Introduction.

1. The essence of true Christianity is knowing God and responding to who he is and what he has done. In John 17:2 Jesus said, ‘And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.' The way we use the word know in everyday speech is very interesting, but makes the meaning of the word know ambiguous. I can say, ‘I know John Howard the prime minister of Australia.' I know what he looks like and I would easily recognise his face in a crowd. I know what his voice sounds like and would know who is talking without seeing his face. Have I ever met John Howard face to face and shaken his hand?  No I have never met the man. The truth is that when I say that I know John Howard I actually mean that I know certain things about John Howard, but I do not actually know him and he does not know me. If I told you that I know Elvia Marshall, you would immediately accept that I know her personally and that she knows me personally and that an active and lively relationship exists between us. This must be the case as Elvia and I have been happily married for over 30 years. It ought to be plainly obvious that there is an enormous difference between the way I know John Howard and the way I know Elvia. It is said that you do not know a person until you have lived with that person. When you live with someone you see them at their best and at their worst, you experience the consequences of their strengths and faults. I cannot say I know John Howard in this sense, he is a complete stranger to me.
   
   
2. When you say, ‘I know God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit' do you mean that you know about God or that you have a sound relationship with him. It would be very surprising for someone to be raised in a covenant home and not know about God. Christian's however do not only know about God, they know him personally because he dwells with them. Listen to what Jesus says in John 14:23, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.'  If God has made his home with you then it is impossible simply to know about him, you must know God in person. Has God come to you and made his home with you? If God has made his home with you he lives with you, he is always present with you, he is continually interacting with you, he is leading you, guiding you, helping you, encouraging you, comforting you, teaching you truth, convicting you of sin, protecting you, providing for you, sustaining you and promoting love for Christ in you. When God comes to you and makes his home with you, he does not come as a quiet guest, but as your God, Lord, and King and his presence will be all-invasive. When God makes his home with you there is no privacy or secret place you can go to and escape his presence. We talk about God dwelling in our hearts, now if God dwells in your heart it means that nothing in your inner being is hidden from the eye of God. God dwells amongst your thoughts, motives, emotions, passions and desires; no part or aspect of your life is unknown to God. If you are a Christian, it means you know God in person and that God knows you. The truth is that God knows you a quadrillion times better than you know him; God knows you totally, completely, thoroughly, perfectly, absolutely, comprehensively and microscopically. His knowledge of you includes every miniscule detail of your life, past, present and future. In Psalm 139 David reflects on God's knowledge of himself and says, "You know my sitting down and my rising up; you understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether. Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me," Even the night shall be light about me; indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You." David is filled with a deep sense of God's presence and the fact that God knows him completely. The truth David expresses would be true whether or not he sensed it. ‘I know God, he has made his home with me, he is always present and he knows me' is a statement that is true of every Christian. For the Christian this is a wonderful statement of truth, a statement of great personal importance, a statement that is full of comfort and encouragement and a statement that is very penetrating and searching.

1. Rejoicing in the knowledge that you know God.

1. Have you ever stopped to think about what it means to say ‘I know God personally?' It's a staggering thought and a reality that is designed to thrill your heart. Think of the privilege; you personally know the almighty Creator, the King of heaven whom all heaven worships day and night, the Sovereign Lord before whom the mighty nations of the world are as a drop of water in a full bucket, and the almighty God who rules and reigns over all things according to his perfect will. You actually know the author of the Holy Scriptures, and through those Scriptures he talks to you deliberately and purposely, and you talk to him and he answers your prayers specifically. You have to agree that this is amazing, wonderful, fantastic, awesome and simply thrilling. Let me talk about this privilege in a way that we find uncomfortable but is nevertheless true. God has opened his heart to the Christian and made him a precious son, called him a friend, endorsed him as a covenant partner, earmarked him to be a prince, prepared a special place in the Father's house, and desires to have fellowship with him. To know God personally means God has lavished you with his eternal love and you can say, ‘I am special to God, he chose me and made himself known to me.' Think about the truth that Christian can truly say, ‘I know God personally,' they know the only true and living God. There is no other God, the only God who exists is God; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and you if you are a Christian, you know him. Christians and only Christians know the only true and living God. This truth is exhilarating and causes the heart to soar and delight in the Lord. Knowing God is a glorious privilege.
   
   
2. When as a Christian you say, ‘I am special to God' do not let your pride rejoice in that fact, but be humbled in thankful joy and abounding gratitude. Ask yourself the question, ‘How is it that I know God personally?'  The answer is simply that God according to sovereign free will chose to make himself personally known to you. This is what Jesus tells Peter, when Peter proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Listen to Jesus' words, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah,  for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven."  The only reason Peter knew this truth was because God the Father revealed it to him. Jesus is making an absolute statement. Peter could not have known and believed the truth about Jesus' identity through the efforts of flesh and blood. Through your own efforts or the efforts of other men you cannot meet and know God, you will only meet and know God personally if he stoops to reveal himself to you. Jesus makes this truth absolutely clear in Matthew 11:27 when he says, ‘All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.' If you can say, ‘I know God' it is because God chose to reveal himself to you. In a sense we see something similar to this in our everyday lives. You and I are not free to determine whom we will know personally. I will never know the Queen personally, there is a remote possibility that I may meet her, but I cannot decide and arrange to meet her regularly and get to know her. For me to know her personally will depend on whether or not she wants to know me. Can you imagine getting a letter from the Queen asking you to meet with her and become her friend; you would be flabbergasted and very flattered. You can only know someone if they are willing to let you know them. If you know God it is because he has chosen to reveal himself to you. That God would choose to reveal himself to me is absolutely amazing and awesome, and a magnificent privilege.
   
   
3. Knowing God personally is a glorious privilege and very humbling when we probe the question, ‘Why would God give me the privilege of knowing him personally?' Was there anything about me that attracted God's attention to me? Yes, there is a great deal about me that not only attracted God's attention, but demanded that he deal with me. I was an enemy of God; I refused to acknowledge him as God, rejected his right to rule over me, refused to submit to his law, called him a liar by dismissing his claim that I needed a Saviour, refused to worship and serve him. Everything about me that attracted God's attention challenged his being and character. Because God is Sovereign, holy, righteous, justice and glorious he cannot tolerate sin, therefore everything that attracted God's attention to me demanded that he judge me and condemn me to hell. If you do not think this is true I suggest that you go home, and sit yourself in front of a mirror, fix your eyes on your reflection and for 20 minutes ask yourself, ‘Why should God give me the privilege of knowing him personally?' You will not find anything in yourself or about yourself that does not make you vile and despicable in God's eyes. Would God benefit from knowing you personally? Absolutely not! Is there anything, no matter how small that God needs you to do for him? Absolutely not! The truth is that you are absolute dependant upon God, and God does not need you in any way. The only reason God has given you the privilege of knowing him, is that according to his sovereign free grace he set his love upon you. God chose to love you with the full knowledge that you are and always will be totally unworthy, and will cause him pain and grief. Augusts Toplady in his hymn ‘Rock of Ages' expresses the sinner's unworthiness by saying;
   
   
   ‘Not the labours of my hands can fulfil the laws demands; Could my zeal no respite no, could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save and Thou alone.
   
   ‘Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling, Naked come to Thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace, Foul I to the fountain fly, wash me Saviour or I die.'
   
   
   When you say ‘I know God personally' it is a statement of God's love, grace, mercy and compassion and never a statement of your own worthiness. Knowing God personally is a very humbling privilege, but a privilege so great and wonderful it should cause you to rejoice without ceasing.

2. Rejoicing in the knowledge that God knows you.

1. How well do you know the person with whom you have the closest relationship? No matter how long or deep a relationship is, there will always be things that people in the relationship hide from each other. Do husbands and wives know each others secret thoughts, fears and sins? We all know things about ourselves that we hide from others. We hide things from each other because experience has taught us that if we reveal certain things it causes deep pain and sorrow in those we love. I know that if my father and mother knew everything I did as a child they would be mortified, it would shock them and deeply grieve them. One of the worst experiences I ever had working in an office focussed on this issue. I started a new job as a manager and was very excited about the promotion to this important position. What I did not know was that there was a much older man who resented the fact that he had been overlooked for promotion and that a much younger man had got the job. The first week passed by smoothly, but first thing on the Monday of the second week he simply made this remark, ‘Have they found you out?' On the Tuesday he said, ‘Haven't they found you out yet? On the Wednesday he assured me saying, ‘You know that they are going to find you out don't you?' On the Thursday he made a prophecy saying, ‘Its only a matter of time before they find you out, your time is up.' These remarks caused me a great deal of confusion, self-doubt and anxiety. On the Friday I marched him into the Directors office and reported that he knew something about me that disqualified me from holding the position I was appointed to and that he needed to bring it to the Director's attention. There was nothing, it was simply a cruel physiological game designed to get rid of me.
   
   
2. There are people in important relationships that live with the constant fear of having their sins exposed, and as a consequence of that exposure their relationships would end. It is wonderful to know that there is absolutely nothing about us that God does not know. God will never discover anything about you that he does not know completely and comprehensively. The Devil will never be able to accuse you of anything that will be news to God. There is nothing about you that God has yet to discover from your past, present or future. There is nothing from your past, nothing from your present life and there will be nothing in your future that will break your relationship with the Lord. The fact that God knows you so comprehensively makes his relationship with you totally secure, unshakable and indestructible. That God knows you personally ought to fill you with delight and cause you to rejoice.

3. Rejoicing in the knowledge that God has made his home with you.

1. Listen again to Jesus' words in John 14:23, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.'  Concerning the phrase ‘make Our home with him' William Hendriksen says, ‘it indicates a very close and intimate relationship. Father and Son, in and through the Spirit, are ever by the side of those who love their Lord, ready to comfort, ready to cheer, ready to extend any and all necessary help.'  Can there be any greater reason for rejoicing than knowing that the Lord has made his home with you like this? To these thoughts we must add the point Leon Morris makes when he says, ‘Jesus is not speaking of a temporary lodgement, but of a permanent dwelling.' If you think about it this relationship with the Lord is the only permanent and uninterrupted relationship you can ever have. Death will end my relationships with my wife, children, family and friends, but death does not end my relationship with the Lord, it brings it to full fruition. Rejoice in the fact that God has established and sustains this unshakeable relationship by his awesome power and amazing love.
   
   
2. When as a Christian you say, ‘I know God, he has made his home with me, he is always present and he knows me' you are proclaiming the glorious privileges and benefits that Jesus Christ secured for you in the New Covenant sealed by his blood. If Jesus had not died as your substitute, taking your sin in its entirety upon himself none of these privileges or benefits would exist and you would still be an enemy of God. The substitutionary work of Jesus brings us fantastic privileges and benefits, our appropriate response is an incalculable sense of indebtedness that puts praise and thanksgiving on our lips and sets our hearts on fire with burning love for the Saviour. Isaac Watts in his hymn ‘When I survey the wondrous cross,' describes responding to our indebtedness to the love of Christ as follows; ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.'  Do you have a deep sense of owing everything, absolutely everything to Christ Jesus your Lord and Saviour?

Conclusion.