Christianity from its inception has been a relational religion. It was never a mere set of propositional truths, something to acknowledge and check off as true, nor was it ever designed to just be an ethic to follow, a higher morality, though it has that. Christianity is truth. It's truth that binds us in a close relationship, both with our wonderful eternal maker and with one another as believers. It's relational. That's what Christianity is. This relationship we have with God is at the core of what it means to be a believer. to grow in that relationship. It's really not too difficult to notice in the Bible how sin hurt a close and intimate relationship mankind was meant to have with his maker. See, the sin that separated Adam and Eve immediately from God, His presence, His paradise, His garden, the joy that they had, all that was lost. Maybe the words of Isaiah 59 too express it well. Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. And your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear you. That's what sin does. The good news about the Bible, what we call the gospel, is reconciliation, bringing man back into friendship with God again. We're alienated from God. Jesus, in his mission, that's what his mission was all about, brings us back into favor with God, into friendship with God. What did he do? He came down to earth, and he came down so he could restore us with our relationship with the Father above. It's really that simple. We believe, and then as soon as we believe, we are immediately reconciled in our spirits to God. He receives us back. Isn't that wonderful? 2 Corinthians 5.18 says, God reconciled us to himself through Christ. It's that simple. You believe, you're reconciled, you're saved. Believers in Jesus now have eternal life, and with that life, They have knowledge of God. They have now a knowing relationship with God. Isn't that what Jesus said in John 17, 3? This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Knowing God is eternal life. Eternal life is knowing God, being in a relationship with God. We do not say we know something about God. Everybody knows something about God, except the atheists. They don't seem to get even the basic about God. Everybody knows something about him. The Bible says we can be brought to know him. Now, some people find that incredible. What, you think you know God? And the answer is yes, actually. We do know God through his son. We have a personal relationship with him, a favorable relationship. This most precious relationship was not designed to remain stagnant. You don't come to know God and hit a flat line. That's it. There's nothing else. Thank God I know him. Let me just move on with my life. It was always to grow and increase, deepen in the sense of knowing him better. Just like in a committed marriage, where there is a committed marriage, people hopefully know the person they're getting married to nowadays, but you don't know them like you're going to know them five years from now. You don't know the spouse like you're going to know them 10, 15, 20 years from now. What happens through those years? Humility hopefully takes over and there's a lot of talking and discovery. There's unselfishness. There's meaningful time spent together, forgiveness, sharing of thoughts, sharing of aspirations and struggles, friction that turns into working something out. And through all of that, you come to know your spouse better than you did years ago. That's God's design. Relationships are to draw closer. We need to grow. in our relationship with our Lord. You understand that? You need to draw closer to God, know Him better than you know Him now. There needs to be something that goes on inside of you. Some of you are quick to develop relationships, others of you are more guarded, but it doesn't matter. With God, you're to grow very strong to Him so that He becomes very close to you. I like Hosea 6.3, let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. That's how we're to be. So the question for you to think about as you're listening today is, are you growing in knowing God? Or have you kind of flatlined and you're just going through the motion? We're going to read and expound our text today. You're going to hear Christ talk about knowing God, and you can tell from the text he wants to draw his disciples in closer. We pray that's what happens to us as well. Look at John 14. As we continue in the upper room discourse, verses 7 through 11 will be our focus today. John, the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verses 7 through 11. If you don't have a Bible, there might be one in the pew where you can look on with someone next to you. If you had known me, Jesus said, you would have known my father also. From now on, You know him and have seen him. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the father. And it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip. He who has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father? Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his works. Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves." So Jesus has just answered Thomas's question back there in verses four through six. Thomas asks, how do we know the way where you're going to heaven? Jesus immediately answered and said, I am the way he went on to answer it. No one comes to the father except through me. Now Jesus continues in that intimate conversation with his 11 remaining disciples. Remember, Judas is gone here. None of this is for apostates. And he explains the connection between himself and the father. They can't see the invisible father. And he says, I am the way, no one gets to the father. And then so they can understand why he's the way and no one can come to the father except through him. He goes on to explain his relationship that he has to the father. And that fills out even Thomas's question, even as he answers Philip's question. And so. As he corrects Philip, really, we can learn how to know God better. And that's what we're going to look at here, three directions or three areas of guidance for growing and knowing God. We want to pick up from this and glean from this how we can know God. How can we grow in knowing God better? First, the first directive, the first direction is in verses 7 and 8. Look back at that. He says there in verse 7 and 8, I'll read it again. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you know him and have seen him. Philip, you could tell, is not getting and he says to him, Lord, show us the father and it is enough for us. So the first directive we have is recognize, if you want to grow and know God, recognize your deficiency in knowing God. And I don't care whether you're eight out there or you're 80. you have a deficiency to some degree, as I do, in knowing God. So recognize that first, admit that, be humble, and recognize your deficiency in knowing God. Notice how Jesus starts with this saved, believing disciple. He says, if you had known me. So there's some sense, obviously, in which the disciples had not come to know Christ. That verb, know, is the very common term used in John's writings, gnosko, in Greek. It means to know someone by experience. It's not a factual-based knowledge only. It goes beyond facts. It goes beyond acquaintance and recognition into experience, gnosko. And so this must be taken in the relative sense of knowing, not the absolute sense. It's not that they had never met Christ before, didn't know him at all. Obviously, we're all aware there are different levels of knowing. Sometimes we say someone is acquainted with somebody. Oh, I know him. I've met him, would maybe be the way we would use that. Or if it's even deeper, we'd say, no, that person is one of my friends. It can even go deeper than that. And they really had not fully grasped Christ in his identity and in his mission. It's that sense that Jesus is saying, you have not come to know me. They're still deficient in their understanding of Christ. Yes, they knew him, but they didn't understand the fullness of his identity. They didn't understand his connection to God. And Jesus is aware of that deficiency and he's teaching them here. That brings us to the next phrase where he says, if you had known me, you would have known my father also. Now, we're going to get into this later, so I'm not going to say too much about that now. But obviously, it connects, if I want to know God, I need to know Christ. There's a connection. If I'm to grow in my relationship with God, it starts with whom God sent into the world, Christ. I need to start there and learn from that, and then I will grow in my relationship to the Father. So God the Father is invisible. We know him through Christ. And then he adds the phrase, from now on you know him and have seen him. That's a little bit of a difficult phrase. What does he mean by from now on? It points probably not to that very moment as they're sitting there, poof, all of a sudden now. They cleared up all their theology, they knew who Christ was, and everything was fine. But the now points more generally to what was happening from that night into the next day, His crucifixion and His burial, His resurrection, His ascension, the sending of the Spirit, all of that would happen over the next 50 days. This was the time period where the fullness of New Testament revelation was going to come out through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the center and core of the New Testament, the center and core of the gospel. So he's saying, you're going to come to know me in a way in which you've never known me before. You're going to see things you've never seen before. You're going to be aware of God and aware of a relationship with God. What that means as the as I die, as the spirit comes, you're going to grow in that. All of this was on the verge of happening that very night. And so most of the interpreters take it that way. In other words, you're about to enter into greater understanding. Here I am, you know me, but you don't really know me. And you're going to come to really know me here. From this point forward, you're going to see all of it happen. The whole New Covenant and everything that happened with the life of Christ took these Old Testament saints who are under the Old Covenant and really move them forward in their understanding and relationship with God. That's what we are supposed to have as New Covenant believers. Now the fact that he also says, not only will know them, but have seen God, from now on you know him and have seen him, I find that to be fascinating and instructive. Because there was no vision of the Father given in that upper room. He didn't all of a sudden turn on his supernatural abilities and have hovering over the table a vision of God. From now on you know him and there he is, you've seen him. He didn't do that, but he did say, you've seen him, you've seen him. And that's fascinating. So what does he mean? He means they must perceive God, see in the sense of perceive him. A lot of people want to see God with their eyes. You can see, you can see that Philip wants to see that, wants to see God. But Jesus is talking about perception of God, awareness of God, sensing the reality of God, not only around, but working closely where someone is. Where was God? How were they to perceive God? Well, God was sitting right in front of them. He's there. And they're not quite getting that. That's Jesus. That's their master. That's their Lord and teacher. It's the Messiah, son of God. But how does that fit in? And now they're being drawn in more, you see, and he wants them to see you're seeing God when you see me. God is incarnate in a body sitting at the table having dinner with you. So there's no qualitative difference between father and son. You see, the essence and character of the father and the son are the same. Remember, this goes back to the prologue, chapter one, the word became flesh, that is a human being, lived among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Of course, Philip doesn't get this. So track with this, kind of see how he's leading them and teaching them, and you can be taught here. Philip doesn't have much insight here. I mean, we just have to put it that way. Don't look for blazing insights from any of the disciples, by the way. They don't have that. There's always, it seems here in the Gospel of John, a contrast between these lofty statements made by Jesus, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And Thomas saying, what's the way? I don't see the way. I don't know what's going on. The denseness of Philip here is amazing. You have seen God. Lord, show us the Father. Show us the Father. And he's just not getting it. It would be good enough for us if you just show us the Father. Then we'll be satisfied. So he's not really getting the whole Christ event. His relationship to God is deficient. It's brought out by this baffling request to Jesus. Maybe he must have thought that Jesus was given some kind of an invitation to see the Father. From now on, you've seen him, and he's like, okay, let me ask. Let's see the Father, Jesus. Show us the Father. That will help us out a lot this evening. That'd be really good for us. And so he goes on this bold request. Philip's one of the 12. This is not Philip the evangelist spoken of in Acts 8. This is Philip one of the 12. We met Philip back in John chapter 1, verse 43, when he was leading another one of the 12 disciples, Nathanael, to find Jesus. You see he had a bit of some administrative and leadership gifts, and you see him in that role in John 1. We meet Philip again in John 6. It's very interesting when the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus turns out of the 12, not to Peter, John, James, but right to Philip and says, I want you to feed them. I want you to feed these 5,000 out here. And Philip's response back in John 6 is, where are we to buy bread so that... Actually, this is Jesus's question. They came to Philip and said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so that these may eat? And it says Jesus was testing Philip, for he knew what he was about to do. He's about to do the miracle. And Philip gives the administrative answer, the limited answer. 200 denarii worth of bread wouldn't be sufficient to feed them, even for everyone just to get a little bit, he said. So you see Philip the administrator here. But he doesn't have too much faith. He doesn't see how ministry can handle this group. We're just a band of guys traveling about Israel. Our purse is only so big. And now there's just thousands coming out to us in the desert. I can't take care of them. We can't do this. It doesn't add up. The accounting doesn't work. And a lot of people would applaud Philip as being reasonable and handling the money well and all of that. And yet here, he had no faith. He's seen that his faith is weak. He doesn't understand the resources available to Christian ministry. By the way, we meet Philip again in John 12. We see him again as practical. There's a group of Greeks that wanted to have an audience with Jesus, have a meeting, and they go to him first because his city in which he grew up was Bethsaida, and it was near an area where the Greeks were populated and the Decapolis, and they recognized that. And maybe Philip spoke good Greek, and they came to him and said, we want a meeting with Jesus. And we see Philip trying to arrange that by going to Andrew. And so that's kind of the character of Philip. He is one of these administrative kind of guys, but lacks some faith and confidence. And here in chapter 14, we see him wanting to see God. He wants to see God. That's not so bad, is it? Someone said, I want to see God. I don't think that's the bad part of the request. In fact, isn't this similar to what Moses asked for? Keep your finger here in the Gospel of John and turn back to the book of Exodus and let's remind ourselves of what Moses made bold in asking God about. Exodus chapter 33. Exodus chapter 33. And start at verse 18. And here in Exodus 33, 18, we see Moses making bold with a request. And he says, I pray you, show me your glory. So he's talking to God on a mountain, but he wants to see. He's seen the burning bush before. He's heard the audible voice, but he wants to see the amazing glory of God. And he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. But he said, you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live. That's what God said to Moses. Pretty fascinating, isn't it? Then the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me and you shall stand there on the rock and it will come about while my glory is passing by that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away and you will see my back, but my face shall not be seen. So Moses was granted a vision of God because he made bold with a request to see God. He was not rebuked, he just was limited. You can't see my face. Now, don't go Mormon with this and think that God actually has a body, a physical body, as they think. God, obviously, in order as a spirit to reveal himself, he has to manifest himself in some way, and so he's going to limit, the point is he's going to limit the glory and give Moses only the fading side of the glory rather than the fullness, because he wouldn't even be able to live and see that. A creature couldn't look into the eternal one and live. And so this is what he says. Now, Philip is making bold, too, and I think that's okay. And yet he's not understanding, and the lack of understanding is not okay. By the way, Dr. Carson writes of this. He says, Philip thus joins the queue of human beings throughout the ages who have rightly understood that there can be no higher experience, no greater good than seeing God as he is in unimaginable splendor and transcendent glory. We have been made in his image, Dr. Carson writes, and however much we have defaced that image, we still yearn for the visio de, that is the vision of God. But with Philip, there is some lack of understanding in this question. He thinks if Jesus would just do that, something like what Moses got, then nothing else would be needed. They would be fine. They'd be on par with Moses. They would have something special. And that would satisfy the curiosity and the unbelief and all of that. In fact, that verb, it would be sufficient, archeo means that. It's gonna satisfy us. It'll fully, fully meet what our needs are. That'll settle it for us. There won't be any other doubts or questions, Jesus. That's what you need to do tonight. It's a good idea. I wonder if he was looking around at the other guys for some moral support there. Just show us the Father, and that's gonna be satisfying. Now you have to admit, come on, I want you to think about this. You have to admit that there's a little bit of you and Philip, isn't there? I mean, if you were sitting there and Jesus was going to go, okay, great idea. Last night I'm going to be crucified and everything. Let me just rip open the heavens and show you the father. You'd be like, yeah, I'm joining in on that. I want a ticket to that place. That is a place I want to be. That's going to be incredible. Just let me see God and I'm going to be fine. There's so many skeptics. Like I only believe God if I see him. They want firsthand knowledge. Don't want to have to trust anybody else. They want it done according to their demands. God commands them to believe. They say, no, I won't believe until I see. And there's a human longing for certainty and confirmation with our eye. Just show us, quit the suspense, settle it all. Now seeing is believing and knowing. Of course, the problem is that we and Philip wouldn't know what we're asking. Right here in Exodus 33, 20, it says, no man can see God's face and live. In John 1, 18, it actually says, no one has seen God at any time. No one ever saw God. So every glimpse of God you see in the visions of the Old Testament or the New Testament are not glimpses of the essence of God. Nobody can see that, only some manifestation that God gives of himself. Furthermore, let's go back to John 14. When we turn back to John 14, we realize that Philip has missed the whole point. Philip did not realize, and maybe you and I don't realize, that he had a far greater privilege than Moses had. You say, really? Yes. And the elders of Israel also had a vision of God on the mountain back there in Moses' day. Jacob even got to wrestle with God, and he thought he had seen God face to face and had lived, but he'd only seen, again, some manifestation of God. But the disciples had a greater privilege than any of them in the old covenant. The new covenant is a greater revealing of God. It's not a lesser revealing. Revelation progresses through time so that more and more and more of God is revealed. And when Christ comes in his glory, all the fullness of God will be revealed, right? When Christ went through what he did and sent the spirit and the apostles began writing the New Testament, they knew then that they had the greater privilege. For example, in 1 John chapter 1 and verse 2, John writes that the eternal life was revealed And he says, we have seen and testify and announced to you the eternal life who was with the Father and was revealed to us. He's like, that was the greatest privilege. He goes on to talk about how we touched him and ate with him. And so there was no greater privilege than to have the everlasting life right among us where we touched him and lived with him. But Philip wants the shortcut at this point to knowing God. I don't want to have to work at the relationship or try to understand what's in front of me. Just show me God. But you can't know God that way. You can't just have a vision of his transcendence and say, now I know God. That's not how God is. God is spirit and he communicates with our inner being, our spirit. You can look at a bush and you can know something about a bush. You can look at a tree outside and you can say it's pretty and you kind of know it. You can't know God that way. That's impossible to know God. You can go out, you can look at an automobile, you know, you can lift the hood, you can say, I know enough about this car, I see this car. Maybe some of you would want to drive it first. But the objects you can get, you look at it, you understand it, oh, that's a bush, that's a dog, that's a sheep. But you can't know God that way. You can't just, oh, there's a picture of God, now I know him. It doesn't work that way with God. Some people have that in their identity. They don't know who God is. You don't learn God that way. It has to be different. John 4, 24, do you know what it says? God is what? Spirit. 1 John 4, 8, what does that say? God is love. 1 John 1, 5 says God is light. Light, love, spirit. This takes communicating at a different and deeper level. And so this knowing is relational knowing. And you don't have anything interfering with your growth of seeing and savoring and knowing God in your life now because the communication is at a higher level than just the eyeballs. And that is why, as he was sitting right in front of them, he was showing God by his actions and his words, Jesus's love, the way he lived, his goodness, his light, his interactions with people. That was telling them so much more about God than Moses and the elders of Israel would ever know under the old covenant. They were having a conversation around a table all night long with God. And they didn't know it. And we sometimes don't get it either as we're reading our Bibles. Let's move on. The second directive for us here. How do I know God? Focus on knowing God through Christ. Focus on your growing relationship with God through Christ. Look at verse nine, if you would. We're back in John 14. Jesus said to him, that is Philip, have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. Wow. How do you even respond to that? You ask a dumb question in class and you feel really stupid, don't you? I mean, Philip must be melting here. I mean, he just didn't get it. How can you say, show us the Father? You know, he's just shrinking right there. I mean, he just missed it. So I think there's disappointment here that this question was asked. By the way, to clarify, the first you in verse nine is plural. I've been with you, all of you, that is, and the second with the verb is singular. Philip had not come to know him, especially him, but some of this applies to all of them. Jesus had been living among them three and a half years, living and moving among them, but Philip didn't know him all that well. He hadn't grasped his person yet, at least not in full significance. Some see this as a gentle rebuke to Philip, others as something stronger, an astonishment, maybe even a sad response on the part of Christ. Whatever Christ's feeling about Philip and what he said, clearly it is meant as a correction. I think everyone can agree on that. Jesus was clearly revealing God in front of them what then was taking Philip so long to get it. Well, now it's true that Jesus's enemies didn't recognize him. We know that. I remember back in chapter eight, verse 19, a question was asked by, by Jesus's enemies. Where is your father? It was a skeptical kind of mocking kind of question of Jesus. That was his enemy, but these are his friends. He's going to call him his friend and they still don't get it. Particularly Philip. So this is sad. I mean, this is, I think, a troubling evening for the Lord Jesus Christ. It's disappointing. It's sad. We have Judas betraying our Lord. He's in process right now to get his 30 pieces of silver. We have Peter who's going to deny even knowing the Lord before the night is over with the cock crow. And now, Philip, he doesn't even know his Lord. Focus on me, Philip. I'm here to show you the invisible God. Nothing will be better for you than looking at me. All those visions of God in the Old Testament you read about in the scriptures are not as great as the incarnation of God in the New Testament. If you look into the heavens and you saw a vision of the almighty, you would be wowed for sure. But you would not know God as well as you will know God through focusing on me. I'm sitting here with you. I'm talking with you. I'm interacting with you. This is the superior way of knowing God. Jesus had been with them since John 144, but they didn't know him all that well. Even all the long time, three and a half years traveling with them, they might've spent just about every day with Christ. You realize that? I mean, you think you spent a lot of time, people at work, they were constantly living and working with Christ. Three and a half years really would be the experience of 10, 20 years in terms of the amount of exposure with him. And all that long time, it did not guarantee that they knew him, that their mind and heart had been opened up to him. Don't be too hard on Philip in your judgment, by the way. Some of you come to church week after week, month after month, yes, year after year, and you don't know God the way you should, and you know it. And you come in and you listen to the word of God, and your relationship with God's not all that close. You don't really get all that excited about God in your heart. Don't be hard on him. Focus on yourself. Why don't you know God more? What's going on in the condition of your heart that you're holding back? Focus there. We all need to draw closer to God. To see Jesus is to see the Father. Jesus said that. In one sense, we already heard, no one has ever seen God. John 1, 18. In fact, John 5, 36 says, when Jesus was talking to the Jews, you have neither heard God's voice at any time, nor seen his form. Just telling them, you don't know him, you haven't seen him. In fact, we are already told to see God in the fullest sense would be fatal to a human being. But in another sense, they had already seen God. They had seen God and beholding God in Christ. This is another one of the amazing statements. Don't rush past it. This is mind blowing. He's gone from saying, I am the way to God. There's no other way. And I am the truth and I am life itself, the life. And now he just says, when you look at me, you see God. It must have been very hard for them to understand this man was God. That's a hard idea for people to accept, isn't it? Frankly, only lunatics and demons would sit around and call themselves God. Unless, of course, Jesus really is God. Which he was. Liberal Christians, if we can call them that, do not really believe Jesus is God. They're at a loss to know what to do with statements like this. All they can do is say, ah, Jesus never really said that. As if they know. As if they are back there and they have some other book or something. They've interviewed other eyewitnesses. No, John's the eyewitness. John says Jesus said that. It's more scholarly to accept that than not to accept it. So simple here, it's so profound also. This is a claim by Jesus to full deity. He is God in every bit the sense that the Father is God, so that when you look at Jesus, you're looking at God. Isn't this what the New Testament teaches? Listen, Colossians 1.15. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. There's no other image, no other icon, no other likeness that God accepts but one, Jesus. He's my image, God said. If you want to know what I'm like, there he is. Colossians 2.9. In Jesus Christ, all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. There it is. There it is. Hebrews 1.3, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of God's nature. We all know that idolatry is severely condemned in the Bible. It's condemned as something that is evil and wicked and wrong. You know that, right? Idolatry is a sin. Can't read the first and second commands of the Ten Commands without learning that. Idolatry is trying to understand God and worship God through images, statues, forms of animals, likenesses of men, even false images of the mind that we may conjure up. But do you know why that is bad? Why idolatry is bad? You know it is bad. Do you know why it is bad? It is bad because every image of the divine must diminish the divine. Every image of the divine distorts the God who's actually there. Each idol does not lift up God and make Him greater. It brings Him down and lowers Him to be part of a creation and not really all that great. Idolatry dishonors the greatness of God. How can anyone who knows the infinite God and His eternal majestic glory look at a cow or a frog and say, that's what God is like? Or for that matter, wicked, foolish men like Apollo or Zeus or any of the superheroes today or Ninja this or that and say, that's God. Even the idea that a static image can reveal God is so misguided. God is a living, dynamic person. He's the giver of life. He expresses love. He interacts with his creatures. He demonstrates righteous anger. He delivers from hell. No dumb idol could ever convey that, nor does it live or breathe. Jesus did reveal God. He's a person. And so because that is true, we need to focus on knowing God better in Christ. If you want to know God, turn your eyes on Jesus intently. Jesus is the object of your faith. He is also the object of your growth and sanctification. Not only to see Jesus is to see God, but to hear Jesus is to hear God, and to know Jesus is to know God. Jesus knows God thoroughly, and so Jesus instructs us about God. In John 7, 29, Jesus said this, I know God because I am from him and he sent me. Wow, there it is. Again, to the Jews in John 8, 55. The Jews did not believe in him. He said, you have not come to know God, but I know him. And if I say that I do not know him, I'll be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word. Boom, right from Christ. Our pursuit of God must necessarily needs be brings us to Jesus, no skirting him. And then Jesus brings us to God. Hebrews 3.1, therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. 1 John 5.20, we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know God who is true. As we're working through these chapters here in John, as Jesus is speaking intimately with his closest disciples, your prayer for yourself should be, oh Lord, open up my heart Help me to see Jesus so I can know you better. Don't dismiss this opportunity in your relationship with God. Don't fall into habits in church that draw your heart away and distract you. Be like Mary of Bethany when Jesus was there and seat yourself at the very feet of the Lord as he teaches. Put away all of your chores and distraction. Get them out of your minds, people, and seek him and his teaching to know God. Love Christ. Listen to Christ. Absorb Christ. Know Christ. As you do, you're going to know God, and that's going to affect all of your life. You know, there is nothing more powerful and more relevant and more life-changing for you in any other sermon, any other thing that can happen to you in church, than for you to grow in your relationship with God. It'll settle all of your fears to know God. It'll bring joyful energy to all of your work. It'll fill you with worship. It'll embolden your evangelism. It'll give you purpose for your everyday chores and jobs and the mundane things that you have. It'll even make your marriage and your home sweeter. Know God. Pursue knowing God. Don't just sit there. Draw close to God. J.I. Packer, in his classic book, Knowing God, which I highly recommend, writes, those who know God have greater energy for God, have greater thoughts of God, show great boldness for God, and have great contentment in God. Don't you want that to be you? Don't you want that to be you? Do you really? Or are you resisting? Why are you attracted to your sin? Why? Because God doesn't seem all that great to you because you don't know him all that well. That's the only reason you could be attracted to your sin. Attracted to all the entertainment that you have. Why? Because your soul is bored. Attracted to pornography. Why? Because you want excitement. To thrills because what? You're unsettled in life. To alcohol because you want comfort from that. To shopping? Because you're empty? Because you have to have? You don't know God. You haven't tasted God. Alcohol doesn't taste all that good after tasting God. Shopping isn't all that fulfilling after being filled with God. Pornography seems dirty and meaningless when you have a relationship with God. You don't know God all that well. You're coming, you're sitting there, you're not growing and knowing God and you need it. You desperately need it. Are you hearing this is what God wants for you. These other things, they grip you and they hold on to you and they control you. We call them addictions. No, it's a it's emptiness. Even for believers who haven't yet grasped their God, they don't walk with God and know God and love God. It just proves you're coming to church. And you're not coming with a teachable spirit. Are you coming to hear something for somebody else or for you? You hear the word, but you're not taking it in. You're not doing something with the word in your life. You're ready to take it in superficially and preach it to others, but not let it soak into your being. Change you. Break your unbelief down, break your pride down, break your defenses down, break your excuses down. It is a dangerous thing, beloved, to be around God. and around God's word and sing the songs and not come to know God better. It's deceptive and it's dangerous. I just urge you, start with you. Ask God, let a revival, let the dry, parched land of the soul begin to be revived in you. Some of you men, your wives have been telling you, you're not all that spiritual. Listen to them. They may have been hounding you for years. Listen to them. Ladies, maybe the reverse is true of you. You're not loving God. It's a dangerous thing to come to church, and come to church, and come to church, and listen, and not grow. You should avail yourself of every opportunity to feed your soul. I have so much more to say. I didn't even get to point number three. So I guess we're going to savor that for next time. And actually, Lord willing, we're going to have Pastor Quinn, Lance Quinn, in our pulpit this next Sunday as well. So this might be two Lord's Day from now. And maybe the Lord designed it that way. I didn't. I thought I was going to get through. And I didn't, but maybe the Lord wants you thinking on that for a couple of weeks, and we'll be back and deal with this again. We're going to pray, and then we're going to have our time of child dedication. Pastor Plumlee will be coming and leading us in that. Father, help us to know you, love you, deepen in our awareness of you, where we resist you and we try to fill life with the next busy thing we have to get off and go do. Help us to remember that's not all that great. And often that eclipses you. And there you are in your fullness. There's so much joy in knowing you because of the weakness of our faith and our disobedience and our giving in the fleshly desire. We keep drowning out that wonderful, blessed awareness and relationship we have with you that is mediated now by your Holy Spirit, who actually lives inside of us. Fill us with this power that we need, O Lord God, for we ask it, of course, in the name of Christ, amen.