Knowing God Podcast Episode

The Scriptures would tell us that creation testifies to God. So, at some level, everyone is able to know that God is there. But there’s also this unique invitation to know God that comes for those who are in Christ, those who are believers who have been changed and converted. 

It’s just Brian Sutter and myself in the studio today here on Breaking Bread. Welcome. Hey, thanks. Great to have you along. This is Matt Kaufman. Today we’re going to talk about God and knowing him. Brian, where do you want to go with this conversation? In the Gospel of John where Jesus is talking to a woman, he tells her that the true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth. 

And so, I think hopefully, part of what we’ll talk about today is just knowing God in truth, what he actually looks like and worshiping him in that. I’ve been fascinated, Brian, about Hosea. It seems to me that the knowledge of God is a really big deal that God is trying to get out through the story of Hosea in a couple of places. 

He says, I have a controversy with these people. They don’t know me. Yeah. And particularly with a people group that should have known him. They were given the law all of this history, all of this experience and they don’t know him. He takes issue with them. 

And then Jesus uses those same Scriptures in Hosea to challenge the present-day religious leaders who should have known him as well. If anybody knew at an academic level, I mean, certainly they did. Right. But yet God wanted something more, something deeper in our knowledge of him. And Brian, if you could help us, let’s put our finger on that. 

And I think just to start with that I think it is sometimes really easy if we’ve grown up in a Christian home and a Bible believing church, for our minds quickly to say well, of course I know God, of course I’ve been taught about him my whole life. Yeah. And yet we go to these places and Jesus is saying, no, you don’t. 

And I don’t think that should bring fear, but it should at least get us to say, I wonder. The Scribes and Pharisees understood the law completely. Sure. And I think that’s a great place to start when we go to know God. I was at a wedding just yesterday. Okay. And we heard the vows. You know love and cherish, sickness and health and all of this and be committed forever. And I had to think, is that the cap of the relationship? Or is that the start? And I think it’s the start. I want my wife to abide by that law. Right. I really want her to know me. Yeah. And I think she wants me to know her. 

And those vows send me now. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. And I’m wondering if the law was always meant to send. Yeah. It seems like that would be the case, that we get this direction, this starting point. But at the end of the day, and it seems to be the point that Jesus is pressing over and over, I don’t want you to just know facts about me, I don’t want you just to know what to do or not to do, but a relationship and something deeper, something where there is a tangible energy between us and God. 

If you were to paint a picture, maybe, of a Christian who doesn’t know God, what does that look like? Let’s try to understand or taste the difference. Yeah, does that make sense? If in your mind to be a Christian is this list of do’s and don’ts, that might be a sign that you know an aspect of God, but you don’t know God in the way that we want to land on eventually. 

That’s a very arduous life to live, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a lot of hand slapping, and it’s a lot of coercing yourself not to do certain things you just would love to do. Right. And too, you read some of the do’s and don’ts in the Scriptures, and those are things that you maybe struggle with on a daily basis, like, don’t lie. And you would say, well, I didn’t lie, but then you can start to question, well, when I said that was a red truck, and now that I think about it, maybe it was a blue truck, and it turns into, like you said, just very arduous, and you can’t even go to God and say did I mess that up? Did I not mess that up? 

And that can cause such angst. Yeah. And to think that he’s on the other side saying, just know me. Yes. What are we going to find at the end of that? Part of what we’ll find is freedom. Like, there’s hope that we’ll find God to be as he describes himself. 2 Corinthians 1:3, that he’s a God of all comfort and all mercies. That’s what we’ll find. So, Brian, what does the exercise look like to you? Alright. So, you obviously have had the conviction, I want to know God. So where do you go? What do you do? I think there are so many different ways, so many different things. And, you know, that probably will look a little bit different from person to person. 

But I think for myself, you know, definitely just time in the Scriptures, allowing them to paint a picture of who God is. For me, that would definitely be a starting point. That’s been very powerful over the years, I would say. And that makes complete sense. We were just in the library perusing and came across maybe 10 volumes of the letters of Abraham Lincoln. 

It was fun. We pulled them off, just opened it up. Here’s a letter to Secretary Stanton and here’s a letter to his wife and here’s a letter, you know, all these things. Right. And if you were to probably add all of those letters up and compact them, you probably would know Abraham Lincoln better and get a picture of him. 

Sure. Yeah, and really that’s what you’re saying. His Word is self-revealing, and I think even just approaching the Word in that way like I just want to know more of you God not necessarily even just facts about you but just who you are. That helps me approach the Scriptures in a way that it’s much more freeing than oh no, I’ve got to figure out what is this saying? What does it mean? What does it tell me to do and there’s certainly a place for that but to just say what does this mean? I just read Psalm 46, and it tells me God’s a refuge and my strength. What picture does that paint of God? Very frequently we go to the Scriptures for application. And application is critical.  

But what you’re providing here is maybe that devotional time or that time in the Word that we have as believers isn’t always tied to what I am going to do with this today. But how does this inform me about him. Yes, and I think that’s a wonderful lens. As we do that, we become more and more connected to the Lord to know him more fully. 

Of course, it’s going to lead to behavior that’s honoring and faithful to him. It just fascinates me. This morning just reading in Paul’s letter to the Philippians Chapter 1, he starts with desiring that their love would grow and that their discernment and their faith and knowledge would grow. 

Like that’s a starting prayer for the Philippian church. Yeah. That I might know Christ in the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings. Isn’t that amazing? His knowledge of him was very key. Yeah. And then as we know him, I think the things that we’re maybe asked to do or the things we’re asked not to do, they become so small in comparison to this glorious God that we’re getting a glimpse of. 

And they make a lot more sense too, don’t they? Once you have that reference. Yeah. You know, you can take a command on paper. And as soon as you know that this came from mom, oh, I know what that means. That makes sense. Right. Or this came from my child. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I can see why they would say that. Yeah.  

So much clarity is brought then when we know God and that’s what he’s always wanted. Yeah, it’s a journey that you’ll never reach the destination. And I think that has to be part of your mindset going in as well that knowing God isn’t about oh, now I’ve got it. It’s about continually seeing that there’s another peak beyond what I thought was the peak and there’s more here than I thought and it’s just on and on. I would imagine that even in heaven we’re going to continue to be learners there, and we’re going to learn about him and he’s going to reveal himself. 

When we have an expansive, infinite God, we continue to plumb the depths and while I’ve always known that he is love, now I know he is love at a new level. As you study different aspects of God, different things are going to highlight. And I think the challenge in the midst of doing that is if you’re studying it, like you just mentioned there, God is love, that is a wonderful, deep, rich aspect of God, but you also have to not lose sight that’s not all he is. 

When our minds are constantly wanting to put things in a box and wrap our minds around him, there’s also this, he’s a consuming fire over here too, and those don’t minimize each other. They gloriously complement each other. They stand in complete agreement with one another. 

Yeah. Which I think too, even just our conversation here makes me think of another aspect of helping me know God. So, reading the Scriptures for sure, but even just like you and I talking together and being around other believers and thinking about what they’re maybe seeing or knowing about God or what they’re experiencing and what aspect of God that’s been really heavy or exciting on their heart and just dialogue with other believers.  

I have to think, Brian, Romans 1 contains this passage which says something to the effect that those who don’t worship God as God become, and then it has a downward spiral of a degenerate person. Yeah. Okay. And the pillar propping up or started this whole thing off is they didn’t worship him as God. 

And you get a sense there of the importance of maintaining a very high view of God. And I think what you’re suggesting here is how we maintain that high view of being a continual learner of God. Yeah. A continual student of him. And I think as that Scripture you’re talking about there, it’s amazing that it ends at God just saying, I just give you over to what you want. 

And a world void of God being God is a very sad world where there’s just all of this brokenness. Yeah. And we need God. He’s on the throne, but we want him to be on the throne in our own hearts so that we don’t slowly and steadily convince ourselves that we’re God, which eventually takes us into these places that destroy us. 

He is faithful to help us continue to know that we need him. And that’s an exciting aspect of who he is. Yeah. Brian, what is a natural outgrowth of a person who is always a God learner? Yeah. I think one thing that you may find is that they would be able to delight in the Lord. I think being able to find him as a place, as a person that they can go to, that they can enjoy and they can, you know, even like the Apostle John leaning on Christ. 

Yes. Just loving him. Yeah, he loved him, and he wanted to be near him, and it was such a place of safety and comfort. When we don’t see God rightly, we turn into either the complacent person who just doesn’t seem to care at all, or we turn into the Pharisee that’s just off kilter. Yeah, we’re just a little bit maybe emphasizing not quite all of the truth but maybe emphasizing some of the truth. And again, I think the tone of this is not chastisement. It’s so exciting to think about God being bigger than what we can even imagine. He invites us into knowing as much of him as we can. Yeah. The more we grow in our knowledge of God, the more we grow in our knowledge of ourselves, don’t we? 

Absolutely. That’s going to happen. Yes. And that’s an interesting spin on the whole exercise. Well, yeah, I mean, it just opens up a whole new room or a whole new village to consider. Because as I think about the knowledge of God, if I know anybody, it’s me, right? I mean, I know myself. 

Right. But what we’re going to discover is maybe you don’t know yourself quite as much as you thought. And in that, as you discover who God is and that exposes the reality of who you are. Again, it just highlights how big God has to be for this to work, which is great. So, as I muse on his eternal nature, and that he always has been, I very clearly see my finiteness. 

I’m very finite. I’m such a little blimp on this whole earth. Jesus says that I am. And in that, he’s making a connection to the infiniteness of God back in the Old Testament. He’s saying, that’s who I am. And God is the I AM. Matt is the I am not. And there’s so many things in life that I am not. I fail at this. I don’t quite make the mark in that. And because God is the I AM, it allows me to be the am not. Does that make sense if he is mine and I am his? Yes, absolutely. And I think that is one of my greatest comforts in the sense that there are so many mornings I wake up and I say God I can’t do that, and I can’t do that, and I can’t do that. 

And what are you thinking? Why would you give me this chance? I can’t do that. He looks down and he smiles and says I know, Brian, I know I am good because I AM. I can take care of this. You don’t have to. Yeah. Brian, I love this conversation. And here in closing, what final comments do you have? 

Well, I think maybe a couple things come to mind. One would be just that in knowing God, difficulties, challenges, struggles still occur. And it’s a sweet thing to be able to hold onto in the midst of those. You know, life is challenging with its ups and downs and brokenness that we wrestle with. 

So, to know that is part of the journey, even in knowing God. And then the other part that I would say is that this is such an exciting thing that we are invited to know Almighty God and that we even have the privilege and invitation to delight in him. And that is such a privilege. 

And for us to be able to enjoy that, to see that as a freeing thing, not as an arduous task that we have to do. That’s exciting. Yeah. And I think that’s what you’ve done here in this podcast, is realize for all of us believers, whoa, there’s a gift right there that perhaps I have or have not opened and pursued. 

And that is the knowledge of God and his invitation towards us to know him and what great change and what great advantage that will be in our life. Yeah. How glorious. Yeah. Thanks. And thank you, friends, for being with us. We trust it’s been a blessing.