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No one likes to hear excuses.  Whether it is your kids, your parents, your coworkers, or your friends, it's downright annoying when people try to avoid problems and then make excuses for not doing what they know needs to be done. It's something we all have to police in ourselves -- and in our Bible study.

Deuteronomy 29:29 has unfortunately become the go-to verse for quitting when thinking gets hard in Bible study.  It's the verse that says:

"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law"

Most people only know the first few words: "the secret things belong to the Lord." As a pastor and college Instructor, I've heard these words often enough to be able to paraphrase their meaning whenever they are used by students of all varieties and circumstances:

 

  • "No one really knows what that verse means, so can we move on to something more practical?"
  • "I want my Bible to be simple. You are making my head hurt."
  • "Why do  we need to know that?"

The irony here is that Deuteronomy 29:29 doesn't mean that there are things in the Bible that are hard to figure out.  Deuteronomy 29 is part of the conclusion of a long sermon by Moses about blessings or curses from God for obedience or disobedience.  After talking about the need to obey God and how to avoid offending him, Moses punctuates his point with this verse. The point is not that God says things that are difficult to understand.  It is that concealed acts of sin are still known to God.  They will be punished by him since they are known to him.  The revealed violations were the Isrealites' responsibility to punish.

For our purposes, the point should be clear:  Deuteronomy 29:29 is not about waving the white flag of surrender in Bible study.  No one understands everything in the Bible, but a lot of hard passages really do have coherent explanations.  It's our job to  find them, not evade the work involved.