Knowing God (April 20, 2020)

Who is God, and what is He like?...this is the most important question you can ever ask yourself. A. W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Knowing God is the ultimate quest of the human life. It far supersedes the urgency to learn the sciences, technologies, and even the study of life itself. All these are good, but your knowledge of God holds more weight than any other knowledge you carry. In fact, the knowledge of God and your conformity to this knowledge gives salvation. If knowing God is the ultimate quest for the human life, we must take serious the means of which we will accomplish this task…to study God’s revelation with urgency.

Knowledge of God guides everything…the way you think and the way you act. Everything depends on who you think God is. In the social sphere, issues concerning morality find their foundation in God. In the ministry sphere, all work and tasks find their foundation in God. In your life, the decisions you make directly correlate on your knowledge of God and your conformity and acceptance of that knowledge. The reason why you tithe, and how much you tithe, finds its foundation in your view of God. Your decision to be kind to others finds its foundation in your view of God. Your decision not to steal the Snicker's bar at the grocery story finds its foundation in your view of God.

In essence, we ought to know God because it is the ultimate task of created beings in relation to the creator, but why else might the believer be encouraged to take this task with the utmost seriousness? Well, I’m glad you asked. There are several reasons that could be argued for an urgency in knowing God, but today I give you three. We ought to know God so that we can love Him. We ought to know God so that we can worship Him. We ought to know God so that we may spread His word.

2. We ought to know Him so that we can love Him.

Imagine that are in your car and you approach a stoplight. A man has a cardboard sign that says, “Do you love me?” What’s your answer to his question? Do you love him? Probably not. You know not his name. You know not what type of food he likes to eat. You know not what he may get sad about. Simply, you do not know him. You cannot truly love someone you do not know…right? Imagine that you are married…wouldn’t it be absurd if you never met your spouse before your wedding day. Granted, there are cases in which certain individuals do enter into an arranged marriage, but still, there is no connect between the two people. Let’s say you are married, in the perspective of a husband. What if you never talked to your wife? What if you know nothing about her? We’ll give you some more credit…you know little things about her, like her name, her age, and maybe her favorite color…but you don’t know what she enjoys doing on her down time, or what gets her sad, what gets her happy, what brings joy to her life. This would be a very sad marriage…right? The more you know about someone, the more you can appreciate them. Maybe there are some bad habits your spouse has, but you know everything else about them so you appreciate them even though they may fart next to you a lot. In the same way, how are you going to love God if you know nothing about Him. A man pursuing a woman will get his hands on any information he can about her. He will contact her friends, try to set up as many dates with her as he can, observe her, and talk to her.

In our love for God, we ought to study His Words. We ought to desire to pray to Him. We ought to strive to know who He is. If you love someone, you want to develop a deeper relationship with that person. Why would it be any different with God? He is perfect. Unlike any human being, He has no wrong, he has no annoying habits. You will not grow weary of Him. You will not ever feel like you need a break from Him. As you know Him more and more, you will love him more and more. The Christian life is marked by love for God. In fact, Jesus declares that the greatest law of the Old Testament is loving God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind and the second, to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Matt 22:37-40). Loving God can only logically flow from knowing who He is and what He is like. To fulfill this greatest commandment, we must know who He is and what He is like.

2. We ought to know Him so that we can worship Him.

The act of worship can be defined many ways. I like John Witvliet’s definition as he defines worship as “the celebrative response to what God has done, is doing, and promises to do.” If he is telling the truth, that means worshippers of God must know what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do; in other words, they must know who He is. Just like loving God, how is a worshipper of God supposed to worship Him if they don’t know who He is? We have an object of worship, and that object of worship is God because He alone is worthy of all praise, honor, and glory. We certainly can worship something or someone who is not God. This is called idolatry. The picture of idolatry that most comes to our mind would probably involve someone who worships a tiny carved stickman made of wood. While this is a prime example of idolatry, it is broader than you think. It encompasses both the first and second of the 10 commandments. The first commandment is a declarative decree to have no other gods while the second is to not make an idol and bow down to it.

Let’s take a look at the story of Moses and the golden calf in Exodus 32. The people are impatient as Moses climbs the mountain and does not come down for many days. They tell Aaron to make a god for them to worship. They recognize that the activity of the soul is to worship, yet they had come to disobey God’s second commandment. Aaron indeed does lead the charge to make a calf out of gold and references the"god" as the one who brought them out of Egypt. This is hard evidence that they weren’t necessarily trying to worship a totally different god, but had skewed their worship of Yahweh God. Instead of worshipping God for who He truly is, they turned Him into a golden calf. This too is idolatry, worshipping God not for who He is. The consequence of this idolatry resulted in their death. If you do not know Him, how are you going to worship Him without falling to idolatry?

The means of worship then, is having knowledge of Him. Without a proper knowledge of God, you cannot worship Him for all He is worth. Knowing God is the most important means of worship. Doxology (simply worship or praise to God) is the chief goal of theology (knowing God). What you know and learn about God should result in worship, adoration, and priase. Without worship, your knowledge is just knowledge. The Christian must remember that doctrine, or simply what we know about God, is knowledge for life. Just as a fisherman will learn how to fish, he will use what he learns to fish. He won’t learn how to fish and not use the skills. Our knowledge of God and its implications are the same; you learn and know not to just know, but to live your life accordingly.

John MacArthur sums up our short study of worship accordingly “Worship is not merely an emotional exercise with God-words or musical sounds that induce certain feelings. Worship is certainly not a mystical catharsis of human passion detached from any rational thought or biblical precept. True worship is a response of adoration and praise prompted by truth that God has revealed. Psalm 145:18 says, “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (emphasis added). Clearly, truth is prerequisite to acceptable worship. Truth is always at the heart of authentic worship.”

2. We ought to know Him so that we can spread His word faithfully.

Have you ever heard of a salesman who does not know his product? Will he be able to sell his cookies to you if he can’t tell you how they are different from the Chips Ahoy at Walmart? The answer is probably no. Now, we aren’t trying to sell God. The faithful life in the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about how many people you convince to believe. Yet, there is a resounding commandment to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations. Of course, this comes with the reminder that God does the saving, not you. You simply are the tool God uses to accomplish His mission.

If you do not know God, you cannot tell others who He is. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not meant to be left to oneself. Some of Jesus’ last words in Matthew 28 was to make disciples of all nations. Jesus’ three main imperatives to achieving this was to go, to baptize, and to teach all that Jesus taught His disciples. Again, we see that knowledge plays an integral role in the task before us. You cannot teach others if you do not know. A good teacher is an expert at what he teaches. In the same light, making disciples require knowledge of God.

Those who do not know Him for who He truly is runs the risk of being a false prophet/teacher. Some will try to be faithful to the call of making disciples, yet they fail to know God for who He truly is. These individuals may very well believe they are preaching and teaching the right God, yet they have already fallen to idolatry. Some intentionally are false teachers. Matthew 7:15-16 speaks about these individual as those who have disguised themselves; they are just wolves in sheep’s clothing. Knowing God ensures that we are not unintentionally being false teachers.

Conclusion

We must diligently study who God is and what He is like. If this is the case, we must strive to do our best, to do justice to the character of God. We must know God for this is the ultimate quest of the human life. We must know Him that we may worship Him, love Him, and to be faithful to His commission. To do this effectively, we must know God and teach others to know God as well. Everything stands and falls on the Doctrine of God, or simply what you believe about God. The stakes are high, as we cannot afford to get God wrong. The believer is charged to know God and therefore we ought to make serious this task. As you continue to walk with God, I pray that you will grow deeper in knowledge and understanding of who He is and what He is like.

May God's grace and peace be upon you,

 - Pastor Matthew Herr