Exodus 5:2

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I know not the Lord." Exodus 5:2 .

A kind of agnosticism more prevalent than agnosticism of a scientific kind. There is an agnosticism of the heart; there is an agnosticism of the will. Men reason foolishly about this not-knowing. Men imagine that because they know not the Lord, the Lord knows not them. This is a vital distinction. We do not extinguish the sun by closing our eyes. If men will not inquire for God in a spirit worthy of such an inquiry they can never know God. Pharaoh's no-knowledge was avowed in a tone of defiance. It was not an intellectual ignorance, but a spirit of moral denial. Pharaoh practically made himself God by denying the true God. This is the natural result of all atheism. Atheism cannot be a mere negative; if it pretend to intelligence it must, in some degree, involve the godhead of the being who presumes to deny God; the greatest difficulty is with people who know the Lord and do not obey him. If they who professedly know the Lord would carry out his will in daily obedience and sacrifice of the heart, their lives would constitute the most powerful of all arguments.