Knowing Christ--John 17:3 (December 3, 2023)

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FBC Travelers Rest sermon from December 3, 2023 by Pastor Rhett Burns

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This morning I want to, you can open it to John chapter 17, we'll be in John chapter 17 in just a minute, but I want to begin with a book recommendation.
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This book called Knowing Christ by Mark Jones. And I thought I was going to have a copy that I could give away today, unfortunately shipping didn't get here.
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And so we'll have to give that away next week. But this book, Knowing Christ is an excellent exploration of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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And I mentioned this book this morning because as we begin our Advent sermons this morning,
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I'm going to use this book as something of a topical guide for our sermons throughout the month of December.
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Now to be clear, I'm not going to preach this book. I'm going to preach the Bible. All right. I'm not, I'm not just going to regurgitate what he said in this chapter.
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I'm just going to kind of use the table of contents as a, as a topical guide. But I do want to recommend it to you because I think it's just an excellent book.
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And especially, I love the name of it, Knowing Christ, I love the purpose of the book to explore the person and work of Jesus.
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And so the invitation to you this Advent season leading up to Christmas is to know
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Christ. And that's the subject of today's sermon. Here in John 17 verse 3 is where we'll be today.
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This is part of Jesus's high priestly prayer where he prays for his disciples, or Jesus prays for those who, all those who will believe in him, but he begins by praying for himself there in the first couple of verses.
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He prays for himself that the father would glorify him as he glorifies the father. And then he notes that the father has given him all authority over all flesh and that he should give eternal life to as many as the father has given him.
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And that brings us to verse 3 where he answers this question of what is eternal life?
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And so let me read John 17 verse 3 and God's word says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true
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God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
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Knowing Christ is eternal life. So what is, what is eternal life?
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What is knowing Christ? Those are the questions that we want to answer this morning. Let's take the first one of those. What is eternal life?
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We're accustomed to thinking about eternal life in terms of quantity of life. That is long, never ending life and this is true, eternal life never ends.
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But length of time, length of life is not the only thing that is at play in the promise of eternal life because for that matter all people, both in heaven and in hell, live forever.
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But there is a massive difference in the quality of life such that the promise of heaven for those who believe, for those who have faith in Jesus, the promise of heaven can be called eternal life while the judgment for unbelievers in hell can be called eternal death.
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There's a difference in the quality of life and so eternal life is not just length of life stretched out into a never ending eternal future but it's length of life stretched out to a never ending eternal future of a certain kind.
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That's what we want to explore this morning because eternal life is the life of love, joy, and peace in fellowship with God.
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Eternal life is the life of love, joy, and peace in fellowship with God and that is found in knowing
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Christ. Let's talk about love, joy, and peace for just a moment. God is love, 1 John 4 tells us.
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God in his essence, we talked about this last week, God in his essence is love and we are united to Christ who is
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God, who is love, and we will be united to him forever.
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And so we're united to that love. We will be in the presence of God. Those who have faith, those who belong to Christ, you'll live forever in the presence of God who is love.
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And so eternal life is a life full of love and in the presence of the one who is in his essence, love.
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Also in God's presence, Romans, excuse me, Psalm 16 tells us that in God's presence there is fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.
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And so eternal life is in the presence of God in whose presence there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand is pleasures forevermore.
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And so eternal life in the presence of God and in fellowship with God is then the life of joy.
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And then we see, Romans 5, that having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. And so eternal life is one of peace with God because Christ has made peace for us.
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So eternal life is love, joy, and peace in fellowship with God.
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And this is not just a future hope for us. It's not just something out in the future waiting for us.
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It's also a present reality. We have then a, we have a down payment of that eternal life now.
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We have the first fruits of that eternal life now because we have fellowship with God by the
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Holy Spirit. We live life by the Spirit and it is a foretaste of that eternal life that we experience now.
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It's not just a future hope, but a present reality. That is, we know something of the love of God now.
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Yes, we only know in part what we shall fully know in heaven, but we do know the love of God for us in this,
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Romans 5, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We know something of joy now.
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Yes, we will, we only know in part now what we shall fully know in heaven, but we do know joy in this, that we can count all things, even trials, as all joy,
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James tells us, because God works all things for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose,
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Paul tells us. So we know something of joy now. We also know something of peace now.
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Yes, we only know in part what we shall know fully in heaven, but we know peace in this, that Christ made peace by the blood of His cross, and we are made right with God, that God is not angry with us because of Christ and the peace that He made for us.
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And all of this is a foretaste of the fullness of eternal life that is to come, but we participate in it even now.
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Again, let me read John 17, 3, and this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
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You have sent. This eternal life, this present reality and future hope for life and fellowship with God, it is knowing
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Christ. And so let's answer that question then, what does it mean to know
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Christ? First of all, I would say that it's not just about knowing facts about Jesus Christ.
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It's not just knowing about Him, even the demons know the facts. And it's not just about knowing what
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Christ secures for us, what benefits there are for you for believing and trusting in Christ.
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In other words, knowing Christ and knowing you're going to heaven when you die aren't exactly the same thing, though they're related. So what does it mean to know
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Christ if it's not these things? I'm going to give you three ways we can answer that question this morning. Three ways we can answer the question of what does it mean to know
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Christ. The first is this, when the Bible talks about knowing, the sense of that phrase is personal relational knowledge.
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Knowing Christ then means thinking Christ's thoughts after Him and living Christ's life after Him.
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It means knowing what He loves and loving those things and knowing what He hates and hating those things, conforming our loves and our hates to what
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God loves and what God hates. It means doing His will in submission to Him, therefore thinking
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His thoughts after Him, living His life after Him. And all of this in covenant relationship with Him.
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This is knowing Christ, having that personal relational knowledge. A second way we can answer that question is fellowship with Christ.
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We see this throughout the New Testament, this witness about the believer's fellowship with Jesus. First John chapter 1 verse 3,
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John proclaims, that which the apostles have seen and heard, they proclaim that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the
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Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. First John 5 20 then goes on to say, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know
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Him who is true and we are in Him, that fellowship, in Him who is true in His Son Jesus Christ.
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This is the true God and eternal life. So we see fellowship with God and eternal life there together in 1
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John 5 20. You remember John 15, Jesus tells us to abide in Him who is the true vine, we're the branches.
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And if we abide in His love, what does
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Jesus say? He says our joy will be made full. So all of these verses point to our fellowship with Christ and it is in this fellowship with Him that we gain personal and relational knowledge of Him.
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And then a third way we can understand, answer to the question, what does it mean to know Christ, is a quote from Jones in this book where he says, knowing
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Christ is apprehending the person and work of Jesus as revealed in the scriptures.
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It's apprehending the person and the work of Jesus as revealed in the scriptures.
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In other words, who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, not just knowing the facts about it but apprehending it.
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And then that last phrase is important, as revealed by the scriptures.
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The Bible tells us what we need to know about Jesus. The Bible tells us what we need to know about Jesus.
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You'd think this would be pretty simple and straightforward. But people want to go to all sorts of other places to find out about Jesus and get their conception of Jesus other than what the scriptures tell us.
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And so one application of this or one example of this, it's a little bit touchy but I'm going to address it anyway, is this.
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You don't need a movie about Jesus to teach you about Jesus.
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See, God could have given us a film, God could have given us a movie, but he gave us a book. And so for all the positive attributes of the media of film,
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God still gave us a book in order to know about his son, to know his son. And so I would encourage you to be very careful about basing your conception of Christ upon how he's portrayed in a film because all sorts of things are either added or subtracted by necessity in order to make a film.
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And so I would encourage you to know Christ. Look to the book. Look to the scriptures.
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And look to the book. Don't look at how scholars have portrayed Jesus in academic texts or how artists have portrayed
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Jesus in various art forms or how you just maybe wish Jesus would be trying to create a
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Christ in our own image. No, apprehend the person and the work of Jesus as he is portrayed, as God has told us about him in the holy scriptures.
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And so let's think for a moment about how Christ is portrayed in the scriptures.
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What does God tell us in his word about Christ? Well, we see in the
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Bible that the Bible shows Jesus to be both lamb and lion, to be both tender and terrifying, to be friend of sinners and judge of sinners.
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We see in the scriptures both Jesus kneeling and riding in the dirt in order to disperse the crowd that is about to stone the woman caught in adultery and he tells her to go and sin no more.
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We see the tenderness of Jesus. We also see in the scriptures in Revelation 19 Jesus bursting through the heavens, riding on a white horse, his robe dipped in blood, his eyes a flame of fire, many diadems on his head and out of his mouth a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and to rule them with a rod of iron.
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In the Bible Jesus tells stories and tells jokes. He teaches and he preaches.
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He raises the dead, he heals the blind, he gives legs to the lame, he feeds the masses, he walks on water, he tells the wind to calm down, he tells the waves to lie down, he calls one woman a dog, he tells another that her faith has made her well, he publicly throws down with the ruling class of his day calling them a pit of vipers and pronouncing woe upon their heads.
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He casts out an untold number of demons and he heals those who are sick from village to village in masses.
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This is just some of what he did. Of course the most important thing he did was to take the sins of the world upon his body on the cross, lay his life down on the cross as the perfect sacrifice and then to take his life up again on the third day, rising triumphantly over Satan, sin and death.
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This is the work of Jesus. As for who the Bible says he is,
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Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, the word who became flesh, the image of the invisible
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God, the firstborn of all creation. All these are direct quotations of scripture. He is the radiance of the glory of God.
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He's the king, the lord of hosts, the bread of life, the light of the world, the door, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth and the life and the true vine.
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He is teacher, prophet, son of David, servant, son of man, lord, lamb of God, holy one of God, the beginning, high priest, the living one, deliverer and the bright morning star.
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This is just a sampling of what the Bible says about Jesus. This is just a compilation that I took out of Jones' book here.
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We could go on. We've left stuff out. But here's the kicker. The Bible doesn't even contain all that Jesus did.
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John 21, 25 says, and there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one,
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I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen. All the depths of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God found in the person and the works of Jesus Christ.
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And so who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, we'll have an eternity to search that out, to mine the depths of the riches of who
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Christ is. We'll have an eternity to know Christ. Putting all of this together thus far, we can say that knowing
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Christ is fellowship with Christ. It's knowing him personally and relationally and apprehending his person and work as revealed in the
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Bible. In John 17, verse 3, tells us that this is eternal life.
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This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
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Now if you're paying close attention here, you realize I've only focused on one part of that verse of 17, 3.
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I've talked about knowing Christ. The whole verse reads that, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
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And so Jesus is speaking here of knowing God the Father and God the Son. So here's the thing.
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Knowing Christ is the way to know the Father. Knowing the Son is the way to know the
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Father. John 14, 6 tells us this, and Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.
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The way to the Father, thus the way to eternal life, is through the Son. No one comes to the
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Father except through Christ. No one has eternal life except through Christ. This is the reason for Christmas.
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This is the reason for this Christmas season that we celebrate together, that the
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Son of God took on human flesh and came into the world as a baby and grew up as a man who lived without sin, being tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin,
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Hebrews 4 tells us. And to die because of our sin, he who knew no sin became sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ, 2
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Corinthians 5, 21. He did this so that the world could come to know the
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Father and to have eternal life, so that you could come to and know the
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Father and have eternal life, so that all peoples could come to and know the
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Father and have eternal life. Every year at Christmas time, as I mentioned earlier, every year at Christmas time we take up the
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Lighting Moon Christmas Offering for international missions. This offering goes to support the work of sending the gospel all over the world to unreached peoples and places through the
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International Mission Board and our missionaries there. And we do this, the reason we partner with the
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International Mission Board, the reason we give to the Lighting Moon Christmas Offering is because there is only one way to the Father and that is through His Son.
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And that there are many places in this world that do not have access to the good news of the
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Son, to the good news of Jesus. There are places in the world where a man could walk in any direction for days, weeks even and not come across another
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Christian, a Bible, or church. And so we participate in this offering, we participate in international missions in that way so that people around the world can know
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Christ and have eternal life. More so because God is worthy of their praises, God is worthy of the glory that comes from their mouths.
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Psalm 96 says, give God the glory that is due His name and that glory is being withheld in unbelief.
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And so we support the work of international missions. But this we must remember, to have the
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Father, they must have the Son. I remember living in Turkey and 1
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John chapter 2 verses 22 and 23 just sitting really heavy on me for my
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Turkish friends. Now keep in mind, those in Turkey are 99 .9
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% Muslim. A key tenet of Islam is that Jesus is not and cannot be
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God. That is, they reject the person and work of Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures.
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And this is what 1 John 2, 22 and 23 say, it says, who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the
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Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the
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Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
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And I can remember reading those verses and being moved to tears about one particular friend because he doesn't know
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God because he denies Jesus. Whoever denies the Son does not have the
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Father either, God's word says. And so if you don't know
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Jesus, you don't know Jehovah and you don't know God and you don't have eternal life.
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And that's true for the Muslim, and that's true for the Jew, and that's true for the
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Buddhist, the Hindu, the Atheist, and it's possible to be true for the
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Baptist too. If he's one who's just going through the motions and doesn't actually know
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Jesus. So then that raises the question, how do you know if you know Jesus? Just a few verses earlier in 1
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John 2, it says, Now by this we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
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He who says, I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him.
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By this we know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him ought himself to walk just as he walked.
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Knowing Christ is personal, relational knowledge of Christ.
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It's thinking his thoughts after him, it's living his life after him, or as how John says it here in 1
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John 2, it's walking as he walked. And so if the question is, do you know
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Jesus, then the answer is, well, do you obey him? Do you walk as Jesus walked?
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This Advent season, the invitation to you is to know Christ. To see his person and work in the
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Bible, to apprehend it, to take hold of it, to fellowship with Christ by the
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Spirit, and to walk as he walked. And so I exhort you, whether you've been a believer for five minutes or fifty years, this
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December, contemplate Christ. Set your minds on Christ and know
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Christ. I can think of no better way to set our minds on Christ than to partake of his supper together.
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At the table, Christ is set before us, body and blood, that we may feast upon him and be strengthened to walk as he walked.
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I want to pray, and then I want to invite a couple of our deacons to come up and prepare to the table.
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Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, I thank you for Christ.
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I thank you for who Christ is, for what he has done. I thank you for your word which reveals this to us, and Lord, I pray that our church, that we would give ourselves to knowing
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Christ, not just this December, certainly this December, but that we would give our lives to knowing
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Christ, to thinking his thoughts after him, to living his life after him, to walking as he walked.
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So Lord, I ask for your grace and help for that, that you would enable us to know
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Christ. That we go further up and further in in our knowledge of him. That we go further up and further in in our obedience to him.
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And that we wouldn't just know Christ, we would love Christ. With all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.