“His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.” (John 16:29)
I mean no offense when I say this, for I have the advantage, as well as you do, of reading the Scriptures in contexts such as this historically, not as in a first-person scenario, but I might have said something like, “Finally, three plus years of parables and now you finally speak plainly in a way we can easily understand. Thank you.”
“Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16)
“Lazarus is dead,” how much clearer than that can you get?
“Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:9)
To us reading these things, we cannot help but wonder, and again in no disrespectful way, were these guys a little dense, a little slow?
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 16:17)
The Holy Spirit gives us all we need to know, but not until we need to know it, and not until we finally understand in faith that which has already been revealed to us. He never, as it is said, puts the cart before the horse.
If you do not understand clearly and without question what it means to be justified, there is no reason to begin a study on what it means to begin being sanctified, the renewing of our mind must be orderly.
Here is why so many who profess to know the Lord get entangled in works verses grace, both in the context of salvation as well as how we are to order and live our lives for His glory. Paul spent three years in Arabia being taught these truths by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, because everything that he had been taught up to that point in his life was so ingrained in him.
“Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,” (Psalm 40:7)
Those twelve who walked with our Savior were not dense men, but new wine cannot be put into old bottles, and so the process needed to be slow and methodical. The parables were truthful, but not fully understood because it was not yet time for the realization of those truths to come to light. A foundation must always be laid first, and faith was the foundation.
Believing and trusting my friends, even when we do not fully understand, that is the majority of our walk with the Lord.
“As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2nd Peter 3:16)
Well and good, contemplate them, pray about them, and continue on in that which you have a full grasp of. When the time is right, the Holy Spirit will reveal to you in full, as much as you need, the answer to your search, and if you understand what has been written here so far, then you know full well that as we grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, there are thousands of other avenues of parables and questions yet to be revealed to us.
It is a blessing beyond compare, to know that we will never completely know the Almighty, and that throughout all eternity we will continue to seek His face as He reveals to us more and more of Himself.
They were not dense or slow my friends, any more than we are, they just learned the same way we do, one step at a time, and only when that time was right.
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33)
If you are not reading the Scriptures at the moment, contemplate them, study them in your mind, search out the deep things of God, the questions that only He can answer. And while you are doing that, perform the tasks He has placed before you that you are already acquainted with for His glory, waiting patiently for Him to reveal to you that which you seek for.
