is true while they are still looking.

Acts 17:26–28 (NIV)

²⁶ From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”

1) Paul describes several things God has already done before he ever mentions anyone seeking Him. What do you notice about that order?

a. Verse 26 lists what God made, marked out, and determined. What kind of activity is being described there?

b. Verse 27 gives a purpose for it. Who is doing the acting in that verse, and who is doing the seeking?

c. Nothing in these verses depends on the listeners having recognized Him yet. What does that do to how the passage reads?

Reflection: Paul puts God’s work first and the seeking second. Everything described as settled belongs to God. The seeking is still open, and the passage does not treat that as a problem.

Consider: What does it do to a person to hear God’s part described first?

2) Verse 27 says people may reach out for Him and find Him, and then adds that He is not far from any one of us. What do you make of those two things standing together?

a. Does the reaching sound like something finished or something still going on?

b. What is the difference between someone being near and someone being recognized?

c. Paul states the nearness without any condition attached to it. What does that add to the sentence?

Reflection: The searching and the nearness are both real at once. Paul does not say the searching produces the nearness. He says the nearness is already true while the searching continues.

Consider: What is worth sitting with in the fact that Paul describes God as near while the searching is still going on?

Movement 2 — He Did Not Know | Exodus 34:29–32

Context: Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. He had gone up Mount Sinai and spent time speaking with God, and he came down carrying two stone tablets. These verses describe what happened as he returned to the people.

Exodus 34:29–32 (NIV)

²⁹ When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. ³⁰ When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹ But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. ³² Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

3) Verse 29 says Moses was not aware that his face was radiant. What do you notice about the reason the verse gives?

a. The verse connects the change to one thing: he had spoken with the Lord. What does it not connect it to?

b. Moses is already coming down the mountain carrying the tablets. What is he unaware of while he does that?

c. The change is described as already present before anyone tells him about it. What does that suggest about when it happened?

Reflection: The text connects the radiance to Moses having spoken with the Lord, not to Moses noticing it or producing it. Something real was already present before he knew it was there.

Consider: What is worth noticing in a change the text credits entirely to time spent with God?

4) Aaron and the others saw it. Moses did not. What do you make of the change being visible to everyone except the person it happened to?

a. Whose account of Moses is more accurate in this moment, and does that matter to what is true?

b. After the others react to what they see, what does Moses actually do next?

c. Verses 31 and 32 move straight to him calling the people and speaking to them. What do you notice about that?

Reflection: No one asks Moses to verify anything. The passage lets the change be real without him confirming it, and then it moves on to what he actually does next.

Consider: What would be different if a work in us did not have to be seen by us in order to be real?

Moses did not know, and the people in Athens were still reaching. In both, something was already true before anyone recognized it. The last passage speaks to people who have heard about Christ and been taught, and it puts their own answering right beside something being done in them.

Movement 3 — Made New, and Still Answering | Ephesians 4:20–24

Context: Paul is writing to people who have heard about Christ and been taught about Him. He is contrasting the way of life they learned with the way they lived before. Notice the shape of what he says: two of the three phrases describe something they do, and the one in the middle is worded as something done to them.

Ephesians 4:20–24 (NIV)

²⁰ That, however, is not the way of life you learned ²¹ when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. ²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

5) Verses 22 through 24 hold three phrases together: put off, be made new, put on. What do you notice about the middle one?

a. The outer two describe something a person does. How is the middle phrase worded differently?

b. The middle phrase is not placed at the end as a result of the other two. Where is it placed?

c. What would be missing if that middle phrase were taken out?

Reflection: Being made new sits in the center rather than at the finish. The putting off and putting on stand on either side of it, and Paul does not present them as what produces it.

Consider: What opens up when renewal is not the thing our effort has to produce?

6) Verses 20 and 21 speak about what these people heard and were taught. What does that add to the three phrases that come after?

a. Paul is not introducing these readers to Christ here. What has already taken place before verse 22 begins?

b. Does Paul present putting off and putting on as a way of gaining Christ, or as part of the life these readers had already been taught about after hearing about Christ?

c. What difference does it make that all of this comes after what they learned rather than before it?

Reflection: Paul is speaking to people who have already heard about Christ and been taught about Him. The putting off and putting on belong inside a life that has already begun, and they are not presented as what creates the renewing.

Consider: What might change in how you hear verses 22 through 24 knowing where Paul places them?

7) Looking across all three passages, what do you notice about the order in which things happen?

a. Acts describes nearness that is true while people are still reaching. What is settled first there?

b. Exodus describes a change Moses did not know about. What did his awareness add to it, and what did it not add?

c. Ephesians describes real things a person does, and a renewing not described as self-produced. What might that suggest about our own answering?

Reflection: Across the three passages, God’s nearness and work come first. Human recognition and response matter, but they are never presented as the source of what God is doing. By Ephesians, deliberate response is fully present, while renewal is still not something we are shown producing on our own.

Consider: What possibility do these passages leave open when a willing response surprises us?

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