Knowing God: Chapter 3

Knowing God – Week 4:

Chapter 3: Knowing and Being Known

REVIEW

• His Cross

  • True Covenant/True Knowledge/True Treasure

  • Take up your Cross – Deny Yourself

    • It's not optional, Luke 14:27, “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”

• Evidence/Tests

  • Great BOLDNESS for God, Great CONTENTMENT in God, Great THOUGHTS of God, Great ENERGY for God

• Know Your God

  • Daniel 10: 10 – 12
    “O Daniel, man greatly beloved…Do not fear… for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words.”

• Declaration of Dependence

  • Are you ready to deny yourself, take up your cross? Be counted as one who is beloved and known by the Lord? Or do you want to be as indiscernible as the average non-Christian?

Jeff price (1997)

• Philosophy Class

• Dostoevsky – Notes from Underground
  “Now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.”

• Albert Camus – The Myth of Sisyphus
  “Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks…Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

• Theology Class

  • Jeremiah 9:24
    “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,”

? God seems like a narcissist. Dostoevsky & Camus seem to understand my life is hard. I like what they’re saying. Why do I want to know anything about this God?

• The Pirates of the Caribbean

• Sartre

  • “What man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confusing their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us without hope.”

• Packer (pg 34)

  • “What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”

Knowing

? What does it mean to know someone?

• Degrees or Distinctions (Frame)

  • Knowledge of facts (knowing that…)

  • Knowledge of skills (knowing how…)

  • Knowledge of persons (knowing whom…)

    • Very intimate (sexually, loving/befriending, enmity)

    • “knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s heart”

• Knowing God involves…(Packer pg 37)

  • LISTEN - Listening to God’s word & receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself

  • LOOK - Noting God’s nature and character, as his Word and works reveal it

  • LOVE - Accepting his invitations and doing what he commands

  • LAUD - Recognizing and rejoicing in the love that he has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into his divine fellowship

• Frame, “Christian knowledge is knowledge of a person. It’s knowing God [the Father], Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit”

knowing jesus

• Four Analogies – We know God as… (Packer pg 37)

  • A son knowing his father

  • A wife knowing her husband

  • A subject knowing his king

  • A sheep knowing his shepherd (John 10)

? What do these analogies have in common?

• Packer, “the knower looks up to the one known, and the latter takes responsibility for the welfare of the former”

• Frame, “servant-knowledge”

• John 10 – A Personal Matter

  • Personal dealing (v. 1-6, 25-30, 37-39)

    • Packer

      • “The Jesus who walks through the gospel story walks with Christians now, and knowing him involves going with him, now as then.”

      • “deal with God regarding the practical application of truth to life.”

  • Personal involvement (v. 7-13)

    • Packer

      • “They have identified themselves with, and are so personally and emotionally involved in, each other’s concerns.”

      • 1 John 2:4, “The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

      • “Believers rejoice when their God is honored and vindicated and feel the acutest distress when they see God flouted.”

  • Personal grace (v. 14-18)

    • Packer

      • “It is a relationship in which the initiative throughout is with God…”

      • “Their knowing God was the consequence of God’s taking knowledge of them.”

being known (By grace alone)

• Frame, “The origin of knowledge is Trinitarian: The Father knows all and reveals truth to us by the grace of His Son through the work of the Spirit in our hearts….Thus it is all of God, all of grace.”

• Packer, ““The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God’s initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving.”

? Why is the fact that God knows us more important than the fact that we know God?

• Total Depravity

  • Sinclair Ferguson, “God has not given us angels, but sinners to train to be saints. Since the situation is further complicated by the fact that parents are also sinners, we constantly need to rely on the teaching and directives of Scripture.”

  • Packer, “There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”

open discussion