He Came First

The most surprising thing in the Bible is not a miracle.

It is not a sea that parted. It is not a bush that burned without being consumed. It is not the stone that rolled away from the tomb.

It is a single sentence — spoken early, into the leaves of a garden, to a man who was hiding from Him behind a tree.

Where art thou?

He is looking for them. Before they can find their way back to Him — before they even fully know they are lost — He is already looking for them. And that one sentence is what the next sixty-five books of scripture will spend themselves unfolding.

In this season finale of Paths to Glory, we set the testimonies aside and sit with one question. Not — how do we find God. But — how is it that God has always been the One who found us first?

From a garden in Genesis to a bush in the back side of a desert, from a boy tending sheep in Bethlehem to a well outside a town called Sychar, from a tax collector called down out of a tree to a thief who could do nothing but turn his head on a cross, from a Palestinian father watching a dusty road every day to a promise in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah that says before they call, I will answer — every page of scripture is the story of a God who moved first.

Because He always moves first.

And He is moving still.

For you.

If you have been rehearsing a speech on the way home — He is not going to let you finish it.

If you have been afraid of what the Father is going to say when you get there — He is not going to say what you are afraid He is going to say.

If you have been a long way off for a long time — He has seen you already.

He came first.

He is still coming first.

Come home.

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If you’re enjoying Paths to Glory, be sure to check out our two other podcasts!

Paths to Glory Kenya shares powerful stories of faith and transformation from the heart of Africa — voices of hope, revival, and purpose.

And for the young — and the young at heart — don’t miss The Jones Family Chronicles, a fun, faith-filled adventure series for the whole family.

You can find Paths to Glory Kenya and The Jones Family Chronicles

The song "Paths to Glory" created with Udio and written by Roy Allison IV.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:16

Everyone has a story. That story is your path. A path filled with trials, triumphs, transformations, and miracles. Welcome to Paths to Glory, where we dive deep into the extraordinary narratives of those who have had their darkest moments turned into beacons of hope. Each episode unveils the raw, heartfelt stories of redemption and renewal, showcasing the awesome power of God. Prepare to be moved, inspired, and reminded that no path is beyond redemption. Now join us and let these powerful stories illuminate your own activity. The most surprising thing in the Bible isn't a miracle. It's not a sea that parted, it's not a bush that burned without being consumed. It's not fire that fell from heaven, or bread that fell for forty years, or the mouths of lions that closed on a man who should have been eaten. It's not a virgin who conceived a child. It's not a stone that rolled away from the tomb. The most surprising thing in the Bible is a single sentence, and it comes early. Adam and his wife had disobeyed. They had eaten the fruit. They knew what they had done, and in the cool of the day they hid themselves. Behind a tree of all things in a garden that he had planted with his own hand. And into the silence of that hiding they heard a sound they had heard every evening in their short lives and had never once thought to be afraid of. They heard God walking. And the sentence he spoke into the trees is the sentence the rest of the Bible is going to spend the next sixty-five books trying to unfold. Where art thou? Not what have you done, not why did you do it? Where art thou? He was looking for them. Before they can find their way back to him, before they even fully know they are lost, he is already looking for them. You see, he came first. He always comes first. That's what I want to talk to you about today. Not the men and women whose testimonies you have heard on this podcast this season, but something older than any of them. Something older than the church you attend. Something even older than the Bible you carry. I want to tell you about a God who has always been there before you knew you needed him. He did not need to come looking. He knew where they were. The one who put the stars in their courses and called the seas by name did not need a moment to figure out which tree they had chosen. He knew every leaf of it. He knew the sweat on their palms, he knew the shame of their nakedness. He knew. And he came anyway. Because the question was never for his benefit, the question was for theirs. Where art thou? That question has been running through every page of scripture. It ran through Abraham sitting in a tent in Ur of Chaldees when a voice he had never heard before said to him, Get thee out of thy country. Abraham did not go looking for that voice. That voice came looking for him. He came first. It ran through Moses, keeping the flock of Jethro at the backside of the desert. Moses had already walked past that particular mountain, that particular bush even, dozens of times, but on the this day, the bush was on fire. On this day it burned without being consumed. And a voice out of that bush spoke Moses' name. Moses did not find that bush. That bush found Moses. He came first. It ran through a boy in Bethlehem, the youngest of eight sons, who was not even invited to the sacrifice when the prophet came. Samuel had come to anoint a king, and Jesse had lined up his seven older sons in order of height, and Samuel had passed by every one of them without a word. And Samuel said to Jesse, are these all the children? And Jesse remembered almost as an afterthought, there remaineth yet the youngest, and behold he keepeth the sheep. He was not looking for a prophet, he was tending sheep. But that prophet had been dispatched with a horn of oil for the express purpose of finding him in a field where nobody else had thought to look. He came first. Do you see what's happening? The whole Bible is a story of God being the one who moves first. Not one time. Not one single solitary time. In all the pages of your Bible, does a human being have the idea to look for God before God has already put the idea in his heart. Not Adam, not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Elijah, not Jonah, not Peter, not Paul. Every single one of them, God came for. He came first. And here's the piece I want you to really think about. Long before any of those men or women had a name, long before any of them had even drawn a first breath, God had a plan. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, he says to Israel through Isaiah, thy walls are continually before me. Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, he says to Jeremiah, and before thou cameest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee. Thou hast beset me behind and before, David sings to him in the one hundred and thirty ninth Psalm, and laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, David says, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. He is there before you get there. He is there before you even think to leave for there. He came first. And I want you to really hear it because this is where a lot of us really get tripped up. That this doesn't stop in the Old Testament. Because you turn the page from Malachi into Matthew, and you get 400 years of what the Jews call the silent centuries. Four hundred years during which no prophet spoke, no vision came, and it looked to every eye that could see like God had gone quiet. He hadn't gone quiet, he had been preparing something. And when the fullness of the time was come, this is what Paul says. God sent forth his son. Not humans reached the right level of enlightenment, not the philosophers of Athens finally worked it out. God sent. Again you see it. He came first. He came to Bethlehem in a body of a woman, and was born in a manger and in swaddling clothes his mother had wrapped him in. He came to Nazareth, he came to Capernaum, he came to a well outside of a town called Sikar, and he sat down at the sixth hour, tired of his journey, and waited. He waited on purpose. Because Jesus had said coming down out of Judea that he must needs go through Samaria. He did not have to go through Samaria. Any observant Jewish man of the first century would have gone around Samaria. Samaria was the wrong side of every tradition he had been raised in. But John writes very carefully and deliberately, he must needs go through Samaria. He must. And he must because there was a woman. She had had five husbands. She was on the sixth now, and he was not even her husband. She was the kind of woman a village turns its back on. She was the kind of woman who came to the well at noon because the other women, the respectable women, came at dawn, and she was tired of all the eyes. She was not looking for him. She was looking for water. And he was already sitting there. He came first. He came first for a tax collector who had climbed a sycamore tree to see over the crowd because he was small of stature and could not see. Zacchaeus, that was the tax collector's name. And Jesus stopped under that tree of all the trees on that road and looked up and called that men by name. Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must abide at thy house. Zacchaeus didn't ask him for that. He had climbed a tree to see. Jesus called him down to come home. He came first. He came first for a paralyzed man whose friends had cut a hole in the roof of a house so they could lower him at Jesus' feet. He came first for a woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years and had spent everything she had on physicians who couldn't help her. He came first for a man born blind whom the disciples wanted to argue about, whose whole life had been quietly moving toward the day a man they had never met would take dirt and spit and open his eyes. And Jesus said, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. He came first. And he came first for a man who was at the time actively persecuting the church. A Pharisee named Saul, holding the coats of the men who threw stones at Stephen, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, on his way to Damascus with papers in his hand that would let him drag Christians back to Jerusalem in chains. That was the man on that road. And the light of heaven fell around him at midday, and he heard a voice out of that light. Saul Saul. Why persecutest thou me? Saul had not been asking for the Lord. Saul had been fighting him, and the Lord came for him anyway. He came first. Which brings me at last to the sentence I want to hand you and have you hold the longest. Because there is a story Jesus told about a son who ran away from home. A son who took his inheritance early, went into a far country, and wasted it all on riotous living. You know the story, you know how it ends. He comes to himself in a pig pen, feeding swine, which is a job no Jewish boy in that day would have been caught doing under any circumstance. And something rises up inside of him and he says, I will arise and go to my father. And here is that sentence I want you to hang on to. When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him. Listen to that again. When he was a great way off, his father saw him. Do you understand what that means? That means his father had been looking. Not once. Not on the day he happened to walk out to the mailbox, not on the anniversary of the day the sun had left, but every day, every single day. Somewhere in that Palestinian village up on the roof of the house, or out in the yard, or standing in the doorway, looking down the dusty road that ran up from the valley, there had been an old man scanning the horizon. He had been looking for a long time. And the day the boy came around that last curve on that road, carrying nothing, having nothing to bring home except his own tired body. His father saw him first. And the parable, if you have read it, does not have that father wait until the son gets home. It does not have that father stand there with his arms crossed on the porch saying, Well, let's see what he has to say for himself.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

It has the father running. And an older Middle Eastern man in a robe does not run. He does not lift up the hem of his garment and sprint down a public road toward a shame-covered sun. But this one does because the father saw him first. The father moved first. The father reached him first. And when the son begins the little speech he had been rehearsing all that way home, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son, the father does not even let him finish. The father is already calling for the robe and the ring and the shoes and the fatted calf and the music and the dancing, because his son was lost and now is found. And what nobody in that parable ever says out loud, but Jesus wants us to hear anyway, is that the reason the Son ever made it home is that the Father never stopped watching for him. He came first. The heart that is beating in your chest today is beating because a God who has known you since before your grandmother's grandmother was born decided that he wanted you to hear this today. He is not far. He's never been far. He wasn't far when you were a child, and something in you already knew, even before you had a language for it, that there was someone him in the room. He was not far when you were a teenager, walking a road you would not walk today, doing things you would not do today, hearing the voice you refused to hear. He wasn't far when you were in the hospital, and he wasn't far when you were in that jail cell, and he wasn't far when you were at the bar, and he wasn't far when you were sitting alone in the car at three in the morning, wondering if anybody knew you were even still alive. Well he knew. He always knew. He came first. Every time you ever felt in your life a small pull toward God that you could not quite explain, every time you have driven past a church and a thoughts come into your mind that you didn't put there. Every time you have heard a song and felt something wet on your face before you understood that you were even crying, well, that wasn't you. That was him. That was him walking in the cool of your day, calling out to you through the trees. That was him passing by the bush you were tending. That was him saying to a prophet somebody has sent to you. Are these all the children? And remembering the one you thought he had forgotten. That was him seeing you when you were yet a great way off. He came first. There is a promise in the 65th chapter of the book of Isaiah that I don't know how anyone reads without weeping. Because in it God says, and it shall come. Come to pass that before they call, and it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer. And while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Before they call, I will answer. Do you know how the answers to your prayers get to you so fast? So fast that it seems like he must have known? Well, he did. He knew. He'd already answered. You were reaching him with a prayer that he had already in eternity decided to hear before you thought to pray it. He came first. It's one thing to know that God has been coming for you. It's another thing to stand up out of the pig pen and start walking toward him. Let me say that again. It's another thing to stand up out of the pig pen and start walking toward him. The prodigal did not just realize his father was waiting. He got up. I will arise and go to my father, he said. You have to arise. You have to turn around from the direction you have been walking, and you have to put your feet down on that road home. And you have to start walking. That is all he is asking you to do. He's not asking you to fix yourself before you come. He's not asking you to have all your questions answered before you come. He's not asking you to explain to him where you've been or what you've done or why you've been gone so long. He knows he's not even surprised. He is just asking you to turn around. Because the moment you turn around, he is going to see you. And if I know my Bible, the moment he sees you, he is going to start running. He is going to run for you. He is going to reach you before you even finish the little speech you have been rehearsing on that way home. He's going to call for the robe, he's going to call for the ring, he's going to call for the shoes and the fatted calf and the music and the dancing. Because his son, his daughter, was lost and now is found. Was dead and is alive again. Somebody listening today has been rehearsing their little speech for a long, long time. Somebody has been afraid of what the father is going to say when they get home. Please hear me. He's not going to say what you're afraid he is going to say. He is going to see you when you are yet a great way off. And he is going to run. And he's going to reach you first because he has always been reaching you first. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. That gift, it's been waiting for you. The one who sent it has been waiting for you. The floor of a church somewhere near you has been prepared for you. Somebody has been praying you home for years, whether you knew it or not. Somebody has been waiting for the sound of your feet on the road for longer than you've even been alive. He came first. He is still coming first. And he's coming for you. Get up. Turn around and just start walking. You won't have to walk very far, I promise you that. Because a father is already running. Running down your path to glory. You've been listening to the Paths to Glory Podcast. To contact us, send your emails to Paths to Glory Podcast at gmail.com. We all travel different paths, so it's important that we remember Proverbs 3, 5 through 6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Our paths to glory. Thank you for joining us.