Special topic: Knowing God In the Details (John 17:3; Gal. 5:22-23)
Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church in Poland, OH on Sunday, January 5, 2025
Pastor J. D. Greear writes:
I once heard the story of a man named Steve who, when he was 2 years old, became deaf after contracting spinal meningitis. For the next 58 years of his life, he lived in total silence—no music, no laughter, no voices of his loved ones. His life was full and happy enough, especially since he couldn’t remember much of the time before he lost his hearing. He had resigned himself, for better or worse, to life without sound.
Then, in 2001, his doctor proposed a procedure that could change Steve’s life forever.
This new surgical procedure would implant a sound wave detection device that could bypass the nonfunctioning part of Steve’s ear. Essentially, the device would transmit the audio signals directly to the auditory nerve in the brain. It wasn’t a dangerous procedure, so Steve happily decided to try it. But there was an annoying catch: They wouldn’t know if the surgery had been successful for six weeks. (What must those six weeks have been like?)
Finally, the day arrived. Steve and his wife came back to the audiologist’s office, nervous and excited. The audiologist programmed the cochlear implant on his device, held his finger over the final key, and looked to Steve to ask him if he was ready. Steve gave the go-ahead, and the audiologist pressed the button.
Then, the audiologist turned to Steve’s wife and gave a silent signal, prompting her to say something. She leaned toward Steve and gently said, “I love you.” Steve’s face broke into a bright smile. Not only could he hear again, but the first sounds he’d heard in six decades were words of personal love. Both he and his wife wept as they held each other, chattering away for the first time ever.[1]
I love that story!
What does it mean to know someone? Do you ever think about how profound it is to be able to say, ‘“My’ wife,” or ‘“My’ son,” or ‘“My’ daughter,” or ‘“My’ mom.” Putting that possessive pronoun, “my,” in front of the noun changes things. It is personal. It shows intimacy. It shows a personal connection. When I married Meagan, she became ‘“my’ wife.” She is not “your” wife. She is not someone else’s wife. She is “My” wife. There is a proper personal connection there.
Likewise, is Jesus “your” Savior? Is Jesus “your” friend? Do you have a relationship with Jesus?
Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)
17 The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
Today, is a special topic Sunday. Next week, we will return to Acts.
My theme is:
Knowing Jesus in the details
- How do we know Him?
- John 17:3 (ESV) 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
- This verse is part of Jesus’s high priestly prayer.
- Jesus is spending time in prayer prior to the crucifixion.
- Jesus knew that the time had come (John 17:1) and now He is praying.
- Jesus talks about Himself in the second and third person. Glorify “Your” Son (John 17:1). Then, in verses 2-3 Jesus referred to Himself in the third person.
- In this prayer, Jesus shares how we receive eternal life.
- We must “know” the only true God. We must know Jesus Christ, whom He sent.
- Do we know Him?
- Do we know the real Jesus. Tim Keller shares about Heb 1:3:
You know the average person sees … Here’s a book written to people in a setting just like ours, and it will not compromise. It starts right out saying what it says, and surely there are people today who say, “We’re never going to have global peace like this until everyone in their religion is willing to admit that all religions are equal, until everyone stops claiming, ‘My religion is the best one,’ or “My religion is the superior one.’ ”
They say, “As long as people say things like this, we’re not going to have peace. Until everyone admits all religions are equally valid, we’re never going to have global peace.” I want to say in response to that, that is by no means the way to get global peace in the slightest. Here’s why. The only way all religions could be equally valid is if you assume either there is no God or there is a God who doesn’t hold people accountable for what they believe. Of course, that God is different than the God of all other religions.
But do you hear what you’re saying? When you say all religions are equally valid, you are assuming a very particular view of God which you’re saying is better than what everyone else believes. Therefore, when you say, “Stop making exclusive claims! Religions have to stop making exclusive claims,” that is the most exclusive possible claim.
Yet you won’t admit what you’re doing. What you’re saying is, “My white, Western, relativistic take on objectivity and subjectivity is the right one. Religions are subjectively true, but objectively they’re all basically the same.” You’re taking your view and putting it on top of everybody else’s.
When another religion, when any religion says, “My religion is the best one. Convert!” there’s integrity there. There’s openness there. There’s self-knowledge there. There’s consistency there. But when you say, “All religions are equal. No religion should claim to be the superior one,” you’re making your spiritual view of reality the superior one. That’s hypocrisy. It’s infuriating to all the adherents of all other religions, and it will never lead to global peace.
Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
- This is not referring to a one-time prayer.
- Dallas Willard shares: Accordingly, the only description of eternal life found in the words we have from Jesus is “This is eternal life, that they [his disciples] may know you, the only real God, and Jesus the anointed, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This may sound to us like “mere head knowledge.” But the biblical “know” always refers to an intimate, personal, interactive relationship.[2]
- Do we have an intimate, personal, interactive relationship with God?
- First, have we “Firmly made the decision to be with Him”?
- Have you decided that you want to live with Him? That would mean having a relationship with Him.
- Have you decided “to become like Him”?
- Have you decided “to learn and do all that He says”?
- Have you decided “to arrange your affairs around Him”?
- If you have done that and are striving for it, then I think you know God.
- This assumes confessing we are a sinner in need of a Savior. That means repenting.
- This assumes believing in Jesus as the One and only Savior.
- John 14:6
- John 3:16
- This assumes trusting in Him and committing to Him (Luke 9:23).
Tim Keller shares:
Jean-Paul Sartre in his work Being and Nothingness, where he has this very famous illustration. He says imagine yourself in a room, and you see a keyhole, and you see light through the keyhole. When you get down and look through the keyhole, you see people doing things, and they don’t know you’re watching.
Wow. There’s nothing more empowering and satisfying than to be the unviewed viewer, to be able to see everything and they don’t know you’re watching. You can see them; they can’t see you. One-way mirror. You can see them; they can’t see you. Now you have power. You’re in the driver’s seat.
Suddenly, in this illustration, as you’re looking through the keyhole and feeling really good, you hear a noise and you look behind you. You see another keyhole, and you see a little eye through that keyhole. You realize your unviewed viewing is being viewed by an unviewed viewer. You are now the object, not the subject. You’re dehumanized, and it’s unbearable. Why?
What Sartre says is there’s nothing more dehumanizing than to be out of control with what people see of you. We need to control how people see us. We need to control what people see. For someone to have access, for it to be uncovered, for someone to have complete access to what you’re thinking and what you’re doing and how you’re living without you knowing it or being in control of it is utterly dehumanizing. We cannot bear it. Why?
That’s an interesting illustration, isn’t it? Of course, Sartre is an existentialist. Sartre of course does not believe in moral absolutes. Of course he doesn’t believe we’re supposed to live up to somebody else’s standards for us. Of course not. Yet he says it is absolutely endemic to every human being to desperately want to be covered. We do not want people to see who we are. We don’t want people to see what we do, how we think. Why?
What Sartre is saying is if anybody has that kind of access to us, they will see things of which we are ashamed. We will do things, we will say things, we will think things of which we are deeply ashamed, and we cannot bear to have other people looking at it, to be able to look inside, to catch us. Why would that be? It’s stupid, frankly. It’s stupid to say, “Well, you traditional people have problems with guilt and shame, but you see, we create our own standards.”
What Sartre is pointing out is we don’t live up to our own standards either. Sure, here’s a traditional society, and they say, “The meaning in life is to live according to the given standards.” Here is our modern Western society, and they say, “The meaning in life is for you to work out your own standards,” but you don’t live up to your own standards either. You’re never the person you say you want to be. You’re never the person you aspire to be. You’re never the person you claim to be. Never.
That means everybody has a problem with guilt and shame. Everybody desperately needs to be covered. Everybody desperately wants to be covered, has to be covered, has to keep people from seeing who we really are. When we are exposed, we’re filled with guilt and shame. That’s true no matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what your century. It doesn’t matter what your culture. That’s why Franz Kafka says about modern people today … He was talking about the twentieth century, but it’s also true of the twenty-first century.
He says, “The state we find ourselves in today is we feel sinful quite independent of guilt.” That’s in his diaries. All of the commentators say … It was a brilliant thing. What he’s saying is we don’t have the concept of guilt. We’re sophisticated. We laugh at this whole idea of guilt, yet we still sense there’s something wrong with us. You may laugh. “I don’t believe in heaven or hell or the moral law. I don’t believe in sin.” Yet you know in yourself, your own heart, there’s a voice that’s always there calling you an idiot, calling you a fool, calling you a failure.[3]
We need to be covered. We need forgiveness. We know that inside. We can only get that in Jesus.
2. Firmly making the decision to be with Him gives you eternal life.
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- Eternal life means that we are alive spiritually.
- Are you alive spiritually?
- Tim Keller shares:
- Christianity is not defined in terms of intellect or morality. It’s not defined in terms of quantity, but in terms of essence and quality, and a change of essence, and a new constitution engrafted into your being.[4]
- Keller defines it more. Plant life versus animal life, versus human life.
- But, we are dead spiritually without Jesus. Eternal life makes us alive spiritually. This means we know Jesus now.
- A person who gets eternal life says, “I was as uncomprehending of holiness, of love, of eternal life, of the righteousness God gives, of adoption into his family, of the gift of salvation, of heaven and hell … I was as uncomprehending of those things as an animal is uncomprehending of beauty and ugliness, of justice and tragedy.”[5]
- What happens without eternal life is the concepts of holiness and of righteousness, of heaven and hell, spiritual truths, spiritual realities either are nonsense to a person without eternal life or they are simple abstractions, but they are not solidities, they’re not realities. They don’t affect you; they don’t control you. You never act as if they’re there. All the difference in the world … A person who becomes a Christian, a person who has received eternal life says, “Suddenly, there is a whole new part of reality I never saw. It never affected me. Those realities were never there. It’s like night and day.”
- A Christian is somebody to whom these realities have become realities indeed. They’ve become no longer abstractions. They’re not philosophical or academic things. They are realities. They are at the center of the being. They make a difference.
- The truth becomes alive. Spiritual truths become alive.[6]
- Are you alive spiritually? Do you know Jesus?
- Knowing Him in the details?
- When we know Jesus, we have a relationship with Him.
- Oftentimes, I have talked about this with spiritual disciplines. I have talked about prayer, Bible study, fasting, silence, etc.
- But, do we care about the fruit?
- If an apple tree did not produce apples, but tomatoes it would have serious problems.
- Do we pray—“Lord, help me to have the fruit of a relationship with You.”?
- Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)
- 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
- I call that knowing God in the details.
Dallas Willard shares:
Our problem is that we don’t truly see the greatness of Christ. In his book Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips laid his finger on the chronic problem of failing to grasp how big God is and our failure to understand the greatness of Christ. When Christians talk about Jesus, they struggle because they have a tiny Christ, a puny Christ who doesn’t compare well with others.
My University of Southern California students have occasionally asked, “Why are you a disciple of Jesus?” My answer has been to ask, “Who else did you have in mind?” And I mean this seriously. They’ve wanted to talk about Buddha, Gandhi, or even their favorite musician or politician, but none of them compare to Christ on close examination.
The reality is that everyone is following somebody. But people are typically not thinking about what is guiding their lives. Good questions for each of us to ask are, Who am I really following? Who do I look up to? Who are my role models? No matter who that might be, that person’s goodness is finite and even limited. But the goodness of God available through following Jesus is so unfathomable you will never see the end of it.[1]
A lot of folks sitting in range of the kingdom are not there for the purpose of discipleship. Often it’s because they haven’t been challenged or even taught how to be a disciple. Other times, they’ve had it explained and have turned away. Even in the Western world, many people have never heard anything about life in the kingdom of God. They think the church is the building on the corner instead of a people who are infiltrating the whole world. This will continue until people realize the solution to human problems is not a human solution. It is learning to live in the kingdom of God through apprenticeship to Jesus Christ and increasingly becoming like him and of his kingdom.[2]
Firmly make the decision to be with Him.
In order to become like Him, to learn and do all that He says, and to arrange your affairs around Him.
Prayer
[1] Willard, Dallas. The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God (pp. 83-84). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
[2] Willard, Dallas. The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God (pp. 96-97). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
[1] J. D. Greear: blog on 11.19.2024
https://jdgreear.com/the-first-sounds-we-hear-are-words-of-personal-love/
[2] From The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. Copyright © 1997 by Dallas Willard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
[3] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
[4] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
[5] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
[6] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
Steve Rhodes blog 