Bible Study
The Way to Know God
” … and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matthew 11 :27b).
Read: Matthew 11:25-30; Job 11:7; I Cor. 1:18-31; John 7:28-29; 8:54-55; 10:15; 17:25-26.
What Is God Saying?
God cannot be known through many of the ways that are given priority by the world. Scientific research has its place but it cannot fathom the unfathomable nor define the undefinable. God is above the facts that science—with all credit to diligent scientists—is discovering. The door to the knowledge of God does not open to the one who dangles from his belt the keys of cleverness and super-intelligence. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever” (I Cor.l:19).
Jesus directs His remarks against the pride and wisdom of the religious leaders who are rejecting Him. He states that the humble listeners who have faith are light-years ahead of them. William Barclay writes, “It is not cleverness which shuts out; It is pride. It is not stupidity which admits; It is humility. Jesus is not connecting ignorance and faith; He is connecting lowliness and faith. A man may be as wise as Solomon, but if he has not the simplicity, the trust, the innocence of the childlike heart, he has shut himself out” (William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible, Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 2, page 15, St. Andrew’s Press, 1957). Then follows the greatest claim that Jesus ever made—He alone can reveal God to man.
How Does This Apply To Us?
So Jesus shows where the true key to the Knowledge of God is found. He, the Son, and He alone, can reveal the Father. Faith in Him, listening to His words, following His example of love and compassion, seeing in His ultimate Sacrifice that which has torn apart the veil of the Temple to let repentant sinners come into the Presence of the Holy God … this is the way to know God and all other knowledge of everything worthwhile branches out from that one basic truth. The better we know Jesus, the better we know God. He wants to let us know God, the Father. He wants us to know how much the Father loves us. That is why He came. It is the heart of Christianity. ” He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by hIm” (John 14:6).
If we want guidance through this bewildering world, if we want to see the light at the end of the tunnel or the candle in the window that says, “This is home where you belong,” we must, in humility, look for the answers in the Person, the Works and the Words of Jesus Christ. That is the reason for and the substance of our prayer today.
Pray With Me
Jesus, blessed Son of God, I want to know our Father according to Your perfect revelation. I cannot be content to know Him as a misty SIlhouette cast upon the curtain of speculation. I want to know Him clearly and deeply through You and the Word which You have spoken. As You are the only One who knows the Father, You are the only One who shows the Father. This was the purpose of Your coming. Immanuel, God with us, In Your mercy, “choose to reveal” the Heavenly Father to me.
Let this truth dawn on the nighttime of my soul. Let it give guidance to my often bewildered spirit:
- Loving You, I love God.
- Hearing You, I hear God.
- Obeying You, I obey God
- Knowing You, I know God.
Man, with his vain traditions and empty philosophies, has often obscured these things. Yet how simple, after all, is the Way. Coming to God means coming to Christ. Coming to Christ means coming to God. I come to You in faith. I come to You in the fresh, glad morning. I want to walk beside You through the common duties of this day. When the day is far spent and our fellowship is still unbroken, I want to be able to say: “Did not my heart burn within me, while He talked with me by the way?”
In Your own blessed name. Amen.
Moving On In The Life Of Prayer
Let each day be an adventure of faith. Are you having trouble getting through to God? Does He seem remote and distant, and indifferent? Does the Bible seem archaic and irrelevant for our times? Beware of Satan! He can scramble messages broadcast from other well-meaning sources. But the static of his lies cannot plague your set when it is set on Heaven’s wave-length, Jesus Christ. Let us tune our listening hearts to that wave-length. Let us listen to the instruction on that, “our true emergency band”. Let us go out in trust and obedIence. Then we will have a growing knowledge of God and, discovering His will, we will find both perfect peace and triumphant, lasting joy. That’s worth praying about again and again, and in the name of Jesus Christ.
Used with permission.
From the book:
First Light: Morning Conversations with God.