It Is Not For You To Know
Acts 1:7
We have many, many questions. And there are not enough answers. We live with unknowns and uncertainty.
Will I marry? Whom? What is ultimately meaningful? What should my career be? Should we have children? Will I get cancer? Are we headed for political or economic doom?
The disciples of Jesus had pressing and urgent questions for Jesus in the few moments remaining before he left them for good. Is it now? Is now the time that the long-anticipated kingdom will be restored to the nation of Israel? Isn’t this why you, the Messiah, came? Haven’t you come to restore justice and to relieve the nation of Israel from Roman oppression?
But Jesus did not give a clear answer to their burning questions. “It is not for you to know.”
Jesus says we are not to know when He will return, what time and date the Father has selected for this glad event. It would not be good for us to know. We might be tempted to abuse the grace of God and delay repentance until just before He comes back. Jesus wants us to live watching, trusting, praying, seeking Him until He returns for His own.
And more broadly, we want to know things and times and explanations that God does not intend for us to know. But we want to know, for knowing gives us the illusion of control. Nothing new here. In the garden, the serpent tempted Eve by saying “…you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” To know is to be like God, to rival God Himself. God is the one who knows all and all things. And God is the one who controls all and all things. For God there are no unanswered questions, no mysteries, no paradoxes and no ambiguities.
But Jesus says, “It is not for you to know.” Or as Moses once said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” Some of our questions must remain unanswered. Let God be God. Learn to be human, and trust God in your finiteness and limitations and knowledge with boundaries. God made you for this. He wants you to trust Him where you do not and cannot know (Proverbs 3:5). Trust Him where you cannot see. Trust God in the dark (Psalm 139:12).
Faith in God will take you where your limited knowledge cannot. It is not for you to know.