Beholding God: The Great Attraction
In January, 2013, Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically was released and Media Gratiae was born.
In the 10 years since, we have been joined by thousands of people around the world in a journey of knowing God and together we have learned that the nearness of God truly is our good.
The Sermons of Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically, by Dr. John Snyder, contains all 12 sermons from the video component of Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically, adapted for readability. This book is in the hands of the manufacturer is is available for preorder now.
If you have done this study before, may it remind you that there is no end to the adventure of knowing God; if you have not done this study, may these words entice you to a deeper walk with Him.
The following is excerpted from chapter one of The Sermons of Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically — “Beholding God: The Great Attraction.”
are we so casual with God because we in the twenty-first century know Him so well? Or is it because we hardly know Him at all?
Knowing God is the great jewel of Christianity. Though we are thankful for the many other gifts that have come from the cross of Christ, those gifts all lead back to this great source—the knowledge of Christ Himself. Currently, even in churches, the idea prevails that knowing God is a casual and easy thing! Knowing Him is on the same level of relationship as bumping into a stranger and acknowledging his existence. For example, a child comes to the pastor and says, “I don’t want to go to the hell that you’ve talked about. I want the heaven you talked about. I want the friends you talked about. I want the happiness you talked about.” Those are all good things, and the pastor says (depending on the church tradition), “You need to join the church,” “You need to get baptized,” or “You need to repeat these words after me and ask Christ into your heart.” These steps are taken, and the child is told that he or she now knows God. The implication is “Well done, child. That’s it. That’s the end of the journey.” But this is an unbiblical view.
Because of the mistaken belief that knowing God is the easiest thing in the world, we take for granted that everyone in our church knows God. We sit down. We look to the left and to the right, and we see cleaned up, nice people. They are our friends and family. We really have a hard time imagining that anybody on the pew next to us, anyone in our small group, may not know God. Some of the consequences of this wrong view are the flippancy in our worship, the casualness with which we stroll up to God in our prayers, and the boredom that we display with the Bible unless the preacher is giving us four steps to happiness. In reality, knowing God is no small matter. I wonder, are we so casual with God because we in the twenty-first century know Him so well? Or is it because we hardly know Him at all?
The significance of knowing God cannot be exaggerated.
Where are some of the Scriptures that teach us the magnitude of knowing God? The first is found in John 17:1–3, where Christ prays, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Do you see what He says there? Did you catch that? “Father, You have given Me all the authority so that I can bring people to know You. And this is eternal life,” not a long existence in paradise. Christ says that eternal life is knowing His Father and knowing Him. The significance of knowing God cannot be exaggerated. In order for a person like you, in order for a person like me, to know a God like that, God must entrust all authority into the hands of His Son, the God-man, as He goes to the cross. Anything less than that—anything less than all divine authority—is not enough to accomplish what had to be accomplished for us to know Him.
In Philippians 3, we see that knowing God has a beginning. In conversion, a person comes to Christ in a repentant faith. That person embraces Christ for who He is and lays at Christ’s feet all that he or she is. But conversion is only the introduction to God. It’s not the entire relationship. It’s the beginning. Young couples who are getting married are not satisfied to come together for the marriage ceremony and then leave the building and never see each other again. Yet, that is the kind of Christianity we often accept and even promote. New converts are told, “Come, ask Christ to save you, trust Him to do that, and you are guaranteed heaven. If you want more, it would be good if you joined the church. It would be good if you worked. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Look at all these other Christians, giving, working for the Lord. Don’t you want to be one of them?” If the convert should ask, “What about longing to know God better?,” we assure them that they already have all the knowledge of God they need.
Nothing can be compared to the jewel of knowing Him—really knowing Him—forever.
We may not actually say this to people, but our actions imply that the introduction to God is everything. What Paul teaches is so different. When he writes Philippians, he has known Christ for years. Who knows Christ better than Paul? Would any of us say, “I think that my experiences of God are probably more glorious than Paul’s experiences in twenty years of ministry”? Who, like Paul, has seen the glory of Christ demonstrated in the way He conquered people, families, and cities? Who, like Paul, has a clear grasp of the doctrines of the Bible? He wrote half the books of the New Testament. And yet Paul in essence says to the Philippians, “If you want to know, really, what goes on inside of your pastor, I’ll tell you. I’m still counting everything else as loss, even the good things in my past; I look away from them in order that I might have more of Christ. I want to know Him.”
Another evidence that the knowledge of God is not insignificant is the fact that knowledge of God can flourish even in the worst spiritual environment. It is not in pleasant, easy circumstances where we find the knowledge of God growing. It is not in good churches only, nor just in the New Testament, where there seems to be a great revival of religion under the teaching of the apostles. It is not only when David is king and is pointing the nation to God. The opposite is more often true. People in the worst churches, in the worst families, living at the worst times, can cultivate a growing intimacy with the uncreated God.
Hosea, the prophet, preaches during a time when Israel is so idolatrous that God compares her to an adulterous wife who has been brought out of a filthy lifestyle. After living a while with a clean husband, she grows bored and bold and goes back to the old life. Over and over, she is brought back to her husband, but she leaves again. Hosea is sent to his wife with threatening messages, but in chapter six of the book of Hosea, he is sent with a message from God to entice her. The message to this adulterous woman is “Yes, God has torn us, but He will heal us. He’s wounded us, but He will be merciful. He has withdrawn His presence, but He will come back.” Verse three follows with the exhortation, “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth” (Hosea 6:3). Nothing can be compared to the jewel of knowing Him—really knowing Him—forever.