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The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God—ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him—lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.
Skepticism about both divine revelation and Christian origins has bred a wider skepticism which abandons all idea of a unity of truth, and with it any hope of unified human knowledge; so that it is now commonly assumed that my religious apprehensions have nothing to do with my scientific knowledge of things external to myself, since God is not “out there” in the world, but only “down here” in the psyche.
It has been said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
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There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.
The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.
We must interrogate God’s word in order to gain a deeper understanding of God’s majesty.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.
Five basic truths, five foundation principles of the knowledge about God which Christians have, will determine our course throughout. They are as follows: 1. God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation. 2. God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him. 3. God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to
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Thus, to the fourth question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “What is God?” the answer read as follows: “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” This statement the great Charles Hodge described as “probably the best definition of God ever penned by man.”
What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it?
there can be no spiritual health without doctrinal knowledge; but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual health with it, if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard.
Take care to have proper motives
the psalmist’s concern to get knowledge about God was not a theoretical but a practical concern.
His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end.
He wanted to understand God’s truth in order that his heart might respond to it and hi...
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The psalmist was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand.
Our concern must be to enlarge our acquaintance, not simply with the doctrine of God’s attributes, but with the living God whose attributes they are.
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God?
Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.
Packer’s definition of meditation
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Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us—“comfort” us, in the old, strong, Bible sense of the word—as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But these private mock heroics have no place at all in the minds of those who really know God. They never brood on might-have-beens; they never think of the things they have missed, only of what they have gained.
A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.
1. One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him.
yet interest in theology, and knowledge about God, and the capacity to think clearly and talk well on Christian themes, is not at all the same thing as knowing him.
The question is, can we say, simply, honestly, not because we feel that as evangelicals we ought to, but because it is a plain matter of fact, that we have known God, and that because we have known God the unpleasantness we have had, or the pleasantness we have not had, through being Christians does not matter to us? If we really knew God, this is what we would be saying, and if we are not saying it, that is a sign that we need to face ourselves more sharply with the difference between knowing God and merely knowing about him.
those who know their God are sensitive to situations in which God’s truth and honor are being directly or tacitly jeopardized, and rather than let the matter go by default will force the issue on men’s attention and seek thereby to compel a change of heart about it—even at personal risk.
Perhaps we are not in a position to make public gestures against ungodliness and apostasy. Perhaps we are old, or ill, or otherwise limited by our physical situation. But we can all pray about the ungodliness and apostasy which we see in everyday life all around us. If, however, there is in us little energy for such prayer, and little consequent practice of it, this is a sure sign that as yet we scarcely know our God.
Once they were convinced that their stand was right,
How do we become convinced that our stance is right?
They may find the determination of the right course to take agonizingly difficult, but once they are clear on it they embrace it boldly and without hesitation.
4. Those who know God have great contentment in God.
What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God. “This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me’” (Jer 9:23-24).
What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance;
God alone accomplishes this.
practical application of truth to his life,
knowing God is a matter of personal involvement—
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 so important.
knowing God is a matter of grace.
“idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.”
1. Images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory.
“A true image of God,” wrote Calvin, “is not to be found in all the world; and hence . . . His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form. . . . Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is.”
2. Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God.
We were made in his image, but we must not think of him as existing in ours.
We are not to make images, material or mental, of God because any image we make reduces God to our created image of him so that, instead of the creator God who exists wholly apart from our understanding, we have created a god in our own image. Anything we create to represent God represents instead our construction of God, not the real God.
God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable—and
Thus it appears that the positive force of the second commandment is that it compels us to take our thoughts of God from his own holy Word, and from no other source whatsoever.
To make an image of God is to take one’s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.
