JEREMIAH 9:23-24 – “Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.””

THEME OF THE DAY: KNOWING GOD. As Christians, we proclaim a very bold statement to the world. We say, “There is one God and we know Him.” We tell people that God is alive; we are in relationship with Him, and that He is not some impersonal force, but a Personal God who is knowable. Yes, we make bold claims to a world ignorant of the one true God. But what does it mean to “know God”? J.I. Packer in his classic book Knowing God wrote…

“Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart. What happens is the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truths of Holy Scripture. Perhaps you have been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years, and it has meant little to you; but one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you – you! – through the biblical message.”

Yet here is where we must be careful about the subtlety of self-deception and self-serving when we come to our Bibles. It is easy to read our Bibles and not meet God. We may acquire knowledge about God; be educated with principles on how to live; and even find passages to lift us up, but fall short of meeting and knowing God. How will we know if our coming to our Bibles is bringing us face-to-face with the Lord in soul-ravishing fellowship and enjoyment? A couple of ways.

First, if we are truly meeting God in the scriptures, we will see ourselves as we really are before Him. Again, from Packer. He writes…

“As you listen to what God is saying, you find yourself brought very low; for God talks to you about your sin, and guilt, and weakness, and blindness and folly, and compels you to judge yourself hopeless and helpless, and to cry out for forgiveness. But this is not all. You come to realize as you listen that God is actually opening His heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you as a colleague.”

What a glorious thought! God shows us our complete dependence on Him, humbling us over our sin, and then brings us into a deeper awareness of our family ties! Is that happening in our Bible times? It is part of knowing God.

Another way we may know if we are meeting and knowing God in the scriptures is our astonishment over His attributes or being mesmerized by His Person as He reveals Himself to us. Few people can explain this truth of being overwhelmed with the Person of our God better than Jonathan Edwards. In a sermon titled God’s Excellencies, Edwards preached, “Now it is impossible we should love, fear, and obey God as we ought except we know what He is, and have right ideas of His perfections, that render Him lovely and worthy to be feared and obeyed. It would be greatly to the advantage of our souls, if we understood more of the excellency and gloriousness of God. A proper understanding of God not only affords man the spiritual tools necessary for Christian living, such knowledge ultimately equips him to fulfill the very end for which he was created: to think and be astonished at His glorious perfections.”

Yes, we make bold claims to know the living God through Jesus Christ. May this God draw us to Himself, revealing Himself through His Word in a personal way; showing us ourselves before Him, then humbling us and enabling us to marvel over the glorious being He is in all His beauty and splendor.

PRAYER: Father, make me come to Your Word to know myself and to know You as we really are.

REFLECTION: The whole of the Christian life is to be amazed over who God is as He reveals to us who He is.