I am going to read one verse to start; well, two verses. Proverbs 25:1:
These are also proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out.
I do not know why that verse is there. I do not know why God gives us that information. I have wondered about that for awhile. It is an interesting tidbit of information that God is giving us, that these are the proverbs of Solomon, and we know that. We are aware of that because Solomon was used of God to write the Proverbs. But it also tells us, “which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out.”
I tried reading the accounts of Hezekiah in the Bible, and I did not see any reference to Solomon or to Proverbs or anything like that. And the word “copied out” is only translated in the English as “copied out” in this verse. Mostly, it is translated as “removed,” like when Abram removed from one place to another place. And so:
…the men of Hezekiah king of Judah removed.
I am not sure exactly what God intends to tell us by that, but I thought I would mention it because it is totally in keeping with what we are going to talk about today, and that is how the Bible is a very difficult Book. The Bible is extremely difficult to understand.
There are all kinds of things in the Bible, many, many verses that I do not understand, chapters and large portions of Scripture that I do not really have much of a clue to what God is meaning by them, why He put them there. There are all kinds of Scripture that we know is inspired by God and we know that He gives it to us in order to bring the whole counsel of God, the whole message of the Gospel, but we really have to shake our head sometimes and say, “I do not know. I do not know.” Actually, this fits right in with Proverbs 25:2:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
And that is all we can say sometimes, that it is God’s doing. If we do not understand some of the Scripture, one of the reasons could be (and is) that God has hidden it. He has hidden it. He has concealed it.
First of all, in this verse, He has already concealed something in verse 2 that we just read.
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing…
What thing? Any old thing? What thing has He concealed? Well, when we go to the Hebrew and we look at this particular word that is translated as “thing,” it is the Hebrew word dabar, which is the Hebrew word for “word.” It is the typical, the normal Hebrew word for “word.”
In Psalm 119:9, it says:
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.
Dabar; that is that same word that you find many times in Psalm 119 because Psalm 119 is a Psalm that God has given to glorify His Word, to really point out how wonderful the Word of God is and what a tremendous blessing it is.
So here in Proverbs 25:2:
It is the glory of God to conceal a word…
It is His glory to conceal a word, and the Bible is the Word of God. The whole Bible is the Word of God.
Is it true—like some people, some pastors or some churches teach—that the Bible is not that difficult or hard to understand? Is that true? Remember what we read a few weeks ago in Isaiah 55? This is the first reason I would say that we have to realize, when we come to the Bible, that it is not easy to understand. Isaiah 55:8-9:
For my thoughts…
And this is God speaking:
…are not your thoughts…
And that is referring to us.
…neither are your ways my ways, saith JEHOVAH. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God is speaking of His thoughts, up against or compared to our thoughts: your thoughts, my thoughts; it does not matter. You can find the most brilliant of men and say that he is the man that we would want to be the example of mankind. He is brilliant; he is a genius; he has a super I.Q. Let us pit him, his thoughts—Einstein, Einstein’s brilliant mind—against the Mind of God. And God does not change His statement, “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, as the heavens are higher than the earth.”
I kind of like this example. Go home and talk to your cat. Go home and talk to your cat. Go ahead. (Well, if you have a cat; there are plenty of strays around.) Go home and find a cat and talk to the cat and have a conversation with the cat and try to express your feelings and your thoughts and your ideas to the cat. Actually, animals can know a few certain things. If you walk to the kitchen, the cat can come out and really communicate to you that it wants some food.
But basically, basically, how much communication can a human being have with a cat or any kind of animal? Very little. Very little. Why is that? Because man’s thoughts—your thoughts, my thoughts, anybody’s thoughts—are higher than an animal’s thoughts. Right? We cannot communicate, except in very basic elementary things, because it is an animal and we are a man.
We are made “in the image of God.” However, the cat is a creature and I am a creature. Any person, any man, is a creature. So we have a lot more in common than we would like to admit.
And actually, our thoughts are higher than the cat’s thoughts, but not really too much higher. They are higher; they are definitely higher. But there is some comparison, there is some scale that you could put it on, from man’s thinking to an animal’s thinking.
However, when God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” and He is talking to us, He is talking to people, we have to realize that He is the Creator and we are a creature with tiny, finite, little peanut-sized minds that we possess, compared to the Infinite Mind of the Brilliant God who knows all things and has all knowledge. There is nothing God does not know about any one person in the world, about any individual’s life and what they have ever thought or will think, and He knows that throughout history and so on. Try to figure out how much data that is alone.
You see, God’s mind is brilliant and God wrote the Bible. He used men; He moved holy men of old to write. But He used them like someone dictating to a scribe or like a CEO dictating to his secretary. God moved them to write. God has written the Bible. The Word of God comes from the mouth and the mind of God. It is from His mind.
And so, now here we come to the Bible and we are going to understand, we think—we are going to understand what is written here very easily, or maybe not too easily, but we will understand it. We will use our reason, we will use our logic, we will use our study ability, and we will figure it out.
Has man figured it out? Why is it that so many churches teach different things? You can pick any doctrine from the Bible, like baptism. How many different teachings are there on baptism?
If you go to a Baptist church, you will hear one thing. If you go to a Catholic church, you will hear another thing. If you go to a Presbyterian church, you will hear a third thing. But there is only one truth. There is only one baptism. Right?
Men have reason. They will understand it. They will figure it out. And really, when we have ten different teachings on baptism, we have nine lies, at least, possibly ten, and there is only one truth. There is only one truth. And that is how it is with many, many teachings and doctrines of the Bible.
What has happened today, because the Bible is difficult and hard to understand, is that they think that the problem is the language of the King James. It is because of the “thees” and “thous.” Get rid of the “thees” and the “thous.” Update it to contemporary English. Give the people the NIV. Give them “Good News for Modern Man.” Give them this version and that version, and then they will understand.
Has it worked out that way? With all of these updated, new-and-improved, contemporary English versions, do the people in the churches understand more of what the Bible is teaching? No; far less, far less than any previous generation. They do not understand the Word of God.
Actually, God wrote the Word in an awkward way in many, many places. And when they try to smooth it out, when they try to make it more palatable and easier to understand, they lose a lot of what God intended in giving us His Word in the way that He did.
So the answer is not finding an easier version. That is not going to help anybody to understand. But, you see, we have some serious difficulties to overcome if we are going to understand the Bible. And one is that we have to recognize that God is supremely higher than us and that we can never comprehend His thinking.
For instance, go to 1 Corinthians 2. God actually tells us this in 1 Corinthians 2. He lets us know this. Let me begin reading in verse 7. 1 Corinthians 2:7-11:
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
It said it right there in verse 11:
…the things of God knoweth no man…
We can never know what the Bible is saying based on our own ability, our own study habits, our own understanding. No human being, no person is going to correctly understand what the Bible is saying.
It is kind of like, and this is not a good example, but me saying that I understand what is going on inside another person. I understand what you are thinking. I understand what you are feeling. I understand the deep-down things that are going on in you.
Do I? Does anybody really know us? Does anybody really know what is going on within us? Even if you reveal some of it, and no one reveals it all, but even if you reveal some of it and tell another person, they have limited knowledge of you. Actually, even the individual themself does not know. I do not know myself completely, and no person does completely because there is a deep-down conscience at work in man that even we are not totally aware of.
And God is saying in 1 Corinthians 2:11:
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save (or except) the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
God’s Spirit knows His Word. God gave the Word. It comes from His mind. He knows it, of course.
But just like it is foolish to say that I know anything that is in you, how much more foolish would it be to go to God and to say, “I know what You are saying in the Bible. I know what the mind of God is. I know what God is saying through His Word.” Because we do not know.
We do not know, but the Spirit of God knows. That is why in verse 12, we read:
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
You see, God gives His Spirit and that is the only way that we can begin to understand what the Bible is saying, because it is really beyond us. It is beyond our ability to comprehend the Infinite Mind of God.
On top of that, if God just gave His Word, as it is, we would struggle mightily; we would have great difficulty. But actually, on top of that, did you know that God wrote the Bible in order to hide His Word? Not only did He give us the Scripture, but He wrote it in such a way as to hide it, just as we were reading in Proverbs 25:2.
Let me go back to that verse. Proverbs 25:2 says:
It is the glory of God to conceal a word…
It is the glory of God to conceal a word.
Or turn over to Matthew 11. It says in Matthew 11:25-27:
At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
Again, we read here that Christ is thanking the Father and praising the Father because He has “hid these things from the wise and prudent.”
This is why we have evolution. This is why we have brilliant scientists who cannot see the nose on their face, when it comes to where the world came from.
It is so obvious that God spoke and created the world, because God has hid it from the “wise and prudent” and yet He reveals it unto “babes.” He takes the “weak things of the world” and the things that are nothing and He reveals to them the tremendous truths of the Bible. And this is characteristic of God.
How did Jesus speak? How did He communicate? If you turn over to Matthew 13:33-34:
Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them:
Why did Jesus speak in parables? Because it makes it easier to understand? We still struggle with parables today, nearly 2,000 years after Christ gave them. We are just actually beginning to understand some of them that we thought we knew but we did not.
No. God speaks in parables to hide things in the Scriptures, “to conceal a word.” Jesus would normally speak a parable and He would say, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like,” and people would be forewarned that Christ was speaking in parables, but Jesus is the Word of God.
Actually there is much in the Bible that is in parabolic form. For the book of Proverbs, we could also say, “the book of Parables.” Or in Job, it says that “Job continued his parable.” In some of the Psalms, as God is giving the history of Israel, it speaks of it being a parable. And we know from reading the Scriptures that many events in the history of Israel, God likens to spiritual truths, and so they are historical parables.
“Without a parable,” He did not speak unto us. And that is how God can hide a great many things in the Bible, a great many things. It is how He was able to seal up the Word “till the time of the end.”
How could He accomplish that? Well, He spoke in parables so that man would not be able to understand, he would not be able to grasp the meaning of what God was saying.
Let me just go to one more verse about God hiding truth. If we go to Isaiah 45, Robert read this earlier. Isaiah 45:15 says:
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
God is a God who hides Himself. “It is the glory of God to conceal a word.” It glorifies Him. It brings Him honor, that He conceals the truth of the Bible, the truth of the Scripture. And yet, if we go back to Proverbs 25:2, the second part of the verse says:
…but the honour of kings…
Let me read the whole verse:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing…
Or “word”; that is dabar.
…but the honour of kings…
And actually, the word “honour” is this same word as “glory” in the first part of the verse.
…the (glory) of kings is to search out a matter.
We do not see this in the English, but the translators did not translate this incorrectly. The Hebrew word dabar can be translated as “word,” “thing,” or “matter.” And in the second part of Proverbs 25:2, it says:
…the honour (or glory) of kings is to search out a word.
And it is the same Hebrew word dabar.
So God is really, in a very typical way, giving us this verse that is telling us the nature of the Bible and the nature of kings. It is the nature of God to hide something, and it is the nature of kings to search it out.
Maybe that is the problem today. We do not have as much royalty as we once had in the world. There used to be kings who governed many lands. But now, royalty is hard to find.
It says:
…the honour of kings is to search out a word.
Again, in this very statement, God is hiding information, because if we go to Revelation 1:5-6, it says:
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
It says it there that Jesus washed His people, His elect, and He made them kings. He made them kings. We are “a royal priesthood,” we read in 1 Peter. We are in the line of the King. We are a son of God. He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords,” and when He saved us, we were immediately put into the heavenly places to be seated.
Let me read that in Ephesians 2:6:
And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
We are seated there in Christ, in the Person of the Lord Jesus, and so we are made kings and priests, and the Bible also says that we are prophets.
So, spiritually, God is looking at believers as kings. Remember the other verse in the Proverbs, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will.”
God is in complete control of the lives of His children, the King, and our heart is in His hands, as the hand represents the will, and He will turn us whithersoever He would have us to go, “as the rivers of water”—like if you follow the Amazon River, it turns and bends. God created the rivers, and He also gave us a new heart that He will direct and guide, according to His way and according to His plan.
But Proverbs 25:2 says:
It is the glory of God to conceal a word: but the honour of kings is to search out a word.
“Search out a word”; searching the Scriptures, like we read in John 5:39, where Jesus makes this statement to some of those who profess to be His followers—I think that is the context here—and it says:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Search; this is the honor of kings, to search out a word. God is going to hide it. It is like a glorious game of hide and seek. God is going to hide the word, and man, the child of God, the believer, is going to search it out. He is going to begin digging, to begin looking into the Bible, because that is where we search.
We do not search a confession. We do not search a creed. We do not search what a denomination teaches or what a church says. We search the Bible.
Remember, even the Jews knew this. In John 7:52, when some were proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the leaders of Israel said:
They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.
“Search the Old Testament Scriptures,” they were saying; “search and see.” And actually, God encourages us, “Study to show thyself approved…a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” Search the Bible.
We are hearing all kinds of information now that has been sealed up “till the time of the end,” and we are hearing things taught that are new to our ears. It does not mean that they are not true. Actually, they are true; they are faithful. But God hid them, which is totally in keeping with His nature, with how He wrote the Bible. He hid them in parabolic form. He hid them for centuries. Now it is the time of the end and He is opening up the Scriptures and He is encouraging us to check it out, to make sure that it is so, to go to the Bible and to search, to make sure that what we are hearing is true, like the men of Berea in Acts 17:11, where it says:
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
You see, that is the nature of a believer. That is the nature of a child of God. If when you hear something, “Oh, I do not believe it. The church has not taught that for 1900 years. Well, I do not believe it at all,” you just immediately write it off, that is not what God would have us to do.
Check it out; here are the verses that are being presented. We are living at the time when knowledge will increase, the Bible makes that very clear. So we are obligated, we are duty-bound to go to the Bible and to see.
But you know what? Even if we are a child of God, even if we know the Bible tells us to search, still the one who is in complete control of knowledge is the Lord Jesus Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has to play the major role of opening up our understanding, as we read in Luke 24:44-45, where it says:
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
You see, that is the key. That is the key for anybody. If we really are desirous to know truth, if we want to know what the Bible is saying, we go to God. We go to the Lord and we pray. We ask Him, “Help me! Show me! Open up my understanding. I see these verses about the Church Age being over, but I do not know. There is something holding me back. Open up my understanding. I see the Scripture that says that we are saved by the faith of Christ and not our own faith. But still, I am struggling with it. Open up my understanding.” Or, “I see that the Bible says that when man dies, he ceases to be and that in that day, his thoughts perish. And the Bible says again and again that the wages of sin is death, which means that you die and that you are gone and that is it.”
Well, if you are struggling with that, go to God and pray, “Lord, open up my understanding if this is Your Word. You are in control of all knowledge and of what I know or do not know, I pray. I will study. I will study and I will keep comparing spiritual with spiritual, Scripture with Scripture, but as I do so, give me insight. Confirm Your Word to my heart so that I might see. Open up my understanding.” And that is how God would want us to go to Him in many, many ways.
Let us go to Psalm 119, and this is a good prayer for us to pray. Psalm 119:19 says:
I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
Also in this Psalm, in beseeching God, it says in verse 18:
…that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
God is in charge of that, and so we pray, “Hide not Thy Word from me. Hide not Thy commandments from me, Oh Lord. Help me to see.”
You know, we have an advantage over Daniel. Remember in the book of Daniel when King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and he called all of his wise men and astrologers and soothsayers and he said, “Tell me the dream.” And they said, “Well, you have to tell us and then we will interpret the dream.” And then the king said, “No. No! I see you have prepared lying words.”
That might be there; I do not know. But the idea was that Nebuchadnezzar wanted his wise men to tell him the dream and the interpretation of the dream. And then when they could not, then they said, “Nobody asks such things of the Chaldeans and wise men.” Then Nebuchadnezzar made the decree that all the wise men of Babylon be slain, which would have included Daniel and the young Hebrews.
So we read in Daniel 2:16-18:
Then Daniel went in, and desired of the king that he would give him time, and that he would show the king the interpretation. Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah…
Otherwise known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are the ones who would be tossed into the furnace in the next chapter.
…his companions: that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
It was secret. It was hid. Who could know what some man dreamed? Who could ever know that?
Well, look over in verses 27-28:
Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show unto the king; but there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;
Now, please, no one misunderstand. I am not saying that God is going to reveal things to us about dreams or anything like that. But the point of coming here is that Daniel did not have a text. He did not have a text. He did not have the part that we do have. He had to go to God and say, “Oh, Lord. Show me the dream and the interpretation of the dream.”
“There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets.” He hid them and He is the only One who knows them. He is the only One who knows the truth of the Word of God. And so Daniel goes to God, and then it says in verses 29-30:
As for thee, O king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass. But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living…
You see? He went to God, his life was on the line, and God revealed the dream and the interpretation of the dream. And He is the same God, “yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”
God will not break the barrier of the supernatural. He does not communicate to us through dreams or tongues or visions or anything like that today. Only through the Bible will God communicate; however, He is the same God, the same Lord Jesus who opened their understanding that they might know the Scriptures.
So we can go to Him, and it would be a good idea to find a verse, to find a couple of verses or a handful of verses. We never make demands of God. We never say, “You must show me this.” But we go humbly and we beseech Him, “Lord, help me. Help me to understand what Your Word, the Bible, is saying, and could it be that You will reveal Your secret to me and help me to understand the spiritual message that is here? Help me to understand whatever You would want me know about the Bible.”
Okay. I will stop there, and we will close with a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You that You are a tremendous resource. Our best efforts are vanity and will get us nowhere, but we know that we can go to You. You have promised to give us Your Spirit to lead us and guide us into all truth. And, Father, we pray that You would be our guide, that we would not trust in our own understanding or lean upon that but to trust in You with all of our heart. We do ask that You would continue to show us what Your Word is saying. Father, we pray that You would be with us the rest of this day. Help us to remember that it is Your Holy Day. It is Sunday the Sabbath, a Day not for our own pleasure, not to do our own will. It is not for games. It is not for work. It is not for cutting the grass. But it is a Day to think of things above, on spiritual things, and we do ask that You would help us, and help the children especially to keep their focus on Your Word, the Bible. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.
We will close with a hymn, and if anyone has any questions or comments, we will take them before we break.
Chris: If anybody has a question or a comment that you would like to make, you are welcome. You can come up here to the microphone. If you are on Paltalk, you can raise your hand and type it out and we will read it here.
1st Question: This is a question from earlier. Revelation 5:5:
And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
Do you believe that all seven seals that God refers to in Revelation 5:5 are open at this time?
Chris: We know, and I made reference to it, but let me go back to Daniel 12:4. It says:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
So we know that God sealed the words of the Bible. Not everything; He gave some understanding to the Jews. They could understand certain things. And then at the beginning of the New Testament church, God opened up the understanding of Paul to the mystery that the Gentiles would likewise be recipients of the Gospel of grace, which is that the Gospel would go into the world to the nations. And yet God had sealed up many things concerning the end and concerning other doctrine that we are finding now.
The doctrine of faith, that we are saved by the faith of Christ, was not really known by the church throughout the centuries until the last 10-15 years. If you look into commentaries or writings of theologians or of the best Reformed teaching of the past, you are not going to find mention of the faith of Christ. Except for an isolated instance or two, they did not have that understanding that we have now that is commonplace, that we are justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of any man, not through our own effort in accepting Christ or any of that. We are saved by His work.
So God sealed that up until recently, and God also has been opening our understanding about the end of the Church Age, that God would judge the church, that the church would cease to be the outward representation of the Kingdom of God on earth, and that God is not using the churches today. No matter what denomination it is, all churches are under His judgment.
That was sealed up along with information on the resurrection, the Rapture, eternal judgment. All of these things have been sealed up by God, and now we know that He is unsealing them, as it said here:
…shut up the words, and seal the book, to the time of the end…
So God is indicating that when we get “to the time of the end,” the Book that has been sealed, and remember that verse in Isaiah 28, where God speaks of the book that is sealed. Maybe it is Isaiah 29. It is Isaiah 29:11, where it says:
And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed:
If you cannot open the book, if you cannot read the book, how much do you know about the book? Very little, except what is on the cover. And so that is the nature of when God seals up information about the time of the end, it means that we knew nothing about it “to” we get until that period of the end, and then He is going to open it up.
I do not know specifically regarding the seven seals. I would not try to say, “Well, when God in the 1990’s opened up our understanding about the faith of Christ, that was the first seal. And in 2001 when we began to learn a lot about the end of the Church Age, that was another seal.” I would not look at it that way.
I would just look at it that we are in the process of the “latter rain” period, of God opening the seals and revealing Himself, from information from the Bible, and it seems to be continuing up until present, because now we are learning about the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ’s death as “the Lamb” from before “the foundation of the world,” that Jesus was slain.
We have already been 20 years into the Great Tribulation, just about, and we did not have that knowledge. So God is continuing to show us truths from His Word, and we just do what we are supposed to do and that is just keep studying, keep reading, and I am sure that more will come forth.
2nd Question: Regarding Matthew 25:2 and searching.
Chris: Okay. Let me read Matthew 25:2:
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
This is referring to the ten virgins. Oh, you wanted Proverbs. Okay. Proverbs 25:2:
It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
3rd Question (continued): I have Romans 11:33, where it says:
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
When we search the Scriptures, will that make you wise or give you knowledge or wisdom, or something like that?
Chris: We can search the Bible, but what we really need is the Spirit of Christ in us and then we will be counted wise and then God’s Spirit can lead us and guide us into truth. The problem is that a lot of people come to the Bible and they are not saved, and so they do not have Christ’s Spirit to help them and they end up with a wrong teaching and a wrong understanding of what the Bible is saying.
4th Question (continued): I have another verse here. Job 29:16, where we read:
I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out.
So is this talking about how God searches our hearts, or is this talking about searching the Scriptures?
Chris: I do not know, Lester. I have not really looked at this passage, so I cannot help you with that particular verse. I do know, if you look at Job 29:1:
Moreover Job continued his parable, and said,
So it is God, once again, giving us instruction in parabolic form. And, really, we have to be careful. We have to be very careful when we come to the Bible that we do not make statements that are not thoroughly checked out. So it is better to just say that I do not know than to try to take a guess on what something means.
Alright. Anybody else have a question or a comment? Okay. We will stop here.