Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”

This is an absolutely amazing offer from our omniscient Creator. Expressed a little differently, He’s saying, “You want to know something wild? Just ask me.” Today we tend to look back on people of past generations and think, “They were so ignorant.” The thing is, we are still so ignorant! Some items of information have made a major difference, such as the awareness of germs causing disease, but there is still far more that we don’t know than we do know. God never has that problem! The question becomes, what do we need to know? On the eternal scale, what is most important is that we have a Creator who is perfectly holy and so cannot abide sin, but who is perfectly loving, and so sent His Son to take the penalty for our sin and enable salvation by grace through faith. Everything else is strictly icing on the cake, but some of it is important to our quality of life on this planet – the awareness of germs being a good example. As the following verses make clear, what God was referring to here was future events that Jeremiah couldn’t have imagined on his own. That was important, because Jeremiah’s writings were what gave the Jews hope during their time in Babylon, preparing them to return to the land when God used Cyrus the Persian to accomplish it. At this point, God has given us knowledge of future events through Ezekiel and Daniel in the Old Testament and John in the New, but we tend to get confused by it all, trying to draw timelines and such. The far wiser course is to ask God to show us whatever we need to know, and not worry about the rest. Daily faithfulness is the key. The devil is quite an expert at distracting us with all sorts of things that might be true in themselves, but they are strictly temporal and don’t mean anything in the long run. Our focus needs to be on our Lord, listening to Him and following through with whatever He tells us. It’s important to remember that God sometimes shows us “hidden, unsearchable” things. The Japanese expresses that as “things beyond human understanding.” We may sometimes have no idea what to do with what He has shown us, but we have James’ reassurance: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (James 1:5) Wisdom is ultimately more important than knowledge.

I have always been something of a knowledge junkie, delighting to collect information, so learning to value wisdom over knowledge hasn’t been an easy road for me. As has been said, knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. That’s a silly, humorous example, but I need to keep my focus on my Lord, and not on all the information that so delights me. The Internet is a blessing and a curse to me, because it certainly feeds my knowledge addiction, while at the same time distracting me from what God is saying to me. I’m not to reject information, but always keep it in perspective. Virtually all of it will be totally insignificant when I stand before God’s throne! I need to keep remembering that God’s smart and I’m not, and be at peace with that.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for the intelligence You’ve given me. May I always use it in submission and obedience to You, for Your glory alone. Thank You. Praise God!