What Does It Mean to Understand God?

Many years ago, when I heard the following scripture, it affected me deeply. I've never forgotten the importance of it in my life. You can say it did change my priorities in life. It's that type of a powerful scripture. I'd like to share it with you because there's a lot more than just the statement there. This scripture has a lot of depth to it. It is one of the most beautiful scriptures in the Bible when you look at it and examine what God is revealing about Himself and His relationship with us. That goes to the very heart and core of the Bible and what life is all about. It's God's genius that He can just put this in these two verses and have so much in it. It's a common scripture that many people probably know. I'd like to just go into it because to me it's like this flower that just blossoms forth with all the petals of the Bible. Once you get this type of a seed that just blossoms and produces all this fruit. It's God revealing something so important to mankind. Let's go to Jeremiah chapter 9 verses 23 and 24. If you don't remember anything else, just remember this scripture when you're having a hard time, when you're wondering what is God doing, how is He in His real essence. This is what Jeremiah 9 verse 23 and 24 says. God was telling Israel that they really didn't know Him. They had veered off into paganism and a lot of Sabbath breaking and other things. God just revealed to them what His essential nature is and what He desires of us. It says, Who glories, who wants to boast about something. Glory in this, that He understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight, says the Lord. A modern and a bit clearer version, and a New Living Translation, it says, The Lord says, Notice it. God begins it and He ends it using His name. It's a commitment. This is truth. This is reality. So what does it really mean to understand God?

We're going to cover these two verses and see there are six important points as we go deeper into it. So it's not just to better know God. It's much more than that, as we will see from this Scripture as we take it apart and examine each one. So I'd like to go in the first part. What He's saying is, first, don't boast about the following things. So He starts out not telling us what we should be happy and proud and willing to boast about. No, He says, first, in the negative, don't boast about these other things. And yet this is what the world normally focuses on about boasting. This is what people will boast about in life.

The first thing He says is, don't boast about your wisdom, your knowledge, your expertise. Maybe you have a high degree of intelligence, and you have a wonderful education and a great profession. These are very good things to have, but God is saying, don't focus on that as the great achievement in a person's life. And then the second thing He says is that perhaps you were born and developed great strength and energy. You know, there are people that work out a lot and build up this huge body, and they're very proud of that. They spend hours working on that. It can become obsessive, like that's their most important thing. They like to show it off in things like this. And God says, that's not really the most important thing at all. And then He focuses on the third thing, which is even more important in the world, and that is prosperity. And that you have amassed the amount of wealth in your life, and you can basically buy whatever you want, and people boast about that. If you get around rich people, what are they talking about? Investments and all of this, that they can just get ahead in life and do all of these things. And God is saying, that is not the most important thing. And so, these are material things that we have, and guess what? Eventually, our profession will, despite all the intelligence, that's going to wear down. Eventually, a person will retire. He won't be doing the same things before. And maybe the intelligence is not going to be as powerful as it was before. And if you're just focusing on that, as all these great titles before or after your name and everything, you can, if that's the most important thing. And there are a lot of people, they just pursue education just to the nth degree, to the point where they don't have another thing to do. That's basically just eternally educating. And again, all of these things are good, but God is saying there's something better that we need to focus on. Yet, the world, what do you see the movies proclaim and focus on? Well, money, powerful bodies, all of this education, and all of the sci-fi type intelligence that people can develop. And so the first point, God says there's something much better. And if you don't have it, you're missing the most important thing of all.

It is much more lasting and satisfying because it has to do with this life and the next.

In Matthew 6, verse 33, tells us what the goal of life is. If we make it, if we achieve this, we've achieved the greatest thing in a person's life. Now, that's not what people in the world are going to tell you, but that's what God is going to tell you. Matthew 6 and verse 33, he says, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. There's that word that God used in Jeremiah 9, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. God will add the rest, the material things, the blessings. But you've got to have the focus. Am I going to make it into the kingdom when Christ comes back? Am I going to be part of that first resurrection? Am I going to be part of those as Ray brought out in the first message that God is looking for people that want to work under Jesus Christ in that coming kingdom, a kingdom where we're not going to have war, we're not going to have poverty, we're not going to have sickness, and we're not going to have exploitation of people and racial issues and things like that. Because Christ is perfect, He's going to reign, and He wants people under Him who are going to do the reigning as He does. So He's training us for this coming kingdom. That's why He says, seek first. That's not the only thing. There's all kinds of things. Seek a good education, seek to have good income, seek to have good health and a body. Those are all good things. But He's saying here there's this focus on really being a winner before God.

And so that's the first part of the verse that we go. He says, don't boast about these things. And then the second point where God says, here is what is truly worth boasting about in your life.

And that is to truly know God, His genuine and wonderful nature, His wonderful truths, and to seek and follow Him with all your heart and soul and have a real personal relationship with Him.

I have found that is the most important and should be the most constant thing in a person's life. You've got to work hard, you've got to take care of so many things. That's wonderful. But first of all, do we really have that relationship? Do we really know God for what He is? And do we want to become more like Him in the future?

Now, the Old Testament gives a very simple description of what it is to know God and to have that relationship.

Only three words, three words can explain that right relationship. It's found in Genesis 6, verse 9. Genesis 6, verse 9. It says here, this is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. And well, it's actually for Noah walked with God. You can say Noah had that walk with God. And that's the way you describe this relationship. Walking daily with God. How do you do that? Well, you follow His laws. You follow His way of life. How you talk in the morning. How you pray and prepare yourself in the morning. And you put on that spiritual armor so you can defend yourself against all the wiles of the devil and the world and everything else. So you put on a spiritual armor and be able to walk with God. You walk with Him in peace. It's joyful to know that He's there. I'm trying to please Him in the way I live. And that's why Noah could walk with God in this way. It wasn't something that was just a very short encounter. It's talking about during the day. Your thoughts and things like this. You're involved in this world. You've got activities and everything else. But God is in the background there. Oh, is this what God wanted me to do in this circumstance? God, can you guide me? Can you help me with certain thoughts? Can you just take Him to Christ to destroy anything that's damaging? Walking with God signifies that you are in harmony. You know His way and you just walk it. And of course, you become more experienced as you walk in this way. Notice that Abraham also walked with God.

In Genesis 24, verse 39, Genesis 24, verse 39, his servant said to Abraham, Perhaps the woman will not follow me. We're going to have a wife here for Isaac. And this is what Abraham answered him. But he said to me, The Lord before whom I walk will send His angel with you and prosper your way. And you shall take a wife for my son from my family and from my father's house. The Lord before whom I walk. So it is a way of life. It's not just something you do on the seventh day and you come to services. No, it's a way of life. It's walking with him, getting to know God, knowing His attributes.

And so this is what God says is so important. Notice in 1 John chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2, in verse 6, talking about walking with God. It's also in the New Testament. 1 John 2 verse 6, it says, He who says he abides in him, if he is with God, if he is with Christ, ought himself also to walk just as he walked. So He laid out the path for us. We have to follow Him. We have to walk according to His footsteps.

And how are we to do this? Well, here are three words in Jeremiah 9 that tell us about God's essential nature. What He is. What His character is all about.

And so the third point is this first of these words that describe God's attributes, His character. And that is the word love. Has said in the Hebrew, which is a sacrificial love. It's the love where you sacrifice your own interests for the interests of others. You put the other person first. You're willing to sacrifice your time, your effort, whatever, for that other person's welfare. And that is God's chief attribute. Boy, is that good news. In 1 John 4, we are already there in 1 John, just turn to chapter 4, and let's go to verse 7. John says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. They have that attitude that God has. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. And again, it's a sacrificial love. It's not emotional as such as with actions that you carry it out. Verse 9, In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. So God showed it not with just words, but with actions. He was willing to sacrifice his own Son for each one of us and our sins, and wipe those sins away from us. That was the greatest sacrifice he could ever do. Very costly. It goes on to say in verse 10, In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation or sacrifice for our sins. So many times, it's not that we love God, but we stumble across God's love. We start saying, he really did that for me. He was willing to come and take the place there at being executed in the death sentence that we had because of our sins, and he took that upon himself. That's God's essence. He is love, constant love, as it mentions there in Jeremiah 9 verse 23. And then the second word that God uses that God says, I am, I am this love, constant love. He says also that he, as it says, I'm going to read it, I am the Lord exercising, putting him into practice. This love. And then the second word is judgment, or what has to do with justice, has to do with fairness. God always executes things because it's going to be fair. He's not a respecter of persons. God never gives a bad deal. He never does anything to avoid true justice. That word in Hebrew, mishpat, mishpat. Let's go to Jeremiah 22 verse 3 to see an example of this type of justice. Jeremiah chapter 22 verse 3.

Thus says the Lord, Execute judgment, mishpat, and righteousness, and deliver the plunderer out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. These are all actions that a person isn't going to cheat or lie or try to twist justice. We have to begin in our own lives with us and then those that surround us. Is this what we create in our home? Where there is justice, there is a right way of acting, parents toward children? How about children toward parents? That's all part of that relationship. If we learn how to deal justly with things, that you're not going to be swayed by all these outside influences, you're going to do what's right before God. That's what justice is all about. And then the third term, righteousness, sadaka.

And this is not only executing justice, but doing what is right. Notice in Genesis 18 verse 25 what Abraham talked to God about.

Genesis 18 verse 25. This is when they were about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

He says in verse 25, Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. In other words, pay the consequences as the wicked would. Far be it from you, shall not the judge of all the earth do right righteousness. It takes courage to do the right thing. And it's a lifetime process. Being honest with yourself, being honest with others, asking forgiveness when mistakes are made instead of blaming others. These types of things where you're judging yourself. I always have said we should judge ourselves with a higher bar than we judge others. Keep the bar lower for others. Don't expect as much, but expect a lot more from yourself. And what does the world do? Totally the opposite. They keep a very low bar for themselves, but then a very high bar for the rest. And of course, they want to look better, and so they try to draw people down to their level or whatever. Whereas in God's way, we're the ones that are requiring more from ourselves, and less from others. Believe me, you're not going to be as disappointed if you have a lower bar for others.

But don't do that for yourself. In Hosea 6, here's an interesting scripture because it deals with a principle that we use today. We don't even know where it came from, but this is a principle we find in the Bible. Hosea 6, verse 4. Talking about righteousness and doing the right things.

He says, God talking to Ephraim, he says, O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you? For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew, it goes away. Have you ever heard the term fair weather friend? You know, when things are great, you've got a lot of friends. Things go bad, they disappear. And God says, well, your faithfulness, your connection with me shouldn't be just when things are going well. Because a true friend is there for you in the good times and the bad times. And he's saying here to Ephraim and Judah that your relationship, oh, yeah, I bless you. Everything is great. Good crops. They're all happy. And then when things don't turn out that way, you go to other gods. Well, God isn't answering us. We got this very short fuse that we kind of put up with God and he doesn't do anything. Well, we're going to go to other gods or we're going to ask others. And he says here, it's like the dew that is in the morning. But it disappears afterwards. Well, that's not the type of righteousness that God is looking for. He wants this constant, this dependable type of confidence that we have in God.

Notice another scripture in Deuteronomy 32 and verse 4. Deuteronomy 32 verse 4.

Talking about God. It says, He is the rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. Mishpat, a God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is He. Is that our view of God? It should be.

He's the one that gave us life. He's the one that gave up His Son for all of us to be in His kingdom. The blessed calling that we can have to one day when Christ comes back, that first harvest of the first fruits that arise from all the way from the time of righteous Abel. Through all the generations up to this time, there's always been this remnant of God's people that have continued to obey Him as always. They have not changed through time.

They're still keeping the Sabbath, the Holy Days, the food laws, the commitment that we do to God with tithes. We saved 10% for God. Because God says, you respect me and I will multiply that. And I tell you, I've seen that. You can have a graft. A graft, well, you can see, okay, I started tithing. Just look what happens afterwards. I remember, I'll just mention a personal experience that I don't think Cottie would mind because it had to do with her two brothers.

And when I came to become the pastor over there in Chile, of course, Cottie's family was in the church, but they had left the church and they were in the world and everything else. But eventually, they started attending. And they said, well, we're going to start. They had a little factory with making all kinds of rubber type of soles for shoes and everything.

They just started with one machine and then they multiplied it and they said, well, we're going to tithe. And you know that business would start rising. Then they'd get into trouble. They'd quit tithing. The business started going down. Then they'd start tithing again. And I remember he would tell us that you could graft that because of human beings the way they are.

And yet God says that he will bless us if we put him first. Now, one thing is to talk about God. The other thing is your pocket, right? Pulling out something and saying, well, I'm going to commit to God. And I had another gentleman that was from Tierra del Fuego. That's the farthest south that you can get on the South American continent. And this gentleman, he had been a CPA and a tax man for the government. He was tough as nails when I came to visit and everything.

And he said, I'm here because I got your magazine and you talked about tithing. And I said, I'm going to show you that God is not going to do this. I'm going to do it and prove that tithing doesn't work. And he said that he had these properties that were way out in the boonies. And people, they lived so far that he couldn't get the rent from them unless they sent it in.

It was just too far and everything. And for years, they had quit paying him for the rent. And he said, I wrote out the tithing check and I said, I'm going to prove that God isn't going to do anything and this is not the right thing. And you know what? The next two weeks, the check started coming in. One after another. And he said, I'm here because God showed me I was wrong. And he just put it into practice. So those are kind of interesting anecdotes that you go through life just seeing how people react. Sometimes they'll just test God because they don't believe he's going to do things.

And so we have a God that is faithful. That he says, my nature is love, justice. You can depend on me for that and righteousness. And so the fifth point is this righteousness of God. And then the last part, he says, for in these things I delight. So it's not just something God says for others. He says, this is what I love to see because this is the way I operate and I love to see others operate in the same way.

So it's not just knowing God in the abstract, but try to put those three principles, the love, the justice and the righteousness in our own daily lives. Because we can't control other people, but we can control ourselves and we can control our attitudes toward things. Now between the thought or what comes into the stimulus and the action, there's like four seconds that they say you decide what you're going to do with that stimulus or with that effect.

You can either say, I'm just going to let the thing get me down, I'm going to reject it, or I'm going to do something right about it. And I'm not going to let it get me down. And I'm going to... there's this little decision that every person gets to make before the action is produced. So it's not something that we automatically are slaves of our atmosphere or our environment around us. No, we can decide. One of the greatest examples was Victor Frankel, who was a psychiatrist that was in Germany during World War II.

And he happened to be a Jew. And so even though he was a prominent professor and psychiatrist, he was sent to these death camps, these concentration camps. And he was tortured, he was humiliated. He says some of the worst things, but he said, you know what?

I can either just get so depressed and just decide it's better to die like so many, or I can control my attitude and what I can do about it. And he started when he'd be tortured or do anything. He'd start projecting himself that after he got out, he could teach his students, this is what I learned, that you have meaning in your life. If you have something strong enough that you want to live for, these guards that are doing this, they cannot break me down. And he changed his attitude, and he just didn't get himself negative and depressed.

And even the guards started treating him better. They respected him, and guess what? He survived. And then he developed this whole teaching, which was about the meaning of a person. You can decide what your life is all about. Don't let the circumstances control it. Because you have people that, even in the worst situations, and guess what? They say, I'm going to be committed to not letting it get me down. And we've had people, Americans in Vietnam, that were in those camps, and they learned.

They learned that you can still do something about things. To maintain your sanity, to wait and be patient. And so, it's putting these principles into practice in our daily lives to set priorities.

What to delight and take pride about.

The first great commandment, as it mentions in Matthew 22, Jesus Christ mentioned, what is the first great commandment? And of course, this is the first commandment magnified, as it is in God's law, and what Jesus Christ brought it up. Matthew 22, verse 35. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, and saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. Basically, talking about the Old Testament. These are the two great principles. Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn't say more than yourself, but it doesn't say less than yourself. Just treat them with decency, with justice, with righteousness. That's what God is teaching all of us. So we have to learn to practice sacrificial love. Women, when they have children, practice sacrificial love. How much they give up for that little baby, hours of sleepless nights and all kinds of things. They can have that sacrificial love. But we're talking about having it not just for our families, but talking about other people. Putting their interests first. Practice true justice in our lives. Can we look at ourselves in the mirror at the end of the day and say, We had an honest day. We tried to be honest before God.

And to follow the path of righteousness. Of doing the right things as God explains it to us. It's interesting, sometimes in some of these Bible dictionaries, some of these men will come up with something that surprises you. That really goes to the core and they're willing to admit as well. Now some would get kicked out of their churches if they tried to say it too often. But here's one from the Expositor's Dictionary of Bible Words about righteousness. It says, in the Old Testament, there is only one standard by which righteousness can be measured. The revealed will of God, particularly as expressed in the law. Boy, I tell you, you probably get kicked out because if he talks about the law as being the standard of righteousness, that's not what traditional Christianity is talking about. And then he goes on to say, when a person is said to be righteous, no suggestion of sinlessness is implied. It's just what happens with this type of cheap grace type of teaching that somehow, oh, we can't be righteous, only Christ can be righteous for us. And that's not what the Bible teaches because righteousness does not mean sinlessness. It means a person that is following God faithfully throughout his life, doing things the best he can. He said, instead, the statement implies actions in harmony with one's obligations in his relationship with God. It's a long-term relationship. Of course, nobody's going to do it perfectly, but that's no excuse for doing your best. Paul brought it up time and time again. We're running in a race. And he says, run as if you want to win. Do your best. Exert the best you can in this race of life. And so this is what understanding God is all about. And once we learn and start following this path, we can help others that are out there, lost, wandering, no idea how life should be lived. We can help others now and in the future. Because even if we never convert one other person, if we learn how to have that constant love, that justice, and that righteousness, and we apply it, just think when Christ comes back. And he gets rid of all of these hurdles and all of these barriers. You're going to be able to teach the people who is God and how to follow Him, how to have that relationship that we built in this life now. So to end, let's go to Jeremiah 31. We've used this book time and time again because it's wonderful as far as revealing who God is, how He operates. Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. By the way, it's also quoted in Hebrews 8. It says the following, verse 31. God is talking. He says, And then he goes on to say, it's not only for Israel because this is going to extend over in the thousand-year rule of Christ. This is what God wants. This is why He created us, to have a lasting and right relationship with Him and also with God. With the rest of people, the brethren and whoever it is, to be the same with what they see you and the fruits and the consequences throughout time. So brethren, that's why this scripture is so important to me and I hope it will also be to all of you.