To Remember what God has Hidden
In our last post we saw how a proverb can help us reflect on the wisdom and ways of our God. By giving us a saying that functions like a riddle, our minds are stretched to consider more than one possibility.
Yesterday we thought together about the proverb “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” (Prov 25:2)
We began by saying that students of the Bible seem to generally agree about the meaning of the second part of this proverb. It seems apparent that it is to the glory of kings to fully investigate the concerns and complaints of their citizens so that their government will be based on the foundations of justice.
But what about the first part of this wise saying. How is it to God’s glory to conceal a matter? What is it good for him to hide?
Many of our thoughts went to the way God tests our faith by wisely withholding from us knowledge of the future and the inexpressible understanding and power by which he works in countless and immeasurable means behind the scenes for our good.
In the process, however, some seemed troubled a bit by our willingness to focus on what God has hidden (withheld) from us rather than what he has revealed (given). So let’s stay with it for awhile longer.
There’s at least one more way of looking at what God is hiding. Think about what our Creator did soon after speaking into existence a visible world that has always been an evidence of his invisible glory. At the moment our first parents stepped down from their position of created honor (often called our Fall), our Creator stepped up to reveal a glory even greater what he had already revealed.
When our parents sinned, God’s first act was to mercifully give them skins to cover their loss of innocence.
This was the first indication of God’s willingness to cover sin and bury it in the deepest sea, as far as the east is from the west (Psa 53:12), (Isa 43:25).
The word used in the Bible for what God did to cover over our sins is “atonement”. In the widely used Strongs Lexicon of Hebrew words we get this range of meaning for “atonement”:
3722 rp;K’ kaphar {kaw-far’}
Meaning: 1) to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, cover over with pitch 1a) (Qal) to coat or cover with pitch 1b) (Piel) 1b1) to cover over, pacify, propitiate 1b2) to cover over, atone for sin, make atonement for 1b3) to cover over, atone for sin and persons by legal rites 1c) (Pual) 1c1) to be covered over 1c2) to make atonement for 1d) (Hithpael) to be covered.
What it took for God to cover over, conceal, and hide our sins under redemptive blood (the price of a life for a life), seems to be in the background when Jesus prays hours before his crucifixion, that the Father would glorify him with the glory that was his before the world was created” (John 17:5).
Was Jesus at this point thinking beyond the cross, resurrection, and ascension to the moment when he would be returned to his place at the right hand of his Father? That’s possible. But my guess is that he was actually referring to glory of his eternal goodness that would be revealed in the lengths he was about to go to cover our sins at the infinite price of his own suffering and death.
I say this in part because later, in his restoring conversation with the Apostle who had denied him with curses, Jesus spoke to Peter about the death by which Peter would eventually glorify God (John 21:19).
Certainly, if Peter was going to glorify God by the way he was going to eventually die, Jesus must have made the ultimate statement of the glory of God by the way he died to make it possible for the eternal God to hide forever, the worst (and all) of our sin.
What do you think? Am I missing something, or just beginning to see another way (maybe the ultimate way?) in which it is to God’s glory to conceal a matter?
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