Apprehending God Psalms 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” KJV
Today we are starting the fourth chapter; Apprehending God. Apprehend: to become aware of. So we are learning to become aware of God. Notice that the verse Tozer uses for this chapter is Psalms 34:8. Let’s read Psalms 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” KJV
Those who seek the Lord discover that He not only saves and keeps but that He also satisfies. When we read “O taste and see that the Lord is good”; "Taste" doesn't suggest a sip or a nibble; it implies feeding on the Lord through His Word and experiencing all He has for us. 1 Peter 2:2-3 “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” (NKJV) David found God's Word sweet. Psalms 119:103 (NKJV) “How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
Tasting means; knowing Him better and enjoying Him more. So to know God better, we need to look at who God is. Question #1: “To most people God is an inference, not a reality.” Is he a reality to you? If so, explain why and how He is real to you. If not, what could He do to make Himself a reality to you? Now as you did your homework, I am sure you journaled a lot on how God is real to you but I want you to look at a video that shows what people think about who Christ is: In general the video shows people saying who Christ is: • a prophet of God • He is the son of God • liberator • revolutionary of his time • don’t know because they are an atheist • gave His life for us • a philosopher • a person who had a lot of wonderful ideas • just a man • a concept of belief that keeps people going
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To most people God is an inference, not a reality. They deduce that He must exist but He is not spiritually known to them. To others God is only an ideal. He is “goodness,” “beauty”, “truth”, or “the creative impulse behind existence.” God is a reality known in personal experience.
From generation to generation you can see a spiritual downfall. You figure Tozer wrote about the lack of spiritual pursuit sixty years ago. Think about where we are today. We have seen, with the video series on our Founding Fathers, how our country was built on Judaea Christian ethics. Thomas Jefferson our Third President (1801-1809) said, “Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage; we humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners.” Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President (1923-1929) said, “The Foundation of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.” Now our 44th President Barak Obama, states that we are no longer a Christian nation. Let’s hear it in the President’s own words: “No matter what we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation, at least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers.” Not only has our leadership withdrawn from God, but God has been taken out of our everyday living. Psalms 33:12 “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (NKJV) Ladies, we need to get back to the basics. Our nation is not going to get any better. We are living in the end times. Now, more than any other time, we need to be diligent in pursuing a deeper relationship with God. We need to be in our word. We need to know God experientially. I cannot stress this point enough! So how can a Christian know God? He or she should be able to know God in the same way that he or she knows the reality of this world.
Question #2: In what ways can we apprehend God in the same way we can apprehend this world? We can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses: “Seeing; Hearing; Touching; Tasting; Smelling” Seeing: Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.” (NKJV) Hearing: John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (NKJV) Touching: Mark 5:27 “When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment.” (NKJV) Tasting: Psalms 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” KJV Smelling: Psalms 45:8 “All Your garments are scented with myrrh and aloes and cassia, Out of the ivory palaces, by which they have made You glad.” (NKJV) I am reminded of a story I heard about a City Pastor who was visiting a sheep farmer. The shepherd asked the Pastor to come take a walk with him. So the Pastor did. As they walked they came across the shepherd’s flock of sheep grazing in the field. The shepherd said, Pastor I was thinking about your message on John 10:27 and how the sheep knows their shepherd’s voice, have you seen it illustrated? The Pastor said no. He asked the Pastor to call his sheep and he told him how he calls them. So the Pastor called the sheep as the shepherd said. But the sheep just kept grazing in the field. Not one head came up. Then the shepherd called the sheep. Every head of the sheep popped up and looked at the shepherd. They knew their shepherd’s voice. Ladies, we need to make sure that we are so close to God, that we know His voice, that we know the difference between God’s voice and an impostor’s voice. In Mark 5:27 The woman planned to slip away and get lost in the crowd, but Jesus turned and stopped her. Tenderly, He elicited from her a wonderful testimony of what the Lord had done for her. Why did Jesus deal with her publicly? Why did He not simply permit her to remain anonymous and go her way?
He wanted to be to her something more than a healer: He wanted to be her Saviour and Friend as well. He wanted her to look into His face, feel His tenderness, and hear His loving words of assurance. By the time He finished speaking to her, she experienced something more than physical healing. He called her "daughter" and sent her on her way with a benediction of peace. To "be made whole" meant much more than receiving mere physical healing. Jesus had given her spiritual healing as well! He wants us to feel His tenderness, and hear His loving words of assurance too. We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for that purpose, as we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit’s urge and begin to use them. Question #3: Why can’t unregenerate people apprehend God? (1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 1:20-21) 1 Corinthians 2:14 (NKJV) “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. “ The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in his nature, unused, and for every purpose dead. Speaking of the unregenerate man, I would like to play you an audio of a man who is an evolutionary biologist and internationally renowned atheist, skeptic and humanist. His name is Richard Dawkins. He wrote a book called “The God Delusion” which was a bestseller in 2006. Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion. Listen to a speech he made: “play audio” Question #4: What is the key for believers to know and have a habitual, conscious communion with God? In other words, what enables our spiritual senses to function? (Hebrews 11:6) The key to developing our spiritual senses is faith. Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV) “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
It is impossible to please God without faith. By faith is meant a living, active faith, a faith that knows and follows God, communes and fellowships with God. It does not matter what a person does; without faith he cannot please God. It is utterly impossible to please God without faith. Without a saving faith, a person stands alone to face the trials and tribulations of this world. As believers, God is there to help us through. Notice the second part of that verse, the person who comes to God must believe two things: He must believe in God – that God is – that God exists. The words “must believe” mean necessary and essential, absolutely necessary and essential. He must believe that God rewards those who diligently seek Him. Note the word diligently. It means to seek out god; to diligently seek to find Him and to follow Him. God does not reward the sleep-eyed, complacent, non-thinker, half interested, worldly-minded, pleasure seeker. God rewards those who diligently seek to know and follow Him. Question #5: What is the difference between imagination and faith? Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. (Reckon: to accept something as certain) Webster’s Dictionary Question #6: Why do we habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of the other? Tozer said: “Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.” Pg. (53) John 20:29 “Jesus said to him, "Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (NKJV)
1 Peter 1:8 “whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory (NKJV) Jesus pronounced a blessing on all who would come to faith without the help of a visible, bodily manifestation to them. This blessing comes to all who believe on the basis of the proclaimed gospel and the evidences for its validity. Believers living today are not deprived by not seeing Him physically; instead, they are the recipients of His special blessing: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. —Bible Knowledge Commentary When I think of something that you cannot see but yet you believe it I think of the “wind”. John 3:8 says: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." (NKJV) You can see the effects of wind but you cannot see it. At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian’s faith is unseen reality. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. Question #7: What do we have to be if we truly seek to follow Christ? If we truly want to follow God, we must seek to be other-worldly. We need to choose the Kingdom of God. Tozer said, “The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear.” As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead. It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel God, who is our life and our all. More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and His presence the glory and wonder of our lives. —Pursuit of God, The
Ladies, as we pursue a deeper relationship, we need to ask God to reveal Himself to us. We need to acknowledge that He is Lord of our lives. As it says in Luke 19:40, if we do not acknowledge Christ as the Messiah and glorify Him, the stones will cry out and glorify Him. Luke 19:40 (NKJV) “But He answered and said to them, "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out." Tozer’s prayer: O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than earthly thing has ever been. Amen. —Pursuit of God, The