Who is the world’s foremost expert on God?

Trick question. It’s Jesus. 

Every neighborhood has a cranky person who likes to boss around everyone else. Our neighborhood cranky-pants gave our son fits one morning a few years ago. We were moving his family across the country from East Coast to West and arrived late in the evening. 

Our son’s pickup was pulling a trailer. The combined length made them too long to park in front of our house without blocking part of our driveway. The curb on the other side of the street runs a good ninety feet from the street corner to the first driveway. We parked there for the night. 

The row began when our son went out the next morning to retrieve something from his trailer. Cranky-pants accosted him for daring to park along her curb. 

A. It is not her curb. The homeowners’ association has made this abundantly clear on multiple occasions. So have the police when she called them. 
B. There is a verse in Proverbs about loudly blessing someone in the morning and how it is taken as a curse. There should also be a verse about loudly cursing someone in the morning. 

When I arrived on the scene, along with the homeowners’ association president, a retired pastor, we all received a loud blessing. This devolved to the point where our neighbor said, “You think you know your son. You think he is a good man. He is not.”

I looked at our son, and he returned my gaze. Knowledge passed between us. We turned and walked into our home. Otherwise, she might still be talking. 

The homeowners’ association president graciously found another place for us to park for the few days our son’s family was with us.

The point is not about my cranky neighbor. I pray for her and her quieter, but also cranky, but not as cranky, husband. 

The point is about our son and me. When I said, “I looked at our son, and he returned my gaze. Knowledge passed between us,” there is more to this story. 

When he and our daughter were small children, I committed myself to becoming the World’s Foremost Expert in My Wife and Children. Nobody was going to know them better than me. I would not be an absentee, disinterested dad. I didn’t realize I had taken a step of discipleship when I made this commitment. 

No one knows Jesus like his Father. No one knows the Father like Jesus. 

There’s more. Jesus said on another occasion, “and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Jesus reveals the Father to those he chooses. This includes you and me. 

This did not and does not include those who demand a sign to prove he is who he says he is. Some people, entrenched in their unbelief, will only respond if Jesus performs tricks on command. That is not going to happen. How did he respond when people demanded signs from him? He said the only sign would be his rising from the dead. You have to admit, that’s a pretty good sign.

Even then, and even now, some people’s hearts are so calloused against anything religious and true that they dismiss this possibility altogether. You can visit Mohammed’s grave. And the Buddha. And so on. Our son recently explored the burial place(s) of Jesus. He’s not there. He is risen, just as he said. 

As I am the World’s Foremost Expert in My Wife, I handed the title to my kids to their spouses, Jesus is the World’s Foremost Expert in me. He knows me better than I know myself. Even though he knows all about me, he loves me. He calls me his own. I am a sheep of his pasture. This is a good point to (Insert your name here). I want ol’ Cranky-pants to insert her name here as well. 

Jesus shows us the Father. He shows us the face of grace. He shows us the only way out of death and the grave. He shows the way to the Father. As you know, he famously said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

There is one way to the Father. That way is as broad and welcoming as “Whosoever will may come.” Revelation 22:17 says, 

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.

Come to Jesus and allow him to introduce you to the Father. Remember how he teaches us to pray in Matthew 6:9. He says because of what he has done for us, we can call him “Our Father in heaven.”

The World’s Foremost Expert in God welcomes us into deep, abiding relationships with them. This is an offer too good to refuse. The next step, as the Apostle Paul stated so well, is to “know him as we are fully known.” (See 1 Corinthians 13:12.)

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I will become an ever-increasing expert in Jesus and our Father in heaven.

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Our Father, you made a way for us to know you. You made a way for us to have a deep, abiding relationship with you. You made the kind of life graves cannot contain. I want to know you as I am fully known by you. I want to lay aside my partial and incomplete knowledge about you and experience you ever-more personally. Amen.