The LORD Knoweth

The LORD knoweth. Psalm 94.11

A Pious Platitude Or A Useful Observation?

In the world that confronts us as it does today with Corona Virus, Black Lives Matter, natural disasters, industrial disasters, a tidal wave of unemployment, horrific child abuse, corruption, greed and a host of other things, life, we can safely say, is definitely not what it used to be. Added to that is the inescapable fact that when we ask religious people for their advice on how to possibly cope with things as we have them today, what do they say?

The LORD knows!

Really? Well, let's see how that's working out, shall we? Uh, not very well! If the LORD knows, why is life going down the tubes? And just how does that statement give us anything even remotely resembling a solution? Then, to make matters even worse (you thought that was impossible, I'm guessing!) they tell us that to react this way is sinful! In other words, to quote an old Bob Dylan song “You never ask questions when God's on your side.” This whole thing is just plain ridiculous and not worth bothering with. They are making it obvious that they have no idea what to say and they are making like ostriches and burying their heads in the sand and hoping that everything will blow over and they can go back to their smug little lives and make condescending half-witted statements, putting our frustration down to us being unbelievers and therefore unenlightened!

Phew!

I'm glad I got all that out of my system because I'm equally glad to be able to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

Let's unpack all this, shall we?

The first thing is that it is far, very far in fact, from anything meaninglessly pious and condescending. Truthfully, it is impossible for anything to be more practical than this. Yes, it's true!

How does it work, then?

Because it is real and tangible Divine Guidance. To grasp the idea here, you have to understand the methodology of Divine Guidance. God doesn't guide us by pointing us in a certain direction and then tell us to go down this road and take the second left turn by the newsagents' shop. That's not Divine Guidance. That's mysticism. The God of the Bible guides us by the heart. And the way that works out is, by stating that the Lord knoweth just as a statement gets us nowhere. But it's not just a statement, it's a fact. Now that's important, vitally important, because what is happening here is that we are being told that God knows. And as we accept the Bible as God's Word by faith, it has a very important effect on us.

Having been told that God knows, we now know that God knows! And this in turn has the effect of, well, having an effect on us! Here's the challenge – how do I feel knowing that God knows? Sorry, but you need to understand something else here to get to that. And spoiler alert, it's a big one.

You have to understand God.

Yes, I told you it was a big one, didn't I?

You see, the religious realm is full of people who want to sound wise and who roll their eyes pretending to be all profound and all, and they all say the same thing.

“You see my boy, it's all a great mystery. We're not meant to understand it. We're meant to believe it.”

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

What on earth is the point of believing something you don't understand? I submit that if you don't understand you don't really believe in the first place! How can you? And to be sure, enemies of religion have used this very thing as an argument. Their idea is that, as we do, we preach a personal salvation, what we're really preaching is that we don't need the Church, and if we don't need the Church, then we don't really need God, and the idea that we don't need God means that there really i8s no God. Not exactly getting us anywhere, is it? So you'd better understand God and be quick about it. And guess what? It's not difficult!

So here it is.

The God of the Bible exists as The Holy Trinity. This means that God is composed of three Eternal persons, The Father and The Son and The Holy Ghost. This doesn't mean that there are three Gods. There is only on God. So how can three Eternal Persons be one God? By their love for each other. Now let's put that in proportion. This love is way more enormous than anything we can possibly describe as enormous. In fact, it's so enormous that the whole universe exists INSIDE it, and guess what? It's even bigger than that! The love that these three Eternal Persons have for each other robs them of any self awareness. There is no ego at all bar none. The only awareness that each one has is for each other, and when we sinners are called to salvation we are being invited literally INTO God! It is the entirely selfless love that these three Eternal Persons have for each other that makes them one God!

There you have it; in one paragraph, I have described the Holy Trinity!

And when we say, “The LORD knoweth.” we are being intensely practical because it's all about the nature of God and the way God has created us. Namely with free will. Hearing that God knows has, or should have, a deeply profound effect on us. Again, how does that make me feel? It leads me to the question implicit in absolutely all of this. If I believe that God knows, then just what am I going to do about it? God looks out at this world and all that's going on and God knows, and and as I as a believer spend time with Him and His people (yes, that's right, The Church) I actually get to feel the same way He does about things. That then leads to what I'm going to do about it. I on my own may not be able to do much, but I can at least do something nice for someone every now and then. That's the practical out-working of “The LORD knoweth.”

Everyone can do something nice, so go find someone today and do something nice for them.

God bless you, and well done for getting to the end!