To Know Him

TO KNOW HIM

Phil.3: ⁹ And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

¹⁰ That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Oh the unspeakable joy of knowing Christ! Only those who have been awakened by the Spirit to find that Jesus is the Creator about whom they wondered and searched the night skies can understand this death to life experience. And when we realize that He alone is the Redeemer, and that He loves and beckons me to come and dine, well what words can drip from human lips that give the sufficient wonder and gratitude for such surpassing knowledge? Jesus loves and died for me and desires to fellowship with me?

How often do I despise myself and all my hidden and open shortcomings and yet Jesus knows them perfectly and yet still desires to meet with me and forgive me of the litany of sins I often attempt to hide and minimize? Oh this is no religious science or just a doctrinal treasure. No, this is what men have searched for in their own strength and thought they had found by some philosophy or some equation or some moral tenants. This experiential knowledge can be described through careful exegesis and doctrinal dissertations, but oh how pitiful they are when compared to what happens within us! The experience surely eclipses the description.

We were lost but then found; we were blind but now see; we were dead but now alive! I can recall that a few days after I was born again I was walking on 8th Avenue in Manhattan in New York City. The hookers were still there, and the peep shows were still open, and men were still selling drugs, and the entire ambiance still reeked of sin and degradation, however something was different! I walked with a slight smile on my face and I seemed to have found a new love for these demonstrative sinners with whom I once roamed. You see, I knew Jesus now and my perspective was now alive with God’s love and Christ’s redemption.

But throughout almost forty years of knowing Jesus and with varying degrees of faithful discipleship, I still believe the key to following Jesus with a passionate love and obedience centers around this core pursuit. “That I may know Him…” Yes we know Him doctrinally and within the gospel narratives and within all the overarching truths of the epistles. Yes we know all those things which hold infinite treasure. But if we awaken each morning with a drive to know Him this day in the Spirit, and with an inward experience that makes everything our doctrinal head knows come alive, well then the word of our testimony will not have to be pulled down from the shelf and recited with a stamped date from the past.

The word of our testimony will be found today because we have known and still know the Lord Jesus Christ as our exclusive raison d’etre, and in whom we live and move and have our being. Halleluiah, what a Savior!

The Church's One Foundation

THE CHURCH’S ONE FOUNDATION

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation by water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her and for her life He died.

She is from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation, one Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses, with every grace endued.

The Church shall never perish! Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish, is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her, and false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor she ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters, repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains, where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains forever shall abide!

We are raising a generation who know nothing of the richness and sacred words of such hymns as this. I am one who appreciates many of the new worship music. I like Jewish sounding songs; I like fast songs; I like songs of victory; I like slow and deeply moving sings; I like a wide range of worship songs as long as they have a discernible message that is Biblical. I even have learned to worship my Lord with songs that came from ministries with whom I have strong disagreements. But it breaks my heart to think that this generation has been kept from a treasure trove of truth captured in song.

The Scriptures do not give us any indication that God prefers one music style over another. But if your worship music is void of any truth and is ultra heavy on the music to the detriment of Jesus and His truth, well then your music is for you and not for Him. And sadly many people are moved by the music and not the Spirit. It is not unusual for church members to live during the week as if there was no God and then wander into the auditorium on Sunday morning and get all stirred up by the music. And after the music stops their previous lives take over once again. It happens with alarming redundancy ever single Sunday and without much concern

But this hymn I have posted is just one of hundreds which are so Christ exalting and so deeply moving that just reading the words makes my heart melt and my eyes fill with tears of sacred joy and worship. Allow me to pull out a few phrases and humbly amplify them to all our spirits. I am going to save the verse for last that always makes me weep and breaks my heart into a place of adoration for Christ.

She is from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation, one Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses, with every grace endued.

Can you not rejoice in such wonder? There is no Jew or gentile, there is no male or female, there is no black or white, we are all His and His alone throughout the world! You may call yourself a Baptist or a Methodist or a Pentecostal but He calls us  “His!” Look dear believer! One Lord! Oh my. There is none like Him and He alone is the door to eternal life. The true church blesses one holy name and we cling to one hope and we live and breathe completely in His matchless grace. This is His church and His body!

The Church shall never perish! Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish, is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her, and false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor she ever shall prevail.

Our shield and our buckler is the Lord Himself. Who can stand before His mighty power? All are vanquished, all are defeated, and all will perish even though they may think otherwise! He is our life and our everything. Go ahead and hate the church. Go ahead and join her without faith. Go ahead and invade the church with your heresies. But eternity will bear witness against you since you will not…you cannot prevail.

Do you think our Lord has to plan strategies since he was unaware of what lay ahead? Oh you blind one, you are feeding yourself with utter nonsense and you have yet to meet the Mighty Lion of Judah. We who know Him rest in Him alone. We have no strength of our own and we have proven it many times along our journey. But our God has proven Himself to be faithful in all, and it is in His might we rest. The church will prevail by the word of our testimony and the blood of the Lamb. And do not be deceived, our testimony is Christ and Christ alone!

Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters, repose in Eden land.

Do you think oh sinner that we have been saved by the might of our righteous works? Please notice the phrase “by the Master’s hand” and notice it well. All blood washed believers know, whether Calvinist or Arminian, it is all by God’s own hand. All our righteousness is filthy rags, and if perchance you see our many faults and sins, mark them well, they have never been our glory. It is God alone who has led us through the waters of death which are crimson red from Calvary’s sacred tree. And at Golgotha, Christ parted those death waters and we walked by faith upon dry ground to become His child. The words “whose rest is won” must not be taken lightly.

That rest came at a high cost. God gave us His only begotten Son and purchased that rest for us. And in that rest we gladly labor for our Master. So which is it, you ask, labor or rest. Oh you do not know the sweet nectar of spiritual sweat given in the privilege of serving our Great Redeemer. The outward man may be perishing but out inward man is being renewed every single day. All religion strives for divine acceptance, but the true church would not dare present Cain’s work and thereby reject the blood of the New Covenant.

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation by water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her and for her life He died.

And now dear brother, dear sister, remove the sandals from your heart for we are on holy ground. Oh my, why are my eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with hallowed joy? We have only one foundation, just one and no more, and that foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord! And through our Redeemer we have not been placed in an earthly system of self help or moral resolutions by which we can transform our own lives. We have been made new creatures through Christ our Lord, and any good and righteous deed we do is His and through His power.

Our testimony is that we have been born again by His power; once I was lost but now I am found. I was blind but now I see. I have found the Pearl of Great Price and He has found me. I have been transformed by His Holy and Everlasting Word. All my words are as useless wind but just one Word from his eternal lips can destroy this creation and make another one in its place in an instant.

He came from the glory of heaven to seek His bride. Think about that. Why would He even need a bride, and yet He sought one. And for His bride He chose us? Really? Oh my. I often repulse myself and yet He desired me and gave Himself to purchase me? What dowry did I have but sin and more sin? And he calls me His “holy bride”. I can hardly imagine such a phrase. Does He really know who I am? Oh yes, dear one, I never have had one atom of holiness and I still do not. I never will. I have His holiness and upon that gift alone I stand.

And please bow your heart and hear the gospel. “With His own blood He bought her and for her life He died.” Look what He has done. Cast your eyes upon that gruesome tree and force your eyes to see how wretched and repulsive you were that would cost God the massacre of His Son. What kind of love is this that oozes blood and sweat and shows itself through vicious wounds and unspeakable sufferings? Men throw around that word love and they have no idea what true love is. Everlasting love only flows from the Savior's wounds.

And for the church, individually and collectively, the Son of God bows His head and dies. Go ahead and revel in your own intellect and your own understanding. See where that gets you. But watch as God the Son, the Creator, dies for His bride. 

 

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord…forever. Selah.