1810. The Joy of Knowing God

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's message will be preached by Rev.

John Dalton, who is Director of Student Life at Bob Jones University. Go with me to Psalm 34 this morning. Psalm 34, once you get there, let's read out loud together verse 8. Psalm 34, Psalm 34 verse 8. Alright, let's read the verse together. O taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Psalm 34 8, one of those mountain peaks in the midst of the Psalms that direct us to the undeniable privilege that every one of us has to individually and experientially know God. And if there's anything that I could hope to accomplish this morning, it really would be this, to entice you, to come and know the joy that accompanies knowing the Creator of the universe.

It was A.W. Tozer who said, for millions of Christians, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a principle. Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving personality dominates the Bible.

Always a living person is present, speaking, pleasing, loving, working, and manifesting himself whenever and wherever his people have the receptivity necessary to receive that manifestation. In support of Tozer's declaration, David Kinnaman in his book, You Lost Me, shared these statistics regarding the spiritual journey of 18 to 29-year-olds. Thirty-five percent said, I went through a time when I considered rejecting my parents' faith. Forty-one percent said, I went through a period when I genuinely doubted my faith. Fifty-one percent said, I've been significantly frustrated about my faith. And over sixty percent said, I dropped out of attending church after going regularly.

This is not rocket science to you. You see it around you. You have been tempted with some of these same thoughts. Why stay around this Christianity that I have been taught all my life, but it really seems to be empty, it's hollow. And to be fair, we've all experienced hardships, we've experienced failures in leadership, bad examples, and the tendency may be, as it is here, in a book that was written in 2011, by the way, so ten years later, twelve years later, we're facing circumstances and statistics that are probably greater than this, the tendency to walk away, wash my hands of the whole thing. And I really think there are some things that tend to contribute to this general generational deficiency in a personal and experiential knowledge of God, because I really think a lot of it comes down to this. To me, Christianity has just been this list of rules, right? The things I can do and I can't do.

It's just this template that's been put over me. And I have never come to see that behind Christianity, there is, as Tozer said, this living and loving personality who walks among the pages of the Bible and who actually walks in and among my daily experience. But I have no knowledge of that, I have no understanding of that.

So my temptation is to run away. What contributes to the generational deficiency I think we're seeing in this personal and experiential knowledge of God? I think there's a few things, these are not in the Bible, these are things that I notice in talking with young people. I think there tends to be sometimes the elevation of personal life experience, life circumstances. Instead of viewing my life circumstances through a thoroughly informed understanding of God and His ways, I view God and His ways through my life circumstances. And I elevate my own personal experience above theology, about what God says about Himself.

So God is merely a concept who is acted upon by my experience. But I think as well, we all are living in a day where feelings are prioritized, right? Be true to yourself, be authentic, be real. Don't do anything that's inconsistent with how you feel. And when truth confronts feeling, the simple response that we tend to have is, how can something that feels so good be so wrong? We've become masters at following our passions, our feelings. Feelings have gained priority over truth.

So God is merely a proverbial cart pulled behind a horse of feeling. I think we also are genuinely, and this goes for all of us, preoccupied with what we can see. Because the temptation is to say, know God.

Okay, well how am I supposed to know somebody I can't see? It's much easier to believe that what I can see is real, better than what I can't see. So because God just kind of remains this figment of my imagination, it doesn't hold a candle to what I perceive immediately around me that's much, I think, more real.

But I do think we also are somewhat lazy. We're disinterested in the effort that it would take to actually come to know God. Because my life circumstances loom so large, because my feelings are the priority of my life, and because God is invisible, why should I make any effort to get to know Him? Well, what does the Bible say about knowing God? Let's just tick through a couple of passages, and as you can see, we're doing a topical view of this theme today of knowing God.

I want to ask you to turn to these passages, but they're worth us considering as we think about the biblical evidence, the motivation, the command at times even, to know our God. The very gripping account in Exodus chapter 32, that's the golden calf incident. And in chapter 33, God says to Moses, okay, go ahead and go. I'm not going to go along with you, but go ahead and go up into the promised land. And as you can imagine, this created a great amount of angst amongst Moses and the people.

God, we don't want to go if you're not going to go with us. In chapter 33, Moses has this conversation with God, which is such a unique window into the intimacy and the worship, the reverence that Moses shared with God. And Moses says to God, now therefore I pray thee if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way that I may know thee. And later on in that passage, Moses says, I beseech you, show me your glory.

What is Moses saying there? God, I don't know you like I wish I did, but I long to know you in a more deep and personal way. At the end of Job's unique life experience, many of you have read the book of Job. I've asked you, where are you reading in your Bible? And at times you've said, boy, I'm reading Job because life's really tough right now.

It's a great place to go to read when life is tough. Job had it. He had it. He had a rough life, didn't he, in many ways compared to many of us, but in similar ways to us as well. But you remember chapters 38 through 42, there's this little dialogue where God says, okay, Job, now you've done some ranting. Now it's time for me to just tell you a few things you may not know, like where were you when I created the earth?

And where were you when I created Leviathan? And he kind of gently but firmly sets Job in his place. And chapter 42, we have this little window into Job's understanding. He says, I have heard of thee, God, by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

What was Job confessing? He had come to a greater understanding of who God was and what he was up to in his life and it was not so much about taking away things from him that he prized, but it was giving to him something much more, God himself. The admonition in the wisdom books. My son, Proverbs 2, if you will receive my words, hide my commandments with you, incline your ear, apply your heart, cry after knowledge, lift up your voice understanding, seek her as silver, search for her as for hid treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and you will find the knowledge of God. What could be more important for a young person to set his life or her life toward an understanding of who God is? Let not the wise man, Jeremiah says, glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man, glory in his might, let not the rich man, glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understands and knows me.

Nothing else matters as much as what matters that you know me and you understand me. Hosea is a book full with these kinds of admonitions. We won't read all these passages, but God's people were being destroyed because of a lack of knowledge and so the prophet admonishes the people, let us press on to know the Lord.

Why? Because when we press on to know the Lord, everything else kind of begins to make better sense. Jesus said in his high priestly prayer, this is eternal life, that they might know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom now has sent. Knowing God is of course knowing his son. And finally, the apostle Paul in both the book of Philippians and the book of Colossians testifies to the fact that I count all things as loss.

For what? For the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things and I count them to be rubbish that I might gain Christ and be found in him not having mine own righteousness which is of the law. But that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, so that — verse 10 — I may know him. And the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being made conformable to his death. This was the apostle Paul's testimony.

It was his life pursuit. I want more than anything else to know my God. I want to know Christ. What do you know well today? What is it that you're deeply familiar with? It might be a person. It might be a sport.

It might be a hobby. I won't share an illustration to somehow make something appear more competitive to the knowledge of God than something else, but take whatever that is, that thing that you're deeply intimately aware of, that you know better than most other people. And ask yourself, do I know God in the same way?

I want to encourage you young people that there is wonderful joy in knowing God. And some of you have never come to understand that. To you, God is some kind of cosmic deity with a baseball bat who's just interested in messing up your life. Maybe because your view of God has been strictly controlled by your own individual experience. But God is walking among the pages of the Bible, and he's walking in the days of your lives, lovingly, caringly, and he sent his son Jesus in order to draw you into a greater understanding of him. So, what does it mean to know God? Bring it to me on my level. Well, to know God is to know his person, his words, and his ways.

So how am I going to do that? Well, the way I'm going to do that is by getting to know his word, because this word is what exposes all of those things to me. It's what helps me understand his words and his works and his ways. And I want us to go to the book of Psalms for the last few minutes we have together today, and I want to look at one particular, because I think the Psalms are a collection, as you know, of inspired songs written by men, authors who obviously knew their God.

Their words are not always full of wonderful hope. There are many lament Psalms. But the Psalms are the place to go to do what people have often called building a biography of God. Some of you know our friend Marty Collier has even written a book that helps us to do that. If you really want to say, okay, John, well, you're telling me this is important, and you've kind of quoted some tozer, and you've given me some people in the Bible that think it's important, so okay, I get it.

How do I do it? How do I get to the point where I'm actually coming to more deeply, personally, experientially know God? Get to the Psalms.

I really would recommend that. That's been my habit this year. I just finished up a project in my Bible reading last year, and so this year, I'm trying to read through the Psalms and build my own biography of God. That means I don't get through one Psalm every day. It might take me a couple of days, and my goal is to, by the end of two years, have read through all the Psalms and have gone through each Psalm individually, noting what does this Psalm say about God? Because what I'm going to have when I'm done with that is I'm going to have a biography, one that I can go to, I can turn pages to, I can even see the way it intersected my life, and draw upon that for strength. You can do this. Say, I'm not a seminary student.

You don't need to be one. You've got the Psalms in your Bible, and you can go there. But I want to just go to Psalm 51.

I want to do a little exercise together. This is going to be just a quick overview on how to build this biography of God. And you know Psalm 51. It's that Psalm, David's prayer of confession after his sin with Bathsheba. And you know, I confess that when I have often viewed this Psalm in the past, I have viewed it primarily as a template that I should use to help guide my confession of sin.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Just yesterday I was speaking with a young man in my office about that, about using Psalm 51 as a springboard into dealing with sin in my own life. But the more compelling truth of Psalm 51, that which actually inspires me to confess my sin and to see my relationship with God restored is what David highlights about God.

So I want you to look at the person next to you. Get your Bible, whether it's on your phone or in paper. And I want you to read the Psalm to each other. If you want to read a verse, the next person will read another verse.

If you want to do two, the next person do two. But let's take a minute. Everybody get to Psalm 51. Now let's just everybody read through that Psalm. Out loud, read it.

Person next to you. Now let's take a minute to just get through this Psalm. All right? All right.

You're doing well. Some of you are speed readers and you made it through quick. I think just about everybody got through most of it.

All right. When you read Psalm 51, what jumps out at you? What jumps out at me is those things that I start seeing in verse seven.

Purge me, wash me. Verse eight, make me to hear joy and gladness. Verse nine, hide your face from my sins. Verse 10, creating me a clean heart. Verse 11, don't cast me away from your presence. Verse 12, restore. Verse 13, I'm going to teach transgressors once I've come through this. Verse 14, deliver me. Oh, verse 15, oh Lord, open my lips.

All right. And all of those things are wonderful things that David is asking God to do to him or to enable him to do. But do you notice that there are some things that have nothing to do with David? They have everything to do with God.

And I want to just highlight three of them. God displays steadfast love and abundant kindness. That's verse one. David is crying out and confessing because he knows this is what's true about God. His sin, David's sin had consumed him. What were his sins? His sins were manipulation, gross manipulation, and murder, and adultery, and hypocrisy.

And it was greater than he can bear. And when Nathan the prophet pointed his finger at David's face and brought the accusation of guilty, David was just smitten, wasn't he? But like all of us, he was tempted, I'm sure, to run away from God. But verse one makes it clear that there is enough truth about God that should cause me to run to God.

The fact is when I sin, I can be sure that I've got a heavenly Father who is abundant in his love for me. He's committed to my good. He has no limit of his kindness. And this in fact draws me to him.

Again, what is your perception of God? Somehow just glaring down over the battlements of heaven waiting for you to step out of line? No, he delights in steadfast love and he delights in kindness. And this is what is central, I believe, to David being compelled to confess.

What else? Well, verse six points something else out. Behold, David says, you desire or you delight in truth in the inward parts. And in the hidden part, thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

God delights in the truth. You know, one of the beautiful things about your God is that you don't have to pretend. You don't have to make things up. You don't have to try to pretend you are somebody that you're really not.

And we all do this. We put on these various personas, you know, I'm tough, or I'm worldly wise, or I'm wealthy, or you know, whatever, whatever it is. So that people will kind of think we're a certain kind of person. But we don't have to do that with God. There's no pretense.

There's no need to put on. God knows who you are. So you can come into God's presence who says that all things are naked and open under his eyes. And he receives you. No need for a costume.

No need to pretend. God delights in truth. He delights in who you are. And as a result of that, Psalm 51 says, run and confess.

Make things right. Lastly, did you catch this at the end? Verses 16 and 17. Hey, you know what? I know, Lord, David is saying, you're not as interested in sacrifices and burnt offerings. What are you interested in, God? Actually, the kind of sacrifice that you're interested in is a broken spirit. You ever know what it's like to have a broken spirit?

Well, all of us probably have been hurt enough by somebody doing something to us that's not nice. We've known what it's like to be a little bit emotional, but do you know what it's like to be that way with God? Not that God has hurt you, but that you are just on your face before him saying, oh God, whatever pleases you is what's going to please me.

That's kind of what David is saying is the sacrifice of God. A broken and a contrite heart. God will not look down on that. He will not think that's just no big deal.

That's a huge deal. He values humility. I've watched at times in wonder, amazement as an individual like this one who has a broken and contrite heart comes in to see me about clearing his conscience about a matter. Sometimes it could be something that happened years ago.

And yet that individual comes in and says, you know what John, I don't really care what happens with this. This is something that I know I violated God's law. I have violated man's law and I just want to be right. I want to be clear in my conscience.

Do whatever needs to be done. And you know, I'm not the Pope. Okay. I'm not the person who makes all rights wrong. Wrong's right. Okay.

That's not my job. It's position of influence that I have here that just puts me in that place where sometimes people are making things right. But I oftentimes look at a guy like that and I think, boy, he seems awful wimpy. You know, he's kind of broken, kind of crumbling, kind of crying, kind of feeble, kind of weak, kind of frail. But what I say in my heart is I say, oh God, make me like him.

Make me like him. Give me that kind of humility. Give me that kind of meekness. Give me that kind of sincerity because God values humility. God forgives my sin. That's the message of Psalm 51. And that really isn't necessarily the point of this message. It's a laboratory in which we have tried to exercise this building a biography of God, but a person who comes to the end of that chapter should understand very clearly, I come to a God who delights, who delights in forgiving my sin and restore a relationship with Him.

And I want to have that back. What comes into our minds when we think about God is the very most important thing about us. Can I encourage you young people today to build your understanding of who God is, not on your feelings, not on your experiences, but on what this book says. And God will build your understanding to such a degree that it will absolutely transform your life. Doesn't mean your life's going to be easy, piece of cake, no problems, but it will fortify you. It will cement you in truth so that when difficulty, pressure, struggle comes, you have something to hold on to. Experiences change. They come and go. God never changes.

His immutability is what anchors me to Him. And I trust that you will come or you will continue to know the joy of knowing God. Shall we pray? Father, use these simple but profound truths in our lives. May some of us just today as a young person make a decision. This is what my life's going to be about. This is going to be my life goal. My life goal is going to be to know God.

That would be a wonderful goal. And I pray if there are other things that are competing with that, misperceptions, misconceptions about you that today you would allow even a quick trip through Psalm 51 to show us that the truths of God that you share with us in your word are the things that draw us to you, not push us away from you. May we know the joy comes with knowing you in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Reverend John Dalton, who is Director of Student Life at Bob Jones University. If you're looking for a college, please consider Bob Jones University, where our Christian liberal arts education will prepare you academically and spiritually to reach your highest potential for God's glory. For more information about our more than 100 accredited undergraduate and graduate programs, visit bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. Thanks for listening and join us next time for another sermon preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.