PCEA

God is Knowable

In His conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, Christ spoke of true worshippers and false. Of the Samaritans He said: “You worship what you do not know”: they were ignorant worshippers. Of the Jews He said: “We worship what we know”: they were enlightened worshippers.

This is still the test of worship. Some worship an unknown God, others worship a God they know. A Christian is a person who says that he knows God, loves Him and obeys Him. But can a person know God? If he cannot, of course he cannot love or obey Him. And a Christian is emphatic that he knows God, not because he is more intelligent or clever than others, but because God made Himself known to him. In some mysterious way, God introduced Himself to him, as He did to Saul of Tarsus on the Jerusalem-Damascus Road, when he asked: “Who are you, Lord?”, and the answer came: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” So God can make Himself known to a man or woman, boy or girl.

Self-revealing

This is what we mean when we say that God is self-revealing. Think of the sun as an example of this. On a bright summer day you would never think of saying to a person: “Come out and I will show you the sun”. He needs only to come out, and he will see the sun for himself. He cannot miss it. The sun is self-revealing. So is the God we worship. God is self-giving. This is also true of the sun. Whenever the sun is seen it shines, and in shining it gives itself, its light, its heat, and its strange mixture of rays. God is like that. Whenever God reveals Himself, He gives Himself to those who see Him. The trouble is that so many do not want to see Him. The owl is a bird of the night; it hates the light of day. If the other birds were to tell him of the sun, its light and warmth, the owl would not believe it. At last he is persuaded to come out in broad-daylight. But the light is too much for his eyes accustomed only to the darkness: he shuts his eyes tight, and then hoots: “Where is the sun?” There are people like that. They don’t want to know God. They say that He is not there, and when they are persuaded to come to a place where they may see Him, they shut their eyes and see nothing. This is what the Psalmist meant when he said: “The fool says in his heart: ‘No God’” (Ps. 14). The foolish heart is shut against God, and says He is not real: he dismisses God in two words: “No God”.

Response Created

But God can give seeing eyes to a blind man and create a response to Himself. Long ago men who did not believe in a Creator-God were puzzled as to how an eye came to be there in the body. The only explanation they could give was that the body lay in the sun for thousands and millions of years, and at last the sun, beating down with its light and heat, opened up an eye in the skin where there was no eye before. How foolish to try to account for such a complex organ as the eye in this way! But in their fumbling ignorance they stumbled upon a great spiritual truth. It is that God can create a response in the human heart that makes Him visible and real. This response is what we call faith. Paul could say in all sincerity, at a time of sore testing: “I know whom I have believed”. The absence of faith leaves a man as blind as an owl, and though he be taken to the light, he does not see it or feel it. But God tells him; face the light, and the light will create a response in your nature and you will see God. For God says: “Those who seek me diligently find me” (Prov. 8:17).

Written Word

Where, then, can a person go that he may see God in this way? The place where God so shines that even the blind can see Him is the Bible. True, it is given in writing — in human language — because it must appeal to our understanding, but God can make that writing a revelation to the sincere seeker. The Bible is thus God’s self-revelation, and God, at any moment, can break through the mere language and reveal Himself in such a way that you can sincerely say that you know God. But it is only to faith that this revelation is given. It is the eye of the soul, the responsive faculty of the spiritual nature of man, the gateway by which light and all its blessings may come.

Let us approach our Scripture reading in this way. First, let us pray to God that His light will break through, and that He will enable us to see Himself there. Then go on to read in a new way with the expectation that we may meet with God.