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Perhaps a better world is drawing near, Just as easy it could all disappear, Along with whatever meaning you might have found. He wants to be able to reflect positively on the purpose of a life lived, but all he can say is: Somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go, may lie a reason you were alive, but you’ll never know. You know, a question I have always had is why isn’t everybody in the world completely depressed. Sometimes I think that if people were able to be honest, Charter Hospital wouldn’t have to keep running all those commercials. They would be packed! And when we add the true hopelessness of the present worldview to the normal everyday pressures of life, one wonders how people keep going at all. The Christian has a different worldview than Jackson Brown, but still knows theologically the truth that the world we in is broken and fallen. The Christian doesn’t just know this theoretically, he also experiences the brokenness first hand. Often things can seem pretty senseless and hopeless even for the Christian. Sometimes it seems as if we live just to survive another day – the work, the relationships, the fears and anxieties. Sometimes the burdens and routines of our day to day lives seem to crush us, and crush our spirits. I don’t care how positive and upbeat a person is, even a Christian person, when life presses upon us, when it throws curveball after curveball, when the work of our hands seems futile and fruitless, we can get discouraged about the real maening of our lives day to day. Sometimes the temptation is just to throw in the towel and live for what every one else is living for, for comfort or glory or riches, even though in the end we know there is no meaning in these things. Under the grind of everyday life, the Christian is tempted to rewrite Jackson Brown’s words: Somewhere between the time I woke up and the time I went to sleep, may lie a reason I was alive today, but I’ll never know. Perhaps a better day is drawing near, Just as easy it could just get worse, And take away whatever we were living for. But Jesus said this: This is life eternal, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Jeremiah put it this way: Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let them that glorieth glory in this, that he understands and knows me. This plain and simple is what we were made for, to know God. This is to be our chief aim in life. This is the best thing life can bring. This is the main business of life. This is the only thing that really carries over from this life to the next life. This is really all we can take with us. As my teacher Dr. Packer puts it in his book Knowing God: What makes life worth living is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian person has that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God? And we might think, yes, this all sounds nice, but when? After the kids are in bed, when I get off work, when I get a job, when my headache goes away, when I get out of debt, when my spouse stops hurting me, when I work with more Christian people, when things aren’t so busy, when I’m not angry anymore, when I get a new house, when the blur of life slows down, maybe when I am on vacation. When knowing and loving and obeying our God is the objective to our day to day lives, it breathes meaning into every pressure packed minute. But it is easy, is it not, to just forget this until.... Even though I care a lot about what we do when we are together each week corporately, even though I know that we as God’s people are a corporate entity, my biggest concern as a pastor is with how you are doing in your day to day lives as believers out there in homes and offices and neighborhoods. My heart for you is your heart for yourself, and is my heart for myself, that you could live each day as another exciting step in the journey of knowing God, as another opportunity to know Him better, as another lap in the race as we fix our eyes on the prize of becoming like Him. I hope for all of us that we could experience the day to day ups and downs from the context of our progression in the knowledge of God. This adds meaning not only to the bright and happy moments, but also to the dark and difficult ones as well. So this is what we will be looking at in messages the next two months. But what does it mean to know someone or something. There are two intertwined ingredients necessary in the knowledge of a thing or a person. First we have knowledge about that thing or person. Second we have personal experience with that thing or person. When I was growing up there was a few acres of woods just three houses down from my house. It’s still there, owned by a church. My dog and I spent a lot of time in those woods. I knew every tree, every little dip and valley and hill, each little glade, each path, each old regrown foxhole. I knew particular trees, favorites that I liked to sit against, look at, or climb. They were like friends. I knew a lot about them by observation over the years. As I entered college and took botany courses, my knowledge of the trees increased. I understood better how they worked on the inside, how they responded to stresses like drought, how they make baby trees, etc. How well I knew a tree depended mostly upon me and the time I spent observing, watching, reading about it. And it was mostly up to me how well I knew that tree. Knowing a person is a similar, and also a very different thing than knowing a tree. Think of how well you might know a person. You might say about a person, “oh, he is an acquaintance,” or “ I know him pretty well,” or “I know what she thinks before she thinks it!” To know a person you have to know things about them. I can spend lots of time with you and not know you if I do not know correct things about you. On the other hand, I can have lots of information about you, but not really know you if I do not spend time with you, if I do not experience you in many situations.. Both knowledge about and experiential knowledge are essential. If I am trying to get to know you, and spending time with you, but keep calling by the wrong name, referring to the wrong town you are from, asking you how a job is going you are not doing, well, I am not going to get very far. Likewise, what if I had been trying to shake an old identity. I had started over with a new name, created a new past, fallen in love, and gotten married. But then my spouse found out about my other life, my other self. No matter what the experience he or she had had with me, she would think she didn’t really know me at all, and would likely leave me. So how well I know a person depends a great deal on whether they choose to make themselves known to me. They have to be open about themselves, to let me see them as they are. You can spend lots of time with a person and not really know them at all. But I can’t really get to know a person as a person just by following them and observing them, even if they are open about themselves. This after all is what wildlife biologists do with birds and prairie dogs and giraffes. For me to really know a person as a person, that person has to relate to me. I have to see not just how they are in general, but how they are to me, toward me. And I have to see this in all sorts of situations that involve me. I can only really know a person as they are in relation to me. I can only know a person as I watch and see them in day to day situations, and as they relate to me in day to day stresses and situations. Knowing God is like knowing a person. After all, He is a personal being. We have to know about Him, and we have to spend time with and experience Him. The language of having a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” is often used proudly as a way of saying “I don’t care about religion or theology, I’m into a relationship with Jesus.” This is all sort of anti-religious-establishment-sounding, sort of folksy, and attractive in its own way, but it is very naive really. Knowing God is more than knowing about Him, but it is not less. We can never know enough about God. We worship a God who delights in revealing Himself to us. He has revealed Himself through the prophets and writers of the Old Testament. He has revealed Himself in the incarnate life of His son Jesus. He reveals Himself today through the Holy Spirit, primarily as He presents to us the presence of the risen Lord Jesus, as he illuminates the Scriptures, as he causes us to see God’s works in the world. He wants to be known, and delights to be known, and extends an invitation to be known. He chooses to be known as God over us, not as an equal. He isn’t an equal, and He isn’t a buddy. We know Him as child to father, as servant to master, as subject to King, as sheep to shepherd, as disciple to teacher, as patient to doctor, sinner to Savior, needy to provider, as creature to creator. Just as with a person, I can know God not only in terms of how He is and what He is like in general, but how He is with and toward me as my master, my king, and my shepherd, and only as I really am in my day to day life. This is where the reality of my day to day life and my goal of knowing God intersect. If all my life consisted of was intentionally just sitting there doing nothing, I wouldn’t get to know God very well as my shepherd, my king, or my master. But as I am engaged in real life with all that it brings, then I get to know Him in all of these ways. The same holds for you. It is as He leads you to pasture when you need nourishment, picks you up when you are hurt, drags you back when you are wayward, and protects you when you are in danger that you know Him as shepherd. It is as you are active in the lives of others, as you are engaged in real work, when you are making choices about lifestyle and money that you know Him as servant to master. It is as you struggle with hard times, deal with difficult relationships that demand more than you have to give, as you try to understand the meaning of tough situations, that you can know Him as disciple toteacher. It is when you are worn out and frazzled that you can really know Him as needy to provider. It is as you deal with your own personal problems and their ramifications that you know Him as patient to doctor. It is when we are afraid and worried that we can really know him as child to Father. You day to day life then is crucial if your goal in life is to know and love God and serve God! We should not then despise the pressures, challenges, demands, limitations, and constraints we face. We should not despise the work we must do each day. We must not despise the people we have to deal with each and every day. God wants to be known to us as a God who is active with us day to day. The Lord Jesus told us to pray, “give us this day our daily bread.” He said that “each day has enough trouble of its own.” He is our God each and every day. Thus our goal of knowing God fills our everyday life with meaning! But are we really just in this knowing God all alone? Is this a solitary effort? Let me put it this way. There are many people who know you, and who know you pretty well. They have a working picture of what you are like and who you are. But each person, each group of persons in your life, knows you in a different way than the other. Each would describe you slightly differently. Yes, they may all say you have brown hair and brown eyes, are tall and athletic or whatever, and may all say you are very nice, but there would be significant nuances of difference. Why? Part of the difference would lie in the context in which they know you. Some know you at work as boss or emplyee, others at the field as umpire, others at church as the piano player. But a significant reason for how these people know you differently has to do with who they are and how the differences between them cause you to relate to them slightly differently. One person that knows you is a very sensitive, so you are very soft spoken with them. One person is very anxious, and you are very soothing. One is manipulative, so you are kind of tough with them. You relate differently to people of different temperaments. My children relate to me as a group. They have many many common experiences of me, and ways I provide for them as a group, act toward them as a group, teaching, wrestling, guiding, providing, etc. But my daughters also each know me slightly differently, not because I am a multi personality, but because things about them draw out different things in me. So really, if the delight of their heart were to know me as fully as possible, they would compare notes, and have a fuller picture. This is one way we help each other know God better, as we help the other to see how He has been dealing with each of us. We then sort of get a more beautiful composite, which causes us to love Him even more. As a church family we will know God in some ways as a group. He will teach us in common, provide for needs in common, take us through various experiences as a body. But he also deals with us as individuals and as separate families. So we each, because we are different and our daily lives are different, come to know Him differently. We help get the bigger picture, we help fill in the gaps, we come to know God better as we share of our knowledge of Him with each other. This is one of the very important reasons we have an Open Time at Covenant Fellowship, so we can all come to know and love our God better. It is exciting to be engaged in the purpose of knowing God alongside others – alongside each of you. I look forward to the progress we will each make in the next few months together. Let us pray. |
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