He who has to be related to

In John 7, Jesus Christ is teaching in the temple and answers the disbelieving Pharisees by informing them, “Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me.”

“Christ tells them, ‘I know the Father, and by the way, no man knoweth of the Father unless I reveal it to him.’ He's saying, ‘Anybody who knows anything about the Father is indebted to me because you can never know the Father except through the Son.’

“Now, THAT’S why they hate Him and that’s why they want to kill Him! It had nothing to do with a bunch of ceremony-breaking incidents because they themselves broke the Sabbath! They didn’t care about that and they would have easily excused Christ if they had wanted to support Him.

“The reason they wanted to kill Him is because He said, ‘You can’t get to God except through ME. Your religion won’t get you anything; you got to go through ME.'

“He’s taking away all they had and replacing it with Himself. What’s He’s done is He’s gone to Jerusalem and stuck the ice pick right in their eye!

*****

“The whole problem with Adam and Eve is they came to the place where they didn’t trust God. Genesis 3:22 says, ‘And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.’

“But they didn’t know good and evil because they were TRUSTING God to know it! They no longer trusted God’s Word about it. The problem was they weren’t trusting.

“Romans 16:25 says, ‘Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.’

“It’s HE who has to be related to! You see the relationship is to Him, not just to a bunch of doctrines, creeds, rites and thinking patterns. I’ve got a relationship with HIM!

“Paul warns in Colossians 2:8, [8] Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

“Any system that takes you away from just resting in Christ, he says ‘beware,’ and we’re watching one of the great sea changes in global history. You need a foundation that’s built on truth and can I tell you, as the world whirls around there’s nobody else ever going to show up like Jesus Christ.

“The one thing you’ve got that’s different from everybody else is you’ve got the ONE PERSON who IS the truth. Truth in the Bible is not, ‘Well, I’m right and you’re wrong.’ Truth in the Bible is reality.

“What is the source of ultimate reality? What’s the real deal here? Paul says, ‘We look at thing not seen because things seen are temporal.’ They’re not what’s real. The things that are NOT seen are eternal. How do you get in touch with that? The only way is by faith. But you have to have faith in what ultimate reality is and that’s who Jesus Christ is.

“That’s why it’s not a theology and something you’re doing. It’s something outside of you—it’s in a PERSON. It’s in God HIMSELF. And when God stepped out of heaven and took upon Himself humanity in the person of Jesus Christ . . . when the eternal God become the God-man in the man Christ Jesus He gave you the ability to reach out and make God tangible and get a hold of Him and He’s the BRIDGE."