Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

great boldness for God.

“Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my

By this test also we may measure our own knowledge of God.

great contentment in God.

I am convinced that neither death

will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”

To soar to endless day?

comprehensiveness of our contentment

Let us ask the Lord to show us.

we must seek the Savior.

instances-for who was the fourth man, “like a son of the gods” (3:25 RSV), who walked with Daniel’s three friends in the furnace?

who was the angel whom God sent to shut the lions’ mouths when Daniel was in their den (6:22)?

till they have found him-for

What were we made for? To know God.

What is the “eternal life” that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).

What, of all the states God ever sees man in, gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself. “I desired ... the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings,” says God (Hos 6:6 KJV).

the person whose religion is merely formal will not be moved by it. (And by this very fact his unregenerate state may be known.)

the main business that you are here for is to know God,

wasting disease which Albert Camus focused as absurdism (“life is a bad joke”),

everything becomes at once a problem and a bore, because nothing seems worthwhile.

What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance,

it is easy to be fooled, and to think you know God when you do not.

what sort of activity, or event, is it that can properly be described as “knowing God”?

We recognize degrees in our knowledge of our fellow men.

knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart.

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.

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.

making friends with you

covenant partner.

from being Satan’s prisoner, you find yourself transferred to a position of trust in the service of God.

knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what he commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this divine fellowship.

we know God in the manner of a son knowing his father, a wife knowing her husband, a subject knowing his king and a sheep knowing its shepherd

those who know him—that is, those by whom he allows himself to be known—are loved and cared for by him.

their-God,

called them to himself,

not by uttering fresh words,

The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with Christians now, and knowing him involves going with him, now as then.

Jesus’ voice is “heard” when Jesus’ claim is acknowledged, his promise trusted and his call answered.

To know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, and guilt, and death.

First,

it is a matter of dealing with him

sermon hearer

Second,

God does not exist for our comfort or happiness or satisfaction, or to provide us with “religious experiences,”

anyone who, on the basis of “religious experiences,” “says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 Jn 2:4; compare vv. 9, 11; 3:6, 11; 4:20).

This is the emotional and experiential side of friendship with God. Ignorance of it argues that, however true a person’s thoughts of God may be, he does not yet know the God of whom he is thinking. Third,

God is so completely above

The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God’s initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving.

All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me.

no moment, therefore, when his care falters.