“...unless He Reveals His Secret Counsel”
As God revealed His message to the prophet Amos about the punishment that was coming to Israel, He made a point about prophecy and calamity that would be good for us to remember today.
“If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:6-7).
When a calamity occurs, is God the one behind it? When a tragedy strikes, is God trying to send some sort of message? People wonder about these things all of the time. As a result, they spend many hours speculating, wondering, and worrying over some message from God that they assume must be interwoven in the events of their life. So they try to figure out what God is trying to show them.
We need to remember Amos 3:7 – “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel.” We can know what God has revealed to us. We cannot know what He has not revealed. Remember the words of the Law:
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Jesus came to “testify to the truth” (John 18:37). His apostles would be guided by the Holy Spirit “into all the truth” (John 16:13). The apostles would then reveal the mystery of God “so that we may know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:7-12).
When God executed judgment against the nations – including His people – in the Old Testament, He sent prophets to explain what was happening. We do not have prophets today (1 Corinthians 13:8-10). Therefore, to attribute certain events to God’s direct working or to infer that God is revealing something through them is going beyond God’s word.
God has given us everything we need in His word in order to know His will and serve Him (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:3). Rather than look at current events or circumstances in our own lives and try to figure out what God is doing and what we think He might be telling us, let us simply look to His word and focus on learning what He has revealed and doing what He has commanded.
No comments:
Post a Comment