Special Episode I: Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. Every year we want to take a few weeks and highlight some of the material we produce outside of our podcast network.

This week, it's Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically. Because we're highlighting the study on the Whole Council, we've knocked the price of it down 10%.

You can see that reflected at Mediagratia .org or just click the link in the description of this episode.

We're on a train car in Chicago to discuss the life and ministry of A .W.

Tozer. In the late 1940s, Tozer, a relatively unknown pastor in Southside Chicago, was struggling under an increasing burden.

He wrote, The sight of the languishing church around me, and the operation of a new spiritual power within me, have set up a pressure impossible to resist.

This burden resulted in the writing of a book, but it came about in an uncommon way.

Tozer received an invitation to preach in McCullen, Texas. The long train ride from Chicago afforded the busy pastor an opportunity to put his thoughts down on paper.

Alone on the train, with only his Bible, Tozer began to pour out his concerns. He wrote all day, ate a piece of toast in his room for supper, and then wrote throughout the night.

He said that the words came to him as quickly as he could jot them down, so full was his heart. When the train pulled into Texas the next morning, the rough draft of the book was complete.

Published in 1949, the book was entitled The Pursuit of God. It was immediately recognized as a spiritual classic.

In the last 60 years, nearly 2 million copies have been printed in 20 languages. Few books of the 20th century have given a clearer message to the church concerning her need to return to the

God of the Bible. Rethinking God, and returning to a life of worship and intimacy with Him, was the theme of Tozer's entire ministry.

He wrote, The gravest question before the church is always God Himself, and the most critical fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives

God to be like. Always the most revealing thing about the church, he said, is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech.

Tozer was born in a small farming community in Pennsylvania in 1897.

As a boy, he attended the grammar school, but that was the extent of his formal education, though he later received two honorary doctorate degrees.

Tozer's grandmother was the major spiritual influence in his youth. She taught him about God, and she encouraged him to educate himself.

After his father suffered a mental breakdown, much of the responsibility of the family farm rested on young Tozer's shoulders.

He was delighted when at the age of 14 the family left the farm and moved to Akron, Ohio.

At 17, he was working for the Goodyear Tire Company. On his way home one day, he heard the street preacher crying out, "'If you don't know how to be saved,' he said, "'just call on God, saying,

God, be merciful to me, a sinner, and God will hear you.'" Those words haunted him, and when he arrived home, he headed straight for the attic and there met with God, who mercifully heard his plea.

From that point forward, he had an insatiable appetite to know God for himself. As a young man,

Tozer had thirsted for adventure. After conversion, this desire wasn't lessened, but rather it was turned fully to the pursuit of God.

He was very practical in this pursuit. In his crowded home, he cleared a place behind the boiler in the basement where he would spend hours alone with God.

He described himself as being a thirst for God, and not satisfied until he had drunk deep of the fountain of living water.

A .W. Tozer married in 1918, and he and his new bride soon embarked on an evangelistic campaign in West Virginia.

It was there that Tozer first began to preach. The young couple became involved with the Christian and Missionary Alliance churches.

Tozer's first pastorate was in West Virginia. He later pastored churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Toronto.

But most of his ministry was spent at the Southside Alliance Church here in Chicago. In spite of being a pastor in one of the busiest cities of America, Tozer poured himself into prayer, the study of scripture, and the practice of the presence of God.

The adoration of God was the heartbeat of his life. Worship was his lifestyle, not merely a

Sunday activity. He came to his office each morning, shut the door, laid face down on the floor, and spent the morning lost in the wonder of God.

Once he was so engrossed in the worship of God that he missed a conference session when he was the scheduled speaker.

I had a more important appointment was his only excuse. Tozer also devoured the

Christian classics. He made the men and women of the past who were consumed with love to God to be his constant companions.

Along with his duties as pastor, he became the editor of the Alliance Weekly, the denominational paper for the

Christian and Missionary Alliance churches. He was a popular conference speaker and an author of nine books during his lifetime, though over 30 more were published from his articles and sermons after his death.

He became the prophetic voice for American evangelicalism. His book,

The Pursuit of God, brought Tozer into contact with men and women across the globe, whose heart beat like his.

The fellowship of the burning heart, he called them, those who had tasted God and hungered for more.

In 1963, at the age of 66, Tozer died of a heart attack. His small grave marker reads,

A. W. Tozer, a man of God. What was it that captivated this man? What made him an influential

Christian who is still influencing others through his books and sermons? The answer can be found in something

Tozer once wrote, I am convinced that the lack of great saints in this day is due at least in part to our unwillingness to give sufficient time to the cultivation of the knowledge of God.

Tozer was willing to devote a lifetime to that cultivation. He once wrote in a prayer,

Oh God, I have tasted thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.

Show me thy glory, I pray thee, that I may know thee indeed. It is that mighty hunger for God himself that we will be considering together in this week's lesson.

After God brought Israel out of its Egyptian bondage, the people began their life with the

Lord with an astonishingly foolish choice. They decided that having been brought out by God, that while Moses was on the mount for 40 days, that the best thing to do would be to worship

God in a form that was more acceptable to them, something that they were familiar with. And so they got

Aaron to build a golden calf. God was so displeased with this idolatrous choice that he threatened to destroy

Israel. Moses intercedes on the mountain with God and God promises mercy.

But another thing about the story in Exodus 33 is that Moses is not satisfied simply to have

God offer mercy again to the people of Israel. But Moses asks a request for himself.

And the request is this, Lord, if I have found favor in thy sight, please show me your glory.

It's quite an amazing request when you think of the life of Moses. Hadn't Moses already seen the glory of God in a burning bush?

Hadn't Moses already seen the glory of God demonstrated in 10 powerful plagues which humiliated the gods of Egypt and rescued the

Israelites? Hadn't Moses already seen the Red Sea parted, the people of God brought over safely, and later the armies of Egypt drowned?

And yet Moses wants more. Show me your glory.

Years later, a young king named David wrote in Psalm 27, one thing

I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the

Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty, the beauty of the

Lord. Later in the psalm he writes this, when you said, seek my face, my heart said to you,

Lord, your face I will seek. Now that's not a desire, a longing that's confined to the

Old Testament saint. In the New Covenant fullness we find the same thing. Many examples, we'll just give one for tonight.

The apostle Paul, 30 years after the ascension of Christ, decades after Paul himself had been conquered by the love of Christ, turned from an enemy to a minister of the gospel.

He writes from a Roman jail to the small church in Philippi, and in one of those rare moments where he gives an autobiographical statement,

Paul says this in chapter three, the book of Philippians, indeed I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my

Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain

Christ, that I may know him. This is a common thread for the believers throughout the

Bible, this mighty longing to know God more, to grow in an intimate and personal awareness of God, but it doesn't stop with the closing of scripture.

We might give many illustrations from church history, just one from the 17th century, a

Baptist pastor named John Bunyan, who spent a number of years in prison for the crime of preaching, he wrote of the goodness and the desirability of God, and this is what he said,

God is the only desirable good, nothing without him is worthy of our hearts.

The life, the glory, the blessedness, the soul satisfying goodness that is in God are beyond expression, but it's not just the ancient world, in the mid -20th century a pastor whom we'll be speaking of often named

A. W. Tozer in Chicago wrote this prayer at the end of a chapter in his book,

The Pursuit of God, oh God, he prays, I have tasted thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.

I want to want thee, I long to be filled with longing, show me thy glory,

I pray thee, that so I may know thee indeed. This unashamed pursuit of an intimate and personal knowledge of God, this mighty burden to know

God better as a believer, a burden that cannot be lifted by anything less than that one -on -one contact with our creator, this is what we've come together to study and to consider, this is what we've come together to stir each other up to pursue.

I think though we have to admit that sadly words like these might seem a bit strange to us today in church, we may think that these writers were exaggerating, we may feel that they were using poetic license in describing the greatness of God and the desire of their own hearts, we may feel that they were letting their emotions run away with them, but there is another answer.

The difference between what we see as normal Christianity and the statements that these believers made might be rooted in the fact that they knew

God in a way that we in our day have only read about. During these twelve studies together we want to seek the

Lord the way they did. Like Moses, we want to plead to God, yes, you've given us favor in Christ, please show us your glory.

Like David, we come to God and desire to have responsive hearts. When you say, seek my face,

Lord, my heart says, your face I will seek. Like Paul, we want to count all things in comparison to knowing

Christ as garbage. Like John Bunyan, we want to be able to say, I have tasted and found that God is so good that his goodness, his satisfying goodness is beyond expression.

And like A .W. Tozer, we want to say to God, we long to be filled with a holy longing that can only be met in Him.

So, it may be that the gap between what we experience as Christians and what we read in the

Bible and in church history of the great longing of the saints is rooted in the fact that they knew God better, but there is another and more tragic possibility.

It may be that the God that they knew was the God of the Bible and the God that we hold in our minds, the idea that we have fashioned of God, even as believers, may be so far beneath the biblical account of God, that no one would say,

I count all things lost to know the God that we have in our imagination, that no one would say, having been given favor, oh

God, show me your glory, that no one would set their heart to a pursuit of the God, the small and inadequate view of God that we hold.

So we want to make sure that in this study, that it is the God of the Bible that we're pursuing.

I know that passion is a word that is valued in Christianity today.

You can't go to any bookstore without finding the chapters or the titles of books with passion written in it.

But passion is not enough if you're passionate about a God that doesn't exist. If we're passionate about a

God of our imagination, if we're passionate about a God that has been passed down to us from our culture, but this is not the

God of the Bible, it doesn't do any good to run passionately on a wrong road. So to help us, in our study, in the early weeks, we'll be looking at some basic truths that we've got to really get under our belt if we're to understand and to benefit from the passages in the

Bible where God describes himself. After those early weeks, then we'll have the middle section of the study, we'll be mainly concerned with the tools that God has given us to get to know him, and then the last section of our weeks together, we'll be looking at the practical applications of the character of God brought down into every area of our life, the individual, the family, the church.

Well today we want to look at some of the truths that we need to really get a grip on and truths that we want to grip us.

We have five tonight. Let me give you the first. The first truth, if we're to really get to know

God and to pursue a clear and biblical view of him is this. We must understand that the most significant thing about us, the most significant thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of the word

God. Now this is true for all people and not just for those that claim to be

Christians. Because it's always true that a man or a woman or a child will make choices based on their general idea of what

God must be like. Even an atheist has a type of religion based on the thought that God doesn't exist and based on the non -existence of God, the atheist will make certain decisions.

He makes decisions in his home, he makes decisions at work. The Muslim makes certain decisions based on his view of his

God. The Christian makes decisions based on his view of his God. What you think of God is the most distinguishing thing about you.

Education, race, age, none of these are so distinguishing as what we deep down really believe

God to be. Because it affects everything. Everything will flow from that. So what is your view of God?

Now I'm not asking you what your official view of God is. That is, I don't want a Sunday school answer.

We don't want to ask ourselves, what does my church say that I'm supposed to believe about God?

We don't want to ask ourselves, what does my denomination say that we believe about God? What do the books on my shelf say that I believe about God?

What do my parents say I'm supposed to believe about God? The question is, what do you really believe and think of when you think of God?

Now, our true view of God is not so easy to spot as our denominational statements or creeds or confessions.

Our true view of God might remain hidden under a great pile of religious rubble, phrases that we pick up from church and from Christian radio, things that we say that sound good, but it really masks what we think.

So if you're going to really understand what you think about God, it'll probably take a courageous and determined search of your own heart.

But whatever you find your view of God to be, it is the most distinguishing thing, the most important thing about your life.

Let me give you a second truth. Knowing God is the great jewel of Christianity.

Yes, we're thankful for the many other things that have come from the cross of Christ, but they all lead to this great source.

They all lead to knowing God. I know that we live in a day where even in the churches it seems that the idea of knowing

God, personally knowing God, the idea is that this is such an easy thing.

It's like bumping into someone on the street. A child comes to the pastor and says, I don't want to go to the hell that you talked about.

I want the heaven you talked about. I want the friend you talked about. I want the happiness you talked about. Those are all good things.

And the pastor says, generally, depending on the church tradition, you need to join the church or you need to get baptized or you need to say these words after me.

You need to ask Christ into your heart. Whatever it is, and you know him. And the implication then is, that's the end of the journey.

But it's a wrong view. We take for granted that everyone in our church knows

God. We sit down, we look to the left and to the right, there are people, they're all cleaned up, they're all nice looking, they're our friends and family, and we really have a hard time imagining that anybody on the pew next to us, anybody in our small group, may not know

God. Knowing God, in our day, is the easiest thing in the world. Some of the symptoms of this, the flippancy in our worship, the casualness with which we stroll up to God in our prayers, the boredom that we display with the

Bible, unless the preacher's giving us the four steps to how you can be happy. In reality though, knowing

God is no small matter. I wonder, are we so casual with God because we, in the 21st century, know him so well?

Or is it because we hardly know him in our churches at all?

It's no small matter to know God. Let me give you a few verses that will help us to see this. The first is found in John chapter 17, and it shows us this.

In order for people like you, in order for a person like me, to know a

God like that, God must entrust all authority into the hands of his son, the

God -man, as he goes to the cross. Anything less than that, anything less than all divine authority, is not enough to accomplish what had to be accomplished for you to know him.

Christ prays in John chapter 17, in verse 1, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son, that your son may also glorify you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Do you see what he says there? Did you catch that? Father, you have given me all the authority so that I can bring people to know you.

And this is eternal life, not a long existence in paradise. Eternal life is knowing my

Father, Christ says, and knowing me. It's not a small thing to know

God. Let me give you another evidence of that. In Philippians 3, the passage we read from Paul, I want us to go back there and see that knowing

God has a beginning. It does, doesn't it? In conversion, when a person comes to Christ in a repentant faith and embraces

Christ for who he is and lays down at his feet all that we are.

But that's the introduction to God. It's not the entire relationship.

It's the beginning. I've never met a young couple who are getting married, and they are satisfied to come together for the marriage ceremony, and then leave the building and go in opposite directions on planet earth and never see each other again.

But that's the kind of Christianity that we often have. Come, ask Christ to save you, trust him to do that.

And you are a shoo -in for heaven. What more? Well, it would be good if you joined the church, it would be good if you worked, put your shoulder to the wheel, look at all these other

Christians, giving, working, don't you want to be one of them? Well, yes, I suppose I ought to. But what about longing to know

God better? Well, you already have God. Now it's not that we say this to people, but it's the implication of the way we act.

The introduction is everything. But Paul is so different. Years he has known

Christ. Who would we think knows Christ better than Paul? Would any of us say,

I think that my experiences of God are probably more glorious than Paul's experiences in 20 years of the ministry?

Who like Paul saw the glory of Christ, demonstrated in the way he conquered people, conquered families, conquered cities?

Who like Paul had a clear grasp of the doctrines of the Bible, Old Testament, how they wove together and brought them to Christ, New Testament events, how to interpret them?

He wrote half the New Testament. And yet Paul says, 30 years after Christ has ascended to the

Philippians, if you want to know really what goes on on the inside of your pastor,

I'll tell you, I'm still counting everything else as loss, even the good things in my past.

I look away from them in order that I might have more of Christ.

I want to know him. Let me give you another evidence that the knowledge of God is not a small matter.

It is a knowledge that can flourish even in the worst spiritual environment.

If the knowledge of God is an easy thing to get and it's a small matter, then I suppose it would be easily snuffed out and discouraged.

But that is not what we find in the Bible. It is not pleasant, easy circumstances that we find the knowledge of God growing in.

It's not only in good churches. It's not only in the New Testament when there seems to be a great revival of religion under the preaching of the apostles.

It's not only when David is king and he's pointing the nation to God. People in the worst churches, in the worst families, living at the worst time can cultivate a growing intimacy with the uncreated

God. Hosea the prophet preaches during a time when Israel is so idolatrous,

God compares her to an adulterous wife who has been brought out of a filthy lifestyle, but after living a while with a clean husband, she grows bored and bold and goes back to the old life.

Over and over God draws her to himself. She goes back again. The prophet is sent with a number of threatening messages, but in chapter 6 of the book of Hosea, Hosea is sent with a message from God to entice his adulterous bride.

And Hosea says in this passage this. He says, yes, God has torn us, but he will heal us. He's wounded us, but he'll be merciful.

He's withdrawn that presence, but he'll come back. So in verse 3, let us know.

Let us press on to know the Lord, for his going forth is as certain as the dawn, and he will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain that waters the earth.

Nothing in our Christianity can be compared with the jewel of knowing him, really knowing him forever, regardless of our situation.

But if that's going to really be our pursuit for these 12 studies, I think we have to be realists and we're going to have to face a couple of hard facts.

And that brings us to the third great fact. The third great fact is this, that we do live in a day when the truth, that the knowledge of God is not a small matter and it is the great treasure of the

Christian life. When that truth has been replaced by pursuits of secondary matters in Christianity.

So certainly I think we would have to be honest and say that the early days of the 21st century have been days when, especially in America and in the

West, there has been a very aggressive rethinking of things in Christianity.

Rethinking worship styles, rethinking inner city church plants, rethinking how we raise a family.

These things are all good, it was good to rethink them, but the problem is they're just not radical enough.

No matter how much you change the worship style, no matter how differently you approach inner city missions, no matter how differently you raise your family now than you did before, no matter how radical the changes in these external areas, it's not radical enough because it's the root problem that we need to deal with before the fruit can be made right.

For all of our thinking, it seems that we're only dealing with the externals.

So when we consider a pursuit of a high and biblical view of God, when we consider the duty of rethinking

God biblically, we need what one historian, Mark Knoll, referred to as a

Luther -like Copernican revolution, and we'll talk about Luther in later studies.

So let's just take this term, Copernican revolution. What about Copernicus? Well, I did a little study today to make sure that my ignorance didn't show.

He was born in 1473, he died in 1543, a Renaissance astronomer.

Now most of us know a little bit about him. Copernicus goes out, and in the time of the Renaissance, as man is searching and pushing the edges of human knowledge, he views the night sky.

With the precision he records and studies the movement of the planets, and he comes to the revolutionary discovery that the earth is not the center of the solar system.

It's not the center of the universe. That may seem silly to us, but it was news for them.

His book was published right before he died in 1543. He didn't get in trouble because he died, because the man that followed him and carried forth this idea a little more, named

Galileo, did get in trouble. Sadly, the Renaissance church, the

Roman Catholic church, misinterpreting certain passages in the Bible, condemned the idea that the sun was the center of the solar system and that our earth was orbiting the sun.

They said, no, that doesn't sound right to us. We believe that God said in the Bible, which he didn't, that the sun orbits the earth.

The earth is the center. Up to that point, they were confused.

Now, what we need is a spiritual Copernicus. What you need is to go to the scriptures and study the scriptures, especially those passages which describe

God, with as much precision and determination as Copernicus studied the night sky, until you have a

Copernican revolution. What I mean is this, in our day, we've been told, even by the church, that we are the center of the universe.

Me, my spiritual needs, my eternal destination, that's what's important.

My family, my town, my friends, our church, our denomination, our nation is the center of all creation, and we all fall right in line with that.

But we must lovingly and humbly go back and say it's a lie.

Everything in church, everything at home, everything in the individual life must orbit

God. We need a Copernican revolution. We need to see that planet earth is not the center, that we are not the center, that you are not the center of God's universe.

Now the church is a little confused. Taking the passages of the Bible that speak of the amazing, condescending love of God, that he knows your name, he knows your needs, he has given his son for your sin.

Knowing these things, the church has taken a mistaken step and said that God is centered around us, but it's wrong.

We need to go back to the Bible and to see God for who he is until he acquires in our eyesight such spiritual mass that he pulls every area of our life into his orbit.

Let me give you the fourth truth. Knowing God is costly. Don't fool yourself.

If you want to know him, you will have to lay all that you are and all that you plan to be and all that you have on the table.

If at any moment you pull it back, you're finished knowing God. There's no progress there.

He will reveal himself to his children, but he will not reveal himself unless he has access, full access to you.

But it's worth it. Nothing is more directly beneficial than knowing God. Nothing is more practical.

Nothing is more relevant. Nothing is more exciting. Nothing is more satisfying than you knowing the uncreated being through his son.

That leads us to our last point. The last truth is a warning.

If you're to know God as the believer longs to know God, you must avoid the counterfeit versions of knowing

God. There are ways of appearing to know God, which like a counterfeit from a distance, appear to be the real thing.

They look good and you will get praised by people for them, even in church. But God knows you don't know him and you know that it's not satisfying.

Something's wrong. There are three counterfeits I want to mention. The first is this, knowing

God by hearsay. Now, this is where you say, well, when someone asks you a spiritual question, you say to them, well, my preacher said, or I read in a book once, or I remember my mother used to say.

Now, it's good to learn from other people. But if you want to know God, don't you want something other than secondhand knowledge?

Don't you want something other than hearsay? You only know God by what you read in someone else's book.

You only know God by what you heard in someone else's sermon. It's all secondhand. They pressed in, they pressed on to know

God. You read the fruit of that and you think that you know God, but you don't.

Secondhand knowledge, knowing God by hearsay, is not enough. If you're satisfied to know

God by hearsay, it is the death of really knowing him. You'll stop short. Second, textualism.

Strange thing. It just means this, you own a Bible and you're a conservative

Christian, so you say, I give my allegiance to this book and whatever's inside this book,

I'm telling you, I agree with it. Now, I'm not saying I know it. I haven't said I've studied it carefully, but if it's in this book,

I'm for it. And so the preacher says, or a friend says, you know, in Ephesians 3, Paul talks about knowing the love of God, the length, the breadth, the height, the depth that is beyond knowledge.

And being filled up with all the fullness of God, that he might receive glory in the church for ages on ages.

And you say, well listen, I'm sorry, maybe you didn't hear me. I believe this book. And I don't remember

Ephesians saying that. I haven't read Ephesians, perhaps, I haven't read in a long time. But I told you I believe this book, and so preacher or Christian friend, whatever you quote from this book,

I've agreed with it. Now, textualism is this, mistaking an allegiance to a text for the possession of what the text is talking about.

So Paul says wonderful things about what a Christian might have by way of intimate knowledge of God.

You agree with Paul, so you think you have it. If you are satisfied with textualism, then it's the death of really knowing

God. Let me give you the last one, true truths.

These are truths that are so familiar to us, so obviously true, that instead of making an impact on our life, we tend to shuffle them to a back room and lock them in a closet.

And we know that they're true, but they're so obviously true, and we've known them for so long, that they no longer make any difference in the way we actually live.

One example would be that men used to think the earth was flat, but now they know it's round, and so you know the earth is round, and that's probably one of those truths that's in the back cupboard for you.

And that's not the kind of truth that made any difference to you this morning, did it? Anyone disagree with the roundness of the earth?

No, we say, well, we know that. But when I woke up this morning, it didn't affect the way that I dressed. When I looked in my closet, the roundness of the earth didn't do anything for me.

When I sat and ate breakfast this morning, I didn't eat in light of the round earth. I didn't drive my car in a certain way because the earth is round.

I didn't listen to things on the radio and make choices about the way I spoke to my family or to the people at work.

It's a true truth. I'm familiar with it. Doesn't affect me. If we're not careful, the great statements that we've heard over and over about God's character can become true truths that no longer affect us.

Take the omnipresence of God, that God lives everywhere. Any person who reads the Bible and believes it would agree that the

Bible says that God fills the heavens and the earth, space, the universe, and hometown.

That's where God lives. He's everywhere. That God lives in heaven and in hell.

He's everywhere at the same moment. That wherever I go today, God is there already.

That God is the environment that I have lived in every moment of my life and He will be the environment forever and ever.

That I cannot lock a door and lock God out. I cannot turn out the light and blind God. I can't whisper and He doesn't hear it.

Every good deed and every bad deed, every sinful thought has been done right before the face of God.

He's everywhere. Anybody disagree with the omnipresence of God?

Well, we say, no, the Bible says it, but is it a true truth? Have you packed it back in the closet so that it no longer makes a difference in the way you live?

Did you look into your wardrobe this morning? You open your closet and the reality that I am before the living

God who is holy means that I choose this way and I sit down at the table and I eat this way and I drive my car this way and I listen to this kind of thing, but not that kind of thing.

And I talk this way to people because I am before the face of God always. If you are satisfied to agree with those truths and put them in the back cupboard where they don't bother you anymore, then it's the death of really knowing

God. Now what do these counterfeits have in common? They're all cheap.

They don't cost much. They are versions of knowing

God, a type of knowing God that doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to lay it all on the table to have secondhand knowledge, hearsay knowledge of God, to agree that this is a book that ought to be believed and to say, yes,

I believe all those truths the preacher says, but they're back there. They don't affect me. They're cheap.

They're manageable. You get to be in charge of your life and have that counterfeit. Another thing they have in common is this, they are respectable.

And the place that they're most respectable is the place that they ought to be exposed, but they're not. And that's church.

I don't know anyone who gets scolded for coming to church and saying, I read a great book. You know what you said about God?

I agree because I read Hudson Taylor and the great missionary, Hudson Taylor, said the same thing. And people think, wow, what a wonderful Christian you are.

You read Hudson Taylor, you read so -and -so, you listen to sermons during the day. I wish I was that kind of Christian.

I wish I knew God like that person knows. No one ever pulls you aside in church and says, do you know

God or do you only know what other people said about God? No one will ever scold you for loyalty to the

Bible. These are very respectable sins. They look great, but they are all ineffective.

They do not alter anything about our life. They leave us unsatisfied and disillusioned.

Remember Hosea's challenge in that dark day? Let us know, let us press on to know the

Lord. His coming is as sure as the dawn and he will refresh our souls like spring rain.

Is he telling the truth for our day? The answer to that for you cannot be answered with your mouth.

It can only be answered by what you do next in life.

Do you put it to the test? Let's pray. Our God, you are the

Holy One, high and transcendent. You possess a solitary glory, God, none like you and none but you.

But Father, you have sought us out. You have stooped down and condescended and you have through the bloody death and the perfect life of your son brought us near that we may know you.

We ask, Father, that you would again open our eyes to see as if for the first time who you really are, that you'd give us grace to smash the small and unworthy views of you that have snuck in and lodged in our hearts and found a safe haven.

God, that you would captivate us. We ask it in the name of Christ, Father.

We ask it for the name of Christ. Amen. The whole business of the

Christian gospel is to bring us to God, to bring us to God so that we are made aware of God and God becomes real to us.

That's what it's about. And that's why Christ came. That's why he died. So sometimes, perhaps for no fault of their own, people misunderstand what a

Christian really is. And that's sad. So it's important, I think, that we emphasize that he died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God so that God becomes a real person in our lives and not just a theological proposition.

You're delighted in what you know? Or are you delighted in knowing him?

Is the most important thing about a man what enters his mind when he thinks about God? I totally agree with Tozer.

Everything that we know about Christianity is built upon the foundation of the attributes of God.

Every doctrine that we believe is somehow hinged, directly related to our view of God.

It affects everything. It colors everything. Now, I would agree with Tozer and I have a great respect for Tozer, but I could go beyond Tozer to quote a higher authority.

And that would be, of course, Jeremiah. And he tells us that that wise men, even wise men, should not boast in their wisdom and that men of great strength should not boast in their might and that rich men, of course, should not boast in their riches.

But the one who boasts should boast in this. God says that he understands me and that he knows me.

It's from that knowledge of God that everything else flows. There's no doubt in my mind that what a man thinks of God clearly indicates everything about his life of any consequence whatsoever.

What you or I think about God affects everything that we are and everything that we do.

And that's exposed or revealed everywhere that we look. I mean, all the decisions that we make, that we see other people making, the root issue there is what that person believes or doesn't believe about God, who they think he is.

If we have a typical American view of God, we don't have a view of the

God of the Bible at all. And it shows up in the life and in the way that people think and pray and live.

Personally, in my own experience, thinking that I was very familiar with God for a long time and not until I was almost 19 years old, being confronted with the

God of the Bible, I knew him in name only, maybe, and really had a

God of my own imagination. I took a little concept from scripture and added them to that. But then when

Tozer's book fell into my hands, from which that quote comes, which is the knowledge of the holy.

And he begins that way, says the most important thing about any person is what enters their mind when they think about God.

And then he unpacked the grand attributes of God for the remaining chapters. I remember the effect the book left on me.

It was instantly and then afterward, I'm not nearly as familiar with the

God that I thought I was so familiar with and I want to know him. I want to know this guy for who he is.

That really is what I believe rethinking God biblically is all about.

It's putting God first. We are not just on the planet by accident. We are not here to please ourselves.

We are here to glorify God and to praise him and to live for him and to know him, not just to know about him, but to know him personally.

And I think that knowing about him is extremely important because obviously to know a person, you need to know about a person and knowing about God is what we normally mean by theology.

But knowing God is about spiritual experience and reality. If you like a felt experience of God, somebody you know as a person.

Experiencing God, not just some comprehension of the mind or the intellect, honestly say that that not only do you have high thoughts of this

God, you walk with him. He is your reality.

The emphasis here is hunger for God. And what goes along with that is the conviction that there is always more of God for the believer.

So you and I may be able to say, well, yes, I was converted under such and such a sermon.

And now it's been so many years since that happened. And it was wonderful what happened. But there's more of God.

Am I hungering? Am I thirsting? Am I reaching out for more of God?

I try to teach my children about the beauty of God, the pleasures of God.

See, we talk about attributes. We're not just talking about this or that. Omniscience, righteousness, holiness.

No, it's all these things that he is. The fullness of all perfection.

It ought to be our great interest. The great work of our lives ought to be to get to know this

God and to get to know him as he's revealed himself to us on the pages of the Bible and seek to see exactly what he says about how he ought to be worshipped.

The guidelines that he's given us in approaching him. That comes about when our

Lord Jesus Christ is glorified, when he is central. Then all of a sudden he unfolds just a little bit more of himself.

And we're mesmerized. And then he unfolds a little bit more of himself. And we begin to realize that what makes heaven heaven is the fact that we are going to be in an eternal pursuit of tracking down this

God that is infinite every day. Greater revelations of glory. It's asinine to think that we know him at all if we don't want to know him more.

The renewing of vital Christian experience and vital

Christian witness, I think ultimately is about seeking

God for himself and pursuing God for himself and wanting to know

God for himself rather than simply for the blessings that he conveys upon us.

Do you remember how in Luke chapter 10, for example, our Lord tells the 70 disciples who return from a preaching mission flushed with success, do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

And then we are told that Jesus rejoiced greatly in God, his father.

You have three types of joy there. You have the joy of success, which is real in its own way, for the spirits to be subject to them was a real source of joy.

But the greater joy was the joy of salvation, knowing that their names were written in heaven. But even that joy pales into insignificance compared with our

Lord's joy in God himself, in his father. And that interpersonal relationship of joy within the

Trinity is to me what we are meant also to have a share in.

We can hear these things, we can embrace these things, but they do not mean the realities in our life. And until they are realities in our life, the work is not finished.

And I do not believe these things can become realities apart from prayer. What frightens me are men full of a lot of correct knowledge, even a lot of great views of God.

But it hasn't been applied to their heart through prayer. Let me share something with you that's so important.

These high views of God are not just gained for yourself in a library, sitting in a in a cushy chair.

They're fought for. They're costly. I'm deeply convinced that the vast majority who call themselves

Christians are not. Because they have never truly exposed themselves to the

God of the Bible. You have to have this God. And if you don't have him, you're dead.

He's not a plus. He's not a bonus. He's absolute necessity.

And if we do not get back to true biblical thinking about God, then our situation is utterly without hope.

So the bottom line is God first, always, foremost.