Knowing God: Chapter 4 - The Only True God

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Chapter 4 of Knowing God focuses us in on how we worship God, particularly how our worship leads us to envision God in our minds and desire Him in our hearts. It brings a strong word of caution about idols and images in worship, building from the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God...” (Ex. 20:4–5a ESV)

How we worship impacts who we worship. And the manner of our worship impacts how we picture God.


There are two words of warning that we need to carefully consider and heed:

  1. Images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory. 
  2. Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God. 

The most important thought we have is what we think about God. We are a people who serve a god not of our imaginations, not of our own creation; we worship and serve the God who has revealed and described Himself in the written word of the Bible and the living Word of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and so we are careful to look not to images created by man but to the Word of God to know God truly.

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