How do I know God is real? Scripture

God is; and another scripture says, "He that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him" (Heb. 11:6). I have first of all to get in my soul the sense that God is. You may say, I do not know Him. That is quite true, and the question is, How can you know Him? You cannot learn Him from nature; but He reveals Himself by His Son and by His Word. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son" (Heb. 1:1-2). The great thing to get hold of is this, that God has spoken. What you and I have to do is to listen, and I am certain of this, if you listen, you will believe, because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If you listen to God's Word, it will have an effect upon you, it will produce a deep, real mark upon you — a mark which reason will not produce, because reason may turn a man away from God, and often does; but faith, the fruit of the reception of the Word of God, always leads a man to God.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The first sentence in the divine canon sets us in the presence of Him who is the infinite source of all true blessedness. There is no elaborate argument in proof of the existence of God. The Holy Ghost could not enter upon anything of the kind. God reveals Himself. He makes Himself known by His works. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork." "All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord." "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty." None but an infidel or an atheist would seek an argument in proof of the Being of One who, by the word of His mouth, called worlds into existence, and declared Himself the All wise, the Almighty, and the everlasting God. Who but "God" could "create" anything. "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number; he calls them all by names, by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one fails." (Isa. 40:26) "The gods of the heathen are idols, but the Lord made the heavens." In the Book of Job 38-41 we have an appeal of the very grandest description, on the part of Jehovah Himself, to the work of creation, as an unanswerable argument in proof of His infinite superiority; and this appeal, while it sets before the understanding the most vivid and convincing demonstration of God's omnipotence, touches the heart, also, by its amazing condescension. The majesty and the love, the power and the tenderness, are all divine.

The heavens declare His glory, and the firmament gives unmistakeable evidence of His handiwork. For the full, revelation of God the world had to wait for Christ to come; nevertheless, creation clearly makes manifest to all His power and divinity. It is plain to any thoughtful and upright mind that the One who made that which we see above and below and around us must have power far beyond the creature, also that He Himself must be above man altogether. And like the testimony sent in grace to man today, the voice of creation has gone out into all the earth, and its words unto the ends of the world (Rom. 10:18). The powerful eloquence of this ancient preacher has doubtless been fruitful in multitudes of cases, in bringing home to their souls the great fact that God is, and in bringing them to cry to Him in their need. More than one has said, “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him?” Nor have the words of Isaiah been in vain, “Thus says the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He has established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else … a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside Me. Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for 1 AM GOD, AND THERE IS NONE ELSE.”

Creation should, indeed, speak, and its voice be heard. What is invisible in the Creator should be and is seen, and seen clearly, being understood by the things that are made—even His eternal power and Godhead—not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left thus without excuse. (See Romans 1:20.) Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself—His nature—but to any, except those wilfully blind, it is evidence sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!

It is deeply important to be clear as to this. I must know God ere I can worship Him. I may "feel after him, if haply I may find him;" but feeling after One whom I have not found, and worshipping and delighting in One whom I have found, are two totally different things. God has revealed Himself, blessed be His Name! He has given us the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. He has come near to us in the Person of that blessed One, so that we may know Him, love Him, trust in Him, delight in Him, and use Him, in all our weakness and in all our need. We have no longer to grope for Him amid the darkness of nature, nor yet among the clouds and mists of spurious religion, in its ten thousand forms. No; our God has made Himself known by a revelation so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool in all beside, may not err therein. The Christian can say, "I know whom I have believed." This is the basis of all true worship. There may be a vast amount of fleshly pietism, mechanical religion, and ceremonial routine, without a single atom of true spiritual worship. This latter can only flow from the knowledge of God.

How can we know God? The mind can never find out God. "Who by searching can find out God?" Nothing but faith can put God in His place. If I am to find out God by searching, my mind must be master of my subject, and then God would not be God. The mind cannot judge the character of God; we can only take it where it is revealed. It is in Christ. We learn it there, not as a matter of knowledge, but as that which should sanctify our souls. I know we fail, but there is such a thing as dwelling in God.

In this very respect the lecture under consideration is remarkable, and in nothing more characteristic of modern thought than in its omission of all mention of God's revelation as a source of evidence to Him. In Scripture, if anywhere, should it not be recognised, we have unique testimony to God, the great standing witness to His existence, to say nothing more? All that nature and human God-consciousness, "the antecedents of revelation" someone has termed them, all that these can communicate concerning God, all that reason and conscience can make known of Him, is not to be mentioned beside that knowledge of God which His word conveys to the believer. The fact of His existence, after all, is but a small thing to have demonstrated. Scripture does so unmistakably, but how much more! God is there made known, His nature, His character as far as Infinite can reveal itself to finite, shown forth in grace. All that concerns Him in relation to us, and all that has to do with man's responsibility to Him is made the subject of its testimony, not to mention greater and larger spheres. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is." So much, perhaps, might be gleaned from what "nature itself teaches"; but the further necessary conviction, "and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him," with what it implies, Scripture only could produce. We cannot go so far as to say that nature's witness to Him is but incidental and undesigned, or that it is absolutely incommunicative as to what His character is; but there is in no sense to be observed there the same full purpose of communication and revelation that is evident in Scripture. For the truth from God we will look in vain anywhere else. Taken in conjunction with that objective adumbration presented in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son, whose declaration, "I am the truth" (John 14:6) can only he understood in the sense of objective display, and not to be severed either from the further fact that "the Spirit is the truth" (1 John 5:6), as signifying subjective power of apprehension, the Scriptures fill a unique, and indisputably important place in the divine scheme of revelation, being the descriptive record of that which God makes known. "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). How gross a blunder then to omit this weighty consideration from the sum of Christian Evidences as epitomised in the Creed! Why should the Scripture be eliminated? Is it that the force and value of its testimony has deteriorated, is now discounted with men, in face of the questions regarding it recently raised? Is it fear of the charge of obscuration, of Bibliolatry, that has led to its omission? Whatever the cause, it surely is something of a novelty to have the evidences to the primary fact of God's existence enumerated, and His own revelation left out.

We are dependent upon the Holy Scripture for all our knowledge of this full revelation, for we were not on earth when the Son of God dwelt among men, but we are thankful indeed, that the Father sent forth the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide the men who companied with Him, to bear an infallible witness to what they heard and saw. “That which we have heard,” wrote one of them, “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life . . . declare we unto you” (1 John 1:1-3). There is a peculiar dignity and authority about the Scriptures. It could not be other wise, since they are the words of the living and almighty God. For instance, they do not set out to prove that God is, they state the fact and show the effect of His presence and power, and they tell us that it is only the fool—the man void of all understand—that says in his heart, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1). They open with that majestic statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But the New Testament is more than the equal of the Old, in this dignity and authority. It does not set out to prove that the One we know as Jesus is God, equally with the Father and the Holy Ghost. It states the fact and shows the effect of it. So that the Gospel, which I think may be justly called the greatest book in the New Testament, opens with the sublime statement, “In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.”

That God exists and that He originated all things is assumed and stated. Unbelieving men may demand that proofs of His existence be produced, but nowhere in Scripture does God condescend to furnish such proofs. Were He to do so they would not be intelligible to the feeble minds of puny men. Moreover they are no more really needed than proofs that the sun exists and shines. That fact could only be doubted by a man who had neither sight nor feeling, and it is just because unbelieving men have neither sight nor feeling of a spiritual sort, that they doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.

Therefore the word trust could not well be substituted for faith, though in the things of God they are very intimately connected. It is really because of faith in some testimony which He has given of Himself that I am led to trust Him. If I did not believe the testimony or word addressed to me, I would not trust Him; but His Word is the revelation of Himself—of His thoughts, His mind, His will—and by His Word I get to know Him in some measure, and this begets trust in Him, for He is worthy of the trust of all His intelligent creatures. I know men, therefore I do not trust them, for I know that they are evil and capable of deceiving me. I know myself, and therefore I do not trust myself, for I know that I am full of deception. I know the blessed God, for He has brought Himself to light in Christ, and Him I can trust with all my heart, for in such an one as Christ there is no deception. But if I did not take Christ, in the first instance, to be the perfect revelation of God, His WORD to men, it would show that I had no knowledge of God, for when He came to light in His Son I did not recognize Him, and without faith in the revelation which He gave of Himself I could have no trust in Him, for I could not trust a Being of whom I was so utterly ignorant.