Korean East Coast Camp Meeting 2019

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Korean East Coast Camp Meeting

Andy Im

The Complexity of Simply Knowing God

Jesus equates eternal life with knowing who God is.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ.

And this is eternal life, that they know who you are, the Father.

Ellen White says that to know God is to love Him.

In thinking about this passage, we're really going to be breaking down this 1 verse.

That's all we're going to be doing this evening.

And in reflecting on this, I came upon, I thought, a very interesting quote from Ellen White.

She says this, the whole spiritual life is molded by our conception of God, and if we cherish erroneous views of his character, our souls will sustain injury.

At some level, you and I worship God and experience God on the basis of our understanding of what we know Him to be.

Our notion of who he is, our idea of who he is, and that kind of thing.

And in reflecting on this passage, I began to think, how in the world can the whole spiritual life be molded by our concept of God and she goes on to say if you have erroneous views of his character, our souls will sustain injury.

When I was growing up, before I got married, I had a very, very challenging, a big challenge in trusting God for who I was going to marry ultimately.

How many of you experienced that challenge at 1 time or another?

And I kind of felt like, you know what, if I trust God, I feel like God is going to give me a wife that's more along the lines of Echinacea and Golden Seal, right?

Just someone that's good for me, that's healthy for me, that's for my best good, but I didn't quite think that, trust God, that he had my happiness in mind.

And I had a difficult time entrusting my future spouse into the hands of God and trusting Him completely.

And so that part of my life I kind of compartmentalized and said, well, I can't really give all of that up to Him.

And so you can see how your understanding of God can ultimately impact the basis or the foundation of whether or not you're going to truly trust your life into his hands.

And sometimes we have this skewed picture of God that ultimately keeps us away from surrendering our entire life into his hands.

And sometimes we doubt that God has our best interests in mind.

To give you another example, this all started in the Garden of Eden.

You have God saying, of every tree, look at all the trees out there.

And by the way, durian is also included, was included in the Garden of Eden.

And I'm sure it smelled much better, and that came to mind because we were talking about Cambodia and Thailand and 1 of the fruits that you can eat when you go out there, and it's very fresh.

By the way, Malaysia has the best durian, I believe, in the world.

Because you go to the stands in Malaysia, and they are super hardcore about their durian.

You go to these stands, and they have them all numbered, like 1 to like 50.

And I was with a good friend of mine, his name is David Pham.

And we went to this durian stand and he would be like, try 26.

26 actually has a chocolatey flavor to their durian.

And sure enough, I get number 26 and, ooh yeah, that actually tastes a little bit like chocolate.

And then another 1 would taste a little bit like coffee.

I mean, there's all kinds of variations of durian if you go to Malaysia.

How many of you, by the way, like durian?

I would certainly say give it a try because the frozen stuff you get here in the Korean and Chinese markets, it's not the same as when you go out there and eat it fresh.

But here you have God saying of every tree, of all these thousands of trees, you may freely eat All that you can eat.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And then when Eve encounters the serpent, The focus now shifts from all that she can eat to the 1 that she can't eat.

And as a matter of fact, the temptation, if you look at the underlying principle of what Satan is trying to do there is causing Eve to distrust God.

And that caused her to distrust God and of course we know all the results of what happened in that decision.

So, the whole spiritual life is molded by your concept of God, who you know God to be.

And if you have erroneous views of his character, your soul will ultimately sustain injury.

If you think of a dog, how many of you have seen a dog that's been abused?

And How many of you have rescued or seen a dog that's been rescued?

I've talked to many people who rescue dogs that have been abused and so forth.

And 1 of the things they tell me is that in rescuing a dog that's been abused again and time after time, again and again, is that it takes a long time for the dog to begin to shift its conception of human beings, right?

From that of 1 that's abusive to 1 that's loving.

And so even when you reach out your hand in gesture of love to an abused dog, it's going to interpret that gesture of love as 1 that is potentially threatening against that dog.

And therefore you see dogs, A lot of times you see these abused dogs that when they come up to you or a dog that gets hit a lot, and they'll just be crawling at you and sometimes they'll be peeing all along the way.

And some dogs really just react in aggression, right?

Anything that comes near, they're just gonna snap at you.

And the dog's conception of human beings will determine how it will react and interpret any gesture from any human being.

So your notion, your idea of who God is will ultimately determine your experience and even whether or not you'll accept or invite God into your heart in the first place.

Getting who God is correctly is so crucial to the Christian experience.

So then the question arises, why all the erroneous conceptions?

Well, think about all the different ways that your concept of God can go wrong.

You think of all the mixed messages from various Christian entities and groups that can certainly skew an individual's perception of who God is, from conspiracy theorists to hate groups and so forth.

Another way it could go wrong is in the family.

And, you know, 1 of the things, you know, PKs, for example, have a reputation of a lot of times going in the opposite direction of their pastor or their fathers.

And I understand this pressure being a pastor and also working in the conference office in Michigan.

When you go to a church and your children are acting up and it's so easy to talk to your children in a way that forces them to conform, rather than for them to be who they really are.

And that messaging to our children can really mess up their experience with God.

And pray for your pastors, because it's not easy.

We visit churches and you have children, and by God's grace, We want to instill in our children the love of God, a true, living, experiential love of God, and not just 1 where you're faking it just because you want to have a good reputation.

And Sometimes that has to be sacrificed for the sake of your children.

But family and the home life can really shape a child's understanding of who God is.

The left that's intentional and the right and all the mixed messaging we get from those who are secular to those who are professed Christians and that kind of thing and social media and what the media is really conveying when it comes to the image of who God is.

You think of all the the Christian leaders, another example of how we begin or obtain an understanding of God and think of all the ways that it can go wrong.

Because there are a lot of mutually exclusive notions of who God is that's portrayed amongst Christian leaders today.

An example of that would be eternal burning hellfire and what a misguided doctrine can say about who God is.

Think about it in the light of this this passage here.

How repugnant to every emotion of love and mercy and even to our sense of justice is the doctrine that the wicked dead are tormented with fire and brimstone in an eternally burning hell, that for the sins of a brief earthly life they are to suffer torture as long as God shall live.

It's beyond the power of the human mind to estimate the evil which has been wrought.

When we consider in what false color Satan has painted the character of God, can we wonder that our merciful Creator is feared, dreaded, and even hated?

The appalling views of God which have spread over the world from the teachings of the pulpit have made thousands, yes, millions of skeptics and infidels." By the way, all our doctrines, all 28 of them, ultimately paint a picture of who God is.

They should paint a picture of God, of who God is.

And many times when we go to evangelistic meetings and so forth, we don't often connect the dots of how these doctrines are related to 1 another and the picture of God that's presented even in our doctrines and how Christ can be the center of even our distinctive truths.

So we can do even a better job in that regard.

You can also have aspects of theology or understandings or things that are articulated in the Bible that can often bring misunderstanding as to who God is, unless we're delving deeper into the Word of God to truly understand.

For example, the notion of the wrath of the Lamb or the wrath of God is a concept that we see in Scripture.

A lot of times we'll just kind of sweep that under the rug because we don't want to go there.

Or it just, it gives us the angst at nighttime, but again, we just don't want to go there.

But I believe we need to continue to search, even wrestle with some of these things that are hard to understand and grapple with.

And I want to talk briefly about the wrath of God.

How should we understand the wrath of God?

Something that seems so severe and is portrayed as God as someone who is angry and out to get us.

How do we understand even something like the wrath of God that's found in Scripture?

And I was reading a well-known theologian from Yale.

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The Complexity of Simply Knowing God

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