How Can We Know God?
00:00:00.000 | Who is God?
00:00:07.120 | It's as important of a question as it gets, and we get it a lot, from international listeners
00:00:11.920 | especially.
00:00:12.920 | We're going to address the question today and maybe on Monday as well.
00:00:16.320 | This might bleed over into two episodes.
00:00:17.840 | This particular question has come to us from listeners like Gamal, Olyanka, Ezekiel, Bobby,
00:00:24.800 | Zandy, Matthew, Giovanni, Jerry, Tom, and Esther.
00:00:29.720 | Thank you for all the emails that have come in on this question.
00:00:33.680 | They're all asking the same question to you, Pastor John.
00:00:36.960 | Who is God?
00:00:40.640 | I love it when people are clear enough and straightforward enough and honest enough to
00:00:48.720 | ask straight out, "Who is God?"
00:00:52.120 | I think it's right and helpful to break that question sometimes into parts, namely, how
00:00:58.480 | in the world can we even know the answer?
00:01:04.360 | Where can we look?
00:01:06.320 | Has God actually revealed the answer to the question somewhere and then, okay, if He has,
00:01:15.760 | who are you, God?
00:01:17.200 | So when I put myself in the place of a person asking, "Who is God?"
00:01:23.640 | I can't help but think that perhaps the first question someone should ask is, "Who in the
00:01:27.840 | world does John Piper think he is to answer the greatest question in the world?"
00:01:36.440 | And the answer is that John Piper is a pointer.
00:01:41.280 | The revelation of God to man does not happen in me.
00:01:48.600 | All I can do is point to it.
00:01:51.560 | There, there it is.
00:01:53.680 | That's the revelation of God.
00:01:56.280 | That's where God has chosen to make known who He is.
00:02:01.960 | Look there.
00:02:02.960 | Listen to that.
00:02:04.600 | So where should we look?
00:02:07.840 | Where am I pointing?
00:02:08.920 | Where does John Piper point?
00:02:11.840 | And what will you see when you look there?
00:02:15.400 | I'm going to point to five places where I hope you will look.
00:02:22.840 | Not to me.
00:02:23.920 | Look there, where you will look, places where God has revealed Himself to us to tell us
00:02:32.360 | who He is.
00:02:34.440 | First, look to Jesus, Jesus Christ.
00:02:38.840 | Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 18, verse 37, "For this purpose I have come
00:02:46.360 | into the world, to bear witness to the truth."
00:02:51.200 | And in John 14, 6, He said, "I am the truth.
00:02:54.760 | No one comes to God except through me."
00:02:59.560 | And then in chapter 8, verse 19, He said, "If you knew me, you would know God."
00:03:07.040 | You'd know who He is.
00:03:10.120 | Why?
00:03:11.240 | Because He said in John 10, 30, "I and the Father are one."
00:03:17.640 | Nobody in the history of the world has made such lavish claims.
00:03:24.160 | Maybe you could even say crazy claims, and then backed them up with a life of integrity
00:03:30.640 | and beauty and power.
00:03:33.080 | The greatest decision anybody, like those listening to this podcast, could ever make
00:03:40.920 | is whether Jesus was telling the truth.
00:03:44.240 | How can you know that?
00:03:46.200 | How can you know if Jesus was telling the truth?
00:03:49.840 | And the answer is by getting to know Him, by reading the four portraits of His life
00:03:55.680 | called the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
00:04:00.280 | If you're not sure about Him, I hope you will make this a top priority in your life.
00:04:06.840 | Is Jesus telling the truth about Himself and about who God is?
00:04:14.000 | Here's the second place that I point you for a revelation of who God is.
00:04:20.680 | Before Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, He said to those
00:04:28.880 | He had chosen to be His authorized spokesmen, He said this, "When the Spirit of truth
00:04:36.960 | comes, whom I will send, He will guide you into all the truth."
00:04:44.560 | That's John 16, verse 13.
00:04:47.360 | In other words, not only did Jesus claim to speak the truth and to be the revelation of
00:04:54.360 | who God is, but He also provided for the truthful writing about Him and His truth through those
00:05:03.440 | first followers.
00:05:04.600 | These writings are called the New Testament.
00:05:08.000 | The Spirit-inspired writings say this, "Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact
00:05:16.400 | imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power."
00:05:21.320 | That's Hebrews 1, verses 2 and 3.
00:05:24.400 | So Jesus Himself reveals who God is, and the writers that He chose reveal who God is.
00:05:34.560 | There's the third place to look for who God is.
00:05:38.160 | Jesus Himself and His followers pointed us to the Jewish scriptures as a reliable revelation
00:05:49.600 | of who God is.
00:05:51.080 | The Jews call this book the Tanakh, which is an acronym for the Law, the Prophets, and
00:05:57.640 | the Wisdom writings.
00:05:59.320 | And Christians call it the Old Testament.
00:06:03.440 | Members of Jesus do not reject the Jewish scriptures.
00:06:08.200 | We believe that Jesus fulfills the Jewish scriptures.
00:06:12.400 | He doesn't reject them.
00:06:13.720 | He said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets.
00:06:18.280 | I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them," Matthew 5, verse 17.
00:06:24.480 | Which is why the Christian Bible is made up of both Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures,
00:06:31.960 | and the New Testament written by those followers of Jesus.
00:06:35.960 | Here's the fourth place to look for a revelation of who God is.
00:06:41.480 | Look to the natural world, nature.
00:06:45.860 | Both the New Testament and Old Testament point to nature, and they say, "Look, if you have
00:06:53.520 | eyes to see, God is revealed there.
00:06:56.280 | Who He is is revealed there.
00:06:58.240 | Nature is not God, but God is the creator of nature and reveals Himself through nature."
00:07:05.840 | The Old Testament says it this way, "The heavens are telling the glory of God, and
00:07:12.880 | the sky above proclaims His handiwork."
00:07:17.320 | That's Psalm 19, verse 1.
00:07:20.000 | And the New Testament says it like this, "God's invisible attributes, namely His eternal power
00:07:26.160 | and divine nature, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made," Romans
00:07:34.480 | 1, 19 and 20.
00:07:36.040 | Now here's the final, the fifth place to look for who God is, namely, look into your own
00:07:46.200 | heart, your own conscience.
00:07:49.000 | Now I'm not saying you can dream up who God is out of the imaginations of your own heart
00:07:57.840 | and make Him be anything you want Him to be.
00:08:00.120 | A lot of people try to do that.
00:08:01.520 | That's not what I'm saying.
00:08:03.000 | That will get you nowhere.
00:08:04.760 | Just the opposite.
00:08:05.760 | What I'm saying is your heart confronts you, if you're honest, confronts you with a stubborn
00:08:14.820 | reality that can't be twisted into anything we please.
00:08:20.520 | The New Testament says this, "God's law is written on their hearts, while their conscience
00:08:29.200 | bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them."
00:08:37.440 | That's Romans 2, 14 to 16.
00:08:40.480 | In other words, our own hearts tell us there is a God whose law is written on our conscience,
00:08:49.040 | and we have broken that law, and we all know it, we feel it deeply in our most honest moments.
00:08:58.640 | So when I hear the question, the absolutely essential question that I wish everybody in
00:09:06.360 | the world were asking with blood earnest seriousness, "Who is God?"
00:09:12.160 | My first thought is, "John Piper is not a source of revelation.
00:09:17.600 | I am a voice crying in the wilderness, so to speak, like old John the Baptist, a pointer.
00:09:23.720 | Look, look, I must decrease, Jesus must increase.
00:09:28.720 | He is the main revelation of who God is."
00:09:33.760 | The New Testament that he has inspired is a true revelation of who God is.
00:09:39.920 | The Jewish scriptures, with Jesus as their fulfillment, the whole Old Testament is a
00:09:46.640 | true revelation of who God is.
00:09:50.200 | Nature cries out every morning and every night and all day long, "There is a powerful, glorious,
00:09:57.760 | wise Creator God."
00:10:00.480 | And every person, all of us, know deep down in our heart, in the most sober moments of
00:10:07.320 | our lives, that we are not a mere collection of atoms and molecules and chemicals and energy
00:10:13.080 | in a meaningless evolutionary process.
00:10:16.880 | We know, we know that He's not who we are.
00:10:22.000 | Written on our hearts is a revelation that there is a God and that He has a will for
00:10:29.800 | His creatures to know Him and thank Him and make much of Him.
00:10:34.440 | And we know we have all fallen short, which makes the rest of this question all the more
00:10:42.760 | important.
00:10:43.960 | Who is God?
00:10:47.040 | Is He the kind of being who is not only powerful, but personal?
00:10:53.200 | Is He mainly angry with the world because we've all failed so badly to honor Him?
00:11:00.360 | Or is He a God of mercy or both justice and mercy?
00:11:05.520 | Has God taken any action to help us?
00:11:08.800 | Might He even want a relationship with us?
00:11:12.600 | So I would plead with everybody who's listening, consider these questions.
00:11:22.080 | The most important questions of your life.
00:11:26.800 | And consider these five places where God has revealed Himself.
00:11:31.760 | Search them out, test them.
00:11:33.560 | Say to God, "I am ready to believe and submit.
00:11:37.400 | If this is true, I am ready.
00:11:40.160 | Show me who you are."
00:11:42.160 | Wonderful.
00:11:43.160 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:44.640 | All right.
00:11:45.640 | So that was the setup answer for the question of who is God.
00:11:49.360 | Now we'll start next week with the answer to that question.
00:11:52.560 | Thank you for listening.
00:11:54.400 | And you can ask a question of your own.
00:11:56.360 | You can search or browse all 1,599 of our past episodes.
00:12:00.880 | Or you can subscribe to the podcast, do all of that at desirewinggod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:12:05.720 | 1,599 episodes.
00:12:09.440 | That means next time when we return, it's episode number 1,600.
00:12:12.720 | It's amazing.
00:12:13.720 | A nice milestone.
00:12:14.720 | Thank you to everyone who listens and who supports our work so that we can make this
00:12:19.400 | podcast without ads, without sponsors, without any cost to our listeners.
00:12:25.220 | Thank you for supporting us so that we can do this podcast and broadcast it to the world.
00:12:29.920 | I am Tony Reinke.
00:12:30.920 | Honored to serve you.
00:12:31.920 | We'll see you on Monday.
00:12:31.920 | [END]
00:12:33.920 | 1
00:12:34.920 | 1
00:12:35.920 | 1
00:12:36.920 | 1
00:12:37.920 | 1
00:12:38.920 | 1
00:12:39.920 | 1
00:12:40.920 | 1
00:12:41.920 | 1