How Great Our Ignorance
How Great Our Ignorance
Judges 13:17-19a
And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?” And the angel of the LORD said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?” So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the LORD, to the one who works wonders, …
When you’re giving your toddler a warning about the dangers of running in the road, do you explain force and velocity or describe what happens to a thirty-pound body when it meets a 5,000-pound object going forty miles per hour? Do you explain how a broken spinal cord inhibits bodily motion? Of course not. You just say, “Look out for cars!” as sternly as you can, because that message is all their undeveloped minds can understand. But the same is true of our relationship to Almighty God, isn’t it? At best, we’re toddlers, crawling around in our curiosity, mesmerized by the universe of objects that our senses encounter, rolling all the mysteries of Providence around in our hands with little clue of what to make of them.
Manoah means well—he’s asking good questions here; but he’s just oblivious to what he doesn’t know. He’s ignorant of just how ignorant he really is. See, friend, we think that because the LORD has condensed Himself into a tangible, relatable form, and stooped down to our level, and born our likeness, that we can grasp Him—that Omniscience is tangible—that He’s just like us, only a little shinier and taller and wiser. Like Manoah, we think we can just ask for a Name as if having a word will end our discovery of the infinite Nature concealed behind it—as if a sound we utter with our lips will cover the unfathomable range of His triune Personhood. Ah, but the LORD replies to our misnomers in the deftness of perfect wisdom: “Why do you ask … seeing that it is too wonderful?” Consider this, friend: if we can’t explain advanced laws of physics to our three-year-olds, how do we expect God to explain infinite mysteries to us?
As we draw near our Immanuel today, and grasp His hand, and follow in His steps, may we never stop seeking that fathomless face He conceals behind the familiar one.