Obeying God's Commands Series

How do we know if we really know God? We live in a day when many people are not even interested in knowing God. They want to live like they want. To know God is the furthest thing from their minds.

This is a very important spiritual issue because if God really exists, then those who reject Him will be accused of the one unpardonable sin, rejecting and blaspheming God. They are going to miss out on what real love is. They will miss out on the abundance of a rich and full life both now and eternally. If we don’t know God, we will miss out on everything that God meant life to be.

For all those who reject God, they must know that the day will come when they will have to stand before God and face His holiness and justice. They will have to face His judgment. So we must know God. But how can we tell if we really know God? For the next seven Sundays we are going to be looking at seven tests that prove that we know God. Tonight we look at Test #1—Do we obey God’s commands? Prayer

We need to examine ourselves from time to time to make sure God is pleased with our actions. Are we staying on track with the keeping of His commands? A local machine company received a phone call, asking if there was an opening for an aggressive worker on a certain machine. The foreman who took the call responded, saying they were well pleased with the person who was working on this particular machine. A friend asked the caller, “Why did you call the place where you work asking for your job?” He said, “I just wanted to check on what they thought of my work.” We should all check on ourselves from time to time.

Man is faced with a problem. The only way man can know if God really exists is for man to cross over from the physical and material world into the spiritual world. We have already discussed how Jesus came to earth to save man and to give man a full and abundant life now and eternally.

Jesus Christ said, “I come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) Jesus told us that God had sent Him to make God known. Jesus said, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” (John 14:7)

What all this means is that if we are to know God, we must know Jesus Christ. So, to know God we must know Jesus Christ whom He has sent. How do we know if we know God? Read verse 3. What are God’s commands? Yeah, we have the Big Ten that we immediately think of. But 1 John 3:23 says, “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

God’s chief command is this: That we believe in Jesus Christ and that we love one another. First, by believing in Jesus Christ we keep God’s commandments.

Second, we must love one another. Love covers all the commandments of God. If we love one another, we won’t hurt or cause pain for one another; we will not offend or sin against one another. We will be obeying all the commands of God. This is exactly what Scripture says. READ Romans 13: 8-10.

How do we know if we know God? Take a test. Do you obey God’s commands? If you obey God’s commands, then you believe in Jesus Christ, that He is God’s Son, and you love one another. We surrender all we are and all we have to Jesus Christ and to loving one another.

Unless we are doing these two things, we don’t know God. No matter what a person may say, he doesn’t know God if he has never given his life to Jesus Christ.

AND he does not know God if he criticizes, grumbles, and backbites his brother and commits adultery, kills, steals, lies, covets, or does anything else against his brother.

If a person really knows God, then he wants to please God. He wants to know more and more about God, and the only way he can know more and more about God is to follow God. He has to do the things that God does, to walk and love as God walks and loves. The more we walk and love as God does, the more we will come to know God.

Some people want to know God so they begin looking for God. They look for God but they do it in the wrong way. Here’s how: