Something was wrong with the engine of a large ship. The owner of the ship called for experts to come diagnose and fix the problem. One after the other they all failed. No one could figure out what was wrong. The owner was informed about an old man who lived in the same harbor and was fixing ships since childhood. So the old man was called. He came with a large bag of tools. He examined the engine for a while, then grabbed a hammer from his bag and tapped somewhere over the engine. It suddenly sprung back to life and ran perfectly. Everyone was surprised. The old man hardly did anything. No one knew that two or three taps could resurrect the engine. Well, the ship owner received a bill for one thousand dollars. He was rather irritated about that and complained to the old man that he’d only been in the engine room about 10 minutes. He requested an itemized bill. The old mechanic sent him a bill that read: For tapping – $1. For knowing where to tap – $999.
Well, you’ve probably heard stories like that illustrating the fact that knowledge is power and blessing.
The most powerful and blessing of all knowledge of course is knowledge of the God who made us, knowledge of His ways, His heart, His plans, His will, how He operates in the world and how we can cooperate with Him, what He delights in, what He hates, how He feels about you. 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, 24 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.” God says to know Him is far surpassing significance than having riches and might and education.
Many of us have tasted of the power and blessing of getting to know God. We’ve experienced a bit of that freedom Jesus promised in John 8:32 when he said “the truth will make you free.” Through getting to know God to a degree many of us have experienced freedom from addictions and sinful patterns of thinking and behavior, freedom from fear, anxiety and despair, freedom from meaninglessness, purposelessness and futility. The more we know God, the more freedom we will experience, the more we will love God and people, the more effective we will be at helping people and making more disciples.
I want talk this morning about how to get know God better. And I’m not going to spend much time on the obvious. You know that if you want to get to know God better it’s very important you read, study and think on the Scriptures. If you want to get to know someone you need to listen to them.
But I’d like to first impress on you a truth that’s been a powerful realization to me. It’s that…
Diligent Bible study will not necessarily increase your knowledge of God.
I used to think if a relatively intelligent person would just dedicate himself or herself to studying the Bible, read it cover to cover and reread it, do some research for unclear parts, compare translations, observe the rules of grammar and keeping things in context, just be a diligent Bible student, he would arrive at a pretty good understanding of God and how to live in relationship with God, and the more he studied the more he would understand. But that’s not necessarily the case.
I want to read to you a few statements Jesus said to some very smart men who spent much of their life studying the Holy Scriptures. In fact they were esteemed as the experts on the Bible in their day. They identified themselves as Pharisees, which was a word that meant separate ones. They believed themselves to be separate from most Jews because of their superior knowledge and obedience to God’s law. The experts of the experts were known as the Scribes or lawyers. But listen to some things Jesus said to these diligent Bible students, “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” The Lord was telling them that despite all their diligent Bible study they still did not know God and His ways and they were hindering people from knowing Him, because their teaching was just indoctrinating people with wrong interpretations and misunderstandings of God.
Here’s something else Jesus said to them. John 5:37-40, “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you [They would disagree. They thought they had lots of God’s word abiding in Him. They could really impress you with how much Scripture they could quote from memory. But Jesus tells them they don’t have God’s word in them, because they don’t really understand it and believe it.], for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
They would search the scriptures carefully. And one of the things they searched the Scriptures carefully for was insight about the Messiah. They studied and studied and studied and came to various conclusions about what the Messiah would be like. But when the Messiah actually stood right in front of them, they couldn’t recognize Him. So for all their diligent Bible study they still didn’t really know God and what He was up to.
Now, how could that be? Is the Bible that hard to understand? Well, it is for some people. And it’s not intelligence that’s the problem. Very smart people can study, study, study, learn Greek and Hebrew so they can read Scripture in its original languages, and study, study, but still not understand much that the Scriptures are really saying and not know God. And others can understand without much trouble.
I have come to realize by the grace of God, a truth that’s taught all through the New Testament. It’s that…
True knowledge of God is a privilege God gives to whom He wants as much as He wants.
In other words, it does not come through mere human intelligence and hard work with the Bible. You actually have to have supernatural help. True knowledge comes through God taking notice of you and choosing to reveal Himself to you, and the activity of His Spirit to open your mind to understand.
One time Ally, my wife, said, “James can you get me some ketchup out of the fridge.” So, if I remember right, I went to the fridge. I scanned the shelves for ketchup. I checked behind some stuff. I went back to Ally and said, “We don’t have any ketchup.” She said, “You’ve got to be kidding me? Yes we do.” I said, “No we don’t. I just looked.” She said “Yes we do” and she went to the fridge and pulled a bottle of ketchup right off the front of the center shelf. I don’t know how I missed it. She said, “How can you spot deer 500 yards away in the trees and you can’t see the ketchup in plain view in the fridge?” I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t where I was expecting to see it. Anyway, I’ve found that when it comes to the things of God and the kingdom and what the Scriptures mean, many people are the way I was looking in the fridge. Truth is right there in front of them, but they can’t see it. They are blind to it. But to those God chooses, He will do what my wife did for me. He will show them what they couldn’t see and they will wonder how they could have missed it.
There’s an illustration of this in Luke 24. It’s the day of Jesus’s resurrection and two of his followers were on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus (not His closest followers, but they believed He was the messiah and they followed him around on earth). Jesus actually came right up next to them as they were walking. And look at this interesting verse, Luke 24:16, “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” He’s right there, but they can’t see Him and so Jesus pretends to be a stranger and asks them what they’re talking about. Then Jesus allows them to tell Him all about Himself and all the things that happened to Him. And then at the end of it, verse 25, Jesus basically tells them that all this stuff they’re saying is just what the Scriptures indicated would happen to the Messiah. Then He explained the Scriptures to them, He showed them all this stuff they never saw before and opened their minds to understand. It says that as Jesus was explaining the Scriptures to them, their hearts burned. Have you ever had that experience, when you’re looking in the Scriptures and it just makes so much sense and you see these glorious truths of God. Then they invited Jesus over for dinner that night and it says when Jesus “took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them,” their eyes were opened and they realized it was Jesus. Then He vanished from their sight and later that same night He came to His closest disciples and He did just about the same thing. Luke 24:45, “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” He showed them all these things they never really saw before.
The Lord is still in the business of doing that, of opening people’s eyes and minds to see Him and to understand the Scriptures. There are so many Scriptures that teach this that I want to mention. But for time’s sake I’ll just mention a few.
Acts 16:14, by a river outside of Philippi there was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, and she was listening to Paul talk about Jesus. It says, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” The Lord chose to reveal Himself to Lydia. While Paul was talking, the Lord was at work opening her heart to pay attention, understand and come to faith.
Frequently in the NT, faith in Christ is referred to as a gift of God (Matthew 16:17; John 6:44, 65; Acts 18:27; Romans 12:3; I Corinthians 3:5; 12:3). We don’t come to understand and believe the gospel without God choosing to intervene, helping us understand and realize it’s true.
Luke 10:21-22, “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things [things about authority and spirits and heaven and the kingdom] from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Did you hear that? God hides things from some and reveals them to others. No one knows the Father or the Son, except those that the Father and Son choose to reveal themselves to. From whom did Jesus say the Father was hiding things? The wise and intelligent. That is those who view themselves as wise and intelligent; the very learned and eloquent, the scholars and prominent people. And who did the Father choose to reveal things to? Jesus describes them as little children metaphorically. That is the humble. Those who are small in their own eyes. The condition of one’s heart is more important to understanding God and His word than one’s intelligence and education… because it’s a gift.
I heard a powerful statement from a Biblical scholar the other day. His name is Christopher Wright, he’s written some excellent commentaries and books. I did a little research on him and found a video where he gives advice to theology students. He mentioned how he grew up with a dad who never went to theology school, but loved God immensely and worshipped God with all his heart and obeyed Him in his life. And Christopher Wright said that when he had gone through all this theological training, earning his Ph.D. he remembered thinking to himself, “Well it may be that I now know more theology than my father. But I don’t know God more than my father.” He realized the key that unlocks the meaning of Scripture and the knowledge of God is not held by institutions of higher learning. It’s held in the hand of Jesus. Jesus chooses who to reveal His Father and Himself to, and He chooses not on the basis of intelligence or education. The Lord looks at the heart.
That’s not to say that learning the original languages and church history and other things in theology school is not helpful. God can and often does use that to reveal much to a person. But it is to say that unless the Lord chooses to reveal Himself to someone through that process, they can go through all the education and still have very little understanding of God. It may just make them like the Scribes and Pharisees who thought they knew God, and did more damage than good with their teaching.
Another Scripture, II Corinthians 4:3-4, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So Satan blinds the minds of people so they can’t see truth. But look what God will do for those He chooses to do it for. Verse 6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God works a miracle in people’s hearts like He did in the beginning when He said, “Let there be light.” He says in people’s hearts, “Let there be light.” He opens their eyes to see their Savior and the glory of God. That should greatly encourage you if you truly believe that Jesus is alive and He is Lord. It means that God has looked upon you with favor and has been gracious to you and intervened to open your eyes. He’s worked a miracle for you whether you’ve realized it or not. He dearly loves you.
And once He opens our eyes to who Jesus is, we’re still dependent on His help to understand the Scriptures and grow in the knowledge of God. I Corinthians 2:11ff indicates this, “Who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The natural person is the person who does not have the Spirit of God. He has to rely on his own intelligence, his own abilities and his own hard work. That man cannot understand the things of God. We have to have the help of the Spirit of God to understand.
So the question of how do we get to know God better is really a question of…
How to be one that God chooses to reveal Himself to.
As we saw, humility is vital part of it, being small in our own eyes. Pride repels God.
Psalm 138:6, “Though the LORD is on high, He looks upon the lowly, but the proud He knows from afar.” In other words, God is intimate with the humble, but He keeps Himself distant from the arrogant. Humility is the pathway to being close with God and knowing Him. He does not bless the arrogant with much revelation of Himself.
In Numbers 12, there’s a story of a time when God intervened in a squabble going on between Moses and his siblings, Miriam and Aaron. They were jealous that Moses got most of the attention and got to be the leader of the nation. God intervened and told Moses’ brother and sister about the sort of friendship He had with Moses, and how with other prophets God would speak to them in visions and dreams and symbols. But not so with Moses. He said, “With Moses I speak face to face as a man speaks with his friend.” It’s interesting that right before God said that, there is the statement in the text that Moses was the most humble man on earth. I think that’s why God spoke to him like no one else on earth. Humility is crucial to get to know God better.
Also vital is obedience, doing the things the Lord has commanded us. Listen to something Jesus said, John 14:21, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” To whom will the Lord reveal Himself? To those who keep His commandments and namely in that context, the command to love one another.
I’ve read a number of books on how to study the Bible, how to understand the Bible. They’re full of all kinds of good stuff like paying attention to the context and keeping the historical situation in mind and looking for repeated words and themes, good stuff like that. But usually those books are missing some crucial elements, like love your neighbor. Forgive those who have wronged you. Flee sexual immorality. Give to the needy… Because Jesus said if you keep my commandments, you love me and my father and I will love you and I’ll reveal myself to you.
Who do you tell your secrets to? You’re enemies? Obnoxious difficult people? No. You tell your secrets to your friends. Who do you tell you biggest secrets to? Your best friends. So does God. When we delight in God, He blesses us with revelation of Himself.
Another important aspect of getting to know God is prayer.
By praying for God to open our eyes and teach us and help us understand, we acknowledge to God that we understand we can’t do it on our own, with our own intelligence and hard work. We acknowledge we need the help of His Spirit. And He likes us to acknowledge that and He likes to be asked, He’s chosen to work in the world in answer to prayer. And we have many examples in Scripture of prayers for greater insight and understanding.
Psalm 119:18 for instance, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”
Paul said in Ephesians 1:17, I pray that the father may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, that you may know of your hope and the inheritance and the power He’s willing to exert for us.
And then of course with humility, obedience and prayer we cannot neglect to read, study and think on the Scriptures.
I love the verse in II Timothy 2 that brings out how God’s Spirit reveals truth to us as we do our part. Look at verse 7. Paul has just given Timothy several metaphors of himself as a servant of God. Then verse 7 Paul says, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” So you see we have the responsibility to read and think on the word, along with humility, obedience and prayer, and as we do God through His Spirit will be granting us understanding. (cf. Proverbs 2:1-10).
I hope this helps you to get to know God better. And I hope this makes many of you feel blessed and assured of God’s love for you. If you realize who Jesus is and if your heart burns as you look at the Scriptures (like those two guys on the road to Emmaus as Jesus explained the Scriptures to them), if it makes so much sense to you and excites you and you’re growing in your love for God because of what you’re learning, then realize you are favored by God. His Spirit is in you, revealing truth to you. Jesus wanted His disciples to realize that. Lots of passages say faith is a gift from God and because His disciples could see who He is and they were learning from Him of the kingdom of God, He wanted them to know they were very blessed and dearly loved by the Father.
Remember when Peter made the great confession? Jesus was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that I am? Who do you say I am?” Peter said, “You’re the Messiah, you’re the Christ, the son of God.” And Jesus told Peter, “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father who is in heaven.” He wanted Peter to know the fact that God had taken notice of him and He’s worked on him and He loves him.
On the other hand, if you feel you don’t know God well and you have little appetite for the Bible, it’s just a complicated puzzle to you and you get very little out of reading it, then know it doesn’t have to be that way. The Lord does not show partiality. If you will humble yourself, repent of your sins, call on Him, seek Him, He will be gracious to you and begin to open your eyes to His glory and the truths of His word.
-James Williams