We’re going to start our singing Sunday with Ask Ye What Great Thing I Know. Consider that word “know.” The first sense of that is the theoretical: Here is an idea, a fact, that I know. I know that Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God, “delights and stirs me,” “defeats my fiercest foes,” “consoles my saddest woes,” “revives my fainting heart, healing all its hidden smart,” is “life in life” and “death of death,” and “who will place me on his right?” We who sing know these things to be true.

But there’s another sense of “know” implied here. We see these two senses in scripture in places like Ephesians 3 where Paul prays that the Ephesian church will “know this love that surpasses knowledge.” How can you know something that surpasses knowledge? Well, consider another translation. We can take Paul to be praying that they “Experience this love that surpasses understanding.” God’s love in Christ is so great, so intense, so extensive, that we cannot ever completely understand it. But we can experience it.

Let’s apply this sense of know to our singing this hymn. “Ask ye what great thing I experience.” Sure, I know that completely ruins the poetry and musicality. Consider, however, that declaring the truth of the facts expressed in the hymn is one thing – surely a good thing! Declaring that this is our experience of Jesus, that’s something different. We don’t just know about Jesus, we know Jesus. We’ve experienced these things for ourselves.

It might be that come Sunday morning when it’s time to sing this song you might think that it’d be nice to have had this experience of Jesus, but you haven’t yet. That’s one of the advantages that comes from preparation for worship. By knowing shat song we’ll be singing you can look at it in advance. Even this very moment as you read my words – or Sunday morning as we sing the hymn – you can pray, “Lord, I want this to be my experience. I want to have this experience of Jesus and life in him. Do this work in me so that I will joyously share the news of Jesus with everyone who asks me what great thing I know, what the thing is that stirs me and excites me.”