Sermon: Do You Really Know God?

#1748A
Clyde Finklea
Given 17-Feb-24; 36 minutes 2024-02-17

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Today we are going to start in the book of Daniel in chapter 11.

Daniel 11:31 And forces shall be mustered by him [and we will find out who we talking about here in just a second], and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation.

Now on the 15th of Kislev in 168 BC that "him" there was Antiochus. He gave himself the name Epiphanies, which some scholars say means illustrious one. So Antiochus stopped the daily sacrifice at the Temple and he offered a hog on the altar. A statue of Jupiter Olympus was set up in the holy place. This is a type of the future abomination of desolation spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24, as you remember. He said, "When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place" that those in Jerusalem and Judea flee. And He also mentioned the fact about this prophecy in Daniel. So the final fulfillment is yet to come.

Daniel 11:32 Those who do wickedly against the covenant he will corrupt with flattery.

In other words, there were some that conspired with Antiochus and they went against God's covenant to do this. Why did they do this, do you think? I think maybe, personally, that they were seeking to save their lives. Remember what Jesus said in Luke 17:33? He said, "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it."

In verse 32, and this is where we want to get to, it says,

Daniel 11:32 . . . but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.

Now, the words great exploits were added, that is not in the original there, not that it is wrong or anything. Some translations say some will act valiantly. And we remember who that was. That was the Maccabees that did that back then with Antiochus. But this is also something that is coming in the future as well.

So from that, I got a question I want to ask you. Would you agree that a Christian's most important occupation or whatever is getting to know God? Well, if so, do you really know God? I think most all of us would answer, "Yeah, we do." Right? And if I was to ask a room full of Protestant Christians the same question they would probably certainly answer, "Yes, we do." If I was to ask a room full of Catholic Christians, do you think they too would answer, "Yes, we do"? And if I were to ask a room full of Jewish believers the same question, they too would most likely answer, "Yes, we do. I mean, after all, we are God's chosen people, right?"

Well, you might be in for a big surprise or some of these people are certainly going to be in for a big surprise. So many people claim to know God. Now, this leads me actually to a second and more important question. And that is, does God know you? Does God know all these people who claim to know Him? Well, let us take a look and find out. Let us start over here in Matthew in the New Testament. We will turn to Matthew the seventh chapter, verse 21. This is one of those parables of Jesus.

Matthew 7:21-23 [And He said] "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me that day, 'Lord Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'"

This phrase, Lord, Lord, I looked it up and it is mentioned five times in the New Testament and each one of them are in the parables of Jesus. And every time you hear the phrase, Lord, Lord, somebody is in trouble, somebody is in for a big disappointment.

As we continue in these parables, I want you to notice that there is a connection between them all. Now flip over with me now to Luke 13.

Luke 13:22-24 And He went through the cities and the villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then one of them said to Him, "Lord, are there few who are saved?" And He said to them, "Strive. . .

This is an interesting thing. He says here, strive. That word strive means to struggle. It means to contend with an adversary. It means to endeavor to accomplish something or fight, labor fervently, strive. A good reference to this right here is in II Peter 1:3-11. That is where he says you must diligently try to supplement your faith with virtue and so on. And at the end of all that, what I always looked at is that it is like the conversion process, so to speak, where you end up at the last where we end up being love like God is love. And Peter says, if you do these things, then you will never fall. So that is what it means to strive. And I think one of the translations says "diligently," make every effort to do these things.

Luke 13:24 "Strive [with your whole being] to enter through the narrow gate [notice the second part of this], for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

Seek what they were wishing and hoping and desiring to be in. But they are not putting forth that right effort, not with their whole being. Jesus said there will be many that will not be able to make it. He says, in another place, "many are called, but few are chosen."

Luke 13:25-26 "When the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord [there is that phrase again], open to us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where are you from,' then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.'

This kind of gives us an idea that maybe this is referring to those while He was on the earth in His flesh. They said, hey, we ate with You. We drank with You, You taught in our streets. And He is going to say,

Luke 13:27 "I tell you, I do not know you or where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity [unrighteousness or lawlessness].'

That is what unrighteousness is, iniquity.

Let us go to another one in Matthew 25. This is another interesting one about the Ten Virgins. Now, this one hits home a little harder for us because we are talking about they are all virgins. I imagine if you stood them all up in the line and you would not be able to pick out one from the other. But He says, five of them were wise and five were foolish. And He says, the ones who were foolish took the lamps, but they did not take any oil with them. The wise did and they had oil in their vessels.

Matthew 25:5-6 "But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. [they got a little slack maybe] But at midnight a cry was heard: "Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out and meet him!'

The middle of the night; some transaction say at midnight. That is the darkest time of the night, right? Because after midnight the darkness starts to go toward the light. Now, we are talking about a time when Christ is coming, He is coming back to this earth, and this is the time He is talking about, right? Coming to get His virgins, His firstfruits. So when is He coming? The resurrection occurs at the seventh trump. Then you got all them bowl plagues and right at the end of those bowl plagues is when Christ and those that are with Him come down to Jerusalem.

Now, I would imagine that is probably going to be the darkest spiritually in the history of this world, at that hour. So we are talking about a time when He is coming back,

Matthew 25:7-9 "Then all those virgins arose and trimmed the lamps. And the foolish said, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you [notice what they say here]; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.'

I have thought about this a long time. This is at the time of Christ's return, right? Do you recall back in

Revelation 13:16-17 [where it says] He [that is the beast power] causes all, both small and the great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead [and in the next verse it says], and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

And notice verse 10 [Matthew 25], "And while they went to buy. . ."

That makes me wonder, is He inferring that there may just be a group of people that is going to corrupt that holy covenant? That is, the New Covenant where Christ puts His Spirit in us and that they are going to get weak and try to seek to save their lives. That is scary, brethren.

And He goes on to say, the other ones went in but they are coming back, they are running back, and they say,

Matthew 25:11-12 'Lord, Lord,' open to us!' But He answered and said, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.'

Did they quench God's Spirit? Did they seek to save their lives and take that mark? Did they get weak? Well, I remember Mr. Herbert Armstrong saying that he believed that half the church would not be ready when Christ returns. And that is what this is all about. He is telling us here,

Matthew 25:13 "Watch therefore, for you do not know the day nor the hour when the Son of Man is coming."

There is one more place where we will read the phrase "Lord, Lord" and that is in Luke 6, verse 46. It is just one scripture. I will just read it to you. You have heard this many times.

Luke 6:46 "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?"

So they were not being obedient to Him. Christ says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

Now, did you make the connection between every one of them when Christ said, "I do not know you"? He knew them. God knows everything. He knows their names. He knows who they are because He says, "you workers." He knew their works, their deeds. But He says, "I do not know you." "I never knew you." What did He mean by that?

Well, let us take a look at this word for "know." And then we will try to make a connection here.

Amos 3:2 "You only [He is talking to Israel. This is God, the one that became Jesus Christ] have I known [the word there is yedayah] of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities."

He knew them. He said you are the only family I knew of all the families of the earth. And God, those that He loves and He knows, what does it say in Hebrews? He corrects, He punishes, He chastises us for our iniquities. Now yedayah means to know intimately, it means to perceive, to understand, and experience. So one of the most striking pictures of intimacy between God and His people in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is that image of a husband and a wife, our groom and the bride.

Isaiah 54:5 For your Maker is your husband.

Isaiah 62:5 As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

Now, this is one I like. It is in Hosea 2, if you want to turn there with me.

Hosea 2:19-20 "I will betroth you [the book of Hosea is just a whole book and story of the love affair between God and Israel] to Me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and in mercy. I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. [I want you to hang on to what He just said because we are going to see something here a little later that is connected to this.], and [then the next sentence says] you shall know [yedayah] the Lord."

"Then you shall know." To know God means that we experience Him intimately.

Now, the imagery of this very intimate relationship between God and Israel continues on, not just in the Old Testament, it also carries right on into the New Testament, as we have seen by the parable He spoke about the bridegroom coming for the virgins. And so He talks about that Jesus is the bridegroom and those who follow Him are the bride of Christ.

Now you find in the New Testament the word for know, one of them (there are two words we hear), is eido, and it means to have regard for one, to cherish, to pay attention to. An example of that would be in I Thessalonians 5:12 where it says, "And we urge you, brethren, to recognize [know] those who labor among you, and are over you and admonish you." In other words, our ministry is what this is referring to, which is to know them, which to have a relationship with them and cherish them and pay attention to what they teach us and what they do.

The next word is ginosko. But that is where He said, "I never knew you." That was the word ginosko. In I Corinthians 8:3, he uses it again. Paul said, "But if anyone loves God, this one is known [or ginosko] by Him." And when He says, "I never knew you," apparently they had no love, real love for God because they were practicing what? Lawlessness, iniquity, unrighteousness. You cannot know God unless you are obedient to Him.

In the definition that Thayer gives he basically defines this as, a Jewish idiom for intimacy, this word, between a man and a woman. Now intimacy, when we think about it in the English term and according to our dictionaries, at least the one here I got out of Miriam and Webster, means familiarity, a knowledge of a person's character, their likes, and their dislikes, their preferences, their visions, their hopes, and their dreams.

What Jesus is referring to when He says, "I never knew you" or I do not know you to those who thought they really knew God, is that He does not or never had an intimate relationship with them. God knows everything; we know that He knows who they were. But He says to each one of them, you workers of lawlessness, you workers of iniquity, you workers of unrighteousness, you who practice sin. So not all those who are calling out to the Lord are practicing righteousness, are they?

Many of them think, the Protestants and the Catholics, that God's law is done away with. When you do away with it, how can you love God? How can you demonstrate your love for God if you do not keep His commandments? God just plainly tells us these things.

Now, I told you to hang on to that in the words I spoke a while ago. Turn with me to Jeremiah 9, verse 23. This is God speaking. God has this, actually, to say about Himself.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 Thus says the Lord, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that He understands and knows Me [yedayah], that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight."

We look at this and we say God is revealing what He is. So God is loving and kind, lovingkindness. Some translations translate it as kind; sometimes as mercy; sometimes it is compassion; sometimes as lovingkindness or steadfast love. I think they might be confused on how to really translate that sometimes about Him. But the fact is that He is all those things.

That word there that is used for lovingkindness is hesed. That is the Hebrew word that I mentioned before, a long time ago. I am sure you do not remember. But anyway, the Jewish scholars say this is the very equivalent word to the Greek word agape. So agape gives us a description of what God is like, right? And we are to be like that. And hesed is the Hebrew equivalent that describes how God is: loving, merciful, compassionate, kind, longsuffering, and all those things.

Now this implies an affectionate person. We sometimes think that we do not have to like nobody or have any affection for them or anything like that as long as we love them. Well, no. Does God think of us like that? "I love you, but I don't like you." That just never made sense to me. But anyway, He is a God of judgment and judgment implies wisdom. It implies justice, fairness, firmness. He is a righteous God. You know this word here that He speaks here, He exercises righteousness in the earth? If you dig into the root of that word, the word is straight.

God is straight with us—always. Always fair in judgment and He always judges in righteousness and according to His nature of love. He is not wishy-washy. He is straight. He does not compromise with His laws, not one bit.

So righteousness implies that He has standards and the existence of standards suggests that He can be depended on and that He can be consistent, right? He is straight.

You know, these are really very important things that we need to know about God because He is describing Himself here. That He is loving, He is kind; that He is just, and that He has standards that He stands by. And another reason that maybe they are important to know is that everything else we learn about God has to be related to these primary traits of character of Him. Because God said this is the thing that you really want to know about Me.

You know what that means, do you not? We are growing in grace and knowledge, and we are growing in this conversion process to what? To become that holy, righteous character of God. And Jesus Christ is our example.

So how can we know and know that we know God and He knows us? Well, I think you probably got it figured out by now but let us just take a look at a few things so that we definitely nail this down. Turn with me to I John and we will begin in chapter 2.

I John 2:3 By this [standard] we know that we know Him [What standard? What standard did he just give us?], if we keep His commandments.

What did He say about all those He said he did not know? They were workers of lawlessness, unrighteousness. They were practicing sin. They were not being obedient to Him.

I John 2:4 He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments [This is bold. I mean, this is straightforward.], is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

On the other hand,

I John 2:5-6 But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk just as He walked.

How did He walk? Well, He gave us a good idea in Jeremiah 9:23 when He said, "But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight."

Brethren, we too must be exercising and working on this, and practicing righteousness and exercising lovingkindness toward each other, especially each other, as we will see in a minute. And we have to have proper righteous judgments and we must practice righteousness in the earth. We must be straight with God's commandments just like He was. Like Herbert Armstrong always said, "God doesn't compromise with His law," and neither should we.

John 17:3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You [He is praying to the Father], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You sent."

Now, if you are still there in I John, go over to chapter 4 and we will pick this up in verse 7. We are going to go through a few more scriptures here to kind of drive this one home. He says,

I John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

John 4:11-12 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also [We are duty bound, He expects this of us, He requires it of us. It is not a suggestion, it is a commandment.] are to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

Is that not what it said, I read this somewhere else. I do not remember where it was, that His love is perfected in us, was being perfected in us.

I John 4:13 By this we know that we abide in Him [this is how we know], and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit.

I John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Number one thing, right? Lovingkindness, growing in His love, trying and striving to be like Him, as loving as He is—compassionate, merciful, forgiving.

I John 4:20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; . . .

He said that earlier too, did he not? If you say you love God and do not keep His commandments, you are a liar. You hate your brother, you are a liar. You do not love God.

I John 4:20-21 . . . for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this is the commandment that we have from Him [from Jesus Christ]: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

We will begin to end with this set of scriptures over in I John 5.

I John 5:17 All unrighteousness is sin, . . .

Is that not what Jesus kept saying to those who said Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord? He said, "No, I do not know you," you workers of iniquity, you workers of lawlessness, you who practice sin, you workers of unrighteousness. All unrighteousness is sin. I think it is Psalm 119:172 where it says, All your commandments are righteousness.

I John 5:18 We know that anyone who is born of God does not sin.

Now, it does not mean that we do not fall short sometimes. We do fall. We do in weakness and things like that. But God lifts us up, gives us a little spanking, then puts us on our way. We repent and we go keep on practicing righteousness. We do not practice sin; sometimes it catches up with us because we live in a world where we fight evil spirits that are invisible, we do not see them. We are human. But we can determine what they are like because Satan comes as an angel of light and his ministers like ministers of righteousness. And we are warned over and over again about false teachers, false prophets, and false ministers. We have to discern, to make sure they are practicing righteousness and we are following those that do.

I John 5:18-19 We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself [by the power of God], and the wicked one does not touch Him. [God will protect us, you know, keep us from him. He keeps us; sometimes He tests us though.] We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

He is the prince of the power of the air. This whole world is being energized by that spirit and we have to live in it and deal with it. It is tough, it is wearying. Do you remember when Paul said that in the last days that perilous times will come? That word perilous, the root word of it means weakening. And it goes on in Revelation. He talks about the wearing down of the saints. He is coming after us. He is going to wear us down. And we have got to be ready, and the way we are ready is if we know God, right?

I John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

So you can know for sure, as we have just seen, when we say, do we really know God? We can say honestly say, "Yes, we do." Does He know us? Yes, He does. Why? Because we are practicing righteousness, we are practicing right judgment, and we are practicing His lovingkindness. And we are growing in that and we will never give up. We will keep striving and making every effort to get through that narrow gate.

Many are called, but few are chosen!

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