Experiences of God

Passage: Psalm 34:8

Main Idea: Experiential knowledge is a reliable and necessary means of knowing God.

Message Goal: Experience God.

Introduction

At what point does experiment turn into experience?

According to Webster, experiment is an operation or procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law.

This comes from the root word meaning to test or place under trial.

According to Webster, experience is a direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge; the conscience events that make up an individual life, the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally.

The key here is participation. It is the conclusion and knowledge one gets from participating.

Experiment turns into experience the moment one survives the test or trial they have submitted themselves to.

That is life is simply an experiment until we find the means to survive it [life].

Karl Barth’s Two Perplexities

Perplexity 1: Karl Barth argued that the minister of God has a unique responsibility that causes a huge perplexity. The minister of God is has to speak of God while being human, and being human disables him from actually speaking of God. There’s an obligation and an inability. The obligation is to speak of God, but the his humanity does not allow him to properly do so. Therefore, the ultimate response of such a perplexity should be to glorify God.

Perplexity 2: Yet, he also described the perplexity of the people who come to the minister. For. the ones who come to the minister shares the same perplexity—they are human. However, because our responsibilities are different we have different responses to this. The minister fakes as if he can properly express the absoluteness of God. Yet, the seeker goes to the one he knows have the same perplexity. Yet, he trusts that the minister, who serves somewhat as a specialist, can answer the fundamental question of all men. Should we argue that man is in search of what should be done in life, Barth responds this is not the reason for man’s pursuit. He writes,

Philosophy and Religion: Selections from the Twentieth Century ii > VI. The Word of God and the Task of the Ministry

The people do not need us to help them with the appurtenances of their daily life. They look after those things without advice from us and with more wisdom than we usually credit them with. But they are aware that their daily life and all the questions which are factors in it are affected by a great What? Why? Whence? Whither? which stands like a minus sign before the whole parenthesis and changes to a new question all the questions inside—even those which may already have been answered. They have no answer for this question of questions, but are naive enough to assume that others may have. So they thrust us into our anomalous profession and put us into their pulpits and professorial chairs, that we may tell them about God and give them the answer to their ultimate question. Why do they not themselves seek to master it, as they have sought to master everything else? Why do they come to us, when they must long since have made the discovery that they cannot expect the same service from us as they do from an attorney or a dentist, for instance, and that if the truth must be told we can answer their question no better than they themselves? One may well ask. Their coming gives evidence not so much of their hope for an answer from us as of their inability, shared with all mankind, to answer their question themselves.

However this may be, we are asked the question; and we ought to understand what the people have in mind when they ask it. It is evident that they do not need us to help them live, but seem rather to need us to help them die; for their whole life is lived in the shadow of death.

He adds that, when someone comes to the minister they are ultimately want to know what is on the other side of life. Here, Barth suggests that our answer should be God.

Again, life is simply an experiment until we find the One who can help us survive. And in surviving it, we find the end of life—God.

Charles H. Spurgeon once said, “A CHRISTIAN’S experience is like a rainbow, made up of drops of the grief of earth, and beams of the bliss of heaven. (Spurgeon, C. H. (1870). Feathers for arrows (p. 72). Passmore & Alabaster.)

Psalm 34:8

The psalmist understood the value of experiences and the process to which one could make a proper conclusion about the things we find ourselves in. Notice the sequence:

Taste- to find out [place on trial, test]; to perceive mentally

See- to experience something; being present during the experience [experiment] so as to view it.

The conclusion he comes to is the Lord is good.

David’s conclusion was far more complex than it might seem on the surface. David, in fact put God to the test several times.

He sought God. God heard and rescued him. (Psalm 34:4)

He cried. God heard and saved him. (Psalm 34:6)

Practical Point: Sometimes, the experience that you are facing will require multiple experiments.

Sermon Points

The English term “experience” is represented in the Hebrew Bible as yada. It means to know or understand; learn. From this definition we affirm that there’s a relevant connection to the idea of “experiential knowledge.” In the New Testament experience is generally connected to some element of suffering. My argument is that experiential knowledge is essential to the stability of a believer, and nothing can replace it or serve the same purpose experiential knowledge does.

The Problem: Experiencing with God has been stopped or replaced.

The Goal: Have genuine experiences with God that will give us the knowledge we need to know and understand.

Academic knowledge does not supersede experiential knowledge: Job 42:5, Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 5:39-40

Ways to Experience God:

Through Scripture: Acts 17:10-15 (Bereans)

Personal Encounter: Deuteronomy 11:1-7 (The Nation of Israel), 1 Samuel 17:34-37 (David)

Conclusion

Experiences with God create a habit of taking our refuge in God, which provides joy in any and every situation.

THE STORY is told of Mr. Yates, who owned a farm in Texas. The Great Depression came and he was having trouble keeping up with the payments on his farm. The bank began to press Mr. Yates and gave him thirty days to pay his back payments or face foreclosure. With three weeks left to go, a man came to Mr. Yates’s door. He worked for an oil company. He asked Mr. Yates to give the company a lease to drill on his farm for oil. Yates knew he was going to lose the farm anyway, so he decided that it couldn’t hurt. Well, that oil company did drill and hit a gusher—eighty-two thousand barrels of oil a day. Mr. Yates immediately became a multi, multi, many-times-over millionaire.

Now, there’s a question on the floor. Exactly when did Mr. Yates become a millionaire? Did Mr. Yates become a millionaire when the oil company struck oil or did Mr. Yates become a millionaire when he bought the farm? Mr. Yates was a millionaire the moment he purchased the farm, but he lived in poverty because he didn’t know what was underneath the ground.

When you came to faith in Jesus Christ as your personal sin bearer, the moment you came to faith, you were blessed “in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3). Like Mr. Yates, many of us are living in the Great Depression. We are living spiritually poor, spiritually defeated, spiritually weak, and spiritually anemic lives even while sitting on top of all this wealth, because we don’t know what’s down there.

Excerpt from: "Tony Evans' Book of Illustrations: Stories, Quotes, and Anecdotes from More Than 30 Years of Preaching and Public Speaking" by Tony Evans. Scribd.

This material may be protected by copyright.

Read this book on Scribd: