DAILY DEVOTIONAL – April 23, 2020
“KNOWLEDGEable“
Prayer: Almighty God, You hold the universe in Your hands. By Your Word all things came to be. In Your grace and mercy You sent Your Word to put on flesh in Jesus so that we may know You, and in that knowledge of You, be forgiven and saved from sin, death and the devil. Lord keep us firm and steadfast in Your Word. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Scripture: Proverbs 9:9-11
Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;
teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
11 For by me your days will be multiplied,
and years will be added to your life.
Devotional – “KNOWledge”
In today’s world of smart phones, tablets and instant internet access, there are many things that we can “know.” If you want to know how high Mt Everest is, you can simply ask the phone you carry in your pocket to give you an answer. Within seconds, it will say “Mt Everest is 29,029 feet high.” However, is knowing the measured height of Mt Everest the same thing as personally knowing how high it is? If you were to ask someone who actually climbed Mt Everest how high it is, they may answer by saying something like, “It’s higher than you can possibly understand. When you stand on Mt Everest, you’re standing where people sit while flying across the globe in a plane. You can see the curvature of the earth. It’s so high you can barely breathe and you can only stay on the summit for a brief time before posing a real threat to your life.” Ask someone who attempted to climb Mt Everest but for whatever reason was unable, and they may answer, “It’s too high…that’s how high it is.”
There is a Mt Everest sized difference between knowing about and knowing of something or someone. By definition the word “about” means “concerning, in reference to or with respect to.” By contrast, the word “of” indicates possession and means, “indicating an association or relationship between two entities, typically one of belonging.” Many people may know about my wife, however, only I know of her and only she knows of me.
In my 2nd year of seminary, as I was trying to cram a ridiculous amount of information into my head, I had what I think could be genuinely called a crisis of faith. For reasons I cannot explain, it felt like I literally woke up one morning and was accosted by overwhelming doubt. I started questioning everything I had learned. I knew in my mind what I had learned and what I knew was true, but yet at the same time, the question haunted me day and night, “yeah, but how do you really know?” For the next year, I struggled immensely with this.
Then one day as I was driving and listening to my audio bible in my headphones, I heard a verse I had read many times before, except this time one small two-letter word just screamed out at me. “OF!” The verse I heard was verse 10 of Proverbs 9, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
Whether you are a student in seminary or a Christian who has been attending church for decades, we have a tendency to confuse knowing things “about” Jesus with actually knowing “of” Him. All of the knowledge I was accumulating in seminary for the first two years had brought me no closer to Jesus. All of the ministry work I was busy with was bringing me no closer to Jesus. In my crisis of faith the Lord was merciful and brought me to the realization that what I knew about Jesus would only come to have meaning and purpose in so far as I knew of Him. What I learned through that crisis of faith is articulated many, many times in Scripture and especially in Proverbs (naturally as it is a book of wisdom!)
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding – Prov. 2:6
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. – Prov. 1:5
Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. – Proverbs 3:7
An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. – Prov. 18:5
The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge. – Prov. 15:4
To sum up what all these proverbs say: To have knowledge, to have true understanding, to have wisdom…is to know the One who gives it. To know of Him, not just about Him. To have a relationship with Him, because He is a Living God and a Risen Christ who is more near than our own skin. He has known us from eternity. He has seen all of our days before as yet one of them came to pass. He knows our thoughts and the intentions of our heart. He knows me better than even my wife, and He knows me better than I know myself. If I am to have any hope of even coming to know who I am, I must first know of Him.
I don’t want you to misunderstand me. Knowing God’s Word and having knowledge about God in accordance with what He has revealed about Himself and His Son Jesus in His Word is absolutely a necessary part of knowing of God and having a relationship with Jesus. I am astonished today by how many people I hear say things like, “I felt God say to me…” or “I know it’s what God wants me to do because I can feel it…I just know…” or perhaps the one that makes me the most unnerved, “I know because the Spirit told me.”
Friends, our feelings and our emotions cannot be trusted. Our senses cannot be trusted. The work of God’s Spirit is not found by any measure in a gut feeling we have. Listen to what Jesus says in John 14 about the Holy Spirit’s Work, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Knowing of God and having a relationship with Him by the Spirit He has put in our hearts begins and ends with the word of God. God will not contradict Himself. As it says in 1 Corinthians 14:33, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”
The Spirit of God will never contradict, say more or say less than what God has revealed in His Word. Jesus says in John 16, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” And in John 17, Jesus prays for His disciples and says, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
We do not come to the Scriptures because we think that knowledge about God is how we grow in a relationship with God or grow in knowledge of Him. We come to the Scriptures and rely solely on His Word as the only source of truth and knowledge because it is through that Word that Christ reveals Himself to us and it is through the Word that we grow in our relationship with Christ. In John 5 Jesus said to the Pharisees, who knew plenty about Jesus but knew nothing of Him, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
Friends, there is no more important possession you have than your Bible. It is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16), it is the source and power of our faith (Romans 10:17), and it is the power that sets us free to experience the joy and fullness of God’s love and salvation given to us freely in the blood of Christ. As Jesus says in John 8:31-32, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Thanks for joining me for another daily devotion in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
