Know and Known
Authentic Followers, Authentic Communities • Sermon • Submitted
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· 4 viewsAuthentic followers know Jesus and are known by him.
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Social
Getting to Know You
Getting to Know You
Opening image
How long does it take to get to know you?
Beyond surface-level things
When do you have a relationship with someone that you share embarrassing things?
How do you know that you can trust them with a secret?
What are the things you don’t normally share?
Are there things that you try to keep hidden, perhaps even from God?
If I ignore it, it doesn’t exist
As we think about being authentic followers of Jesus in , we notice that Jesus has something interesting to say about his relationship with his followers: I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Authentic followers know Jesus and are known by him.
Hide and Seek
Hide and Seek
Now, when I say that Jesus knows you, I’m looking to see who and how many in the congregation are squirming, and not just kids.
At heart, there may be quite a bit that we’re uncomfortable with God knowing - things that we don’t even like our friends to know
How did we get here? Let’s rewind a few years to
We were created to be in relationship with God and with one another
Only thing not good is that Adam was alone
God walked regularly with Adam and Eve in the garden
- Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.
Neither before God nor before each other
When they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they did three things immediately; what were they?
They realized they were naked
Covered themselves
Hid
Because of our sin, we run to hide rather than run to be known
our world becomes a frightening place rather than a wonderful place
As a kid, walking around a department store was one of my least favorite activities
any neighborhood at night
this hides us from our source of life, our creator—but not really; we are never hidden, but in hiding we hide from ourselves; God knows where we are; we do not
So why this detour through ?
Because when Jesus says that he knows us, sin has conditioned us to be afraid of that; it robs us of the reason we were created
Our tendency is going to be to hide outright, to make our knowledge of Jesus so academic and sterile that it’s safe, or we will make excuses for God
Know and Known
Know and Known
The truth is that Jesus knows us and accepts us where we are so he can lead us to where he wants us to go
The parable of the lost sheep doesn’t leave that sheep away from the rest; the Shepherd brings it home
When we allow ourselves to be known by God, we are better followers, because we allow God to work in every aspect of our lives (not just the well-curated ones!)
When we know Jesus, we are better followers because we know the safety of the Shepherd’s care