The Secret Things And The Revealed Things

THE SECRET THINGS AND THE REVEALED THINGS—Dt. 29:29

If you could know the future, would you do things differently?

***I was playing basketball with my brother, and I noticed an older guy who seemed to play every day. I asked my brother what he did for a living, and my brother informed me that he hadn’t worked in years. It seems that he bought stock in a small company called Microsoft, and he did pretty well in his investment. If we could only know the future…**

Would you want to know all that the future will bring, even this year? Would you want to know what will happen to your health, or the ones you love, this year? Would you want to know the challenges you will face, and the opportunities and joys that will come to you? Would you want to know what will happen in the world this year—in the stock market, or the world at large?

If you did know any of those things, would you do anything differently? Do you have any control over what will happen in your life this coming year?

Moses is speaking to God’s people, the Israelites, shortly before they enter the Promised Land. He reminds them of what God has done for them in the past few years, and then he challenges them to trust and obey God in the future. In the middle of his sermon, we find this:

Read Deuteronomy 29:29.

THERE ARE THINGS THAT ARE SECRET; they are not revealed to us in advance.

We can’t know many events in our future: our health, actions of other people, or how our circumstances might change. On a global scale, we can’t know whether there will be prosperity or recession, war or peace, hurricanes or pandemics.

We might want to know what is coming, and take control! The desire to know and control the future is as old as Moses.

Read Deuteronomy 29:16-18.

Why would God’s people be tempted to worship idols? It was an attempt to control the unknown! Pagan rituals were a kind of sympathetic magic, bringing rain and healthy babies. Divination, using the innards of animals, promised guidance and insight. Sacrifices attempted to appease the gods, heading off catastrophe. There was a social element as well: Worshipping with pagan neighbors fostered peace.

It all sounds so strange to us. Yet the desire to control the unknown remains. We depend on science and technology to solve the world’s problems. We depend on medicine to keep us healthy. We depend on government and political solutions to provide stability and control. We depend on work and investments for security.

None of these are bad things, and of course we should plan for the future and act wisely. These things can become false gods, however. Science and technology can be misused. Politicians can be worshipped, and power can be used for evil. Work can become all-consuming, and wealth can be hoarded.

False gods cannot secure the unknown, leading to disappointment and disillusionment. We are irritated when doctors can’t heal us. We are devastated by destructive storms or pandemics. We are at a loss when the stock market tanks or a job is lost. We are frustrated by corruption in government and the failure of political solutions.

The most dangerous false god is not those things, however, but ourselves. We can easily think that we have everything under control. When things go as we planned, we claim the credit for being so wise and resourceful. When things don’t go our way, we blame other people for disrupting our plans.

The Apostle James warns us about putting ourselves in the place of God: (James 4:13-16) “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” And you are not God!

Does that mean that we should not make plans for the future, or that it doesn’t matter what we do? Should we just sit back and let tomorrow come to us? No!

THERE ARE THINGS THAT ARE REVEALED TO US, and we should act on them. Read Deuteronomy 29:29.

Moses specifically refers to the “the words of this law.” God gave the law to guide his people.

The Ten Commandments are a good example of what the law reveals. The law doesn’t reveal to us the stress we might have in the coming year, but it does reveal that by keeping the Sabbath of rest and worship, we will have resources to handle the stress. The law does not reveal struggles we might have in our family this year, but it does set the boundaries of marital faithfulness and honoring parents. The law does not reveal the challenges we might face in business dealings, but it does reveal that honesty must guide us. The law does not reveal how people will treat us, but it does tell us that we should “not kill,” or as Jesus explained, not try to destroy people. The law will not reveal whether we will prosper this year, but it does reveal that we will be happier and healthier if we do not covet.