Thanking God for Revealing the Hidden Things

I recently read this beautiful prayer of Daniel from Daniel 2:19-23, and it made me “think a thought I’d never thunk before”:

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever

to whom belong wisdom and might.

He changes times and seasons;

he removes kings and sets up kings;

he gives wisdom to the wise

and knowledge to those who have understanding;

he reveals deep and hidden things;

he knows what is in the darkness,

and the light dwells with him.

To you, O God of my fathers,

I give thanks and praise,

for you have given me wisdom and might,

and have now made known to me what we asked of you,

for you have made known to us the king's matter.”

That thought was: it’s a good and holy thing (which I need to practice) to thank and praise God after He teaches me something new (i.e illuminates the timeless truth of His Word) in Bible study and at church.  It’s the result of His grace.

After all, Daniel’s not the only one to praise God for opening the eyes of his heart.  Jesus, rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, took time to thank the Father for revealing to us “little children” the things that are hidden (Luke 10:21-24).  He told the disciples: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

Paul says it this way (in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16): “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God… The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned…. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”

Wow!  We can know and understand the truth of God’s Word because God has given us the Spirit, who searches out the wisdom of God, and reveals it to the mind of Christ who is able to discern it… which was also given to us, as His body!

Yet unbelieving minds have been blinded to truth by the god of this world, Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4).  That’s why Paul also instructs Timothy to “not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

So that’s what hit me: Don’t take the Bible for granted.  Don’t take access to and study of the Bible for granted.  Don’t take faithful and anointed expository teachers for granted.  And surely don’t take His grace for granted, which allows us, the redeemed in Christ, to see things into which even angels long to look (1 Peter 1:12).

May the “eyes of our hearts be enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18), and may we thank God for teaching even us, the “uneducated and common” (Acts 4:13) and the “weak and foolish” (1 Corinthians 1:27).