God's Greatest Secret: Conclusion

Live for the Glory of God, With What He Has Given You: His Love

So, this final post will show the outcome of the correct understanding of this passage.

If we understand that God is perfect in wisdom and infinite in Being and knowledge, and that we should trust him for our salvation through the mystery of Christ, the outpouring of this is found in the Shema.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart: it starts with love. If Israel would have realized this, they would have been able to worship their God through their sacrifices and not because of their sacrifices. Here is what I mean.

Do you obey God because “he says to do certain things” or do you obey God because you love him and desire to worship him?

Let me ask you:

Why do you memorize Scripture, read your Bible, pray, come to church and tell others about Christ?


Is it natural because of the outflow of love you have for your Creator and Saviour?

Think of this:

What is the difference in killing an animal for forgiveness of sin because God says so (like they did in the OT), and reading the Bible and praying because God says so? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; My ears You have opened; Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.”
Psalm 40:6-8

If God didn’t desire the sacrifices of animals because he merely said so, what makes you think he desires your sacrifices in the form of bible study, prayer and evangelism, just because he says so? He doesn’t. This is the definition of doing what God says for “fire insurance.”

David says something in this Psalm that gets to the crux of the issue and why God loved David so much…

What does David say in Psalm 40:8?

I delight to do your will...

David does the will of God not merely because he is supposed to, but because he loves God. David exclaims elsewhere:

I love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.
Psalm 18:1-3

So, why does David pray, do the will of God, look to God, read and study his commandments?

Because he loves the God of his salvation, even though it is all a mystery to him.

The question is: Do we?

Deut 29:29’s second half says this:

but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law

God has many mysteries, none that we will ever know, even in heaven, but we are told to observe the things that are revealed to us. The most awesome thing that has been revealed to us is the mystery of God’s salvation, that is, Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:29

We have the all infinite God, all knowing God, that created us, loving us by sending his Son to die for us. He has revealed this to us, it should only be a mystery of why he did this for undeserving whores.

But out of this, we should observe all the words of this law.

We should trust in our God, not to get us out of trouble or to give us things in this life, but our trust should be found in our redemption, our hope should be found in our redemption. This was the cry of David’s heart. It should also be the same with us.

Although we don’t understand everything that goes around us, we do get a grasp of the love of God because it was shown and demonstrated through the death of Christ for us that didn’t deserve it.

May we cry out like David cried out, even when we don’t understand everything:

I love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,

The riddle at the beginning of this series was, “what gets whiter the dirtier it gets?” (a chalkboard)

We could also ask, “Who realizes how white he is, the more he realizes his dirt?”

The answer: Christians

The more you realize how dirty and sinful you are, the more you should realize the greatness that Christ has washed you white as snow.

This secret belongs to God, but may we love him dearly for it and worship him the rest of our days.

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God's Greatest Secret: Part III

The Ultimate Secret: The Messiah

I am not going to try and cover, in one post, all that God promised to deliver the Israelites or all the prophecies that were spoken about their restoration. But, who were the Israelites ultimately waiting for and looking forward to for their restoration?

They were looking forward to the Messiah.

There are many prophecies concerning the Messiah. Like the riddle that we told at first, you might know things about the thing spoken about, but you do not know the substance.

This is how it was with Christ.

In Deut 30:2 it states that when the Israelites obey God with all their heart and soul according to all that God commands that is when God will rescue them.

What is the problem with this if you are an Israelite and God tells you this?

This is impossible.

If the Israelites were honest with themselves they would have understood that this was completely impossible for them to follow. They would know that they must look to another to accomplish this. They would have to look at one that is perfect, without sin.

They must look to God. They must look to God to save them from their sins. They must look to God to not only send them the Saviour, but BE their Saviour.

And God gives them prophecies concerning this all along the way.

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
As He will bear their iniquities.
Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the booty with the strong;
Because He poured out Himself to death,
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the transgressors.
Isaiah 53:11-12

God said this is how it will be done. God said that the one will have to be Immanuel, Eternal Father, Mighty God, the Righteous One. So, in essence, God says, I will send myself to die for you. And after this, I will do something remarkable.

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
Ezekiel 36:26-27

So, back in Deut 30 it says that God will save them if they would obey him with all their heart. God now shows that the only way for this to happen is through the new covenant of blood through Jesus Christ and him dying for their sin and then God putting the new heart in them and cause them to walk in his statutes. This is the only way this will happen.

So, the ultimate secret, the ultimate mystery of salvation came through Jesus Christ. Instead of looking inward to our goodness and keeping of the Law for salvation, we are to look outward and the obedience unto death of our Saviour. This is how this redemption will take place. This is the ultimate secret that God gave the Israelites. But instead of listening to God, they decided to give it the good ole Pharisaical try and desired to try and live perfect lives, instead of looking outward to God, who is the perfect One.

It is almost comical when we see this play out back in Exodus:

So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do!” And Moses brought back the words of the people to the LORD.
Exodus 19:7-8

To think that you can do all that God has commanded is a travesty, and it will lead you directly into hell, because you will look to self instead of the all powerful Righteous One; Christ. Because of them trying to do it all by their own works, and they failed miserably, God tells us what will then have to happen: He will have to do it all himself, he will have to live a perfect life, he will have to die the perfect death, he will have to be risen in the perfect light, all for the sake of his people, ultimately for the sake of his name.

Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Jeremiah 31:31-33

With this in mind our next post will show the outpouring of the life that understands that the most perplexing story to unfold is that a Righteous Saviour would save a whore like me. This life, is lived for the glory of Christ and because of the love that we have for him.

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God's Greatest Secret: Part II

Salvation: Where Our Rest Must Lie

Again, what is the main point of Deut 29:22-30:4? Is it not salvation?

Most of us, when asked what we should do because we do not know the secret things of God, respond by saying what? We respond by saying that we should trust Him. Should we not put our trust in the all knowing God and not ourselves? We probably all know the famous passage in Proverbs:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5

Why? What is the purpose of trusting in God when I don’t have the answers? What is the end result?

Is it not because I trust my God and lean on him for my ultimate salvation for his glory? I mean think of it: Do you think that the martyrs trusted in God merely for their physical lives and for their safety? Or did they trust in God for their salvation?

When we speak of God choosing people for salvation, don’t most of us say, “that isn’t fair!” But, God plainly shows us in his word, that fairness is seen completely different. We think God owes us, for some reason, to bring all to heaven, but look at what some verses say when we think of this term, “the secret things belong to the Lord.” God is going to show us what should perplex us.

I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people,
Who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts,
Isaiah 65:2

All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
Isaiah 53:6

God shows us what should perplex us. It shouldn’t perplex us why God would send sinners to hell, it should perplex us that God spreads out his hands to a rebellious people. This should make us wonder, why does God do this? Think again of the passage at hand. Look again to Deut 29:22-30:4.

What is going on here? What does God say he is going to do? He is going to gather back the people of Israel, even though they have been a wicked people.

This should really have us saying, “I don’t understand why God is so gracious to save a people who don’t desire him, who continually turn from him”

God really gets to the point in Ezekiel 16 by calling Israel, or us, all being whores, and harlots going after other gods. God says, in Jeremiah 3, after talking about how terrible the sin of Judah and Israel was, the following:

Go and proclaim these words toward the north and say, Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the LORD;I will not look upon you in anger. For I am gracious,’ declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your iniquity, That you have transgressed against the LORD your God And have scattered your favors to the strangers under every green tree, And you have not obeyed My voice,’ declares the LORD. Return, O faithless sons,’ declares the LORD; For I am a master to you, And I will take you one from a city and two from a family, And I will bring you to Zion.’
Jeremiah 3:12-14

What?! Why? How could this be? This is the ultimate secret of the Lord. This is the ultimate mystery. How we could be such whores for other gods, so much so that God says in Ezekiel 16:25 that we sit upon the mountain side and spread our legs out for anyone who passes by.

Does that make you cringe? Does that verse in Ezekiel 16:25 make you think that is a little inappropriate for me to say? Are you uncomfortable yet? I hope so, because God is talking about you being a whore. It is a little R rated, is it not? Does anyone desire to grow up to be a prostitute? When God says this it is a little like Nathan and David. God points to how terrible it is to be a whore and a slut, we cringe at those ugly and disgusting people and cry out "SINNERS!" and God looks at us and says, "You are the man!" or "You are the whore!"

That is how terrible you and I are. The secret thing, that is amazing through all this, is that God desires to save you!

Deut 30:3 says, “then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you."

This is not deserved. Again, YOU DO NOT DESERVE THIS! So, if you start to understand that you don’t deserve heaven in any way and that you never deserve God, then when you lean on him and trust him, what is it for? It is trusting in God through all things because he has redeemed you. This is ultimate.

You don’t trust God to get you out of a bind, you don’t trust in God to help you get out of financial trouble, out of trouble at school, out of trouble with the law, or with parents, your spouse, your friends, etc., because you might be punished through terrible decisions. But, you trust God through letting yourself rest in his salvation, not in what he might, or might not, give you on this earth.

This is ultimately why Christ said, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, because you might not have any treasures while you are here on earth besides Christ.

The one who trusts in God because of what he gives or takes away from you is one that trusts in a genie in a bottle, not in the true Yahweh God that delivers you from bondage into his everlasting arms.

This is a mystery why God would do this. Not only why he would do it, but through whom he would do it through. The next post will point us to the mystery of the Saviour who saves us from whoredom.

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God's Greatest Secret: Part I

Because I am a leader in the church and because I interact with a lot of people, I get asked many times on why people go through dry times in their spiritual lives. I have been recently coming out of one of my own, so it is always easier to answer a question when you have been staring at it in the mirror for a little bit. Most of the time, instead of answering this question with a “7 Step Program” of "success", which is really just a way to be a moralistic Pharisee, I take my questioner back to the cross.

In short, the reason we go through dry times, and the reason we go through times to where we feel God is “far off” is so that we can grasp the greatness of God and that a “program” is not what we need, but we need the ultimate treasure: Christ.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a good friend about sin. He is going through a time to where he doesn’t realize why his sin is so forcefully being put in front of his eyes for him to see them laid bare.

Instead of trying to get him to look to the “good things of life” or to dismiss his struggles, I took him to the greatest secret that God has withheld from us: the cross (I’ll explain what I mean by this statement in a later post). He didn’t need me to empathize with him, he didn’t need me to just say, “everything will be okay.” What he needed was the reassurance that his salvation and his life is not in his hands, in his works, but only in the hands and the assurance of his Saviour, Jesus Christ.

This takes me to the next series I want to direct this blog to. It is looking at the Old Testament passage of Deuteronomy 29:22-30:4. In the middle of this passage is one of the most abused passages, myself included, to generate trust in God’s ways and not our ways. It is verse 29 of the 29th chapter of Deuteronomy:

"...the secret things belong to the Lord our God.”

This verse is raped from the original intent of the passage and taken to mean that if you don’t get it, it must be a secret of God. This could be true, but I don’t think this is the ultimate meaning of this term as spoken by Moses. I want to show you that if you can see the ultimate reason for this passage, you will be able to really trust in your God, no matter your circumstance.

Think of a riddle. What is a riddle? Isn’t a riddle something that gives you clues to get you to guess the substance of the riddle at hand?

Here is a quick riddle: What gets whiter the dirtier it gets?

God and his ways are sometimes like a riddle. We know some facts, like the riddle. We know in the riddle above that whatever this “thing” is, it is a “thing” because the term “what” is used, instead of “who.” We also know that it gets white in some way, and also gets dirty in some way. We know some facts, but we don’t know the underlying reasons, or answers to the facts that surround us.

Being in the church age, we have a lot of answers that the Old Testament saints didn’t have available to them. We have, in essence, gotten more of the riddle answered than they did.

I want to show you the ultimate reason that this verse is placed in Deuteronomy. I want to show you the ultimate “riddle” or the ultimate “secret” that God has given us, to completely astonish and perplex us, that in the end, should make us run to him and trust in him even more.

We will see how this verse works out through looking at:

God is a Mystery
Salvation: Where Our Rest Must Lie
The Ultimate Secret: The Messiah
Live for the Glory of God, With What He Has Given You: His Love
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God is a Mystery

The secret things belong to the Lord our God

I have used this verse many times when I have taught, counseled and just brought about theological questions.

I believe the understanding of this verse, must first come in the understanding that God himself, is a secret and a mystery.

You are going to see how this all comes together in the end, but look at Isaiah 55:6-11

This is almost an exact parallel to Deut 29.

What is Deut 29:22-30:3 speaking about as its central theme?

Its central theme is redemption, and we’ll get to that in the next point, but it also speaks of the mystery of God or the secrets of God.

In Isaiah 55 it says that God’s ways are higher than our ways, that his thoughts are not our thoughts.

Why is this? Why is it that his thoughts are not our thoughts and our ways are not his ways?

Let me put it this way.

What would most kids eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner if they got to choose?

Candy

Why won’t the parent let them eat candy all the time?

It is because the parent knows what is best for the child and knows the consequences of the child eating candy and knows the benefit of the child eating well rounded meals.

We are like the child and God is the parent.

Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge And informed Him of the way of understanding?Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales; Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust.
Isaiah 40:13-15

So, God is all knowing: He literally knows all things. Do we know all things? Actually the Bible says quite the opposite. It says that none understand, and have become useless in Romans 3; in Romans 1:22 it states that we profess to be wise, but we are fools.

Isaiah 41:21-24 furthers this thought.

God says that he is the only one that knows all things. He is the only one that can tell us the former events, the events happening now and also the events that will happen. He continues in Isaiah 46:10.

Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;
Isaiah 46:10

Here God takes it even further. He not only is saying that he knows all things but he has a purpose for each thing that happens. So, there is not only things happening which he knows of, but they all have a purpose, and he alone is the one who knows them. So, when a rape happens to a Christian, or anyone for that matter, God knows why this happened. We as humans can know the fact that this person was raped, but we cannot know the purpose. God does. This is how far above his knowledge is when compared to our own.

So, think of this. When we read Deut 29:29 that states, “the secret things belong to the Lord” can we come to the conclusion that this has to be true, that God has secret things, because he knows all things, knows why they happen, and is forever eternal from eternity past to eternity future? Especially when compared to us, who are said to be foolish, worthless, and today we are here and tomorrow we are gone, that our life is like a vapor.

Our understanding compared to God is not even close to the understanding that a child and a parent have, we are even more far off in knowledge and understanding compared to the child.

So, think of my knowledge and my two year old’s knowledge. My knowledge compared to Coleman’s (my two year old) isn’t even close…yet my knowledge when compared to God’s is even a further distance off.

This is why there are secret things that we do not know that only God does.

We will take a look next to where our rest must lie, if we know that the secret things belong to God: Salvation.

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