Knowing God

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I appreciate your being here this evening and we're in the middle of – for those of you who might be visiting with us tonight, I want to just give you a little insight into where we are. We're talking about God – we're in the process of a study of systematic theology. We completed our study of the character and nature of scripture, and we now find ourselves beginning what I trust will be one of the richest studies of all of our lives together, and that is the nature and character of God.

I don't know if you have ever had a dream in which you couldn't get where you wanted to be. You ever had one of – I mentioned dreams this morning, I really don't often recall my dreams, but I happened to think of this as well. Occasionally, I have a dream in which I can't get where I want to get, and there's this sense of frustration, because it seems easy enough. It seems like you ought to be able to get there, but no matter what turn you take, you can't make it. Well, unfortunately, sometimes real life reflects dreams, and the summer after Sheila and I started dating, I joined her family for a road trip. Now, I don't know if you have ever taken a road trip with your in-laws-to-be, but it was a great time, actually. We had a wonderful time – I was finishing up on, I was preaching all summer in a number of camps, and then I joined them for sort of the last week and her father-in-law was preaching through a series of churches in the northeast, and they were taking the daytime to enjoy some of the sights. So, I joined them in Massachusetts, and we had a great time, but I'll never forget one evening in Massachusetts. It was near Saugus, I believe, and Sheila's dad, who was a man not easily turned aside from something he wanted to do, had his mouth set for Yankee pot roast. Now, I don't know exactly why – I had no desire to have Yankee pot roast, but this was in his mind – we were all in the car together, and unfortunately, he saw a restaurant as we were driving that said, "Yankee pot roast," and so he immediately hit the exit, turned around, thought this will be easy to find – we saw it right next to the road.

Well, that was the beginning, because this was one of those interchanges in which several Interstates convene, and you couldn't get there from here. The first fifteen minutes we laughed, and then we started crying because every time he tried to get to the exit, we'd get on a different freeway, and then you'd have to travel another five minutes or so before you could hit the first exit and turn around and come back and try again. We did this for 30 to 45 minutes – trust me, Yankee pot roast is not worth it. Finally, after about 30 to 45 minutes, we gave up – I was shocked, but he gave up and we got down the road a bit, and finally we stopped at McDonald's. It was a small town and it seemed eerily quiet. Well, we got in the restaurant – we were the only people in the restaurant, which wasn't shocking, considering it was a McDonald's, but we got in there and we found out that that day there had been a riot in town. I mean an all-out riot, and that within a few minutes a curfew was going to take effect, and so that's why nobody was on the roads.

I don't know if you've had that experience or not where you – not the curfew experience, but the experience of not being able to find where you want to be, not being able to get there from the route you've chosen. Often, it's not that important – it's certainly not worth the Yankee pot roast, but it's one thing to choose the wrong route when you're trying to get something trivial and insignificant, when you're trying to go somewhere that seems like a good idea. It's another thing when you choose the wrong route to get to a destination that is absolutely essential. My mind goes to what happened last year – we were all horrified when those soldiers lost their way in the middle of the Iraq desert and ended up being captured and tormented and tortured, and to our joy were ultimately found and released, rescued. Sadly, many who seek to know God, which is a destination that is crucial for all of us, choose the wrong routes – they choose routes that are equally unsatisfying. Let me give you a couple of examples of routes to the knowledge of God that won't get you there and no matter how much you try, you will never arrive.

One of them, I would call the mystic encounter. There are people who, there are Christians who live their lives and have been influenced by someone who think that they can know God, they can really develop a knowledge of God, by a mystic encounter – that they're just hoping that one day God will show up in their house or in their prayer closet or in their bathroom and speak to them, and there will be this interchange between them and God, much as we read between some of the people in the New Testament, the Apostles. What I want you to note about mystic encounters are – that is, true encounters with God in the scripture, not mystic encounters of today, but the true encounters of God in the scripture – they were few and far between; the average person like you and me didn't have them. They were, instead, those men whom God chose to communicate His revelation to. Mystic encounters will never get you to a knowledge of God – it is a route that is very unsatisfying, and in the end, it may even leave you disillusioned.

There's a second route that a lot of people take to know God, and that is ritual. Now, most of us are not tempted in that way, but – you may not know this, but there is a growing interest among evangelicals in ritual, in a return to some sort of liturgy and some sort of ritual encounter with God, because they've tried the shtick that's out there in many churches, and they found it unsatisfying. And so, they're looking for something that will fill this void in their hearts, that will give them this route to God, and they feel like, well, ritual has been around for centuries, for thousands of years, and so, surely that's a way that I can gain some knowledge of God, that I can gain an encounter with God.

A third route that some choose to gain a knowledge of God is pure emotion. This is different than the sort of mystic encounter, the sort of one-time revelation of God where He shows up and talks to you, supposedly. Instead, those who are driven by pure emotion are looking for a continual feeling of God, a sort of continual experience of God's presence – if only I could just feel God. Now, don't get me wrong, emotion is a legitimate part of the Christian life – in fact, if your emotions aren't moved in the worship of God, then there's something wrong with you spiritually. Read the Psalms – read how a man after God's own heart, David, expressed the intense emotion of his heart toward God. But pure emotion – that is, emotion that is not driven by the content of the knowledge of God in the scripture – will not lead you to a true knowledge of God. It'll only be dissatisfying, it'll only be disillusioning because there are people who live this way; they attend services and they go and they hold hands and they swing back and forth, and they try to work up an emotional experience of God, and they think that somehow that's going to get them closer to a true knowledge of God. But in the end, you can only work up emotion so long before you realize it's not the real thing and it becomes dissatisfying.

A fourth route that some take is a sort of cold academic exercise; they simply sit down and analytically, engineer-like, analyze God. But God can't be put in a test tube – this too is an unsatisfying route to knowing God.

What does it mean to know God, and how does it happen? Well, those are the issues I want us to look at tonight; let me just remind you where we've been. We're talking – we began by talking about God's incomprehensibility, and by that, we said God infinitely surpasses what any of His creatures can ever perceive Him to be. [It] doesn't mean He can't be understood, it means that we can't fully understand Him. And then we looked at a number of verses that talk about that reality, that God is beyond what we can ever get our arms around. At the same time, God can be known – this is where we ended last time; God can be known because God has revealed Himself. God has let us know certain things that are true about Him, and God's self-revelation is necessary; that is, if it weren't for God telling us something about Himself, we would never arrive at any knowledge of God. What God tells us about Himself and His Word is truthful; it can be believed. While we can't get our arms around all that is truly God, what God does tell us about Himself is the truth; it corresponds to reality.

Then we saw that it's limited. God's self-revelation is limited in that God is infinite; God cannot begin to pour into our little finite minds all that's true about Him, and so instead God has revealed to us only what He believes is necessary for us to know. And even what He reveals about Himself, He has to put in terms that we can understand. And so, the Bible is filled with what are called anthropomorphisms; that is, when the writers of Scripture attribute human characteristics to God. We talked about God's hand; God is a spirit, we're told – He doesn't have a hand, and so when the scripture talks about God's hand, it's talking about the fact that God acts. The eyes of God run to and fro about the Earth, we're told, looking at the evil and the good – God doesn't have eyes in the sense we have eyes; that's to tell us that God is omniscient, He's aware of what's going on, there's nothing that escapes God's notice, and so forth. Also, the scripture is filled with what are called anthropopathisms; these are both words that come from Greek words – you can see the "anthropos" for "man" at the beginning of each of them. "Morph" is the word "form," and "path" has to do with one's passions, with one's emotions or feelings, so this word anthropopathism means that the writers of scripture attribute human feelings and emotions to God. It's not that God doesn't have something in Himself that corresponds to the emotions we experience – He does, but they're not exactly like the emotions we experience. The writers of scripture simply help us understand something that's true about God by attributing to Him things we do understand. At times, the writers of scripture use images of human emotions attributed to God, when we know that that human emotion, if it did belong to God, would not reflect on His perfection, and we know it's an anthropopathism. I gave the example last time of God changing His mind – does God really change His mind in the way we change our minds? No – God, in eternity past, ordained whatever would come to pass, and He knew ahead of time, and He planned it, and He mapped it out, and so nothing surprises God. So, He didn't change His mind the way we change our minds – instead, that's intended to give us some knowledge, something that's true about God.

Now we come to where I want to come tonight – God's self-revelation is not only necessary, truthful, and limited – and this is where it's really encouraging for all of us – it's also personal. It's personal. You and I – listen to this, think about this – you and I have been given the privilege to know God. I love this quote by Sinclair Ferguson, whom I hope to get to our church – he's going to soon be in the Dallas area, if he's not already – and he writes this in his book, A Heart for God – listen to this: "What do you and I boast about? What subject of conversation most arouses us and fills our hearts? Do we consider knowing God to be the greatest treasure in the world and by far our greatest privilege?" Do you? Do you see knowing God as your greatest treasure and your greatest privilege? He says, "if not, we are but pygmies in the world of the spirit. We have sold our Christian birthright for a mess of pottage and our true Christian experience will be superficial, inadequate, and tragically out of focus." You see, knowing God is what our faith is all about.

I want you to turn to John 17:3. Beginning in verse 1, though – you know the context here, this is on the night before our Lord's crucifixion. There's some debate about whether this occurred in the upper room or somewhere on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane – but regardless, "Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said," – now, here is the true Lord's Prayer. What we often call the Lord's Prayer is really the disciple's prayer – it's for us, not for the Lord. This is the Lord's prayer to His father, and He prays to His father, "the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life." In other words, You have given Me authority, Father, and that authority is to give to all of those whom You have given me – you remember we talked about this sometime ago, that we who have been chosen by God, were the love-gift of the Father to His Son. And Christ says You've given Me these as a love-gift, and You've given Me the authority to give them eternal life. Now notice verse 3, because here's the definition of this amazing gift that he gives to us whom God has chosen. "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Eternal life is defined as the capacity to know God and to know His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – to know God is the essence of being a Christian. The life of a Christian isn't a life of rules; it's not about rules – certainly we have, laid down for us in scripture, those things that God expects from us – but the life of a Christian is the life of a knowledge of God. And if you've missed that, if that isn't a priority on your checklist in the spiritual pursuits of your life, then you have missed the essence of the Christian life. You remember the shorter catechism "what is the chief end of man?" We often recite the first part of it, "to glorify God," but it completes by saying "and to enjoy Him forever." Do you enjoy God? That's what it means to be a Christian.

The same point is made by the apostle John in his first epistle – notice 1 John 5. In verse 20, he says, "and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that" – here it is, here's the purpose. Christ came, and He gave us, who are His, understanding for the purpose "that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ." This is the true God and eternal life; there he makes the same point again – the whole point is knowing God.

Now, in a sense I've already answered the question, but let me answer it a different way – why is it important to know God, why is it important? Well, let me – I'm not going to take a lot of time with these, but I just want you to see them. First of all, great men value it most. You go through the scripture – let me just choose three examples. First of all, Moses – turn to Exodus 33. In the Old Testament, as we've already noted, there is no one greater than Moses. All authority went back to Moses because no one, the Lord says, knows Me face to face like Moses. But let me show you that this was the desire of Moses' heart. Notice Exodus 33:13: "Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You." Verse 18 of the same chapter – he prays, cries out, "I pray You, show me Your glory!" This was the desire Moses had.

You see it in David – Psalm 63:1, you see David crying out to God, and he says, "O God, You are my God." He calls on that language of the covenant, where God says, I will be your God and you will be My people. He says "You are my God; I will seek you earnestly" or literally, early, as the idea, with the dawn. In other words, this is my first priority in life – when the sun breaks, I'm seeking You. "My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus, I have seen You in the sanctuary" at the temple, "to see Your power and Your glory." David wasn't able to be at the temple, and his soul cried out to see that visible manifestation of God, to behold the glory of God – he wanted to know his God. David was forced to flee from Absalom, and in the midst of that fleeing, he cried out, because of his love for, his desire to know his God, to see his God manifested.

Paul, of course – and we'll get there, I'm not going to touch on this tonight because we're going to get there in a couple of months, Lord willing, we'll get to – well, I shouldn't say a couple of months; I don't really know, to be honest with you. Soon, within the year, we will get to Philippians 3:10, and it's exciting to hear Paul the apostle, in prison, far along in his ministry, toward the end of his ministry, say "that I may know Him" – I long to know Him even in a more complete and better way. So great men value it.

It also has wonderful results, and here's where – I'll just give you these, as something you can study on your own. It produces great concern for God's glory. You remember when I was here, candidating, I think, or perhaps before that, we looked at 1 Samuel 17, how David, a man after God's own heart, was concerned about the glory of God. You see, to know God, when you know God, produces a great concern to see God glorified. Also, it produces great thoughts about God's Person – we looked briefly last time at Isaiah 40, and that's one of the results. Isaiah 40:9 says, behold your God, or "Here is your God!" And then it lays out the greatness of God – when you know God, you don't think small thoughts about God.

Also, it produces great lightness to God. Turn to 2 Corinthians – I want you to see this passage; you're undoubtedly familiar with it, but I just want to remind you of what it teaches. 2 Corinthians 3:18: Paul writes, "But we all" – that is, all of us who are in Christ – "with unveiled face" – unlike Moses, we now can see clearly – "beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." So, we're looking – it's as if we're looking in a mirror at God's glory; it's in the scripture he's talking about, in the Word of God, we "are being transformed." The Greek word is "metamorphosized;" it's the word from which we get the word metamorphosis. We're being radically changed in character – just as that caterpillar becomes, in the process of time, a butterfly, we are being transformed, metamorphosized into the same image that we're beholding – the glory of God from glory to glory, just as from the Lord of the Spirit. You see, as we gaze at the Person of Christ and the Person of God in the scriptures, we behold Him in all of His glory, then we begin to be changed into the same image.

Another reason why it's important is that God prizes it supremely, and of course this is the most important one – God prizes it supremely. Let me show you a couple of passages; let's start first with God's indictment of Israel in the Book of Hosea. Notice what God says to Israel – Hosea 4: "Listen to the Word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, for the Lord has a case against" – that's an interesting expression; the Hebrew word is a word which means, literally, a court case. God has a court case against the inhabitants of the land – why? What's God concerned about? "Because there is no faithfulness" – literally, the word is "truth." What He's saying, what the prophet's saying is, there's no truth telling, and there's no truth doing. Nobody's speaking the truth and nobody's obeying the truth. And then he says there's no "kindness." This is one of my favorite Hebrew words, you've heard me discuss it before – it's the word chesed. It means loving loyalty; it means there's a covenant, a legally binding promise that's been made, and there is loyalty within that covenant. "Unfailing love" is the way the NIV translates it, which is pretty close to the idea. He says there's none of that in the land; people are absolutely violating the legally binding promises and commitments they have and should have. But then he says, and there's no "knowledge of God in the land" – there's no knowledge of who God is, of what He's done in redeeming His people, and in what He requires. There's no knowledge of God – and God says that's why I'm indicting the people of Israel, because they have no knowledge of Me.

Look at God's gracious gifts, and – we won't turn there; let me just call your attention to both of these verses. Jeremiah 31:34 is part of the new covenant, and in the new covenant God promises to give to people a knowledge of Himself. It's repeated in Hebrews 8 and in several other places, but the idea is, they will know Me. As part of the new covenant, God says, it's important to Me that My people know Me, and I'm going to give them the capacity to know Me. In Isaiah 11:9, he's talking about during the millennial period, and he says the same thing – "the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters of the sea." God's clear statements show us that he prizes it supremely. While you're here in Hosea, look at 6:6 – God says, "I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." It wasn't about the external; it wasn't about the ritual – that's where those pursuing ritual are all wrong; it never was about the ritual. God was far more concerned about people pursuing Him.

But I want you to turn to Jeremiah 9; my family, this past week, has been memorizing these verses – Jeremiah 9:23. Now, let me give you the context. The book of Jeremiah is God's final warning to Judah; shortly, Judah will be carried off captive by the Babylonians. The prophet Jeremiah prophesies just before that occurs, and actually during the exile, so just before the exile, and during it, but it's God's final warning to the people – he's telling them, judgment's coming; repent! Get right with Me! When you come to Jeremiah 9, basically, you see Judah, that is, the southern kingdom's corruption and their sin. It's all about God judging them, and right in the middle of God's judgment, he puts these two verses that are a great treasure, and essentially, they're there to tell the people of Judah, look, I'm bringing judgment. How should you respond, what should you look for, on what should you depend in the midst of this trouble? And here's what he says. Verse 23: "Thus says the Lord, 'let not a wise man boast of his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches'" – you see what Jeremiah has done. He's chosen three things that people typically put their boast in. Now, let me explain the word boast – usually, the idea of this word, boast, involves something on which you put your dependence, and because you depend on it, because you put your confidence in it, then you take pride in it, and you boast in it. So, he's saying, if I could paraphrase it, don't let the wise man depend on and therefore take pride in his wisdom. Don't let the mighty man depend on and therefore boast in and take pride in his strength. Don't let the wealthy man depend on and take pride in his wealth. Yet those are three of the things that all cultures hold up. Isn't it interesting? You go back to just before the fall of Judah in 500's BC and look what they praised and whom they prized. They prized the academic, they prized the athlete warrior, and they prized the financier, the wealthy men of their culture. And he chooses those, and he says, don't you dare put your dependence on those things; don't you dare put your pride and your confidence in those.

Instead, verse 24: "Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me." Probably, those two expressions, "understands" and "knows" – most commentators take those to be basically synonymous; it's just a total picture, it's one idea. He understands, and he knows Me, that "I am Yahweh." First of all, he's got it right, who I am – he's not worshipping the wrong God. I am Yahweh, the God who revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then, watch what He says about Himself. "I am the Lord who exercises" – and he lists three things. "Lovingkindness" – there's our word, chesed, again – loving loyalty, unfailing love. He says, listen – I make legally binding promises to people who don't deserve them, and I never change. I will be everlastingly loyal to those to whom I've made those promises. That's you and me, folks – this is our God. "Justice" – God is about justice. We don't always understand that or see that in this world, but God will prevail; justice will eventually be done. And "righteousness" – doing what's right; God always does what's right in our world. You know, so many people respond to tragedy and difficulty and trouble in life, and what's their first practical response? It isn't fair; it isn't fair. No, God does what's right. "'For I delight in these things,' declares the Lord." You see, God prizes nothing of our human ability, of our human wisdom, of our human capacity, of our human skills – instead, He says, I want you to prize only one thing, and that is that you understand and know Me – that's why it's important.

Now, what does it mean – what does it mean to know God? Well, it means to begin to grasp the reality of who He is. Turn back to Exodus – I didn't want to give you all of the verses there before, because I wanted to look at it again – turn back to Exodus 33 for a moment. Moses, in verse 13, says "Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways" – that is, your paths; as I've said before, your predictable patterns of behavior, let me know how You act – "that I may know You." And then he asked – that's for a verbal display of the character of God, and then in verse 18, he says, "Show me Your glory" – he's asking for a visual display of the glory of God. And I want you to know how God responds – He says, in verse 19, "I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you." And he says, verse 20, but "you cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" "Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I pass by." Some people say, well, what did Moses see? Don't ask me that; it's not here – we don't know what he saw. "Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back – My face will not be seen." But here's where I want you to go – notice verse 5 of chapter 34. "The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by in front of him" – there's that visual display Moses asked for, "show me Your glory," and God let him see something of His glory, but then here's the verbal display – "and proclaimed, 'The name of the Lord, The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness" or chesed again "for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." You see, to know God is to know what's true about Him and to know, as Moses asks, His predictable patterns of behavior – how does God act; what does He do? Here it is, He's revealing it to Moses.

But it doesn't mean merely to have an academic knowledge about God in the Bible – instead, it also means to have a relationship with Him. We get a clue from the original languages – in both Hebrew and Greek, the words for "know" are often used for personal relationship. For example, the Hebrew word is used in the context of Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare a son. It's the same word that's used in Jeremiah, this whole idea of a relationship with God. But that's kind of vague, and that isn't always helpful, because everyone God has created has a relationship with God. Those who are opposed to God are rebels against Him – they're His enemies, they're the objects of His wrath. Our relationship is different, so what does it mean, this personal relationship with God? Well, let's see if we can define it – I break it down into two parts.

First of all, to know God is to enter into a father-child relationship with God through salvation; that's the nature of the relationship. You know, people sort of throw around this vague term, if I have a personal relationship with God – well, what does that mean? Well, this is what it means – through salvation, I have entered into a father-child relationship with God. Notice the text I put up here – turn to Romans 8:15. Paul says, "for you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons." Listen, when you were saved, when God saved you, your relationship to Him changed, you went from being an enemy, from being a rebel to being His child. And Paul finishes out that passage there in Romans 8:15 by saying, because we have this spirit of adoption, "we cry out, 'Abba! Father!'" – a term of endearment. There's a relationship, but what is that relationship? God is now our adopted Father. You see it again in Galatians 4:5 – "so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." Ephesians – let's turn to Ephesians; I want you to see this in its context. Ephesians 1 – in the middle of this great passage, at the beginning of Ephesians 1, where Paul begins in verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing," and then he goes on to enumerate those spiritual blessings – look at what he says in verse 5. "In love," – the end of verse 4 – "in love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself." This is what it was about, this is what God was doing – He was saving us, and through the process of saving us, or as a result, I should say, of saving us, He adopted us as His own children. That's what it means to know God – you and I now know God in the sense that He's our Father.

That brings us to the second part of my definition, not only to enter into a father-child relationship with God through salvation, but secondly, to deepen our communion with our Father through spiritual growth. To deepen our communion with our Father through spiritual growth – this is what it means to know God. The apostle John lays out this process in 1 John 2 – turn there for a moment. He's talking to all of us, and he groups all of us, as believers, into three groups. All of us belong to God by adoption, we're all His children, but we're at different stages of development. He refers to some, you'll notice in verse 12, as "little children" – he addresses them again at the end of verse 13; notice what the little children have? To describe them, "I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake," verse 12. End of verse 13, "I have written to you, children, because you know the Father." Here is the most basic level of spiritual maturity – these are people who have just been adopted, these are people who are struggling as new children of their heavenly Father. They know that God is now their Father, and they know their sins are forgiven, but that's about as much as they know. That's about the level of their spiritual maturity, their spiritual development – they're very young children of the Father.

But then there's another category here, and that's the category of young men. Notice the end of verse 13, "I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one." And then again at the end of verse 14, "I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one." Here are those who have developed a little further – they're beyond the baby stage of now being children of the Father, but now they're beginning to grow into young men. What does it mean to grow to be a young man? It means that you understand the Word of God – you understand the truth of God's Word, and you're not like children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine; you begin to be stable in your faith. Oh, you're not perfect, you're still developing, you're still growing, but you understand, and you're overcoming the temptation of Satan, you're overcoming the trouble that you've been encountered in your life and you're overcoming the misleading doctrines that come along the way. You're now stable, you're beginning to have that stability in your growth and development.

There's a third category he has here – notice in the beginning of verse 13, "I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning." And again, at the first part of verse 14, "I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning." You see, all of these are children of the heavenly Father. Notice the end of verse 13, "I've written to you, children, because you know the Father." All of these people know the Father, they're all related to the Father, but they're at different stages of development. There's the young children who just know their sins have been forgiven, there are the young men who understand the Word of God and have begun to develop so that they can stand and be stable, and then there are the fathers, that is, the older men – still children of our heavenly Father – but now they've reached a point at which they know God, they have a deep intimate relationship with God, their communion with their Father has deepened through spiritual growth.

As you mature in the faith, you'll find yourself not only studying and reading and meditating to gain an understanding of the teaching of scripture, but you'll find yourself digging into every text to see what it uncovers about God. I see that in my own life – there was a time when what I wanted to know was the doctrine of scripture, and that's crucial. As young men, you have to know the doctrine of scripture, but there comes a time when you have a handle on that – you're still growing, you're still developing in that way, but now you move beyond that, and you want to see in every text, not the biblical principle, but the Person of God. You'll begin to glory not in what you know, but Who you know. Many Christians rejoice in glory in the simple reality that they belong to God; others move beyond that level and revel in doctrine and a knowledge of doctrine, as I said, is crucial, because it's important to know God and it's important for our own spiritual growth. But the final goal of our faith isn't knowing doctrine – it's knowing God.

That raises the final question, and we'll answer it briefly – how can we know God? How can we know God? Well, obviously, the first answer is, only through Jesus Christ. John 1:18 makes it clear that "no man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has exegeted Him." The only way anybody can know God is through Jesus Christ. But what about once we're in Christ – how then do we develop in this relationship with God of Father and child, deepening our communion? Well, I think the answer is found in Proverbs 2 – turn there, and we'll look at this briefly as we close this evening. What I want you to notice about Proverbs 2:1-5 is that the first four verses are an if statement, and verse five is a then statement. You recognize that construction, we use it all the time. Verse 5 is called synonymous parallelism – I've talked to you about that before, it's Hebrew poetry, where the two lines are basically synonymous; that means the two lines are saying the same thing in a slightly different way. Notice verse 5 – "then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God," so to fear God is to know God. And if we will do – here's the point: if we will do what the first four verses say, then we will find the knowledge of God. So, what do the first four verses teach us about how to come to know God? Well, notice verses 1 and 2: "My son, if you will receive My words and treasure My commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding" – we find out that the knowledge of God is found first of all through the Word of God. "If you will receive My words and treasure My commandments," if you'll be attentive to what I say, if you'll "incline your heart to understanding" it – in other words, the knowledge of God, building a deeper communion with our Father – this process of spiritual growth begins with the Word of God. It's impossible to grow in our knowledge of God, apart from our understanding and knowledge of who God is, and it's impossible to know who God is outside the pages of scripture. This is talking about – notice – accumulating knowledge, but it's also talking about obedience. Making your ear attentive and inclining your heart has to do with desiring to hear in order to act – it's obedience. We grow in our communion and relationship with God as we are in the Word of God, learning and obeying. Secondly, notice verse 3. "If you cry for discernment and lift your voice for understanding" – it comes through prayer. He's talking about crying out to God – if you cry out to God for discernment, if you lift your voice for understanding. And then finally notice verse 4 – through intense desire. "If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures" – you see, you're seeking wisdom and wisdom is – in the end, you find the knowledge of God. Verse 5, you "discover the knowledge of God" – intense desire.

It's interesting – when you go to the Psalms, particularly the Psalms we read earlier, Psalm 63 and Psalm 42, David describes this intense desire to know God as thirst. Now, we really can't appreciate that because of where we live, we don't understand that image – but if we lived elsewhere, we would. I was struck with a documentary a few years ago about the Sahara Desert. You know it's the largest in the world – it fills nearly all of northern Africa, it measures approximately 3,000 miles from east to west and between 800 and 1,200 miles from north to south – a huge, barren, trackless wilderness. In his book Sahara Unveiled, William Langewiesche tells the story of an Algerian – an Algerian named Lag Lag, and his companion – their truck broke down while they were crossing the Sahara. They had plenty of water to make the crossing if the truck had held up, but it broke down. They nearly died of thirst during the weeks they waited to be rescued. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything in hopes of quenching their terrible thirst. The sun forced them to dig trenches under the truck – they went under the truck, but rather than just lying under the truck, they dug trenches to see if they could get a little bit further away from the heat, and they would just simply lie there day after day during the time the sun was out. They carefully rationed the water that they had, and they didn't eat because – they had food, but they didn't eat because they were afraid that would only add to their dehydration and magnify their thirst.

Thirst is one of the most terrible of all human sufferings. Physiologists tell us there are three stages of thirst. There's eudipsia, which is ordinary thirst, what you and I have when we go to the refrigerator. There's hyperdipsia, which is a temporary intense thirst, and then comes an interesting word, polydipsia – poly, of course, means many – it's the kind of thirst that can be satisfied in many different ways. Physiologists have special words for its different manifestations, and some of them are not pleasant, such as uropotia for the drinking of urine; hemopotia for the drinking of blood. But this is the kind of thirst that will take anything to quench – it will receive whatever, in hopes of quenching one's thirst. After three weeks, Lag Lag, this Algerian, and his partner ran out of their carefully rationed water. It didn't take long, but the next step was for them to slip into this third stage of thirst, in which they actually began to drain the rusty water from the radiator of their truck to drink. In order to survive, they were willing to, in effect, drink literally anything – that's a picture of the kind of consuming thirst, the intense desire we are to have to know God. Through the Word of God, through prayer for God to reveal Himself, and through our own intense desire for God – when those things are true, Proverbs promises, then you will "discern the fear of the Lord and you will discover the knowledge of God." Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for the clarity of Your Word, thank You for the encouragement that we receive from it. Lord, I pray that You would cause all of us who know You, who are Your children through adoption, to long to deepen our communion with You. Lord, help us, when we come to the scripture, not simply to be looking for principles – although we need to do that, because that's important in our growth and our obedience – but to help us also to be looking intently for You, to be looking for Your Person, to what You revealed about Yourself. And Lord, I pray that as we mature from spiritual children to young men to fathers, that our appetite for You would only grow – Lord, give us that sort of thirst for you that David had.

We pray in Jesus' name – Amen.