LivingWalk - An Exhortation for the Authentic Christian Life!

Knowing Our God - W.E. Smith

Just recently I found myself wading into the very tangled thick of things in the first chapters of Jeremiah, where the Lord, in no uncertain terms, indicts His people Israel, on a number of fronts. But one thing in particular really jumped out at me; that despite all of their history with their God; despite all of His magnanimous revelation and blessing and grace towards them, they still, at the end of it all, did not - “know Him”.

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me; The rulers also transgressed against Me, And the prophets prophesied by Baal And walked after things that did not profit. (Jer. 2:8)

“For My people are foolish, They know Me not; They are stupid children And have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, But to do good they do not know.” (Jer. 4:22)

The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it? (Jer. 5:31)

Amazing this, that the very people, priest and prophets who were called to know Him, and to singularly represent Him to the nations of the earth, did not; and they actually exalted in this. Apart from His original intent for them and the patient showering of much divine favor on them, they had by some stange means derived a life and religion completely divorced from the blessing, guidance and governance of their God.

Well folks, that was them, but what about us, what about you and me? Do we know the Lord, and are we actually aware that knowing Him is the reason we were reconciled to Him by the blood of His Precious Son in the first place. And more to the point, how do we come to know Him, and what is the price of this intimate knowledge?

It was Austin-Sparks, that great and humble servant of God, who taught that the cross must be basic to all knowledge of the Lord, and that true spirituality, reduced down, is simply knowing God.

sparksHe also wrote this -

“We cannot have the knowledge of the Lord – the most important thing in the mind of of God for us – except on the ground of the continuous application of the cross, and that will go right to the end.”

Dear friends, please keep that statement in mind as you read the following passages -

Make me know Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; For You I wait all the day. (Psalm 25:4-5)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:16-19)

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God (Col. 1:9-10)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15)

Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:8-9)

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. (John 14:16)

To know the Lord of All Life is everything isn’t it? One can know many things and many persons and many concepts in the course of his life, but only one thing truly matters at the end of the day – and that is to know the Living God; to know our God! Knowing God is the reason we were born, and the purpose for our lives! And we will go on knowing Him as long as eternity persists! Yet to know Him as He intends means so much more than knowing ‘about Him’ through study or investigation or religious pursuit. Consider Job -

Then Job answered the LORD and said, “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-6)

Job’s coming to “see” and know the Lord was no mere intellectual endeavor, but a blood and spirit encounter; a reckoning borne out of repentance and the rejection of the self. If this sounds a lot like what Austin-Sparks was describing above – “the continuous application of the cross” – then it is because that is the only way to see or know our God.

And as we also see from the passages mentioned, to know the Son (”The image of the invisible God”) is to know the Father. This is the fundamental reason any idol or graven image representing God is blasphemous, for it supplants the one true and legitimate image of the Eternal God - the Lord Jesus Christ!

Further, Ephesians reveals that fruit, borne out of the crucified life, leads to the ever-increasing knowledge of God. If we we want to know our God, and to know Him more perfectly, there must be loss, rejection, suffering, pain, loneliness, estrangement; in short an ultimate cost to be paid. For if the Lord Jesus Christ is the singular way to the Father, then only His way must be ours as well. It is a way spotted with blood; where the chorus of the many shouts down against the few, where life is brought forth vicariously out of death.

And so when David prayed -

Make me know Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths.

… we must acknowledge what in fact he was asking for and how it would ultimately be apprehended. Not sitting casually at ease in the king’s chamber reading the scrolls or discussing theology with his contemporaries. No, where David learned the ways and paths of the Lord was by sharing in the rejection and suffering of the Christ. And it is no different with any of us dear brethren, all those who would know the Lord God in all of His Wondrous Wisdom and Love and Glory!

How we all need His grace to know Him, and His Spirit and Help to know Him, and how that knowing Him would become the very pivot of our lives, turning us here or there, or wherever He leads us. And I pray that we will see, that as we come to know Him it is not as a God somehow outside of us (out there or up there), but within, abiding within us in real spiritual unity, intimacy and relationship.

Dear friends, I must say sadly and candidly, that there are many in the world and the church speaking for our God who don’t actually know Him. They (it would seem anyway) have never actually encountered Him or experienced that moment of reckoning where they see Him as He truly is, and then abandon all else to follow Him unequivocally. There are many more I suppose who have studied the Scriptures to great depth, and have a vocabulary for all of their high-sounding concepts about the Lord (this was me at one time I confess). Yet look around and there is no cross, and no blood and no pain and no rejection. In short, the way they have chosen is not the Lord’s way. The truth they have accepted is not His Truth! And the life they are advancing is merely a religious, ephemeral life; it is not a life advanced out of death at all! The path of knowing the Lord is singular one, and as much as we may like the notion of many disparate roads all leading to the same happy place, this concept is nowhere found in the testimony of Scripture. It is a lie and can only lead to greater blindness and unknowing, the polar opposite of what we are referring to here.

My friends, dear saints of God, we must all come to the place where we are willing to suffer whatever the cost that we might know the Lord God who saves us. Everything else to be known is incidental and relatively worthless. We were created and redeemed that we might know our God who breathed life into us, and is conforming us to the image of His Son. Yes we can read in the Bible that He is this or that, but our knowledge of Him must be founded on so much more than reading or scholarship (please note that I am in no way devaluing the importance of study in the Word; this should go without saying). We must experience Him in all of His abiding wisdom and love and truth and wonder! And we cannot possibly know Him if we persist in remaining rooted and attached to this present evil world, for He has already judged this world and its God, and found it wanting. Doom, death and destruction is all that remains for this world and its collision course with the Almighty Judge!

Is the price of knowing Him dear? Oh yes, very dear indeed, for the pioneer of our faith showed us the way to the heart of the Father, and look at what it cost Him. Dear brethren, the greatest blessing the Lord has endowed us with is Himself. Let me say that again – the greatest blessing the Lord has endowed us with is Himself! Look how much our Lord loved and honored the Father! Oh what He must have known about Him, such that all else proved merely superfluous. Oh what He must have seen! To know God truly is to love Him! And to know Him is to worship Him as He deserves, with all honor and truth and spiritual praise! Truly He is the most compelling thing in His universe!

My friends, I pray for all of you that you might know the Lord our God, and be willing to pay the price, such as it is in your life, that this might be possible! I can personally attest to the fact that it is not an easy path; that at times it is a bewildering and painful road we are on. But we are all on it together my brethren, and it leads to the very heart of our Heavenly and Loving Father! Please pray for one another and for the one sharing these words. It is only His grace that brings us through the trials and storms, only His grace!

Oh Lord, help us to know You most perfectly, in Jesus’ name, Amen.