Monday, August 27, 2012

Knowing God: Jeremiah 9:23-24


We are beginning a new series today on the attributes of God, and I’d like to start with a quote from A.W. Tozer’s, The Knowledge of the Holy.  He begins the first chapter of his work with this statement: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”  What is it that comes into your mind when you think about God?  One critique of our day and time is that we are not a people who know what it is to think very deeply about anything, much less God.  How often do you think of God and how deeply do you think of Him when you do? 

Let me read you the words of Charles Spurgeon, who at twenty years old was thinking far more deeply about God than many of us ever have: “The highest science, the loftiest speculation, and 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.
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.  Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.”  But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumbline cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with solemn exclamation, ‘I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.’  No subject of contemplation will tend to more humble the mind, than thoughts of God.
But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it.  He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe…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. 
And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory.  Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is balsam for every sore.  Would you lose your sorrow?  Would you drown your cares?  Then go, plunge yourself into the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.  I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”
In Jeremiah 9:23-24 Jeremiah charged God’s people with the importance of knowing God.  The Israelites had become a people who had forsaken God and were hoping, trusting, and boasting in everything but God.  To these people, God would say through the prophet Jeremiah: [23] 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.”
Today I want to us to contemplate the importance of knowing the only true God of the Bible and look at three truths that will be foundational for us to become people who are desperate to know our God. 

I.              We Must Beware of the Danger of Idolatry (9:23)

Jeremiah first warns the people of God not to boast in themselves or their resources.  This is a warning against idolatry, which is the worship of that which is not God.  All people will either worship God or an idol (Rom. 1:18-32).  What we see in Jeremiah 2:12-13 is that idolatry is not only a worship of something else but also a forsaking of God: Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, [13] for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
While we can all identify with the temptation to boast in and trust in idols like the ones that Jeremiah mentions here, I want to draw our attention today to one of the subtlest idols of all: an inaccurate view of God.  Even if we think we are worshiping the God of the Bible, we are committing idolatry if our view of God does not match what God has revealed about Himself in the Bible because we are still calling something “god” that is not God.  Commenting on this type of idolatry, A. W. Tozer would say: “Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry…  The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness.  Always this god will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges. 
A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God.  
Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it.  The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”
“Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous.  The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.”[1]  Inaccurate thoughts about God are idolatrous thoughts about God.  One of the reasons this is so important to understand this type of idolatry is that we can find ourselves living much like the Israelites were in Jeremiah’s day, wearing God like a badge and then living however we want to.  We must remember that a god who is god of the head but not god of the heart is not the God of the Bible. We would do well to heed the words of J.I. Packer, that “those who hold themselves free to think of God as they like are breaking the second commandment.”[2]

II.            We Must Understand the Importance of Knowing God (9:24)

Jeremiah calls God’s people to boast in understanding and knowing God.  Do you know God?  What does it mean to know God?  Now there is a sense in which we both can and cannot know God.  Firstly, we cannot know God apart from His intervention into our lives (2 Cor. 4:3-6).  Apart from the grace of God, we would remain stuck in Romans 1:18-32 to our own eternal destruction.  Also, we cannot know God fully, or exhaustively, because God is incomprehensible!  [7] “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? [8] It is higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know? [9] Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea. (Job 11:7-9) [145:1] I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. [2] Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. [3] Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. (Psalm 145:1-3) Our knowledge of God will never be exhaustive (John 21:25, Romans 11:33), which is one of the things that will make heaven joyful: an eternity of knowing God more and more! 
There is a sense in which we can know God though.  First, we can know God personally, which is a far greater privilege than knowing God exhaustively.  It is a far greater joy to me to know my wife personally and to experience life together with her than it would be to simply know all the facts that I could about her.  Another very important sense in which we can know God is that we can know God accurately as He has revealed Himself in Scripture.  For instance, in this passage, God reveals to His people (1) Who He is: YAHWEH, (2) What He is like: He practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, and (3) What He delights in: He delights in these things.  In the Bible, there are many ways in which God reveals Himself: His names, His images, His actions, and also what are called His attributes, which is where we will focus over the next few months. 
Knowing God is the most important matter in the universe!  Consider the following passages: John 17:3: And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.  This is what eternal life is!!!  This means that there will be eternally terrible consequences for not knowing God.  According to 1 John 2:14, knowing God is the mark of maturity for a believer: [14] I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.  In Jeremiah 31:31-34, we see that the aim of the New Covenant is that God’s people might know Him: [31] “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, [32] not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. [33] For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. [34] And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”  Nothing matters more than knowing God, which is why Paul would say in Philippians 3:8-11: [8] Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—[10] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [11] that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Do you know God?  Does this passion to know God burn deep in your heart?  I am not speaking of mere head knowledge and lip service.  I am talking about the most joyful and deeply satisfying experience available to a human being: knowing their Creator. 

III.         We Must Understand the Path to Knowing God (9:23-24)

In this passage, Jeremiah’s presents us with three paths to knowing and understanding God.  The first path is that of humbling one’s self.  I say humbling one’s self because this charge is one of repenting from self-boasting to God-boasting.  Notice that a humble person is not someone who isn’t boastful: a humble person is simply someone who boasts in that which most deserves to be boasted in, namely, God.  The second path we see is to knowing God is that of making the pursuit of knowing and understanding God our boast and delight.  This is not just a call to understand and know God, but a call to boast in understanding and knowing God.  It is a call to make this pursuit our boast and delight.  Finally, the third path we see to knowing God is that of God’s self-revelation.  What we can know and understand of God is what God reveals to us about Himself.  We learn about God by revelation, not speculation. 1 Cor. 2:14: 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.
Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian believers is my prayer for us as we journey through this series: [15] For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, [16] I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, [17] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,” (Ephesians 1:15-17).
How are we going to avoid the danger of this becoming merely a pursuit of learning about God?  Packer gives us some simple but demanding advice here: “we must turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter of meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.”[3] May we become a people who humble ourselves and become desperate to know our God, and in studying God, may we be led to God Himself.  God brought some of you here today to reveal Himself to you so that you, by faith, could know Him. 




[1] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 3-4
[2] J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 47
[3] J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 23

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