Can You Know God?

Do You Believe?

Do you believe in the Cross of Jesus Christ? No matter the answer I challenge you to call/ text/ message two or three people and send them the link to this program. This is a conversation they do not want to miss. There has never been a more important question at a more pivotal time in our history.

We are studying about if you can know God.

Can you have a real relationship with God?

a real feel it/ touch it /smell it relationship.

- He brought them (animals to Adam) - Active role

- they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden - Seeks us - Active Role

they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden

- Enoch walked with God - life of relationship/ fellowship with God - Active role

- Noah walked with God. - life of relationship/ fellowship with God - Active role

Enoch walked with God

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Noah walked with God.

God takes an active role in the lives of the people that He uses. These are just a few examples, how about when God called Abraham out of his fathers country, Moses back to the country of his birth. All of these people had a relationship with God, and an active, touch it, feel it, hear it relationship. You can see these types of relationships throughout the Old Testament.

What Happen?

In the Old Testament, you see personal relations, fellowship and communications back and forth between God and the people He is using. We see this seemingly come to an end in Malachi, then for what we assume is 400 years nothing. Why?

1 Samuel 3:1-

1 Samuel 3:1–6 ESV

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, “Samuel!” and Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Scripture goes on to explain why we don’t hear or know God.

1 Samuel 3:7–10 ESV

Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.”

1 Samuel 3:7-

We are not trained.

We may get head knowledge but are we instructed in the ways of our heart and the knowledge that God places there. We are removed from Biblical times by many generations, and have history to look at but we never learn from it.

Culture and the world has a way of creating a divide between God and us. We allow this by not by not seeking a personal relationship with Him.

The World says God is an impersonal God

Through history, even in the church history we see arguments between church leaders on whether God can be known.

Louis Berkhof

Systematic Theology A. God Incomprehensible but Yet Knowable

In the fourth century Eunomius, an Arian, argued from the simplicity of God, that there is nothing in God that is not perfectly known and comprehended by the human intellect, but his view was rejected by all the recognized leaders of the Church. The Scholastics distinguished between the quid and the qualis of God, and maintained that we do not know what God is in His essential Being,

Systematic Theology A. God Incomprehensible but Yet Knowable

The Christian Church confesses on the one hand that God is the Incomprehensible One, but also on the other hand, that He can be known and that knowledge of Him is an absolute requisite unto salvation.

Which is it? This is the same theology as you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The claim of an unknowable God is based on the limits of the human mind. That our minds cannot comprehend the awesomeness of God. Agnostics use the argument:

Man knows only by analogy

Man only knows what he can grasp in its entirety

All predicates of God are negative and therefore furnish no real knowledge