All Knowing God

Our God is a God who knows and perceives all things. He intimately knows all things past, all things present and all things future. He is a God for whom nothing is concealed. With him there are no secrets, there is no darkness and nothing is shrouded from his total awareness and full comprehension. God would surely be something less than God without full acuity. Scripture affirms that “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account” (Heb.4:13). And there is the discomfort in an otherwise consoling attribute – “we must give an account.” If he knows all things, he certainly knows each one of us through and through. He knows our every thought and intention. He perceives our musings and every effort of our imagination. He knows the words in our mind that are never stated and the dreams in our heart that are never acted upon. And as the Scripture often reminds us, “when the Lord comes, he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts” (1Cor.4:5). As Jesus taught us, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs” (Lk.12:2-3). What is left for us but to live a circumspect life – a life that is as judicious about the inner person, as we are about the outward reputation. So, while we take comfort in our omniscient Father whose eye is on the sparrow, we will seek to be holy, both inside and out (1Pet.1:15-17).

Life Perspective

Do you long to see Christ face to face (1Cor.13:12)? Do you truly feel your citizenship is in another world (Phil.3:20)? Have you laid up sufficient treasure in heaven so that your hope is really set on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ (Mt.6:20; 1Pt.1:13b)? If so, most people will think you’re crazy, but actually you’ll be living out one of the fundamental virtues of New Testament theology. Longing for the next life is the expected result of a regenerate heart. You should, with the rest of God’s people, be “eagerly awaiting a Savior from heaven – the Lord Jesus Christ” and together we should be “longing for a better country – a heavenly one” (Heb.11:16). When passion like this is absent in the hearts of professing Christians the Bible calls it “worldliness.” We are told that a fondness for the present life is antithetical to loving God. John exhorts: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1Jn.2:15). Like Demas, you’ll see a love for the world supplanting your zeal to risk and sacrifice in service for Christ (2Tim.4:9-10). Like Judas, you’ll find that a love for the world’s silver will be a source of chronic compromise (Jn.12:6). In contrast, like Paul, our willingness to continue on this planet should be out of a singular interest for the next one. Consider the conflict created by his passion for the next life: “If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body” (Phil.1:22-23). May we genuinely be able to say with the apostle: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil.1:21). Maranatha! Come quickly Lord Jesus! (1Cor.16:22b; Rev.22:20).

Forgiveness and Happiness

Knowing that we are truly forgiven should naturally give rise to real joy and genuine happiness. When forgiveness is real, having been secured by those contrite sinners who have thrown themselves on the grace and mercy of our forgiving God (who has paid the ultimate price in redeeming us from the penalty of our sins) then they should encourage their hearts to rejoice in the good fortune of this amazing transaction. David wrote these seemingly obvious lyrics for Israel and the church to echo throughout the centuries: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him” (Ps.32:1-2). The word “blessed” translates the familiar Hebrew word “asher” – the name given to Jacob’s eighth son in response to Leah’s delight over his birth. The word “asher” means “happy” – the joyful or jubilant disposition of someone who has become the recipient of something good. Amid the domestic politics of the patriarchal drama of Genesis 30, Leah could not contain her joy at the arrival of the newborn son. Their little “Asher” had brought her profound “asherness!” That was certainly good for her, but nothing could be better for us than having our list of damning sins accusing us as sinners being totally and completely erased! Praise God, with great joy, that the transgressions which should assault you on Judgment Day are not and will not be counted against you. Rejoice afresh in the “covering” of your sins by God himself. Tell your heart to be glad that you will never know the dread of being condemned before your Creator. Do something today that expresses and reflects the happiness of a forgiven life!

Work

Working is a gift from God – a pre-fall, pre-sin, pre-curse gift. While sin’s consequence injected obstacles and pain into the equation (“the ground will produce thorns” leading to work “by the sweat of your brow” – Gen.3:18, 19), the commission to work preceded the fall (“God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work” – Gen.2:15). Even in the first chapters of the Bible we are introduced to God who is said to be at “work” in creating his universe (Gen.2:2). And remember that in the perfect and blessed order of things in the New Jerusalem work is not extracted: we are told that God’s “servants will serve him” (Rev.22:3). It may be hard to believe but even now we can experience a taste of God’s perfect design for work as we adopt a new mindset about our labor. It is not a curse. It does not have to be drudgery. It can be a foreshadowing of your eternal home. Notice the Christian perspective on work (even the most demanding work) in Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, and not for men, since you know that you will receive your inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (3:22-24). So let’s stop dreading Monday morning, instead let us express a godly passion to work with all of our hearts for the glory of our King. He is coming, and he will compensate us for how we tackled our nine-to-five.

Bible Interpretation

If only we could see how often we abuse the Bible (and therefore, its Author) in an effort to bolster and justify our personal views and proclivities. The process is called “isogesis” – presupposing our own interpretation and views and “reading them into” a passage of Scripture when they are not actually there. The goal, of course, is “exegesis” – extracting God’s meaning from a passage of Scripture by allowing that text to speak for itself. Knowing which we are doing when we are reading or quoting the Bible is critical. Unfortunately, it is our tendency to bring our preexisting understanding of what God is like, our valuations of the world and culture, our beliefs about right and wrong into a passage expecting to find it there even when it’s not. We do this most often by injecting assumed definitions of words into the passage we are reading. We are not tenacious enough to insist that biblical words be defined by the Bible instead of assuming their definitions based on our interaction with our parents, our childhood church, pop culture, our American democracy, our social institutions or any number of personal twenty-first century experiences. Avoiding this tendency is what makes Bible study so challenging. Here we find ourselves confronted with an inspired document that was delivered against the backdrop of a language and culture that is now two thousand to thirty-five hundred years past. This is why we can’t just plop our finger on the page and ask, “What does this verse mean to me?” If we don’t know a text’s historical, literary and grammatical context we are bound to become isogetes and not exegetes. So, let’s do our homework, avoiding “Bible abuse” by expending the necessary effort to derive biblical principles after we have understood the original context and the biblical definition of words.

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