To know God well is the greatest treasure of life, but this treasure isn’t on the surface and found by intellect, it’s deeper and only found by our spirit
Col 2:2-3 ...That they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of (divine) wisdom and (the) knowledge (of God). NIV
To many, God is a complete mystery. The Bible confirms that God is indeed a mystery. But the word mystery simply means something that is not directly understandable or knowable to natural human intelligence. For reasons that will become clear, God had to hide Himself to our natural faculties while at the same time making Himself freely available and knowable to all, in Christ, if we are willing to go to our deep to find Him.
The unsaved and unspiritual Christian look to their brains to find God and do not find Him
In how many different ways does God, who is a Spirit, try to tell us that He cannot be found or known by the human intellect, which is part of our irrevocably fallen human nature? And yet most Christians still insist on trying to grow spiritually, that is to know God better, through the reasoning faculties of their own intelligence; which is impossible.
Prov 3:5 …Do not lean on your own understanding;
Prov 23:4 …Cease from your own wisdom. KJV
1 Cor 2:14 But the natural man (including the natural part of a Christian) does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they seem absurd to him; nor can he know them (that way) because they are spiritually discerned.
Matt 11:25 Jesus answered and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and learned (the intelligent and educated) and have revealed them to (spiritual) babies”.
These are God’s own words; we can’t find Him with our natural minds, because He has hidden Himself from that part of us. But He can be abundantly found and Hr eagerly reveals Himself to our spirits, the part of us He has or wants to re-birth as His children.
Matt 11:27 (Jesus) ...Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. (well, isn’t this discrimination? No:)
1 Tim 2:3-4 ...God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth (everyone can be saved but few choose to be. why?)
1 Cor 1:26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world's eyes, or powerful, or wealthy when God called you.
Why does God say so few naturally intelligent, rich and influential people in fact enter the kingdom of heaven? Because they put trust in their own intelligence, wealth or power and won’t become and see themselves as little spiritual children in order to receive the much higher wisdom, riches and power of God. It’s our human pride over what we are or possess naturally that poses the greatest barrier to our being born again as a Christian, and then if so, growing in the knowledge of God; since all growth comes on an above-natural plane.
We can’t know God by use of reason, He opens our hearts to know Him, if we accept this
Luke 24:32 ...He (Jesus) opened to us the scriptures. KJV
Luke 24:45 He (Jesus) opened their understanding, to comprehend the Scriptures.
Acts 16:14 ...The Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying.
Were these people randomly selected by God to receive spiritual revelation? Not at all:
Prov 1:23 If you will turn and at My reproof (from trying to know me your own way), I will pour out my Spirit upon you, I will make my words known to you.
1Cor2:9-10 Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. (Do you love Him, first?)
Prov20:27 The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD (the only place where God reveals Himself), searching all the inner depths of his heart (not our heads)
It is a plain Bible fact that God is not knowable to the human intellect, either initially in order to be converted or subsequently in order to grow as a Christian. My Christian life will flourish enormously the moment I fully accept and live in accordance with this fact.
Human reason, which is designed by God to process knowledge obtained through the five physical senses, can neither directly know God nor His will, since both require God to reveal them to our spirit. We can only know that God exists by use of reason, from the evidence of creation. Our spirit or heart is the only part of us designed by God to receive His revealed knowledge of Himself, then communicates this knowledge to our intellect.
Matt 16:8 (Jesus) ...O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves…?
We cannot trust God with our heads, only our hearts were designed to have faith in God:
If we have any relationship with God it is a faith relationship. Not blind faith, but faith that has received in the heart the revealed knowledge of God and His will. The natural human part of us, including our brains, is not designed to, or capable of believing God. Only our hearts can receive His word and His Spirit of faith and can exercise genuine belief in God.
Rom 10:10 For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness... NASU
Heb 4:3 For only we who believe can enter His (God’s) place of rest... NLT
Jer 29:13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
God cannot be directly found with our brains, only with our hearts. How can we say that God is hiding from us, when He says “You will find me when you search for Me with all of your heart”? This means that God is near and can be found by every human being:
Acts 17:27 God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him (with their hearts), though He is not far from each one of us. NIV
Our hearts are our deep, this is what it means to go deep and dig for Him. To set my will and to purpose in my heart to seek Him, whether for the first time or as a Christian. He says “You will find Me”. If we have been separated from God – it is only ever sin that separates us from God – and we have lost our peace, we’ve become irritable, we have no joy or consciousness of His presence, and we want to know how we got separated. We must not look to our heads to get the answer. Oh they will give us an answer, but not the right one that restores us to God. No, we must go deep and dig with our hearts, for it is only there that God can reveal to us what it was that separated us, so that we can confess and forsake our sin and receive God’s mercy, because Christ died for that sin.
Prov 28:13 ...Whoever confesses and forsakes his sins will have mercy.
Eph 4:32 ...Forgive one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.
We must learn to distinguish between intellectual curiosity about scripture, and a heart hunger for the truth. My curious head, which cannot receive God’s answers to questions, can be a major distraction from truth my heart hungers for and that God wants to reveal.
The disciples asked how Christ would be able to reveal Himself to some and not to others:
John 14:21-26 (Jesus) He who has my commandments and keeps them, it Is he who loves me...and I will love him and reveal myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said "Lord, how is it you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered "Those who love me will keep my word, my Father will love them and we will come and make our home with them.
If we hear God’s words with our hearts, by which He imparts Christ’s initial nature to us, and retain them and live by them, we prove we love His words. Since His words are Him, we prove we love Him. And God can now give us His own Spirit and by His Spirit reveal to us more of His words, more of Himself, and by these He makes His home in our hearts.
24 Whoever does not love me does not keep (retain or do) My words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent Me.
26 The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.
What it comes down to is this; God continues to reveal Himself to everyone who loves Him.
So why did God hide Himself from our intellects but reveal Himself to our hearts or spirits?
1. Since we have differing levels of intelligence (IQ’s) if God made Himself knowable this way then clearly He would be favoring the brightest people and could legitimately be accused of being unfair to the less bright. But the truth is “God shows no partiality and is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). Instead, God puts an identical spirit into every new baby (Ecc. 12:7). This spirit is separated from God and dies to Him when, knowing right from wrong, we choose to sin (Isa 59:2). But when we receive God’s forgiveness, because of what Christ did at Calvary, that dead spirit or heart is made alive to God again and God can reveal Himself to us. God re-births with an identical new spirit everyone who receives forgiveness. In this way God is so fair and can never be accused of favoritism.
2. If the knowledge of God and His will could be obtained by reason and did not require God to reveal Himself, then the wicked spirits that rebelled against God, who can reason but will never receive revelation, could deduce God’s plans from the Bible and then thwart His will. If this had been possible they would have prevented Christ’s death.
1 Cor 2:7-8 (Paul) We speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom…the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age (demons) has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. [Who Himself bore all of our sins in His own body on the cross, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness...1 Peter 2:24]. NASU
3. If our intellects could figure out the mysteries of God’s Kingdom then we wouldn’t need God. We wouldn’t need to currently have any relationship with Him; we could grow in the knowledge of Him while still in sin and living independently from Him. This would mean that unrighteous people would have access to eternal life and corrupt the righteous kingdom of God, putting part of it under the god of unrighteousness, Satan. A divided kingdom, Jesus said, would fall. That’s why Adam and Eve were kept from the tree of life:
Gen 3:22 The LORD God said, "Man (after sinning)...now knows good and evil. What if they eat the fruit of the tree of life? Then they will live forever."
24 After banishing them (Adam and Eve) from the garden, the LORD God stationed mighty angelic beings...guarding the way to the tree of life.
Rev 22:14 Blessed are those who wash their robes (from sin), so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the (eternal) city by the gates. NRSV
All the treasure of the wisdom and knowledge of God is buried – buried beneath the surface level of natural human comprehension – to find it a person must go and dig deep
Luk6:47-48 Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house (his Christian life), who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock (of my revealed word).
Virtually all of the earth’s most valuable natural resources, its treasures, like silver and gold and oil lie well below the surface of the earth and in order to obtain them it is necessary to dig deep and either mine them or drill wells to extract them. Likewise, and not by coincidence, all the more valuable treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God do not lie on the surface as if capable of being grasped by natural human understanding. Instead they are buried and their depths can only be explored by the deepest part of the human being – the human spirit, and then only by a re-born human spirit.
Matt 13:44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found…and sells all that he has and buys that field (and that treasure is?).
Ps119:162 I rejoice at Your word As one who finds great treasure (where do I put it?)
Prov 21:20 There is desirable treasure (God’s word), And oil (God’s Spirit to reveal it) in the dwelling of the wise (where does he live? In his heart or spirit)..,
Prov 2:1-5 My son, if you receive my words, And treasure my commands within you (in your heart)…If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures; Then you will …find the knowledge of God.
A mental approach to the Bible will only yield a surface understanding of the written word of God. All the treasures of the Bible lie beneath the surface and are hidden from the intellect or carnal mind and can only be mined by the human spirit re-born through faith in Jesus Christ. And then only to the extent that such a re-born spirit is voluntarily submitted to the Spirit of the Bible, the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who can reveal these treasures to the seeking heart of a Christian.
All the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God are found in the Bible - God’s way:
This is God’s way to find Him This is Man’s way that doesn’t
• With a spirit that is clean from sin With a sin corrupted intellect
• By revelation from God By human reasoning
• To the heart that can see and hear With the brain that is blind
• Through heart belief in God’s words By mental assent of the word
• A revealed knowledge of the Word A sense knowledge of the word
• Holy Spirit dependent Self dependent
• Requires humility – total trust in God Promotes Pride, self sufficiency
• Must be in Christ; spiritually alive to God Is in the flesh; spiritually dead
• Is the way of all spiritual growth and life Is the error of decline and death
• Imparts Christ, the divine truth and nature Imparts lies, Satan is their father
• This is true Christianity This is counterfeit religion
• Results in eternal life in heaven Results in eternal death in hell
Ps 42:7 Deep calls unto deep… God’s deep is calling unto our deep. God, who is a Spirit, is calling to our spirits so that He might reveal Himself and impart all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, which are hidden in Christ, to our hearts through His word, by His Spirit. Are we willing to sever our dependence on our intellects and go deep and stay deep so that we may find the greatest treasure in the universe, a deeper knowledge of God? Treasure that God then will lead us to share, and we will want to share with others.
1 Peter 3:4 Rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, the incorruptible beauty of a meek (tender, hearing) and quiet (humble) spirit, which is of the greatest value in the sight of God (because He can reveal Himself to them).
