21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. 22 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” 23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” ~ Luke 10:21-24
When the disciples returned from their mission trip, the Lord Jesus rejoiced. These joyful disciples had gone out two by two to preach the gospel of the kingdom with the power to heal and to cast out demons. This is the only time in the Gospels that we are told that the Lord Jesus rejoiced.
There is a threefold joy here: the joy of service (Luke 10:17–19), the joy of salvation (Luke 10:20), and the joy of sovereignty (Luke 10:24). Our highest joy is not found in service or even in our salvation, but in being submitted to the sovereign will of our Heavenly Father. This is the foundation for both service and salvation.
In v.21 we read, "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do." It is the Holy Spirit who provides joy and it was out of His joy that the Lord Jesus praised the Father. And, the pleasure of the Father factored into the joy the Lord Jesus displayed that day.
The Son is rejoicing that the Father designed a salvation plan that is accessed by the humble, those who reject all human ability to know God apart from divine revelation. It is to those who have experienced the process of a broken heart that God reveals Himself. It is to the spiritually bankrupt that the Lord Jesus reveals Himself.
In the beginning of v.22 we read, "All things have been committed to me by my Father..." Within the Trinity everything is shared. The Father perfectly trusts the Son who has the supreme power to work out this plan of redemption completely. The Father has turned the whole operation over to the Son. In Matthew 28:18 the Lord Jesus said, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me."
As we continue in v.22 we read "No one knows who the Son is except the Father." No one would know the Son is if the Father hadn't chosen to reveal Him. No one knows who the Son is except the Father. The true knowledge of the Son is known only to the Father and none of us would know it if the Father had not revealed Him.
Then, we read, "and no one knows who the Father is except the Son..." We would never know the Father personally except the Son reveal Him to us. The Lord Jesus came to reveal the Father to us, this is all just as God had planned it. And so, v.22 ends with, " and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
No one knows God personally unless He wills that we know Him. To us who have received the revelation of the Father in the Son, the truth was revealed, and our blindness was turned to sight. At that point, we went from death to life.
In v.23-24 we read, "23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
In v.21-22, the Lord Jesus had been talking to the Father. Now He turns to the disciples. He says, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see." He experienced extreme joy over the blessing that had come to them. He rejoiced in them being blessed. Matthew adds, "Blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear." He's referring to the work of the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit who awakened us from the dead.
Then in v.24 we read, "For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it." Our hearts are naturally blind. Luke's Gospel repeatedly presents men in a natural state of blindness. We saw this when the Lord Jesus first described His ministry in Luke 4 to “open the eyes of the blind.”
In Matthew 13:11, the Lord Jesus said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted." This has been granted, not earned or achieved.
The New Testament is the revelation of all the things kept secret in the Old Testament. The Old Testament saints looked into the mysteries and tried to understand. They could not understand it. But, it is all revealed in the New Testament and it has been revealed to us. God reveals Himself in a way that goes to war against human pride because pride is the source of all of our other sins.
