The Secrecy of God

8. THE SECRECY OF GOD

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us.

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The Bible has much to say about the secrecy of God. “Hast thou heard the secret of God?” asks Eliphaz (). “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him,” exclaims the psalmist (). “Thy Father which is in secret,” says Jesus (). We must never forget that God’s revelation is in every case tempered with reserve. Man is permitted to explore, to research, to discover a great deal, but there is an infinite domain beyond his mental reach. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.” Observe that:

1. The secret things of nature belong to the Lord our God.

One of the world’s greatest astronomers, Sir Isaac Newton, confessed: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

At the close of a magnificent lecture on “The Wonder of the Worlds That Float in Space,” Sir Robert Ball, the first man to weigh the earth, acknowledged: “When I compare what I know with what remains to be known, my knowledge is small and insignificant.”

Thomas Edison, pioneer of electronics, declared, “No one knows one seven-billionth of one percent about anything.”

2. The secret things of the soul belong to the Lord our God.

“He knoweth the secrets of the heart” ().

“God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ” ().

3. The secret things of the church belong to the Lord our God.

“The revelation of the mystery … was kept secret since the world began” ().

“By revelation [God] made known unto me the mystery … which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men” (, ).

4. The secrets things of the future belong to the Lord our God.

“There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets” ().

“He revealeth the deep and secret things” ().

“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him” ().

It is communicated “in the secret place of the Most High” () by “the Father which seeth in secret” (). Is the reason why we know so little of the secret of the Lord perhaps this, that we are not often enough in the secret place with Him?

Ian MacPherson, Usable Outlines and Illustrations, Dollar Sermon Library Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), 16–17.