John 17:3 (A Prayer For Eternal Life)

The Shepherd's Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

I don't know about you, but when I was a child, I used to sit in my room sometimes and just think about eternity and try to wrap my head around what this concept actually meant.

00:14

And I would think about, at that point my theology wasn't really great. I would think about, well, if I sin too many times, what is hell going to be like?

00:23

And then I would think about, you know, what it must feel like to be burned and then what it must feel like to experience that for a day and how awful that would be.

00:31

And then for two days and then for a year and then 10 years and then 100 years and then after 100 years, 100 more years.

00:37

And you sit and you try to think about this and conceptualize this and it breaks the mind. I also would think about what heaven was like.

00:49

You know, after we've had all the conversations, like after we've met Moses and after we've met Joshua and Jacob and we had all those conversations, finally after we met

00:58

Jesus and we bowed down and worshiped him and then we did all of the activities, then what?

01:05

And I think to myself, well, does heaven have a bowling league? I mean, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do for an eternity?

01:12

Is it, and as a child I would think to myself, is it ever gonna get boring? Because you're trying to think about what eternity's like, trying to think about what infinity is like, you can't.

01:23

The reason that we can't conceive of such big, infinitely big things is because we are people who have a beginning and an end, so never -ending things don't really make sense to us.

01:35

They stretch us beyond our possibility of understanding. You and I had a beginning in time and space.

01:41

We will have an end when our bodies stop producing ATP and our brain stops firing. Sometimes I feel like that's already began in my life, but you know, someday it'll finish the course.

01:55

And as people who have a beginning and end totally wrapped up in time, it's hard to think about what timelessness actually means.

02:03

It's hard to think about what eternity means. Now, Jesus has much to say about this.

02:09

The Bible has much to say about this, but Jesus in particular has a lot to say about this, and John's gospel has more to say about eternity and eternal life than any book in the

02:21

New Testament. By itself, it has more to say than the synoptic gospels do. Mark has four occasions of eternal life.

02:28

Luke has four. Matthew has six. John has 17, just by itself.

02:34

With John and his epistles, it's about 70 % of the occasions of eternal life in the

02:41

New Testament. So John is imminently concerned with eternal life and eternal things.

02:49

He even says that the purpose of his book is about these things, that these things have been written so that you would know and have eternal life.

02:58

Understanding John, therefore, and understanding what Jesus says in the gospel of John will help us understand eternity, maybe perhaps more than any other book of the

03:09

Bible. And it's especially true in our passage today, in John 17, three.

03:16

Now, if you remember, Jesus and the disciples have arrived in Gethsemane. They left the city, they left at night, they went through the town, they went through the gate, they went through the

03:24

Kidron Valley, they went up the Mount of Olives, and now they've arrived at the Garden of Gethsemane.

03:30

Jesus, when he arrived there, he set up eight guards, which is smart, because Judas is coming.

03:36

After that, he takes the three disciples in a little bit deeper, and he sets them up as guards, and he tells them to pray, to avoid sin, and to wait for him, because he's gonna go through three series of prayers where he's gonna be praying to the

03:50

Father. And in one of these sessions, I'm not sure if it was the first, the second, or the third, Jesus prays this high priestly prayer.

03:59

It says that he was so broken after he prayed that he fell on his face, that he was distressed deeply in his spirit, that he wept tears of blood, that he petitioned

04:10

God the Father to take this cup from him, and that he would avoid this hour that he was coming to, and he was so distressed that God himself sent an angel to comfort him as Jesus decided joyfully to submit to the will of God.

04:24

He said, not my will, but yours be done. Last week, we began looking at this high priestly prayer in the

04:32

Garden of Gethsemane, and we covered five verses. And we didn't actually cover verse three.

04:39

If you were paying attention last week, we covered verse one, two, four, and five, because those verses mention glory five different times, and we talked about how everything is redounding to the glory of Jesus Christ.

04:51

His prayer is for his own glory. But sandwiched in the middle of that statement is this beautiful little verse.

05:01

This is eternal life, that they would know the Father, and they would know the

05:07

Son whom you have sent. We didn't get to cover that verse, and I refuse to skip it.

05:16

This may be the only time, as slow as I preach, that it will ever cover

05:21

John 17, three. This may be the only time in your life you hear a sermon on John 17, three. They would be irresponsible, foolish, and mean if we skip this verse.

05:32

So today, we're gonna dive into this verse, because we need to know what eternal life is, and we need to know more than anything, because Jesus says eternal life is knowing the

05:41

Father. So if you wanna have eternal life, you need to know what it means to know the Father. It's one of the most important and most properly basic concepts of the

05:50

Christian faith. What does it mean to know God? That's what we're gonna be talking about today, and we'll do so in two parts.

05:56

The first part, we're gonna ask ourselves the question, what is eternal life? The second part, we're gonna ask, what does it mean to know the

06:04

Father? And that's what we will accomplish today. So turn with me to John 17, verse three, as we explore this verse.

06:15

I've already said it to you, we'll say it again. John 17, three. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true

06:24

God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Let us pray.

06:31

Lord, we thank you that you do not leave these things to matters of confusion, but you have told us what eternal life is.

06:39

Eternal life is knowing you, knowing the Father, knowing the

06:45

Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit of God. Lord, help us today, as we dive deeply into your word, to understand what it means to know you.

06:58

Lord, I pray that we would have confidence in the knowledge of God and of Christ. Lord, I pray that we would have assurance in our faith, and in the promises of God, that these eternal promises are ours in Jesus.

07:14

It's in your name we pray, amen. Amen. If you wanna understand the meaning of a word, you need to go back to the original language.

07:21

I've said this many times before, seminaries said, don't do that. Don't preach and bring up the

07:27

Greek. Even one of my professors said, it's like underwear. You should have it on, but you shouldn't show it to anybody.

07:34

Which I think is strange. But we need to know what the original words meant, so I reject that counsel.

07:42

Sorry, professor. The Greek word underneath eternal life in this passage is ionikos, it means without end or limit.

07:54

It means duration, no duration or boundary. It means everlasting, never ending. It's an infinite direction, or an infinite, it's an infinite span that's going in a single direction.

08:05

It is eternal without end. But we have to understand that it does not just mean quantity, because if it just meant quantity, then it would be an endless amount of days.

08:20

And as we said last week, it could be an endless amount of days in a dentist office. It could be an endless amount of days getting a root canal, wouldn't that be terrible?

08:30

It could be an endless amount of days where you could never blink. It could be an endless amount of days where you sit under the dripping of a rusty faucet.

08:40

It could be any number of torturous scenarios. So it's not just quantity, it's not an endless amount of quantity, it is also qualitatively limitless.

08:53

The life that Jesus prayed for has a certain quality about it that is perfection.

09:01

It's the absence and the removal of all the curse. It is the total glorification and blessing that he pours out onto his saints.

09:11

Where all pain, all tears, all curse, all suffering is removed from his people.

09:19

This is the kind of life that the Bible talks about in the prophets, it's the kind of life that the

09:25

Bible talks about through God's promises, through the prayers of the saints. It literally spans every page of the

09:31

Bible, it's all over the place. And we certainly can't cover a concept that big in one sermon, but I do want us to realize that Jesus is not inventing the concept of eternal life.

09:43

When Jesus comes upon the scene, he starts saying that eternal life is possible and that believing in him you can have eternal life.

09:49

This is a concept that's old, it's ancient. It goes all the way back to the Old Testament where there's a mitany of promises about what eternal life means.

10:01

This idea is sprinkled throughout every page of scripture as we said before. And this modern concept that life belongs only to right now and that your greatest accomplishment in the afterlife is that you will become worm food for some beetle or whatever.

10:22

That concept, that atheistic tendency that an anti -supernaturalist culture has produced these days, that there's nothing beyond this life is counter to our own humanity and it is counter to the very truths of scripture that are shared all over the

10:40

Bible. Even the devils in hell don't believe that madness. But you can rest assured that if something smells of sulfuric ash that strongly, it must be from the pit of hell.

10:54

The Bible is gonna give us clear understanding. For a moment, I want us to look at various passages because again,

11:00

Jesus is not inventing a term here. He's giving us something that has a well -established theology so we're invited now to go back into the

11:08

Old Testament to look at what does eternal life mean? I'll share with you several examples.

11:13

Number one, eternal life means having an eternal, never -ending, abiding hope.

11:20

Psalm 49, 15, but God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol for he will receive me.

11:29

David is saying that I have an eternal, unshakable hope because even though I die,

11:35

David is saying, I know I'm gonna die. I'm gonna go down into Sheol, I'm gonna go down into the grave, but God will revive me, redeem me, resurrect me,

11:44

David, even before the New Testament, before the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ understood the resurrection of the body.

11:53

He believed in it, he hoped in it, and he's saying that there is an eternal, imperishable hope for the saints of God that they will live though they die.

12:04

This is all the way back in David's time. He has an eternal hope. What else is eternal life?

12:10

Eternal life is the eternal resurrection. You have hope because your body's not gonna lay in the ground, it is gonna be resurrected, and this is clearly stated in the book of Daniel, chapter 12, a bodily resurrection.

12:24

It says in Daniel 12, two through three, many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

12:35

Those who have insight will shine brightly, like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness like stars forever and ever.

12:47

Daniel envisions the end of human history is not the end of human history. That at that moment, when

12:55

Christ returns, that he will raise the dead in Christ alive and their bodies will be made imperishable so that they cannot break, rust, decay, or wither.

13:06

The Messiah will awaken the dead and he will give them eternal life. There's this idea, and maybe you don't believe this, but there's this idea in evangelicalism that heaven is our final destination.

13:17

No, it's not. The Bible does not give a disembodied eternity as your hope, that is a stop on the way to the new heaven and the new earth where you are given your physical body, where you worship

13:32

God embodied. It is better. The Bible is not talking about chunky cherubs on clouds wiping toilet paper on their faces to make sure that it's soft enough.

13:44

That's a medieval concept. That's a gnostic concept where spiritual is better, physical is worse, physical is evil.

13:53

That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that God will redeem everything that was broken, your body included, perfectly restored to live in perfect pleasure with God for all eternity.

14:08

Eternal life also means it's eternal living, consistent with what it says. Isaiah 25, eight envisions this.

14:16

He says, he, God, will swallow up death for all time and the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces and he will remove the reproach of his people from all the earth for the

14:26

Lord has spoken. He's saying death will be no more. Every broken moment we've experienced as we know loved ones who have died, that will be no more.

14:37

Death will be no more. Back pains will be no more. Ingrown toenails will be no more.

14:45

Every tear will be wiped away and every pain will be erased. God himself will wipe away every pain and misery in a perfect physical relationship with him.

14:59

It's also about salvation, Isaiah 45, 17. But Israel has been saved by the

15:04

Lord with an everlasting salvation. You will not be put to shame or humiliated to all eternity.

15:10

Now, that doesn't just apply to physical Israel. Physical Israel was not the focus of what that statement was.

15:17

Israel is a spiritual people. It's a people who wrestle with God. Paul says that we, the church, are the

15:22

Israel of God if you believe that you're children of Abraham. So for the people of God, this promise is that we will have an everlasting salvation in his presence and it can't be taken away from us and we cannot ever be ashamed or humiliated ever again.

15:39

David tells us that it's an eternal dwelling place. He says, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the

15:47

Lord forever. David was not a priest. David dwelled in his house. He was a king.

15:54

So what David is saying is he's looking past his own life and he's saying in the afterlife, in my death, in eternity,

16:01

I'm gonna live in the house of God. David lived in the best house in Israel. The temple was not built yet and he is looking forward to a moment where that old shanty is gonna be put down and he's going to live in the presence of almighty

16:14

God. Not like a high priest who gets to go in once per year. He gets to live in the white, hot, beautiful, holy presence of his

16:22

God. So he has an eternal hope and eternal salvation, eternal dwelling, eternal joy is what eternal life is.

16:32

Isaiah 26, 19, your dead will live, their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy.

16:40

For your due is as the due of the dawn and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.

16:46

Eternity is going to be thrilling and joyful. The greatest worship service that you've ever participated in will be the first one you participate in in heaven.

16:56

It says, the corpses will rise and they will awake and shout. There will be no one who's afraid of their tone and maybe in heaven, tone will be corrected.

17:08

The tune, singing out of tune. I certainly struggle with that. But there will be a joy that causes us to shout for the things of God.

17:18

Can you imagine what it's gonna be like to stand in the presence of Christ shouting with great joy?

17:25

And it never getting old is eternal pleasure in eternity.

17:33

Psalm 16, 11, in your presence is fullness of joy.

17:38

In your right hand, there are pleasures forever. The reason that you and I can't conceive of something that's pleasing forever is because we're temporal, time -bound beings who are prone to decay and so are our things.

17:53

We get a new gadget and it's old within a month. Sometimes within a week. We get a new car and then it becomes commonplace.

18:01

We get a new house and it becomes just another thing. Every item that we have that has an expiration date on this earth, we will eventually yawn at, be bored by, and give up.

18:11

And most of the things that we own will end up in garage sales and dumps somewhere to gather rust and moths.

18:21

And yet, the imperishable, incorruptible truths, the incorruptible

18:27

God that we are in the presence of will never be old. We will be thrilled forever.

18:34

So when you're looking at all of these promises, and this is not all of them, we can keep going, but I wanna just give a smattering of this.

18:41

When you're looking at this, eternity is never -ending hope. It's looking forward to an eternal resurrection, which brings about eternal living in the presence of God with an everlasting salvation that cannot be taken away, destroyed, and you can never be left humiliated.

18:57

It's where we're gonna exist in the presence of God forever where his presence is no longer dangerous to us, but it is welcoming to us.

19:05

It'll bring about limitless joy where your every day in heaven will be turcurling sensation, where you'll have overflowing pleasures and blessings forevermore.

19:16

If you can't imagine that, it is because we're too earthly to grasp it, and it will be better than you could possibly imagine.

19:25

Now, Jesus also teaches on these things. In the book of John, he teaches what is eternal life.

19:31

John 3 .16, he talks to the religious scholar who should have known what this was. He studied the

19:37

Bible, but Jesus tells him, for God so loved the world, you know this verse, that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

19:49

So all of the promises of the Old Testament are true for you, and as a result of that, by belief in Jesus Christ, that will cause you never to perish, never to decay, never to rust, never to fade, never to break.

20:00

You will have eternal imperishability. John 4 .14, you'll have refreshment, all of your infinite days with Christ.

20:11

John 4 .14, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give shall never thirst, but the water that I give to him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

20:20

It is not just a well that feeds you and refreshes you and hydrates you on this side of heaven, it is an eternal well that will always satisfy you in the presence of Christ.

20:33

Eternal nourishment, John 6 .54, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

20:44

This is not just empty belief or some sort of cognitive assertion, this is feasting upon Christ, eating at his table, being nourished by him, not just now, but forever.

20:57

There's no one who is dehydrated in the kingdom of God, and there's no one who has their ribs showing because they haven't had enough to eat.

21:06

He is a good provider, and he will provide for us lavishly. Eternal reward,

21:13

John 6 .40, for this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

21:23

This is a promise. This is a promise not dependent upon you and not dependent on your faithfulness and not dependent on your record or your score or your ability.

21:34

You and I, our life is like a roller coaster. There's days where we live and we think, man,

21:42

I did pretty good today, and then on those days you're ignorant because you don't know how bad you were.

21:49

And then there's days where we think, gosh, I was really bad today, and on those days you're ignorant because you still don't know how bad you really were.

21:59

The point of this is to get our eyes off of us and get our eyes onto him.

22:05

We're not good, he is good. We're not worthy, he is worthy. We're not, we've earned nothing but the fires of hell.

22:14

The only thing, Jonathan Edwards said, that keeps God from letting loose the arrow of his wrath so that it would plunge into us and become drunk with our own blood.

22:23

That's what Edwards said. Ooh, vivid, huh? It's the sheer grace of God. It's his goodness, it's his kindness, it's his love, it's his mercy, it's his holiness, it's his grace, that by which we now stand.

22:40

There's so much more that we could talk about. John 3 .15 talks about we've been, the curse has been eternally lifted.

22:47

John 4 .36 talks about that we'll have eternal rejoicing. John 5 .24, eternal freedom from judgment.

22:54

John 6 .27, eternal reward. John 10 .28, eternal security. So that if you've been following so far, we'll have an everlasting quantity and quality of days.

23:08

We'll have a never -ending hope, an eternal resurrection, everlasting living, everlasting presence with God the

23:18

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We will have limitless joy, overflowing pleasures, blessings forevermore.

23:25

He will never -endingly preserve us, refresh us, nourish us, reward us.

23:31

We can keep going. Eternal life is what

23:37

God has promised to those who believe in him and those who know him, and that's why we have to talk about what does it mean to know the

23:44

Father? It's the most important question that we could ever possibly answer. What does it mean to know

23:50

God? Because if you know God, you have this, and if you don't, you have all of the curses and punishments that all of us deserve forever.

24:03

What does it mean to know God? It is the question we must answer.

24:10

Let's go back to the text. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true

24:16

God, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. What does it mean to know God? Well, again, we have to show our underwear here and go back to the

24:24

Greek. It doesn't mean mere cognition. It does not mean understanding a fact.

24:32

It does not mean to know God, you must know the word God. Or, if you're really spiritual, the

24:39

Hebrew Yahweh. I emphasize that to be really spiritual for you, Yahweh.

24:45

It doesn't mean that you just know that it's the God of the Bible. It doesn't mean that you memorize certain basic facts.

24:50

It doesn't mean, children, that you just memorize the catechism, and then God's gonna love you. That's not what it means.

24:57

It doesn't mean that you memorize the entire Old Testament. The Pharisees did that, and look what happened to them.

25:04

It is not a matter of mere cognition that we may know God. Jesus is speaking about an intimate knowledge here, a kind of knowledge that is so intimate that there's only one human relationship that describes it.

25:21

The word that he uses here is the word that Mary uses in Luke's Gospel when the angel

25:27

Gabriel says to her, you will be found with a son. And she says, how can that be? I am still a virgin.

25:35

Now, the word virgin here is not actually in the text. It's applied by our translators. The KJV actually translates it literally.

25:42

This is what the KJV says. Then said Mary unto the angel, how shall this be, seeing that I know not a man?

25:50

That's the word. I've not known a man. How can I possibly have a child if I've not known a man?

25:56

Jesus says that the only way to have eternal life is that you know God like that. That's incredible.

26:05

He's talking not about sexual love, but the most intimate love that's possible.

26:14

Knowing God in the most beautiful, intimate, exquisite possible way so that there's no boundaries, no borders, no secrets, but it's intimate fellowship with the

26:25

Father. And he uses this word for two reasons. One of them is not so that we wouldn't blush.

26:32

He uses it for two reasons. First, because sexual intimacy in the marriage, which is what

26:38

Mary's referring to, Adam, that same word is used. Adam knew his wife. Sexual intimacy is patterned off of the relationship with God, not the other way around.

26:48

God did not cause us to know him as a metaphor by knowing what sexuality is.

26:56

He patterned sexuality after what the inner Trinitarian love has always been, which means that the sexual act is limited in the sense that it can only barely possibly communicate the kinds of truths that he's trying to get at for the divine love.

27:12

And that's why there is no marriage in heaven because it's limited. It is the best that we have now to be able to understand the mystery of the gospel,

27:21

Ephesians 5, that points us to the love of God. That's why it doesn't continue in heaven because it's limited.

27:29

It is a metaphor in the same way that God is Father is a metaphor, that Christ is older brother is metaphor.

27:35

These things are true, but they're not true in the ultimate sense. They're not the fullest expression.

27:41

There's more, there's more, there's like an iceberg underneath these things. So when

27:47

Christ says that we must know the Father, he is using the word that is for husbands and wives in the most intimate relationship that is available on earth, not because it fully describes it, but because it's the closest thing that just barely describes it.

28:09

Second reason that he uses this word is because it does communicate much.

28:16

Just because it doesn't communicate everything doesn't mean that it doesn't communicate a lot of things. And we should not throw it away just because it's not able to communicate everything.

28:25

There's not a single word that can communicate everything. So we have to study this word to understand what your relationship and my relationship with God ought to look like.

28:36

If it's, I show up once a week at church, and that's what I believe that my relationship with God is, well, husbands, let me ask you this.

28:44

Do you go home once a week? If it's like that, and we need to understand that, then what does it mean to know

28:53

God in that way? There's so much. Let's talk about just a few things.

28:59

In our relationship with God, in the same way that there's a marriage, there's a covenantal commitment between us and God. That's why

29:05

God makes a covenant with His people in the same way that He makes a covenant of marriage. Ezekiel actually describes the covenant with Moses and with the people of Israel as a marriage.

29:14

Hosea describes their unfaithfulness to God in terms of sexual infidelity because there's a connection here.

29:22

It's a covenant commitment. There's an expectation, number two, for intimacy. A husband and a wife has every expectation that there should be intimacy in their marriage.

29:33

They should expect it, they should participate in it, they should craft it, they should grow in it, they should be pleased in that.

29:40

And in the same way, God expects our intimacy. God does not expect that we'd have a lifeless, boring, dull relationship with Him and that we give

29:47

Him token obedience and token prayers in order to pacify Him on His divine throne. He expects you to know

29:54

Him and be in relationship with Him and be intimate with Him. That requires affection and devotion and friendliness and affection and love.

30:03

It's an intimate relationship. That's what eternal life means, that we would know Him in the most intimate way.

30:09

If you don't have that kind of relationship with God, repent of that. Get to know Him, pursue

30:14

Him, pray to Him. Cultivate and develop that relationship so that there's deep intimacy in the same way that a marriage, number three, has submission, each one to one another.

30:24

The wife submits to the husband as the church submits to Christ and also the husband submits in ways because he's submitting to Christ.

30:31

He's leading her in a submissive way because he's submitting to Jesus. In all of that, we ought to realize that in our relationship with God, there's submission.

30:38

We're not the leader in our relationship with God. He is our covenant husband, so we submit to Him.

30:45

Whatever He wants, we do. There's vulnerability and openness. You don't have secrets with God.

30:51

There's not a part of your life that's hidden from God. There's a desire for unity in our relationship with God the same way that there's a desire for unity in marriages, except it's better because the kind of unity that's supposed to be in marriages is the kind of unity you actually have in your relationship with God.

31:10

How many marriages do you know that are not unified? Many, but there's not a single

31:15

Christian who has an ounce of chaos in their relationship, ultimately, with them and God, and it's not because of you, it's because of Him.

31:25

There's a longing and pursuit in our romantic relationships where we, out of affection and desire, we pursue, we chase, we laugh, we have fun.

31:36

Our relationship with God is not meant to be lifeless and dead and religious. That sort of stoicism, asceticism, and gnosticism has infected the church.

31:49

Men, it is not a feminine thing to find Christ as the most glorious and beautiful treasure that you have ever found.

31:57

He says that the man would sell the field and go in order to have the pearl of great price, and he would give up everything he had for that.

32:03

Men, women, the greatest joy that you and I could ever have is in the pursuit of knowing and loving and enjoying

32:13

Jesus Christ. It will take all of our affections and emotions.

32:20

That's why God says for us to love Him with all of our heart. He starts there, doesn't He? He doesn't say love

32:26

Him with all of your faculties, like all of your mind. He starts with heart. There's intimate communication.

32:33

Your relationship with God will not flourish if you are not praying in an intimate communication with the

32:38

Father. Your relationship with God will not flourish if you don't know Him in the same way that a wife and a husband get to know one another.

32:44

We get to know Him through participating in our faith with Him in the Word, through the means of grace.

32:51

Eternal life is being thrilled by God and getting to know

32:57

Him for who He is. That is the picture. That is the point.

33:03

It is not you filled out the back of a card at church in a service. It's not even as much as we love baptism that you got baptized and now you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life.

33:17

The point is that we would know God with every fiber of our being.

33:24

And if we don't know God that way, brothers and sisters, we've got to repent. And we've got to pray.

33:30

We've got to ask the Lord to help us know Him. We've got to know Him that way. Our relationship with Him is not dead and lifeless.

33:36

And if it is, it ought to terrify us. Our relationship with Him is all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

33:45

Remember, if you're not there, repent of that. Reorient your life to that. And let me give you permission to not feel like a legalist by working and striving in your faith.

33:57

You don't do it to earn your salvation. But you do it with fear and trembling to know

34:02

Him. We've become so afraid these days of obedience, so afraid that I'm gonna put my faith in my obedience that we've forgotten that we actually have to obey.

34:15

And that obedience makes us joyful and it helps us know Him. The catechism begins,

34:22

Westminster Shorter, with what is man's chief end? It is to glorify God and enjoy

34:28

Him forever. Brothers and sisters, are you enjoying God? Are you thrilled by God?

34:34

Do you find Him beautiful? Does your relationship with Him cause you to wake up with a song in your heart after,

34:41

I know, after you rub your eyes and get your coffee and all that? I'm not a morning person either. Trust me,

34:47

I get it. We'll sing a song in just a moment called

34:52

The Church is One Foundation. I love this song. It says, from heaven He came and sought her to be His only bride.

34:59

And with His own blood He bought her and for her life He died. He gave everything for us.

35:05

Not so that we would give very little back to Him. He gave everything to us so that we would give everything back to Him.

35:14

And it really does model that perfect marriage that's described in Ephesians five, where the husband loves the wife, the wife submits to the husband.

35:23

Our relationship with Christ tells the world the story of the gospel. We will either tell them the story of an unfaithful gospel or our life will tell them the story of a precious, beautiful gospel.

35:37

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for such a simple text on the surface that doesn't take hours in order to describe it.

35:55

There's really two things going on that we need to understand in it. There is such a thing as eternal life and it comes through knowing you.

36:02

And Lord, it comes through the kind of knowing you that none of us can manufacture on our own and that none of us can imitate without you.

36:13

It really, all of this is dependent upon your spirit. You're the one who awakens our knowledge to be able to see you and you're the one who invigorates our relationship to love you and be pleased by you.

36:25

Lord, I pray for everyone in this room, for me especially included, that you would awaken our hearts, that you would stir our affections.

36:35

Lord, I pray that none of us here would have a lackluster, lukewarm kind of faith.

36:42

Lord, I pray, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help us, that you would cause our affections to be saturated by you and that Lord, that we would be pleased and thrilled by you, that every fiber of our being would be conformed to you.

36:58

Lord, I pray that we would be a people who enjoy you and enjoy you forever.