To Know Him

Me

“This is my food”

Just being in His presence

I thought maybe tihs topic wasn’t good enoguh. Wasn’t deep enough, wasn’t the most theologically profound thing they ahve ever heard. Wasn’r rich enough..

But then, like a brick wall Holy Spirirt reminded me tof the complex simplcity of what it means to kow Chrsit. That this is awell, that has no limit, more rich than you can ever imainge, more theologically profund than you could even fathom.

Oh friend, here me in this, you want to know that one thing that I trully belive is lacking in the church? It’s intimatly knowing Him.

It’s tis idea of coming back to the simple faith, where we desire nothing else but tio Know Hijm. To know Him more than I did yesterday.

Like could you imagine a prayer life that is charatcerizsed by your desire to KNow GOd more and more?

You know, to not just treat paryer as a checklist or a tick on the “christians duties for the day”. Freind, hear me in this. Prayer isn’t a checklist, just a habit. No no no, frined imainge if we as followers of Jesus followed Jesus’ model of prayer and treated prayer as communicating with the One who saved us, who createed us, who runs towards us even when we don’t deserve it.

Could you imagine? That when we pray it’s about kn owing Him and out of teh abundance of KNowing Him, we know His heart.

I have a reputaion fro being queit, I am a naturally quiet person. Except when I pray by mysely, I’m loud. I’m wild when I pray by myself. In those ,msomemt between Jesus and I, my excitemnt level goesthrough the roof. I sit there going “Wow, I gt you all by myself. Like creator of the entire universe, I get you all to myself, like it’s jsut you and I herre. I get to speak with you and you want to speak to me” ike it’s wild, and honeslty I’ve prayed liek this for most of my life.

I get excited, why? becaue I know Him. You think I’m crazy now, I’m holding back lol.

We

Some of you may be looking at me going n”Ryley your strange, weird, I don’t do that” and you’re right on the weird part.

this whole book is about knowing Him. That you and I are created to Know Him.

That you and I are created to walk intatmely with God. And I’m scared becasue I see so often that we all brush past it likes it’s not a big deal. But it’s a HUGE deal.

We get caughtnup in eveyrthig inour world, and I think a lot of our society and churches too have fallen into knowing about God but not actually knowing Him. Now i’m not just talking about the pasotr’s oh no, I’m talking about the people.

Many people, inclsuing myself, canfall into the trap of settling for just a Sunday faith. oH frined, we got to go back to priroty one. Knowing Him.

Imainge it with me, shaping our entire lives about being passionate for knowing Him?

As one pastor said “ What about just knwoing Him? Being modeled and shaped by the beauty of who He is and His presence, so that who He is begins to be you’re expression. That you being to living from the place He dwells”

Still with me?

My big thng is this, to go abck toheart of it all and fr us to finally get it that it’s about knowing HIm and making Him Known.

You read this book from cover to cover, it’s all about Knowig who God. Example aftetr example, from moses, to david, to Jeremiah, To Paul. It’s all about knwing Him. Having that realtionship with the one who created, saved, and redeemed us.

I was sent a video the other day and it made me laught becaue the video was a sermon on the exact thing i am speaking about. The importance of knowing Christ.

For thr past little bit, I have been Paul in his letter to the chuch Becuwe when we know Him, even the little bit, we begin to see who we really are. We know Him, his abounding love for us, his deisres to be with us, we begin to see ourselves and loved, valued, we begin to see How God see’s us.

God

Recent

Paul expressed his aspiration to know Christ as much as possible—not just the glorious Christ but the Christ who became man and servant, forsaken and crucified—then raised and glorified. This is stated in his famous words: “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death” (3:10–11). He urged the Philippians—and all Christians—to share the same aspirations and to pursue the goal of knowing Christ.

Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 141.

Philippians 3:7–11 NASB95

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

He was willingly emptying himself of his reputation, his gains, his achievements, and his self-reliance, so that he could be filled with the life of another—Jesus Christ. (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 200)

Matthew 7:21-23

You

As we continually go deper and deeper into knowing Him then everything changes.

Story of my mom and cancer.

Satan wil do everything he can to distract us from what really matters. We may be caught up in things that are good, but are we caught up in what’s the most important?

As Francis Chan said ‘is this enough for you”. Is knwoing God enoguh for you?

If you hate me, whatever, as long as HE loves me.

Now friend, you might be listening to me today and think to yourself “that’s great and all, but it’s not for me. God doesn’t want anyting to do with me”

Hear me, you couldn’t be more wrong. There isn’t one thing you could do, that would cause God to abanon His love for you. Isn’t that someting? That God has never reasssed hisn evaluation of your potential.

Coming back to the simple faith.

I just want to know Him. More today than i did yesterday.

If it means that I am going to go tot the altar and kneel becuae I am in awe of Him, then so be it!

Does it sounds crazy? Good, it’s suppsoed to. It was something that you could just do won your won, it woudl sound aroght. But,

We

Back to authentic

Praying that we would be people who get ecited about spending time with God.

Quotes

When Paul put his accomplishments and the excellency of knowing Christ on a ledger, all his accomplishments would be listed as “losses” or liabilities, while all that belongs to Christ would be considered “gains” or assets. (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 201.)

From Paul’s new perspective, his religious pedigree (circumcised the eighth day, an Israelite, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, a Pharisee, a blameless law-keeper) added up to zero or less. By comparison, knowing Christ was of “infinite value” (3:8). (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 201)

The idea is that knowing Christ personally is far more valuable than any religious pedigree or accomplishment. The kind of knowledge (gnōsis [1108, 1194]) Paul had in mind was not merely intellectual. In the context of Philippians 3, “the knowledge of Christ is personal and intimate, as the expression ‘my Lord’ shows, certainly more than an intellectual apprehension of truth about Christ. Rather, it is a personal appropriation of and communion with Christ himself. ‘The knowledge of Christ’ no doubt does involve one’s thoughts, but in its distinctive biblical usage it may be said to involve one’s heart” (Loh and Nida 1977:103–104).(Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 201.)

Paul, like all Christians since, did not know Jesus Christ according to his human life on earth. He knew only the risen Christ (2 Cor 5:15–16). From the very beginning Paul knew the risen Christ via his Spirit, whom he called “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (1:19). In this regard, Paul became the forerunner of all those Christians who have never seen Jesus in the flesh and who have come to experience him in the Spirit. It is true that Paul had seen the risen Lord; he was the last one to do so (1 Cor 15:8). And from that time onward he realized that Jesus was exalted far above all. Paul wrote much concerning this, but his writings did not leave the far-above-all Jesus far away from us all because this was not Paul’s experience, nor ours. Any experienced Christian should be able to testify that the Christ in the heavens is also the Christ in the heart (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 201)

But Paul wanted more than just a right standing with God on the day of judgment. He wanted more from Christ than just a Savior. He wanted to know Christ personally and fully so as to be made like him. Unlike many Christians, who want to know only certain aspects of Christ, Paul wanted firsthand knowledge of Christ in his complete experience of suffering and resurrection. Paul wanted to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, which means he wanted to be energized day by day with the same divine power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the heavenly places (see Eph 1–2). Paul also wanted to fellowship with Christ in his sufferings (addressed later in this commentary). The result of this intimate knowledge and fellowship was that Paul would be conformed to Jesus’ death and would attain the resurrection from the dead.(Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 202)

As our Christian lives progress, we should gradually notice that our thought-lives are being changed from Christlessness to Christlikeness. Transformation does not happen overnight—regeneration is instantaneous, but transformation is not. We are transformed to Christ’s image gradually as we spend time with him in spiritual fellowship. (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 202)

If we are to be made like him, we must have both. To know Jesus, as far as Paul was concerned, was to know both the power of his resurrection, which came to him through the Spirit, and the fellowship of his sufferings (Harold W. Hoehner, Philip W. Comfort, and Peter H. Davids, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, Philemon., vol. 16 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 203.

So Paul states his achievements. He was so loyal a Jew that he had never lost the ability to speak Hebrew; he was not only a religious Jew, he was a member of their strictest and the most self-disciplined sect; he had held in his heart a burning zeal for what he had thought was the cause of God; and he had a record in Judaism in which no one could find fault. All these things Paul might have claimed to set down on the credit side of the balance; but, when he met Christ, he wrote them off as nothing more than bad debts. The things that he had believed to be his glories were in fact quite useless. All human achievement had to be laid aside, in order that he might accept the free grace of Christ. He had to strip himself of every human claim of honour in order that he might accept in complete humility the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. (William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 71–72)

The great basic problem of life is to find fellowship with God and to be at peace and in friendship with him. The way to that fellowship is through righteousness, through the kind of life and spirit and attitude to himself which God desires. Because of that, righteousness, nearly always for Paul, has the meaning of a right relationship with God. Remembering that, we try to paraphrase this passage and to set down not so much what Paul says as what was in his mindm (William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 73)

The basic thought of this passage is the uselessness of law and the sufficiency of knowing Christ and accepting the offer of God’s grace. The very language Paul uses to describe the law—excrement—shows the utter disgust for the law which his own frustrated efforts to live by it had brought him; and the joy that shines through the passage shows how triumphantly adequate he found the grace of God in Jesus Christ. (William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 74.)

It is not simply intellectual knowledge, the knowledge of certain facts or even principles. It is the personal experience of another person(William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 74)

It is not Paul’s aim to know about Christ, but personally to know him. To know Christ means for him certain things.

(1) It means to know the power of his resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection was not simply a past event in history, however amazing. It was not simply something which had happened to Jesus, however important it was for him. It was a dynamic power which operated in the life of the individual Christian. We cannot know everything that Paul meant by this phrase; but the resurrection of Christ is the great dynamic, the driving force in at least three different directions.

(a) It is the guarantee of the importance of this life and of this body in which we live. It was in the body that Christ rose, and it is this body which he sanctifies (1 Corinthians 6:13ff.).

(b) It is the guarantee of the life to come (Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 15:14ff.). Because Christ lives, we shall live also; his victory is our victory.

(c) It is the guarantee that in life and in death and beyond death the presence of the risen Lord is always with us. It is the proof that his promise to be with us always to the end of the world is true. The resurrection of Christ is the guarantee that this life is worth living and that the physical body is sacred; it is the guarantee that death is not the end of life and that there is a world beyond; it is the guarantee that nothing in life or in death can separate us from him.

(2) It means to know the fellowship of his sufferings. Again and again, Paul returns to the thought that, when Christians have to suffer, they are in some strange way sharing the very suffering of Christ and are even filling up that suffering (2 Corinthians 1:5, 4:10–11; Galatians 6:17; Colossians 1:24). To suffer for the faith is not a penalty; it is a privilege, for thereby we share the very work of Christ.

(3) It means to be so united with Christ that day by day we come more to share in his death, so that finally we share in his resurrection.

To know Christ means that we share the way he walked; we share the cross he bore; we share the death he died; and finally we share the life he lives for evermore. To know Christ is not to be skilled in any theoretical or theological knowledge; it is to know him with such intimacy that in the end we are as united with him as we are with those whom we love on earth, and that, just as we share their experiences, so we also share his.

William Barclay, The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, 3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 75–76.

All eyes were on Christ and on him alone. Paul wanted to know Christ. (Max Anders, Galatians-Colossians, vol. 8, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 244)

Why such single-minded devotion to Christ? Because he is the only source of righteousness—that is, of right relationship with God. Righteousness comes as a gift from God and is by faith in Christ, the true way to God in contrast to human merit or works. Here is Paul’s doctrine of salvation and philosophy of life. In regards to eternal salvation, humans deserve nothing, can achieve nothing, and have no reason for pride or self-assurance. God has done everything: created, disciplined, had grace, given his Son Jesus on the cross for our sin, raised Jesus, declared us righteous and justified, adopted us as his children, and promised us resurrection and eternal life. The only human part in all this, in faith, is to accept what God has done. (Max Anders, Galatians-Colossians, vol. 8, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 244.)

To know Christ in this way meant he was ready to share in Christ’s sufferings, even if that meant sharing his death. Paul’s longing to share with Christ comes through strongly in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In everyday living, Paul maintained that his life and the lives of his readers should reflect the difference that Christ makes. (Max Anders, Galatians-Colossians, vol. 8, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 244).