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:
• They speculate about God. This is the route most people take in trying to know God. They imagine what God is like and hold that image in their mind. Then they try to live by what they imagine. They have their own teachings, their own rules, and their own images of what God is like, and they govern their lives by that image. That’s the wrong way to look for God.
• Some try to seek and know God by mystical or emotional experiences. They seek to know the spiritual world and its focus through spiritists, astrology, seances, magic and a host of other man-made mystical experiences.
Is that the way to know God? NO! And verse 4 says, READ. It’s absolutely impossible to really know God and not to obey His commands. The Bible tells us that if a person says he knows God and does not keep God’s commands, he is a liar.
A person has to walk and live as Jesus Christ walked and lived. He has to follow Jesus Christ and do exactly what Jesus Christ says in order to know God. This is what Jesus did: He obeyed all the commands of God; therefore, He knew God perfectly. This is what man must do.
So we know what we must do to know God (at least one of the things). But verse 4 tells us that the opposite is also true. READ v. 4 again. If a man does not keep God’s commandments, then he does not know God. He makes a false profession
What he thinks God is like, is false. His image of God and the ideas within his mind of God are not true. They are false, counterfeit, and not genuine. The person is a liar; the truth is not in him. He is making a false profession. Remember what the Bible says about this.
Matthew 7:21 – “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
I hope this next verse about false profession is not describing anyone here this evening.
Ezekiel 33:31-32 – “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice. With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.”
But then we have the obedient person. The obedient person obeys God’s Word and knows God and loves God. This knowing and loving God in order to get to know Him is nothing different than knowing anyone else. The only way to know anyone is:
• To get near them.
• To study them, learn all about them—all about their will, desires, and wants, their nature and thoughts and behavior.
The same is true with God. The only way to know God is to get near Him and study Him, learning all about His will, desires, and wants—all about His nature and thoughts and behavior. How can we do that if God is in the spiritual world, a world that is far removed from this world? By Jesus Christ. So by drawing near to Jesus Christ and following the example He left for us, we get to know God better.
So when we obey God’s Word, His love is made complete in our life. What does that mean? It means that when we draw near to God and begin to keep His word, we begin to establish a relationship with God.
It’s just like a boy who meets a girl and begins to draw near her. He begins to know her and to develop affection for her, and the more he associates with her, the more he loves her. So it is with God.
So the point of this message is simple yet it’s difficult. We must obey God’s commands in order to know God. Jesus said, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. (John 15:10) God’s commands revolve around two basic commands, believe in Jesus Christ and love one another. That’s the hard part—truly believing in Jesus Christ and not just giving Him lip service—but truly believe. The other is to love one another. We think we are so close to loving one another and yet we are so far away at times.
Read verses 5-6. And it is here that we have God’s word on how to apply all this to our lives. We must walk as Jesus walked. This speaks of our spiritual walk. Christianity speaks of sin in the heart, and asking for forgiveness and trying to correct it through faith in Christ. The Christian is not a person who walks in the dark alley continuing to look for the black. The Christian is on the highway to heaven walking in the light of the Son of God.
If a person says he abides in Christ, he must be a responsible person. He ought to walk as Jesus walked. The person who professes Jesus, who claims that he knows God, is obligated to walk as Christ walked. OK! OK! We know we should walk as Jesus walked. What does that mean? How did Jesus walk upon earth? He walked:
• Believing and trusting God.
• Worshipping and praying to God
• Fellowshipping and communing with God.
• Giving and sacrificing all He was and had to God.
• Seeking and following after God.
• Teaching and telling others about God.
• Loving and caring for others just as God said to do.
• Obeying all of God’s commands.
I know that sounds like a long list of things to do, but if we will only remember to simply believe in Jesus Christ and to love one another, the rest of this list falls into place. That is obeying God’s commands. That’s the first step to knowing God and letting His light shine through you.
“What is a saint?” the youngster asked;
So his parents set out to explain.
By describing Saint Francis and Bernadette
They attempted to make it plain.
They told him of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
And ended with John and Paul;
But the boy just couldn’t relate to this
And didn’t grasp it at all.
Then the parents went to their church and showed him
The stained glass windows there;
The faces of the elect shone out
As they preached or knelt in prayer.
The boy was asked if he understood,
And he said, “I think I do;
With what I’ve seen, I’d say that a saint
Is a person the light shines through.”
Do you want to know God? Obey His basic commands of believing in Jesus Christ, and loving one another, and His light will begin to shine so brightly through you we might have to wear sunglasses to church.
