This lesson from Thomas Brooks is lengthy. I’ve pulled sections from it to focus on the points. This is another wonderful motive to get away with your Bible and communion with the living God. Brook’s first line is a grabber, at least for me. He had my heart’s attention with it. If I’d stop writing, you could stop reading my words and get to the steak. Let’s go:
Consider you are the only persons in all the world that God hath made choice of to reveal his secrets to. John 15:15, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’ Everything that God the Father had communicated to Christ as mediator to be revealed to his servants, he did make known to his disciples as to his bosom-friends. Christ loves his people as friends, and he uses them as friends, and he opens his heart to them as friends. There is nothing in the heart of Christ that concerns the internal and eternal welfare of his friends, but he reveals it to them: he reveals himself, his love, his eternal good will, the mysteries of faith, and the secrets of his covenant, to his friends.1 Christ loves not to entertain his friends with things that are commonly and vulgarly known. Christ will reveal the secrets of his mind, the secrets of his love, the secrets of his thoughts, the secrets of his heart, and the secrets of his purposes, to all his bosom-friends. Samson could not hide his mind, his secrets, from Delilah, though it cost him his life, Judges 16:15–17; and do you think that Christ can hide his mind, his secrets, from them for whom he hath laid down his life? Surely no. O sirs! Christ is,
(1.) A universal friend.
(2.) An omnipotent friend, an almighty friend. He is no less than thirty times called Almighty in that book of Job; he can do above all expressions and beyond all apprehensions.
(3.) He is an omniscient friend.
(4.) He is an omnipresent friend.
(5.) He is an indeficient friend.
(6.) He is an independent friend.
(7.) He is an unchangeable friend.
(8.) He is a watchful friend.
(9.) He is a tender and compassionate friend.
(10.) He is a close and faithful friend; and therefore he cannot but open and unbosom himself to all his bosom friends. To be reserved and close is against the very law of friendship. Faithful friends are very free in imparting their thoughts, their minds, their secrets, one to another. A real friend accounts nothing worth knowing unless he makes it known to his friends. He rips up his greatest and most inward secrets to his friends. Job calls his friends ‘inward friends,’ or the men of his secrets, Job 19:19. All Christ’s friends are inward friends; they are the men of his secrets: Prov. 3:32, ‘His secrets are with the righteous,’ that is, his covenant and fatherly affection, which is hid and secret from the world. He that is righteous in secret, where no man sees him, he is the righteous man, to whom God will communicate his closest secrets, as to his dearest bosom-friend. It is only a bosom-friend to whom we will unbosom ourselves. So Ps. 25:14, ‘The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.’Now, there are three sorts of divine secrets:
(1.) First, There are secrets of providence, and these he reveals to the righteous, and to them that fear him, Ps. 107:43, Hosea 14:9. The prophet Amos speaks of these secrets of providence: Amos 3:7, ‘Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secrets unto his servants and prophets.’
(2.) Secondly, There are the secrets of his kingdom; and these he reveals to his people: Mat. 13:11, ‘Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but unto them it is not given.’ So Mat. 11:25, ‘At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.’ …There are many secrets wrapped up in the plainest truths and doctrines of the gospel, which none can effectually open and reveal but the Spirit of the Lord, that searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. There are many secrets and mysteries in the gospel, that all the learning and labour in the world can never give a man insight into. There are many that know the doctrine of the gospel, the history of the gospel, that are mere strangers to the secrets of the gospel. There is a secret power, a secret authority, a secret efficacy, a secret prevalency, a secret goodness, a secret sweetness in the gospel, that none experience but those to whom the Lord is pleased to impart gospel secrets to: Isa. 29:11, 12,
Chrysostom compares the mysteries of Christ, in regard of the wicked, to a written book, that the ignorant can neither read nor spell; he sees the cover, the leaves, and the letters, but he understands not the meaning of what he sees. He compares the mystery of grace to an indited epistle, which an unskilful idiot1 viewing, he cannot read it, he cannot understand it; he knoweth it is paper and ink, but the sense, the matter, he knows not, he understands not. So unsanctified persons, though they are never so learned, and though they may perceive the bark of the mystery of Christ, yet they perceive not, they understand not, the mystery of grace, the inward sense of the Spirit, in the blessed Scriptures. Though the devil be the greatest scholar in the world, and though he have more learning than all the men in the world have, yet there are many thousand secrets and mysteries in the gospel of grace, that he knows not really, spiritually, feelingly, efficaciously, powerfully, thoroughly, savingly, &c.
Oh, but now Christ makes known himself, his mind, his grace, his truth, to his people, in a more clear, full, familiar, and friendly way: 2 Sam. 7:27, ‘For thou, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, hast revealed to thy servant;’ so you read it in your books; but in the Hebrew it is thus: ‘Lord, thou hast revealed this to the ear of thy servant.’ Now, the emphasis lieth in that word, to the ear, which is left out in your books. When God makes known himself to his people, he revealeth things to their ears, as we use to do to a friend who is intimate with us: we speak a thing to his ear. There is many a secret which Jesus Christ speaks in the ears of his servants, which others never come to be acquainted with: 2 Cor. 4:6, ‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’(3.) Thirdly, There are the secrets of his favour, the secrets of his special love, that he bears to them; the secret purposes of his heart to save them; and these are those great secrets, those ‘deep things of God.’ which none can reveal ‘but the Spirit of God.’ Now these great secrets, these deep things of God, God doth reveal to his people by his Spirit: 1 Cor. 2:10–12, ‘But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.’ Now what are the things that are freely given to us of God, but our election, vocation, justification, sanctification, and glorification? And why hath God given us his Spirit, but that we should know ‘the things that are freely given to us of God.
Tiberius Cæsar thought no man fit to know his secrets. And among the Persians none but noblemen, lords, and dukes, might be made partakers of state secrets; they esteeming secresy a godhead, a divine thing, as Ammianus Marcellinus affirms. But now such honour God hath put upon all his saints, as to make them lords and nobles, and the only privy statesmen in the court of heaven. The highest honour and glory that earthly princes can put upon their subjects is to communicate to them their greatest secrets. Now this high honour and glory the King of kings hath put upon his people; ‘For his secrets are with them that fear him, and he will shew them his covenant.’ It was a high honour to Elisha, 2 Kings, 6:12, that he could tell the secrets that were spoken in the king’s bed-chamber. Oh! what an honour must it then be for the saints to know the secrets that are spoken in the presence-chamber of the King of kings!
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Brooks, T. (1866). The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks. (A. B. Grosart, Ed.) (Vol. 2, p. 189). Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert.
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