That Men May Know

A teaching on Psalm 83:18

“That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth." — Psalm 83:18 (KJV)

There is a phrase in this verse that must arrest our attention: that men may know. It is not incidental. It is the whole reason the Psalmist gives for everything that has come before it — the raging of enemies, the counsel taken against God's people, the confusion sought against nations. All of it, the Psalmist says, is so that men may know that Jehovah alone is the Most High over all the earth.

But this raises a question worth sitting with. If knowing is the goal, why does knowing so often come the hard way? Why must men be brought, sometimes broken, to a knowledge that faith should have given them for free?

Faith Believes Before It Knows

Genuine and pleasant faith, the kind that is beautiful in the sight of God, does not wait for proof. It believes before it knows. This is the substance of true faith — that a man can look at the Most High with nothing yet demonstrated to his natural eyes, and still bow the knee, still say "Thou art God," still order his life around a reality he has not been shown but has chosen to trust.

This is what pleases God. Not the knowledge that is forced upon a man by circumstance, but the faith that is offered by a man freely, before the circumstance ever arrives.

Why the Disobedient Must Be Compelled to Know

But not every man walks in that kind of faith. There are those who are disobedient. There are those the Psalmist would call arrogant and worldly wise — men who trust their own counsel, their own strength, their own reading of how the world works. These do not believe first. They will not bow until they are made to. And so for them, a different road is appointed: the road of knowing.

This is the terrible mercy of Psalm 83:18. Notice the enemies in this Psalm are not gently persuaded — they are confounded, put to shame, made afraid, brought low, so that they may know. Knowing, for the man who refuses to believe, does not usually arrive gently. It arrives through the collapse of the very things he trusted instead of God — his wisdom proven foolish, his strength proven insufficient, his plans proven powerless against the Most High. This is why the Scripture elsewhere warns that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, and that He is able to take the wise in their own craftiness.

The Purpose Behind Every Situation

This is the key that unlocks why we go through what we go through. Every situation, whether it delights us or wounds us, whether it lifts us or humbles us, is aimed at the same target: that we would know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men.

Daniel says something remarkable about this — that God sets up over the kingdoms of men even the basest of men. Read that again. The Most High does not only rule through the noble, the gifted, the impressive. He rules even through the lowest, the least expected, the ones nobody would have chosen — precisely so that no man can say the outcome was owing to human greatness. When the base man is exalted, or the mighty man is humbled, the message is the same: this did not happen by human wisdom. This happened because the Most High rules.

So the promotions we celebrate and the demotions we mourn, the doors that open and the doors that shut, the delay that frustrates us and the breakthrough that overwhelms us — all of it is God writing the same sentence in different circumstances: that men may know.

They That Know Their God Shall Be Strong

There is a difference, though, between the knowing that is compelled through judgment and the knowing that matures out of relationship. Daniel again gives us the language: "the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits." This is not the shallow, surface-level acknowledgment that God exists. This is an intimate, proven, relational knowing — the kind that comes from having walked with Him long enough, trusted Him deeply enough, and seen His hand in enough seasons that His superiority is no longer a doctrine but a certainty.

This is the knowing every believer should be moving toward — not the knowing that is beaten into the arrogant through terrible experience, but the knowing that faith matures into through fellowship. And this knowing carries strength. It carries exploits. A people who truly know their God do not shrink from difficulty; they are established by it, because they have already settled the question others are still being forced to learn.

The Invitation

So here is the invitation in Psalm 83:18. Do not wait to be compelled. Do not require the collapse of your own wisdom before you bow to His. Believe now — while it is still faith, while it still pleases Him, while it still costs you something to trust Him before the evidence arrives. Let your knowing grow out of relationship and not out of ruin.

Because one way or another, every man will come to know that Jehovah alone is the Most High over all the earth. The only question left to each of us is which road we will take to get there — the road of faith, or the road of terrible experience.

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Pastor AB Daniel.

GRKN — Gospel Revelation Kingdom Network

Bringing God's people back to God.