Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Maybe you’ve noticed in your life that the more you know, the more you are aware of all that you do not know. When you know nothing, you do not know what it is you do not know. That is why a lot of times young people are the most brilliant people in the world; they do not yet know what it is that they do not know. That is why you may feel more ignorant now than when you did when you were fourteen years old! You know more now, and that knowledge reveals to you that there is a lot more that you do not know.
In Deuteronomy 29:29 God draws a contrast between the things that we do not know and the things that we do know. It says, “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” So, there are a lot of things Israel knew that God had revealed unto them. God had given them a covenant, the Ten Commandments, and so on, but there is much they did not know or understand. God seemed to say, “Don’t worry about the things that you don’t understand. Concentrate on what you are responsible to know.”
You can be defined by what you know or by what you do not know, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with how much it is that you actually know. I think about brilliant people, men like Stephen Hawking who was a brilliant physicist among other things but who did not know there was a God. In fact, I think he stated that he was not just an agnostic, he was an atheist. So, as brilliant as he was, he was a man who was more defined by what he did not know than by what it is he did know.
Today, you can either be defined by your ignorance or you can be defined by your knowledge. The way to be defined by your knowledge is to act on what you know. That is the whole setting of Moses’ words about “all that the LORD did before your eyes.”
Israel had seen so much that God had done. They had seen Him provide food from Heaven, bring them out of Egypt, and provide for them in the wilderness. God had done all that, therefore they needed to keep the words of the covenant. There were many things that God had done that Israel did not understand. But, God said, “Keep therefore the covenant, and do them.” Why? It is because being defined by what you know means taking action on it.
Today, there may be a lot of things you don’t know or don’t understand. You can either worry about those things or you can take action on the things that God has revealed to you. Ultimately, being defined by what you know means taking action on it.