KNOWING GOD David Legge
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Vital facets of our relationship with God… by David Legge KNOWING GOD David Legge David Legge is a Christian evangelist, preacher and Bible teacher. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He ministered as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall from 1998-2008, and now resides in Portadown with his wife Barbara, daughter Lydia and son Noah. Contents 1. Trust And Truth - 3 2. Love And Acceptance - 12 3. Understanding His Father-heart - 22 4. Intimacy - 30 5. Fellowship With Christ - 49 6. Beholding And Becoming - 55 The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.com) or by request from [email protected] All material by David Legge is copyrighted. However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. This does not include hosting or broadcasting the materials on another website, however linking to the resources on preachtheword.com is permitted. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all. 2 KNOWING GOD David Legge Knowing God - Chapter 1 "Trust And Truth" Copyright 2019 by David Legge want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 33. As I said to you, I'm going to be here this Sunday, all today, and then two Sundays in May I think, I and I decided that I would bring a series to you. I feel that the Lord laid on my heart what you see on the screen there, a series on 'Knowing God'. We're going to take the six sessions, if I can get through it OK, looking at this very deep and diverse subject. Before we read Scripture, I want us to pray, I want you to pray now, would you do that with me? That God would speak to your heart - don't let me do all the praying up here, I want you to pray now that God would speak to you. Let's pray. Father, we come to You, and as we have been singing: we desire to hear Your voice, we want to be receptive to Your voice. So we ask You, in Jesus' name, that You would come and speak to us now. Come by the Holy Spirit, Lord, and reveal Christ to us in our lives. Lord, we so desperately need You, and we ask that we would be in a receptive place to receive what You have to say to us. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we ask these things, Amen. So Exodus 33 verse 7 is the beginning of our reading. This is where Moses has been up the Mount of God, and God is meeting with him. He has received the law, he has gone down the mountain and seen what people have been up to - which has been no good - and then he receives the law again after smashing the tablets. Verse 7 then: "Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp. So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle. And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses. All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door. So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle. Then Moses said to the Lord, 'See, You say to me, 'Bring up this people'. But You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight'. Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people'. And He said, 'My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest'. Then he said to Him, 'If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth'. So the Lord said to Moses, 'I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name'. And he said, 'Please, show me Your glory'. Then He said, 'I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before 3 KNOWING GOD David Legge you'". This is not what I'm speaking on, but isn't it interesting - in the light of what we've been singing about the goodness of God - that when Moses asked to see God's glory, God's goodness passed before him? Have you ever noticed that? The glory of God is in His goodness. This does anticipate some of what I'm going to share this morning: some of us can't truly say from the depths of our hearts, 'God is good' - and there are reasons for that. Verse - where did we get to? - verse 19: "Then He said, 'I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion'. But He said, 'You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live'. And the Lord said, 'Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen'". A.W. Tozer wrote a book years ago that I probably read round about the time I was an assistant here in Portadown, but certainly in my youth. It was a favourite of mine, and still remains to be such - it's called 'The Pursuit of God'. I don't know whether you've read it or not, but I would highly recommend it. In chapter 4 of his book, entitled 'Apprehending God', commenting on Psalm 34 verse 8 'Oh taste and see that the Lord is good', he quotes Canon Holmes of the Church of England, then of India. 'Many years ago', Tozer says, 'he called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from the evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. 'He must be', they say, 'therefore we believe He is'". I want to ask you here today: is God an inference for you? An 'inference', of course, is a conclusion based on the evidence that is available to you or on your reason. Is God merely an inference, or is He a living reality? Now, especially if you're like me and you grew up in a Christian home, an environment where Christ was known and you were sent to church et cetera, God can very much be an inference. He has always been there, and you have assumed He always will be there - but kind of in the background, there's not an awful lot of personal encounter as an individual. Tozer goes on in that chapter to talk about how, for some, they know God through hearsay, but they haven't discovered Him for themselves; or God is an ideal for them - in other words, He's just another name for beauty, or truth, or goodness, or life, or another virtue that you can think of - but there's no personhood in your conception of God, and certainly no personal interaction with Him. One thing those who hold such notions all have in common is that they do not know God in their personal experience. Perhaps, for some of them, it has never even entered into their mind that it is possible to know God intimately, just like any other person. I think that's why many Christians go through their life being loyal to an ideal, or to a set of life principles that they live by, but they never truly have experienced God as a personal acquaintance.