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Transcript

John 17 three. Jesus says, "And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." J.I Packer's great 20th century classic, Knowing God. It starts like this, "It has been said by someone that the proper of study of mankind is man. I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God's elect is God, the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead, the highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of the child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind than thoughts of God."

And then he concludes with these words, "Oh, there is something in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound. In musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief, and in the influence of the holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea, be lost in his immensity and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief, so speak peace to the winds of trial as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning." Now those are the opening paragraphs of the book, Knowing God. It is actually a quotation from a sermon preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1855, remarkably when he was but 20 years of age.

The God of whom Packer wrote... And let me say this, the reason why I start with that book is because it was a life-changing book for me. It redirected my entire life. I read that first as a junior and frankly I've got plowed under by it and then went back to it my senior year, completed reading it and I determined at that point I needed to study under J.I Packer, that I might know the God of whom Packer wrote. And so it was a decisive event in my life. I start with that quote because there's a sense in which there is nothing more that I could encourage you to do, nothing better that I could encourage you to do than to get a copy of the book, Knowing God, and start slowly to read your way through it, pondering and meditating as you go. It is a powerful, wonderful testimony to the nature of the God that we serve. I have waited 26 and a half years to preach this series of sermons on the attributes of God.

The first time I led a group through a study of the attributes was in 1980 as a pastoral intern at the community Presbyterian Church of Danville, California. I was leading the Seekers Fellowship through the study that we will be engaged in over these weeks. But then a second time, in 1982, I taught it for a Sunday school class at the Granada Presbyterian Church. 31 years later now, I am returning to the subject, and 31 years later, I sense the same things that I sensed back then, that is, I still feel inadequate, I still feel somewhat presumptuous and even a kind of impropriety in the study. Are we to study God like he were some sort of laboratory animal? Are we to poke at him and dissect him and place him under our microscopes? How is it that we can study the infinite God of heaven and earth? Would we not be better off like Job putting our hands over our mouths lest we blaspheme? Well, maybe, but that's not what we're going to do. Why? Because of the vital importance of the knowledge of God.

I believe knowing God is the determining factor in understanding who we are and what our purpose is in life. Calvin begins the Institutes with this remarkable statement that all knowledge consists of two parts. There is the knowledge of God and of ourselves. And he goes on to say that we have never truly come to understand ourselves until we have gazed into the face of God and then from there, descending down to evaluate ourselves. The knowledge of God is the key to an understanding of who we are and why we are here and how we are to live and what are our basic needs and where are we going? Today, I think that there are many people for whom life is empty and it's meaningless and it's purposeless, and the reason it is because they don't know God. They're lost and they're wandering about aimlessly because they don't know God. They're unable to discern any purpose in life and any purpose for their existence.

The dominant philosophy, it can be well argued, of the 20th century is nihilism from Nietzsche, the philosophy that says that there is no meaning and there is no purpose at all in life, and what is is whatever is. We cannot know ourselves and we cannot know the purpose and meaning of life unless we know God. And Jesus says that this is eternal life. And as we will see, eternal here means more than just a succession of years. There's a qualitative as well as a quantitative element to that word eternal. Jesus says the same thing in John 10 when he says, "I came that you might have life and have it abundantly." Eternal life is the life worth living. It is a qualitative concept as well as quantitative. It is the good life, the best life, the life that God means for us to have. So let's move on and ponder together the need of diligent study. Why is it that we speak then in the title of this series of the study of God?

The reason why study is necessary is because thoughts of God are inescapable. We are all, in a sense, theologians. We all have concepts of God and his relation to the world that we bring to the table. They may be deliberate or they may be accidental, they may be conscious or they may be subconscious, but we all have opinions about God, and the question is whether or not our opinions or our views or our ideas are going to be the right ones or whether they're going to be the wrong ones. Since the fall, human unaided reason or common sense is invariably wrong when it comes to God and plunges us into idolatry. This is the Apostle Paul's argument in Romans one where he argues that that which may be known about God, his invisible attributes is a divine nature. Invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen being understood through what has been made, "But," He says, "We have exchanged the knowledge of the invisible God for God in the form of man and four-footed creatures," And so forth and so on.

"We have suppressed the truth and unrighteousness," He says. "We have exchanged the truth of God for a lie." That is the propensity of human nature. And so we are theologians, the question is whether or not we're going to be good theologians or bad theologians, whether or not our thoughts of God are going to be the correct ones or they're going to be false. One Corinthians 2;14, the apostle Paul says, "The things of the spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man." The Calvin put it this way. He said, "The fallen human heart is a factory of idols." It manufactures by nature. Its whole tendency and propensity is to manufacture idols, and so right thoughts about God will only be found by turning to scripture. It is the textbook. If we would properly know the truth of God and as we go to that textbook, it will be necessary for us to work at it, to submit ourselves to God's self revelation.

Let's move on then and talk about the neglect of the diligent study of God. Why is it then if the study of God is necessary, if we were to know God, why has it been neglected and what are the barriers to that diligent study? Let me name several of them. One is presumption. I think that there's a presumption out there. The assumption is that God is similar to us. He is like we are and he's just a bigger version of ourselves. And so what is true of us and our desires and our needs and our wants and our outlook and our perspective that we can project those out onto God and that will give us an accurate depiction of what is true of him because what is true of him is what is true of us. This is the error that the psalmist identifies in Psalm 50 verse 21 when he says to those who were morally indulgent and idolatrous, "You thought that I was like yourself. You thought that I was just like you." JB Phillips wrote a book back in the middle of the 20th century entitled 'Your God is Too Small'.

Martin Luther said to Erasmus, one of his nemeses in the 16th century, "Your thoughts of God are too human." "My thoughts are not your thoughts," Isaiah 55;5, "My ways are not your ways. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite." Carl Bart, arguably the greatest theologian of the 20th century, made the famous statement in his exposition of Paul's letter to the Romans that God is wholly other. And with the liberals of his day, he said, "You cannot find God by shouting man in a loud voice." God is not just a bigger version of ourselves. Just to show you I'm not a complete cultural ignoramus, Jethro Tull's Aqualung album, on the back of it said in the beginning, man created God and in his image he created him. There's a lot of truth in what they were saying. Man is constantly creating God after his own image. God is personal, but because he is personal and because we rightly make that emphasis, we sometimes draw the wrong conclusion that therefore he is weak and inadequate and pathetic and lacks towards sin in the same way that we are.

I think one reason why so little true worship goes on in our day is because God has been scaled down to proportions that are no longer worthy of worship and no longer evoke our worship. Job 11;7 asked the question, "Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?" The presumed answer is no, you cannot. Paul at Romans 11;33 and 34, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor." His ways are, Paul says, they're inscrutable. They're just beyond us, beyond our comprehension. Calvin, again, in the institute says that God, even in scripture, lisps to us. He has to condescend to what is for him virtually baby talk in order for us to understand him. He says, Calvin does, "We know God not as he is in himself, but as he is toward us."

At every point, there is always more to be said about God because he is infinite. So we can know God truly, but we will never know him comprehensively. Number one in the neglect of a diligent study is the problem of presumption, of thinking that God shares our interests and desires and therefore study is unnecessary. Number two, similarly, there's an anti-intellectualism in the church in our era. It goes back, in my understanding of the flow of history, to the fundamentalist, modernist debates in the early part of the 20th century. The fundamentalist basically lost that debate culturally and were consigned to the backwaters of our civilization. And since then, amongst conservative Christians, there has been a fear of study, a very understandable fear of academia since most of the intellectual elite in our country are unbelieving, they're skeptics, they're hostile toward biblical Christianity, and so the temptation has been there to stick to the simple gospel, to tell over and over the old, old story and not get too deep. "Exegesis leads to exit Jesus," Is what the old fundamentalist said.

John Stott wrote a book back in the 1970s entitled, 'Your Mind Matters'. Great little booklet. God says we are to love him with all of our heart and all of our mind. We don't disconnect our brains when we become Christians. God speaks to us, he addresses our minds. The God that we worship says, "Come, let us reason together." And you find the Apostle Paul in the Book of Acts, start with chapter 17, but repeatedly we find him reasoning and persuading, addressing the understanding of people, thereby bringing them to repentance and faith and to a true understanding of the God of the Bible. Third, similarly again, the neglect of diligent study has been a result of a kind of super spirituality. There's been this false antithesis between my thoughts and my personal relationship with God and the thoughts and opinions and views of others, and it's been expressed like this. I don't trust man's opinion. I don't trust the opinions of others. I go straight to the Bible. God speaks to me directly, and so I have this unmediated knowledge of the truth.

Question, if you don't trust the opinions of others, why do you trust your own? You say mankind is fallen, well, so are you. What about your own limitations? Proverbs five, one and two, "Apply your minds and seek wisdom." Two Timothy 2;15, "Study and show yourself a craftsman rightly dividing the words of truth." "If we are," Yet another phrase from Calvin, "To think God's thoughts after him, it will be necessary that we consult the great theologians and study them and the creeds and the council so that the views that we adopt from scripture are those that have been carefully vetted by the church over the centuries." And then fourth, in terms of the neglect of diligent study, there's a bias toward the practical versus what is seen as kind of abstract, theoretical, impractical knowledge. People want to study marriage and family and finance and emotional health and well-being. There's two problems with this outlook. Number one, right thinking about God glorifies God.

He doesn't like mis-attribution any more than any of the rest of us do, and if we are to know God and bless God and praise God for who he is, we have to think rightly about him and understand his nature, his character, and his attributes.

Second answer to the bias toward the practical is that the attributes of God, the study of them, is eminently practical because it's through the study of the attributes of God that we lay the foundation for all of life because through that study, all the basic questions of life are answered. It means some theological heavy lifting has to be done. True enough. And there will always be a temptation to shortcut the process. Nevertheless, it's true, the foundation for life, the foundation on the basis of which we answer all of the basic questions of life are answered through a correct understanding of the nature of God. So these are the forces that we have arrayed against us. What we've seen so far is number one, the need of diligent study because thoughts of God are inescapable. Two, we've looked at the neglect of diligent study and we have examined presumption, anti-intellectualism is super spirituality and a bias for the practical as obstacles, forces arrayed against the study of God that would seek to persuade us to direct our attention to lesser subjects.

And then there's the problem of our own worldliness and carnality and sloth and the whole culture of amusement and the ethos of fun. And so we have our work cut out for us in the studies that are ahead. So large number three then, Roman numeral number three, as it were, we've looked at the need of diligence study, the neglected diligence study, now let's return to the importance of the true knowledge of God. Back to John 17;3. Jesus says, "This is eternal life that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Do you see what Jesus is doing here? He is summarizing his whole mission and purpose in terms of knowing God. That is the goal of his mission, that we should be forgiven for our sins, reconciled for our sins so that we might know him. In other words, the real end point of the whole work of redemption is not merely that our sins would be forgiven or merely that we would be reconciled to God, but that we would know him.

Similarly, Philippians three-eight. There, the apostle Paul goes back into his own personal background as a Pharisee of Pharisee, Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, righteous. He says He counts it all rubbish in comparison with the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord for whom he had suffered the loss of all things. Think about what he is saying there. Here is the one thing that matters, the one thing, the thing that is of surpassing value, the thing that exceeds everything else that one could possibly have or know in all of the world. What is it? What is that thing that is of absolutely surpassing value? It is to know Christ. Even if it means that I should suffer the loss of all things, it's all for the apostle. It's all rubbish as compared to the true knowledge of God in Christ. And then the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah nine verse 23, "Thus says the Lord, 'Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast in his might and let not a rich man boast of his riches but let him who boasts boast of this.'"

All right. Now I'm predisposed to pay attention at this point. We've had this succession of let nots, and the things that were to let not, they're pretty valuable, their wisdom and their power and their riches, essentially the things that everybody in this world wants. So that's not the thing that we're to boast in. That's not the thing that's really valuable and important apparently according the prophet Jeremiah. No. "Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving-kindness, justice and righteousness on earth for I delight in these things," Declares the Lord. Not wisdom, not might, not riches, but the thing that matters more than anything else about which we should boast about, which we should aim, that should be our goal is that we would know God. And as Spurgeon said in our opening quote, "There isn't anything more fulfilling, humbling, consoling. There's nothing better for our spiritual, emotional, psychological, intellectual wellbeing than the knowledge of God. Its benefits are inexhaustible."

We want to make a couple of distinctions that are important as we look at the importance of knowing God. The first of these is the true knowledge of God is both knowing about God and knowing God. So we're making a distinction. The first is to know God, we must know about God. There's no replacement for careful study. We're going to the Bible and carefully examining all that the Bible has to say about the nature and character and attributes of God, and some very subtle distinctions will have to be made if we're to know him accurately. They're very careful. Understanding must be arrived at as we look at the doctrine of the Trinity or as we distinguish between the communicable and the incommunicable attributes of God, or to a proper understanding of God's infinity or his immutability. How is it that God can be said to never change and yet there's places in the Bible where it says God repented of something? So to know God, we have to know about God, and that requires careful, extended thought, contemplation, meditation.

I'm not much of a mathematician and I didn't get all that far in higher mathematics, but one thing I do remember is to get math right, you got to spend a lot of time looking at the formulas. You got to look at them, you got to work them, you got to think about them, and then after a long time of staring at your math book and working on the problems, it clicks, but it takes a while, doesn't it? At least it did for me. I suspect it did for most of us. You can't just get it overnight. They're complicated and the concepts behind the formulas are difficult, and so careful, extended contemplation and study is necessary. Likewise with the study of God. We need to know the data. We need to know what actually is said. We need to come to a more subtle understanding of the various aspects of his nature. So to know God, we must know about God, but also knowing God is much more than that. It's not mere knowledge, it's not theoretical knowledge, it's not just the mental data. The goal is experiential knowledge.

Back to John 17;3, this is eternal life. We repeat ourselves. Eternal life is not an infinite extension of years, it's not just a matter of longevity, it is quality as well as quantity. It is the life that we were meant to live. It is the abundant life that we find in knowing God. I think the word abundant is synonymous with eternal, and this is what a number of the scholars say about the Greek vocabulary. Eternal life is abundant life. That is to know God is a rich, experiential relationship. That is the ultimate good, the highest good, transmitting the greatest of joys. It is profoundly experiential, not just knowing about God but knowing God. We find this repeatedly in the Psalms. Psalm 73, the psalmist says, "The nearness of God is my good." The nearness of God. He knows what it is to have fellowship with God. He's experienced that. He knows that that is his good. Above everything else on earth, that is the good thing. Psalm 34, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Taste, that's the language of experience.

You taste food, you use your taste buds. Well, there's a spiritual taste, and one is able to experience the taste of fellowship with God. One is able to experience God. Psalm 63, "Your loving kindness is better than life." Look at that statement along with the apostle Paul's in Philippians one when he says, "To depart this world and be with Christ is far better. Loving kindness, the [inaudible 00:29:11], the grace of God is better than life itself." To experience that, to know that is better even than living. So leaving this world and departing it for the next world is far better because it means you get more of God, to whom to have even in part in this world is better than life. Psalm 16, "In his presence is the fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore." That's the language of experience. Someone who hides away in a corner, opens his Bible and spends time in prayer and contemplating God's word, experiences... I'm not saying every time, but enough that he keeps coming back again and again and again, experiences the fullness of joy.

Those who are disciplined about their devotional life, they're not disciplined because somebody's cracking the whip on them, they're disciplined about it because of the rich experience of the presence of God, a fellowship with God that they experience as they devote themselves to the word of God in prayer. Psalm 27, "One thing I have desired that will I seek." One thing. Can you narrow it down to one thing? He says one thing, "That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and behold your beauty." That's the language of the senses again, the language of experience again. That's the one thing he wants. What's the one thing that you want or that I want? It may not be that. We might have other things, a different agenda than that. The psalmist says here's the one thing worth living for, here's the one thing to seek after, the one thing that trumps all other desirable things that I might dwell in the house of the Lord so that I might enjoy his presence, so that I may see his beauty. That's what it is to know God.

He is the pearl of great price. He is that treasure buried in the field for which we sell all in order to get it. And then finally, the attributes of God are most clearly seen in Christ. Again, if you're taking notes, this is still under Roman numeral number three. As we return to the importance of the true knowledge of God, we were saying there's a difference between the true knowledge of... Or rather we were saying that true knowledge of God is both knowing God and knowing about God. We want to say this, finally, the attributes of God are most clearly seen in Christ. He is Immanuel, God with us. If we want to see some aspect of the attributes of God, where do we go to see it? I'll tell you where I think you go. You go right to the cross. You want to know the love of God? God demonstrates his love toward us, Romans five. Where does he demonstrate that? In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Where do you see?

Well, that's the love of God and the grace of God and the mercy of God and the long-suffering of God and the patience of God. All of that is most clearly seen, most clearly expressed in the cross of Christ. Take it the other side. The wrath of God, the anger of God against sin, the justice of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God. Where is that most clearly seen? Same place. How is it that the cross is a demonstration that God is just and justifier? Justifier, he's the forgiver. Just because the penalty for sin for humanity is paid. God didn't wink at sin. The crime was committed by humanity and by each one of us individually as well as collectively. The price had to be paid. The cross is the payment. God is just. And I believe that we will see the same as we work our way through the attributes. We'll see the justice and righteousness and grace and mercy and patience of God, and then as well the implications of the attributes.

There's a sense in which the whole Christian life is a contemplation of the attributes of God. So we are to be imitators of God as his beloved children in Ephesians five. We are to follow in Jesus' steps. You want to know how to live? You look at the life of Christ. We are to have the attitude, Philippians two, five, that was in Christ Jesus. The attitude of humility and of regarding others is more important than ourselves. In this is love. Not that we loved God, one John four, eight and nine, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if he so loved us, so ought we also to love. See how the Christian life is a contemplation of the attributes of God which we are to imitate that are supremely demonstrated in the life of Christ, in his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

And Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. If anyone hungers, let him come to me and eat. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, and from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water." To know Christ is to experience the satisfaction, the quenching of the hunger, the satisfying of the thirst of the soul. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst. It's in Christ that the experience of the knowledge of God promised by the prophets and the apostles is realized. Jesus said, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be satisfied. I believe this study will pay huge dividends as we persevere together carefully examining the scriptures, which above all else reveal Jesus, the one in whom we find rest for our souls. As we pray together.

Our Father in heaven, your hand must be strong upon us as we undertake this great study together. Guide us, oh Lord, that we might know all that you have revealed of yourself and that we might also pass through the knowledge to the experience of that knowledge itself, to the satisfying of the deepest needs of our souls. In Jesus' name, amen.