rewards Archives • Knowing God and His Ways

The value of knowing God is infinite. To seek daily to know God better provides the best return on investment of anything you can do.

“Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (ESV)
—Jeremiah 9:24

This verse describes an unlimited opportunity. God says if you want, you can understand and know him.

Unfortunately for most people in the world, that is the last thing they want to know. In fact, they deliberately push out of their minds thoughts about God. Even many believers do not make knowing God better a priority, thinking they have more valuable things to do.

To be someone who sees the rewards of knowing God you must be someone who recognizes value, who knows a good investment when you see it. Those who choose to prioritize knowing and understanding God recognize the infinite value of God.

The value of knowing God

They are like the people who in the earliest days of the big tech companies saw their value and bought their stock. For example, investors who bought a share of Microsoft stock at the start of 1987 paid about 16 cents (adjusted for inflation). If they sold that share at the start of 2021, they received about 217 dollars. That is an increase of 135,525 percent. That means someone who invested just 1,000 dollars in that stock in 1987 would have $1,356,000 in 2021. That company has had value.

God has value. His value makes Microsoft look like wasted money. His value is literally infinite. He has more value than anything and everything, even than everything else put together, more value than the whole world. You cannot measure the value of what you invest in knowing and understanding him.

God can teach you about himself

Some writers say God is so different from us we cannot understand anything about him. They are wrong. In this verse God plainly says the door is open to understand and know him. Yes, God is different from us, both in degree and in kind, but that does not mean we cannot know him, because he has chosen to reveal himself to us. What he has revealed is reliable, understandable knowledge.

God is a good communicator. He has skills. He is the Word. And he created our ears and brains. He creates each human spirit. He made us in his image. And he has the ability to enable us to understand him. He sent his Son Jesus as the exact display of himself (Hebrews 1:3). He inspired the writing of Scripture as his inerrant words, his very words. In the Scriptures we have a wealth of riches for knowing God, enough to challenge the finest minds not just for one lifetime, but for many.

Deep, genuine knowledge

In Jeremiah 9:24 God says we can know and understand him. Notice the doubling—know, understand—which serves to emphasize the point. The two words largely overlap in meaning, but understand (Hebrew, sakal) emphasizes knowing truly and with the mind, while know (Hebrew, yada) is used for a broader range of knowing, such as knowing experientially, with the heart, even sexually. But the point is, we can have genuine, deep, reliable knowledge of God, which is the foundation for a rich relationship with God.

That is what a good relationship is. You know someone more and more and relate to them based on what you know. Trying to relate to people you do not know is like walking through an unfamiliar room in the middle of the night in the dark. You discover things the hard way. You unintentionally offend or hurt them. Or you talk about things they are not interested in. You try to do things with them that they do not enjoy.

But the more you know God’s ways, what he likes and dislikes, what he approves and disapproves, you can walk intimately with him, experiencing his presence continually. You can know and understand God. You can walk with him every day, all day, pleasing him, doing what he approves, talking to him, receiving his peace, joy, and love, fulfilling his perfect purpose for your life.

Scripture says of Noah that “he walked with God” (Genesis 9:6). You can do that too. It begins with determining that you want above all things to know and understand God better every day.

Practical and relevant

I cannot overstate how valuable this knowledge is. First, because God is the most valuable thing there is, which alone makes this knowledge worth everything. And that must be our primary motivation for seeking to know him better.

Second, because no one affects everything about your life both now and forever as he does. That is because he is sovereign over all. He controls literally everything about your life: your health, lifespan, job, finances, friendships, romantic/marriage relationship, emotions, salvation and sanctification from sin, victory over the world, the flesh and the devil, and on and on. Scripture says he gives and he takes away (Job 1:21). He opens doors and closes doors (Revelation 3:7). From him, through him, and to him are all things (Romans 11:36). Every good and every perfect gift comes from him (James 1:17). It follows, then, that no knowledge is more practical and relevant than the knowledge of God.

To view the knowledge of God as irrelevant or low priority would be like a 5-year-old saying that about his mother, or an investor saying that about the economy.

The time you invest every day in knowing God better is the wisest, most rewarding investment you make in your overall happiness, health, and well-being. As Jesus prayed to the Father, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” (John 17:3).

I recommend this prayer: Lord, I want to know you much better. I confess that I have been content with far too little understanding of you and your ways. And I confess that I often have preferred to think and learn about other things of lesser value. Forgive me. Thank you for giving your Scriptures to us precisely so that we may know you. Stir me up daily to read and study your Word. As I do, please reveal yourself and your ways to me. Amen

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

God’s generosity is revealed most clearly in the gospel of Jesus Christ as being extravagant. He enjoys giving his best to no-good sinners.

One autumn day, a certain driver for a shipping company gave way to his lower nature and stole a package. It was a small package from a jewelry company, and his imagination got the best of him—notions of diamonds and riches that could pay off his gambling debts.

He of course knew well he was risking his job, but he was sure he was clever enough to get away with it.

He was wrong. He was nothing special, definitely not clever, just another average student during his school years who since getting this job had an unremarkable level of productivity and who at the casinos had a predictable string of losses.

His venture into crime was quickly uncovered, and he was summoned to a meeting with his supervisor. The supervisor confronted him, laying out the evidence. But then he did what is incomprehensible. Instead of summarily firing the driver, he made him an offer.

“If you will sign a confession of your crime and return the stolen goods, not only will I not fire you, I will forget it happened. I will not put this on your record. What’s more, in five years I promise to promote you and double your salary. In five more years, I will make you a part owner of the company. Thereafter you will receive one hundred shares of company stock as an annual bonus. Finally, I require that you follow me as your mentor for the rest of your days.”

Get real

Okay, so this little parable is far-fetched. Sure, you can find supervisors who give an employee a second chance, but no one promises a thief a promotion and an outlandish raise.

Unless you are the God of the gospel. Compared to what God offers sinners in the gospel, this little parable describes a piddling reward for amending one’s ways.

God’s generosity to a thief

For example, as Jesus hung on the cross, one of the thieves on another cross, who earlier had joined the crowd in heaping abuse on him, had a change of heart. He said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42–43)

For a few hours of this criminal’s faith, Jesus did not promise him probation, not merely pardon, but paradise.

God’s generosity to a wasteful son

Similarly, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, when the son who had wasted his father’s inheritance on parties and prostitutes returned home prepared for the worst, his father gave him the best.

“The father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.” (Luke 15:22–23)

Jesus did not promise this foolish son a chilly reception and a long rehabilitation making up for what he had wasted, but a party and the robe, family ring, and sandals of a true, beloved son.

God’s generosity to his servants

Jesus told another surprising parable.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

“And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went.

“Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same.

“And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

Immediate wages

“And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius.

“Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

Seemingly unfair generosity

“But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:1–16)

Jesus said God will not give his workers what they deserve, but rather generosity, extravagant generosity, generosity so extravagant it seems unfair.

Extravagant generosity

In fact, the gospel promises one extravagant reward after another to sinners who sincerely believe in Jesus.

1. He makes them sons and daughters and heirs of all he owns, which is everything (1 Corinthians 3:21–23).

2. He gives them an eternal, resurrection body in the likeness of Jesus (1 John 3:2).

3. He makes them his holy priests (1 Peter 2:9).

4. He makes them powerful kings (1 Peter 2:9).

5. He gives them the glories of the kingdom of God (Luke 12:32).

6. He gives them the pleasures of paradise (Luke 23:43).

7. He gives them the rights of citizenship in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21).

8. He rewards them with blessings of the New Creation that for now are only hinted at with symbols and metaphors, like the right to eat from the tree of life; imperviousness to the second death; hidden manna; authority over the nations; the morning star; a white stone with a new name written on it; white garments; one’s name written in the book of life with permanent ink; the acknowledgment of one’s name before the Father and his angels; a tattoo bearing the names of God, the New Jerusalem, and Jesus; and a seat on the throne with Jesus. All these rewards mysterious to us now but guaranteed to be good. (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26–28; 3:5, 12, 21)

9. Best of all, he gives them himself as redeemer, father, friend, king, Lord, elder brother, God, eternal provider, protector, shepherd, and so much more.

All this and more the gospel promises to sinners. While the Old Covenant definitely reveals God’s enormous generosity, nothing reveals his extravagant generosity more than the gospel of Jesus Christ.