1 “Knowing God” – Just the title of our new study makes exhausting demands on the human intellect and reason. On the one hand, to know the Ineffable is forbidding, dark and overwhelming. Yet He calls us to begin a task, the completion of which is impossible – and this is mysteriously attractive and life changing if we see His design in it.

2 It is a matter that is so colossal we can never even begin to grasp its gravity, yet understanding just a little sliver of these lofty concepts will absolutely revolutionize a life. Let me demonstrate it.

3 “But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me.And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.’” Ac 22:6-10

4 There are two slam-dunk concepts here. What are they?

5 “But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me.And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.’” Ac 22:6-10 We find the core of our whole teaching encapsulated in these two questions. You are going to spend the rest of eternity uncovering the incomprehensible reality of WHO Father, Son and Spirit are face to face! Think very carefully on this. We would all say that we “know” Jesus as Savior, but do we really KNOW Him? What can we accurately say that we know for certain about Jesus? The other thing we need to see here is that when even a vile, hateful man is exposed to the reality of even a shard of who or what Jesus is, he immediately submits his life to Him! So let’s all look at our lives and answer for ourselves that question, “Who is Jesus to me?” How we see Jesus can be determined by the way that we live before Him, and how we engage other people.

6 “But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, and I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And I answered, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ‘I am Jesus the Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me.And I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been appointed for you to do.’” Ac 22:6-10 So as we begin our study of Knowing God, I want you to take an inventory of what you think you genuinely know of God by experience, (not just theologically) and how that knowledge influences your day. Do any of you have any thoughts on the subject before we move on?

7 Because suddenly I personally find several things that Jesus said making perfect sense to me and I find them horribly lacking in my own life as I compare my life to Jesus’ life. “So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” John 8:28 What are we to make of His designation “Son of Man”? He spoke as the quintessential human being, not as God, and what did He say about His essence as a man? He said He did NOTHING originating out of Himself and only said what the Father taught Him. I don’t know about you, but I would never let those words come out of my mouth until something dramatic changes me.

8 He said other things that now make perfect sense to me, a created being, relative to my Creator. “Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” John 5:19-20 Notice the relationship between Father and Son. The Son watches the Father who reveals His work. Notice also that the Father showed even greater things that He did to the Son – so that mankind would marvel!

9 He also said the following: “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” John 5:30 Notice the impact of the revelation of the Father to the Son on the judgment of the Son. Do you suppose that the Father wants to do in you the very thing that He did in Jesus? Jesus was able to live this way because He understood clearly who the Father is, and what the Man Jesus was relative to the Father. So guess what “knowing” is imperative to you as a human being, that you will only begin to expand over the next 20 trillion years.

10 “So the Jews were saying, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” And He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” So they were saying to Him, “Who are You?” Jesus said to them, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?” John 8:22-25 Jesus said that if they didn’t believe in who and what He was, they would die in their sins.

11 “So the Jews were saying, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” And He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” So they were saying to Him, “Who are You?” Jesus said to them, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?” John 8:22-25 He was deliberately speaking cryptically to them in an effort to generate the necessary curiosity to get them to ask the right question, which they did, but did they find the right answer? And maybe the answer to that question is much greater, and far more impacting to us than we first imagined when we came to Jesus as a Savior. Might there be the wealth of blessing and heavenly influence in our lives that Jesus experienced if we would dare to pursue a deeper answer to that question than what we thought when we first believed in Jesus? Can we grow into a greater reality and experience from a deeper answer?

12 I told you that I have been reading Tozer’s book “The Knowledge of the Holy” again, and what the Lord shared with me from the book is so powerful and pertinent, I can’t possibly keep it to myself any longer. So let’s just jump into Tozer’s introduction, which I thought was pretty powerful.

13 In speaking about the purpose for writing the book, Tozer said it was “called forth by a condition which has existed in the church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.”

14 Tozer continues, “The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life is resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking. With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit.”

15 “The words "Be still, and know that I am God," mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle of the twentieth century. This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains but losses spread over a wider field.”