John 14:5-11 (The Knowledge of God in Christ)

Humanity's greatest need is the knowledge of God.

I'm not talking about intellectualism where we have an academic head knowledge. I got plenty of that in seminary.

There's a stuffiness and a sort of obtuseness about those sort of environments.

Not to say that the Lord didn't bless that, but the knowledge of God is not mere academic pursuit or intellectualism, and it's also not unbridled emotionalism.

Where we've seen examples of that in many churches that are devoid of theology and devoid of deep thought, it's neither exclusively heady or unbridled hearty.

The knowledge of God is this intimate, personal affection, this knowledge of God that is the same sort of knowledge that is present in a marriage.

If I had simply memorized a list of facts about my wife, she's 5 '4", she has blonde hair, she was a

Quaker when she grew up. I used to joke with her and tell her that, does that mean you rode horse and buggy?

She's like, we're not Amish. But if I just simply memorized a bunch of facts about my wife, that wouldn't really be love.

So there's a different kind of knowledge between a husband and a wife that's intimate, that's emotional, that's personal, that's relational.

So when we talk about the knowledge of God, we are not talking about memorizing every single point in a systematic theology or a dogmatic theology.

We're talking about intimate, relational knowledge of God. It's the most important knowledge that you and I could ever have.

In fact, it's the only knowledge truly, eternally, ultimately that we need underneath every need that we have, under every craving that we have, every passion that we have is a need to know

God. Scripture say, whether you eat or whether you drink, do it all to the glory of God, which means that at the very basest level of our existence, whether we eat or drink, whether we breathe, whether we wake or sleep, whether we walk or talk, there's a need for us to know this great

God. Nothing else ultimately matters. I enjoy things like a wonderful glass of wine, a nice steak, at the end of the day, my eternal existence is not dependent upon the places that I eat, the relationships that I'm in, how far up the ladder

I go, which here, there's nowhere vertical to go at the church. You get what

I'm saying. For us, it doesn't matter about these things. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many cars you have or how many houses you have or how many vacations you take.

It doesn't matter how many countries you visited. At the end of the day, the most important knowledge is the knowledge of God.

That is the knowledge that will carry you safely home into eternity. It's more precious than anything that God loves you and is favorably disposed towards you and rescues sinners in Christ.

That is the most important knowledge that we could ever have. You could forget everything else.

You could be in the most advanced stages of dementia or Alzheimer's, and if you know God, you're safe, you're secure, you have everything.

You can face anything. The great Christians of history, you look at them, you look at like Bonhoeffer, right?

Bonhoeffer was in a German concentration camp in the 1940s. Everything was taken away from him, and yet he goes singing to the gallows.

You look at the great Puritans who were set on fire for their faith. You look at the men and the women in the New Testament times who were thrown to lions, and the

Romans are like, what is wrong with these people? They're getting eaten with joy. It's because the knowledge of God was more latent, more central, more pertinent to them than even their own comfort.

The knowledge of God is the greatest knowledge that you and I could ever have. We can weather any storm, any trial.

We can go through anything. The problem is that's not at all how we live.

As we talked about earlier, one hunger pain, and I turn into something else.

One Massachusetts driver, and my day is ruined. Sometimes two.

The problem is is that we are born dead. That we were conceived in iniquity, that we inherit this sort of selfishness, this plight, this self -centered me, me, me sort of mentality, and even in our salvation, the work that is going to be completed in eternity is not yet finished.

Christ has began the good work. That's a very important phrase, unless you have discouragement.

And the Bible says that he's completed the good work, and there's a lot of us that can look at ourselves and say, that doesn't apply to me.

He's began the good work in you. He's forming you, he's shaping you, he's changing you over time, that's sanctification.

But for much of our life, we are very focused upon ourselves. The question is why don't we live this way?

Why don't we sing during every occasion? Why do we let troubles take up headspace instead of joy?

Why don't we say with Paul that I've learned the secret of being content in all things.

Paul had been shipwrecked, imprisoned, beaten, stoned a couple times, died one time, and God brought him back to life like snake bitten.

This man had more going on in his life than I've ever dreamed about, and yet he said in his old age,

I've learned the secret of being content. You can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.

How can Paul say that? It's because his situations, his scenarios, his circumstances, his life became small in comparison to the bigness of the knowledge of God.

Same thing John the Baptist says, he must become greater as I become less.

All of the my's, my way, my thoughts, my life, as they become smaller, and as the knowledge of God becomes bigger, all of these things fade away.

You and I are a living poster to the world about what the knowledge of God means.

You and I are the ones who are dead on a gurney, and we were shocked back to life with the gospel when he saved us, when he regenerated us, when the

Holy Spirit came in and indwelled in us, and adopted us, and justified us, and redeemed us, and sanctified us.

He's done a lot already, and has made us a living example of the power of the gospel.

May it not be so that the world looks at us and says, why would

I join that group of people? They're miserable. All they do is complain and whine.

May it be said that the world looks at us, and they're baffled, and they say,

I can't imagine how this is true, but my goodness, they're excited about it. They have love for one another.

They have joy in the midst of circumstances and trials. This begins with us, the people of God.

If anyone should know joy, it's the people of God. If anyone should know true happiness, true blessedness, it's

Christians, and that's what I want us to talk about today.

I want us to talk about the knowledge of God from three different angles. Number one, I wanna talk about it from the way the disciples would have perceived it at the time of Christ.

I want us to be reminded of that. We're actually gonna go through three R's today. Normally, I have to announce my outline.

You have it in front of you today, praise the Lord. We're gonna be reminded about how the disciples would have viewed the knowledge of God.

Then we're going to remember what Christ has done for us in his cross, in his atonement, and then we're going to rejoice at what

Christ has done because the knowledge of God climaxes in rejoicing. If you really know who

God is, and you really know what Christ has done for you, you cannot help but rejoice.

So we will end with that. So if you will, turn with me. John chapter 14, verses five through 11, as we explore these three things.

John 14, five through 11. Thomas said to him, "'Lord, we do not know where you are going.

"'How do we know the way?' Jesus said to him, "'I am the way and the truth and the life.

"'No one comes to the Father but through me. "'If you had known me, you would have known my

Father also. "'From now on, you will know him and have seen him.'

Philip said to him, "'Lord, show us the Father, and it would be enough for us.' Jesus said, "'Have

I been so long with you, "'and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? "'He who has seen me has seen the

Father. "'How can you say, show us the Father? "'Do you not believe that I am in the

Father "'and the Father is in me?' Let us pray. Lord Jesus, help us today to understand what it means to have the knowledge of God.

As John Calvin said, it's the greatest knowledge that could ever be acquired. Lord, let us today not walk out of here with head knowledge, although it is a good thing to train our heads.

Lord, let us not walk out of here with mere emotionalism, although, Lord, you do work in our emotions.

Lord, let us not walk out of here today with a mere dutiful commitment to serve you, to continue to grind and grind and serve you.

Lord, let us not walk out of here although it is good to serve you. Lord, underneath those things, under our heart, under our mind, under our will,

I pray that you would bring the sweet, intimate, relational knowledge that binds us to you, that causes our heart to sing for you, that causes our minds to be inclined towards you.

Lord, let us know you today. It is the greatest knowledge we could ever know.

In Christ's name, amen. We'll begin with a reminder of what the

Old Testament folks would have seen. Now, I use that term intentionally, the Old Testament folks. We're in John.

If you went past Malachi enough, we passed chapter four, there's a single page in your

Bible usually, wasn't original this way, there's a single page with just a few words that says the New Testament.

And yet, Matthew, most of Matthew, most of Mark, most of Luke, most of John occur before the crucifixion, before the resurrection, before the ascension to the

Father, before the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 75, 80 % of the Gospel of John is still in the

Old Testament era. You still have a temple, you still have priests. So you're dealing with disciples who are

Old Testament -oriented people. They don't have sort of the New Testament framework that we have yet, so we have to remember what it is that they were thinking about the knowledge of God.

They weren't thinking like us, that the knowledge of God is found in Christ. They were thinking temple, priest, sacrifice.

They were thinking Old Testament, covenant ways. Now, Jesus, in this passage, even uses past tense verbs to sort of anchor the knowledge of God or the limits of the knowledge of God in the

Old Testament in the past. He uses past tense verb. He says, if you had known me, then you would have known the

Father. He's saying, in circumspect, in their life, from the time you were born until now, if you had known me in the right way, then you would have known the

Father. I think this is a larger meaning, though, that goes all the way back to Mount Sinai, that if Christ had been the explicit fulfillment and purpose of the

Mosaic covenant of the temple, of the priest, and the kings, and all of it, then they would have known the

Father, because the old covenant was never meant to be a complete covenant. It was never meant to be a fulfillment of everything.

It was always a type and a shadow that pointed to the fulfillment. Christ is looking back, and he's saying that the old covenant, if it had been about me fully, you would have known the

Father. But as it was, it was a placeholder. It was a type.

It was a shadow of what was coming. We were talking about this earlier in Sunday school.

Plug for Sunday school, by the way. We have a lot of fun there. Type, what is a type?

As a kid, I used to love making little models. My dad and my grandpa would buy me old

Chevys or Mustangs. I had a 67 Shelby one time that I was putting together with glue.

My fingers got stuck together for a time. Character building. That 67

Shelby model, I mean, you can get some really impressive models that are very detailed, where you're like with tweezers connecting little parts of the car together.

It's actually pretty accurate. And yet, it's not a 67 Shelby, is it? It's a type.

It's pointing to the reality. It's the only 67 Shelby I'll ever be able to afford.

But it's not a 67 Shelby. It points to it. The old covenant, as beautiful as it is, as glorious as it is, as God -ordained as it is, it's not the fulfillment of all of God's promises.

It was incomplete. It was incapable of bringing about the true and full knowledge of God.

You can say it this way, it was good for a time. For roughly a thousand years, it was good.

And God ordained it, so it was good. But it wasn't complete. It wasn't the fulfillment.

It wasn't adequate for all time. It had limitations.

Now, when you ask yourself what kind of limitations it has, I sketched out a few different points. It had moral limitations. You look at the law.

Israel, once they got the law, they became a perfect people, right? No. Israel's history is schizophrenic, roller coaster, up, down, it's like six flags.

Every time you go up and down, you're just like, what are they doing? That would have been us. The law doesn't produce moral people.

God gave them the law in order to show them who they are, but it would not make them who they would become because it was limited.

The law was a mirror that showed them all the warts. The law was a tutor that was supposed to point to Christ.

The law was a guide that was supposed to help them see the future fulfillment that was gonna come in a

Messiah, but the law was not enough. The law was not sufficient. Now, the great problem with the

Pharisees is that the Pharisees actually thought that the law was enough. In this time period, the

Pharisees were walking around, literally speaking, watching to see if someone had sinned so that they could whack them over the head.

The Pharisees had got it in their mind that if every single person in Judah, for one day, would obey the law perfectly, then the

Messiah would come. So every day at sundown, they were like, one of you sinned, and we are the moral police, and tomorrow we're gonna get you.

They actually invented the word sinners. I think I've mentioned that before. The word sinners was invented by the

Pharisees as a pejorative to people who would not follow the law because in their mind, the law was sufficient.

The law, if they would obey it, could force the Messiah's hand, and he would have to come, and he would have to take charge of his kingdom.

They missed it because the law, from their history alone, proves that it is not sufficient to produce righteousness.

Paul tells us exactly what the purpose of the law is in 1 Timothy 1, verses eight through 11.

He says, now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.

Understand this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and the profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

Paul's saying that the law is for that. The law is to identify sin. The law is not to make you righteous.

It can't, and it won't. Try. Try for a day.

Try to be perfectly loving, just that one. Try to be patient. You drive the same streets

I do, this ain't happening. The law is there to reveal sin.

The law is not to make us righteous. If it were, we would have done it. If the law could make us righteous, we would have obeyed it.

We can't. It has an inability. That's why

Jesus was born into that world. He wasn't born in the world to bring his pom -poms from heaven and cheer us on as we tried to obey the law.

He came, he obeyed, he was perfect. He did when we could not do.

He died as the only innocent one. He was the only one who was righteous because we could have never done it so that his life could be a substitute for ours.

It's one of the more subtle ways to deny the validity of who Christ is is to try to be moral in a way that you think is gonna make

God happy. To try to be perfect. I've struggled with this before. I'm like, God is angry at me.

I've gotta clean myself up. I've gotta do this. I've gotta do that. I've gotta obey, obey, obey, obey, and then

God will accept me. What a way to nullify the gospel. The point is we could never obey.

The point is one already has obeyed and he doesn't need competition. Receive his obedience.

Rest in him and don't rest in yourself. You're not sufficient.

Again, the law was limited. The temple also was limited. The temple could not do everything that the temple was pointing to.

Now, you'll remember in that time period, the temple was one of the most beautiful buildings in all of the ancient world.

The Herodian Temple complex was astounding. It had elaborate construction. It took them 47 years to build it.

It was on an elevated position. Jerusalem was built on top of a mountain hill. The temple at the highest point.

For miles and miles and miles, you could see the glory of the Jerusalem Temple and yet it was not sufficient.

It was a tourist spot, actually, until war broke out and then that sort of dampened the tourism industry in Jerusalem.

But many from the Roman Empire would come to see it. In fact, almost every writer in the ancient world mentions the temple.

It's a fascinating thing. I'll give you a few examples. Tacitus, a structure of extraordinary magnitude and beauty.

This guy lived in Rome. He saw some of the most beautiful buildings and he said, of the Jerusalem Temple, extraordinary.

Josephus, the man who saw the temple destroyed, said it was the most beautiful building in the world.

Maybe you don't take his opinion because he was a hometown guy. Be like me saying, you know,

Moxville's water tower is the greatest water tower in the world. Really? Okay, well,

Philo, an object of wonder and amazement for all who beheld it. Suetonius, a marvel of architecture and workmanship.

Cassius Dio, or Deo, a marvel of art and of unique achievement.

We can go on and on. Almost every single person who was somebody has a record of saying how beautiful and glorious the

Jerusalem Temple was, and yet it was insufficient. Because most, like is always true of God, the external is not as important as the internal.

Jesus looks at the Pharisees and says, you're like whitewashed tombs. You look nice on the outside, but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones.

That's what the temple had become at this point. An architectural triumph. And yet inside it was hollow and rotting.

The temple's purpose was to make a space for man and God to dwell together. And for years

God committed himself to dwelling inside of that temple, but it was limited because most of the population, if you and I lived in that time period, would be on the outside looking in.

God was three layers deep inside the temple so that you could not get to God. You could experience the fact that he's there, but you couldn't see him or experience him or know him.

It was only one man, one time a year, under great preparation and under the threat of death who could go in for a moment to spend time in the awesome, ferocious, holy presence of God.

And if I had to guess, this was not a moment of pride for him. This was a moment of fear and panic for him.

He didn't walk outside thinking, I got to go in and you didn't. He probably walked out thinking, oh

Lord, I didn't die. The temple could not bring the community, the people of God into intimate, close, relational presence.

There was boundaries, there was borders, there was things in the way because it was a placeholder for a greater temple, the body of Christ.

There's geographical limitations. Jerusalem was the only place where the temple sat.

So if you didn't go to Jerusalem, you couldn't know God. Think about that today. It's sort of like Islam is today.

You have to travel to a holy city to meet a holy God. Praise God that all of us in the wilderness of Massachusetts don't have to travel to Jerusalem to know our

God. The old covenant had geographical limitations. It had atonement limitations.

The sacrifices that were sacrificed, you had to keep doing them over and over and over.

The priest had to sacrifice something every single day, every day, on and on, every year, on and on because the sacrifices were not enough.

Bible says that the blood of bulls and goats is not sufficient to cleanse mankind of their sin.

So if you wanna know God, a goat and a lamb's not gonna get you there, at least not permanently, at least not perfectly.

There was a priestly limitation. You had the Levitical priest who were trying to serve God's people and some of them get swallowed by earth because they're immoral.

You have the Aaronic priest who some of them get struck dead in the holy place because they're immoral. You have limited men who are supposed to act as a mediator of God and the people and yet they're totally limited.

The feast, every year you have to do the same feast over and over, they weren't sufficient.

All of it was a picture that was supposed to remind you of what's coming but not replace what is coming.

I've shared this example before, I think it's great. If I were to get deployed right now, my wife would probably look at her phone and she would look at a picture of me.

You know, there's, she'd probably do that. I was gonna make a joke but I'm gonna not do that. She'd probably listen to her voicemail and listen to that smooth

Southern drawl that I've got and she would say, I miss that man. But how weird would it be when

I get back from deployment if I can't get her attention, I'm like, honey, I wanna tell you all the things that happened.

I'm looking at your picture. I'm listening to your voicemail. Man, that really, it really does it for me.

That's not a replacement. It's a small thing to cling to in moments of desperation to get you to the point where you have the real thing.

How much better, how much more so is that true of God who gave them small trinkets, small pictures, small things to cling to for generations and for centuries and for decades until God in the flesh showed up in front of them.

Which is why it's such an awful, awful rejection when the people who had the picture rejected the one

God who came in the flesh. Again, the temple was limited, the whole

Old Testament covenant was limited. It just wasn't sufficient, which is why

Jesus came. That's the reminder. We're looking at the old covenant. It's a good thing,

God gave it to them, but it's limited. It can't complete them. So when Jesus is looking at his disciples and he's telling them, if you've seen me, you've seen the father, if you would have known me, then you would have truly known the father.

He is turning the page of covenantal history and he's saying that the old covenant times are finished, the temple, the reality of that is complete.

I am now the way that you know God. There is no way, I am the way, I am the truth,

I am the life, no one comes to the father except through me. He's closing out old covenant history and he's saying that now everything is wrapped up in me, which means that all the law, the fast, the feast, the priest, the temple, all of it finds its culmination in Christ.

So that if you wanna know God, you have to know Jesus. If you wanna know

God, you wanna have intimate knowledge of him, if you wanna be known by him, if you wanna have fellowship with him, if you wanna come into his family, you can't do that through legalism, moralism, religion, or any of it else.

You have to come in through Christ and it's an exclusive way and it's a jealous way.

It's an exclusive way because it's only Christ. It's a jealous way because it's only Christ.

And how many of us, how many in the world today get this wrong? We create these sort of Jesus plus religions.

Back in their time, it was Jesus plus the temple. There was a group actually called the Judaizers. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're so grateful

Jesus did all this, but still gotta go to the temple. Still gotta circumcise our kids.

Gentiles, by the way, you gotta circumcise your kids or else you're going to hell. Jesus didn't fulfill all that stuff.

He came as an addition to all of that stuff. It's Jesus plus the Old Testament. That's what the Judaizers believed.

And Paul excoriates them. You like that, don't you? It's a good word. He excoriates them for that sort of false belief.

But Jesus plus -ism isn't dead today. It didn't die with the book of Galatians. Jesus plus -ism is alive and well.

You look at Jesus plus the Pope, Jesus plus tradition, Jesus plus the sacraments.

You can't know God at all unless you've been baptized or unless you commune or unless you have your last rites.

Baptism is a good thing. The Bible says that baptism saves, but not in the way that they're talking. That sort of Jesus plus religion is alive and well in the

Romanist church. It's not dead, though, in evangelicalism.

There's other sorts of Jesus plus -isms. I'll give you one, Jesus plus experiences, Jesus plus evidentialism or experientialism.

We know the reality of who God is by how we feel. If I get those certain spirit bumps during worship, if the music causes me to sway in a certain way, that God was really there that day.

Really? Because we set an atmosphere, because we welcomed the

Holy Spirit, he necessarily came, because we walked out on the waters, because we did our thing, now

God is more real, more present. Because I had a better experience, God is more present. Isn't God present fully everywhere?

Doesn't the Bible say that my heart is the fickle, frail problem?

That my discernment of reality is the problem? If I walk out of here and I haven't had an experience with God, it does not mean that God wasn't present in this place.

Because God promised that he would be present when his people gather. The problem is me.

It's not our worship, it's not how loud we sing or how much we pray. All of these different, the problem is me or we.

Jesus plus experiences. This is why auditoriums turn the lights down.

You know, can I diatribe for a second? Beethoven, Handel, Bach, these great men who loved

God were innovators. They created some of the heights of music. Beautiful, you listen to Bach, you can listen to some songs of Bach, forward and backward, and they make sense both ways.

You can take them and splice them all together. Mathematically genius, these songs.

And now today, we're not innovating anymore. We've taken secular, secular habits and we've brought them into the church.

The lights, the show, those were in concerts before they were in churches. We've adopted pagan practices to create experiences.

I can go to an opera, I can go to a rock concert, I can go to a country music festival, and I can have my heart moved by the music.

That's not an indication of whether I've had an encounter with the living God. We've brought paganism into the church and we've rubber stamped it as Christianity and it needs to end.

Because the true knowledge of God comes through Jesus Christ, not through our machinations or our musicality.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one has the knowledge of the

Father, but through him. Jesus doesn't want us thinking that we can find our salvation through experiences or through the law or through self -fulfillment or through morality or through performance or experiences or relationships or the right church or the right church.

He wants us to find our identity and our reality in him. Again, morality is a good thing.

We should be moral. I would never say, hey, because Jesus rose from the dead, go be immoral. Paul says,

God forbid. Don't make your identity about your morality, though. Don't make your identity about how good you are.

Your identity is how good he is. Church buildings are a good thing.

We come here to gather. Praise God on a day like today, we're not outside. But those things can't save you.

Performing, doing, obeying, building, striving, none of that can save you. It's Christ who saves.

Your politics can't save you. How many years do we have to go through election cycles to realize that that is true?

I'm a conservative. I like, I tend to lean towards the Republican Party, but they're not my idol.

They don't save anything. Christ alone saves. I don't put my hope in them. The world will be saved through Jesus Christ and nothing else.

He is the way, he is the truth, he is the life. No man comes to the Father except through him.

Now, Jesus not only speaks in those sort of exclusive terms, he also speaks in very conditional terms, which

I think is fascinating. He says, if you had known me, then you would have known the

Father. He who has seen me has seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

These sort of conditional realities, he's saying to the disciples, if you wanna know God, then you have to know me.

If you don't know me, you will not know God. That's the condition. If you want a true experience, you need to know

Christ and the power of his resurrection. If you wanna be in with God, you cannot be only out with Christ.

That's the point Jesus is making. Now, the question we have to ask ourself today is how do we know

Christ? Because if you have to know Christ in order to know God, then the next question is how do we know

Christ? The Bible also tells us very clearly that we don't and we can't in our own strength and our own ability.

Let me put forward one example. Philip is one of the 12 disciples. He's been with Jesus for three years at this point.

He's seen him break bread and make enough out of a few loaves to feed 5 ,000 people.

He's seen Jesus cast out demons. He's seen Jesus disappear out of thin air when a crowd was trying to push

Jesus off a cliff. He's seen things that you and I have never seen. He's had experience with Jesus that we've never had.

He must know what Jesus is talking about. He had a better chance than we did.

He had a better opportunity than we did. He had more information than we did. Look at what Philip says. Right after Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the

Father. If you wanna know me, or if you wanna know the Father, you have to know me, Philip says, Lord, just show us the

Father and that will be enough. Jesus is like, how long have you been with me?

I just got through saying if you wanna know the Father, you gotta know me and now you're saying just show me the Father? How long have you been with me and yet you have not come to know me,

Philip? You wanna see the Father and yet you don't know me. He who has seen me has seen the

Father. How can you say show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and that the

Father is in me? This is so typical. Nicodemus, the great scholar of Israel doesn't know the things of God.

He says, what do you mean? What do you mean I must be born again? Jesus is like, and you're the teacher of Israel? Best example, none of us are on Nicodemus' level, like probably memorized the first five books of the

Old Testament, probably knew most of the Psalms by heart through singing them, probably knew most of the

Proverbs and was very conversant with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Habakkuk. Can you right now on a dime outline the book of Habakkuk for me in detail?

Nicodemus, good. We're not on his level. I can't. Sometimes I can barely say it.

Pharisees, Pharisees, and again, top -notch theologians and scholars do not understand Christ.

The disciples who were with him for three years do not understand Christ. Jesus says in John 2 that he knows the heart of man and because of that, he's not entrusting himself to it.

What is the point? Paul even tells us this, that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us are dead.

All of us are dull. There's not a single one of us by our own strength, by our own will, by our own power who can come to know

Jesus. We can't. Which strikes against much of evangelicalism that says turn your eyes upon Jesus.

I have decided to follow Jesus. No, you didn't. Because in your flesh, you would have never decided to follow

Jesus. All to him, how's it go?

Oh, I surrender all. No, you don't. I always, we don't sing the song here, but if we did,

I always sing, I surrender some. I surrender some.

We don't surrender all. Our heart is selfish, prideful, self -serving at best.

No one seeks after God. Not Peter, not Thomas, not Philip, not Saul of Tarsus. The only people who seek after Christ are those people that Christ has first sought after them.

We read today, he comes to seek and save the lost. We do not seek Christ.

Remember the irony of this passage. Verse seven is astounding. If you had known me, you would have known my father also.

From now on, you see that? From now on, you know him. That sounds like a curve ball, like Jesus kind of misspoke there.

If you would have known me, you'd have known the father, but from now on, you'll know me. What are you saying,

Jesus? He's saying that the knowledge of God is not dependent upon your power and your strength and your seeking and your striving.

It's dependent upon the declaration of Christ. In your strength, if you would have known me, you'd have known the father, but you can't.

Now, Jesus declares from now on, my people will know the father. My people will see the father because salvation is not based on our declaration of allegiance to Jesus.

It's based off his commitment to us. Before Philip said the dumbest thing that he said in the

Gospels, Christ makes this statement. Before Philip said, show us the father,

Jesus says, from now on, you will. Then Philip says something dumb, and Jesus chides him for it.

But remember, Jesus announced that he would see the father before he said the dumb thing. That's awesome.

Before Peter denies Jesus three times, Jesus already said, you're gonna see the father. Before the disciples scatter and act like cowards,

Jesus says, you're gonna see the father. Before they huddle together in a dark room, afraid of their own shadow,

Jesus says, you're gonna see the father. From now on, you will know God. Future tense, you will know

God, and you will see God because you will know me. The promise is that Jesus is gonna make a way for sinful people who don't seek him, don't love him, don't worship him, don't care for him, don't chase after him to know

God. How is that the case? Well, we see it all throughout the

Scriptures, how God is going to bridge this chasm.

For instance, Ephesians 1, God chose us before the foundations of the world to be saved, before we did anything, before we said anything, before we thought anything, before a single diaper was changed, before the positive sign on the pregnancy test.

He chose us to be saved, before we did anything, which means it's not dependent upon anything that we've done.

Ephesians 1, 7, he not only chose us before the foundation of the world, Christ came and paid for that salvation in space and time.

So 2 ,000 years ago, not only saved in eternity, but it was paid for 2 ,000 years ago on the cross.

Have you ever been to Kmart? I grew up in North Carolina, we had Kmart. I used to remember going with my mom at Christmas time where she would go to the layaway section and I knew there was something special behind it.

She'd go, find those doors, something for me. It was hers and yet she was paying for it over time.

God declared you were his, Christ paid for you in time and then at some point in your life, you came to know

God. And what I find so fascinating about this is that we're just like Philip.

We've said a lot of boneheaded things. But yet in eternity,

God saved us. 2 ,000 years ago, Christ paid for it and in space and time, at some point in your life, you came to know him.

I find it a pattern that everybody goes through a period of ignorance even though they're his.

If you're a Christian today, you were always a Christian. If you're a Christian right now, you were claimed in eternity.

You were never not going to be his. The Bible says there's lost sheep.

The Bible doesn't say that goats become sheep. If you're a lost sheep, you will eventually become a found sheep. So you're his, even though you don't know it.

I was 23, 22 years old before the Lord woke me up.

I was dead before that, yet I was his, already paid for by Jesus. We are like Peter, go through years of denying him and not understanding him before finally he wakes us up and he shows us,

I've been doing this for centuries to bring you to myself. You think you woke up and discovered something?

You think you had a bright idea in church one morning to say, I think I better raise my hand and follow

Jesus today? When you realize that for centuries and millennia, all the way back into eternity, that work was already being done for you, you just woke up to it.

You just realized it. When we wake up on an operating table and the doctor says, I got the cancer, time didn't start in that moment.

They were there for hours working on you. In the same way, before you come to know

Christ, he's doing things, drawing you to himself. John 6, this great passage,

John 6, 44, it says this, no one can come to me, that's

Jesus, unless the father who sent me draws him. That word draw, we've talked about it before, means drag.

It means tie a rope around you and pull you through the streets, kind of drag. So when

Jesus says, you have to know me in order to know the father, the father says you can't, so I'm gonna have to drag you to Jesus.

Think about what's going on here. How much of you is in that equation?

You must know Jesus, but you can't. So God drags you to Jesus, puts the paddles on your heart, wakes you up, and then you see

Jesus, and you're like, I have decided. And all of that was about Jesus.

All of that was about what God had done in your life. God dragged your rotting soul to Christ, and then

Christ nailed your corpse to the cross with him, and then he dragged you down to the grave with him, and by the power of the

Holy Spirit, he pulled you out. You did nothing, and he did everything.

From now on, you will know, Christians, the knowledge of God, because God willed it to be so,

Christ paid for it to be so, and the Holy Spirit poured out his love on you to make it so.

The only thing Jonathan Edwards says, and he's right, that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.

So when you ask yourself, what did you do to be saved? I have three answers for you.

You did nothing, you did nothing, you did nothing. He did everything, amen.

Now, what does that mean? As we close, for the Christians in this room, that means you're new, you're new creations.

That means that you have a new heart, you have new affections, because you're like a flashlight that had no batteries. You can go outside all you want and try to find your lost keys with that.

You're not going to. It took God putting the batteries in to wake you up so that you would shine for him. But now that the batteries are in, now that you're new, there's new things about you, you have new affections and blessings.

You now find Christ radiant and beautiful in your sin, you find abhorrent and ugly. You now long to know him, yearn to see him, desire to be with him more than ever.

You now love the holiness of God in a way that you used to hate, and you now hate the sin of man that you used to love.

One of the greatest proofs of whether you're a Christian is do you love Jesus? Now, I'm not talking perfectly.

I'm saying, do you love Jesus? Do you find him beautiful? Do you find him glorious?

Do you still act like you're dead or do you have a faint little heartbeat that's going on inside of you? And I want you to know, you don't have to be fully formed yet.

None of us are fully formed, but is there a tiny spark inside of you that says, I love Jesus? It's not a lot yet.

Maybe it feels like it's choked out by a lot of things right now, but is it there? Do you love Jesus, at least in an infinite or in a sort of small way, like a little tiny ember that's gonna turn into a great forest fire?

Do you have him in that sort of way? Because if you don't, if you don't care for him, if you don't care for righteousness, if you don't care for his kingdom, if you don't care for the things of God, you do not know him.

At least not yet. But if that spark is in there, if that little flame is in there, if that weird moment has happened to you, that's happened to all of us at some point, you're like,

I don't want to sin right now, but I used to. And gosh,

I want to go to church. I want to read the Bible, but I have no idea what it's talking about.

But I want to keep going. If you have that, it's evidence to the fact that he's awakened you, that he loves you, and that what's been going on for centuries and millennia, you're now awake to and alive to.

Praise God for that. That's the knowledge of God. That's the relational, intimate affection that Christ has given for you that lets you know you're his.

If you love him, obey him, serve him, it lets you know that you're his.

If you're here and you're like, none of that applies to me, I don't want to be here.

Someone tricked me. Someone promised me that we would go to a nice restaurant afterwards, and I am just enduring your blathering.

If that's you, if that's you, I pray that God would arrest your soul, that he would wake you up, and that he would give you the knowledge of God, because my words can't do it.

Your ability can't do it. Your desire can't do it. You can't impress anyone in this room.

You can't impress God. If you are gonna be his, it's gonna be because he grabbed hold of you and claimed you as his own.

I pray that for you if that's you. That's the knowledge of God. That's the knowledge

I pray for us, and that's the knowledge I pray we grow in. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, as we end, let us rejoice in the knowledge of God, being reminded that the temple's not enough, the priesthood's not enough, the feast and the

Passovers and the festivals were not enough. None of it was enough, and yet,

Lord, you use that as a picture of who you are. It's just the right time you came, and you crucified our sin on the cross, and you traded places with us, giving us your perfect righteousness, and you dragged us down into the grave, and you rose us up, and at some point in our life, you gave us the

Holy Spirit of God to show us that we belong to you, and Lord God, I pray for everyone who's here that if we are yours, then the love of self, the love of the world, the love of the flesh, the love of all of these different things that are competing for our affections,

Lord, I pray that they would die a thousand deaths. I pray that the knowledge of God knowing you, being in relationship with you would be our primary and chief concern.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and Lord, we know that if we will devote ourselves to glorifying you, we will have joy, a joy that the world just can't give.