I WILL GIVE THEM A HEART TO KNOW ME, THAT I AM THE
LORD: Or "Yahweh". But this does not simply mean that the righteous or the
favored will be led by God to know that there IS a God. Any man possessed of
reason may know that there is a Supreme Being, who created all things and
preserves the universe in existence. The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the evidence of divine skill and power are so abundant that "God's invisible
qualities... have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made,
so that men are without excuse" (Rom 1:20). No, the knowledge intended here is
much deeper than that which comes from observation, and only affects the
intellect. To know that there is a God is a first step, which many men have
taken. The verse goes beyond that, to promise that the favored ones shall know
that God to be... Yahweh. He leads men to see that the God revealed in
Scripture, and manifested in the person of the Lord Jesus, is the God who made
heaven and earth.
Man fashions for himself a "god" after his own liking; perhaps
out of wood or stone, or perhaps out of his own consciousness, or his cultured
thought, a deity made to order, who will not be too severe with his iniquities
or deal out strict justice to the wicked. He rejects God as He is, and develops
other "gods" as he thinks they ought to be, and he says concerning these works
of his own imagination, "These are your gods, O Israel."
But those who are truly instructed by God's word learn that
Yahweh is God, and beside Him there is none else. The God of heaven and earth is
the God of the Bible, a God whose attributes are completely balanced, mercy
attended by justice, love accompanied by holiness, grace manifested in truth,
and power linked with tenderness. He is not a God who overlooks sin, much less
is pleased with it, as the gods of the heathen are supposed to be, but a God who
cannot look upon iniquity, and will by no means spare the guilty. This is the
great quarrel between the philosopher and the Bible believer. The philosopher
says, "MY god must be of such a character as I now dogmatically declare him to
be"; but the believer replies, "No, our business is not to invent a god, but to
obey the One who is revealed in the Scriptures of truth."
The God of the Bible is love, of course; but He is also
possessed of justice and severity; He is merciful and gracious, but He is also
stern and terrible towards evil; therefore unrepentant hearts say, "We cannot
accept such a God as this," and they call him cruel. In doing so they make
themselves idolaters -- even if they set up no graven images -- for they set up
another god and forsake the true God.
The Lord teaches his people that he is Yahweh, who brought
Israel up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: the Yahweh who
smote Pharaoh with plagues, and drowned his army in the Red Sea, the Yahweh who
led his people through the wilderness, but cast out their enemies from before
them with a strong hand and an outstretched arm; the Yahweh who redeemed His
people, but chastened them for their iniquities and took vengeance upon their
idolatries. The God of Sinai is exactly the same God as the God of Jesus. 'I am
Yahweh your God, and I stand alone.' When man is content to believe in this God
as He has revealed Himself, and no longer goes about to fashion a deity for
himself according to his own desires and notions, then he is well on his way to
the Kingdom of God.