When you hear the word passion today, most
of the time we relate that to some
sensual or sexual idea, but the word passion
means an overwhelming, intense, strong desire towards something
or someone else.
Passion is not to be limited to something
that is sensual, but passion can also be
directed towards something that is spiritual, that is,
a passion to know God, a passion for
God.
And that is exactly what I want to
talk about in this message, and I want
to begin a series today by that very
theme title, and that is a passion for
God, and the title of this message, A
Passion to Know Him.
A strong, intense, overwhelming, emotional desire to know
God in Christ Jesus.
Now, if you'll turn to Philippians chapter three,
because probably of all the text in the
Bible, this is the one that best describes
and expresses the passion of the Apostle Paul
to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if you'll recall also that in this
book, all through this epistle, he's talking about
rejoicing and praising the Lord, though he's writing
this from a prison.
And in the third chapter, he has just
made the statement in the last part of
that third verse, put no confidence in the
flesh, that is, don't depend upon our own
self-achievements and accomplishments for anything spiritual.
And then he begins by verse four saying,
although I myself might have confidence even in
the flesh, if anyone else has a mind
to put confidence in the flesh, I far
more.
He says, now, first of all, you shouldn't
put any confidence in the flesh, that is,
don't base your acceptance by God on the
basis of your past heritage accomplishments or achievements.
But he says, if anybody had the right
to do so, he said, I would for
the following reasons.
And then he tells us what they are.
Verse five, he says, I was circumcised on
the eighth day.
I was of the nation of Israel, of
the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews,
as to the law of Pharisee, as to
zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to
the righteousness which is in the law, found
blameless.
But whatever things, referring to these, were gained
to me, those things I have counted as
loss for the sake of Christ.
And then he says more than that, I
count all things to be lost in view
of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus,
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the
loss of all things and count them but
rubbish in order that I may gain Christ
and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own derived from the law,
but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which comes from God on the
basis of faith, that I may know him
and the power of his resurrection and the
fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his
death in order that I may attain to
the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it or
have already become perfect in these things, but
I press on in order that I may
lay hold of that for which also I
was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Now, if somebody says to you, do you
know so-and-so?
If you've heard of them or if you've
been around them or if you've talked to
them, more than likely you say, yes, I
know them.
When in essence what you mean by that
is on a very surface level, I do
know something about them.
But to know someone and to know something
about them is entirely different.
And so most of the time when we
say, yes, I know them, we don't really
and truly mean that we really know that
person.
We know about them.
We know something about their reputation or where
they live or who they are married to
or their children and so forth.
So I want to ask you this question.
Do you really and truly know Jesus Christ?
If someone should say to you, who is
Jesus Christ?
How long would it take you to explain
to them who Jesus is?
Would you say something like this?
Well, he's the Savior of the world.
He's the Son of God.
He was born of a virgin.
He's the Lord of life.
He was crucified, buried, and risen again, and
he's ascended to the Father, and he's sitting
at the Father's right hand.
He's coming again.
Would you stop with that?
Or could you tell them who Jesus really
is in an intimate fashion as your friend,
one who's accepted you, one who loves you,
and one who walks with you every day,
one who's become not only your Savior and
your Lord, but your very life, one in
whom you trust, one upon whom you rely?
Could you begin to explain to that person
who Jesus Christ really is?
Far too many people sit in church houses
on Sunday, and far too many people listen
to tapes, listen to the radio, watch television
programs that are religious or spiritual, and think
they know who Jesus is, but really do
not know who he is.
And the Apostle Paul in this passage of
Scripture says, the passion of my heart that
is the most intense, strong, overpowering, yearning, hungering,
thirsting desire of my life is to know
Jesus Christ.
Could you say that?
If I should ask your wife, does your
husband really know you?
Many women would say, not really.
If I should ask you as a husband,
does your wife really know you?
Some of you would say, not really.
Because you see, real, genuine, true knowledge goes
beyond the surface when it comes to knowing
someone.
It has to do with something far beneath
what we see and what we feel on
the surface.
To know someone involves a great deal more
than that.
And so the question comes, why would the
Apostle Paul say, I count everything else in
my life as mere rubbish compared to knowing
Jesus Christ?
Well, let's see why.
Because that should be the desire of our
own heart to know him in that fashion.
And there must be something very special about
Jesus for a man to say, everything else
is mere rubbish compared to him.
So let's look at it, if you will,
in this third chapter.
And first of all, let's get a proper
understanding of what he means by knowledge here.
And you can tell by the priority that
the Apostle Paul puts on his desire to
know the Lord Jesus Christ, this has to
be certainly more than factual knowledge, some theory
or some principle about Jesus.
When he says what he desires is far
more than that.
So what does he mean when he says,
above all else, I desire to know him?
That kind of knowledge involves three things.
First of all, it involves understanding Jesus Christ.
It involves experiencing him personally.
And thirdly, it also involves an intimacy with
him.
So it means understanding him, his ways and
why he operates the way he does and
how he seemingly responds to us and works
in our life.
It involves not only an understanding, but it
involves an intimacy with him.
That is an ever growing, deepening relationship of
oneness with him that is continually growing.
It involves a relationship of intimacy and understanding.
It involves a relationship that is ongoing and
life effecting.
To know the Lord Jesus Christ never leaves
a person the way they were before.
To know him by experience, to know him
in intimacy, to know him with understanding.
This is what Paul is referring to here
when he says, but I count everything is
lost compared to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.
For example, in the Old Testament, a word
that is similar to this word for knowing
here is the word, yada, which means to
know.
And in Genesis chapter 4, I believe in
the King James version, it says that Adam
knew his wife Eve and she conceived and
brought forth a son.
And so they use the word know to
explain the physical intimacy between a husband and
a wife.
Because you see genuine, true knowledge is beyond
the surface and it goes into that intimate
relationship.
Why did Jesus say that a man is
to love his wife like Christ loved the
church?
Jesus doesn't love us merely on the surface.
He loves us in an intimate, deep, ever
growing, ever life changing fashion.
Husbands and wives are to grow in their
intimate relationship with each other, far above and
beyond the physical, because the spiritual intimacy that
a husband and a wife are able to
experience with each other goes far beyond any
kind of physical relationship.
And so Jesus said to the apostle Paul
that a man is to love his wife
in such an intimate relationship.
It is like Jesus loving his church in
a fashion that can only be experienced and
probably never fully explained.
The apostle Paul is saying in this passage,
the passion, the deepest yearning, the overwhelming emotional
desire of my heart is to know this
Christ.
And so when he talks about knowing him,
he's talking about knowing him in that fashion,
to know him in such a way that
he can never be the same again.
If that knowledge of him is growing, that
means I'm growing.
If my understanding is growing, then I'm growing.
If my intimacy is growing, then I'm growing.
If my relationship with him is such that
it is affecting all of my life, then
I too am maturing on the basis of
my knowledge and understanding of who Jesus Christ
is.
It is a continuing daily experience with Christ.
Now let's think about it for just a
moment.
I wonder how much you and I really
truly want to know him because you see
most people are satisfied with knowing Jesus as
Savior.
Now watch this.
The reason most people are satisfied with knowing
Jesus Christ as Savior is because knowing him
as Savior means I'm forgiven of my sins,
I've been redeemed from them, and ultimately the
penalty has been removed, and therefore I am
now receiving something as a result of knowing
him as my Savior.
But now watch this.
Far too few people are interested in knowing
anything about Jesus Christ as Lord because you
see to know him as Lord says I
know him as the boss, I know him
as the controller, I know him as the
guide, I know him as the director, I
know him as the one who's controlling my
life.
Am I interested in knowing Jesus Christ as
my Lord?
Am I interested in submitting my will to
him?
Am I interested in walking subdued before him
and yielded to his will?
Or am I only interested in knowing him
as my Savior because that's the way I
get the forgiveness of my sin?
And then how many people know Jesus Christ
as their life?
If someone should ask me what is the
greatest truth you have ever known or discovered
since you've been a Christian, I can tell
you right now what that is.
The greatest truth I have ever discovered in
all of my Christian experience second to nothing
is this simple truth that Jesus Christ who
is my Savior, my Lord, and my life
is my sufficiency for all my needs.
I am complete in him and I can
respond to every circumstance based on who I
am in him, who he is in me,
drawing for every temporal and spiritual need from
the inexhaustible resource of the person of Jesus
Christ, the all-sufficient one.
That is the greatest truth I have ever
discovered in life.
That is knowing him in a far greater
and more intimate way than something that is
on the surface.
That truth has absolutely radically revolutionized and changed
my whole perspective of the Word of God,
of the church, of God, of Christ, myself,
and my whole outlook on the world.
Paul said, I have a passion.
I have a passion to know him.
You see, most of us want the stretch
of our hand to him, not our heart.
We want to know him as the giver.
We want to be the receiver.
We are far more interested in knowing him
as the one who answers our prayers and
gives us what we need rather than just
to know him for who he is.
Isn't it strange how many people can quote
certain very popular people who are in the
area of sports or politics or the theater?
They can tell you all about their score,
everything that's happened in the past few years,
all the good things that they have done,
the achievements, the accomplishments, the awards.
Whether it is in the area of politics,
the theater, sports, whatever it might be, it
is amazing how much real knowledge about some
people they have.
And then when it comes to Jesus Christ,
there's a void.
Let me ask you a question.
Is he worth knowing?
Do you know what a wife thinks when
her husband doesn't really want to know her?
Here's her conclusion.
I'm not worth knowing, which is a devastating
response, but that is exactly what a woman
thinks.
I must not be worth knowing.
I wonder when Jesus looks at your life
and mine and our interest in him, if
he sort of sometimes comes to the same
conclusion according the way we respond to him.
And of course he knows better.
He is indeed worth knowing.
But how much do you care to know
about him?
Are you satisfied just knowing him as your
savior, that you're forgiven of your sins and
you go into heaven?
Or is there something inside of you that
drives you, that motivates you, that stirs up
your keen interest?
You want to know, who is this Christ
in whom I've trusted my whole eternity?
Who is this Christ who answers my prayer?
Who is this Christ who loves me, cares
for me, forgives me, meets my needs, accepts
me just the way I am?
Who's written my name in the Lamb's book
of life?
Who's going to take me to heaven?
Who's preparing a place for me?
Who understands me fully?
And who loves me just the same?
Who is this Christ?
Are you dissatisfied as long as you know
you're going to heaven and you've been saved
by the grace of God?
The apostle Paul was never satisfied.
He says, the passion of my heart is
to understand and to know this Christ.
Listen, to know him in such an intimate
fashion that I am absolutely and totally perfectly
satisfied being in his presence asking for nothing.
When you kneel to pray or when you
come to him in prayer, are you always
asking for something?
Do you always have your hands outstretched, oh
God, my needs here, there and yonder?
Or can you honestly say, I'm just satisfied
being in his presence and talking to him
and listening to him and asking for nothing?
Do you really know this person whom you
serve and whom you claim to be your
savior?
And if you know him, how intimately?
How deeply?
How lovingly?
Or are you satisfied to have your mind
barraged with all the information the world has
to give?
All the things that pour into your mind
day after day after day, remembering this and
that and the other and whatever happens to
our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
All of that is so temporal and passing
and changing.
And remember this, listen carefully.
What we genuinely know of the truth of
him never changes.
I didn't say that our understanding wouldn't deepen.
And I didn't say we wouldn't understand more,
but I'm saying the truth that we know
about him never changes because the truth of
him is always the same.
Everything else in life, all the knowledge is
continually changing.
But knowing Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul said,
the knowledge that I'm talking about is of
such priority that I put that knowledge above
every other thing in all of my life.
Now, what happens when a young man gets
interested in a young woman?
What happens?
He wants to know her better.
When a young lady gets interested in a
young man, she wants to know him better.
They don't just say, well, how you doing?
Good to see you again.
But there is an ever growing desire toward
reaching out, pursuing, seeking after, desiring to know
one another.
Let me ask you a question.
Since you have been saved by the grace
of God, what have you done to really
and truly know Jesus Christ as your savior?
Listen, what would motivate a man to say
what the apostle Paul says in this passage?
Now look, if you will, in verse seven,
he says, what things were gained to me?
Speaking of the things he had just mentioned
in verse five and six concerning his family
relationship, his relationship to the nation of Israel,
his position as a Pharisee and his position
as far as keeping the law, he says,
whatever things were gained to me, those things
I have counted as lost for the sake
of Christ.
So not only do we need a proper
understanding of what he means by knowing, but
the second thing I want us to notice
here is this, and that is the profound
value the apostle Paul places on knowing Jesus
Christ.
So he says more than that.
I count all things to be lost in
view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ
Jesus for my Lord, for whom I've suffered
the loss of all things, count them but
rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.
Now look at that for a moment.
He says, here's how I value this knowledge
of Christ.
First of all, he says, as I look
at my past, my achievements, my accomplishments, my
possessions, my heritage, he said I count all
of that as of no value compared to
intimately understanding and experiencing knowing Christ Jesus.
Not only that, he says, those things that
were gained to me, verse eight, more than
that, he says, I count everything as a
total loss compared to knowing Jesus Christ intimately,
understanding him, experiencing him in my daily life.
He said there's nothing to compare with it.
And then he reaches his climax at this
point when he says, more than that, I
count all things to be lost in view
of the surpassing value.
Listen, he says when it comes to knowing
Christ, there's nothing to be compared with the
priceless privilege.
He says with the overwhelming value, the overwhelming
preciousness, the surpassing value and the supreme advantage
of knowing Jesus Christ.
He says there is nothing to be compared
to that.
And then notice how he says it.
He says, knowing Christ, my Lord, for whom
I have suffered the loss of all things
and count them, but rubbish.
He says, here's the way I view everything
else in life.
You can put my family heritage, my possessions,
my prestige, my prominence, my position, my authority
in the past, everything I've achieved, everything I've
accomplished, everything in life that has any value,
you can put that on one side of
the scale.
You can put knowing the Lord Jesus Christ
on the other scale pan.
And what happens is there is absolutely no
comparison whatsoever.
And when he uses the term rubbish here,
the apostle Paul chose the worst word in
the vocabulary he could possibly use to describe,
listen now, to describe the comparison with everything
the world has to offer compared to knowing
Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to say it just like
what that word means.
He says knowing Jesus Christ puts everything else
on the level of rubbish, trash, garbage, piles
of manure.
That's what he means.
What in the world did the apostle Paul
know that would cause him to say none
of those things that my friends, that my
brethren, that the world considers important, none of
these, these altogether have absolutely no comparison.
They bear no worth.
They bear no value compared to knowing the
person of Jesus Christ.
What would motivate a man to say something
like that?
Let me ask you, what is it in
your life that you want to know more
than you want to know Jesus?
What is it you have a passion for?
When you hear people say, well, she's just
my life, then their priorities are totally out
of order.
When someone says, well, you know, he's my
life.
No.
When somebody says, oh, my vocation is my
life.
No.
There should only be one person who can
fit that category.
And that is Christ.
The apostle Paul writing out of a prison
said, rejoicing in the Lord.
He said, everything I know, everything I have,
everything I have ever experienced and every promise
of the world has to offer is mere
rubbish compared to intimately experiencing and understanding the
person, a relationship that I have with the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Here's the man who knew the Lord.
How do I know that?
Who wrote the epistles?
Who wrote Philippians and Ephesians and Colossians, three
great epistles that unveil the person of Jesus
Christ in such a fashion that you and
I will never be able to fully comprehend
all the truth that is wrapped up in
those three epistles.
They're not the only three, but the apostle
Paul said more than I want anything else
in life.
This is what I want.
He didn't say, I sure would like to
be free.
Paul, what do you want most of all?
You're a preacher of the gospel, a statesman
and a missionary.
Don't you want out of prison?
Don't you want the freedom to get out
there and preach the gospel and establish more
churches?
No.
He says, the passion of my heart is
not to get out of jail.
The passion of my heart is not to
be unchained.
The passion of my heart is to know
this Christ.
And when people sit hour after hour, night
after night, watching television programs that do nothing
but pour trash into their minds and read
books and magazines and articles, and they know
all about what's happened in Hollywood and who's
married to the fifth, who's had the fifth
husband and who's had the fifth wife and
on and on and on they go.
And somehow there's this awesome sense of barrenness
about wanting to know any more about Jesus
than the fact that I'm forgiven of my
sins.
I can remember hearing testimonies and you have
heard them too.
And people have shared about how they got
saved.
And I can remember, especially years past of
people when I was growing up who came
to church and gave testimonies.
And I can remember the tenor of so
many of them.
They'd say, well, you know, when I came
to Jesus, I gave up my career.
Oh, when I came to Jesus, I gave
up marriage to this person.
Oh, when I came to Jesus Christ, my
family turned me out and I gave them
up and they go on and on and
on and went on and on and on
talking about what they gave up when they
came to Christ.
And I would sit there and think, wait
a minute, wait a minute.
And let me ask you how many of
you have given up anything and sacrificed anything
to come to Christ?
The only thing you and I've given up
to come to Christ is our sin and
our rebellion and disobedience.
And what have we gained?
We have gained everything.
Listen, don't ever tell anybody that you sacrificed
to come to Christ, that you gave up
something to come to Jesus.
Friends, you didn't give up anything that you
ought to have.
You didn't give up anything that would not
have destroyed you ultimately.
And what you laid aside, you laid aside,
not because you lost it, but because you
gained something.
Listen, you do not hear this out of
the apostle Paul.
Oh, as in prison, I've given up being
a Hebrew of Hebrews and being a Pharisee
and the acceptance of my brethren in the
synagogue and the opportunities to stand there.
You hear not one single regret from a
man who is in a prison cell.
And what is he saying?
He's saying, hey, you want to know what
motivates me?
You want to know what the passion of
my heart is?
It is this insatiable, hungering, thirsting, yearning, overpowering
desire.
Who is this Christ whom I know and
whom I serve?
That's what he wants to know.
You know why the apostle Paul wanted to
know it?
Turn over, if you will, one book, Colossians
chapter 2.
Paul knew something about him.
He knew him and he was growing in
his knowledge.
And you see, it isn't that Paul doesn't
know anything about Jesus when he says this
or does not know him at all.
But he says, my desire is to know
him more intimately and to experience him in
ways that I'm yet to experience him.
Colossians chapter 2.
If you could wrap it all up in
one phrase, Paul says, this is why I
want to know him.
Verse 3 of Colossians 2.
He says, because in Christ are hidden all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Listen to that.
He said, in Christ is hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
When you know the Lord Jesus Christ and
you really know him, what happens?
You begin to understand your comprehension, your discernment,
your perception, your whole perspective on life, God,
heaven, future, eternal things, temporal things.
Everything begins to change as you and I
grow in our knowledge and understanding of him.
He says, if you want the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge, where do you find that?
In knowing Jesus Christ.
Let me ask you this.
What is the passion of your heart?
What is the thing that you are pursuing
above everything else?
Is it a ministry?
Then it's the wrong passion.
Is the passion of your heart somebody?
It's the wrong passion.
When Jesus Christ becomes the objective, when he
becomes the object of my affection and the
passion of my heart and the obsession of
my life, everything else that I need and
desire, God will provide in its perfect and
proper timing and place.
But when my obsession is someone and when
my desires for something or achievement or accomplishment
or recognition is anything other than the person
of Jesus Christ, everything's out of balance.
You said, does that mean we should have
no desires?
No.
Does that mean you should have no desires?
But absolutely nothing should compete with our knowledge
and desire to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is more valuable in life than knowing
him?
Who is more valuable to you than the
person of Christ?
What relationship is more valuable to you than
that of Jesus Christ?
I can answer that.
In many people's lives, their relationship with someone,
their relationship to something, their relationship to some
opportunity is far more valuable to them than
knowing Christ.
So I ask you a simple question.
Do you really know him other than knowing
him as Savior?
Do you know him intimately?
Do you know him as a friend?
Do you know him as the one who
walks with you moment by moment, day by
day, with whom you can fellowship and converse?
Do you understand his ways while he operates
the way he does?
Can you sort of foretell sometimes what he's
going to do because you've seen him operate
that way in so many times heretofore?
How well do you know him?
Are you just sort of running along in
your Christian life, doing your thing and calling
on him just when you need him in
times of desperation, trouble and heartache and problems
and trials?
Or are you like the man and woman
who takes the time to genuinely, intimately love
the Lord Jesus Christ and to get to
know him?
Let me ask you a question.
If you love somebody today, you want them
to know you.
Amen?
You really want them to know you if
you love them.
And the Apostle Paul says, when I look
at every single thing in life, he says,
here's my conclusion.
You can put all of that on this
scale and you put knowing Jesus over here
and he says there is absolutely no comparison
whatsoever.
And listen carefully.
If you're sitting here asking yourself the question,
but what is there to know about him
that would cause anybody to think that?
Well, your question reveals a great deal.
And my friend, when you begin to understand
who he is, then you won't ask that
question anymore.
You'll begin to say, wow, why did I
not pursue this earlier?
Why did I not give myself to find
out who is this Christ in whom I
have believed, in whom I trust, in whom
I follow and whom I serve and whose
name I have named myself, follower of Jesus,
Christian.
Well, listen to what Paul says.
He says, verse 10, that I may know
him and the power of his resurrection, the
fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his
death.
So not only do we have to have
a proper understanding of what he means by
knowledge, and we understand here what he means
when he talks about this profound value he
places upon Jesus, superlative, beyond and above all
other knowledge or experiences relationships.
Then he comes to give us here that
is his primary goal of knowing him.
What is it that he wants to know
specifically about Jesus Christ and what does he
want to experience in him?
And so he tells us what that is.
Look at this, if you will.
He says, if you'll notice in the last
part of verse 8, he talks about gaining
Christ.
That doesn't mean that Paul wants to get
saved because there's already been saved sometime before
he writes this.
And he talks about being found in him.
First of all, Paul says, here's my goal.
He says, I want to know the Lord
Jesus Christ, first of all.
Now follow this.
First of all, I want to know him.
I want to know him and experience his
righteousness.
That is, Paul was already saved.
He says, I want to fully understand and
experience.
He says, I want such an intimacy with
him that I understand what it means to
be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.
You see, the apostle Paul had lived most
of his life trying to keep the law,
trying to keep the ten commandments, trying to
keep the Mosaic law.
There came that time on the Damascus road
when he was struck down, he was saved
by the grace of God.
God placed in his heart a desire to
know this Christ.
And he said, my desire is to know
what it means to live and to walk
and to experience the righteousness of Christ.
That is, I am clothed in his rightness.
I am clothed in his holiness.
I want to experience that to the deepest
intimacy of my relationship and my capacity to
know what it means to be fully redeemed
and fully justified and fully glorified in the
righteousness of Christ by faith and faith alone.
No works of my own, no achievements of
my past, no promise of doing something better.
You see, one of the reasons that I
say to you week after week, I say
something about the all sufficient substitutionary, sacrificial, atoning
death of Jesus Christ, hoping that I will
say it long enough and intensely enough, often
enough that you begin to say, what does
he mean by all sufficient, sacrificial, atoning death
of Jesus Christ?
Why does he keep saying that?
I'll tell you why.
Because until you know Jesus Christ, until you
know him as the all sufficient sacrificial savior,
until you know him as the son of
God, virgin born, who came to die on
the cross for your sins, until you know
him in the suffering of the cross for
your sins in mine, until you know him
in that way, you don't really know Christ
until you know him as the lamb slain
before the foundation of the world.
Paul says, I want to know him intimately
in that fashion.
But secondly, listen to what he says.
He says not only that, verse 10, that
I may know him and the power of
his resurrection.
Paul said, I want to know the Lord
Jesus Christ, and I want to be able
to intimately walk with him in the same
power that he experienced after his resurrection.
That is the power of the Holy Spirit,
walking in such a fashion that his life
was not only meaningful, listen, not only leaving
an impression, but his life made an indelible
eternal impact on the people he met and
the people with whom he associated.
He said, I want to know the intimacy
of Christ.
I want to experience what he experienced when
he lived in resurrection power, which he promised
to every single believer.
The presence and the power of the Holy
Spirit operating in your life and my life,
making it possible for each one of us
to make an impact on those about us.
He said, I don't just want to know
about him, I want to experience this same
overwhelming sense of resurrection power that my life
can make an impact like that of Christ.
But he says, I want to go a
step further.
Look at this.
He says, and I want to know him,
the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to
his death.
Now, usually we'll look at that and say,
well, Paul wanted to suffer like Jesus suffered
and die like Jesus died.
Well, that's true, but let me explain what
he means by suffering and death.
He's not saying that I want to go
to the cross like Jesus went, but here's
what the apostle Paul is saying in his
desire to know him.
You see, the apostle Paul wanted to know
Jesus Christ in a very practical way, nothing
just theological and ethereal and philosophical and probable.
He wanted to know Jesus Christ in a
very practical way, moment by moment, day by
day, where as he walked, as he sat
in prison, who is this Christ?
And he says, I want to know him
in the fellowship of his sufferings.
When the Lord Jesus Christ was here, he
suffered trials, tribulations, heartaches, harassments, attacks.
And you know what he did?
He always responded in a holy fashion.
He never responded in a sinful fashion.
He always responded with love and forgiveness.
And when he says conformed to his death,
here's what Paul was saying.
Fellowship of his sufferings, yes.
I want to be able to experience what
Jesus experienced and respond the way he responded.
I want to know him in such a
fashion that it'll be just as natural for
me to respond to these things as it
was for him to respond.
And when he said being conformed to his
death, that's the only time I believe that
word is used in the New Testament.
And it's almost like Paul coined the word
and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of
course.
And he says, I want to be as
crucified to sin.
I want to be just as dead to
sin.
That when I suffer and I am persecuted
and I'm tried and I am rebuffed and
I am criticized and I face tribulation and
heartache and suffering, I want to be able
to be just as dead to the responses
that are natural.
I want to be able to respond just
the way Jesus did.
I want to know him so intimately that
I will be able to live as crucified
to sin as he was crucified for my
sin.
I want to be able to walk in
public on the basis of what my position
is in private with Christ.
He says that's the way I want to
know him.
I want to know him in a fashion
that no matter whether I'm in prison or
whether I'm out preaching the gospel, no matter
what, that my response to life is the
same response that the Lord Jesus had, and
that is forgiveness and loving and acceptance and
death to sin.
It had no appeal.
And the apostle Paul wanted to know Jesus
Christ not just head knowledge, no philosophy, no
ethereal kind of puffy, cloudy, fuzzy, hazy, foggy
kind of idea about him.
He said I want to know him intimately.
I want to experience this man.
I want an intimate relationship with him.
I want an understanding of who is he,
how does he operate, because it is affecting
my whole life.
Well, when you look at how Paul gauged
all of that, here's what you have to
come to.
This man knew something about Jesus that was
so practical, so real, so life-changing.
He said, listen, even though I know him,
the passion of my heart is to know
him even more.
Listen, whatever the apostle Paul had discovered about
Jesus only stirred him, motivated him, built a
passion in his heart to know him better.
Let me ask you a question.
How did you and I get so satisfied
knowing so little of Christ?
How did we get so satisfied?
Did we learn enough?
Did we learn something we didn't like?
Did we learn something that was not true?
Did we learn some error?
Here's the man who says, the more I
know of him, the more insatiable my desire
to know more of him.
You see, Paul said, here's what I want
to know.
I want to know him so intimately that
when I'm tempted and tried, it isn't struggle,
trying, counteracting sin, trying to counterbalance it, praying
and pleading and begging and crying out to
God.
But he said, I want to be in
such an intimate relationship with him that it'll
be natural for me to say, I choose
death to that and walk on in my
Christian life without halting or stumbling or falling.
He said, I want to walk in such
intimate knowledge with him and understanding of his
ways and the power of his resurrection, that
sin will have no appeal to me whatsoever,
that I will live as crucified to the
appeals of the world as Jesus was crucified
for my sin on the cross.
That's what he's asking.
And then he says, and beyond that, verse
11, in all of that, he says that
one of these days I may attain to
the resurrection from the dead.
That's not an implication that he thinks maybe
he may not, because he already knew what
salvation was all about.
He knew the righteousness of Christ.
He'd experienced that.
What he's really saying in this, the desire
of his heart is to know Christ in
that ultimate, final, ultimate, complete resurrection that Jesus
Christ literally experienced when he followed the cross
to the grave and then was resurrected.
Now, here is the error of our thinking
oftentimes about this whole passage.
I read this passage and I was reading
it one morning and all of a sudden,
it's just like God turned the light on
for me.
And I've read it many, many times.
And I thought how practical, how simple, but
how often I had read this and overlooked
this very simple truth.
You see, what we want to do is
to take Paul's declaration here of his desire
to know Christ and, and say, well, now
all of these big things over here, I'm
willing to give up prominence and prestige and
wealth and authority and all of these things.
And somebody's saying, well, you know, I don't
have any of that to give up anyway.
So what does it matter to me?
And here's the whole key.
I read that passage and all of a
sudden it dawned on me.
Here's the way it works out practically in
our life.
And I can tell you, it has done
something for me personally.
When I began to realize that the way
you apply this to your heart is this,
every time we have an appeal from Satan,
whatever the temptation may be to say, think,
do, act, how do we respond?
Well, when I look at that compared to
knowing him, that is rubbish.
Lay it aside.
I'm to respond to life moment by moment,
day by day.
When I respond to life with a passion
to know Christ, here's what happens.
The struggle with sin somehow dissipates.
The power of the appeal of Satan begins
to diminish.
It loses its attraction.
Listen, when it comes to comparing knowing him
intimately, understanding him, experiencing him versus Satan's appeal,
there is no comparison.
And you know what happens?
Day by day, you can say, no, thank
you.
No, thanks.
Not interested.
Now, if you can't do it, listen carefully.
It means that there is a desire in
your heart that exceeds your desire for Christ.
It's really helped me to understand that.
Hey, what in this world can compare with
a deeper, more intimate understanding and relationship and
intimacy with Christ?
Nothing is to be compared to that.
And you know what happens?
The things that have appealed to you in
the past will lose their appeal once you
get a glimpse and a taste of knowing
who Jesus Christ is.
So, let me ask you this question.
Satan has fired one of his arrows that
is all aflame with temptation and passionate desire
for something, some experience, something, some person.
Ask yourself this question.
How does his offer compare to an intimate,
loving, understanding, and experience, deepening experience of Jesus
Christ?
And my friend, if you choose what Satan
has to offer above knowing Jesus Christ even
deeper, you need to get on your knees
and cry out to God.
Cleanse my heart.
Create within me such a desire for Christ
that sin will have no appeal and that
the overpowering passion of my heart is Christ,
not what the world has to offer, which
is so destructive and so divisive and has
no real eternal value to it.
You see, here's a man sitting in prison
and what is his desire?
Not freedom, but a yet an even deeper
understanding of who Christ is.
Some of you men know your business very
well.
You are thoroughly and completely equipped in your
business.
How does that compare to what you know
in your relationship to Christ?
And some of you moms, you know your
children very well.
You've made it your business to understand them
and that is all very, very, very good.
How well do you know Jesus?
And some of you students, you studied diligently
in order to pass or in order to
prepare yourself for your vocation and you give
it hours upon hours upon hours upon hours
of diligent study.
I'm not saying you shouldn't study.
You should give it all you can.
But what I want to know is this.
When you get out of four years of
college, you know a lot of science or
math or English or history, computer science, whatever
it might be, and you don't know anything
about Jesus, do you think you are equipped
for life?
Not really.
You see, the world's degree will get you
a job.
Christ's degree will give you peace and joy
and happiness and true success and genuine contentment
and everything your heart needs and much of
what your heart will desire.
We're so mixed up and confused about where
the priority is.
The Apostle Paul said you can put it
all over here, but you just give me
an intimate understanding, a relationship, an intimacy with
Christ, and there is no comparison value.
Now, the question is this.
If everything I have said to you is
true, how many of you really and truly
want to know Christ?
Well, you say, well, I like to know
him.
I just don't know how to know him.
I'm going to tell you something that grieves
my heart.
I'm going to tell you this.
This really makes me sad.
What makes me sad is to think about
people who are saved, who go to church,
who go to Bible studies and prayer meetings
and all the rest, but who don't really
and truly have any strong desire for Jesus
Christ enough to do anything about learning who
he is.
And you see, one reason I repeat some
things over and over and over again is
my attempt to get you to want to
know what I know is absolutely important to
know, but I can't make you do that.
And I'm saddened oftentimes when I see people
who are satisfied just interested in going to
church and hearing another sermon when Jesus is
so exciting and to know him absolutely revolutionizes
everything about your thinking processes.
And sometimes when I say, let me tell
you what I believe God's told me.
Somebody said to me, well, he doesn't speak
to me.
It's because you don't listen.
What I want to know is, do you
really want to know who Jesus is?
And once in a while, somebody will say,
you know, I just don't know the scriptures.
Now I can understand that from somebody who's
16, but not 66, who was saved when
they were 16.
Where does our interest lie?
Do you really want to know Jesus Christ?
The two people who have made the greatest
impression upon my own heart to know him,
first of all, was my granddad, whom you've
heard me refer to many times.
And the way God used him to create
that desire in my heart is listening to
him talk about his relationship to God, to
Christ.
And I remember thinking, Lord, can I know
you the way he knows you?
Will I ever be able to talk about
you and to talk to you the way
my granddad does?
And then reading Oswald Chambers, my utmost for
his highest, the one thing Oswald Chambers said
to my heart over and over and over
again in that devotional book was, the most
important thing in life is knowing Christ.
The only thing that really matters is who
is he?
And what does he want to do in
my heart?
Nothing else is really important compared to that.
And the question is this, hey, listen, do
you want to know him?
Are you going to keep on being satisfied
just knowing about him, knowing him as your
savior?
What about Lord and life?
Listen, knowing him as your life will absolutely
transform your whole perspective.
If you want to know him, I want
to give you seven suggestions.
And those of you who want to know
him are going to get them down.
Do I really want to know this Christ?
Number one, if I want to know him,
I must study the scripture.
This is where God has unveiled and given
to us the intimate person of Jesus Christ
in the word of God.
Secondly, I must be willing to spend time
alone in prayer, meditation, and worship of Christ.
Not just asking him for things, but just
being alone with him, talking to him, listening
to him, allowing him to speak when oftentimes
maybe I don't understand what he's saying.
Or maybe it may appear that he says
nothing, but spending time alone with him.
Notice I said alone, listening, praying, worshiping, meditating
upon him.
Thirdly, I must trust him.
If I'm going to know him and he
tells me to do something, I must trust
him.
Fourthly, I must obey him.
Not only must I believe what he says,
but I must do what he says if
I'm going to know him.
Because you see, the only way I'm going
to know how he operates is to do
what he said, when he said do it.
Number five, if I'm going to know Jesus
Christ, listen very carefully, I must observe and
record.
I must observe and record how God works
in my life and in the lives of
other people.
I must not only be very sensitive to
what he does in my own heart, but
I need to be sensitive to what I
see God doing in somebody else's life.
When I say observe, I mean carefully ask
what's going on.
Why did that happen?
Why did he fail?
Why did not God do this?
And so why did God do this?
Why did he respond the way he responded?
Why did this circumstance turn out the way
it did?
You see, if you're going to learn the
ways of God, you cannot be self-centered.
You've got to be caring for other people.
You must be observant.
What is God doing in the life of
someone else?
Why did God do that for them?
If God will do that for her, will
he do that for me?
You know what part of our problem is?
We're too proud to ask.
We must be willing to watch the way
God operates in other people's lives, as well
as our own life, and record it.
Here's what God did.
Now I understand why this happened the way
it did.
Now I can understand why he responded.
Now I can see what God was up
to.
Now I can understand that God knew ahead
of time what was going to happen.
You see, if we run through life and
don't look for and record and observe and
become sensitive to God's ways, you'll never know
him.
Listen, the people you live around, the people
you work around, the people you fellowship with,
the people you play with, the people you
worship with, every single one of them is
a potential object lesson in knowing Christ.
Look what God is doing in their life.
We put on our blinders and we run
through life, and the only thing that matters
is we get what we want, and we
never know the one who is the giver.
But then number six is this.
I must look for the evidence of Christ
in every circumstance of life.
Look for him in every circumstance.
If you want to know him, look for
him.
He is in every single circumstance of life.
I don't always understand it.
I can't always figure it out.
But eventually, in the word and looking at
that, eventually, most of the time, it clears
up.
And then number seven, if you really want
to know him, if I want to know
him, I must be willing to lay aside
every single thing in life that competes with
my love and loyalty and devotion for him.
I want to tell you something.
You can't live in deliberate sin and know
Christ.
You cannot.
You cannot choose day after day disobedience and
rebellion toward God and ever know this man,
Jesus Christ, who is God.
Now you say, well, how do I get
started?
Just start with number one and open the
word of God and start with Philippians and
tell the Lord, Lord, here I am at
this age in my life, and my knowledge
of you is so barren.
I know so much about so many other
things, but oh, dear Lord, I know so
little about you.
But I choose this day to begin to
know who you are.
And I want a passion to know you.
And I want a passion to know you
that overrides and supersedes every other single desire
of my heart.
And my friend, your life is about to
get exciting.
And you know what you're going to be
saying?
Why didn't I start before now?
Why have I waited so long to discover
who is this Christ?
Now, you can do one of two things
with this sermon.
You can say, well, it's time to go
home.
Or you can say, oh, dear God, etch
this truth so deep in my thinking that
it is inescapable and no desire and no
appeal of Satan will ever even begin to
match this all-consuming desire of my heart
to know Jesus Christ.
And if that is your response, every day
your life is going to change because you're
going to grow and your understanding of Jesus
Christ is going to deepen and become more
personal and more intimate every day.
Lord Jesus, when I think of who you
are and what you have to offer, and
when I think of how willing you are
to unveil yourself and to show us yourself,
reveal yourself and give yourself, and when I
think of the appeals of the world in
comparison with you, with the Apostle Paul, we
say, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
Death to all of that and life to
you.
Create within our hearts such an intense, overpowering,
overwhelming, emotional, mental desire that everything else will
lose its appeal in comparison to our desire
to know you.
And Father, I pray for someone who is
unsaved, that they may understand that when the
Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross at
Calvary and shed his blood, it was atoning
blood, that is, debt-paying blood, paying the
sin debt for that one for all eternity.
And the moment that they're willing to place
their trust in Christ as your only begotten
Son, the Savior, trusting you for the forgiveness
of their sins, their life is in that
very moment transformed.
They become a child of God, saved by
your grace, your unmerited favor, based on nothing
other than your wonderful capacity and desire to
accept us the way we are in the
moment of your forgiveness.
I pray for all the rest of us.
Oh, dear God, would you so work in
our hearts that everything will lose its appeal
in comparison to our desire to know you?
And Lord, it is my prayer that everything
that is not of you will lose its
appeal.
That we can walk in your righteousness, uprightly
before you, moment by moment, day by day,
in the joy that is ours through knowing
Christ Jesus, with understanding, in experience, and with
intimacy.
In his name we pray.
Amen.