Tyndale Chapel Podcast

Good morning. Got a little bit of a response there. Good morning. There we are. Want to thank you for the invitation to be here this morning.

If you have your Bibles, I'm going to invite you to turn to Philippians chapter three, Philippians chapter three. Paul is giving a rundown of his impressive credentials. And we don't have time to read the whole passage, or to go into detail here this morning. But he writes, beginning at verse five, "Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless." Verse seven, "but whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

When I began my journey with Jesus, as a child in the parking lot of the Argyle mall, which still sits on the corner of Clark Road, and Dundas Street in London, Ontario, all I wanted was to know God. Even as a child, and through my preteen and teen years, right into adulthood, it was a desire that burned within me. That statement sounds far more spiritual than the reality, because there were times where God would pull back the curtain as, as it were in and give me a brief glimpse, of what complete, wholehearted surrender would look like. And it would often pull me up short, and cause me to reconsider that desire. I don't have any problems with the part about knowing the power that raised Christ from the dead. It's the next bit that causes me to hesitate, the sharing in his suffering, and so forth. So here's the question I want to ask you this morning. Do you want to know Him? Do you want to know Him? It's kind of a trick question, because "to know" can actually mean different things. For example, there's the head knowledge, if I were to have a large triangle up here, with angle A being 90 degrees, and the second angle being 60 degrees, the third angle would be 30 degrees. I know that. I wouldn't have to measure it. I know it. Those of you who remember, maybe your high school, trigonometry, would know it as well. For many of us when we say we want to know God, this is the "know" we're talking about. It's an information piece. I want to know the facts. So I can have an answer for my atheist neighbour. So I can win an argument about creation. I want to know the Scripture. So I have something meaningful to say when I stand in the pulpit. I want to know verses so I can respond to an unbelieving neighbour so I can respond to folks in need. It's concrete knowledge, and want to know the words to use, the steps to take the right procedure in order to have my prayers answered. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with this type of know. I know John 3:16. I can recite it. I know the stories of David and Goliath, of Daniel in the lion's den, of Esther, of Mary and Joseph and the story of the trip to Bethlehem. I know Jesus lived, and walked and, and died and rose again, there's nothing wrong with this level of "know".

But there is another level of Know. I know if I leave the church office, where I work, and head for home during rush hour, it's going to take me twice as long to get home. I know that because I've experienced it. When the disciples scattered through the known world saying Christ is risen. It wasn't head knowledge, they had seen, and felt, and heard, and walked with and talked with and eaten with him. It was more than head knowledge, it was experience that was talking. That's why John would begin his first epistle "That which was from the beginning which we have heard and seeing with our eyes we looked upon and touched with our hands. This is what we proclaim to you concerning the word of life." This is the "know" that, if we are honest, most of us pursue as followers of Jesus. The "know" that we experienced in what we might call a quote unquote powerful time of worship. The "know" of Hallelujahs shouted and thank yous whispered, the "know" of hands raised in adoration, the "know" of a group of friends gathered together in prayer so sweet that the time flies and nobody wants to leave. The "know" of verses revealed that that fit perfectly our situation, so we just know that was God speaking to us. This is the "know" most of us want. As with the first "know", we talked about, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of knowing when it comes to faith. In fact, like a child moves from knowing their letters to learning words, and then learning how to read and perhaps tell stories at some point too, we must move beyond knowing stories about Jesus, to experiencing Christ for ourselves. But there is a serious danger here as well. There is the danger that we become so focused on the emotion, on the tingles and the feelings that we begin to chase, not God, but the experience, the emotion, the buzz. Truth be told, this is the "know" most of us would be content to live with. Give us a church service where we feel God each week, and we would ask for nothing more. It's sad how many believers measure their faith by tingles and tears. Sadder still, how for many who have experienced God, it's something in their distant past, something they reminisce about, I remember when, I was at this event, or that event, or I felt this, I felt that. But what is even more tragic, is how few followers of Jesus seek to move beyond this type of knowing.

See, there is at least one more type of knowing. Most online dictionaries don't include it in their definitions, at least not when I last checked. I did find it in Merriam Webster dictionary under the heading archaic, or outdated. Sometimes used as a euphemism for sex. Check out Genesis chapter four, verse one in your favourite Bible translation. Now Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived, some of the newer translations will translate it out. They put in Adam had relations, or Adam made love to his wife Eve, which is an accurate translation into the vernacular, but it runs the risk of missing the fact that the Hebrew word that is used there is sometimes used to refer to the relationship that God is inviting us into. This kind of knowing is intimate. It is transparent, exposed, vulnerable, invasive, risky and yielding.

You want a snapshot of the three types of knowing, think of Job, Job's comforters and his wife would fit the first type of knowing. They had the facts, they could recite them. In their mind, they knew exactly why Job was suffering so horribly. Everybody knows it's the wicked and the sinful that are punished, Job. If you were innocent, everybody knows this would not be happening to you. Job represents the second kind of knowing he knew God by experience. So even when his circumstance went sideways, he still had enough confidence in God to say "though he slay me, yet will I trust him." But even that wonderfully confident faith is wrecked when God shows up in Job 38, and suddenly Job knew God in a way that he had never known God before. He says up to this point, I, everything I knew about you was hearsay. But now my eye sees you. I uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. But now I know.

So here's the question of the morning. Do you want to know God? And if you say you want to know God, what kind of knowing are you referring to? Are you looking for the words, the verses the information from which to conduct ministry? Or are you looking for the experiential know, where you feel a tingle, or the tears begin to flow because it feels so sweet. I'll tell you while there are things I would love to know, cognitively and factually about God, and there are things that I want to experience about God for myself. There is that other "know". That intimate, transparent, exposed, vulnerable, invasive, yielding, risky knowing that my soul longs for, but that scares the heck out of me. It scares me because inherent in this knowing are things that clash with my flesh. Things like submission, and yielding, and surrender. It calls me to step out of the bushes where I, like Adam and Eve, am desperately trying to hide the truth that I am not good enough, smart enough, holy enough, whole enough. There is a price. There is a price to pay to know Him whom to know is life.

So I don't know how many of you are parents here. I don't know if you've ever noticed how much time children waste. Children waste a lot of time. You don't really have to be a parent to see it. But for adults, time is a resource meant to be to be harnessed. Grownups use time to accomplish stuff. We feel good about ourselves when we use our time well, to get stuff done. Not so with children. Children don't get that busyness work, work stuff, children just, they just play, they bounce from one thing to the next. Children can go a whole day without accomplishing anything an adult would call useful. Parents will also know that when children reach a certain age, they begin to endlessly pester you to join them in accomplishing nothing. During those years, parents will hear themselves saying "Later, hon. Not right now, daddy's busy, mommy's busy". Sometimes to get them off your back, you'll assign them tasks that you think are a better use of time. "Why don't you go read? Why don't you go practice your piano? Have you done your homework? Yeah. Why don't you draw daddy a picture?" At times, they will ask if they can join you in what you are doing. That's, that's fun. Maybe you're cooking supper, or painting, or working on the car, or doing yard work or laundry. Every parent knows, or soon discovers, adults are much more efficient without the help of a child. Moms and Dads know that putting a toddler in the mix is going to make the task messier, sloppier and will require more time. And if you take them up on their childish offer, you'll probably have to do it all over again to make sure it's done right. Which means the first time through, basically a waste of time. That's our thought process as adults, because we're thinking about the task.

But what if children are not so concerned with the task? What if they just want to be with you? What if, what looks like a waste of time to us, is actually about relationship for them? Of course they won't express it in those terms. But what if they're trying to deepen relationship and develop intimacy with us? What if developing intimacy with someone requires wasting time with them? In case you think of the parent child relationship as an isolated example, consider a couple in love. A lot of what a couple in love does, particularly in the early stages of a relationship, is they waste time with each other. Sometimes when you're in love with someone, you don't just waste time with them. You find yourself wasting time with them doing things you would never do on your own, just so you can be with that someone special. We need to recover that ability, the childlike love soaked practice of wasting time with God. We need to relearn what it means to hang out with God, for no other reason than just to know Him, for no other purpose than just to be with Him. Not because we want something from Him, not because it's our devotional time, not because we need to churn out another sermon or assignment, not out of guilt or shame, not because we're sick, or afraid, or in need.

What if we were to give our lives to just wasting time with the Father? What if we were to give just one day? Can I invite, encourage, challenge, whatever term you want to use, can I invite you to, in the midst of the business, in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the doing, carve out time to waste with a God who loves you?

Join me in prayer.

Eternal, relationship offering, God of everlasting love. God, who squeezed your godness into human form, a task surely more painful than the cross, grant to us the longing for, the satisfaction of, the abundant filling of your love that we may be true vessels, carrying you to those who are empty, sure of our Father's boundless love, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and growing in Christ's likeness. In Jesus name, Amen.