Delighting in the Knowledge of God, Part 2

We started a mini-series several weeks ago on delighting in God and knowing God. And by the way, we have plenty of sets of notes here if you didn't get a copy. Why is delighting in God so important? One of the main reasons why is because your Christian faith is not safe in a compartment partitioned off from the rest of your Christian life, or the rest of your life. Your Christian trust and faith must constantly be joined to your affections.

And the reason why is because true faith, saving faith, the kind of faith necessary to walk with God, is a response of your entire soul to God. It's not a little spiritual portion of yourself. It's the response of your whole soul, and at the center of that response are your affections and desires and what you're looking to for happiness. This is absolutely vital to Christian growth and to worship and to usefulness to God and also to putting sin to death as we progress in the sanctification. And so delighting in God is one of the main ways that our straying, our cooling off, is corrected and rectified.

Because backsliding is not merely enormous sins, such as immorality, dishonesty, sinful passions running wild. Backsliding also includes weariness of God, a coolness in our affections toward the Lord, and a weak desire to know the Lord. That's also part of backsliding. And so cultivating delight in God and desiring God and hungering and panting after him is absolutely essential to your Christian growth. Now, there was an old saying from back in the days where most of America was agrarian or farmland.

It has been said that a swine, a pig, has never seen a star. That's not because pigs have vision inferior to ours. Their vision is roughly equivalent to ours. The reason a swine has never seen a star is they have zero interest in stars. they just want the slop bin they want something down here they have no interest in stars they weren't created to seek out majesty they weren't created to seek out the majesty of the night heavens we are and the reason we're created to seek out the majesty of the night heavens is because we're created to worship and we want to see god's majesty in the creation and that's why we are endlessly curious as human beings.

We map, we explore, we adore, we investigate, we compose, we sing, we wonder, and we interpret. So we could say that God has created us to be enthusiastic spectators of excellence. That's part of our, our creational identity as the image of God. You were made to be an enthusiastic spectator of excellence, and you cannot escape that creational identity. Even the most hardened atheist is still constantly looking for majesty and excellence.

This latest book by Dawkins, he's talking about the wonders of the universe. Oh, how wonderful it is. Oh, the mystery, the wonder, the beauty. Well, he's just doing what? He's manifesting his creational identity, though he's an unbeliever.

And so God has created us to find happiness in him. We've got a little radar turning inside. of us always looking for majesty and beauty and excellence and worth, that we can praise it and exalt it. And so God has made us to find happiness in himself by pursuing God as our object of desire. But we know what happened in the fall, don't we?

That fall is reiterated, repeated in terms of its effects in Romans chapter 1, that we worshipped and served the creature and the creation rather than God who's blessed forever. And our object of worship and has changed from God to something that is made by God or made by man. And that's only turned around, that problem of worshiping and serving the creation and the creature is only turned around by the new birth. Only regeneration by God's mighty Holy Spirit causes us to be a worshipper of God again, to become a true worshipper and to begin living out our identity as the image of God. well toward the end of our lesson most of this is introduction this morning but toward the end of our lesson we'll be looking at paul's first prayer in the book of ephesians he has two prayers in ephesians one in chapter one and one in chapter three and one of the wonderful things about paul's prayer here is he is opening up the topic of transformed seeing faith seeing spiritual seeing remember when jesus said to his disciples, blessed are you that you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

And that's a gift from God in heaven that you have eyes to see and ears to hear because your unsaved friends, your unsaved relatives, your unsaved boss and your unsaved co-worker cannot see anything above the horizon of this earth. All they can see are temporal things and things related to sense and sight and touch. They cannot see anything above the horizon of this earth. They are absolutely blind to heavenly realities because only the new birth gives us this new faculty of transformed seeing. Well, the Apostle Paul knows that transformed seeing produces transformed living.

And so he has a method, he has a reason why he is so eager for these Ephesians to see spiritual realities, the beauty of heavenly realities because he knows that's going to revolutionize their Christian walk. And beloved, we need this because we're always in danger of cooling off toward God. We're always in danger of having our affections become lukewarm. We're always in danger of moving in that direction, of drift, almost weariness of God. And so we need to keep feeding our affections, delighting in God, cultivating that delight.

And so Paul prays for his converts in Ephesus that they would have supernatural sight and supernatural comprehension of these spiritual realities. And this is so vital. We can only have spiritual sight and spiritual enjoyment of that which we know personally, that which we have beheld, that which we have comprehended or perceived or apprehended. And so we could say that there's an exhortation associated with this theme that Paul is introducing. We'll get to our text in a minute.

And we could say this exhortation would run something like this. Stir yourselves from your lethargy. Stir yourselves up out of your apathy to improve your spiritual sight. Improve your spiritual seeing. Since you were created to be a worshipper, it's impossible that you will not be worshipping.

The issue is, what are you worshipping? What captures the lion's share of your time, talent, and affection? Now, you know, if you asked yourself this question, you know what the object of your desire is. You wake up in the middle of the night, you're thinking about it. You wake up in the morning, you're thinking about it.

During your discretionary thought time, you're thinking about it. You know what the object of your desire is. and Jesus talks about that object of desire which we look to to bring us happiness he refers to that object of desire to the treasure of the heart you know what your heart treasure is you see this heart treasure is so important that Jesus reveals in the sermon on the mount that every person is always reviewing his treasure every person is always adding to his treasure speaking of his treasure if he has a chance and guarding his treasure because ultimately you are ruled by your treasure. See, this is so vital to a holy life. You're going to be ruled by your treasure.

Your Christianity is not safe in a little compartment partitioned off from what you desire and your affections and what you're looking to to make you happy. Your Christianity is not safe there because ultimately you will worship what you desire. I like what John Piper says about this. In terms of desiring God, delighting in the Lord will take you from duty to passion and desire for him. It'll make you holy and it will enable you to love others supernaturally.

So this whole issue of being a Christian hedonist, going to God for delight, satisfaction, desire, pleasure, it's not simply for your own enjoyment because I find myself a great. with John Piper. God is most glorified when we are enjoying him the most satisfaction in him. God is most glorified in our lives. This is a far cry from reducing the Christian life to mere duties that you crank out.

The issue is passion, desire, having an object of affinity. Now I know I've told this story in the class maybe even twice before, but I'm going to tell it again because it's just so pertinent to this subject. There was a Scottish divine named Thomas Chalmers, exceedingly effective in preaching. And he'd been preaching to his congregation. He'd been pastor there for a couple of years, but he was amazed at how stagnant his congregation was.

They seemed to not be thrilled with the Lord and thrilled with these gospel realities. And so he took a sabbatical, and during his times of meditation on the word and prayer, he's just on his knees pleading with God, why is my congregation so static, so stagnant and the Lord made it clear to him Thomas, Thomas Chalmers you're preaching to the will you're preaching to the conscience you're preaching truth but you're not preaching to the affections in other words you're not displaying Christ in his beauty you're not displaying God in his glory you're not displaying God's work in its majesty you're not exhibiting the attractiveness of God You're just preaching, do this, and this is truth, and your conscience knows it. But it's time to preach to the affections. Well, he sat there. He was stunned by what God had shown him.

It was clearly revealed in the Word of God. And so he wrote his most famous sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection. The expulsive power of a new affection. In other words, your idols, your bosom sins, those vices in your heart that you can't dislodge, they will only give way if they're replaced by a higher affection. That's the whole point of his message.

The idols in your heart that won't release, whether anger, bitterness, lust, greed, whatever idol is there that just won't budge. It won't move unless it's displaced by a higher affection. And so Chalmers came back to his church. He preached that message, and that was the beginning of an incredibly fruitful ministry. And not only did his congregants see it, but also his fellow pastors.

So what's the message? The clearer your view of God, specifically who God is towards you in Christ, the more clear your view of God is, the more strength you will have against indwelling sin. The more motivation you'll have to smash your heart idols, because nothing is a more powerful influence in your life than to know that you are beloved. of God and to feel that in your whole soul. This is why we're encouraged in Scripture to get assurance.

We must understand that we are a child of God, beloved of Him, held in his heart of love. The more firm your conviction is of that, the more energy you'll have to destroy your idols, and the more energy you'll have to serve God. So Chalmers explains very clearly in his sermon we are not practical moralists we don't lift up the value of morality for its own sake we don't do that we're always exalting a more worthy object God's glory in Christ we're always lifting up and lauding him because the ascendant power of a second affection is the only way to remove a previous affection. You cannot forcibly exterminate a previous affection unless there's a more worthy object that replaces it. This stamps, and I love what Chalmers says here, this stamps the word impotence upon all moral declarations about how bad the world.

is and why you shouldn't be attracted to the world. Railing against the dissipation associated with the world does not change the heart of man. Well, we need to know our hearts. We need to know how God has constructed us. We have to have a thoroughly biblical anthropology, a thoroughly biblical doctrine of man's nature in order to understand how God changes people.

And I love what Chalmers says here. A man will not consent to the misery of being without an object of affection merely because that inferior object of affection has been displayed as frivolous. I like what Lewis Perry Chaffer said as he trained pastors at Dallas Seminary. Men, don't spend all your time preaching against the world. You're wasting your time.

Show people who they are in Christ and they will voluntarily release their affection for the world. What a great statement. Show them who they are in Christ. show them who God is toward them in Christ, and they'll voluntarily release their affection for the world. See, only a superior object can displace the power of a previous ruling affection.

We are changed by a doctrine of replacement. We're not only replacing sinful behavior with holy behavior. We're replacing inferior objects of desire with a far infinitely superior object of desire. desire. So sometimes when I preach in other churches, I ask the congregation, just take a moment and think about what your equation for happiness is.

What is your personal formula for happiness? Is it when your house is completely in order? Is it when everybody's approving of you and you have no critics and no enemies? Is it when you're able to reach your goals and buy that second home or RV or whatever it is. What is your happiness formula?

I ask people to think through that whole issue. You see, our desire for an object exerts an incredibly powerful influence upon us. And unless there is a more powerful desire than our previous desire, we will not release our previous affection. Nothing will make us release it unless there's the more powerful pull of a new affection. grasping and desire is the tendency of the human heart we must hold an object of desire or affinity we cannot stand to live without the pursuit of an object that make us happy and beloved that is not sin that is humanity that is our nature that is how God created us God created us to experience happiness as a byproduct of producing an object of desire that is the human nature even in its unfallen state.

You were created to find happiness as a byproduct of seeking or pursuing an object of affinity. So this whole idea of sanctification that you can live as some sort of monk in a state of self-denial that refuses an object of happiness is not even realistic. What we're saying here this morning is that moral exertion alone cannot make a lasting change in your life. Moral exertion alone cannot produce sanctifying change. I'm on page three here where it says moralistic preaching is powerless to evict the idols of the heart.

That's in bold toward the top of page three. And again I'll quote Lewis Barry Chaffer. This coming Sunday, sermons will be preached. of thousands, hundreds of thousands of sermons will be preached all across America. And the sad thing is, you could boil down most of those sermons to only two words.

Be good. Be good. Now, he said that in 1943. It's still a problem today. If we're not displaying the desirability of God and His glory and of Christ and of heavenly things, then we will not see hearts ultimately changed.

you see something happens when the desirability of heavenly things captures your imagination captures your heart affections when transformed seeing lets you have a ravishing sight of god's glory in the face of christ you are gladly going to revolt against your former love of the world. And that's the middle paragraph here on chapter in page three. Only the love of Christ in the gospel makes a man revolt against his former love of the world. Ever thought about sanctification that way? It's not just you trying to wean yourself of the love of the world.

It's not you just flagellating yourself because you committed the same sin you did last week. When you see the beauty, the superior desirability of Christ and God's glory and majesty and heavenly things and his infinite love for you, that produces a revolt in your heart against the world. It's nothing less than a rebellion against your former idols. It is a true revolution against what dominated your life in the past. And scripture describes this as the crucifixion of the old man, producing this radical change.

Only the cross of Christ can produce a change this deep. No amount of railing against the world and railing against sin can produce this change. It is the cross of Christ, which produces this change when God shines into your heart, the glory of God in the face of Christ, and the spirit of adoption comes in as poured in by the Holy Spirit, and you just rejoice that your God's son or daughter. Everything changes. It delivers you from the tyranny and the dominion and the dictatorship of your former desires.

Now, as we mentioned when we first started this class six months ago, or five months ago, whatever it was, we said that the information that we're communicating in this class is not just for your own personal progress toward maturity. We're really encouraging you to incorporate this in your own fellowship with other believers and in discipling other believers. I know a number of people in this class, many who have been saved less than seven years, who are already discipling other people. And that is to be commended. That is the proper biblical pace of growth.

You grow to a certain point, you start pouring your life into others, you start speaking your life into others, you start practicing soul care of others, life on life. So what you're hearing today, think about not only how you can apply it in your own walk, but how you can use it for biblical counseling of others and discipling of others. So bottom of page three, only a faithful expounding of the tidings of good news, the good news of the gospel, will cast out the love of the world. That's the only possible way that that'll take place. It's feeding our affection on God and that's what keeps your hearts in love with God.

That's what shuts out your love of the world and that's what allows you to have a reflexive, responsive, spontaneous love back to God. See, we have to meditate through transform seeing on these spiritual realities in order to have a love that goes back in God's direction. so top of page four bold why do people keep old affections why do they hang on to old affections why is that one idol in your heart instead of kicking it over and smashing it you walk by with a burning stick of incense toward this one idol in your heart this bosom sin that will not dislodge itself why are we still paying homage to old affections. The answer is very clear. We keep old affections because new ones are out of view.

We keep old affections because we've not been dedicating ourselves to transform seeing. We keep old affections because we're not committed to the spiritual discipline of faith-seeing and spiritual sight. That's why the old affections still have such a grip upon us. Do we really believe that God wants to make us intensely happy in him? Do we really believe that God wants to meet with us and fill our soul overflowing with satisfaction?

Do we really believe that he wants us to have rivers of living water bubbling up in us so that our thirst is quenched in him and not in the world's cisterns? Do we really believe that? See, the reason old affections won't be released is because new affections are not in view. And so we need to fresh commitment for spiritual seeing, a fresh commitment to that particular discipline. Now, when I meet with AJ and my other good, good brothers on Thursday morning, we are stimulating each other to love and good deeds by exalting this true treasure.

We love talking about our true treasure because when I'm around my brothers like Christian and Anthony and we're talking about our true treasure, that deepens my spiritual seeing. It deepens my transform seeing. I'm able to exhort my brothers and it stimulates us to love and good deeds. And then we have more power to say no to making a provision for the lust of the flesh. We have more power to say no.

See, fellowship is needed here. So what I'm sharing with you this morning is not just for your personal devotional life. This should fill your conversations with other brothers and sisters, shouldn't it? We have to stimulate each other to love and good deed. Second paragraph down, true discipleship is driven by this delight in the Lord.

It's not merely take up your cross out of duty. There must be a beauty in the Lord, a satisfaction, a panting after him, which causes us to delight in being ruled by his government. He is our mediatorial king. We must take delight in being ruled by him. You see, every fleshly sin is enmity and hostility to the moral majesty of God.

We must say it like it really is, according to Romans 8, 5 through 8. In every sin there is hostility to who God is. This is why he is so zealous to punish it, because it is a direct frontal attack on his name. We must define sin as it is. It is hostility to his moral majesty, which is the very center of his name.

nature, his essential holiness. Well, what is it that changes a person? It's the freeness of the gospel offer. The gospel offer, I'm in the middle of page four here, the gospel offer must remain free. We cannot add conditions to it.

It must remain absolutely free because only then is the element of sovereign mercy able to be seen and communicated and understood. The more conditions are added to the gospel, the less sovereign grace is in view. The more conditions are added to the gospel, the less we understand it is divine sovereign pity and charity and mercy upon us. Unobligated on our part, we could not produce any conditions necessary to make God kind to us. It came totally out of God's heart of love.

See, the more that is seen, the more willing you are to offer yourself back to God as your entire life, lifestyle as your entire lifestyle. I love what John Piper says. When you talk about adding conditions to the gospel or trying to motivate people by guilt saying things like this, God has done so much for you, he spared no expense for you. John Piper calls this the debtor's ethic, the debtor's ethic, treating God as if he's a pensioner and wants you to pay him back the rest of your life. brothers and sisters we got to get rid of that view of god that is absolutely biblically incorrect god poured this out he poured out he poured out a niagara falls of unending grace on you and he takes incredible pleasure in giving you endless future installments of grace unobligated grace coming totally from his own generosity we have to see god that way otherwise offering yourself back to him will not be your highest joy.

It'll be a duty. And for you to offer yourself back to God as your highest joy, you have to be controlled by grace. You have to see grace as what it is. And see, that's why the gospel's offered without conditions. Come and buy without money and without cost.

Isaiah 55.1. It is absolutely a free gospel offer. all right bottom of page four sometimes we're walking in faith and sometimes we're walking by sight and so my bold statement here is man is either operating by a channel of the senses or a channel of faith and only the latter a channel of faith leads to delight in God and this is what we need we're commanded in jude 20 to build ourselves up in our most holy faith That's faith at work, faith working by love, build ourselves up in our most holy faith. And so that is a matter of transformed seeing. That is a matter of spiritual seeing.

Bottom of the paragraph, top of page five, Chalmers says, By the love of God and the gospel, a new affection expels the old, all without doing violence, to the constitution of men. man's moral nature. Isn't that great? I'm still to take up my cross. I'm to crucify my passions and my lust and desires and my passion for the world.

All those things are to be crucified, but all those things are a consequence of Christ having crucified them when he identified me with Christ. I don't crucify these out of my own abilities. It's just believing what Christ has done in that co-crucrucifixion and then finding my greatest satisfaction in the Lord. the bold, the first bold line you see on page five, our theme from Ephesians centers upon the truth that God is known and he's known better and better by means of the way in which he saves us. In other words, his sovereign grace and mercy and his glory given to us is to become the chief object of our meditation.

What is the chief object of our meditation? Our relationship with God as it is settled in Christ. You are, if you know the Lord, you are an incredibly secure, beloved child of his. And all the things he had to do to make you that child. These are the things that are central in our meditations.

All right, that's a long introduction. I have just a couple of minutes left. That's okay. We can continue this next week. But I want to just begin the very beginning of Paul's prayer, first prayer, in Ephesians.

if you go to Ephesians chapter one. Well, Paul is interceding for these Ephesians, but remember he's praying for people who are already believers. That means the prayer he's offering here to God applies to your life. It also means that what he's praying for, you should ask for yourself and of other brothers and sisters. This is a prayer for believers.

So Ephesians chapter 1, verse 15. For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which exists among you, they are believers, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance and the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. And so we're going to hit those second two points, Lord willing, next week. But I want to finish off this morning's message with Paul's prayer for enlightened eyes of the heart and for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ the Lord.

what is our mandate we must grow in the knowledge of the Lord and why is that so essential because that's inseparable from your progress toward maturity this is your major preparation for heaven to grow in the knowledge of the Lord this is your major preparation to keep growing in your worship it's your major preparation for delight in the Lord and loving God instead of the world. We have to keep growing in our knowledge of the Lord. And how do we grow in our knowledge of the Lord? We ask for a spirit of wisdom and revelation that we might know him better. That's a request for transformed seeing.

That's a request for spiritual seeing. We want that ability to see spiritually heightened. When was the last time you had a devotion in the Word of God? and you were thrilled. Your eyes became moist with joy.

Your heart was warmed at the hearth of gospel promises. When was the last time that happened? Dear people, that is to be a normal experience. Not once every five years. That is to be a normal experience for the saint.

If it's not, then I'm showing you how much you need to pray this prayer. Give me a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you, Lord. I'm not content to just study the word out of duty. I'm panting after you. I want to know you.

I want my heart thrilled by you. I will settle for nothing less. Therefore, I'm going to seek you with all my heart, all my might. See, part of our prayers ought to be a confession that our desire for happiness and God is so weak. Part of our prayers ought to be, Lord, I'm just confessing to you right now that my panting after you, the year I was saved, was greater than now.

Lord, I just want to confess that my pursuit of you, the year I got saved, was more than now. We ought to be able to confess that. See, knowing God better depends upon this spirit of wisdom and revelation granted to us. It depends upon the Holy Spirit's ability that he's going to give to you to pursue the Lord with all your might and to want to know him. See, the Spirit searches the deep things of God.

He has everything you need to give you through the word that you could keep growing in the knowledge of God. He gives continuous light to the sons and daughters of God. And that light that he gives to know God better is called enlightening the eyes of the heart. And so that faculty of perceiving God is enlightened by the Spirit's work. Well, I think I'm going to save these three points of the prayer for next week, the hope of his calling, but I just want to exhort you in this direction that, as Chalmers has stated so well, only when we're resolved to dwell upon spiritual blessings in Christ, will we cease to be mesmerized by the old affections.

Only when you're absolutely resolved to dwell upon spiritual blessings in Christ will those old affections that mesmerized you will be dislodged and that you'll experience what Chalmers preached 200 years ago the expulsive power of a new affection. This is how God changes us. This is how our hearts are more attached to Christ and want to destroy and smash our idols.