Need To Know Basis

There are the things we want to know and the things we need to know. Maybe we are a bit nosy, wanting to know more, or it could be it's just curiosity. The disciples were that way too.

In the first chapter of Acts, Jesus is spending the forty days proving himself and preparing the disciples for their coming mission. He has promised them shortly the Holy Spirit will guide them in what they will need to know.

Yet they want to know more.

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"

Acts 1:6

Jesus response was direct, “It is not for you to know”. They as Jews were naturally curious about the fate of their homeland, but that wasn’t what they needed to be concerned with. God had a plan for Israel (Romans 11:25-27) and he would be taking care of that. They needed to focus on the task that was before them.

Sometimes Bible students fall into the same trap. We get so caught up in passages that have a mystery to them, something unknown, and we forget to consider that which we do know. Theorizing and speculation override understanding and application. Debates on the difficult become priorities instead of preaching the plain. What results are quarrels and factions and little of the true mission of the church.

I’ll never know it all. There will be those questions we won’t have an answer to anytime soon. But I still can know enough to place my faith firmly in Jesus and his word. I can know the most important things, how to be saved and how to live a Godly life. And I can tell other’s what can be known.

God has his secrets. Our focus should be on what he tells us to not what he doesn’t.

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”

Deuteronomy 29:29

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