Where the Hiding Starts

The first thing humanity did after sin wasn't confess - it was conceal. “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8) Before there was a prison, a cave, or a tomb, there was a tree line - and two people trying to disappear from the One who made them.

We've been hiding ever since. Lies hide. Deception hides. Secret sin hides. Death does its work in the dark. The Bible shows us three kinds of shadows: the ones we hide in, the ones we get thrown into, and one surprising shadow that's the safest place in the universe. And God settled the first question long ago. “Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him?” says the LORD; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:24) The shadows were never hiding places from God - only from each other, and from ourselves.

Secrets Sneak and Sin Sinks

The first shadow is the one we choose. In Joshua 7, Achan buried forbidden plunder in his tent, “hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, with the silver under it.” (Joshua 7:21) and that one secret cost the nation a defeat at Ai.

David hid his sin with Bathsheba behind a cover-up that ended in a man's death (2 Samuel 11). Then Nathan arrived with God's answer. “For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.” (2 Samuel 12:12) The cure is just as plain. “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13) Hiding doesn't protect us. It keeps the mercy out of reach.

Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night” (John 3:2) - he wanted truth but wasn't ready to be seen with it. By John 19:39 he's out in the open helping bury Jesus. Judas went the other direction. “Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night.” (John 13:30) John isn't just giving us the time of day.

Lies Love the Lights-Out

Jesus told us where lies come from. Jesus said of the devil, “he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:44) And He told us why people prefer the dark. “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

Today the darkness has a new tool. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center broke out AI-related fraud for the first time in its 25-year history: 22,364 complaints and about $893 million in losses in 2025. In the 2024 Arup case, an employee joined a video call with a CFO and colleagues who were all deepfakes and authorized 15 wire transfers totaling $25.6 million. The same report counts more than 75,000 sextortion complaints, including more than 5,700 submissions involving minors referred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Evil still needs the dark, and now it fits in a pocket.

But Jesus already told us how this ends. “For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.” (Luke 12:2) Lies live in the shadows, but their lease is short.

Death Dwells Among the Dead

Death has always preferred the dark. When Jesus crossed the lake to the Gerasenes, He met a man who had moved into the graveyard. “And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.” (Mark 5:5) Isolation, torment, self-harm, living among the dead - that's what the shadow does when it's the only home you have.

Then Jesus spoke. “Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind.” (Mark 5:15) From tombs to sitting, from naked to clothed, from torment to a right mind. Light restores what the shadows steal. And he didn't go back into hiding - he Mark 5:20 proclaimed what Jesus had done for him across the Decapolis.

David knew you can pass through that valley without moving in. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me” (Psalm 23:4) - through, not stay. At the cross, even creation went dark (Luke 23:44), because the Light of the world stepped into the deepest darkness there is so that no one has to live there.

Caves, Pits, and Prisons

The second kind of shadow is the one you didn't choose. Not every dark season in the Bible was caused by sin, and God was working in every one.

Elijah ran to a cave after Mount Carmel (1 Kings 19:9). God wasn't in the earthquake or the fire. “And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:12) He met Elijah in the cave with a whisper and sent him back out with an assignment (1 Kings 19:15-16).

Joseph went from a pit (Genesis 37:24) to a prison, yet “the LORD was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.” (Genesis 39:21) Then in a single day, “they brought him hastily out of the dungeon” (Genesis 41:14) and he became second in command over Egypt (Genesis 41:40-41). The shadow was preparation.

Daniel's den was sealed with a stone and the king's signet (Daniel 6:17), but in the morning he told who had been in there with him. “My God sent His angel and shut the lions' mouths, so that they have not hurt me” (Daniel 6:22). Cave, dungeon, den - God was in every one, and nobody stayed.

The Shadow That Shelters

The third kind is the strangest. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” (Psalm 91:1) The Hebrew word for shadow there, and in David's prayer to be hidden under the shadow of God's wings (Psalm 17:8), is tsel - shade, protection, defense. So the question isn't whether you're in a shadow. It's whose.

Jesus saw a day when God's people would need that shelter. “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” (Matthew 24:16) John saw it from heaven's side. “Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.” (Revelation 12:6) When the Antichrist turns on the Jewish people, the place they run to isn't abandonment. It's a place prepared by God.

History has its examples. Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jews from the Nazis in Haarlem behind a false wall, in a space no bigger than a closet. After an informant betrayed them and the whole family was arrested on February 28, 1944, the people inside were not found, and they stayed two days without food or water until the Gestapo stopped watching the house. The family is credited with saving an estimated 800 Jews. Her father and sister died in the aftermath, but Corrie survived. A dark closet became the shadow of God's wings.

Richard Wurmbrand spent fourteen years in Communist Romanian prisons, three of them in an underground cell with no lights or windows. Years earlier, at a government-run gathering of some four thousand church delegates, he warned his wife Sabina that speaking up would cost him. She answered with “I don't wish to have a coward as a husband.” He stood up and spoke. After he was ransomed out of Romania, he co-founded Voice of the Martyrs. The forced shadow became a megaphone.

And it isn't only history. Human Rights Watch reported that on January 6, 2026, Chinese police raided the home of the Early Rain Covenant Church leader, weeks after about 100 members of Yayang Church in Wenzhou were reportedly arrested. Last October, nearly 30 pastors and staff of Zion Church were detained in a nationwide operation. These believers meet in living rooms because the open light isn't permitted, and they keep worshiping anyway.

The shadow you hide in because of what you did and the shadow God hides you in because of Whose you are can look alike from the outside. One is shame. The other is shelter. What changes is who's in there with you.

Saturday in the Silent Tomb

Think about Saturday. Friday had the darkness and the cross. Sunday had the empty tomb. Saturday was a stone, a seal, and silence, with the disciples hiding behind locked doors (John 20:19). Nothing happened that anyone could see. That's what shadow seasons feel like. But the tomb was never defeat - it was staging. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.” (John 20:1) The resurrection started before the sun came up.

And the angel's announcement is the heartbeat of this episode. “He is not here, but is risen!” (Luke 24:6) God working in the dark is not God being absent. The Father was doing His greatest work on the day the world saw nothing.

Light Wins the Dawn

So how do we get out? “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.’” (John 8:12)

And He didn't just call Himself the light. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6) The way out of the shadows is a Person, and the Truth and the Light are the same Person. Lies need the dark. Truth never has to hide. And the darkness has already lost the contest. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:5)

Overcoming comes by walking in that light, and we don't walk alone. “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7) Light is community. Shadows isolate. The man in the tombs was alone, but the church in the light is together. And Paul reminds us who we are now. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:8)

If you're in a dark place you didn't choose, David has a word for you. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall fall on me,’ even the night shall be light about me; indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.” (Psalm 139:11-12)

Lamps, Not Baskets

The light isn't only for us. “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matthew 5:14) Nobody lights a lamp to hide it under a basket (Matthew 5:15). Jesus sent Paul “to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). The people living in deception, addiction, and secret sin aren't the enemy. They're the ones He sent us to.

And remember Lazarus. “Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Loose him, and let him go.’” (John 11:43-44) Jesus does the calling out. We do the unwrapping.

Here's my challenge, and I want you to do both parts before the week is over. First, name the one thing you've been keeping in the dark - a habit, a secret, a bitterness, a lie - and tell one trusted believer who will pray with you and walk with you. “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:16) Second, think of one person living in a shadow right now, whether it's deception, addiction, or a lie they've built a life around. Don't lecture them. Call them, take them to coffee, invite them to church, or tell them what Jesus did for you. Let Jesus do the calling out. You just be ready to unwrap.

Lies live in the shadows. Deception hides there. Death happens there. But truth walks in the light, and so can you. Come out. Walk in the light.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version (NKJV) unless otherwise noted.