Knowing God

A Devotional Discovery

As I read this week’s lesson, “To Know God,” I was taken back in my mind to several years ago in my own devotional life. In 2020 and into 2021 I decided to listen to the entire Bible rather than read it through. It was a helpful and refreshing way to hear and understand God’s Word. 

When I came to the book of Ezekiel, my mind was opened to something that I had never seen before. I had always found it difficult to read and, more important, to understand the book. In chapter 1 alone there are faces, wings, wheels, and living creatures. I hate to admit that previously I would just skim through Ezekiel so I could hurry up and get to the book of Daniel; but I decided I wouldn’t do that this time. As I listened (and I didn’t play Ezekiel at a faster speed), I did so as intently as I had with the previous 25 books. 

I heard something in Ezekiel 6:7: “The slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” Then in Ezekiel 6:10: “And they shall know that I am the Lord; I have not said in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them.” Then again in Ezekiel 6:13: “Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when their slain are among their idols all around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every thick oak, wherever they offered sweet incense to all their idols.” And yet again in Ezekiel 6:14: “So I will stretch out My hand against them and make the land desolate, yes, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblah, in all their dwelling places. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”

For the first time in my life, the book of Ezekiel had my full attention. Do you see it? In just that one chapter of Ezekiel, the phrase “know that I am the Lord” appears four times!

I was fully unprepared for what would happen as I continued to listen to the entirety of Ezekiel. Astonishingly, in the 48 chapters of Ezekiel, the phrase “know that I am the Lord” occurs 63 times in the New King James Version. God was showing me the heart of the message of Ezekiel. Amid the unusual visions, the major theme and clear purpose is that God’s people would come to know Him.

That phrase, by the way, occurs only 78 times in the entire Bible.

Who Was Ezekiel?

Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel’s and Jeremiah’s. Jeremiah was the prophet who told God’s people that trouble was coming from the north; they were to repent and turn from their wicked ways. Yet when they did not turn from their wicked ways, Jeremiah told them that they should surrender to the Babylonians arriving from the north and that they would be in captivity for 70 years.

Daniel was a young man living in Jerusalem when the Babylonians came and besieged the city in 605 B.C. Along with other nobility, Daniel was taken captive to Babylon to be trained and utilized by Babylon. Despite Jeremiah’s (and other prophets’) warnings, God’s people continued to rebel. In 597 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar returned to Jerusalem and removed Jehoiachin as the king of Judah, installing Zedekiah as his personally chosen king. According to 2 Kings 24:14-16, “he carried into captivity all Jerusalem: all the captains and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land. And he carried Jehoiachin captive to Babylon. The king’s mother, the king’s wives, his officers, and the mighty of the land he carried into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. All the valiant men, seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths, one thousand, all who were strong and fit for war, these the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.”

For the first time in my life, the book of Ezekiel had my full attention.

Many scholars believe that Ezekiel was a part of that group taken to Babylon. He was unique in that he was both a prophet and a priest, and he began to prophesy about five years after his captivity began. He was married, but his wife unexpectedly died four years after he began his prophetic ministry. A few years later Jerusalem was destroyed, including the temple.

Ezekiel’s Theme

That is the context in which Ezekiel was given messages to share with God’s people. They needed a word from heaven to help them understand why this had happened and to prepare them to eventually return from Babylon. Meanwhile, they were learning lessons in adversity that they could have learned during times of prosperity. If only they had listened to all the prophets and their messages!

While not my main point, it is important to note that today we should also seek to listen to and study the messages of all the prophets, including God’s prophet to His last-day people. The last portion of Ezekiel is devoted to many conditional prophecies of hope for a future restoration of Jerusalem, the temple, and God’s people.

Ezekiel pleaded with the people; he also exposed their sins. His messages were a call to repentance and reliance upon God, pointing the people to a life of obedience in the renewed covenant. He faced a tremendous challenge because some of God’s people had been misled by false prophets, while others, through a lack of study, had a very distorted picture of God’s character and His plan for His people. 

All because they did not know Him!

Ezekiel’s name means “God will strengthen.” He set out to help the nation know and understand God so that they might be strengthened. This is why this week’s lesson is so important. Just as God’s people then, we are also now living in a time of preparation. This time it is our eternal destiny at stake: we look forward to a time God will make the earth new—a time He will take us to our true home. Only those who know Him and are obedient to Him will be taken to that eternal home.

The phrase “know that I am the Lord” echoes throughout the book; it is critical that we know Him. Space doesn’t allow us to examine all 63 occurrences of the phrase “know that I am the Lord.” (In fact, I preached a 10-part series on the lessons learned from those 63 occurrences!) For our present purpose—reflecting on the Sabbath School lesson—I’d like to share just a few thoughts.

To Know or Not to Know

The word “know” in the Old Testament is translated from the Hebrew word yada. This word appears more than 900 times in the Old Testament. In the New Testament there are two words used for the verb “to know”: oida and ginosko. Those two words, collectively, appear more than 500 times. This means that the word know and its derivatives occur more than 1,400 times in the 1,200 chapters of the Bible. The Hebrew word yada is also translated: to perceive, to discern, to show, to notice, to learn, or to realize. It is used most often in reference to God and knowing Him through the most intimate of experiences. It is, in fact, the same word used when the Bible says that Adam “knew” his wife, and she conceived a child (Gen. 4:1).

Only those who know Him and are obedient to Him will be taken to that eternal home.

The intimacy that exists between a husband and wife, when compared to our relationship with God, is not so much about a physical relationship as it is about an environment of intimacy. There are two key features to a biblical marriage relationship that provide the context of intimacy. The first is the exclusive nature of the relationship: it is between one man and one woman. Second is the unconditional love found in that relationship.

It is when we understand these parameters of intimacy that we understand, in part, what it means to know God. In Isaiah 45:5, 6, the Bible states, “I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Notice the exclusive nature of this statement: He is the Lord, and there is no other.

The beginning of knowing God, then, is to know Him in an exclusive, loving experience: perceiving, discerning, learning, and realizing that He is God. To further deepen an understanding of knowing, Proverbs 1:7 states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”

What makes this even more interesting is that the first angel’s message of Revelation 14:7 begins with the words “Fear God and give glory to Him.” To fear God is to know God; to fear literally means to be in awe of, to respect, or to revere Him. To know God as Lord is an exclusive, loving, and reverential relationship. 

It is equally interesting to explore the Hebrew word for Lord. It is the word Yahweh. In theological circles it is often referred to as the Tetragrammaton, which is a Latin word. Tetra means “four,” and gramma means “letters.” Since the original Hebrew contained no vowels, God’s name has four letters: YHWH (the word Yahweh would appear as YHWH). 

Yahweh is God’s formal name. It is revered so highly in Judaism that it is never spoken aloud. Instead of Yahweh, it is simply replaced with the word Adonai. Yahweh is used more than 5,000 times—more than any other word for God. The name is rooted in the Hebrew verb hayah, which is the verb “to be”; God’s very name conveys His self-existence. He simply is. His name is ingrained with idea of nearness, His concern for humanity, and His redemptive nature.

To know God is to enter into an exclusive, loving, reverential experience of understanding—discerning His very personal nearness and concern for the redemption of humanity: His concern for you.

I encourage you to carefully study the lesson this week to know and understand Him better. I also encourage you to study Ezekiel and see all that God does to make Himself known. I pray that you would come to know Him and to be known by Him.