The Way to Follow the Way

To many people, being a Christian is not much more than the belonging to a country club or some civic organization dedicated to volunteering. It’s pretty important but it certainly isn’t the number one thing in their life. God’s idea of “knowing Him,” is that He can and should be a lot more than just a passing acquaintance. He wants to be Number One in our life. He wants us to really know Him and not just learn a few facts about Him. He is not someone we go visit on Sunday morning. If you are married, think of it this way. When you started dating the one you actually married, you wanted to learn all you could about the other person. The first thing you wanted to find out was what kind of character they had. Were they truthful, fun to be with, trustworthy, loving, kind, and any of a number of other character traits we could name? You soon found out that wasn’t nearly enough information. So, you learned what they liked, what they didn’t like, their favorite color, food or movie and more. Then you moved on to find out more than just this surface knowledge you could obtain by asking questions. By experience, you learned what it felt like to hold their hand and just spend quiet time together. You learned to discern, without anyone saying anything, when they were happy or sad and what caused it. You really got to KNOW them. In order to do that, you had to spend a lot of time with them. When you were apart, you couldn’t wait until you were together again. If you’re not married then consider these words as instructions for something you must do before you decide who to marry. Getting to know God is how we seek first the Kingdom of God in accordance with the instructions of Jesus. That is the key to obtaining salvation and everything else that God has made available to us. Rom 10:14, “And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? (NLT) People in the past did not have the complete Bible like we have. During the time of the prophets, people were not able to hear directly from God. A very, few people had access to a hand copied Pentateuch which contained only the first five books of the Bible. At that time God spoke mostly through the prophets. Not many people were selected by God to hear directly from Him. So, if you were not acquainted with or did not have access to a prophet, then the only way you ever heard anything from God was, at best, what someone told you they had heard someone else say. It was really hard to get to know God. Most people’s knowledge of God was what was passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition or stories about how God dealt with mankind. PROMISE OF A NEW COVENANT As a matter of fact, during a 400 year stretch between the Old and New Testaments, there is no record of anyone at all hearing from God. However, a few years before that, in a prophecy given to Jeremiah, God promised to change the way he communicated with His people. In this prophecy, He talked about a New Covenant He was going to establish with His people. Jer. 31:31-34 says, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah —32not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." This promise says “they shall ALL KNOW ME, from the least to the greatest of them!” What a marvelous promise. No matter what our status here on earth is, people can KNOW God personally. This New Covenant was ratified when Jesus shed his blood on the cross at Calvary. Jesus made that clear in Matt. 26:27-28. “Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’” Since that time we have had the opportunity to get to know God on a personal basis. Notice I said “opportunity.” James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” He has already made the first move by establishing the New Covenant and making it available to us at no cost. Now it is up to us to make the next move by getting to know God well enough to place our total and complete faith in Him. BY FAITH WE UNDERSTAND… Our knowledge of God begins with faith. Paul tells us how in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” The NLT says it like this, “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.” God spoke and the earth and everything we can see was formed from something we cannot see. In order to understand this takes faith. By faith we understand… Now I am going to repeat something I said earlier. At first it sounds confusing, but you will get it if you think about it. If we don’t understand something, it’s because WE don’t understand. God knows everything and His Word is absolutely true. He has done some things so incredible that we are not capable of understanding how they happened or how they work. Are we being asked to believe through faith, that things are true even though we can’t see them? Let me answer that by asking you another question. Can you see gravity? You know it exists. It’s what keeps you from being flung off the earth into space. Stop and consider this for just a moment. The earth is approximately 24,900 miles in diameter at the equator. It makes one entire revolution every 24 hours. It is like being on a merry-go-round that is 7,925 miles in diameter and we are at the outer edge where it is traveling over 1,000 miles per hour. There is no way you could hang on tight enough to keep from being ejected. But if you were standing at the North Pole or the South Pole, it would be like you were standing at the center of the merry-go-round. You would just be turning around and around. Yet you weigh essentially the same no matter where you are on earth. How can that be? We don’t understand it but we know it’s true. We call that the law of gravity. Gravity is defined in the dictionary as a force pulling together all matter. Matter is anything you can physically touch. The more matter, the more gravity, so things that have a lot of matter such as planets and moons and stars pull more strongly. It doesn’t make any difference whether we understand it or not. It’s still a fact. You can even forget about gravity and it still works. I looked in several references for the definition of gravity and in every one it is simply called “a force.” No one ever attempts to explain what causes it or where it comes from – it just exists anywhere there is matter. Science cannot explain it. As you grew up you learned to work with the law of gravity. You learned if you walk off a cliff, or fall out of a window in a tall building you’re going to get hurt. While the law of gravity is good because it keeps us from flying out into space and things stay in the place where you set them, it can also be bad for us. If you choose to ignore it or you are not cautious and fall from a high place, you will die a physical death.