When I first got started I learned a lot from reading other’s sermons, so now I’m going to start putting some notes from my own sermons on here. Subscribe is you don’t want to miss them. Go to ivychurch.org and look around a bit if you want to listen or watch on Youtube.
This is from our recent INCREDIBLE Ivy weekend away, first night – so it won’t be on the site!
Hungry for more of Him…
Are you hungry for God?
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger now, for they will be satisfied.”
How does that work?
It’s wonderful that we are here together now. I don’t know if you had your evening meal ready or if you’re hungry for food, but as we come together, consider this:
- Why did you come?
- Was it for community? Wonderful!
- Was it for fellowship? Fantastic!
- Was it in the hope of receiving a breakthrough through prayer? I hope so!
But are you hungry for God?
One of the greatest gifts God can give you is a hunger for more of Him. One of the greatest dangers we can fall into is that which we see in Revelation, especially the last letter, where the Laodicean church felt full and satisfied, not realising they were in DESPERATE need of the Lord and what He could provide.
“You say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and have all I need,’ and you don’t realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.”
Revelation 3:17
After a baby is born, the second gift God gives is hunger. Nobody needs to teach them to seek food – and if they’re not hungry, something’s wrong. As we grow, we’re hungry for more. My grandkids are living proof – they’d eat you out of house and home! They’re always hungry!
Jesus said:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
Matthew 5:6
The word “righteousness” means right relationship with God first of all. It also means living right according to his ways and then finally hungering for what God wants to see happen.
Are we hungry for what God wants to do in our lives and in the world?
Peter writes:
“Like newborn infants, crave pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.”
1 Peter 2:2
I don’t know how long you have been a Christian, but that’s not the main question. The big question for growth is: how hungry?
Are you still hungry for God? To know God? Hungry for more of Him?
If not – what else might we be filling ourselves with?
I say filling because we can all fill our lives with so many things but nothing else really satisfies. Psalm 107 says:
“For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”
The word for “longing” there means yearning and almost fainting with desire.
That’s who God fills. The Hebrew word saba means “abundantly supply to overflow, with nothing missing or lacking.” So hunger is a great blessing in the spirit!
If anyone wants more of God, knowing Jesus is where it all starts. So we start our weekend together with KNOWING. Tomorrow it’s Growing and Saturday? Going!
Our vision as Ivy starts with Knowing Jesus as life’s ultimate pursuit and prize.
He said to the woman at the well, who had tried to fill her life with what only emptied it of everything:
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.”
So it’s good to be hungry and thirsty for more of God.
Moses and a Holy Hunger
How do you think Moses, very old, could still go up and down Mount Sinai – over 7000ft?
- He knew who was waiting at the top when he got there.
- He wanted to be in God’s presence – in the glory cloud.
Even after witnessing Pharaoh humbled, seeing his rod parting the sea, his people being delivered from slavery carrying everything they would need, Moses didn’t look at all the gold and silver they took out. He was marked for life by an ENCOUNTER.
That first time he met God – at the blazing burning bush – on that same mountain. The ENCOUNTER marked him for life. He had come to know God who told him “I AM THAT I AM” – God told him his name there. And another name – Yahweh!
But Moses was still hungry. He longed to know God more.
In fact if you track it you’ll see Moses went up that mountain at least seven times.
He went up and God told Moses to tell the people if they obeyed Him He would be their God. He went down and the people said yes they’d obey, so he went back up and told God. Up and down, up and down, and God gave him the Ten Commandments.
Then the people said, “We are too scared to come close to God – you go instead!” They stood at a distance while he went up to God, because he wanted to know Him more.
Again and again Moses walked up that mountain to encounter the LORD again. Forty days and forty nights.
But the people couldn’t wait… could not wait on God… They turned to idols instead, they wanted to make something happen – trying to satisfy their sinful desires through fleshly idol worship – taking what the LORD had given them to make a golden calf – the kind of demonic idol their Egyptian slave drivers bowed down to! Because what you worship takes hold of you, and this is a spiritual war we are in.
There are consequences when we break God’s laws! When we give ourselves over to false gods and demonic powers. 3000 of them died! Many more got sick!
So Moses went up the mountain again – to intercede for them.
Alone in the cloud another 40 days and 40 nights! That’s 80 in total! He didn’t need anything to eat because being with God sustained and fulfilled him. He wasn’t counting hours or days fasting, because he stepped out of time into eternal realms with God.
God said, “Moses, I’m not going with those people any more. How about I just send an angel to go along with you from now on instead?”
But he said, “NO LORD! I’m not going an inch from here unless Your presence goes with us. I’m not taking another step unless it’s with You! I need Your presence! I want to know You.”
He knew that his life didn’t matter unless God was with him. Nothing he did, wherever he went – knowing HIM was all he wanted since the burning bush. He’d seen God’s power and what He could do, but more than what God did – he didn’t want an angel! He wanted to know the LORD.
He asked God, “Show me your glory!”
So God said, “You cannot see my face and live. But there’s a place near me where you can stand – on a rock. I’ll hide you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand as I pass by you.”
This was as close as one could get to God at that time because until Jesus came, nobody could see God and live – until He became a man, and lived among us. So we could KNOW.
Are you hungry to be with God? What else have we been trying to fill our lives with?
Good stuff is not good if it’s a replacement.
Evil opens us up to be slaves again.
Will we let Him set us free and satisfy us this weekend?
At Ivy we talk (about lot) about Knowing… Growing… Going. It’s our VISION.
“So What Do We Do Then?”
People ask me, they can get quite frustrated, “So what DO we do then? If that’s the vision?!”
And we can go and build golden calves and have a great time worshipping. But if we spend that time with Him who is eternal, you can bet there will be actions and activities, plans and strategies coming out of that – God will command us. But God doesn’t want us just doing, doing, doing.
Tomorrow, we’re going to focus on Growing. I’m so excited to hear from our guests on that and to DO IT as we grow together as a supernatural community that’s all about Jesus. Then Sunday it’s what? GOING, and God gives us all we need for all three!
Peter says:
“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and goodness.”
2 Peter 1:3
What do you need? What does your life or ministry need? Do you need freedom from something in the past or that’s holding you back today? Assurance so you don’t need to worry about tomorrow? What do you need in your life?
That verse says God has provided it. That was His job. And yours – is to receive it.
Knowledge That Changes You
How do we move into these realities? Because we read such scriptures and say, “I want to believe that – but how come I’m not seeing it happening in my life? Why am I still stuck?”
Well I know the problem in the equation is not with God – it’s that we don’t know.
We don’t know how to access these truths.
How do we get the first half of 2 Peter 1:3? Tonight it could be you need healing, provision, being set free and delivered, hope. How do we get what God has for us?
Notice he says it is through knowledge. What knowledge? The knowledge of HIM. Epignosis. That’s not the usual Greek word for knowing in your head. It’s relational. Not information. It’s knowing by experience, by encounter, in relationship. Knowledge that changes you. Deep.
Not knowing about God. Knowing Jesus personally, intimately.
Knowing Him – is how we access EVERYTHING that’s available from Him.
Anyone hungry for that?
To know Him, we must see Him.
We’ll never come to the end of knowing Him will we? After all these years I feel like I’m just getting started. It’s like I’ve seen one blurry fraction of colour out of a whole rainbow. God is more wonderful than we could ever grasp with our minds! That’s why he wants us to step up close to his glory, because in His presence as we love him from our hearts and worship him with our spirit, He does what nothing else could do and gives us all we need.
He knows that anything outside of himself can so quickly become an idol, which will ultimately lead to our destruction, so worship is not just for His pleasure, it’s for our good! It’s not because He’s insecure we have to tell him we want to get rid of all our idols and break agreement with anything else that wants to take first place.
The Lord doesn’t want us to worship ourselves or the things of this world that are fading away, or anything the enemy wants us to give ourselves to instead of Him. For our good, He who is the BEST has made a way for us to come, to glorify the Son, to step into his presence. As we step out of darkness, out of death – we get the LIFE of God in the presence of God.
John 17:3 says:
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
To the extent you know God, the true life you have will expand – out of the material and into the eternal, because it will reflect that knowledge. Otherwise we remain in darkness.
Your life now – the peace you have (or don’t have), the joy you experience (or not) – it’s a reflection of the knowledge of God that you have.
He couldn’t show His face or glory fully to Moses and reveal all of Himself in that encounter on the mountain – but He wanted YOU to know His glory! So you could see it, and show it, and shine His glory in the world, as we reflect our knowledge of God through our worship of Jesus Christ. He went on in John 17 to say he came to reveal God, to show God to us.
Moses couldn’t see Him or he’d die.
Then Jesus came – and now we must see Him or we won’t have life!
Beholding His glory.
BE-HOLD.
From the Old English word: BE – thoroughly. HOLD – observe.
So, look attentively with singular focus. One thing. The One thing.
And he takes away everything that stops us being free. No enemy can touch you in that place of presence and glory. As you behold Him – everything changes.
If you make anything else your key focus or priority for life – that thing will become your god and ultimately enslave you, because we cannot serve two masters. This is how we become free – through knowing, beholding, through encountering Jesus.
Anybody in scripture who ever accessed anything from heaven worth desiring saw it first through an encounter with God.
Names of God – Dimensions of Encounter
Most of the names of God we know were not just spoken from heaven, they came out of encounters with people wrestling with God somehow.
Someone saw a dimension of God and discovered something new (to them) from that encounter and then named the dimension of God out of that encounter.
Abraham saw Him provide as Yahweh Jireh. What does Jireh mean?
No, it does not simply mean “provider.” It means “upon the mountain His provision shall be seen.”
Abraham had an encounter through going up a mountain – where and when he was willing to give up, give back, the best thing God had ever given him. Then, through that, he saw a new dimension – as God Himself provided a sacrifice instead.
In John 8:56 Jesus said, “Abraham your father saw my day – and he rejoiced in it.”
When?
2000 years earlier, on that mountain – Abraham somehow encountered Christ, “the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the earth.” The Son who would die because the Father would give Him. And he rejoiced.
Abraham lived out of that dimension he’d encountered – that Jesus is Jireh. That dimension of God resulted in the abundant life Abraham lived. But the abundance was not the blessing. The dimension of Jesus he saw when he beheld Him was the blessing.
When God wanted to give anyone something to be known, he revealed a dimension of Himself, because there’s nothing greater to receive. So our greatest hunger and pursuit if we want LIFE must be nothing else but to see God.
One thing I seek…
How do we see God?
I’ve seen Him in visions and dreams a number of times. Each time – transforming my life.
Maybe you say, “Ok for you – but I’ve never seen Him.”
Well God is gracious.
You could either see Jireh for yourself when you have an encounter of great personal sacrifice, obey Him at huge personal cost – that’s when that realm is opened up through encounter, the pain involved in laying your Isaac down. Maybe you don’t want that…
But God saw – “If I’m waiting for all of them to come up the mountain when I call them and give back and lay down the best I ever gave them, very few will climb up.”
So He came down, and we see this in His Word. Jesus is the glory of God, the sacrifice.
Thank God there’s another way! Hebrews 1 says we don’t need now to find Jireh through our own sacrifice. We don’t need to know Jehovah or Yahweh Sabaoth, Nissi, Rapha, Shalom etc. the way they did. We don’t climb up the ladders or mountains because when we encounter Jesus, He is the aggregation, the summary of ALL those OT dimensions – it’s all wrapped up in Him!
If you want to know God – KNOW HIM!
He’s the radiance of God – shining from the inside. Jesus didn’t reflect God like Moses’ face shone when he saw the glory. He radiates because He IS God! That word “representation” in Greek is a word you already know – character. The essence of God’s very being.
Soon we’ll remember the first Christmas when the angel came to Mary first, then Joseph saying, “You shall call his name Jesus.”
Why? Because he is Jireh.
He shall save his people from their sins through sacrifice.
He is the Lord! Yahweh Rohi – our Shepherd.
His name is Immanuel. Prince of Peace. Mighty God. Wonderful Counsellor. Light. Saviour. Rock. Alpha and Omega!
His name is Rapha – healer. Healing is in Him tonight when you get prayer! We don’t need to look to a serpent on a pole because Jesus said, “In the same way Moses put the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man will be lifted up – so that all who look to him shall be saved.”
Every dimension of God – BEHOLD! Look to Him. It’s all in Him! We press in to see Him.
How do we do that? In worship, in prayer, and in the Word.
Meeting Him in the Word
John 1:1–5, 14:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John says they knew about God before – the Word was there creating light and everything from nothing in Genesis 1. But then they KNEW Him. Saw Him, touched Him, in the flesh.
He explains even more in his first letter:
“We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him…the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard…”
Do you see why the Bible is so important?
We don’t worship the Bible. But Jesus said it’s the Word, and Jesus is the Word. The Word came in the flesh. Now we can meet Him in the Word.
Now when you see Him in the Word, it’s like you encounter Him in the flesh. If you look for Him like this and how you can KNOW Him – you’ll NEVER have a boring Bible study!
If we don’t miss the point – that it all points to Him.
In John 5:39, he told the Pharisees – who knew the Bible but were missing God:
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that speak about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
Come to Him – in the Word.
Look for the encounters and you’ll never have another boring Bible study.
He was the Word, before He became flesh.
Now I can’t see Him in the flesh because He’s ascended so… we encounter Him here.
Theology’s good. But the goal when I study is not to be a theologian.
It’s:
“That I may know Him…”
That’s how I don’t just become a theologian, or a historian about what He did – but when I behold Him and come to Him – I become a witness. Of what I see and hear and touch and the One I KNOW.
“We beheld His glory…”
A witness –
Of what I have seen and heard, and touched and who I have known.
Hungry For God?
So let’s pray.
Hungry for God?
Come, Holy Spirit.
Renounce and reject all other gods, idols – there is no other.
No other name, but you Lord.
We want to see you, Lord…
Our eyes are on you…
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image…”
2 Corinthians 3:18
Knowing you.
Growing is all about knowing you.
We go because we know you and, like Moses, we don’t want to go anywhere you are not, or build anything you are not in.
“Seek the LORD and His strength;
seek His face continually.”
“You have said, ‘Seek My face.’
My heart says to You,
‘Your face, LORD, I will seek.’”
Seeking first the Kingdom…