What can we know?

God requires us to make every effort to learn what he has revealed, and to trust him when he keeps secrets.

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” —Deuteronomy 29:29

You have decisions to make, but you’re not sure what to do.

Things are happening in your life and world that don’t make sense.

You want to understand God, his will, and the Bible, but some things are not adding up.

You really want to know

What you can know is a super important and relevant subject because we need knowledge and we all want to know everything. We are all curious. Literally, if we could, we would be like God and know everything about everything.

We want to know how to do everything with perfect skill and success. How to find perfect happiness, relationships, and peace. How everything works.

And how every event in history actually happened.

We want to know.

The details about how the universe and life began. What the future holds.

When our prayers will be answered. Why something bad happened. How long we will have to wait for that job, marriage, child to be conceived, success on the job, visa approval, breakthrough, healing, baptism in the Spirit, promotion, or answer to our question. Or is our wait in vain?

We want to know what every verse in the Bible means. Why God does what he does.

On and on it goes. So many books, so little time. We want to know.

What God wants us to know

Unfortunately, at least from our perspective, God doesn’t want us to know everything. That’s what the opening Scripture above from Deuteronomy says. There are “secret things,” and then there are “things that are revealed.” And Moses says the one who controls that is God.

In fact it all begins with what God is willing to reveal about himself. You need to know two things about God: He hides himself, and he reveals himself. The Bible says:

“Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15).

“He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth—the LORD God Almighty is his name” (Amos 4:13, NIV).

That means he doesn’t completely hide himself. And he doesn’t completely reveal himself.

At this point there are some things he wants us to know about him and his ways, and so he has revealed those things in the Bible, in nature, in the church, and elsewhere. Otherwise, on our own, we could not know them.

That’s because knowing God is not like studying scientific questions such as how trees grow. No matter how hard we explore, humans cannot know anything about God—literally zero—unless he chooses to reveal it.

But there are other things God has actually chosen to hide. He doesn’t want us to know them now. They are divine secrets. They are mysteries. And no one can uncover what God has hidden.

Mysteries

For example, the two most important things for any human now to know were locked up in a vault called mystery until 2,000 years ago: namely, Jesus and the gospel.

The Bible talks about “God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Colossians 2:2).

And, “the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Ephesians 3:9).

And, “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26).

Let’s continue this crucially relevant subject next week. For now, let’s close with these two foundations:

God’s way: He hides, and he reveals.

Our way: We may or may not pay careful attention to what God reveals. Or we may or may not trust God when he hides himself and his purposes. We want to have control over what we can know. We would like to know everything.