To Encourage You

Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”

One of the greatest opportunities that can be squandered by man is negligence in the matter of seeking to know God.  God has repeatedly told us in His Word that there are awesome ways in which He will bless those who hunger to know Him. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6).  In other words, there is a satisfaction of soul that is available for people that they will never know unless they hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Sadly, this is a hunger and a thirst that most people think little of.    They are satisfied already (at least that’s what they think), or if they hunger and thirst for anything it is for physical things rather than spiritual. 

And then we have promises like that in the verse above from Jeremiah that tell us that there are great and hidden things that we have never known and that can only be revealed to us if we go to God for them.  Again, the prerequisite is a desire to know greater things that we already know and to see things that are currently hidden from our eyes, for otherwise why would we call to God for them? 

We hear such a yearning in the prayer of the psalmist who pleaded with God in these words: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).  Surely there are wonderful things, infinite things, great things hidden in God’s Word. They are things that most who read the Word may just pass over. They are there, but a person must be willing to pray, to dig, to yearn to find them.  Like diamonds hidden deep in the earth, the Lord doesn’t reveal the precious truths of His Word to those who have no desire to dig.  He has ordained that only those who long to know Him will have their eyes opened to the riches of His being, for He is not one to cast his pearls before swine, i.e., lay out precious things for those who have no interest in or appreciation for them. 

In Jeremiah 29:13 God puts it this way, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Again, note the condition.  It’s a wholehearted desire to know Him.  That’s the condition our God has placed on His revelation of what are the greatest things there are to know, for they take the greatness of God to show them to us. Otherwise, they will forever be hidden.

But oh, how God wants us to know them!  It’s the longing of His heart.  For us to desire to know the greatness of our God so that we long for this with all our heart, pray for it, and devote time to peer deeply into His Word, is something that God will surely reward for it is His greatest desire for us.  But again, sadly, it is one of the greatest acts of negligence for most.  Listen to Jesus as He looks over the city of Jerusalem with a heart that aches to bless them, if they would only be willing: “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes’” (Luke 19:41-42). 

You see, Jesus came to His own people, the Jews, but the vast majority of the Jews, even to this day, have not received Him.  But His coming was not just for the Jews.  It was because God loved the whole world that He gave His only begotten Son.  Jesus came to tell us great things, hidden things, that only He could reveal. But it is only to those Who receive Him, to those who have believed on His name, that He gives the right to know the great and hidden things of God. 

And who are these people? They are those who have been transformed from people who have little interest in Him, to those who now hunger and thirst for Him.  It is those Who desire with all their heart to know Him. So, does that describe you? Is that what you want more than anything else in the world?  Or are you like the Jews of the first century who gave no reception to the greatest person Who ever lived?  If so, the Bible says that there are great and hidden things that you will never know.  Yet they are things that anyone can know, if they only desire with all their heart to know them.