“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law”

(Deuteronomy 29:29).

Have you ever noticed how quickly your interest picks up when someone whispers to you, “Let me tell you a secret”? Just let someone beckon you to hold your ear a bit closer while he speaks softly behind the back of his hand, and your attention stands on tiptoe.

Why are we all so interested in secrets? I’m afraid it is one sign of our Original Sin. We want to know what we are not supposed to know or what others don’t know, because, in our own thinking, it exalts us above others. It puffs up our pride to be in the know. But our interest in learning secrets is also an indication of the divinity God has set in our hearts, that spark of eternity that has propelled the questioning soul of man up from the slime of the cosmos to wrest from nature the answer of one secret after another, to think God’s thoughts after him. Man’s interest in the secret, the unknown, the mysterious, is indicative of both his sublimity and his degradation.

Nowhere has the secret, the unknown, been more intriguing to the mind of man than in the realm of religion. In expressing his religious instinct, man has universally dramatized the secret and mysterious and enshrined it in his religion.

At the very heart of Hebrew temple worship was that mysterium tremendum, the holy of holies, a small, secret, darkened room into which no person was permitted to enter save one man, the high priest, and he on only one appointed high day in the year. The ancient Greeks had a religion that taught that the messages of the gods were inscribed in secret code on the veins of oak leaves and only the priest, learned in such secret crafts, could interpret the Olympian pronouncements to mortals. In the old mystery religions so-called divine secrets were revealed in the initiation ceremonies of the neophytes. Only one who had been initiated knew the secret, divine wisdom.

As the Pharisees of Jesus’ day kept demanding from him a sign, saying, “Show us a sign from heaven” — a startling, secret revelation — so people today are still demanding of religion that it satisfy their insatiable curiosity about the secret, the mysterious. Witness the sects to which the multitudes flock where the stock in trade is talking in unknown tongues or searching the Scriptures for secret, hidden prophecies of startling events about to take place in the immediate future.

A few years ago I fell into conversation with a chance traveling com­panion. He was a very intelligent man whose obsession was searching the Scriptures for obscure passages that he pieced together and in some mysterious manner spliced with the dimensions of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, coming out with prophecies he said had been fulfilled concerning Adolf Hitler and the Second World War, a clear prediction of the date the Third World War would break out, and, wonder of wonders, the precise moment God had in mind for finishing off this little show of world history! What that fellow had a big dose of we all have in more or less degree. People everywhere have an insatiable curiosity about the secret things of religion.

So Moses’ farewell words to the children of Israel, which we read from the book of Deuteronomy, are quite pertinent for us: “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” When Moses-the man who had seen God face to face, who had put off his shoes on the holy ground before the burning bush, who had communed with God in the smoking, shaking mountain, and whose face had shone from the glory of that experience — came to the end of his life and bid goodbye to the people whom he had loved and liberated, he gave them as his final advice: “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

In our religion there are two elements: the secret and the revealed, the known and the unknown. Moses’ word to us is that we concentrate on what has been revealed, rather than bothering too much about the secret and unknown. Mark Twain said that he had never been too bothered about those portions of the Bible he could not understand; it was the part he could understand that gave him the most trouble!

Well, what is the revealed and not secret in our religion? First there is the moral law. This is what Moses was talking about specifically. “Don’t trouble yourself about the deep secrets of God, which you can’t understand,” Moses is saying. “The ten commandments he gave us should occupy all your religious interest and zeal. Just major in keeping them. Worship the one, true God. Don’t make any idols or images to use in worship, for this leads to wrong impressions, for God is a spirit. Be reverent before him in word, thought, and deed. Remember the Sabbath day, one day out of seven, to keep it holy. Honor and respect your parents. Never lie; never steal; never commit adultery; be faithful to the life partner God has given you. Never take the life of another human being. Be content with your lot in life and guard your heart from covetousness.

“Let this law that God has revealed to you be the principal concern in your religion, rather than speculating on why he gave this law and not another, or how God’s righteous judgments will ultimately be worked out.”

What else is revealed and not secret in our religion? That the way to come to God is through Jesus Christ, his divine Son. Did not Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me?” He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all human striving, and he holds the keys of life and death.

The deep secret of how the great Creator could be the created, of how divinity could become humanity, of how the Eternal could enter into time God has not revealed. Nor has he made known the great mystery of just how the Savior’s sacrificial death could atone for the whole sinful race or by what secret process his broken body was raised from the tomb and given glory. These are secret things that belong to God, but the revelation of Christ’s heavenly beauty and his saving power for lost sinners God has made known and given to us.

What else is revealed and not secret in our religion? That the way God comes to us is by his Holy Spirit. “Nothing is more certain,” said Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher, “than that we are ever in the presence of an infinite energy from which all things proceed.” Who could doubt this who has lived through a springtime and watched while suddenly, miraculously, the stripped and barren trees slip over their uplifted arms glorious green garments of ten thousand times ten thousand leaves and the flowering shrubs burst forth in all the rainbow’s hues? How that resurrection power of the springtime operates is a deep mystery well-nigh incomprehensible to us, but that it does is revealed and known by all.

The Gospels reveal the fact of the Incarnation, the coming of the Son of God in human form, and the Book of Acts reveals the fact of the coming of the Holy Spirit with power into the human lives of those disciples as they waited in Jerusalem.

“Wait for the promise of the Father,” said Jesus. “Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” They waited — that is, they trusted and believed and prayed and stayed in the fellowship — and the promised power came. By the Spirit of the living God they became the few mighty ones who turned the world upside down.

It is not revealed to us by what mysterious, unseen avenues and agents the Almighty operates — whether by guardian angels or other heavenly messengers. But what is revealed and known to us is that prayer, worship, study of God’s word, trustful waiting on the Lord, relying upon him rather than self, and remaining in the fellowship of the saints — these are the channels through which the power of God comes into our lives, transforming our weakness into strength and blessing us with personal power, peace, and poise. This is the testimony of all the saints of all the ages.

Furthermore, our text reminds us that these revealed things of God — the moral law, the Redemption through Christ, the channels for the indwelling of the Spirit-are not only the known and revealed things of God, but they are what he has committed to us, what he has made our own, what he has given to us and to our children for our inheritance, forever. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever.”

And yet we won’t claim our inheritance. We had rather consult astrologers or spiritualists or fortunetellers or delve into occult, mysterious speculations than take the plain path of religion revealed to us. For me the greatest tragedy of our present time is the repudiation of our great traditions. How many of us will now sincerely pray with John Baillie, as put forth in A Diary of Private Prayer, “Grant, O Father, that I may go about this day’s business with an ever-present remembrance of the great traditions wherein I stand and the great cloud of witnesses which at all times surround me, that thereby I may be kept from evil ways and inspired to high endeavour”?

“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Here is the purpose of the revealed things of God that he has made known to us and given us and our children for our inheritance: that we may do all the words of the divine proclamation.

Joseph Parker writes in The People’s Bible:

A word is to become a deed: a thought is to be embodied in expressive action…. The architect draws his plans not that they may be exhibited as pictures but that they may be built up into visible and useful edifices. If the builder has taken the architect’s plans, framed them in gold, and hung them up in the best room of his house, he has not honoured the plans but dishonoured them…. Have we not framed the law of God and made a picture of it and worshipped the letter with a species of idolatry? What have we done with the Bible? We have published it in letters of gold; we have bound it in richest morocco; … but where is the mansion of a noble, holy, and useful life? We received the law that we might “do” it; if we have failed in the doing our admiration is hypocrisy and our loudest applause is but our loudest lie.

The Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ, has come, and we have professed our faith in him as our divine Lord and personal Savior, but have we made real our profession by doing what he commands?

Jesus said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

Let the word of the Lord prevail!

• Scripture Reference: Deuteronomy 29:29-0 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : God — Knowableness; Revelation; 617 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 5/7/1950 • Last Preached: 4/30/1989 • Rating: 2 • Book/Author References: n/a