So we turn again to the third chapter of Philippians, reading from verse three. For we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. though I might also have confidence in the flesh, if any other man thinketh that he hath already my trust in the flesh, I, more, circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, and Hebrew of the Hebrews, are touching the law of charity, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. But what things were gained to me Those I count at loss for Christ. Ye doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I suffer the loss of all things, and do count them but done, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being made conformable unto his death. We've been speaking in the opening verses of this chapter of the, as I mentioned, the perils of the Christian life. In contrast, yesterday are the of the normal proper Christian life. And now this morning I'd like to look with you a little bit at the passion of the Apostle Larry. His ambition was to, as he told you in these verses, to know Christ. That was the passion of his soul. The Apostle tells you that if anybody could have confidence in the flesh, he could have in his unconverted days, and he gives you a little brief record of that which a Jew would boast in, inordinately boast in. It has been said, I don't know how much proof there is in it, that the Apostle Paul came from a very wealthy family. Bible dictionaries tell you, he lived in taxes with a Roman citizen, and Bible dictionaries tell you that only the very wealth he lived in part was permitted by some particular Roman law to live in that city. So it had no doubt when he came to prostrate, he not only gave up all the other things that he mentioned here, but his wealth as wealth and became an outcast for Christ's sake. I read some years ago somebody making the suggestion, not only for many bases for it, as far as I know, but the suggestions were out of interesting. And that is that this young man you read of in the tenth chapter of Mark's Gospel, the young ruler that came to Christ, the suggestion was that he was the apostle in his unconverted days. We know he was in Jerusalem, he studied there. He says of himself, and it must have been about the time when Christ was on earth. Anyway, that was a young man who could say very much what Paul says here in this chapter. touching the righteous which is in the law blameless he said for ever things he said the law said he said I have kept them all these things have I kept for my youth of me and that is something like the language of the Apostle Paul here and you remember that young man turned away because he loved his money and he didn't love Christ I don't know whether it's the same young man or not but the insinuation is rather interesting I think it could possibly have been certainly he was like him in every way He was an outstanding personality, and if he hadn't become a Christian in this world without, he would have stood head and shoulders above everybody else, something like his namesake of old. Saul King Saul of all was physically head and shoulders above everybody else, and this Saul was mentally and morally above everybody else, head and shoulders above. And then one day, as you know, on the way to Damascus, he had a vision of Christ in glory. A vision has completely and forever revolutionized his whole life, his whole outlook, everything about it. He became an idealist. Many of us have ideals, but they never become realities. But Paul's idealism became realism. He realized his ideal in complete conformity to Christ that perhaps no person on earth ever has. And God has seen fit in the scriptures to set him before us as an example for you and me. I have always had a great deal of encouragement out of that, because if we only had the example of the Lord Jesus, we'd say, well, of course he's God, and we could never live like that. And so God has seen fit to give us the example of a human being, with all the possibilities of failure, with all human frailty like we have, and yet so outstandingly remarkable in his devotion to Christ. the challenge that is Paul's matured and it is possible and therefore should be a real encouragement to you and me. Paul saw a vision of Christ in glory and that led to his complete surrender not in blind fanaticism but in intelligent faith. I am sure that when he was saved and his friends heard about it and falsely said, well, he is always so intensely zealous in everything. He's got some new fads now and that pretty soon will die out. He's just a fanatic. You'll get over it. But he didn't. He'd seen the vision of Christ in glory. He surrendered himself completely to him. His position, his wealth, his status in life, his ideas, his life, his soul, every. There was a complete revolution in his life. And it did that way, of course, in a more or lesser degree, in the life of every human being that learned to know the Lord Jesus Christ. It falls of particularity. I read once years ago that some of these inhabitants that travel to their sacred city of Mecca When they get a view of that city and a certain spot where they stand, they have bricks that are heated, red hot, a brick pavement. And some of those fanatic actors look about a movie, they'll bend their heads down and burn their eyes out on that red hot pavement so that they'll never afterwards see anything except the vision of their holy city. For something like that in the spiritual area, Apostle Paul got the vision of Christ and has closed his eyes forever. to everything else and for Christ from everything to him. He mentions that revolution, as we mentioned the other day in the seventh verse, what things were gained to be those I counted love for Christ. The Apostle Paul is in Scripture besides the many other accomplishments he had. He's a CPA, a certified private accountant. not published, he did it by himself. He counted all things lost for Christ. He did some thing doing, and he says, all those things, and by the way, you probably know it as it says, those things that were gained to me, they are in the plural. Those things that were gained to me, I counted lost in the singular for Christ. He didn't detail them and so forth and say, now what about this and that, and jumped them all together, he lumped them all together in one thing and threw them aside, and he said, Whatever else I was once so proud of, now I'm ashamed of. That which once I thought was everything. Now I realize there's nothing. And he tells you, but not hardship for him to give up those things. Not hardship to deny the things that once were dear to you when you've seen Christ. For he says, I've caused them that dust, garbage. Now you don't find any difficulty getting rid of garbage. You're not in love with it. You are glad to throw at our doors. And the Apostle Paul says, Lord, I once thought for so worthwhile is now nothing but junk. I found it but garbage for the sake of knowing Christ. He got a vision of the Christ in glory. Now in the next verse, in the eighth verse, he says, He is doubted, and I come. Now he puts it in the present time, all things that lost by the essence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Between the Sabbath and the eighth verse lies the life that the Apostle had lived up until that time. Thirty years or more perhaps. Thirty years of unparalleled suffering and hardship. We were mentioning at the breakfast table that perhaps no person has found any record exists. Suffered physically and mentally, spiritually, carrying burdens on his soul. and the physical abuse that he received. He gives you a record of it in the second Corinthians. No person has ever lived, suffered like that for Christ's sake. You know, his life was not a Sunday school place. His life was a life of constant, unvarying hardship. And yet he says, after thirty years of that, he says, it still wasn't. I said it thirty years ago, and then I didn't know anything about it. I said it Because I've got a vision of Christ, and I have to learn by experience whether I've made a bad bargain. And now, thirty years later, I'm still of the stable thinking. I count all things but loss for the equity of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. My Lord. I don't suppose the Apostle Paul has to bewail very much in the way of failure. We do. I know I do. I'll oftentimes bewail my failure and still do it. Also, I've beware the lack of response to the love of Christ in my own form. But one thing I've never beware of, never felt sorry for, is that it's a decision I once made to accept Christ as my Savior, that I've never had to repent of. Never feel sorry for it. The authority of the Apostle Paul, every Christian can look back over his Christian life and still say, Of course, not in the same degree, but it's still there, count all things lost. For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. For things, the Apostle Paul substituted Christ. He counted all things lost for the person of Christ. In this world, people count Christ lost for things. They do it the other way around, but Christ counted things lost for Christ. It has been said that Paul lost things in verse eight in this chapter. He lost himself in verse nine in this chapter. For the blessed thing is that you become a Christian. Now they only learn to estimate things of that proper value, but you learn to estimate yourself as your proper value. You lost himself. And then having lost himself, he found himself once again in Christ, as he said in verse nine, found in him, but in a different way, altogether different now, with Christ everything and he himself nothing. He's found in Christ in verse nine, he was found for Christ, in verses twelve to fourteen, living for him. He's found like Christ in verse ten, conformable to him. And you find him with Christ, as well, we shall be two someday in verse twenty-one. when the Lord comes to take his people home to glory. Now in verse eight, the Apostle Paul speaks of this knowledge of Christ, of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul knew something about knowledge. He was a highly educated man. He lived in a day when there was a secret society known as the Gnostics. And if you know a little bit about Greek, you know that's just the word that means know-all, those who know it, from the word firm to know it. There was a Sikh of Zai called themselves the Gnostics. They knew everything. More or less like one of these American cynics said once they learn more and more every day of things of ironcloth or of iron, but they know everything about nothing. And these Gnostics belong to that society. They knew a great deal of great many things that weren't so. just like many of these educators today know a great many things, like evolution and the denial of the truth of the Bible. They know a lot of things that ain't so. Paul knew a great deal about God, obnoxious. Remember the class of people called agnostic, which means those who don't know them. Some people pride themselves on the regular. Not peculiar, but they do. The fact is that they don't know anything. And they, as a class, because they don't know anything, therefore you don't know it either. I personally find a resent that idea. But then in this verse, you have supernostic. Paul talks about this knowledge that's superior to all other knowledge. And Christians are not agnostic, nor gnostic, they're supernostic. That's that passage says, in the second chapter, the first epistle of John, verse twenty. He says, you have an unceased from the Holy One, and you know all things. I know I've mentioned that before too, to some of you. I was traveling on the train one time, and of course I have a reputation for that. Somebody who preaches here, they even have told me that somebody has thought of a oblique way, that the Vendran thinks they know everything. Well, we do. I was traveling on the train, talking to a man, and he said to me, Father, you know everything, you think you know everything. I said, oh no, I resent that. I don't think I know everything. I know everything. And then I said, I'll read it to you. I don't want you to get a mistaken idea. I'm not saying it is God. And I read in that verse in the official of John, you have an answer from the Holy One, and ye know all of them. I said, God says that. He said, we Christians know everything. We are the supernostic. Now God is saying that in the official of John, to save you. He saves the children. In other words, children, there is infants. Now infants don't know everything intellectually, of course. And then he says, you know all things. It doesn't mean to say you have learned every detail, but it means that if you know Christ, you have everything. All wisdom and knowledge is found in him. And when you have Christ, you're a supernatural. If you're willing to learn, you find out well. All knowledge is found. The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. all causes this excellency of knowledge, whether it's not the result or the product of human reason. It is not the subject of your arrival by the accumulation of evidence. It's the knowledge that is imparted by God, not by you. It's a moral conviction. It's an experimental knowing in the depth of your soul, because God says so. in his word. Like I said in John chapter seventeen, this, this life we serve that may now be, the only true God in Jesus Christ who now himself. Somebody has said about quoting this, super knowledge is when we know Christ not merely as a man, but as one who loves us, who became a man in order to bring us into fellowship with God and with himself. superknowledge is that we don't know Christ as a prophet teaching truth merely like Nicodemus said that we know him as one who reveals to our own inner being the reality of God the mind and heart of God superknowledge is another one we don't know not merely that we know Christ as a sacrifice who made atonement but when we know him as one who has taken our own sins and put them away for others and has given us all the blessing of God. Superknowledge is not merely when we know Christ yielding a scepter on the throne in heaven, but when we know that Christ enthroned and crowned as king in our own hearts. Superknowledge is that we as Christians have in every way, and knowledge, they'll tell you that in school. Knowledge is that which leads to conduct. The end of all knowledge is conduct. The minute you know of it to be so, you're going to act according. This is a young couple strides before the minister, or the judge, and he pronounces the man and wife, and then he just doesn't wave at her and says, glad to know you, goodbye? No, he goes to live with it. He acts on the fact that he's now married. His knowledge leads to conduct, and so it is in every department of life. That's why the knowledge of Christ is superior. That's why it's super-knowledge, because it results in action. It results in conduct. I'd like to call you attention to some things why this knowledge is called the excellency of the knowledge that is super-knowledge. First of all, because it's not merely mental, but it's experimental. It's experimental. not merely mental. You know when you go to school you get a lot of knowledge, mental, that if you cram your head with a lot of facts, I mean public truth. Today's education is almost unfettered in this country. But you know all the knowledge you get doesn't affect your life practically in any way whatever. It affects your job or your personality, it affects very little except in an adverse way. The more people know immediately, the more conceited and self-important they become. But the accuracy of the knowledge of Christ is that it doesn't stir your head only, but it stirs your heart. In other words, it makes something of you. It doesn't only tell you. It doesn't merely instruct the knowledge of Christ, but it develops like us. No other knowledge does. It develops God. some of the worst beasts, morals, that have lived are men with the highest possible education. Mere formal education, mere knowing things, never develops a person's character. They make him worse. Often times he becomes more skillful in goodness and wickedness, for he has a better understanding of things. But the knowledge of Christ is superior because the direction of character changes your personality. It makes you what you want to be, about God wants you to be. The reason for that, of course, didn't I? I'd like to read to you from a verse in the next official, chapter three of Colossians. The reason for that is that it says in verse ten, we have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Or there is a verse in the official before, the official of the Ephesians, which says in verse twenty-three, that we are renewed in the spirit of our mind. It tells you there that when a person is saved, his mind is renovated. When a person is saved, he is renewed in knowledge. The natural mind doesn't understand the things of the spirit of God. And if there's one thing that's ran towards generally in the hearts of human beings is when you tell them that if they're not saved, they cannot understand God's mind. He said, that's just as great as you have, yes, no doubt much better, but it doesn't make any difference. The natural man understands us not to think of the Spirit of God. You need your mind renewed. The mind needs to be revived through faith in Christ, and God shall we say, sharpens, brightens, renews the mind and the one that trusts in Christ. the simplest child, say by the grace of God, can understand the things of God's government, the widest philosopher that doesn't know Christ. That's what Christians teach us, and that's what's proven and experienced. So then the first thing, of course, why a Christian understands and appreciates the knowledge of Christ, why it means something to him, because he has the capacity to understand. Third, when God comes to dwell within, take the things of Christ and show them again. It's put in blunt form in the Old Testament, repeatedly in the book of Proverbs, where it says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Until you have learned the fear of the Lord, today you will say, I love the Lord. You can't understand anything. But once you can, the knowledge becomes superior. Of course, we Christians even are in danger of getting knowledge in a wrong way. It says in Thursday of the chapter eight, it warns against them that knowledge stops us. And once in a while you find Christians. Oftentimes I'm sad to say young Christians. And I'm not saying it ostensibly because I was a young Christian and I was that way. I thought I knew everything when I was a young Christian. I mean, not only I could say a while ago and do it in Westminster, but I thought I knew it already anyway. You know, you preach when you're young on faith that you don't even care to touch it up. You know everything. Knowledge fushed up and made you a sense of superiority. After a while, of course, you learn what a fool you make of yourself comes back. I remember hearing a young fellow preach some years ago, and he spent a whole hour to prove that there's a difference between believing in the Lord Jesus and on the Lord Jesus. If you direct the Greek Testament, the same word is used in both cases. Exactly the same word in the Greek Testament. There is no difference in other ways. Well, I used to preach like that, too. And I don't want you to discourage some preaching, but anyway, God against this, of thinking that you know everything about it. The man thinks that he knows anything. He knows nothing yet of the aftermath. Anyway, knowledge can suck up, whether it's a Christian or anybody else. that is knowledge of things, but knowledge of Christ, that's a big verse you've talked about. Never talked about it, humble. The more you get to know Christ, the less you learn to think of yourself. The closer you come to Him, the more insignificant you appear to. Men measured themselves by themselves. They get a great deal of understanding and knowledge of the Scriptures, and that can be very daily. It has to be counted down. by a knowledge of Christ himself. In other words, the truth of God has to be learned in an experimental way. This is the verse of the seventh chapter of John's Gospel, which is a very nice verse. It says, the Lord Jesus said, If any man will do my will, he shall know the gospel. He shall really know it. Depends on carrying out, too. That if you don't learn to know Christ merely by sitting on a chair and studying the Bible, You learn to know Christ by living out what you learn in practice in everyday life. I remember leaving one time with a little boy watching an electric line and fixing a power line. And we don't do it anymore that way nowadays, but then this electric line was wearing a pair of rubber boots. And the little kid standing by said, he said, what are you wearing good boots for? It's raining. And he says, no, I'm not wearing them because it's raining. He said, but you see, this wire up here has got four thousand bolts in it. And if I touched it, it would kill me instantly. But you see, you see, he says that electricity up there can't hurt me. At once it can go off through me. These rubber boots, he has stopped the conflict. Stop the circuit. He elected, he has to have a circuit. And everything else has to have a circuit. And if it can go out of me, he said it can't get in from me. And that's a wonderful lesson. Because through the world, it can't get in through unless it goes out of me too. It has to have a circuit. You can't learn things yearly by studying the Bible. You have to learn about practicing that in everyday life. Just like a young fellow jumps through college, he's studied to be a doctor. And he's learned all about doctor. He knows all about it. Then he starts practicing. And he finds all kinds of cases that he didn't learn when he went to college. All kinds of problems that he has to read and experiment and experience. And after practicing some yearly, he learns to know how to be a doctor. You didn't learn the psychology, you learned the fundamentals, but you learned the reality in everyday living. And so it is in the Christian life. I'd like to suggest to you strongly that the way to learn more the mind of God is to live off what you have learned. Sometimes Joshua said to me, what can I do to get a better knowledge of the word of God, and it says, do something for the Lord Jesus. Take a Sunday school class for it. Those kids could ask you more questions, and seven wise men could ask it. They bring up all kinds of things that you don't know the answer to. What do you do? You go home and study the word of God to find out, or you ask somebody that doesn't know. And the next time you can answer that question, but that's another one you can't answer. And you study some more. You see, teaching a class, I found that out. I thought I would come to school after some years. And I thought, oh, but I learned a great deal more than I taught those children. They taught me in a remarkable way. You learn. You talk to a man about Christ, or you find a man has some other idea. You've been drawn up under some false doctrine, and he surely is right, and you don't know how to answer it. So you go home and study, or read up on it, and the next time you can answer. See, you grow because you have to grow. I naturally am on a lazy disposition. If I didn't ask to preach, I wouldn't be studying. I've got to study if I'm going to say something. So you see, doing something does something for you. The attribute of the knowledge of Christ is that it is carried out in life, in practice. I would like to call your attention to a few precious verses, at least the precious of each, to show what this knowledge of Christ means. It's not a mere academic thing. It's practical, the utmost extreme. First John four verse eight says, He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. That is, this knowledge results in love. The knowledge of Christ produces love. Of course it does. Just like the knowledge of the child. Here heard that your baby's knowledge of you produces love in that child. You love it. And so it produces in the child a response of love to you. The child's knowledge of you leaves that child to crush you completely. And so your knowledge of Christ creates in you a love to Christ. an increasing love for Christ day by day. Then that verse in John seventy and verse three tells us that the knowledge of God is from the Christ is life. He only fulfilled that is love. In John seventy it is life. This is life. That's a magnolity. And that verse is not a definition of life. This is life to the magnolity. It's a definition of living. It's life in the practicality talked about in that verse. This is real living to know thee. Jesus Christ of the Holy Spirit. Coming back to the epistle of John, it says in the third chapter that to know Christ is sinlessness. It says in verse six of third John three, Whosoever abides unto him sinneth not, whosoever sinneth has not seen him, neither know him. It says to know him means to live a sinless life. Of course to know him perfectly that means He said, no, that's why we failed you, that failed where we come short, but sin may come in. But the knowledge of Christ is that which produces a life of sinlessness. I'm not saying they're sinless, but it produces that. That's just sin. You can't produce sinlessness in human beings in any other way except by occupying with Christ, by learning to know Him. And then again there is the first love of John, to know Christ, is the supreme knowledge of all. That's why it's the excellence of God. You can add nothing to it. In third John chapter two it says in the thirteen verse, I write unto you fathers because you have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you young men because you have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you little children which have known the fathers. I have written unto you fathers which have known him that is from the beginning and so forth. In those two verses he speaks through three classes of three grades of Christians. Father, young men and children. When he talks to the young men and children he says something else the second time. But when he talks to the fathers he says exactly the same thing both times. In verse thirteen I write unto your fathers where you have known him that's from the beginning. In verse fourteen I have written unto your fathers where you have known him that's from the beginning. Like you have known Christ. He doesn't change it. He doesn't add anything to it because nothing can be added there. There's nothing beyond knowing that. And he said that to the Father, that is those who are older in the Christian life. It should be a mark of Christian growth that we have learned to know Christ. At first we know mostly truth. That's the difficulty of my mother, the weakness and much of the preaching. In many places there's a lot of truth to it, the way of salvation and so forth. There's a lot said about the blessings that we get, but so little is said to exalt the person of Christ. It's not the things you know, it's whom you know. It's knowing him all about him, not about you, but about him. When you learn that you are saved, you learn something about you, incidentally about him, of course, but you are the prominent body. When you learn that you are going to go to heaven, Lord is going to take you only, you're thinking about what's going to be to you. You have yourself with you as a tremendous deal of that sort of offhand selfishness in Christian ministry. That's the purpose of the teaching and the word of God. It is not to point you to yourself. It's to point you to Christ. To be in love with his love with him. It's the same way you know why marriage is proved to be so weak. almost unconsciously, the married fathers are thinking of themselves. They're thinking about they're going to get out of married life, not what they're going to put into it. They're thinking what it means to them or out of what it should mean to the other one. When you marry, you should devote your whole life, your interest, apart from the things of God, of course I mean. But naturally, you should have your whole interest in making that union of blessing to the one that you chose as a father, not to you, but to her, or vice versa. But so often we think of our childhood and it doesn't work the way we want it. Then people get divorces and so forth. But it's Christ that's to be the center, not that we get out of it before he gets out of it. And so here there is no addition, because there is nothing beyond knowing Christ. It's the father. Now by the way, father, not old men, father. Fathers have children. It means those who are living for Christ and who have been used of Christ to see souls saved, and so they get a deeper appreciation of what Christ is and who Christ is himself. But anyway, the knowledge is supreme because according to this text, there is nothing you can add to it. It is challenging because it says in second Peter chapter three, the last verse of that chapter, it is the growing grace and in the knowledge of the Son of God, the knowledge of Christ. It's the knowledge that you never reach the end of. You grow old in you. In heaven itself you'll never reach the end. But in the ages the promise that God will show us the exceeding riches of His grace in His time assured us through Christ Jesus. I heard Peter Thou say once at the early birth conference that when the devil took the Lord Jesus Christ up on the top of the mouth and he showed them all the glory of this world. Because he showed it to him in a moment of time. That's all it took. One flesh. That's all it took for the devil to show him. By the way, that word moment is the word Adam. But he isn't much about atomic bombs. It's over the Adam. In an Adam of time. And the word Adam means something that's so small, you can't make it any smaller. It means it cannot be divided. He showed the Lord all the glory of it in an Adam of time. But then he said... God cannot show the wonders of his grace that fast and takes an eternity to do. All the glory of this world you can see in an atom, but all the merciless grace of God, God will take me eternity. An unending time. Grow of grace is the great challenge to connect you with earth. And then it's the love of creation, the act of three charlatans, the knowledge of heaven, the love of past and knowledge. And the Apostle Paul puts it in this way, and the very word in the very order in which these words come as we know it's significant. The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. Christ, Jesus, Lord. Christ is a title of the one who is exalted, who is in heaven. God made that Jesus Lord and Christ. It's his title of the heavenly one, the one who is on the throne of God of our high priest and intercessors. is the knowledge of Christ. The first thing he mentions is that the Christ is exalted. See, that's how he got saved. He didn't get saved by a Christ on earth. He got saved by a Christ in heaven. That's what makes his ministry different from all other ministry that he does. He's always occupied with a Christ that's exalted. See, he lifts your heart above them and your heart is lifted above this world. Then you get a proper attitude towards this world. You can see it properly from upstairs, not from down below. Paul says, Christ first, the exalted Christ, the one that men despise whom God exalted, the one that gets lifted as thy grace to that higher level of blessing. That's the one I know. Then Jesus, for Jesus is his earthen name as our example. In heaven as our power, in earth as our example. And I'm third Lord, as the one to whom we all are leading, who is exalted in heaven and once lived for us on earth, is now the one. who is to be the one whom we acknowledge in every department of our life as Lord and Savior. But within this superknowledge of Christ you have, the great thing of knowing Him, the thrill of knowing Him, is an exhaustive thrill in that. Don't think you know of it. We never will, because discovering is because we'll discover, for all we can be can know And thus is that in Peter's thrill, and then go forth and tell His grace and show them what Christ is doing. Paul said, He counts all things long for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. May you and I have the ambition to spend much of our time, at least the time that we have available to learn to know Him, First of all, in the simple way of studying his word, and secondly, in making him known, has been said that every one of us grow in two ways. We grow by food and exercise. Food, study, by studying it, and exercise, living it out, and what we will know him, whom to know, is a knowledge that satisfies, that transforms, that makes life worth living. produce his blessings. Now God and Father, again, you have commenced with me thy precious word. We thank thee for him who came to earth, that he might know thee. We all be through God. And we know thee through Jesus Christ our Lord. We could not know thee any other way. We thank thee that knowing him is to know thee. Well, he said, if he has seen me, I have seen the Father. We thank thee for the record. concerning thy beloved Son in thy word. We live in a world that for many people Christ means nothing. There's no particular attraction there. There are high colors, cold. That's why he's concerned. We thank you that open our hearts to recognize that in him we have everything. He's all in all to us. Without him, what would we do without him? We thank you for Christ our Savior. We thank you for the thrill of learning to know more of his mind and will of thy word and of the privilege. So live it out where men talk about things for us to talk about him. So live him. We seek thy blessing upon thy word. Seek thy blessing for our today. Give thee our thanks in his precious name.