Many
people erroneously refer to a book in the Bible as ‘Revelations’. I’ll let you
into a well-known secret, there is no ‘s’ at the end of Revelation. Revelation
is the opposite of secret. Not just the last book, but the whole sixty-six
books of the of the Bible are the written revelation of God. In short, the
Bible is God’s revelation about how the world and everything in it got here,
i.e., Creation. Why creation is the way it presently is, i.e., The Fall. Then the
Flood, God’s becoming also a Man, the Redemption (of God’s people and His
creation), the coming Judgment. However, God has left some things hidden from
us. ‘The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are
revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words
of this law’ Deuteronomy 29:29.
No doubt
the saying, ‘A little bird told me’ comes from the following verse, ‘Do not
curse the king, even in your thought; do not curse the rich, even in your
bedroom; for a bird of the air may carry your voice, and a bird in flight may
tell the matter’ Ecclesiastes 10:20. Indeed, we ought to watch all our words,
as the 3rd and 9th Commandments warn us; ‘You shall not
take the name of the LORD your God in vain’ and ‘You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbour’ respectively. Jesus gives us this stern
reminder of the Omniscience and Omnipresence of God, (never mind a little
bird!), where He says, ‘For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor
anything hidden that will not be known and come to light’ Luke 8:17, (cf. 12:2). The Woman at the Well had an
encounter with Jesus. ‘The woman then left her water-pot, went her way into the
city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all the things I ever
did. Could this be the Christ?”’ John 4:28-29.
Secrets
and revelations are the stuff of the Bible. When Jesus spoke in parables, He was
doing both at the same time. Says Jesus, ‘To you it has been given to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that,
“seeing they may not see, and hearing
they may not understand.” Commenting on this verse, says Matthew Henry, ‘Happy
are we, and for ever indebted to free grace, if the same thing that is a
parable to others, with which they are only amused, is a plain truth to us, by
which we are enlightened and governed, and into the mould of which we are
delivered.’ It reminds us of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘If I have told you
earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you
heavenly things?’ John 3:12. The Bible is just another book to the unbeliever.
But to the believer it is the Book of books! Without God’s free grace the pearl
of God’s truth remains firmly hidden within the clam, which is to say that the
Bible is a closed Book to the closed mind, its revelations remain as secrets,
and that which was revealed is still very much concealed.
What is the key that unlocks the
Bible? Well, you’d need to be like those men after the woman at the well had spoken
to them. ‘Then they went out of the
city and came to Him’ John 4:30. Why? Because ‘[Jesus] holds the key of David.
What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open’ Revelation
3:7b. Therefore, ‘Repent and believe in the gospel’ Mark 1:15. Why? ‘For the
wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord’ Romans 6:23.
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