23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
Yesterday, our pastor preached on God. J.I. Packer wrote an excellent book called Knowing God, but this sermon began with the essential reality that God knows …us, our hearts, our stories, the plans he has for us, the struggles and the triumphs.
It took me back to a paper I wrote in seminary on redemption. I’ll spare you a lot of the academic writing, but an explanation from a Jewish scholar about all of the ramifications of the Hebrew verb “to know” help me know what it means to know that “God knows…”
In the biblical conception, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellect and mental activity. Rather, it is more experiential and is embedded in the emotions, so that it may encompass such qualities as contact, intimacy, concern, relatedness and mutuality. Conversely, not to know is synonymous with dissociation, indifference, alienation, and estrangement; it culminates in callous disregard for another’s humanity. Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary
What is ahead in your day, your week, your month, your life? Exam week, PT stretching, a wedding, a new business venture? What does it mean to you to know that God is intimately involved, that he knows, that he cares, and that he is engaged in whatever the days hold?
[i] Sarna, 5.
