Knowing God Week 2 (Sept. 19)

Knowing God Week 2 Chapter 1 (part 1)

Introduction –

Spurgeon quote from Knowing God:

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe….The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soulf of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subjest is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a cough of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning.

Exhortation – The Bible clearly speaks that God is the only one who can satisfy our souls!

Psalm 73:25-26 “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart aand my portion forever.”

Roger Yoderan’s wife quotes this passage of Scripture when her earthly husband is taken from her.

Philippians 1:20-21 “as is is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

For Paul, death was gain, because he got Christ; the caretaker of our souls. Maybe your world is being rocked right now, maybe it’s not. But it’s just a matter of time. Where’s your treasure?

Matthew 13:44-46 “The kingdom of heave is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heave is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

‘Theology’ – composed of two Greek words: Theos (God) and Logos (word, or meaning, or rationality)

God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. And not only that, the God of the universe planned to enter into a relationship with us. Our heavenly Father has revealed Himself to us. And the best way to know God is to know Christ (2 Cor. 4:4-6) – In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in hour hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The best way to know God is to Know Christ! To study Christ, because Christ and the Father are one, and Christ does the will of His Father!

Draw your attention to Luke 24:13-27 where Christ walks with two of his disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus testifying how the OT Scriptures testify about Him.

-“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

All of the OT is the revelation of the character of God and His unfolding plan of redemption. It’s all about God and it’s all about Christ and the Spirit. Christ appeals to Scripture as the way to know Himself. He doesn’t give them a Charismatic experience. He doesn’t perform a miracle yet, he simply opens up the Scriptures to show authority about God. We should do likewise. As we seek God, we should keep the Scriptures in the forefront.

Q: What attitude does Packer say we should assume when someone tells us “there is no road to knowledge about God”?

5 Foundational Truths Christians have of the Knowledge of God according to Packer:

1.) “God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation.”

2.) God is Lord and King over his world; he rules all things for his own glory, displaying his perfections in all that he does, in order that men and angels may worship and adore him.

Q: Is it egotistical for God to rule all things for His own glory.

This points to what Piper said in Desiring God: “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.”

3.) God is Savior, active in sovereign love through the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue believers from the guilt and power of sin, to adopt them as his children and to bless them accordingly.

I like how Packer phrases that. We are all “rescued” through the Gospel. We all, but for the grace of God, would have made shipwreck of our lives if it weren’t for our sovereign rescue.

4.) God is trinue; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.

Q: Does anyone have a good explanation of the Trinity for the class?

5.) Godliness means responding to God’s revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God’s Word.

Knowing God Week 1 (Sept 12) - Preface

Knowing God Week 1 (12Sept2010)

The Lord started to give me a vision for this class in the Spring. And as I prayed and thought about it, I realized that I had to bring others on the journey that the Lord has brought me on.

Psalm 68:5 “A Father to the Fatherless.” – I think that God has taken care of me at the requests of my father, and because of His sovereign plan. My heart was always attuned to the things of God and I hungered for His Word. But it was on a mission trip to China in 2002, that the leader of the trip, Mike Douris dropped this book in my lap. And it changed my life (Pleasures of God).

I was exposed to statements like: “What is the chief end of man? A: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Piper said, The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. I want to remind you. God doesn’t change. And God is infinitely happy and He has great joy in Himself in His Trinitarian affections. God is not merely to be studied…but intimately worshipped.

Jesus said in John 4 to the woman at the well. You must worship God in Spirit and in Truth. I am looking for true worshippers.

Presupposition

1.) Holy Scripture is our only authority, because it is the inerrant Word of God. SOLA SCRIPTURA. Because God is our only final authority.

Ultimately, the backlash to Luther nailing the 95 thesis to the door at the Wittenberg Chapel on October 31, 1517 was a debate over authority. The Catholic Church argued at the Council of Trent almost thirty years later for two forms of authority: church councils/pope and Holy Scripture. Luther thought differently. Thus the catch phrase and one of the 5 Solas of the Reformation: Sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is our authority, because it is God's Word. Luther was famous for saying “One peasant armed with one verse of Scripture is more powerful than popes and councils without Scripture.” At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Luther is famous for saying:

Unless I am convicted by the testimony of Scripture or by evident reason – for I trust neither in popes nor in councils alone, since it is obvious that they have often erred and contradicted themselves – I am convicted by the Scripture which I have mentioned and my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. Therefore I cannot and will not recant, since it is difficult, unprofitable and dangerous indeed to do anything against one’s conscience, God help me. Amen.

A.W. Tozer –

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 has 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. The words, “Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period 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 are but losses spread over a wider field.

The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

Jonathan Edwards

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God , is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here….These are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the ocean.

Henry Scougal

The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love..”

David said in Psalm 104:31-34 –

May the glory of the Lord endure forever, may the LORD rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.

The other day, GA and I went to a dock by our house and looked at the sunset. And it was incredible. But as we looked at the sunset our hearts turned to worship, because our affections were towards God, the maker of the sunset, and not the sunset itself. We gave glory to Him in worship and we were awed that God could make such beauty. It’s not bad to be stunned.

John Piper – Pleasure of God

One of the tragedies of growing up is that we get used to things. It has its good side of course, since irritations may cease to be irritations. But there is immense loss when we get used to the redness of the rising sun, and the roundness of the moon, and the whiteness of the snow, the wetness of rain the blueness of the sky, the buzzing of bumble bees, the stitching of crickets, the invisibility of wind, the unconscious constancy of heart and diaphragm, the weirdness of noses and ears, the number of the grains of sand on a thousand beaches, the never-ceasing crash crash of countless waves, and ten million kingly-clad flowers flourishing and withering in woods and mountain valleys where no one sees but God. I invite you…to look, as though it were the first time, not at the empty product of accumulated millennia of aimless evolutionary accidents (which no child ever dreamed of), but at the personal handiwork of an infinitely strong, creative, and exuberant Artist who made the earth and the sea and everything in them. I invite you to believe (like the children believe) “that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course you shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega.”

John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only ture God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

C.S. Lewis – “If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

J.I. Packer - “The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God – ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with Him – lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.”

New Sunday School Class at CBC

This fall at Community Bible Church of Beaufort during the 9:15 hour, we'll be going through J.I. Packer's excellent book, Knowing God. I was led to Knowing God in high school after reading Tozer's, The Pursuit of God, Piper's The Pleasures of God, and Dan Dehaan's The God You Can Know. In the God You Can Know, Dehaan relates how when he was leading a large collegiate Bible Study, he kept receiving question after question from students about many different aspects of the Christian Life. Through this process, he realized that most of the students did not have a proper understanding of the character and nature of God. He found that by placing the microscope on the character of God, students not only began to understand more about God, but also began to develop better relationships with Him. They also began to understand their own character qualities as well!

My hope and prayer is that through this class, hearts will be awakened to our Father in Heaven, that we'll be spurred on in our pursuit of Christ, and that we will listen more attentively to the urgings of the Spirit as we bear His fruit. Tozer said in The Pursuit of God, "The most important thing about you, is what you think about when you think about God." And that's true! Because a proper view of God is our foundation in how we should think about everything. Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:23-24, "But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." Join us as we strive to worship God as he really is, in spirit and in truth.

If you have questions or are interested in joining the class, please email me at grant.r.castleberry@gmail.com.

Back to America!

I can't wait to get back to the states and see my family and friends that I have been so distant from, physically while in Japan! I want you to know that I pray for you often and that you have been on my heart! I'm excited about so many things as the day of our flight back is now a month away (June 28). I'm excited about going back through Hawaii and seeing the Broggis there (haven't seen them since GA and I got married). I'm excited about seeing my family in Texas in their new home in Katy over the July 4 holiday. I'm excited about driving east to Beaufort, SC. The place where my dad past away when he was 26 years old (I just turned 26). Can't wait to see so many of you! I know I haven't written in a while. I was deployed for 3 months with the 31st MEU in the Indian Ocean and couldn't update. Please have a great and safe Memorial Day holiday!

Dr. Lawson presents the Gospel

This is an incredible Gospel Presentation. I would encourage you to watch it. If you are an unbeliever, I pray that you put your faith in Christ. If you are a believer, I pray that you would be encouraged in your faith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQOBMi4QS8

Frontline

A lot needs to happen in Afghanistan for us to be successful. We must win in Afghanistan! Otherwise, it will only become a stronghold again for Islam and their launching point for attacks. This video is enlightening for what needs to happen. It also has some great clips of Marines.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/view/

The Primacy of the Cross of Christ Pt. 1

Christianity is becoming more and more obsolete in America today. The simple faith of Christianity has been relegated to the sideline, especially in urban areas and intellectual communities. Now practical atheism is the most practiced religion in America (practical atheism exists when people simply live like there is no God even though they may intellectually believe in a "higher power"). Many have lost sight of the fact that one day they will each have to give an account to the King of the Universe. In Japan, where less than 1% of the population is Christian, the cross is not understood nor appreciated. But yet, the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross is the most important event of history.

But how do we share these important truths with a world that doesn't understand? I think that we must start by highlighting the absolute primacy and necessity of the cross of Christ! The cross was not just a possibility that God chose out of a list. Some think, that since God is omnipotent that He could forgive anyone's sin if He wanted to. In fact many rest in this assumption without placing their faith in Christ. They believe that since God is a loving God, and that since they have been "good people," that when they die, God will simply weigh their deeds on a balance scale and if the good outweigh the bad, than God will sweep their sins under the rug. The truth however is that God is just and no sin will go unpunished! The Psalmist says, "For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you (Ps. 5:4)." A sinner can not be in the presence of a holy God. Furthermore, the Apostle Paul said that the "wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 6:23)." Everyone who has committed the smallest sin deserves death and can not be in the presence of a Holy God! So for us to enter into the presence of God, we must not only be sinless, but God must see us as perfect. This is an impossibility for us! We are hopeless in our own standing. We not only need our sins forgiven, but we also need to be perfect. That is the beauty of the horrid, gruesome cross of Christ! When God the Son came to earth and lived a perfect life as a humble servant and then gave His own life on the cross as a penalty for sins, it allowed God to see those that believe in the cross for their salvation as pure, sinless people who have inherited the righteousness of Christ!

The following verses stress the absolute necessity of the cross of Jesus Christ:

Leviticus 17:11 "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life."

Hebrews 9:22 "Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."

Hebrews 2:10-11 "For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source."

John 3:14-17 "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."