Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever… We have come to associate secrecy with selfishness, yet all nature proves that in Divine administration secrecy and benevolence may co-exist. As rapidly as we are pointed to the mystery we' should direct our eyes to the fatherhood. Do men say that God keeps to Himself the mystery of the sun? Our answer should be that He turns upon us the full revelation of the light. Does God keep to Himself the secret of germination? On the other hand, He gives us the revelation of golden harvests; the spring kept the secret of her heart, but the autumn has filled our barns with plenty. Thus enough is kept hack to prove the power, and enough is given to establish the mercy. It is not only right, it is necessary that the father should know more than the child. Is a father less a father because of his superior knowledge? Is not his very superior knowledge one of his highest qualifications for discharging his duty as a father? Mystery is the seal of the infinite, yet benevolence is perpetually present in the providence which guides human life. You have seen a blind man led along the highway by a little child, to whose young bright eyes he commits himself in faith and hope. Man is that poor blind wanderer through the way of God's mysteries, and that little guide represents the benevolence, the mercy the tenderness with which God leads us from day to day, and will lead until the time of the larger revelation. The commonest mercy of the daytime flames up into a fire column that lights men through the gloom and trouble of the night. We must not look at the mystery and forget the benevolence. The very wealth of God makes us covetous. Does poverty provoke envy? We look not so much at what God has given as what He might have given. We read the love through the mystery, rather than the mystery through the love. Men like to penetrate into the hidden. They flatter it, they exalt it, they say it is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise; and having wrought themselves up into this delusive appreciation of its value, they put forth the thievish hand, and the fancied blessing turns to a scorpion's sting. We are not to anticipate our course of study; the volumes will be handed to us one by one. Let us understand what we now can, and in doing so let us increase in knowledge; understand that in all the wastes of folly there could be no greater fool than he who would not believe his father's telegram because he cannot understand the mystery of the telegraph. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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