Thy Kingdom Come # 14

3. The Kingdom and the Name (continued)

Revealer of Secrets

Of course the Lord knows all the secrets. He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10); "the darkness and the light are both alike" to Him (Psalm 139:12). He is the Holder of Secrets. But He is also the "revealer of secrets" (Daniel 2:47). He wants to reveal His mind to men; He longs to find those who can share His confidences. It is His good pleasure to make known to His people that which they could never find out for themselves. For this reason He has given us His Word. Those who wrote the Scriptures needed revelation, but we who read them also need the Spirit's enlightenment, if we are to understand them to profit. Not only the apostle who wrote but the saints who read must have the "Spirit of wisdom and revelation" if they are to know God's secret - His "mystery", as the New Testament calls it. It is a waste of time to open your Bible if you do not, at least in intention, pray the psalmist's prayer: "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" (Psalm 119:18). The Lord wants us to pray this prayer, because He really wants to answer it. Above all, He wants His people to know "the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden" (Colossians 2:2, 3). He is the Revealer of Secrets, and we may know Him as such if we wait before Him in the same humility and faith that characterized Daniel.

The only way in which we can understand Divine secrets is by the Lord revealing them to us. None of the wise men of Babylon could discover what God was saying. Daniel and his friends had apparently completed three years' training, and so had acquired much of this world's wisdom in addition to that which was natural to them. None of this helped them. Neither natural ability nor acquired education can teach us the simplest matters of spiritual truth. We learn them only by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. Let us believe that God wants to give us this revelation; that He really longs for us to have the eyes of our heart enlightened. This was one of the differences between Daniel and the magicians. Daniel really believed that God was able and willing to make known His mind - that He was not mocking them by capriciously hiding the secret, but was provoking them to humility and prayer that they might receive light from Heaven. A really teachable spirit is essential to such an understanding.

Such insight may save us from spiritual defeat. The three were not so frightened and overwhelmed as the rest by Nebuchadnezzar's great image, because they knew its end. It "became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors: and the wind carried them away .." (2:35). Revelation saves you, for it shows you God's viewpoint and delivers you from satanic deception. This principle worked all through Daniel's life: it was his understanding of God's secrets which made him the man he was, and made his service to God so effective. The great criterion of distinction between between a mental grasp of ideas about the truth and a heart enlightenment from God is the difference that it makes in life and practice. God reveals His secrets, not to satisfy our curiosity, but to make us spiritually effective in His kingdom.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 15 - (The God of Heaven)