He Knows

I have been noticing an interesting pattern in my reading in my One Year. There is a part in the story of David and Goliath, where David is going along the front lines. He is asking if anyone will do anything to shut up the big Philistine bully shouting at them. But his oldest brother, Eliab, hears him. There’s clearly some resentment, some serious anger towards David. He comes down on David, raging at him. He demands to know why he isn’t working.

“Who did you leave the sheep with? What are you doing here?”

And it gets worse from here, with one line:

“I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle!”

He claims to know David’s heart, that deep down he is evil and wrong, only here for his own benefit. But the funny thing is, so many times, David is called “a man after God’s own heart.” God knew who David was, and he is not who Eliab accuses him of being — at all.

So that was interesting.

Then it happened a second time, this time in the New Testament.

This is after Jesus heals the man who was born blind, and everyone is freaking out. Some of his neighbors say that this isn’t actually the guy, but only looks like him. Some of the Pharisees are unhappy, because Jesus has, in their eyes, broken the Sabbath by giving this man his sight.

They question the man who’s not blind anymore, several times. The second time they call him to question him, they command him to be honest before God. He shouldn’t say any good thing about the man who healed him, because:

“We know this man is a sinner.”

Really? They know?

They don’t have a clue who they are talking about. Who they are trash talking, accusing. They have no authority to say who Jesus is, because He already knows. He only ever pleases His Father. He died and came back so that we can say the same.

All of this came to a head when I read this line in the following chapter in John:

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and they know me — just as my Father knows me and I know the Father…”

Jesus says that “he knows.”

Eliab didn’t. The Jewish leaders didn’t. The devil doesn’t. Any person who has ever hurt you and hated you doesn’t. Any voice, any person in you life, who claims to know you, that says terrible and ugly things about your heart, your thoughts, your life, your dreams?

They don’t know a thing.

He does.