This Is Eternal Life - John 17:3 - August 19, 2012
As a young boy I had one of those plastic bow and arrow sets where the arrows have the little red rubber suction cups on the end. How many of you had something similar as a kid? I enjoyed playing with them a lot and I think I probably terrorized the neighborhood a bit, certainly my sister, as I launched my arrows at anything that moved. Eventually though I out- grew that bow and I got busy with other things and some 30 years would pass before I held another bow in my hands. In fact it was just about three years ago now that my interest in archery was rekindled.
The bow I have now is considerably different than my first one; gone is the plastic and gone are the suction cups. It’s no longer a recurve but rather a compound bow that I hold in my hands. I enjoy getting out and practicing with it and when I do I have a couple of goals in mind – things that I’m striving to accomplish. And those goals go beyond simply hoping to miss hitting a tree, or burying an arrow in the grass, or losing one in the river. My goals are not things I want to avoid doing but rather they are the things that I’m trying to do. Archery is about precise repetition – bringing the bow up the same way, anchoring it in the same position, holding the same sight picture, every time. So my first goal each time I take up the bow is to seek after that precision. And that helps me with my second goal, which is to have my arrows hit the target in the very spot I’m aiming at.
Now, we have many different goals in our lives and what I want you to do is to take a moment and consider what your goals are. If you have the sermon notes in front of you you’ll see that there is space for you to write down 3-4 of the goals you have for your life, for your family and I want to invite you to go ahead and do that right now. What goals are driving your life? What goals are shaping the choices you make? What goals are defining the life you’re living and the person you are becoming? What’s your mission in life? Go ahead and write down a couple of those things that come to mind. And maybe you’ve never thought of them as goals so much as dreams, or things you are reaching after or hoping to accomplish – go ahead and write those down. These are the things that you are aiming for in life. …
Now you might have any number of goals on your list, and we don’t have time for everyone to share this morning, however I don’t think I would be too far off of some of your lists if I suggested that those of you who are married may have goals that will help you to build into your marriages, to become more loving husbands or more supportive wives, that those of you who are parents have a goal of raising your kids well and building into their lives. Maybe your goals revolve around the work you do with your hands – there are any number of possibilities. If I were to fill out that list I might say that some of my goals would be to become a more loving husband, a more present father to my children, and to be a better pastor. Those are some of my goals and you are sure to have some of your own. And as goals these are the things that will drive our lives, influence our decisions, and impact our choices on a daily basis.
It’s just about a week ago now that the Olympic Games ended. Hundreds of athletes from around the world competed against one another to achieve their own goals and to bring glory to their country. This has been the primary focus of their lives for many, many years. This is what they have been reaching for and striving after. And it’s good to have something in your life that you’re reaching after, but we need to understand that not all of our goals are necessarily worth reaching for. Think of all the things that people seek after in our world and then consider the words of the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, where he writes these words …
“If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
Some of these are the things Paul had chased after in his life – he was zealous in persecuting the church – he was diligent and enthusiastic in doing it and he gave himself to it wholeheartedly, he was faultless in his keeping of God’s laws, he was a well-respected and deeply admired Pharisee. These were the goals that drove his life and yet listen to what he goes on to say …
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:4–11, NIV84)
What’s Paul saying? Simply this: that everything he had chased after in his life, everything that he had valued and prided himself in, everything that had consumed his time, his passion and his energies, paled in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.
So here’s a question to consider … can you say the same thing? When you wrote down your goals, the things that were driving and shaping your life, did any of you write down that your goal, your desire, your dream, was to know Christ better with each passing day? … Probably not because our lives are filled with so many other things, aren’t they?
If we have kids we are consumed with them. For example, we may want them to succeed in sports or music. We get up early in the morning, we invest in the equipment that is needed, we tirelessly run them around from one place to another because we want them to succeed in these things – and there’s nothing wrong with sports or music – please don’t hear that in my words – but our primary goal as parents is not to raise up the next Wayne Gretzkey or the next singing sensation – it’s to raise our children up to know the Lord. Is that priority reflected in your household, in the goals you set, and the decisions you are making?
As adults ourselves our goals may be to excel at our work, get the promotion, build a bigger farm, find someone to share our life with and raise a family - and while none of those things is necessarily wrong it’s also true that none of them can ever be a good substitute for knowing the Lord. Paul’s telling us that when he got his priorities straight he suddenly realized that there is nothing more important in this world than knowing Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. And that’s just as true today as it was back in his day.
So why is it so important for us to know the Lord in this way? Well turn with me in your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of John. John, chapter 17, verse 3 and listen to what Jesus says here. This is what is called His “High Priestly Prayer.” These are nearly His final words because shortly after this prayer He will be betrayed, arrested, put on trial and ultimately sentenced to death by crucifixion. Jesus knows what is to come and so He’s talking to God the Father. He’s praying, and this is what He prays, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:1-3, NIV84)
Now, if someone were to ask you to define eternal life, you might be tempted to tell them something like this: “Eternal life is living forever. For the Christian, eternal life is living forever in the presence of God.” And you wouldn’t be wrong, but you wouldn’t have the full picture either. Our focus tends to be on the extent of life, the reality that it will be never ending. But Jesus’ focus is on relationship. He defines eternal life in the context of relationship with the Father and with Himself. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
What does it mean to “know” somebody? This is the age of social media and you can go on Facebook and in short order you can have yourself a list of a couple of hundred people who are your so called “friends.” I would suggest that even though they are called your “friends” that the vast majority of those people are not really known by you at all. They are acquaintances – sometimes very tenuous acquaintances – whom you know something about, but whom you don’t really know at all.
You can read someone’s autobiography and you can learn to know many things about them but you don’t begin to know them until you do life with them on an on-going basis. Heather and I have been married for 15 years and I’m still getting to know her. That should never end as long as we both live. And that’s how it ought to be when it comes to God because in John 17:3, when Jesus talks about “knowing” it’s written in such a way that it indicates it is to be a continuous, on-going reality.
When the Bible talks about “knowing” it uses words that reflect a much deeper meaning than we can convey by the simple English understanding of this word. To know someone in the biblical sense is to know them intimately, closely, personally. It’s often used of husbands and wives and it means “to perceive, to learn, to understand, to recognize, … to see or experience.” When it’s used of God it conveys the additional meanings of believing, accepting His claims, conforming to His will, to obeying His word and to responding in faith. Which means that the opposite of knowing God, is not so much ignorance, as it is rebellion. (Adapted from, Intimacy With God, by Ian Johnson, www.sermoncentral.com)
So here’s the question we need to wrestle with: Do we really know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, or do we only know about Him?
God desires for us to know Him! Listen again to those words from Jeremiah which we heard earlier in our service: “This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24, NIV84)
To understand, and to know the Lord, is what we ought to be seeking after. And not just to know about the Lord, but to know the Lord relationally. There’s a big difference between the two. The first is all about head knowledge. You can fill your head with all sorts of facts about God but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you know Him. On the other hand, when you do life together with Him, when you see Him faithful in your need, present in your distress, comforting in your sorrow, speaking to you through His Word, guiding by His Spirit, you come to know God relationally as you would come to know a close friend or a spouse. You submit your will, your desires, your life to Him. In the process you are being sanctified and your character moulded and shaped to more brightly reflect Jesus into the world around you. Jesus says to know God that way is eternal life and Paul says everything else in this world that we could choose to value and pursue pales into insignificance compared to the reality of knowing Jesus Christ in such a way as this. He doesn’t simply want to know about God as from a distance; he wants to experience the reality of God in his life – the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, and becoming like Him. He wants to do every day of life in the reality of the presence of God – so much so that his entire life reflects the greatness, wonder, glory and grace of God. What about you?
In light of this reality, Paul goes so far as to say that he counts all things rubbish – garbage – useless – compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord. Many times I’ve heard people say something like this: “I don’t seem to experience God in the same way that people did in the pages of the Bible. He seems distant; uninterested, unconcerned with my life.” Perhaps one of the reasons why we feel that way is because we don’t really know Jesus. We know about Him – that He is the Son of God, who died on the cross for our sins, who was buried and who, on the third day, was raised to new life – but we don’t know Him experientially.
God says let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth. If anything were to be worth boasting about it wouldn’t be our riches, our homes, our cars, our jobs, not even our families, but the fact that we knew and understood God and had experienced His kindness, justice and righteousness first hand, that we are doing life together with Him, not inviting Him to come alongside us, and bless us in our sin and unrighteousness, but seeking to come alongside of Him and put our hand to those things that He is blessing, where He is working, where He is building His kingdom.
So often we make our faith about all the “do nots.” “Do not do this thing, or go to that place,” or do not do whatever else we might put on that list. And there is some value and some truth in that but only if we come at it from the other end. The “do nots” are the heart of religion. We take some comfort in religion but religion is man’s effort to reach up to God. “If I do not do this thing then God will accept me.” Religion is the way of the Pharisee and Jesus never had much good to say about the Pharisee. Instead He frequently told them that they had all the appearance of godliness but none of the reality. They worshipped Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him and, consequently, they did not have eternal life. And the response of the Pharisee was to say, and this is a very loose paraphrase, “Hey! Wait a minute – we’re doing all these things for God – keeping all these rules and we’re not out doing all these sinful things that everyone around is doing – how can you say we don’t have eternal life?”
And Jesus’ response blows me away. It tends to shake me up every time I read it because of what He is really saying there. If you want to follow along you’ll find these verses in the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 7, beginning in verse 21. I’ve shared these verses with you before but listen again to what Jesus says … “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21–23, NIV84)
Sometimes people substitute doing things for Jesus with really knowing Him. But not doing the bad things, and seeking to do the good things, outside of knowing Jesus, is only empty religion. It is worthless before God and useless for you and me. Let me take you back to the archery illustration I started with today for just a moment. If my goal is simply to avoid hitting a tree, or sinking an arrow in the river, or losing it in the tall grasses, it’s never going to be enough to put the arrow where it needs to be. We are so tempted to make our faith about avoiding the questionable activities, being seen in the proper places and doing the proper things, when what we should really be seeking above all is to know Jesus, then those other things fall into place.
Listen to the words of God that come to us from the 6th chapter of the book of Hosea. God says, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6, NRSV) More important than any of the things we do for God, or which we offer in God’s name, is knowing God Himself through His Son, Jesus. Religion seeks to reach up to God, but God has reached down to man through Jesus, through relationship. Why? Because as John has written, “this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:11–13, NRSV)
Why is knowing Jesus so important? I’ll let Jesus answer in His own words … “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NRSV) For as it says in the book of Acts “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12, NRSV)
Religion is all about do’s and don’ts and it’s man’s way of trying to reach God. But Christianity is about knowing Jesus, and having known Him we will love Him, and having loved Him we will strive to walk in obedience to His commands, not out of legalism, but out of a response of love and gratitude. And the more we come to know Him, and do life with Him, the greater our love will grow, the more our wills will be shaped by His Word, the more we will seek to walk in step with the Holy Spirit and the more we will experience the active, on-going presence of God in our daily lives. Eternal life is knowing Jesus and it starts today!
And that’s really what we’re supposed to be all about, isn’t it? If you open your bulletins, and look on the inside cover right at the top, you will see the “We Welcome You!” box. Right under the name of our church you will see the purpose statement of Parkside, and if you’ve never seen it before, or never considered what it was all about, let me read that for you this morning. The purpose of Parkside, our reason for existing, that which should be undergirding all that we do, is “To know and worship Jesus Christ and make Him known,” to the world. Why? Because according to Jesus’ own words, this is eternal life.
So in light of these things I want to leave you with a challenge this morning. I want to challenge you, as an individual, as a couple, as families, to be deliberate, to be intentional, to be mission minded. And your mission is this: to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, better tomorrow, than you do today, more personally next week than you did this week, to be growing in Him daily.
Ann Dunagan has written an article about parenting that I quite appreciate and I want to share with you a little quote from there and apply it to what we’ve been talking about this morning. She writes this: “In a mission-minded family, there's a God-infused energy. There's a focus on God's worldwide purpose. There's a passion for the lost. There's a spiritual depth and hunger that reaches beyond the maintenance mode of cultural Christianity. A mission-minded family emphasizes leadership, calling, and destiny. There's a prevailing attitude of self-sacrifice and an emphasis on total submission to God's will. And there's an unmistakable and contagious joy.” (www.kyria.com, Become a Mission-Minded Family, Ann Dunagan, August 3, 2012) And I would add, for it’s in knowing Christ in this way, that we come to know the peace that surpasses all understanding, a hope that is never ending, and an abundant life, filled by the Spirit, pleasing to God.
Let’s pray …
