The Treasure of Christianity
Dr. John Snyder is the pastor of Christ Church New Albany, director of Media Gratiae, host of The Whole Counsel podcast, and author of multiple multimedia Bible studies including the Behold Your God series, Living with the True God: Lessons from Judges, and Behold Your God: Seeking Him Early.
In The Sermons of Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically, Dr. Snyder explains four truths we must master in order to set our hearts to pursue the one true God.
you must understand that the most significant thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of the word God.
The first truth—if you really want to get to know God and to get a clear and biblical view of Him—is this: you must understand that the most significant thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of the word God. This truth applies to all people and not just to those who claim to be Christians. Every man, woman, and child will make choices based on his or her general idea of what God is like. Even an atheist has a type of religion based on the thought that God doesn’t exist. And, based on his belief in the nonexistence of God, the atheist will make certain decisions. He makes certain decisions in his home; he makes decisions at work. The Muslim makes decisions based on his view of his god. The Christian makes decisions based on his view of his God. What you think of God is the most distinguishing thing about you. Education, ethnicity, age—none of these are so distinguishing as what you, deep down, really believe about God because that belief affects everything. All desires, thoughts, and actions will flow from it.
knowing God is the great jewel of Christianity.
The second truth is that knowing God is the great jewel of Christianity. Though we are thankful for the many other gifts that have come from the cross of Christ, those gifts all lead back to this great source—the knowledge of Christ Himself.
The third great truth is this: today, the truth that the knowledge of God is the great treasure of the Christian life has been replaced by pursuits of secondary matters. The early days of the twenty-first century have been days when (especially in the West) there has been a very aggressive rethinking of many aspects of Christianity. There has been a rethinking of worship styles, rethinking of inner-city church plants, rethinking of how we raise a family. It was good to rethink these issues. The changes that have occurred because of this rethinking are extreme, but the problem is that these changes are not truly radical. Radical means foundational or root level. No matter how much you change the worship style, no matter how differently you approach inner-city missions, no matter how differently you raise your family, no matter how extreme the changes in these external areas, they are not radical because we are not actually getting to the root problem that must be dealt with before the fruit of change can be lasting and pleasing to God.
In our day, we have been told, even by the church, that we are the center of the universe. Me, my spiritual needs, my eternal destination—that is what is important. My family, my town, my friends, our church, our denomination, and our nation are the center of all creation. We must lovingly and humbly go back and say, “It’s a lie.” Everything in church, everything at home, and everything in the individual life must orbit God. We need a Copernican revolution. We need to see that in God’s universe, planet earth is not the center. We are not the center. You are not the center. We need to go back to the Bible and see God for who He until His spiritual mass pulls every area of our life into His orbit.
Do you want to know God for yourself? To do so, we must expose the counterfeit and seek the real.
The last of the four truths is a warning. If you are to know God as the believer longs to know God, you must, at all costs, avoid counterfeit versions of knowing God. There are ways of appearing to know God, which (like a counterfeit) from a distance seem to be a real knowing. They look genuine, and you may even get praised by people in your church. Despite these appearances, God knows that you don’t know Him, and you know that you are not satisfied. Something is wrong.
…While counterfeit knowledge looks great, it is ineffective. It does not alter anything about our lives. It leaves us unsatisfied and disillusioned. Do you want to know God for yourself? To do so, we must expose the counterfeit and seek the real.