The Nature of God's Knowing
KNOWN OR UNKNOWN
The Difference Between Heaven and Hell Week 2:
INTRODUCTION: THE WEIGHT OF BEING KNOWN
Amos 3:2
Good morning, Church. Before we go anywhere today, I need you to do something. I need you to put your phone down. I need you to look up from your bulletin. Because what God has for us in this room, on this morning, is not information you absorb passively. It is a word that will either confirm your standing before God or disturb your comfort zone until you do something about it.
Last week, we began this series, "Known or Unknown," and we set the stakes clearly. Matthew 7:23. Jesus, on the last day, looking at people who prophesied in His name, who cast out demons, who did mighty works, and saying to them: "I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." Those are the most terrifying words in all of Scripture. Not because God lacked data on those people. He is omniscient. He knew their names, their addresses, their church attendance records, the exact number of hairs on their heads. The problem was not information. The problem was relationship. The problem was covenant. He never knew them in the deep, binding, intimate sense that Scripture means when it uses that word.
So this week, we are going to answer the question: what does it actually mean to be known by God? And I promise you, the answer is more glorious, more demanding, and more life-altering than anything you have heard before.
Look at Amos 3:2. God is speaking to Israel. He says: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."
Now stop. Read that sentence again slowly. God is not saying He had no awareness of Egypt. He is not saying He had no awareness of Babylon, Assyria, or any of the surrounding nations. Of course He did. He is God. He sees everything. He knows everything at the level of raw data and fact.
But He looks at Israel and He says, "You only have I known." The Hebrew word there is yada. Write this down. Yada. And yada is not the word you use when you say you know the capital of France. Yada is the word used in Genesis 4:1 when Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived. Yada is intimate. Yada is covenantal. Yada describes a relationship where two parties are bound together in commitment, affection, and mutual self-disclosure. God was aware of Egypt, but He covenanted with Israel. He chose Israel. He set His affection upon Israel. He made Himself known to Israel in a way He did not make Himself known to other nations.
And then comes the second half of that verse, and Church, this is where it gets serious. He says: "Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Being known by God is not just a privilege. It is a responsibility. The intimacy of the relationship raises the stakes of accountability. When God knows you, when He has called you, when He has covenanted with you, there is no such thing as casual sin. There is no such thing as comfortable compromise. To whom much is given, much is required.
That is the weight of being known.
And in Jeremiah 1:5, God says to the prophet: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Before Jeremiah drew a breath. Before his mother felt the first kick. Before the word "Jeremiah" existed in any language, God knew him. God set His affection on him. God consecrated him for purpose. Jeremiah did not apply for the job. God did not post the position and wait for qualified candidates. This was entirely, completely, overwhelmingly God's initiative.
That is what we are talking about today. That is the nature of God's knowing.
I. ELECTING LOVE DEFINED
(Turn with me to Romans 8:29.)
"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."
Now I know some of you heard the word "predestined" and your shoulders just tensed up. I want you to relax. I am not here to turn this pulpit into a seminary classroom. I am here to preach the grace of God, and this verse is one of the most grace-saturated sentences in the New Testament.
The Greek word translated "foreknew" here is proginosko. And just like the Hebrew yada, this word does not primarily mean "to know about in advance." It means "to set one's love upon beforehand." God, before the foundation of the world, set His love upon you. He did not look down the corridors of time like a man scanning a crowd, waiting to see who would raise their hand first, and then respond to their initiative. No. He chose. He loved. He called. First. The entire movement of salvation begins with God's love moving toward you before you ever had the capacity to move toward Him.
Turn to 1 Peter 1:2. Peter writes to believers who are "elect exiles," chosen "according to the foreknowledge of God the Father." The same root word. Chosen according to God's fore-love. Not according to your resume. Not according to your family background or your church denomination or your moral track record. According to His knowledge. According to His love.
Church, hear me today. Election is not God being cold and arbitrary. Election is God being overwhelmingly, scandalously gracious. If salvation depended on your choosing rightly, on your seeking God with enough sincerity, on your moral effort being sufficient, not one of us would make it. Romans 3 is clear. "No one seeks for God." We were all running in the opposite direction. And God, in His electing love, turned us around.
But notice what the purpose of election is in Romans 8:29. "To be conformed to the image of his Son." Write this down. Election is not a VIP status. It is a transformation assignment. God did not choose you so you could feel spiritually superior to other people. He chose you so that He could remake you, from the inside out, into the likeness of Jesus Christ. The goal of being known by God is to become more and more like the Son whom God eternally knows and loves.
Go back to Jeremiah 1:5. Jeremiah was set apart before birth. He did not earn it. He did not achieve it. When God called him, Jeremiah's first response was to protest. "I do not know how to speak. I am only a youth." He felt completely unqualified. And God's answer was essentially: your qualifications are irrelevant because I am the one doing the calling. "Before I formed you, I knew you." The initiative belonged entirely to God.
That is electing love. That is fore-love. It is God's movement toward you before your movement ever began.
II. RELATIONAL INTIMACY
John 10:14-15
Jesus says: "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep."
Read that sentence slowly and let the weight of it press down on you. Jesus uses the relationship between Himself and the Father as the benchmark for how well He knows His sheep. The Father knows the Son in the most complete, most pure, most total intimacy that exists in the universe. There is no greater knowing. There is no closer relationship. There is no deeper mutual understanding. And Jesus says: that is how I know you.
That should bring you to your knees. The Son of God, who exists in eternal, perfect communion with the Father, looks at you and says, "I know you the way the Father knows Me." This is not casual acquaintance. This is not the way you know the name of someone you have seen at church for six years but have never actually spoken to. This is complete, penetrating, loving, eternal knowledge of who you are.
And He pairs that knowing with action. "I lay down my life for the sheep." The proof of the knowing is the sacrifice. He did not just know you at a distance. He moved toward you. He took on flesh. He bore a cross. He descended into death. All of it was the outworking of His intimate knowledge of you and His love for you. The knowing and the laying down cannot be separated.
James 2:23 says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God."
Friend of God. That phrase is remarkable when you sit with it. There is a massive difference between a servant and a friend. A servant knows the rules. A servant knows the tasks. A servant knows the schedule and the requirements and the expectations. But a friend knows the heart. A friend knows the "why" behind the instructions. Jesus himself draws this distinction in John 15:15. He says, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."
Abraham was called a friend of God because he believed God. Not believed about God. He believed God. There is a difference. Believing about God is theological data. Believing God is relational trust. It is taking God at His word and staking your life on it. That is the bridge from servitude to intimacy. Abraham crossed that bridge and became a friend of the Most High.
But Church, listen to what Jesus says in John 10:27. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." Intimacy requires response. The relationship is not one-sided. Yes, God initiates. Yes, He calls. Yes, He sets His love upon you first. But then He speaks, and His sheep hear. And hearing is not passive. Hearing in Scripture almost always implies obedience. The proof that you are truly known by Jesus is that you recognize His voice and you follow where He leads.
This is the question you need to carry in your chest today. When God speaks through His Word, through conviction, through the Holy Spirit's prompting, do you recognize that voice? Do you follow? Because if you are truly known, you will.
III. THE FRUITS OF BEING KNOWN
1 Corinthians 8:3, Paul writes: "But if anyone loves God, he is known by God."
Read that again. He does not say, "If anyone knows God, he is known by God." He says, "If anyone loves God." The evidence that God knows you is that you love Him back. That is the cycle of grace. God sets His love on you. That love, received and internalized by faith, produces love for Him in return. And the presence of that love for God is the confirmation that you are truly His.
This is why 1 John 4:19 says, "We love because he first loved us." Our love is not the origin of the relationship. It is the fruit of the relationship. But it is real fruit. It is visible fruit. It is fruit that changes the way you live, the way you prioritize, the way you spend your time, the way you treat other people. If you are truly known by God, you love Him. And if you love Him, it shows.
Now look at 2 Timothy 2:19. "God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are his,' and, 'Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.'" Two sides of the same seal. One side says: God knows His own. The other side says: those who are His live in holiness. The two sides cannot be separated. You do not get to claim the first seal without the second. You do not get to say "God knows me" and then live in comfortable, unrepentant sin. Holiness is not the condition for being known. Holiness is the output of being known. It is what happens when God's electing love actually takes root in a human soul.
Church, hear me today. Transformation is not optional for the truly known. Being conformed to the image of Christ, which Romans 8:29 told us was the whole point of election, is a process that God is actively working in everyone He has genuinely known. If there is no process, if there is no movement, if there is no evidence of the Spirit reshaping your desires and your character over time, that is a serious warning sign.
Now turn to Galatians 4:9. This verse is a warning, and I need you to hear it with full force. Paul has just celebrated with the Galatian believers that they have come to know God. And then he corrects himself mid-sentence and says, "or rather to be known by God." Even in their celebration, he wants to make sure they understand the order correctly. God's knowing of them came first. But then he says this: "How can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?"
These believers, who had encountered the living God, who had been drawn into genuine relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, were being pulled back toward dead religious ritual. They were returning to rule-keeping and calendar-observance and performance-based religion as if the relationship they had with God was not enough on its own. And Paul's response is essentially: this is spiritual insanity. Once you have tasted the reality of being known by the God of the universe, once you have felt the warmth of His electing love, once you have heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling your name, why would you trade that for a checklist? Why would you go back to earning what has already been freely given?
This is the warning for our generation. Our churches are full of people who started well. They encountered God. They were moved. They wept. They surrendered. And then, slowly, imperceptibly, they drifted from the relationship back to the religion. They go through the motions. They attend. They volunteer. They check the boxes. But the intimacy is gone. The voice of the Shepherd has been drowned out by the noise of performance. And they have stopped following because they have stopped listening.
Do not let that be you.
CONCLUSION AND ALTAR CALL
Church, I want to ask you a question, and I need you to answer it honestly, not for me, not for the person sitting next to you, but for yourself, before God, right now.
Are you resting in a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, or are you relying on religious performance?
Those two things look similar from the outside. Both of them show up to church. Both of them use the right language. Both of them know the songs. But on the inside, they are completely different realities. One person is living in the warmth of being known by God, loved by God, called by God, transformed by God. The other person is working, straining, performing, hoping that the accumulation of religious effort will be enough when they stand before Him.
And the terrifying truth of Matthew 7:23, the verse we started this series with, is that it is entirely possible to do all of the outward religious things and still hear those words: "I never knew you."
Not "I knew you once and then forgot you." Not "I knew you but your sin disqualified you." Never. It never existed. The covenant was never real. The relationship was never genuine. It was always performance with no intimacy underneath it.
I am not asking whether you are perfect. None of us are. I am asking whether you are in a real, living, active relationship with Jesus Christ. Are you hearing His voice? Are you following? Are you growing in love for Him? Is there fruit? Is there movement? Is the Holy Spirit doing something in your life that you know you could not manufacture on your own?
If the answer is yes, then receive the full assurance of 2 Timothy 2:19 today. The Lord knows those who are His. Rest in that. Build on that. Let it produce in you a deeper holiness, a deeper love, a deeper surrender.
But if you sat through this message and something in your chest felt hollow, if you recognized that your Christianity has been a performance and not a relationship, if you realized that you know about God but you do not know God, then today is the day. Right now is the moment.
I am going to invite you to come. Come to the front of this room. Come and trade your religion for a relationship. Come and surrender the performance and rest in the covenant. Come and say, "God, I want to be truly known by You. Not just known about. Truly known. Yada. Covenant. The real thing."
The altar is open. Come as you are. Come now.
Prayer of Surrender and Awakening:
Father, we stand before You right now, and we are undone by the weight of what Your Word has shown us today. Before You formed us, You knew us. Before we drew breath, You set Your love upon us. You did not wait for us to qualify. You did not wait for us to find You. You moved first, and Your movement was love, and Your love was expressed in the sacrifice of Your Son on a cross.
God, for everyone who has come forward today, I ask You to do what only You do. Break through the performance. Dissolve the religion that has kept them at arm's length from You. Let them hear the voice of the Good Shepherd for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, and let them follow.
And for everyone in this room who is already walking in that covenant relationship, deepen it today. Let the truth of Your knowing them produce in them a love for You that reshapes everything. Let holiness be the natural outflow. Let the fruit be visible. Let the seal of 2 Timothy 2:19 be unmistakable in their lives.
We are Yours. We want to be known. We want the real thing.
In the name of Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd and the one who laid down His life so that we could be known.
Amen.
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Blessings,
Pastor JM Raja Lawrence
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
email: lawrencejmr@gmail.com
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