Key idea: Your greatest need, and your greatest delight, is to know God.

Blaise Pascal: “…there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain[s] to him only the mark and empty trace… he in vain tries to fill [it] from all his surroundings… But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”

I. To Know and Love God More, There is No Greater Thing (1:15-18a)

1. Paul’s Thanksgiving and Prayer (1:15-17)

2. The Spirit’s Teaching (1:17-18a)

3. The Saint’s Delight (1:17-18a)

Psalm 16:11 (ESV)

You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Isaiah 55:1-3 (ESV)

II. The Was, Is, and Forever Blessings of Knowing God (1:18b-23)

1. God’s Blessings in Your Past: Unfailing Hope (1:18b)

2. God’s Blessings in Your Future: Everlasting Love (1:18c)

3. God’s Blessings in Your Present: Immeasurable Power (1:19-23)

• a. The Power of Death (1:19)
• b. The Supremacy of Christ (1:21-22)
• c. The Power of God—for us! (1:22)