Video Transcript: Knowing God

Day 21 to 30 – Unit 3 God's Attributes (Part 01)

Video Transcript: Knowing God

Bible reading this morning is from Jeremiah chapter nine verses 23 and 24. Some of the most important verses in the whole Bible thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. let not the mighty man boasts in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For him these things I delight, declares the Lord. That ends the reading of God's word, and God always blesses His Word to those who listen. 

Knowing God, that's what it's all about. A failure to know God is the cause of nearly other form of failure in our life. And knowing God is the key to everything that's worth glorying in. That's worth bragging about. One of my favorite books that I've reread quite a number of times is the pursuit of God by AW. Tozer. And Dr. Tozer, who was a pastor in the Chicago area said to most people, God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate. But he remains personally unknown to the individual. So such people believe in God on the basis of good evidence for the fact that God is there. Others know of him only by hearsay, because somebody else told them that there's a God and they believed it. 

They've heard about him from others and put belief in him on into the back of their minds along with various odds and ends that make up their total creed. So they heard God exists the same way they heard a lot of other stuff they filed it away into via God's probably there. Now, some people who wonder why young people may be falling away from the church today have said, you know, the problem is too many people hear about God when they're children, and they kind of believe it for a while. But nobody ever gave them the evidence, the apologetic reasons to believe in God. And if only they had a clearer statement of all the proofs and evidences that God is real, they would not be nearly so likely to stop believing. Now there may be some truth in that.

But Dr. Tozer his diagnosis is that whether you believe in God just because of hearsay, and really don't have many other reasons that you've come up with, for believing it, or whether you consider the evidence to be quite adequate. There's still a severe lack either way. And the great lack is this, that people simply don't know God over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. People can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy, as they know any other person or thing. And then he mentioned some of the biblical statements taste and see that the Lord is good just as you can taste your dinner. Taste God, just as you can see things around you, see God, just as you can hear things around you, my sheep hear my voice of just as you can be touched and feel that you're being touched. Jeremiah could say the Lord touched me, he touched my mouth. 

Now in one sense, the, the sight and and taste are non physical, but no less real for that. And the point is that through personal experience, you can taste see, hear, touch God, what can all this mean except that we have in our hearts organs, by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses. We possess spiritual faculties. God designed us with those spiritual faculties just the way he gave us sight and ears and all of that. We possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world, if we will obey the spirits urge and begin to use those faculties. These senses must be quickened to act of life again, by the operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Or in the words of Jesus, you must be born again. Nobody can see the kingdom of God the reign of God unless you're born again. But if there is rebirth then that faculty that you were created with and meant to have comes alive again. And you begin to perceive God where He becomes in reality to you not just an inference, or something you heard about, but a living reality, in your experience, but why do the even Christians very often are lacking here? And all of us are lacking, of course, to the degree that we will see God face to face. But why do the very ransom children of God themselves know so little of that habitual conscious communion with God, which scripture offers? The answer is because of our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function where faith is defective, the result will be inward insensibility, and numbness towards spiritual things. So where faith is lacking completely, will have no sensitivity towards spiritual things, that where our faith is weak and wavering, it will also inhibit that faculty to perceive the reality of God right here with us, and all around us. 

God and the spiritual world are real, we can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. If you listen to philosophers, they may argue whether or not you can prove God's reality. But the philosophers will also argue whether you can prove the existence of physical reality, or the existence of other minds. And they will conclude that you can't prove that they will also include that you can't prove the reliability of memory. How do you know that something you think happened 17 minutes ago really happened 17 minutes ago, you have this impression, and this recall, but nothing can prove anything. And yet, we reckon on that react, we reckon on the general reliability of our memory unless something has really gone bad with our minds, we reckon on the perception of other people around us. Even though you can't really prove that anything exists outside the workings of your own mind and sensations, we just recommend those things, and behave as though they're so and so to God in the spiritual world are railing we need to reckon on God's reality. Our trouble is that we have established that thought habits.

We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. Sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see the other reality, the City of God shining all around us. So we have this faculty for perceiving but sin has fogged it up, or dirty did up and made it very, very hard to perceive God as a reality, we still may believe based on the evidence or what we're told that he's there, but he doesn't seem real. In our day to day activity. The soul has eyes with which to see, and ears with which to hear, feeble, they may be from long this use the vital life giving touch of Christ, they are now alive, and capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing. As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our inner eyes, a new God consciousness will seize upon us. And we shall begin to taste and see and inwardly feel God, who is our life, and our all. 

Before I go any further, I'll just say this, if this doesn't at the very least awaken some longing, then our difficulties are dreadful. If this awakens, at least a sense of, I've tasted that a little bit and I longed for more. That's a good sign. But this God consciousness, this constant awareness of living in the reality in the presence of God, is what we are meant to have. Now, when we read the book of Jeremiah, we read a lot of bad stuff. A lot of terrible things are going on. But it's really not that complicated. What lies at the root of it, not knowing God. The priests did not ask where is the Lord? Those who deal with the Lord did not know me. The leaders rebelled against me, the prophets prophesied by Baal following worthless idols. So certain idols seemed more real to them, and that's what they followed. Even those who are supposed to be dealing with the law didn't know God. My people are fool. They do not know me. They're senseless children. They have no understanding. They're skilled in doing evil. They know not how to do good. So all the other stuff you read about All the terrible practices and things that infuriate God and bring judgment down on the people of Judah. All those things really change traced down to this, my people are fools, they don't know me.

Now, even the kings and the prophets and the priests are bad. In one particular case, Jeremiah speaks against King Jehoiakim. And King Jehoiakim, has just finished a grand project. Maybe he remembers the greatness of Solomon, and all the buildings that Solomon built, sometimes making his people a little uneasy after a while Solomon did. We've been reading about that as part of the Bible reading plan, where you read, he built a simple Lord, that was fantastic. So him seven years 13 to build his own palace. Then he had to build palaces for his Egyptian wife, then some temples for some of the other gods that his various wives worshipped. And they, you know, they never stopped building. But that's what makes a king is build, build, build, build, build. build, Solomon knew better when he was young and should have known better the rest of his life, he didn't know any better. And so he builds this fabulous Winter Palace, he forced his slaves to work on the palace and doesn't pay them anything for doing it. And when he's done, he's got his palace. And Jeremiah comes to him and or delivers the message. He didn't come in person, he delivered the message, written Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor, doesn't make you a king to have more and more cedar, did not your father have food and drink his father was godly King Josiah, and the father of all the kings was the godly king David, Didn't your father have food and drink he did what was right and just, and so all went well with him. 

He defended the cause of the poor and needy. And so all went well. Is not that what it means to know me, declares the Lord. Josiah was the king who knew God. And because he knew God and what God is like, and he lived under God's kingship, it changed his kingship. And he saw what was just he looked out for the poor and needy and protected them from the rich and the powerful. And that's what it means to know me if you're a king declares the Lord, not building one more palace and forcing people to help you live in luxury. So you see, again, the ordinary people as well as the Kings, the key is whether they know God. So King Jaya Kim being who he is asked for Jeremiah's scroll, and proceeds to cut it in a slice at a time and burns the whole thing. And Jeremiah says, God's Word doesn't quite burn like paper, you are going to have the barrel of a donkey, you jackass. 

Basically, that was the message he delivered. And within a year, he was dead. You bear you don't have the noble burial of a king, you're not remembered well, people have no good memories of you. They're just glad to put you in the ground so that you don't think things up anymore. That's the message that this king received. After burning up God's scroll. Jeremiah says I wrote another scroll and added many similar things to it. Well, that's kind of how that works. When you refuse to know God and listen to God. Now, as we think about knowing God, if we look at that, in the light of what Jeremiah says, we can find a certain number of tests. This isn't some scientific comprehensive thing. This is just a list of a few questions to ask ourselves, whether we really know God and to what degree and it's not a theology quiz. I mean, good theology is very important. But these are just personal questions about whether God is real in your own experience in life, what makes you come alive, and get excited? And just what do you look to for satisfaction? What guides your decision making and your thinking? What makes you feel secure? On the other hand, what scares you? What are you ashamed of? What makes you feel embarrassed? What do you glory in? You know, what do you delight in and thrilled about and even tell others about and even brag about a little bit? Well, let's go through those questions. What makes you come alive?

God says through Jeremiah, My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit like people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and heute out cisterns for themselves, broken systems that can hold no water. So you have two choices. Do you want to drink fresh, cold spring water? Or do you want to dig around and drink dirt? God says, My people have turned into a bunch of dirt drinkers. So you have this possibility of cascading springs of fresh water from God that you can drink from. Or you can go to the one of the broken cisterns, you can go to this hole in the ground and it's a broken one, it's not even lined well. So that holds water, the water all leaks out of it. And what you get is a little bit of dirt and mud and sludge at the bottom. And so you drop your bucket into there and try to scoop up whatever you can get. Much of life is dropping that bucket down into the sludge, and hoping something satisfying comes out of the sludge. And God says that's basically the only two sins there are. One is turning your back on God and the water. And the other is all those attempts you make, to find happiness on your own, to find satisfaction on your own. And that can take all kinds of forms, if it may take form and just pursuing drink or drugs to get that buzz one more time and maybe get a little more of it this time than the last time. It can involve the pursuit of pleasure through sexual pursuits, it might involve the pursuit of certain respectable pleasures like getting rich and having a fine house. Remember, the wise man boasts of his wisdom, it might be your big education. 

The strong man boasts of his strength, it might be your clout, and your power and your mind or just your physical ability or your athletic ability. It might be any of the kinds of things we tend to brag about. But those are empty cisterns that hold a lot of mud at the bottom, and they are not designed to satisfy our hunger, because only the water of God can do that. So that's one question is just what? What gets you excited? What makes you happy? Another in is what guides you when it comes to decision time. What controls your thinking? Are you constantly looking to the Word of God? To control your thinking? Are you meditating on God's word trying to memorize it and finding out how it applies to your particular situation? Are you seeking God's personal and direct guidance as you make decisions? And in prayer being attuned to him? Or do you make a decision as though God isn't there? Are you practical atheists?

In your decision making? Yeah, God is there maybe in the back of my mind, along with those other thoughts that I kind of hold in storage. But he's not an operative reality in the way that I think and make my decisions. Jeremiah says they hold fast to deceit. They refuse to return. Even the stork in the heavens knows their times, and the turtle down swallow and crane keep the time of their coming. These birds that you know, fly south and then come back again. They fly to warmer places, and they they know when to migrate, they follow God's guidance systems, but my people know not the rules of the Lord. How can you say we are wise, and the law the Lord is with us. But behold, the lion can have the scribes has made it into a lie. They have rejected the word of the Lord. So what wisdom is in them? Oh, how I wish this were 2600 year old news. But the lying kind of describes is more adept at lying than it has ever been. There are many of my fellow PhDs who have become experts in the lie and kind of describes, they know nearly everything except what God says. Everything in the Bible is doubtful. Everything they get fed from the latest findings of their own researchers and their Fellow Scholars opinions, that is dead certain. But it's more dead than certain. Now, Jeremiah is saying be a bird brain. You know, when he calls these people, bird brains, it would actually be a compliment to them, because the birds they know when the sly and where to fly because God directs them in that, and yet, these people are supposed to be following God aren't following or even paying attention to God's guidance system. They don't know when they head for the warmer climate. They don't know what path to take, because they're not listening to God. 

People are not meant to be governed simply by the instincts that God puts in them, but by a conscious awareness of God, and of His presence and of His Word. Another question about whether we really know God is what makes you feel secure, or what makes you worry is the flip side of that. And one thing that helps some people at least to feel secure is their religious identity, their religious practices, even the very place where they worship. In the time of Jeremiah, they have this fabulous time. People that Solomon had built, and it was still there hundreds of years later. And it was the place where God had promised to dwell in a special way and be available to his people. And yet they misunderstood what this temple was Jeremiah, speaking for God says, do not trust in deceptive words and say this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. They thought it was this good luck charm, that God could not possibly punish them or destroy the city of Jerusalem, so long as his temple was located there, because poor God needs a temple after all, what would poor God do without his temple? 

Will you steal and burn commit adultery in perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods that you have not known. And then come and stand before me in this house, this temple, which bears my name and say, we are safe, safe? To do all these detestable things, has this house which bears my name become a den of robbers to you that I have been watching, declares the Lord. And not long after that temple was utterly demolished. Jeremiah should go back to the time of Eli, remember him and his rotten sons. They thought they could just grab God move God into battle, take, take the Ark right into battle, and nobody can defeat an army that carries the ark, right? Wrong. Now, here they are, they've got this temple, nobody can lose it. They've got the temple of God, right? Wrong. Time of Jesus, he walks into that temple area, they're buying and selling. Jesus says, this place is a den of robbers. I'll tell you the truth, there's not gonna be one stone left on another. See, they misunderstood what temples are for.

Psalm 27 shows us what a temple is really force is one thing I asked the Lord, this is what I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple. My heart says, If you seek His face, your face Lord will I seek any place of worship is a place to seek God's face and to love Him, and to know Him. And if you start treating that place of worship as your good luck charm, or any of your other religious practices as something that's going to make you safe and secure without knowing or longing for the face of the living God, it's simply not going to work. And so we read about all the details of Solomon's splendid temple, sometimes it's a little boring to read through long chapters of all those details, but it was not boring to be there. And to see that fantastic building, and all that was built there, and all the precious metals and the precious wood that went into it, you were awestruck by such a place. And the real thing that mattered though, was the presence of God in that place. And when God withdrew his glory from the place, it was just another building. And when people started relying on the place, instead of the God, who indwelt it, they were in deep, deep trouble. Jesus said, I tell you, that the time has now come when they're not going to worship in this place, or that place, but they will worship the Father in spirit. And in truth for that the kind of worshipers that God desires, God is Spirit. And those who worship Him must worship in spirit. And in truth, this is vital for what it is to know God to worship God, in spirit and in truth, and to truly know Him. 

The flip side of what makes you feel secure. And for some of us, again, the security may not come from a temple, it may come from the strong man boasting of his strength, or the rich man boasting of his riches, if you've got a few 100,000 laid away in an account somewhere that makes you feel more secure. If you don't, it might make you feel very insecure. And so the flip side of what makes you feel secure is what scares you, you're scared that I'm not that strong, or that I'm not that healthy. Or I don't have that much influence, and I really don't have much control. So this feels secure because we have a sense of control over our circumstances. And some of us, yeah, we feel secure. Yes, we've got the money and really, really, really insecure, if we don't, and others are insecure because of various superstitions. And Jeremiah talks about some of the superstitions that people have, whether it's false gods, whether it's horoscopes, whether it's crystal balls, whether it's all the other stuff that's supposed to affect your future, learn not the way of the nation, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them. So don't look at the signs of the stars and say, Ooh, what's going to happen to me now? Yeah, they'll keep printing horoscopes in newspapers and online until Christ comes again. 

But the nations can look at all that, don't you? Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field and they cannot speak, they have to be carried for the cannot walk. So you got these critters, that they have to nail their feet down so they don't topple over. If you want him to move, you have to carry them yourself. And the convenient thing about gods like that is they are controllable. They are manageable. They are not personal. And so they have that advantage. The disadvantage is they can't do diddly. Don't be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good. There is none like you, oh Lord, You are great. And your name is great in Might, who would not fear you, oh king of the nation. So he's basically saying all those things that scare you are not worth being scared of. 

You're like some stupid crows who see a scarecrow and go Ooh, well, even scarecrows are often smarter than that after a while they notice the Scarecrow doesn't do much. And then they fly in. And the crows do their thing anyway. And when we go through life with this fear, and that fear and the other fear, it is evidence that we do not know God well enough that he is not really enough to us. There is no other nice way to say it. I know that we don't always say this straight up, when we're comforting a person who's going through a worrisome time or a difficult time. But this is the truth of the matter. That if God is the overwhelming reality to us, yes, he is present to us and we are fully aware of him. Nothing will scare us, except him. Last night preach remember, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers either heightened or depth or anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God. That is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So in all those things were more than conquerors. 

But the only way to say we're more than conquerors is to know God. And to have a strong awareness that he's here, now with us and otherwise, the scarecrows are going to have our teeth chattering, and have us nibbling our nails, wondering what's going to happen to us. If your number one challenge in life is worry, then the number one thing that's needed is to know God, to really know, His nearness and his presence, not just to believe that he's there. But to believe that he's here. To know that he's here. Jesus said, Don't fear what other people fear. Don't even fear those who can destroy the body. Don't fear the people who can kill you. Don't fear the diseases that can kill you. The stuff that can destroy your body can only do that. And then they can't do anything more. Jesus said, one, you should fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. If you know God, you know there's one thing to be afraid of his wrath and his rejection. If you have his acceptance, you have zero, to be afraid of perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. So there's one fear in the universe worthy of being feared. If you're no longer afraid of him, then you need not be afraid of anything.

Another one, what are you ashamed of? So often we get embarrassed by what other people think of us or even by what they might think of us. You know, how do I look? Is my makeup on properly? Do I have a hole in my pants that might be embarrassing? Or if holes are in style, it might be embarrassing not to have a hole in the right place. And so we can be very embarrassed or self conscious about that. We're ashamed of a variety of things. But we need to have a proper sense of shame. Once again, your sense of shame varies with how well you know God and how real He is to you in a given situation. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all. They do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen. Or there is a certain kind of shamelessness where people are not any longer embarrassed about some of the most shameful things in the world. People who have come to know God, at least to start to know God will say this instead, let us lie down in our shame and let our dishonor cover us. For we sinned against the Lord our God we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God. Nowadays, we have parades. In many major cities, Chicago had its own and even candy companies like Skittles, get in on the act where we want to taste the rainbow and what that means is taste the rainbow of every deviant practice. 

That's known to men, and it is something to be celebrated, and have parades in honor of. And if you live in a society like that, after a while, that sort of stuff is no longer embarrassing. What you're embarrassed about is letting your voice be heard. To the contrary, though they know God righteously created, those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. So it all depends what you're embarrassed about. Paul says, I'm not embarrassed about the gospel, because it's the power of God, for salvation to everyone who believes. Now, there's a great difference. Some people, if they struggle with certain perversions or perverse tendencies, they may feel that God has forsaken them. That's not so either. The point is, if you realize that something is amiss, and that it's wrong, then it is something you ask for God's help with, it is not something you celebrate, and delight in and approve of and seek others who approve of. So this is one of the most telling things again, about whether we really know God or not is one of the kind of things that I get embarrassed about, do I get embarrassed about talking to other people about Jesus? Do I do my cheeks just kind of start to flush and I get real nervous and embarrassed about that. But there are good many other things that I have no shame whatsoever, and some of them are pretty low. Not a good test is just what what makes you laugh. You know, when you're when you're watching TV, what makes you feel cheerful and cheery and you find funny and amusing and kind of, you know, enjoyable. Again, that's a very, it's a more telling test than how you're going to do on your next theology quiz. What do you like, what makes you feel happy?

Another question. And that gets back to the text itself. What do you glory in? What are you thrilled about? What are you happy and excited about? are excited about knowing more than other people for for some, that's fun to know more than other people do to know that you can always out argue them that you've got just two more facts at your command, and they've got it there's, you win the debate competition. You can win personal arguments, you can show people you're smarter than they are for others. Well, you know, that's, that's kind of a geek pleasure. You know, if you weren't born a geek, you can get some of those jock pleasures, let the you know, the mighty man. Bigger than you are a little geeky, you may be able to argue with me, but I can thump you. And you know that that how kids may act when they're young. But when you're 50, or 60, they're still the same games are being played where some are still trying to use their mental capacities to outmanoeuvre somebody, and others are trying to use their position and their power to just play in some of those smart alecs and get what they want. And of course, well, you, you just glory, look at our society. The status that comes with having an expensive car, a car that costs $100,000, is in general not going to do a whole lot better job of getting you from here to there than a cheap one. But somehow you feel important if you just blew a pile of money on an expensive car. If you have a fantastic palace, you know, these huge mansions that you need a cleaning crew to take care of that makes people feel important, and they've made it and the rich man boasts of his riches. And that's how you glory in your riches is conspicuous consumption. In some societies, they do it this way that the rich people in the tribe make several mounds of yams from their fields, and then they just leave the yams to rot. 

They don't let anybody have them. They just make pile the yams and let them rot just because they can it's kind of like old Jaya, come I'm going to build this palace even though my kingdom is falling apart even though the people are impoverished. I'm building this palace because I can and the rich man is going to boast in his riches well what do you glory in that kind of stuff? And or in knowing God now when we talk about boasting because you know God, it's not going to I know God better than you do. I know God better than you do. I have three vision last week, and you didn't. You know if that's how you understand boasting in knowing the Lord misunderstanding it. Here maybe the the King James version is a little more helpful where it speaks of glorying in The Lord of of just having a sense of what a glory it is to know God and what a glory it is that I want to share, not how well I know God what a great person I am for knowing him. But how great he is and what amazing thing it is to know Him. And I want to share with you what little I know of him so that, um you can benefit from that. 

So it's not just bragging about our own superiority, but it is boasting about the Lord Jesus Christ, and glory in him. And these are all in their own ways, tests of the degree to which God is a reality to us, that we just know, the way we know there are other people around us the way you know, your spouse is there. And that all has an impact on who you are, how you live your life. So it is to an even greater degree if you know that God is there, that God is here, and that God is within you. Well, upon thinking about these things, I think for most of us, one of the first things we need to do is to face our lack. J I packer, another outstanding book, knowing God. If you want to add anything to your reading list, get Tozer the pursuit of God, and get Packer knowing God and spend some time in those books, books don't substitute for God, of course, but these are books by people who knew God and who can help us a lot. We must recognize how much we lack knowledge of God, we must learn to measure ourselves not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray. And by what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us. It's pretty simple question What is your prayer life, Like?

When nobody else is looking? What's going on in your heart? Do you know God? Or do you just kind of keep yourself busy doing God type stuff? Or sometimes people just chuck the God type stuff? Because they're sick of it. But the question is, and one of the most telling tests is simply our own prayer life. And do we enjoy spending time with God or is about three or four minutes seeming like almost an interminable amount of time. This is one of our great test is just in our own prayer life. Jeremiah speaks the word of God and He says they okay, I know when you don't know God, not much. In one sense you can do about it. God has to make himself known. And God has to give you a heart to know him. And he talks about two different kinds of people in this particular text. He's talking about people who got dragged away into captivity. This was before the final fall of Jerusalem, a bunch of people got taken away into captivity to Babylon, and others got left behind in the land of Judah and Jerusalem. And the conclusion was pretty obvious. The ones who were spiritually okay were the ones who got dragged off. And the good people were the ones who got left behind it to stay in Jerusalem. And God says not quite. And he gives Jeremiah a vision of two bowls of figs. One is rotten, the other good and he says like the good figs, I regard as good. The exiles from Judah. 

Remember, Daniel and his friends were not bad she got hauled away, Ezikiel was another one of those who got hauled away, I send them to the place to the land of the Babylonians, my eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land, I will build them up and not tear them down. I will plant them and not uproot them. The bad things are the ones who are going to stay there and reject the idea that God is going to judge them or run off to Egypt to try to escape it. And they're going to have the problems. But God's going to take the exiles the ones you least expect, and he's going to plant them. And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with all their heart, a heart to know God that is the greatest gift that God can give. If it's not given, then you can be staying behind in Jerusalem for a while the temple may still be standing, the walls still look pretty good, and all is lost. If you've been carted off, and you're made a slave, and things look very bad, but God has given you a heart to know Him, then all as well. And so it is today when everything is going your way except having a heart for God. All is lost. When everything's going against you except the fact that God has given you a heart for him. Then All things are yours because you are Christ in Christ is God. The great promise of Jeremiah is the promise of the New Covenant. This passage is quoted again and again. In the New Testament. 

God says I will make a new covenant I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people no longer When will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying, know the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness, and will remember their sins no more. To know, in a sense means to relate to. And in order for God to relate to us, in order for God to know us. First, we need to be forgiven by God. I mean, in a sense, he knows all the facts about us. But remember, at the last day, Jesus is going to say to some people I never knew you. That's the meaning of that is I never related to you in that personal, interactive way. And in order for that to occur, we first need to be forgiving, so that God can know us, it always comes first that God knows us. And then he needs to give us a heart to know Him, to give us this new heart, this new spirit that resonates that, that is in tune with God's love. We want what God wants, our mind and our heart, longs for the things that God longs for. God writes it on their hearts, and gives us a heart for him.

And the fulfilling of that new covenant is our Lord Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, God, the One and Only who is at the father side, Jesus has made him known. And our Lord Jesus Christ, when He prayed to His Father, on the night before he was crucified, said, now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent, I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known, in order that the love you have for me, maybe in them, and that I myself, may be in them. Jesus came in human form, to make God known to humans. And so if you really want to know God, the first thing is, of course, to focus on Jesus, who is God appearing to us in human flesh, and to listen to his voice to see the events that happened in the scriptures that are recorded for us so that we get familiar with Jesus, and who he is. And then also, as his Spirit works in us, to give us that heart for him to sense that he's still living, he's still present, and walking with us through each day. The apostle Paul said, I account everything is lost compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus, my Lord, everything else is rubbish. I want to know him. I want to know Him. 

This is the burning desire of those who have been given this heart from God. And the apostle Paul wrote the best commentary on Jeremiah nine verses 22 and 23, the verses we've been looking at, first of all, he takes what we shouldn't be bragging about, you know, let not the wise man of the strong man or the rich man most of those things, and then he says, now you, you guys, you believers in Jesus, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. If it depended on IQ or test scores, an awful lot of you would be tossed out of the kingdom. Not many were influential, you're not big shots. The presidential candidates aren't coming to you for another 5 million to keep their campaign going, are they? You don't have noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world, to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him. When God decided whom to give the new hearts and the future to he didn't pick the people who seem to be still be in the best position Jeremiah's time who were still in the city and had everything. He chose the exile the castaways, the despised one, because God doesn't want anybody bragging and saying, oh, I deserve this. I earned it. I qualified for it. So the Apostle says, God doesn't want anybody to boast before him, well, maybe. They may boast about one thing, it is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 

Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. And Paul said that a number of different times just one more quote, far be it from me to both except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul glories in the crock Paul glories in Jesus. J I Packer says, How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? Well, as we've already said, the first thing is God's got to take action, and make Himself known to us and give us a heart to know Him. But once he has done that, it's still possible to have a new heart and have a very clouded and infrequent sense of God's reality present in your life. How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is demanding, but simple. It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God. So we take the scriptures and rather than saying, Okay, I read my chapter for the day. Close done. Glad I got that taken care of now, I don't have to feel guilty till tomorrow. Okay, that, I guess it's probably better to read it than not to read it. Maybe.

But Packer is saying you know, you have to take these truths. And you need to spend some time to absorb them, and do so realizing you're doing it in God's presence. You're learning, not just about God, but you're doing it in the presence of God. And then you start talking to God about it. You learn to combine your Bible reading and your prayer, and you and you talk back to God, when you're reading things, and you listen to him, and you ask Him to show things to you. Meditation is a lost art today. And Christian people suffered grievously, from their ignorance of the practice. Meditation is the activity of calling to mind and thinking over and dwelling on and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God, it is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, you're doing that with the awareness that you're there with God, he's there with you. 

Under the eye of God, he's watching by the help of God, you say, God helped me, I'm not any good at all at knowing you but helped me to know you, and as a means of communion with God. And if meditation on what God reveals in His Word is, is missing in your life, then that can cause you to remain with a very strong sense of having God outside your range of experience, outside what you think about most of the time, instead of being God conscious, and having God on your mind a lot, and starting to see life, in your own life, in the light of God, meditation can help you do that lack of it can keep that internal organ of seeing pretty weak, the physical organs of the body atrophy, if they're not used, if you had your eyes shut for a month, and then tried to open them, they would not work very well. If you have your arm in a cast for three months, it is very wimpy, when you take off the cast, because it hasn't been used. And so it is with our inner faculty, our inner heart for God, if it's not used in meditation and dwelling on God and conversation with him, it gets very, very weak. And so we must pray to God for a heart for him. And then to be dwelling on the things of God with our hearts. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, we can read over sentences like that. And yet those sentences are everything. He has called us into the fellowship of His Son, He has called us into communion with his son. He's called us into connection with his son into relationship with him into an interactive conversational walk with Him. God called us into that. Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 

It's not we have a theoretical belief that God exists somewhere out there and made stuff or even that Jesus lived long ago and did stuff that we do think really happened. Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ, a living relational fellowship that isn't is not a was, that's a here, not just their. Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God, and Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him, this awareness this interactive knowledge of his reality and experience of him who called us by His own glory and goodness, through this he has given us His very great and precious promises so that through them you may partake, participate communion fellowship with the Divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. So what are we going to brag about, what are going to glorian, not. Our wisdom, our might, our well, what are we going to worry about? Not the lack of those things. What we glorian is this, that we understand and know God, that we know his loving kindness is justice or fairness, His righteousness, his goodness, that we know him and what he's like, and that more and more we are becoming like him, and reflecting his image. 

Let's pray together. Father, I ask that you will help each of us now to take to heart these words. Lord, if any lack of heart for you, please grant that new covenant blessing of a living heart, Lord, remove the heart of stone, give out of your generosity and mercy and for the sake of Jesus give the heart of flesh, the living heart that beats and longs for you that has a faculty for knowing you. And Lord, we pray that for those of us who do have that new heart that who so often find ourselves wandering in fog and having our abilities, the perception clouded over, Lord, help us to seek your face. Help us Father more and more not to simply know you, theoretically, or on the basis of evidence or what we're told we do, thank you for those who have told us. We do thank you for the many evidences, you've left that we pray that above all, we may know you in personal encounter, that our fellowship may be with the Father, and with our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in His name, Amen.