God . . . Revealed and Concealed!

The Biblical narrative explains why God chooses to reveal Himself to some and conceal Himself from others.

God has provided enough light to every person so they could respond to the invitation for relationship. He speaks through our conscience and natural laws. The psalmist declared, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies display His marvelous craftsmanship . . . only the fool says in his heart, there is no God."

The prophets declared, "God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble."

Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth for hiding these things from the intellectuals and worldly wise and for revealing them to those who are as trusting as little children. Yes, that's the way you designed it." Jesus was not opposing scholarly disciplines but the egotistic arrogance that often blinds the cleaver and intellectual elites of this world. Jesus confirms this truth when asked why he spoke in riddles and parables. He concealed the meaning from the proud but revealed the mystery to the humble.

The Jewish rabbinical scholar, Paul of Tarsus, was spiritually blind and eager to destroy every Christian. When confronted by the risen Christ, he was humbled and given spiritual sight to see his faulty thinking and behavior. He writes to the Corinthians, "God says, I will destroy all human plans for salvation, no matter how wise they seem and ignore the best ideas of men, even the most brilliant of them. So what about these wise men, these scholars, these brilliant debaters of the world's great affairs? God has made them all look foolish and shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. For God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never find God through human brilliance, and then He stepped in and saved all those who believed His message, which the world calls foolish and silly."

God has chosen to reveal Himself to the humble with a childlike trust in the Creator. God has chosen to conceal Himself from the intellectually arrogant and those who trust in material possessions.