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Transcript 136B — Does God Hide Truth from the World?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I was wondering about the Scripture in Matthew 13:10-13. We were discussing that here. And to me it seemed like it just isn't fair for God to hide things from people who are seeking to know. I mean, these people came out, following after Him and seeking after Christ's wisdom. And yet He hid the sayings from them. And I was wondering what you thought about that.
HC: The question is raised concerning Matthew 13, where Christ says that He has spoken in parables in order that there will be those that will see, "and yet they will not see. They will hear, but will never understand." In other words, God has hidden truth from certain individuals. And the question really is, why would God do this? This doesn't seem fair, if they were really seeking for Christ.
Now the answer to this is this, that God is not hiding information from those who are really seeking Christ. That is, those who have humbled themselves before God and realize their spiritual bankruptcy, and cry out to God for mercy, and in faith trust that what God has declared is true and trustworthy, God the Holy Spirit will open their eyes, and they will see the truth.
But you see, there are most of the people of the world, who are wiser than God in their own eyes. They really believe that they can know truth, that they can decide what is true or what is not true. They are not ready to humble themselves. They are ready to pick and choose from the Bible what they want or what they don't want. In other words, they want to design a religion that meets their specifications rather than those of God.
And so they go to the Bible, and they will find all kinds of statements that foster unbelief, that will lead them down blind paths, that will encourage them to believe certain doctrines that are quite contrary to the Word of God. God has written the Bible that way. God expects us to come to the Bible by faith, just with a childlike trust. And unless we do, we're going to be lead down the path of unbelief by the scriptures. There are all kinds of statements in the Bible which, if you take them and isolate them from the rest of the Bible, and just let them stand by themselves, will teach exactly opposite of what God really intended by them. This is the way God prepared the Bible.
Now Israel was very guilty of this. God came to them again and again and again and again, from the days of Abraham on, and encouraged them to place their trust in Him. But no, they didn't put their trust in Him. We read in Hebrews 3, for example, that when the nation of Israel came out of Egypt, two million strong approximately, virtually all of them perished in the wilderness because of unbelief, of unbelief. They would not trust God. They really believed that they knew better than God. And so they perished because of unbelief.
And Israel kept doing this. And finally God said, in Isaiah's time, and you can read it in Isaiah 6, the words that are quoted in Matthew 13:14-15. There you read, "With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, You shall indeed hear and never understand. And you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes, they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and turn for Me to heal them."
This began during the days of Isaiah, some 700 years before Christ, and it continues right down to the present day. Now wonderfully, that's not the end of the story. As you go through the Bible, while on the one hand you read this terrible traumatic language about how God has blinded the eyes of the nation of Israel, yet there is also the note of grace shining through. Again and again the Bible speaks of a remnant coming out of the nation of Israel and believing on Christ, a remnant chosen by grace.
During the days of Elijah, there were 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal. In the days of Christ there were the 120 who believed. There were more than 500 in Galilee who believed. Right up to the very present day there are individual Jews who do believe. But as a nation they are blinded. Now actually, the same is true of the Gentile nations. The highest percentage of the individuals in any nation of the world remains in unbelief. And it's only a small percentage, a remnant chosen by grace, that actually believe. And these are the ones who have humbled themselves and thrown themselves on the mercies of God and come completely spiritually bankrupt to God. For their eyes were opened.
CALLER: Okay. Thank you very much.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.