So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about. (Acts 17:22-23)
For a lot of people, accepting the possibility of a God isn’t that big of a deal. They do, however, want to know what he’s like, but they can’t figure it out. They need some specifics.
When I was in high school I had about a 20 minute drive in the morning. I would wake up, make some coffee, put two scoops of icream in it and get in the car. Every morning I would listen to the radio (I didn’t have a cd player or a plug in for my iPod). Once in a while, a really, really good song would come on that I didn’t recognize. I’d listen to the song, hoping that the DJ would say what it was and who it was by. It always ticked me off when the song would end and he went on to talk about traffic or announce the next song, but not tell me about the previous song.
Fast forward 4 years. I get an iPhone. On the iPhone there is this awesome little app called Shazam. Shazam recognizes almost any song, tells you what it’s called, who it’s by and even gives you a link to download it from. Now, whenever I’m listening to the radio and an awesome song that I don’t recognize comes on, I open up Shazam and BOOM! I have the specific information.
Jesus is our Shazam for God. Jesus is the image of the invisible, giving us the specifics. The book of John describes it like this:
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1: 18)
If you want to know who God really is, know Jesus.
If you want to understand what God is like, understand Jesus.
If you want to hear God's voice, listen to Jesus.
If you want to follow God, follow Jesus.
You can start today by reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
Like Paul told the people of Athens, the God you think is unkown, is actually real and you can know him personally. His name is Jesus.