Knowing God
Established Series- CCCAG 7-25-21
Scripture: John 17:1-3
Today we are starting a new series today called Established. In this series, we're going to learn how to be rooted and established in the love of God.
If you haven’t been here for the last few weeks, we have spent some time talking about what the immediate future might hold, and that we might be facing some tough times.
While preparation for tough times is important, I want to now circle back and tell you why we can be secure no matter what life throws our way- that we are Established in the Love of God.
Something that I have learned in life is force myself to have the correct focus.
When I went through paramedic school, I committed to a solid year of training. There were no semester breaks, no holidays off- that’s often when you could do your clinical and ride time requirements, but a solid year of learning and training.
I did that when I was 25, and it was a huge grind for me to get through it.
One of the things that I do when I have a ton of work to get through to accomplish something is visualize the prize. If you look at the course calendar, and all of the reading, the papers, the tests, or the over 500 hours of clinical or ride time you will get overwhelmed and be tempted to drop out.
That’s why I learned to focus on the prize. For me in paramedic school, it was holding that paramedic patch with my license number on it for the first time.
(this is that patch)
I’m using that again when I think about nursing school. When I’m facing deadlines, assignments, clinical time and exams, I make sure my whole focus is on December 11th when we receive our nursing pins the day before the official graduation. It’s the day you can actually call yourself a registered nurse. I don’t care about graduation- I probably won’t even go, but I want that pin, and visualizing another RN pinning that on me is getting me through the very long hours of studying and training.
To bring that around to what I want to talk about this morning, the bible tells us the future to prepare us, and to help us focus on the important stuff. However, these events that are coming are not the important stuff.
We shouldn’t be overly concerned about which event in biblical prophecy happens first, or how the antichrist will come to power or how he will institute the Mark of the Beast.
Really, those are small events in history and to focus on them is to miss the point that God wants us to show us this morning.
The point is- it’s not about that.
It’s about HIM. (repeat)
In your Bible, turn to John Chapter 17.
The background of John 17 is that Jesus just had the last supper with his disciples. They are now getting ready to walk over to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. Before they leave, Jesus is giving them final instructions before He goes to the cross.
Now he has begun to pray for his followers, and I want you to really focus this morning on the subject of this prayer-
John 17:1-3 “After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and he prayed.”
“Father, the hour 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 know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
For emphasis, I want to read verse 3 again: “Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Prayer
This scripture helps to put our faith into a perspective that we can look forward to.
Let me give you an example-
When you plan a trip, do you start with looking at the of the possible roads you can travel, or do you look first at the destination, and the destination is the primary factor in deciding the route. You may see some cool things along the way, but that isn’t as important as the place you are going to.
That is exactly how we should be living our lives here on earth. We get so focused on our lives here that we lose the vision of where we are heading.
Because we concern ourselves more with the journey that we lose the joy of the destination.
That causes us to lose that focus.
Anyone who has been in the military will tell you that one of the things that gets you through a long deployment is when you are in your down time to focus on who is waiting for you at the end of the deployment. Not just getting back to the world, not just getting out of the area you are deployed in, but back to the person you love.
That is what our life is- a journey toward a person who gave everything to make a way for us to be with HIM forever.
When we get this into our spirits, it really helps us to be able to answer the tough questions people may have about our faith.
Why did Jesus come?
What's life all about?
What's Christianity all about?
To the last question, most people will say it’s about not going to hell. Jesus gave us a Get out of jail free card.
Christianity is about more than just heaven and hell. Jesus should be more to us then a free ticket to salvation.
That's a big part of it, but it's broader and bigger and deeper and wider than that.
The Christian life is more than not sinning.
The Christian life is more than the hereafter, the afterlife. It's also about the here and now.
Let’s break it down a bit.
There are three main things here in these few verses of scripture that we just read.
I. Number one, here's what we read. Jesus came to give us eternal life.
This begs the question, why did Jesus die on the cross?
The usual answer, if you've been in church, is that it was about paying for your sins.
Yes, but why do you need your sins to be paid for?
Answer: so that you can have eternal life.
What is eternal life?
It’s not just about getting to go to heaven or avoiding hell. Eternal life is not a destination, but a person known as God.
Our creator- HE who gave us life, and then gave us new life through Christ Jesus. He not only gave us life, but wants us to live an abundant life in HIM.
God’s perfect will for us is to live in a voluntary love relationship with him simply on the basis of who HE is.
That is why He gave us the burden of having free will.
Many people have asked me about free will and honestly it’s a question I continue to explore in my mind and heart, and in the bible. It’s probably the biggest question I go back and forth about because it has a million more questions pop up every time I think I have an answer.
The question of free will can be asked in this way-
“Why did God put the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden and make it accessible to Adam and Eve?”
In 21st century terms, I would equate it to leaving a locked and loaded pistol on the floor with the safety off with a toddler in the room and then pointing it out to the child and saying- “Don’t touch that”
Not only did you prohibit them from touching it, but you drew attention to it.
Why did God do this with the first humans?
Various answers have come to me over the years, most of them coming down to this statement- “to test Adam and Eve”
There is some truth to that but if you just leave it there, it sounds really capricious if you take that answer to it’s logical conclusion- that God gave humanity a test we couldn’t pass and then punished us for failing it.
It sounds like some of my nursing instructors.
If we were to think that and then stop there, you’d miss the beauty of what Jesus was trying to show us, not only through this verse we read, but throughout His life and ministry.
The first principle is that-
You can’t have love without free will.
If a wife has to chain her husband to the couch so he will not leave, does the husband really love his wife? Or Vice versa
Part of being human is dealing with this emotional force called love. We mess this up because love is not just an adjective describing a feeling, but a verb describing an action. The Action of love is proof that the description of love is real.
And that is why the tree was placed in the Garden
You remember that upon Adam’s creation, God’s instructions to Adam not to eat of that tree included a consequence: “If you eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on that day you will die”
In other words, it was God saying, “I am God, and I created you and gave you life because I love you.
This is your choice- to love and trust me that this tree is very bad for you, or to take from it and die
We know the choice they made- humanity only knew love as a feeling, and not the action. That launched the plan of salvation- culminating with the ultimate expression and action of love ever witnessed- the death of the God man on the cross to pay for the sins of HIS own creation.
Does this make sense? The whole purpose of Jesus’s arrival, the whole purpose of the cross and the resurrection is so you may have eternal life.
That eternal life is not truly expressed as the joys and wonder of heaven, but in the joy and wonder of being with a person called God forever.
That’s why we need to correct some of our thinking here.
Some of us have heard over the years that Jesus came so we could have a better life here.
“Come to Jesus- HE wants you healthy, wealthy, and blessed” is the message. From a marketing standpoint- that’s a great message.
You preach that message and you also could buy a stadium and use it as a church. You could live in a mansion, have expensive cars, and a private jet if you were to preach that message.
But you would miss telling people the most crucial message- that your focus isn’t so much to be on this life, but on the life to come and more importantly the PERSON we are journeying toward.
God is the prize…not his home.
And it’s not the life, so much as it is the person we get to spend eternity with.
If you think the other way, you get stuck in a cycle of performance-based religion.
Let me give you an example-
Have you ever had something bad happen in your life and you think to yourself, “God, are you kidding me? I've been to church like six weeks in a row.” “I’ve been a good person!”
As most of you know, a little over a month ago I hit a deer on the way to work. One jumped out and I managed to swerve around him, and then three more jumped out and I had no wear to go.
I flipped my hazards on and pulled over to survey the damage.
I had two responses here-
The first one could be- “Seriously, Lord? Where is the blessing? Don’t you now how much I have sacrificed for you and you can’t even help me avoid a deer?”
That statement assumes that God owes you something. If that is the case, who is really God in your mind?
If God is your debtor and exists only to bring blessing into your life, He cease to become God and is little better than the pagan deities we read about in the Old Testament- do the right thing and be rewarded- stroke the genie in the right way and get your wish.
That’s the problem with this idea that is being propagated that if you give your life to Jesus, that all of a sudden, in this existence, everything is smooth and fine.
But, That's not why Jesus came. Jesus came so you could have real life. Life and life eternal in HIS FATHER.
The correct response is that of gratitude. In the case of hitting the deer- “God thank you for preserving my life. In that spot outside of Black River Falls, a little to the left or right and I have a 60 foot dive going 70 MPH into the river. Now give me grace to exude confidence in you as I deal with insurance companies and repair shops. Let me represent you well in the coming days as I search for a new vehicle.”
That’s why we need to understand that our eternal life is in a person, and not a place. It is also why I keep saying over and over again that our eternal life has already started, because it’s wrapped up in God, and not in heaven.
That brings us to point number two. Eternal life is, as Jesus defines it in what we read, two words: knowing God.
Eternal life is knowing God.
This is massive. Jesus taught that eternal life is not about a destination. It's about a relationship.
In the scripture we read, Jesus said: “Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” When he says that eternal life is knowing God, he's not talking about knowledge about. He's talking about knowledge of.
There’s a massive difference in believing things about God and actually trusting in and knowing God.
Trusting in God is a relational exchange.
It’s not just believe the right thing about God, although that is important.
If you only believe in God, all you have is knowledge.
However, if you trust in God- that is transformational.
When Jesus says that he came, died on the cross, rose again, his whole deal was about you having eternal life. Eternal life is knowing God.
He came to offer you a relationship—not just in the hereafter or heaven, but in the here and now.
The purpose of life is to know God and walk with God. To know him more and more each and every day.
When you look at the heros of the bible, you see the same idea expressed in their writings and their lives.
The greatest thing for David was not when he defeated Goliath. It wasn’t the battles he one, or the fame he received. It wasn’t becoming the King of Israel.
The greatest thing for David was that he knew God.
The greatest thing for Moses was not leading over 6 million people out of Egypt. It wasn’t the miracles like when the Red Sea parted. It wasn’t even the receiving of the law or writing the first 5 books of our bible.
The greatest thing for Moses was that he knew God. He had a friendship with God.
The greatest thing for Simon Peter wasn't being called as a disciple. It wasn’t hearing first hand the teaching of the Son of God, or seeing the miracles. It wasn’t being called the Rock of the Church or when he walked on the water.
It was that his best friend was God through his faith in Jesus Christ.
When I grew up in church, the whole thing was about the afterlife, but that's not actually what the Bible teaches.
It includes that, but Jesus taught that the reason you're breathing right now, the reason that God knit you together in your mother’s womb, was so you can know God, have a relationship with God, and walk with God.
When I was growing up and still very immature in my faith, heaven to me was heaven because you were going to be rich there.
You get a mansion and pearly gates and streets of gold. Does this sound familiar?
But heaven is heaven not because of the shiny stuff. You know why the streets are made of gold- the most valuable thing in biblical times?
It shows us in heaven that gold is irrelevant. It's like pavement. Its no more a consideration or worth then the sand and dirt that are in the church yard right now.
What makes heaven heaven is that God manifest presence is there, and we will know Him completely and we will fellowship with Him completely.
Heaven is heaven because heaven is about Him.
For some of us, we're doing what's right.
We're living a good life and really, what we're after, what we're hoping for, is what God will give us when we meet HIM face to face.
It could be that we're trusting in some outcome, we're trusting in some blessings instead of trusting in Him, the one who actually blesses.
In summary-
This life is the start of our eternal life, and it’s all about God.
It's not about getting His stuff.
It's about getting Him.
If you and I are going to be established in the Christian faith, we've got to start right there.
It's the cornerstone of the whole thing, that through my faith in Jesus I have eternal life.
Which is what? A relationship with God that never ends.
Last main point: Christianity is not a religion. When people say I’m religious, I say God forbid that I ever become religious. Religion is man’s attempt to reach God. Christianity is all about God reaching down to man in love and mercy so HE can have a relationship with us.
That is what our faith is about- a relationship with God.
It's about a relationship. Knowing and walking with God.
Over the next few weeks, we're going to talk about how that works. If you're going to have a relationship with somebody, you've got to learn to talk to them and you've got to learn to listen to them. In fact, next week we're going to talk about how to hear from God and how to communicate with God and we're going to grow and be established in our relationship with Him and in that, be rooted and established in His love.
Let’s pray.
