Notice these words: ‘Jesus hid himself.’ Now you may be a superficial believer – you only assent to Christ; you are not really his. Your life isn’t changed, you don’t belong to him, obey him, honour him, love him, do everything you do to bring glory to him. Well, Christ will hide himself from you. You won’t know him; you won’t know his great answers to your prayers; you won’t know his blessing; you won’t have any assurance of salvation. You will have no spiritual experience, no salvation, no blessing, no awareness of the presence of Christ in your life – what a tragedy.
I was reading an explanation of this once and it was from a good source, but I think it was mistaken. It said, what happened was this: they were so furious they were going to stone him for blasphemy there and then – they could not contain themselves – that’s right. They went to a part of the temple where there was reconstruction going on, and building, and they picked up huge stones with which to stone him – that’s right too. But then the explanation went on: and why they were in the process of getting the stones, Christ hid Himself among his disciples, or sympathisers, and sneaked out through the crowd, so that they lost him, and they couldn’t see him. Now, actually, it is well intended, but that is not a good explanation. When you consider that the disciples were vastly outnumbered by furious, self-righteous Jews who wanted him stoned, they would never have lost sight of him, had he made himself just a fugitive and exercised only human power to get out, and to sneak away. This is a miraculous event, just as on other occasions when Christ walked through the midst of his persecutors, and they were totally unable to lay hands on him; perhaps temporarily blinded to him – who knows what method God used. ‘But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple’ – with full dignity – ‘going through the midst of them, and so passed by.’ It’s the language, not of the Lord sneaking out, but of a miraculous walking out, because it was not yet time – six or seven months yet before the divine plan said he would be executed, or arrested - and he went.