Sermon Transcript
Stanley Milgram? I bet you know the work of Stanley Milgram. He’s a social psychologist in the 1960s. And he created some experiments called the small world experiments that built on the work of other people who’d gone before him. And what he wanted to know is, is it possible to take 2 people at random and what’s the probability that those 2 people would know each other?
2 people picked at random. So what he did is he formulated some experiments, and he picked Omaha, Nebraska, and Wichita, Kansas, as the starting points of this experiment, and Boston, Massachusetts, as the endpoint of his experiment. And his goal was to see how many steps it would take for a letter or a chain of correspondence to get from one place to another with people who do not know each other, that are just selected at random. And so he took people and he sent something to Omaha, Nebraska, for instance, that had a letter sort of describing the process, and then Giving them the target, like the name of a target person in Boston. You know, send this to them.
If you know this person, then you can send it on to that person. If you don’t know this person, think of a friend or relative who does have a better chance of knowing that person, and then send it on to that person. And then the same instructions: if they know that person, they’ll send it on. On average, they found that there are how many steps between people on average? 5.5 to 6.
6 degrees of separation. And so this is where we get this. They turn it into a show and a movie and a game. And I love the game, by the way, and I’ll challenge anybody in this room right now to that game. But the idea of separation, 6 degrees of separation, comes from him.
And again, the work of other people— Stanley Milgram. And what he concluded is it’s not so much that we’re all separated from one another on average by 5.5 to 6 people, which is fascinating if you think about it. As big as our world is, really? 5.5 to 6 steps in between you and I and somebody else somewhere else in America? On average, that’s about what it is.
But the more interesting finding for me is, first of all, the idea that the criteria for do you know this person was do you know this person’s name? Do you know this person by name, by first name? That’s not do you really know the person, right? But In this particular case, it was one of those things where they had to have some sort of criteria. So, do you know this person by name?
The other interesting thing is, is that the chains of correspondence kept coming through the same 3 or 4 people at some point. And the point is, it’s not that we’re all connected to each other by 5 or 6 steps. It’s that There are very few people who are connected to the rest of the world in a few steps, and the rest of us are connected to the world through those few people. Does that make sense? You know people like this, right?
In the first service, we had Sue Larson. She’s one of these people. Some of you remember Wanda Blockus. She was one of these people. Somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody and can connect people to one another.
I love people like that. Where’s the best place to get a sandwich in Los Gatos? Where’s the best place to go looking for seashells within a 60-mile— okay, well, and you just talk to those sort of people because they’re connectors. It’s a fascinating experiment. I love that kind of stuff.
But the reality is, is just because you know a person’s name does not mean that you know that person. You’ve had people, I know you have, like me, who are telemarketers who call And in my case, they may say, may I please speak to Stu Dornad?
You mean Steve Durand? Yes, yes, congratulations! And they have something for me or whatever. You don’t know me. When I go to Safeway like I did this morning, and I punch in my club card or whatever, oh, thank you very much, Mr. Durand.
You don’t know me. We know each other by sight. Sometimes I’ll go across the street to the bagel shop, and some of us here in the room know Sen over there. She runs the place.
She remembers not only you, but your order and all the things. I’ve been here 2 and a half years, and she remembers from the first time that I came on in and placed an order. She’s amazing. But we really don’t know each other. We know each other by name.
We have a person that we pass by every morning on the way to work when I drive my kids to school who is walking. And one morning she wasn’t there, and we were like, what happened to her? She has no idea. She would be creeped out. One morning Tate, our son, said we should get her something sometime.
And we said, oh, that’s No, like, that’s creepy. It’s like she probably would go, like, you’re stalking me. This is really, really weird. But we have people like that, right? That if they’re missing from your life— we have another guy that we see on occasion.
We haven’t seen him in a while. I hope he’s okay. He’s the scooter guy, is what we call him. Hey, the scooter guy. And he has the same basket, and we follow him.
We all have— hey, it’s that guy. Or, hey, it’s that person. It’s the cat lady. It’s the whatever it is. And the point is that there’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware It’s a small world after all.
They should write a song about that. When I heard Pastor Dave last week mention the Carousel of Progress at Disneyland, I felt I had to inject that. Come next week and you’ll hear about how the Bible and Space Mountain are connected to one another. We’re going to be looking at some of the last words of Jesus. We’ve kind of backtracked.
We looked at the crucifixion and the resurrection. We’re kind of backtracking a little bit. We’re talking about knowing. Today. This idea of knowing.
Can a person know God? I’ve heard people all my life, and I’ve grown up in church, I’ve heard people all my life who say, I have a personal relationship with God. And I have to be honest with you, I haven’t always known what that means. Like, that sounds really prideful. It sounds really presumptuous.
Oh, look, you know God? Other people really struggle with that because, okay, first of all, God’s invisible. Second of all, he created things in like, you know, just one breath. And it’s like, okay, you can know this person? How can you possibly have a relationship with somebody like that?
How good of a relationship could that possibly be? Other people have that kind of a longing and they search for it and they look for it and it sounds good but we don’t know how to get there. Can a person truly know God? I have people come to my office and I talk to as a pastor all the time and I know Pastor Dave does and some of our other pastors and they essentially want to know 2 of life’s big questions. Is God knowable?
And secondly, if he is, how do I know that I know? Is God knowable? And if so, how can I know that I know? What does a personal relationship even mean with God? Yes, it’s a personal thing.
It’s going to look different, but scripture gives us some ideas of what this looks like. But I have to say, I’m troubled with it even as I think about in the course of my life, how do you— what does that even look like? What does that even look like? And depending upon your faith background, how long you’ve been in church, you probably have your own thoughts on this. And in the course of the week, what does that look like in my day-to-day life?
How does this interact with me? And to raise the stakes a little bit, this idea of knowing God, not just knowing about him but actually knowing him— is that possible? I read a few weeks ago in my fan or follower message— you guys remember that we talked about there are people who are fans of Jesus and there are people who are followers of Jesus? What’s the difference? Knowing about something versus knowing something.
And in Matthew 7, just to remind us of what I read there, in verse 21 of chapter 7 of Matthew, Jesus says, not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, is going to enter the kingdom of heaven. But it’s only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that last day at the end of life, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? This is the shocker here. Then I will tell you plainly, I never knew you.
You did all these things for me. I never knew you. You want me to use this?
All right, that works.
Says, then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. It’s possible to go through your entire life having this sort of assurance that you have this relationship based on what you know about somebody, and then to hear the shocker at the end, no, I never knew you. And that’s the criteria for having a relationship with me, is do you know me? That’s a pretty significant deal.
You can have all the resume in the world that of all these things that you do for God, just because you do things for him doesn’t mean that you know him, right? We understand this. So this is really troubling for those of us who want to know, how does a person truly know an invisible spirit, truly know God? And if so, if it is possible to know him, how do I know that I know? Let’s look at John chapter 14.
We’re going through the book of John. We’ve kind of come back Now to verse 14, John chapter 14, and we’re gonna look at verse 5. Gonna cover a couple verses Pastor Dave talked about last week to just sort of remind us of some stuff and give us some context. John chapter 14, verse 5. We’re gonna be talking about these very issues here.
Is God knowable? And if so, how does a person know that they know that they know that they know? How can a person have that assurance? And I’m so grateful for the opportunity to look through that because I have those questions too. I want to be able to know those things.
So let’s look at John chapter 14. And in the first 4 verses that Pastor Dave covered last week, he talked about the fact that Jesus told his disciples, I’m leaving. I’ve been here with you. I’m leaving. And it’s greatly troubled them.
When my kids were little, they’re probably like your kids whenever they were little, where anytime you go out for the night, you hire like a babysitter. Kids have 3 questions: where are you going?
Can I come? And when you coming back? And that’s what the disciples were asking Jesus. Where are you going? Can we come?
And like, are you coming back? Please tell us like you’re coming back. They were troubled by this. They were really troubled by this. And so Pastor Dave talked about being troubled by troubles.
But let’s look here at verse 5. Thomas then said, Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. So how can we know the way? And Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through me. And if you really knew me, Philip, you would know my Father as well.
And from now on, you do know him and you have seen him. And Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that’ll be enough for us. Thanks for all the religious instruction, Jesus. If you could just show us God, that’d be great. Thanks.
And that’s how a lot of us feel. And Jesus said, Philip, don’t you know me? Even after I’ve been among you such a long time? Anyone who’s seen me has seen the Father. You’re looking at me, you’re looking at God himself in the flesh.
God with skin on. Verse 10, don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? We’re one and the same. The words that I say to you, they’re not just my own. Rather, it’s the Father living in me who is doing his work.
So believe me when I say that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me. Or if you don’t believe those things, at least, at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. Verse 12, I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I’ve been doing. He’ll do even greater things than these because I’m going to the Father. I’m leaving you, I’m going to the Father.
And so, verse 13, I will do whatever you ask in my name in order that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I’ll do it. Verse 15, if you love me, you’ll obey what I command.
I think in order to address those questions of, is God knowable, and if so, what does that even look like, and how can a person truly know, we have to think about the struggles that we all face with this particular issue, kind of the whys, the hows. And there’s a few key struggles that I think are consistent with all of us, and you find them in here. One is, is I think God’s too familiar to us. I’ll just be honest with you. I think for many of us, God is too familiar to us.
And with something that becomes too familiar, we begin to sort of take it for granted. If you look at verses 8 and 9, Philip said, Lord, show us the Father. Jesus said, look, don’t you know me, Philip? Don’t you know me? Listen, I’ve been around you.
I’ve been living right in front of you. You’ve watched me teach. You’ve heard me. You’ve been with me. You don’t know me?
Have you— have I been so close that you’ve missed the obvious? Open up your eyes, Philip.
And that’s how it is for a lot of us. Many of us were raised in church, or we’ve been around the church long enough that we know the songs and we know the deal and we know how you do the stuff that you do. And Jesus just becomes pretty tame and pretty manageable and pretty passive to us. Good guy, good teacher, but we lose sight of the magnificence and the grandeur and the fact that he is God, that he is awesome, all-powerful, all-knowing, and can do all things. And we lose sight of that just because we just— over time, things become too familiar with us, to us.
And I wonder if that’s something that you struggle with, and a reason why you struggle with your relationship or lack of a relationship with God is because he’s become too familiar to you. And if he has, you have the opportunity to take advantage of things that God puts before you to know him more. That’s my desire, that he would not be overly familiar to you, that you would know him. If you ask the average person in the Bay Area today, just on the street, why did Jesus come into the earth or into the world? People might say he came to show us how to live, he came to die on the cross for our sins.
Like, they might tell us that. And Jesus, if you were to ask him, why’d you come into the world? We’d see that those things really miss the point, even though that they’re true. Ask a person, what is a Christian? Think about this for a moment, rhetorical question, just inwardly.
What is a Christian? What is a Christian?
We think about somebody who goes to church and somebody who does certain things and doesn’t do other things. We think about somebody who tries to live life on a higher plane or maybe gets inspiration from the Bible. And Jesus is saying, you’re missing the point. You’re missing it. I came that you might know me personally.
I came that you might know God personally and have a relationship with him. Make no mistake about it, I didn’t come just so you could do good things and not do bad things. There’s so much more than that. You’re missing it. Let’s not be so familiar that we take God for granted, that we can know him That’s significant, and that’s huge.
And I think another issue for us is that God’s too personal for us. Some people really struggle with this. God’s too personal because here’s the deal: the New Testament won’t speak to us about any of our many, many, many, many questions for God. It will not speak to us on those things, or about how you can get your needs met, or how I can get my needs met, until we answer one question that God has for us: do you know me? What do you make of Jesus.
And this really bugs us, I have to say, because we have questions. God, why does bad stuff happen in life? Why did you allow such-and-such to happen to me or to my friend? What happens to all those people who don’t know about Jesus somewhere in the world? What happens to those people?
And, and how do I live my life according to what you want me to do? Because that’s like really hard to do. I have all of these questions and The New Testament is consistent. You’re not going to get those questions answered, and I’m not going to get them answered until we come to God on his terms and say, I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I believe that who he is, who he says he is.
And until that can get established, all the other stuff just kind of falls away. And we don’t like that. That really, really bugs us. It’s too personal. Do you remember in John chapter 3 Whenever we first started going through the book of John, the guy named Nicodemus, the dude who came to Jesus at night, a religious leader, and he wanted to have an intellectual conversation about whatever with Jesus, and Jesus wanted to make it personal, right?
Nicodemus had all these questions. Jesus made it personal. The very, very next chapter in John chapter 4, Jesus meets a woman who’s at a well in Samaria, the Samaritan woman. And she wants to have a theological conversation with Jesus and ask about beliefs and ideas and politic kind of stuff. And Jesus wanted to make it personal.
That bugs us because we got questions. We have them. And yet you will not know God if that’s holding us back, this idea of it’s just too personal. Whenever we bring our questions, God has questions for us. We have to come on his terms.
Is he too familiar? Or maybe it’s too personal. It’s just kind of like, okay, that’s like too weird. We want to come to God on our own terms. Or maybe it’s this third sort of challenge: God’s too exclusive for us.
Pastor Dave talked about this a little bit last week. Look at verse 5 and 6. Thomas said, Lord, we don’t have any idea where you’re going, and yet you say we know the way. How do we know the way? Jesus said, I’m the way, I am, I’m the truth, I’m the life.
No one comes to God except through me. And this really bugs us. This really bugs us because the absolute and exclusive claims of Jesus, the things that he says about himself— I am the Son of God, God in the flesh, and I have to be number one. I need total commitment. I don’t need halfway living.
I’m interested in all of you, and I’m interested in total commitment from you, and I need to be number one. I need to be the way and the truth and the life. And that really bugs us because it’s like, he’s being like a little too narrow-minded. Okay, ease up there, Jesus. Okay, what about all these other— no.
But this is the nature of personal relationship, isn’t it? If you want to get to know a person, I don’t force you to come on my terms. I figure out what’s of interest to you and I come on your terms. I don’t say, no, listen, okay, now I want to get to know you, so you’re going to meet me over here at Starbucks and we’re going to spend, uh, one day a week together and we’re just going to spend time together. Well, I’m going to try to figure out what works for that person.
I’m going to try to work around that person, right? It takes 2 people here to be able to make this work. If I’m interested, like when I was interested in dating Shannon, When I first started being interested in her, which was pretty soon after I saw her, I knew that the way to her heart was through music. And I’d be a fool to try to start a relationship with her in any other way other than through music. And she saw me playing the piano, and that’s how it started.
Because it wasn’t going to be because of this. I guarantee it wasn’t going to be because of that. And it’s still not because of that. All I have to do is go over there to the piano and start playing, and she’ll You know, we fall in love all over again. But it’s that— it’s the idea of, listen, I need to figure out what’s important to her.
I can— hey Shannon, I’m really, really interested in you, so you need to kind of get to know me and the things I’m interested in, and you just need to adjust, deal with it. That, that doesn’t work. Young people, if you’re interested in another person, that’s not the way that you start a relationship. It’s just little tips from the family pastor here. Don’t do it that way.
Come on their terms. And Jesus is saying, I have to have this here. And anytime you get to know a person, anytime you have friendship or personal relationship, we start to lose a little control of our life. And that really bugs us, right? We can’t set the parameters.
Like whenever we have— like the Hunters at some point are going to be moving here at some point. I don’t want them to leave because I’m connected here to these guys. I’m invested in their life and all— wait a second, like, you can’t just up and leave. You know, have you ever had a friend like that does that? And you’re, wait a second, like, you’re putting these sort of— you start to lose control of your life.
Anytime you get to know people, they start coming over to your house. You invite people. If you want to get to know people, you have to open up your life. It’s inconvenient. And Jesus, yeah, it’s exclusive, but that’s the way of personal knowing, isn’t it?
You don’t come on your terms, you come on that person’s terms.
So we come back to the question, is God knowable? Despite all these things, whether he’s too familiar to you or it’s too personal and, okay, he’s asking all these personal questions. Yeah, he does that. He has a lot of personal questions he’s going to ask because he’s God and he knows these things. Or perhaps we just really struggle with this exclusivity and God being narrow-minded.
Yeah, he’s pretty narrow-minded. He demands total allegiance. So does my wife. So does— I mean, that’s like, that’s what happens in a marriage, right? That’s what happens in a relationship.
But is God knowable? Let’s look at verse 7 here again. This thing, this is powerful. Jesus said, if you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. And from now on, you do know him and you’ve seen him.
It’s expected that we would know him. Jesus expected that. And if there’s one familiar theme that just is all throughout scripture, it is this: that God wants to be known. He wants you to know him. He wants me to know him.
He longs for relationship. We see throughout scripture it says he’s very near, and he’s near because he wants to be near. He holds himself out to us day after day after day with opportunities to know him more. And if you’re like me, we kind of miss those opportunities. Let’s say that God brings a person into my life that is a really difficult, challenging person.
But sometimes God can help us to know him more through that challenging personality. Sometimes God allows a challenge in my life or a trial or a struggle or in your life, and we’re in such a hurry to get through it when God wants us to know him more through that. I can tell you, I know God so much more personally because of the multiple pregnancy losses that Shannon and I experienced whenever we were first married. It was heartbreaking, but we know God more and we know each other more. As a result of that.
And as we went through the adoption process with our kids, it was, it was just a roller coaster ride for us and for our friends. But we know God more as a result of that. We know God more through the things that he— whenever we were praying about moving 1,800 miles from Waco, Texas to come here 2 and a half years ago, it did not make sense to us on the surface. It still doesn’t in a lot of ways, and yet God helps us to know him more. Because of how he speaks to us.
And I’m curious, is God speaking to you through a circumstance you’re going through right now and you’re not listening? And it’s an opportunity that he’s holding out to you and he’s saying, lift up your head, open your eyes, that you might know me. Because he wants us to know him and he wants us to draw near to him. If we draw near, he will draw near to us.
And when you try to get to know a person You don’t have to come up with some sort of new formula or a new program on how to do this. You just take better advantage of the opportunities that are already at hand. You become more intentional. You don’t just drift into friendship, right? You don’t just drift into relationship with a person.
You spend time with them. What are the means by which God has given us? Well, we start with the Bible, we start with prayer. Those may be new and awkward kinds of things for you, but that’s one of the ways that we get to know God. He also speaks to us through circumstances, like I said, and through people.
There’s all kinds of things that God uses to get our attention that we might know him. We just need to take better advantage of those opportunities. I think many of us have the best of intentions. We go to bed at night and we wake up in the morning and we want to give God our life and we want to give him our time and our complete devotion. And it sounds good, but then the moment we wake up, we start thinking about all the things we have to do that day.
And consequently, we don’t feel his presence as closely as we’d like throughout the day. We don’t feel his power throughout the day. We don’t feel the life of God in this kind of ongoing relationship. We may lob up a prayer every now and then, but it’s not friendship and it’s not relationship like it would be, and it’s because we’re not intentional about it. If you want to get to know a person, you gotta be intentional, and you’ve gotta take better advantage of the opportunities that are before you.
Are you doing that? Because God’s there the whole time just saying, I want you to know me. I am near because I want to be near. I want you to know me. From the beginning of creation, even when you have Adam and Eve walking around in the garden and God’s looking for them because they’re hiding from him.
Listen, God doesn’t hide from us, we hide from him. And so he’s saying, where are you? That’s what he asked Adam and Eve, because he wants us to know him. He wants us to be close to him and to draw near. And God is asking, where are you?
Do you know him? So God is knowable. He is knowable. We can know him. We can have a relationship.
And a friendship with him. And if indeed God is knowable, how can a person know? How can you get that assurance? There’s a few different ways to look at it. You can go back and look a little bit closer at verses 12 through 15, and it has some ideas there.
But I would submit to you that there are at least 3 dimensions of knowing God that are pretty important for us to consider. One is the intellectual dimension of our lives, the intellectual dimension of how we can know that we know God, because intellectually we give mental assent to these promises of God, and we believe that Jesus came to love us sinners and to die on the cross for us. And I believe that, and I believe that he’s God, and I believe that he’s perfect, and I believe that I can have a relationship with him. And if I give intellectual belief to that and mental assent to that, that’s a dimension of knowing God. Now granted, it, it by itself is not great.
Just alone, it’s fine. It’s like knowing about a person. Just like you know about me, but you don’t really know me, or I know about you, and you don’t— but I don’t really know you. That’s fine. This is a good place to start, and it’s an essential place to start, that intellectually, with our mind, we believe God, that he exists.
I believe that my wife exists. I see her over there. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that we have a relationship. Doesn’t mean we have a relationship. So we have to add to that.
Another dimension to think about is the emotional dimension of a relationship, our heart. Just giving mental assent by ourselves, you know, in and of itself is not sufficient. But with our heart, we read about these people throughout Scripture who say, God, I hunger and I thirst after you. That there’s an inward, deep emotional connection that says, I love God and I love the things that God loves and I hate the things that he hates. And if that’s not present in your life, do you know him?
Oh, you may believe intellectually, but if this emotional piece isn’t there— and I don’t mean that it’s not going to waver at times, of course it does. There are going to be moments like in any relationship where you’re going to have issues emotionally that, okay, you know, we need a little, you know, like we need to work through this rough patch. God doesn’t falter in his love for us, but we falter sometimes, and he brings us back. He brings us back. But in general, if this is not there, do you really know God?
And then on top of that is our volitional choices, our volitional dimension of our lives with our will that says, I know how I used to live and I know how I live now, and there’s a change, and I’m a new person. I’m a new creature, and God is making things new in my life. He’s making me like he wants me to be, and I’m running away from the things that I used to run towards. And now I’m running towards the things I used to run away from.
And my choices, while not perfect, do they indicate that I’m a changed person with my will, that I know him?
And if not, do I really know him? If the knowledge of God doesn’t affect how I treat my spouse, do I really know him? If the knowledge of God doesn’t affect, parents, how you raise your kids, does that mean that you know him truly. Students, if the knowledge of God and knowing about him and having a relationship with him doesn’t change how you study or how you are at school with your friends, do you really know him? Does it really change how we deal with money, how we deal with just day-to-day living?
And if it doesn’t, do you really know him? These 3 aspects are like the legs of a 3-legged stool. Any one of them is short or missing, we’re going to falter in our assurance. How can I know that I know? Are these 3 things present in your life?
And if not, focus on the one that’s a little deficient or short and ask God that you might know him more. When was the last time you prayed that? God, help me to know you more. Help me to know you more. But there’s another way to think about it, and it’s this, that— and Craig Groeschel is a pastor in the South who has a neat way of putting this.
How can I know that I know him? He asks a good question. What do you call God? What do you call him? When you think about how I can know that I know him, what do you call him?
Because the name reveals the intimacy, or the lack thereof. What you call me indicates how well you know me. If you call me Stu Dornad, you don’t know me. If you call me Mr. Duran because you looked at a receipt, you don’t know me. If you call me Pastor Steve, you might know more about me because you know kind of what I do.
But there’s a few people in my life who have exclusive rights on more intimate forms of address, and it’s the 3 kids in my life who call me Dad, Daddy, and only they can call me that.
And we have this kind of relationship because they know me. They know I screw up all the time. They know I’m imperfect as a dad. They know that I’m trying my best, but they know me and I know them, and we have that kind of a relationship. And for some of us here in the room, God is this formal relationship, or a little 8-pound, 6-ounce baby Jesus, or, you know, whatever our relationship with God is by name.
It’s this kind of relationship where it’s very, very formal instead of saying God, you are my rock. You’re my fortress. You’re my shelter. You’re my friend. You’re my healer.
And for many here in the room, God has been your healer, and that’s what you call him. It’s because you know him. You know him in that way. For many of us here in the room, God has been your protector or your provider or a deliverer. And so you call him that.
What do you call him? The name reveals the intimacy. The name reveals your knowledge of him or your lack thereof. What’s the core truth in all of this here as we think about Jesus saying you can know God by knowing me? What’s the core truth in all of this?
It’s that if you seek him, you will find him. If you seek him, you will find him. How do we seek him? We do it through the means he’s already provided. The Bible is God’s invitation to us to know him more.
We enter into a relationship through prayer. That may feel formal and stuffy and weird for you depending upon where you’re— wherever you’re at or whatever your background. It’s fine. But that’s— those are some of the means that we use to start. And if you’re willing to draw near, he will draw near to you.
If you seek him, you will find him. It’s all throughout scripture, all throughout scripture. Deuteronomy and in Jeremiah and Matthew 7 where Jesus says, ask And it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you.
You know, in Revelation where it says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and we hear that idea, and we have to open the door for him. The door is not on the— the doorknob is not on the outside of our heart. He’s inviting us to know him. We have to open that up. We have to take advantage of the invitation that he gives to us.
Have you done that? If you’re here today and you’ve never had that assurance, you’re not sure at all that if you were to get to the end of your life that God would say, I know you. You can know that today beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the way you do that is by looking at what Jesus did, recognizing who you are, and accepting what he did on your behalf into your life. We admit We believe, we confess, we admit that we’re sinners, that we’re lost, that we’re apart from God and separated from God because all of us are born into sin and we live in a corrupt world.
And because of that, there’s a barrier between us and God and we can’t know him in the way that he wants us to. We have to be— believe that what Jesus did is sufficient for us, that he is God and that he died on the— and that Jesus died on the cross for us. And then we confess with our mouth and with our life and say, Jesus, come into my life. And if that’s where you’re starting at, that’s fine.
A relationship has to start somewhere, and God is waiting for that. For the rest of us, don’t let God become so familiar that you miss the relationship. Don’t let God and your questions for him throw you off and keep you from knowing him in the way that he wants to know you. If you seek him, you will find him. Are you seeking him?
This week, when you get up in the morning, ask God, help me to know you more. Help me to know you more. You read through all the great prayers in the Bible, people weren’t praying about personal needs. Here, God, meet my needs, meet my needs. Usually the great prayers in the Bible were about, God, may we know you more, and that we know May we have a deeper relationship with you.
That’s my prayer for you. Let’s pray.
Father, I would imagine that there is somebody here in the room, somebody who is far from you, and they’re far from you because they’ve chosen to be far from you. And yet you’re inviting them to come near. And I pray that today, oh God, that that would be that day. And if that’s you here today, would you just in your own prayer silently just ask God to draw near to you, that you might know him more?
If God has become overly familiar to you and you’re really struggling with that and you sing the words, but your heart’s not really engaged, or you just sort of go through the motions during the week, or his presence doesn’t feel as close as you feel like it should, and his power and his protection and peace in your life is not what you feel like it should be. Ask God to be more real to you than ever before, because he longs to be known.
Father, I would ask that you would hear the prayers of your people going on all around this room. And I would pray that you would draw us close to you, because if we seek you, we’ll find you. You are not hard to be found. We have lots of questions, but the most important one that you have for us is, do we know you? And I pray that that would change our perspective on everything, that our relationship with you would grow because of that.
Thank you that you are knowable. Thank you that you’ve presented yourself and your Son Jesus, that we might know you.
Lord, as we continue in worship, hear the prayers of your people and the praises being lifted up. We pray all these things in your Son’s name. Amen.
