Day 186: Intimacy With God

Today's Connected Scriptures: 

• Exodus 33:7-23 
• Deuteronomy 34:5-10 
• Psalm 119:1-176

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the Connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. I very much appreciate you joining us here on day number 186 of the Canon Connected, and we've just come off of a catch-up day where my brother Ashley and I talked about the founding of America and at least the Christian influences on it. Very fascinating discussion. I always have respected Ashley's thinking and his ability to communicate. He could have very easily been a preacher, but God led him into a very similar but a little distinct vocation of teaching. But today we're going to start not a new series that's lengthy and has a big umbrella with subseries under it, but just one very specific thing today, and that is God face to face in the sense of relationship. We've done God face to face as far as people encountering him. But this time we want to talk about it as far as intimacy with God, I think is one way to say it. That may be even what I titled it. But truly, you know, relationally, you know, seeing God face to face, uh, the way that Moses did. And I even did not include the readings today when we talked about people encountering God face to face, because in the one the previous time we talked about this, it was very much centered around people seeing God, you know, and being blown away by him, falling on their face, falling on their knees, kind of declaring themselves sinful, declaring themselves, you know, unworthy, that sort of thing. But what I'm talking about today, with the way it is talked about in these two passages with Moses and how you can see it clearly from Psalm 119 is relationalists, people who really know the Christian God, you know, not perfectly, of course, because ultimately, you know, God is like calculus and we're like just ants, you know. But that's not a truly, you know, accurate um illustration in full because we can know God. And I'll say this up front, every language I've studied other than um than English has two different words for no, K-N-O-W. And this matters for this discussion, which is why I'm explaining it. One of the words for no, again, in the other languages I've studied, will be things like facts and dates and data. You know, I know my wife was born August 20th, you know, 1992 or whatever, you know, and I I know that uh she was raised in Cesar and went to Caesar Valer High School. But it's another thing to know her in the sense of I know what annoys her and I know what she means when she looks at me a certain way, and usually, usually good, okay. That note that has a negative connotation. But that is to know something in a relational way, okay? People could even say, you know, like I know this is not true of me much anymore, but when I lived in Chicago 17 years, the visitors came. This is more true of the neighborhood where I live than the city, because the city was too big and I got lost downtown just like everybody else. But I can say I know Bell Cragen. You know, that's not the same thing as knowing dates and data and facts, you know. It's a different level of knowledge, it's relational knowledge, okay? And so that is what I'm talking about today. And that matters because when it comes to the Bible, especially, I don't want to just have an education, okay? I just don't want to learn data. I just don't want to know that Noah built the ark and they were when it was 40 days and 40 nights of the rain and they were there 150 days or whatever. I don't even, I mean, it's good to learn the dimensions of the ark, okay? But knowing that is not the same as knowing why all of those things matter. And it truly comes down to do you want to know the God of Christianity or not? The two passages you read with Moses today just again say that as they started off. He knew God face to face. He knew him, he had a relationship with him, he had intimacy with him, and I'm not bothered by the what we've attached to that. What I mean by that is a deep personal knowledge, okay? All right, and that is what we want in Christianity, because when you know the God of Christianity, you're going to live the way he wants you to. You're going to worship the way he wants you to, and you're absolutely going to dwell with him forever, relationally, living with him. Now it's a little harder, okay? Because we don't know God the way that Moses did, like face to face like that, quite like that, okay? But that's why we put Psalm 119 in there, because now we know God through his word. And that's what you see in Psalm 119. And we could easily say it's the chapter about, you know, loving God's word. But the whole time the psalmist is writing in Psalm 119, and yet again I give credit to Dr. Wong Loising from Moody Theological Seminary for teaching me this, he is using languages like language like I and you. He is having a personal dialogue with God, and it's all centered around his word. Because if we're gonna know God now, if we're gonna know Jesus, if we're gonna know the Holy Spirit, primarily it's gonna happen through reading his word. And again, it's not knowing facts and it's not being able to say the books of the Bible and memorizing verses, although those things are helpful, okay? But you can memorize 10,000 verses, all right, which is a third of the Bible. You can memorize, you know, all 31,700 verses and still not know God. Or echoed in 1 Corinthians 13, okay? You can have all the spiritual gifts. You can be so good. You can be a preacher and preach sermons that make grown men cry. You can preach on 1 Corinthians 13 and get it all exegetically correct. And you can still not have love. And in the same way, you can know the Bible and not know God. Part of this reading plan, I really want people to be amazed by God, okay, in a relational sense. Not so they can store up facts in their head and say, well, you know, Numbers 14 is quoted in John chapter 3, and so I'm going to impress you with my knowledge. I don't want anybody to be impressed with me. I want people to be impressed by the God of Christianity because that's who he is. That's his nature, that's relational knowledge, the kind of knowledge that Moses had. And the beautiful thing is that Moses was sinful and he had to experience grace because there really is no knowing God without knowing that grace. And knowing again that he didn't get to go in the promised land. And so just because we make huge, you know, um mistakes with sin, okay, because we commit huge sins and have huge moral failings does not mean we cannot continue in relationship with God if we repent. All right, but I put Psalm, this is the second time Psalm 119 has been in the reading plan so far. All right, and that's intentional. We did a whole day of it on a catch-up day, and I always see it again because it's a relational, intimate, you know, knowledge of God psalm to me. I, you, you, you and your, you know, I love your precepts. You have been good to me. This is how we need to see God. You know, of course, in the context of the church, it's we and us and our, okay? But even we're spending time with God, it matters again that we don't just have a ritual. It's not just I open my Bible for 10 minutes a day and process things, and then I have a ritual rote wrote prayer that I say every day. No, it is when you talk to God, you talk to him like like Moses, like a friend, okay? Yes, he's God and you need to see him with reverence and all, but you speak to him like he's a person because he is. He's three persons truly. And it's relational, it's intimate knowledge. And this is how we we have to be with God, okay? It is not the facts and data knowledge, all right? Even though that can be part of it, but truly at its core, at its foundation, to know God is to know him face to face, to know him through his word, um, and to and to worship him and honor him and to and to be personal with him. Um again, the fact that the Bible, as I've said, you know, many times and did the the fourth, you know, preview episode on God with us, God dwelling with us, that's just proof as much as anything. God wants relationship with us. That's what covenant is. This is everything, okay, in Christianity. Relationship with God, intimate, personal, deep, face-to-face relationship with God. Have you ever met anybody that you know that you just knew? You just knew from their character, from their daily walk. You never saw them once pray in private or read their Bible, maybe. Maybe you have if they were in your family, especially. But you just knew from knowing them that they they walk with God. That's how I feel about my mother, by the way. I I know she walks with God because of how she lives. You you can't fake that sort of integrity and that sort of humility and meekness. It's truly the most amazing thing about both my parents is just how meek they are, not weak. You know, they are strong people, but man, they they there's so little pride in them to me, at least in general. I know though they would say, you know, through their marriage and other things, they've they've seen pride in each other, but we would all say that about each other. The idea is none of us are gonna do it perfectly, Moses certainly didn't, but we can still know God and we can know him deeply, and we can know him richly and personally, and not just store up facts in our in our mind and and exhibit rituals and spiritual discipline, you know. Um, but to actually, you know, relationally interact with the God of the universe every single day of our lives through Bible reading, prayer, fasting, singing, you know, uh serving the poor, whatever it may be. It's all for God and it's all to be in relationship with Him and not to check a bunch of boxes. So tomorrow, um we're gonna change the topic again to something that's uh gonna be we're gonna do several days of this. We are gonna go into a lengthy study, um, at least a week, I think, on this topic of skin disease and and uncleanliness in the Old Testament, not the most exciting thing, but again, there are practical applications to this. So I so I hope it's helpful and I hope you and I hope you enjoy it and that you're edified by it, and it does help your understanding of God and why he talked about skin diseases and clean and unclean food and bodily uncleanness over and over and over again uh throughout the Old Testament. So and how Jesus responded to bodily and cleanness in the New Testament, even that's part of the gospels for sure. So come back and be with us again tomorrow as we continue to read the connections, see the connections, and stay the connections. Thank you.