In this sermon, Brian Borgman discusses the importance of knowing God and emphasizes the need for special revelation, which comes through scripture. He highlights the fact that natural revelation, such as the beauty of creation, is insufficient for a saving knowledge of God. Borgman explains that the Bible presents God as both transcendent (incomprehensible and majestic) and imminent (personally knowable and near). He refers to Isaiah 57:15 to showcase the dual nature of God, who is high and holy but also dwells with the contrite and lowly. The speaker concludes by expressing his hope that listeners will be transformed by the knowledge of God, and for those who only know Him by hearsay, to come to know Him personally.

My name is Brian Borgman and I come from the once great state of Nevada. Can any good thing come from Nevada? Well, I live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, about 30 minutes from South Lake Tahoe Anybody ever been to South Lake Tahoe? How sad All right. Well, so so I live in the Carson Valley and we started the church 28 years ago and God has blessed us in many ways, but Nevada is also filled with Mormons, and so I thought this for a while was called Burning in Your Bosom, and I thought, what is that?

So here's what's burning in my soul. Isaiah 57, 15. For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy, I dwell on a high and holy place and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the lowly, the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. When I was a college student, I was a Bible major, Biola University in Southern California, and one of the books that we had to read was A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy.

And I know Tozer wasn't reformed, but I will tell you that book changed my life. I sat on the lawn in front of the music hall reading, and I remember like it was yesterday, reading those words from Tozer, what comes into your mind when you first think about God is the most important thing about you. And here we are at a conference on knowing God, and I want to just say that I don't think that there's anything more important than talking about knowing God. Now the question then is how do we know God? If the most important thing about us is that we know God, who He is, and what He is like, then we have to ask ourselves, how do we know this God?

And of course, God reveals Himself in nature, in creation, and like I said, I live in a beautiful area. There are times we look out to the Sierra Nevada mountains and the snow-capped mountain peaks and there's something that rises up in your soul where you just you just want to sing how great thou art right But I want to tell you that what the Bible says to us is that even though God reveals himself to us in nature, we don't actually just come to natural revelation as objective people who are trying to seek truth and then reason from natural revelation up to God. In fact, Romans chapter 1 is very clear that that which we know about God in nature, in creation, we actually suppress that truth in unrighteousness. And so if you're going to know God, you need to know God in the way that God reveals himself, which is in special revelation. I could go up to Job's Peak, the highest peak of the Sierras where we are, and I could contemplate for a hundred years and never come to a saving knowledge of God himself just through that revelation.

I need God's special revelation, and God's special revelation comes to us, obviously it comes to us in scripture. God reveals himself to us in the words of scripture. We just heard about the importance of the sufficiency of scripture. And what we need to be clear about is that if we are to know God, who he is, what he is like, if we are to have a saving relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ, then it has to come through the knowledge of God mediated to us through Holy Scripture. Now there's another sense in which God reveals Himself.

You'll remember Jesus was at Caesarea Philippi and He says, who do men say that I am and the disciples? Some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Jeremiah, one of the prophets. And Jesus says, but who do you say that I am? And Peter says, you're the Christ, you're the son of the living God. And Jesus said, Simon Peter, that's one of the best uses of natural theology I've ever seen in all of my life.

No, actually what he said is blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven. And so when God the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty and the truth of who God is and what he is like in Holy Scripture, we see the living and true God. Now why did I pick Isaiah 57 15? Because the God that we come to know through special revelation is the God who is both transcendent and imminent. You actually see it in the text, and by the way, This has huge significance for us today.

You see in this first part, for thus says, notice this language, the high and exalted one, who lives forever, whose name is holy, I dwell on a high and a holy place." The God who made heaven and earth, the God of the Bible, the triune God of the Bible, is incomprehensibly majestic. He is transcendent. He goes beyond our ability to comprehend. Here's the wonderful thing about God, is that he is both incomprehensible and yet knowable. Remember, many years ago my son, my oldest son who was about four or five, we were teaching the kids on the attributes of God.

And I said, Zach, what attribute did you learn tonight? And he musters up all of his little mental powers and he says, we learned that God is incomprehensible. Not bad for a five-year-old. Zach, what does that mean? That means that God is so big, we can never fully figure him out.

The God that is revealed to us, The God that we come to know and to love is beyond our finding out. He is incomprehensible. He is transcendent. In fact, I remember Tozer in Knowledge of the Holy says that an earthworm has more in common with an archangel or an archangel with an earthworm than we have with the almighty God. Because there are two fundamental categories, God and that which is not God, or the creator and the creation.

Earthworm and archangel both belong to the creation. God alone is in that category of creator. And so he is transcendent. But here's the other thing, and we need to remember this, and we need to take this to heart. We should do our very best to dive into the scriptures and to understand God in the very deepest ways that we can, and we should take deep dives into the attributes of God, the Trinity and so forth, but at the end of the day, we need to remember also that this transcendent God is also the God who is imminent, that is the God who is near us.

And so that text continues, He not only dwells on a high and holy place, but he also dwells with the contrite and the lowly of spirit in order to revive the Spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Here's one of the most stunning things is this transcendent, incomprehensibly majestic God is also the God who is personally knowable, who is a personal God, who is a relational God, and who is near to us. The God who is holy other than us, the God who is the thrice holy God of Isaiah 6 is also the God who actually draws near is near to the brokenhearted the God who is so majestically described for us on Isaiah 6 then is also described for us in Isaiah 7. The virgin shall bear a child, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us. To know God is to know that he is far above anything we could ever imagine.

But it is also to know that he's right with you as the tears flow. And he's right with you when you feel lonely and when you feel defeated and when you feel overwhelmed. The transcendent God of Isaiah 6 is also the God who draws near, really near, not just near in appearance, but really near, so near in fact that He saves up your tears in His bottle. In his bottle. And it is that God who is near to us and walks with us and carries us in his arms like we are little lambs.

The God whose power knows no limits, the God whose knowledge knows no limits, the God who is truly incomprehensible and transcendent is the God who will carry you all the way to your death and then receive you into his presence forever. That is our God. What's burning in my soul is that over these next few days, the things that you hear about knowing God would transform your soul. And for those of you that only know God by hearsay, it's our prayer that you would come to know him personally because this is eternal life, to know the living and true God in Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. Amen.