The Christian’s Confidence (Deuteronomy 29:29)

Have you met one of those know-it-all Christians? You know, they're connected with Jesus now, or with God himself, and they speak and act as if that means they've now got the answer to everything.

Rarely pleasant, they can often appear arrogant and even dogmatic, but as someone put it, definite and dogmatic in all the wrong places.

Of course, there's also the conflict-averse Christian.

who's never definite if it's going to cause an issue or an argument, and always humble in the wrong places.

Professor James Stewart fronted up to both types when he wrote, humble and self-forgetting we must be always, but diffident and apologetic about the gospel, never.

Well, we're going to focus on just one verse this morning, one sentence, which also speaks into these tensions.

Deuteronomy 29, verse 29.

It's an easy reference to remember, isn't it? It's one of those great Bible verses.

I've long known it, but to my shame, never taught it seriously.

And it comes in one of Moses' last sermons to the people as they stand at a crossroads in life, faced with the prospect of a future shaped by God's blessings or his curses.

And into it all, Moses drops this verse, a sentence that gives us a handle on the certainties and uncertainties of life and how to live with them.

So look at verse 29.

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this Lord.

Chris Wright explains in his commentary that if this verse is linked to what's gone before in chapter 29, then the secret things could be a way of referring to the as yet unknown future.

God alone knows what will happen in the future history of his people.

But the future is not a matter of blind fate or inevitability.

So leave the unknown future to God and concentrate on the things revealed, namely God's known law that can be obeyed.

Or, says Chris, if the verse is linked to what follows, to chapter 30, then there may be much that remains hidden from our understanding, but God's revealed all that's needed for us to know and obey God.

And yet the verse has a tone that's different, doesn't it, from the bits either side of it.

Almost as if it's explaining broad principles to teach us.

The whole of life is divided into two parts, two types of truth.

The secret things and things revealed.

Or as one writer puts it, the covered things and the uncovered things.

And if I understand these clearly, this is a hugely confidence-building verse.

I'm praying it leaves you, as it does me, better equipped and encouraged to face life with all its challenges.