Secret Things

SECRET THINGS

 

 

Perhaps  you know someone  that has asked you the question, "What is your favourite Bible verse?" Most Christians have asked or been asked that question. This is impossible to answer for obvious reasons.  As we all have a number of favourites. However when we read about earlier Christians  we can begin to see what they quote often. 

In the case of  the Reformer John Calvin, here is one he quotes a lot.

It says, "The secret things belong to the LORD Our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." 

( Deuteronomy 29:29 )

This verse is profound, because it remind us of a basic truth. This is a truth that we easily comprehend because we all know of events, people and things that God has not revealed to us.

 There are things about God and His work that we could not understand and many things that, in His wisdom, He has decided to keep from us.

Job, Old Testament saint, learned this lesson. He suffered in many terrible ways and even after God appeared to him, he did not learn why he had suffered. But Job himself says, "Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know"

 (Job 42:3). 

Job's encounter with God made him acutely aware that there were many things that he did not understand, many truths that were beyond his understanding 

In the New Testament, this truth is echoed, by the Apostle Paul

writing "For we know in part and we prophecy in part." Then he adds: "For now we look in a mirror dimly, but then we shall know face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 (1 Cor. 13:9, 12).

There are many things that God has chosen not to explain to us. God knows all and is sovereign in all. But our knowledge is partial. At least until we reach Heaven.Then as my Dear Wife once said, then,even then,we probably won't care.

There are secret things that belong to the Lord. But God, in His kindness, has given us a distillation  of His all sufficient Word.

My thanks to those titans of the faith who have gone before.