In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1;14).

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1 Introduction Basic to all Christian faith is the premise that God has revealed His will to us. The Lord has not left us in the dark concerning our sinful condition, our hope in Christ and our future in heaven. The writer of Hebrews wrote; God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds (Heb.1:1). Jesus Christ is God s personal Word to man. Jesus Christ is God s reliable, dependable, honest Word to humanity. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1;14). The Word of God reveals our sin and the solution our Savior. In the sixth century B.C. the Greek philosopher Pythagoras wrote; It is not easy to know (duties), except men were taught them by God himself, or by some person who has received them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some divine means. How can we know the truth about God, about life, about death, about sin, about heaven about hell? We live in a funny culture. People take pot shots at Christianity through bumper sticker conversations. One bumper sticker read; You keep believing; I will keep on evolving. Ironic isn t it? This man or woman wants to distinguish between religious faith and science as if Christian faith is a matter of belief and evolution is a matter of fact. Yet evolution has failed to be proven by science. And Christian faith faith in the person Jesus a historical person who lived in history and died in history and resurrected from the dead in a moment in space and time which seems more credible? Christians are given privileges in Christ. We are given the revelation of spiritual insight. We are given true knowledge of the Father and Jesus His Son. We are given authentic information from God s revelation. Our First Privilege: Spiritual Insight (v.21) Luke 10:21 (NKJV); In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. The expression Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit is very interesting. The Greek verb is agalliao. It means to rejoice greatly or with great enthusiasm. The word is much stronger than the English word rejoiced. The idea is filled with joy, thrilled with joy! The idea includes a kind of triumphant or victorious joy! Satan is defeated (previous passage). This is not excessive celebration but rooted in the Holy Spirit! This is not some kind of worked up emotionalism; spiritual trash talking but joy and confidence deeply rooted in the absolute knowledge that God is in control and God s victory over evil is certain. The joy of Jesus was in part rooted in the knowledge that men and women in bondage were snatched from the jaws of Satan, of hell and death and brought into love and hope and eternal life. 1

2 The Lord of Heaven has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. The Believer s privilege includes spiritual insight in the truth. We are given the ability to discover and grasp spiritual truth. Jesus is not rejoicing because Scribes or Pharisees or religious authorities are blind to the identity of Jesus! Jesus does not rejoice because sinners are blind to the truth of the gospel. Jesus is not willing that any perish. Jesus refers to His Father as the Lord of Heaven and Earth. He also prays you have hidden these things. The Truth is hidden in the Father. How do you play hide and go seek with God? How can human beings discover reality? The proud, the selfish, selfsufficient won t even go looking! They are blind and refuse to seek help and refuse help when it shows up. They rest in their own ability and achievements. Spiritual truth is hidden! Where? In God! God has done the logical thing. He has taken spiritual truth and locked it inside Himself. The only access to real truth, spiritual truth is through God. The key is Jesus. The key is faith and trust in Jesus. This is why the person who considers himself wise and intelligent and sufficient without God will refuse a personal relationship with God. The self-sufficient person never comes to know God or spiritual truth because that truth is hidden in God (see Rom. 1:18-22). Don t you ever wonder why certain people never come to God? Because truth is hidden in God. The Spirit of God and the Gospel of Christ are available to those who come to God in open, humble, dependent trust. The Bible over and over again tells us God has hidden certain things, and revealed other things. Deuteronomy 29:29 (NKJV); The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. 1 Corinthians 2:10 (NKJV); But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. What things? What are these things? I suspect Jesus means the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. More specifically I think it means the truth the seventy had received in verses In other words, the truth that God is active and not passive, God has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. The truth that God saves human beings, He loves and is willing to save human beings. God is willing to give human beings power to defeat the devil, and advance the Kingdom of God, and write our names in the Lamb s Book of Life! Knowing these things is the greatest thing a human being can know! Knowing things about God is should never be a substitute for loving God. Can you imagine a man saying of his wife, I know things about my wife ; verses I love my wife! 2

3 Jesus rejoices because the understanding of truth does not depend on age, or education or intellectual ability! If that were the case most of us would be shut out of the Kingdom of God. Spiritual insight depends on knowing God. You will recall when Jesus sent out the twelve and the seventy as Ambassadors of the gospel, it was not the wise, the mighty, the influential, who humbled themselves and came to Christ. James 4:6 (NKJV);6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble. 1 Peter 5:6 (NKJV);6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, Is Jesus really happy that the wise and learned are excluded? Is Jesus guilty of being anti-intellectual? We have to be careful. The wise and the prudent are those who boast great religious learning; this is the religious establishment of the days of Jesus. Who are the babes? No it doesn t mean bay watch babes it means infants, little children, we are talking about common people, fisherman, publicans, regular salt of the earth kind of people. Jesus describes them as babes unlearned, perhaps not educated in the traditional sense of the word, they have a child-like faith unspoiled by classic education. Jesus offers praise for the people who have received God s revelation with a childlike simplicity. You may hate people who say, God said it, it believe it, that settles it. When you came to Christ were you among the wise, the mighty, the noble, the influential? 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 (NKJV);26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. The Lord was willing to reveal himself to babes infants, little children, unwise, uncomplicated, filled with needs and deficiencies. Jesus reveals himself to the humble and the teachable. We are all sinners deserving of God s judgment. The point is the wisdom of this world sometimes makes people proud, conceited, arrogant, unteachable and therefore resistant to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some people use education and learning as a reason to keep God at arms length, or too push God away altogether. Some people throw themselves into the failed pseudoscience of evolution to give themselves some rational way to deny the existence of a Creator God. Others accept God, but a God 3

4 who does not reveal Himself, or care about them personally, and so they see no value in knowing God. Others people God is irrelevant in a scientific, technological age. It is easy, even natural for those who see themselves as learned and wise to see others as unlearned and unwise, and then to go one step further, that in their learning and wisdom they have a kind of moral superiority. In other words they think others have to go a little further than they have to go to get God s approval. This kind of delusional thinking leads to salvation by comparison, a pharisaic delusion (see R. Kent Hughes p. 383 in his commentary on Luke, Vol. 1). R. Kent Hughes comments; The secularized form of this delusion is found in the common rationalism, I m not perfect, but I m certainly better than... Close to this errant thinking is the equally delusive thought of salvation by association. Some dismissed Jesus by asking, Has any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him? (John 7:48). The biggest self-deception by far for the wise and learned is the idea that their superior knowledge gives them a spiritual advantage. I suspect that Jesus is not promoting ignorance, or anti-intellectualism, ignorance is not a virtue. But love of God is far more important than knowledge of God. God does not hate ignorance but he does hate pride, he does hate conceit, he does hate a haughty stare. God did not create or invent human pride. God only has two choices for the proud person, leave them in their pride; God will not force anyone to worship Him therefore their pride becomes their punishment; their rejection makes them harder and harder and harder. They further and further removed from the Lord. So the Lord hides Himself and His truth from their wicked, corrupt, and perverse hearts. Oh there are those who are more than happy to mix a little truth in with a whole lot of lies. Our Second Privilege: True Knowledge Of God and His Son (v.22) Luke 10:22 (NKJV); All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. When Jesus asked His disciples; Who do men say that I am? The disciples answered some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and others one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered and said to Him, You are the Christ. You will recall Jesus said, Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven! (see Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-21). The Father reveals the Son. Jesus praises the Father for revelation of Himself, and of using Jesus as the instrument of that revelation. All things have been delivered or committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and know one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Note that. The Son reveals the Father. Jesus is the source of revelation since only God knows God. 4

5 No other Father knows my sons like I know my sons. And my sons know their Dad. My analogy falls short. You can know me or my children different from how we know each other. Jesus claims to be the sovereign dispenser of true, accurate, reliable information about the Father. No one will see who God or Jesus really is unless Jesus chooses to reveal Himself or His Father. When the unbeliever does not get it does that surprise you? When the unbeliever does not understand Jesus or the gospel we should not be surprised. The gospel is light the Word of God is light, but it cannot be seen unless a person s eye is opened by God. That makes Jesus everything when it comes to salvation. Jesus is the Revealer, the Redeemer, the Savior, and Keeper of our souls. Jesus is everything now and forever. Jesus holds the supreme place in the universe. All things have been delivered into the hands of God s Son; because all things have been made for God s Son. Colossians 1:16-17 (NKJV); For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. Do you think the vast majority of the people on the planet earth understand Jesus made the world, everything in it, and everything exists for Him? Acts 17:31 (NLT); For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead. The truth will be obvious one day. For a day is coming when the Son of Man will be revealed to this world. 1 Corinthians 15:24-25 (NLT) After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having put down all enemies of every kind. 25 For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. Only God and Christ have perfect knowledge. Therefore a complete knowledge of both Father and Son are available only to the Father and the Son. God is Spirit (John 4:24). He is in another dimension of being entirely. If a human being is to know accurate information about this spiritual world it must come from God. This is why other sources of information are not to be trusted. Man s mystical experiences, demonic mutterings, spurious writings from people who deny the identity of Jesus, the sinfulness of man, the solution of the cross of Calvary. Our Third Privilege: Understanding God s Revelation (vv.23-24) Luke 10:23 (NKJV);23 Then He turned to His disciples and said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see; 5

6 Luke 10:24 (NKJV);24 for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it. Adam and Abel, Enoch and Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, Zechariah and Zephaniah! Can you imagine? Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to watch Noah build the Ark, watch Abraham offer his Son?Have you ever wished you could see the ladder drop from Heaven when Jacob visited Bethel? Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to watch Moses receive the commandments from God, or watch Joshua battle as the sun stands still? Can you imagine watching Enoch get raptured, or Elijah taken to heaven in a fiery chariot? All of these men wondered, pondered, puzzled over God s Messiah! They saw bits and pieces through a glass darkly, but you see Jesus! People in the early church understood that we can t know all there is to know about God. Yet they believed that God had revealed some information about Himself, His Son, His creation, His plan of salvation. In the Middle Ages the church began to consider the authoritative interpretation of Scripture as revelation along with the Scriptures themselves. The Roman Catholic Church said that only the church could authoritatively interpret the Bible. So the church s teachings became viewed as revelatory along with the Scriptures. This, however, did not change the traditional understanding of the Scriptures as God s revelatory Word. The Reformers rejected the idea of additional revelation, but their understanding of the nature of the Bible was also the historic position it is the revealed Word of God. (Scripture It s Power, Authority, and Relevance; Robert Saucy; p.27). Conclusion Look again at the source of Jesus joy! The truth goes not to those with worldly wisdom, worldly privileges, the self-sufficient, but rather to the humble, and the open. Second Jesus rejoiced in being the revealer of the Father! Jesus is stoked beyond measure to be the source of revelation about the Father! We believe not because we are good but because we are open. We believe not simply because we are open and humble but rather Jesus himself opened our blind eyes! Bishop Ryle was fond of saying the difference between prophets and kings and what they see is the difference of twilight and noonday, of winter and summer, of the mind of a child and the mind of a full grown man. Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 6