The Secret Things and the Revealed Things

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever. - Deuteronomy 29:29

I was musing on this verse today, and thinking that it's another good reason to be reverent when we worship. Of course there are many reasons for that, the chief being that we are in  the presence of the Incarnate One, and our awareness of that ought to be evident in the way we worship. It is not the time or the place for entertainment. More reasons for being reverent are recounted in my book, Leave It Alone. You'll Break It. 

But here's yet another reason. There are more 'things' than have been revealed to us. God has kept the secret things to himself. 

In the Heidelberg Disputation (1518 - exactly 500 years ago) Martin Luther warns that a theologian of glory wants to gain access to the hidden God apart from the cross: “He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering." The cross is where God is most clearly revealed, and therefore the cross is what we preach.

As for the things God has not revealed, he keeps these things to himself. The theologian of glory wants access to them. This is reflected in the way he worships, in his theology of praise. Proper praise of God, in accordance with the sacrificial offering that Christ made, will look different than praise of the theologian of glory that does not take this into account.

We must be theologians of the cross; we must adhere to the former kind of praise, because the secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever.