TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE LORD BEEN REVEALED?

Walkersville Christian Fellowship

9.29.02 - Gary L. Cox

 “Who hath believed our report? and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Isaiah 53:1. I would like to talk about the revelation of God. There are things that are present which are the means and the opportunity of revelation and you and I are called to give care and to give careful consideration and to treasure those special opportunities.  Young people, we are going to realize that to be raised in a Christian home gives you a unique advantage. You have something to which you will give an account for later if you in your own stubbornness reject the opportunity that God has laid at your hands by your being raised in a Christian home. 

Proverbs 18:2 "A fool has no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself."  The nature of a fool is to seek their own heart's revelation.  And there is no delight in the fool's heart for understanding what God has done.  Young people, it is so common that you hear about the things of God. It is so easy to take for granted the understanding that the Lord can bring.  If you have no delight in understanding what the Lord has for you, then you fall into the trap of your own opinion; of your own delight.    Will you be one who listens?  Will you be one who hears?  Or will you be the fool and simply delight in your own heart understanding itself and having your preferences and your interests satisfied. 

How does this revelation of God come upon us?  The revelation of God comes to us on many angles and the necessity is that you and I get serious about the opportunities that we have.  When we have a small occasion in our hand, if we brush it away and disregard it, then we have despised that which is precious, but we have exposed ourselves through that despising; we have exposed ourselves to great loss and to great confusion of mind in our own heart.

First, revelation comes from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The revelation that we need to understand God's side of the universe, and God's side of our own lives, comes from God alone.  And it is continually the work of the Spirit of God to be the one to bring revelation.  It is necessary that we position ourselves in such a way that we might be a people who will receive from God that revelation that He has.  If He is the source of revelation, we must come to Him, we must desire Him, and we must seek Him with our whole heart.  It is never going to be the case that a man or a woman will ever come to revelation without a work in their heart being done, whereby the resistance to God is melted, and rather than resist, they open their arms and they embrace and they say, 'Come Lord, I need all that You have.'  That opening of the desires of our heart must be toward God.

Second, revelation comes by the opening of our eyes and our understanding.  The simple truth of revelation is we not talking about new information; we are talking about information that is readily available. Any man that can read can pick up the Word and go over the words, but the words themselves are a closed book to the heart and the mind of man, and it is needful for us that we have our eyes and our understanding open.  The fact that God is the one that reveals is tied directly to the fact that He uses the Word of God to reveal to us, but that Word is closed until He opens our own understanding. Psalm 119 is a psalm of prayer of someone who realizes revelation comes from God and he goes to God and he says, "Lord, I need my eyes opened to understand Your Word in order that I might have understanding." 

Third, revelation comes to households.   Revelation comes to households, and also to unbelieving spouses, and children have a special access to the precious secrets that God has revealed to their parents.  It is not a small matter that children raised in Christian homes are given significant opportunity for the revelation of God to be upon them.  1 Corinthians 7:14 says specifically that there is a sanctifying process; there is a setting aside of a household when one member believes, as a visitation of God begins to move into that home. When God moves upon a household, that opportunity for hearing the Word, and receiving it, and having that revelation opened to us, has come very near and very close to us and it is a great privilege and it is a great opportunity that our children can be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And children who being in such a case happily and joyfully say, "This is a privilege, this is an opportunity," and they open their hearts to that which their parents bring to them by the grace of God.  When you stand before God on judgment day and you are yet an unbeliever, God is going to judge you for your unbelief and He is going to hold you accountable for the occasions by which you might have believed.  When an opportunity beckons to you and calls you and brings to you that sense of heritage by which you can say, "God has been kind to my parents, God has been kind to my family," and you open your heart and you lean into the instruction that God has brought in your home.  There is a wonderful opportunity, it is ready made, it lies upon the door and there is an accountability and a necessity that you will hear, that you will draw near to that which God has provided.  An interesting verse in Deuteronomy 29:29 says, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God: but the things revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."  It is not something that we can fully understand, but it is a truth that is certainly there for our encouragement, and for our consideration, and our pursuit, and that is this: that when God reveals Himself to parents, that revelation is now something that is a possession, an inheritance, and it is a privilege of parents to pass that revelation of the Savior on.  Two quick comments.  Number one: parents, we must treasure the revelation in such a fashion that it is clearly something dear in our household.  The man who is diligent keeps his treasures well, and he brings his treasure forth and offers them to his children.  There is that significant heritage.  Second: our children must be accustomed to such a relationship with us that they desire our heritage because they desire us.  It is necessary for us to attend to those issues parents, of working on the strings of our children's hearts, to opening them up so that they might be turned toward us and that they might desire and that they might receive that which is the heritage of the saints.

Four, revelation comes not by merit but by God's purposes.  In Daniel 2:30, we find that Daniel reveals the work of God in his own life. Speaking to the king he says, "But for me, the secret is not revealed to me from any wisdom that I have more than any other living, but for their sakes that shall make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart."  There are two aspects of revelation here that relate to God's purposes. First, there is the personal side of revelation whereby as we begin to understand the truths of God, there comes the sense of burden by which we desire to share that truth.  That sense of ownership of the truth by God, pushes us from a proud kind of know-it-all-ish attitude where we might consider ourselves being better because we know something, but rather the weight of the message breaks through as from God and we begin to be someone who is ready and who is anxious to share that revelation with others because of the nature of the message.  Second, the aspect of God's purposes breaks through on the fact that God Himself is bringing revelation to know the thoughts of our heart.  When God brings across a revelation, He is testing our thoughts.  God is after people whose motives are after His heart and not after their own.  When God brings revelation, it is to reveal in us what is in our own hearts.  Those whose hearts are hardened, and stubborn, and unbelieving, and refusing to give any glory or any credit to God, those hearts become revealed by revelation and they take it and they despise it.  God expects us to tend to what motivates our hearts; what they respond to.  Our hearts are going to be held accountable before God and He is going to hold us accountable through revelation.

Five, revelation comes when it pleases God.  

For the people of God it teaches us to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding, in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain, that we will receive our reward if we faint not.  God reveals when it is the pleasure of His purpose and His own time.  If we are going to be those who can receive revelation then we have to wait patiently for it.  The most frustrating part of growing up is doing things without an adequate understanding of why.  I do not think that there has ever been a parent who has not had a child recognize or face one of God's expectations in their life that the child has not had some mechanism or means of asking the question, "Why?"  It is natural to want to understand and there are many occasions when that understanding of "why" is held back and in due time God Himself brings forth the revelation. 

Six, revelation comes through sorrow and difficult circumstances.  

There is a verse in Luke 2:35 speaking to Mary, and speaking of the sorrow of the cross that looked ahead, to the very life and death of her Son, and the prophet said by the Holy Spirit, "Yea, a sword shall pierce thine own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."  God uses suffering and sorrow to bring to light revelation.  He is doing something through suffering and through sorrow that no man in his natural form would receive.   Suffering and sorrow are absolutely rejected by the natural man.  We are unwilling for it to be that way and yet God has chosen suffering and sorrow to bring forth revelation.  Are you suffering justly or unjustly, righteously or unrighteously?  God is using that to bring forth the revelation of His purposes.  And one of those revelations is who are we when it comes to trusting God?  Are you are a person who will trust God without understanding when difficulty and sorrow seem to take away life itself?  Or are you those who must only deal with God in terms of your own benefit, getting what you want, having the satisfaction and the happiness of what you desire? 

Seven, revelation comes to babes and not to wise and prudent.   It is possible that if there are adults who don't yet know Christ and there are young people that do not know Christ, just the very nature of being a young person gives them opportunity for receiving revelation more than an older person who has begun to rely so heavily on their wisdom and their understanding.  God has chosen to reveal Himself to babes.  That would tell us that while we are a babe it's far more important that we appreciate what a babe is and that we learn to respond as a babe; by trusting.  I remember that verse in Psalms where David said that he has not considered things that are too high or too lofty for him.  But instead of agitating for understanding in difficult matters, he has chosen a different course and he says this: "like a weaned child on his mother's breast, so he has quieted his soul before the Lord."  A child will trust because of the safety and the trustworthiness of the parent.  And in that very same sense of the word, children can learn to trust God in the same way.  It is not by understanding but by recognition that God Himself cares and He is trustworthy.

Eight, Revelation comes through circumstances at hand, and those circumstances will not always be present. 

The number one problem we have as humans is we are ready to get beyond the present circumstances and we are looking past it to better days, to happier times, to the significant future.  The immediate treasure of the present is often laid aside because we are anxious and we are pursuing tomorrow and tomorrow has a way of never hitting us. We are only ever guaranteed today, and the treasures of God are at hand; they are not far away.  If we skip today's treasures, tomorrow we will have lost our way because we will have received something that is other than what God has for us to begin with.  John 12:35, "Jesus said to them, 'Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness comes upon you: for he that walks in darkness knows not whether he goeth.  While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may children of light.'  These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide Himself from them." We have opportunity now but opportunity is not guaranteed at all tomorrow.  Be children of light and as Christians attempting to raise Christian families, raising up a Godly seed, we have present in our hands a tremendous opportunity to get the benefit that God has in and through our homes today.  Young people, do not cast aside your home.  Don't cast aside the opportunities of today because you are troubled about tomorrow. As you grow up from the younger years, all the sudden you begin to have your eyes and your understanding open to some of the pleasures and opportunities this world has and it is such an easy case to want to agitate.  There are things today that will never come by you again.  Will you receive them?  Will you lay hold of them?  Will you take it with all your heart? 

Nine, revelation comes to those who love God. 

If there is ever a condition for revelation, this is the condition. We need to recognize that God deals in revelation to those that love Him.  Do you love God?  This is a question valid for those who are not yet saved and those who claim to be Christians.  For indeed those who are not yet saved it is good to recognize that you have no love for God in your eyes; you do not care about God.  That recognition might be the first revelation that God might bring to you so that you might lay a hold of Him for that revelation that is for life to come.  But us believers have the same question.  We know the Lord but are we walking in revelation?  A believer who is not walking in love toward God cannot receive revelation.  We make ourselves the very enemy of God as Christians; God is not going to reveal Himself to His enemies.  He is going to reveal Himself to those who love Him.  It is important to understand that at any time when we are in prayer and we need a revelation of God, there is a qualifying condition of our love for God. The most important thing that the love for God does to our heart is it creates a yielded spirit. John 14:21, "He that hath My commandments, and keepth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him."  If we love someone we treasure their words that are written to us personally.  It is special.  The question is do we love God? Are we walking in love to God?  We loved God because He first loved us.  It is that love that is the energy and the driving aspect of our daily life and it is out of that love for God that He is going to make Himself known to us. In any particular matter, if we so set our heart so that God's purpose might be accomplished and that we will do and we will obey that which God has for us in that circumstance, God is going to give us the revelation of insight of what we should do.  Because we have predetermined a willingness to obey, now we are in the condition for being told what to do because we are going to do it.    The truth of God sets us free when we respond to it with obedience.  Do you love God?  Is His love real to you?  Is His purpose in our life the most significant purpose that we have in our life and are we willing to receive from His hand all that that good purpose has no matter whether it brings suffering or sorrow or some other aspect of life that is not necessarily readily desirable by the human flesh. 

Ten, revelation comes not through wisdom of words, but by the preaching of the Gospel: Christ crucified, risen and coming again.  It is important that we understand that we cannot make the truth of the Gospel appealing to the natural man.  And since it cannot be made appealing, then it is necessary that we recognize that the very preaching of it in its unappealing fashion is the means by which God is going to grant revelation.  He is going to bring home the truth that it is about us letting go of our lives, it is about us saying, "Yes", to God unconditionally, whatever His terms, and recognizing that it is the power of the cross.  The cross separates us from our natural desires and transfers us over to the desires of God and God does a work that He desires to do; that only He can do through the power of the Gospel.  The message that we must preach to each other in every circumstance is the message of the cross.  Lift up the cross, Christ will draw all men unto Himself.  You cannot help me out when I am down by trying to soften the blow of the cross.  It is the embracing of the cross that brings life to our soul. Our duty and our need is not only to preach the cross in season and out of season but it is to embrace the cross, to embrace that message because from it comes the power of God to salvation.

Eleven, revelation comes through the creation and a reprobate mind.  No one will go and stand before God and say, "You never told me anything, I never knew You and that You wanted anything out of my life."  No one will ever have that occasion.  There are two un-fordable rivers that God has erected by which He separates men from their folly and by which He verifies the truth that He has revealed Himself to all men.  Number one, the creation.  God has so presented Himself in creation that it is inconceivable that He cannot be seen in it. We have no excuse for not surrendering to God. Everything that is in us speaks and testifies that there is a greater one than us, to whom we must give an account.  God in His kindness has given us another irrefutable revelation of Himself in our sinful condition and that is the unhappiness of our soul when we do not yet know Him.  And it is by that unhappiness of our soul that we press and we pursue and we demand to have pleasure heaped upon pleasure.  We demand our own understanding.  God is not going to let us be happy because He has designed our soul for eternal happiness and that can only be found in Him and He will not allow us to fasten ourselves to something less than Him and ever find a moment of satisfaction.  But on the contrary, if we are willing to release this life and lay a hold of Him alone who is worthy of all our praise, He will fill us up even if we are absolutely immobile. When you get a hold of that which you think makes you happy, how many times in God's mercy does He ruin it for us. To Him will be all the glory and praise and honor. 

Twelve, revelation comes through the law and the prophets.  The revelation of God has been recorded in a written message.  The revelation of the Law tells us that we're powerless to do good, we're powerless to please God, that by our own instinct all our efforts are sin. We have no capacity, by our own strength, to do good.  The message from the prophets is an overriding message of promise.  'But God, who is rich in mercy, for the great love wherewith He has loved us, by grace you are saved.'  The law and the prophets give us that concluding edge, pointing us to the perilousness of our own nature.  We are sinners.  Prophets and prophecies tell us that we transfer our hope to God, who yet will make the fullness of His will known, and who yet will incorporate us who believe into the riches of His glory. 

Thirteen, revelation comes in a spiritual package as a mystery, and it must be unlocked to the hearer by the Holy Spirit alone.  The understanding of revelation is unlocked by the Holy Spirit; it is not something that you or I can do. Here is where that qualification of love is clarified all the more in a practical sense; we must love God on His terms by the means that He has revealed Himself to us.  It is not possible for us to get a hold of His understanding without first getting a hold of Him in love.  God is the one who reveals to us and He reveals it in His due time, but there needs to be an understanding that there is a leaning towards that understanding; there is a leaning towards that redemption. What do we do when we are waiting for that revelation?  We keep showing up to be served. If your heart is sorrowful, if your understanding is weak, if your perspective is confused, don't quit just because you are confused.  Keep coming, there is only one place.  If we know where the words are found, let's show up at God's door, let's just keep knocking, let's be persistent, let us wait on the Lord.  The most significant thing that God raises in His people until heaven comes is learning how to endure the time frame when we don't have an answer, when we don't have understanding, and He wants us to endure patiently to the end.  Revelation will come in God's time.

Fourteen, revelation comes by degrees of growth.  First as milk and later as meat as growth occurs.  There is a need for us to receive a little bit of revelation before we receive a lot.  1 Peter says in chapter 2, "Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you can grow thereby.'  Sometimes our lack of receiving revelation is our own fault, because we are demanding that we understand it after the carnal mind, after the natural man, and we refuse stubbornly to receive it on any other basis, and so we keep knocking ourselves out of the place of the secrets.  How true it is that the revelation of God that brings us understanding and the very life for our souls, is right at hand and the block to that revelation is the proud, stubborn, insistence that God present Himself to us on our terms according to our understanding on a platter that we approve.  How many of us will stand before God and be pitched into Hell because all of the treasures and all of the opportunities of revelation that have been brought to you because of God's kindness to you in bringing you into a Christian family, bringing you into a nation where the wealth of the Gospel has been so pronounced for so many years, and yet in the pride and the stubbornness of your heart you have insisted that it be according to your own understanding, and you have rejected the Holy One, and you have cast away the means of understanding because you will not come, you would not come on His terms.  That is the accountability of our soul before God.