DAILY DEVOTIONAL – August 5, 2020
“Know No Thing”
Prayer: God of all knowledge and power, we submit all of our thoughts and all of what we think we know to Your most perfect will and most abundant grace. Teach us now as we come to Your Word and grow in our knowledge of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 10:3-5
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
Devotional – Know No Thing
Samuel Arbesman is a complex systems scientist and writer. He is currently a Senior Adjunct Fellow of the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and an Associate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. In short, Mr. Arbesman is a pretty smart guy.
In 2013 Arbesman authored a book entitled The Half-Life of Facts where he addresses in detail the fragility of what we think we know. In every field of knowledge, half of what is true today will one day be updated with better information. This is what Arbesman calls “the half-life of facts.” The premise is that for every domain, silo, discipline, and school of knowledge, the facts contained within are slowly being overturned, augmented, replaced, and refined — and in medicine, for example, the rate of that overturning is high enough that you never really complete your education. In physics, about half of all research findings will be disconfirmed within 13 years. In psychology, it’s every seven. In other words, according to Arbesman, if you graduated with a degree in psychology seven years ago, half of the information in all your textbooks is now inaccurate.
Despite how unreliable the knowledge of men has proven to be, that hasn’t stopped many from rejecting the thought of God entirely, because of what they think they know. Albert Einstein, a name that has become synonymous with intelligence (and for good reason), so appropriately said, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot of knowledge.” This is exactly why the book of Colossians warns us in 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”
There is an eternal difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom knows what to do with knowledge and how to understand it, and James 1:5 tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”
The Apostle Paul was an incredibly intelligent man, not only was he the protégé of the famous Jewish Sanhedrin scholar, Gamaliel, and author of 14 of the 21 epistles in the New Testament, but we see throughout his ministry how he was able to magnificently outwit his opponents in theology, philosophy, politics, and the laws of the land.
Having learned a very difficult lesson from the Lord about the difference between knowledge and wisdom, Paul wrote to the Church in 1 Corinthians 2, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
Paul learned that to be wise is to know nothing and submit all of what you think you know and understand to the God who is the author of knowledge, and the God who declares in Malachi 3:6, “I the Lord, do not change.” What mankind thinks they know may have a half-life, but the eternal knowledge of the only Almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does not. As Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.”
That is the Good News of the Gospel my friends, our omniscient and omnipotent God does not change. From the very first sin God promised that He would bring forth a child of Eve that would bring salvation from sin, death, and the devil, and who would bring the Kingdom of God and reveal to us the knowledge of the wisdom of God that is but foolishness to a world that is perishing because they have rejected Him and dared to pursue the worship of their own fleeting intelligence. Salvation is not, nor will it every be found, in the knowledge and wisdom of men; not in science, not in medicine, not in philosophy, not in the laws we pass, and not in the religions we invent. Salvation is found only in the knowledge and wisdom of God that has come and revealed Himself to us, in the flesh, in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who confounds and bewilders the mortal minds of men with the simplicity of His actions and the unfathomable reaches of His grace.
The Apostle Paul, who was made blind so that he could see the truth of the wisdom of God, says in 1 Corinthians 1, “18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Be a know nothing, not a know-it-all, my friends, abide in the Word of God that promises to set us free in the knowledge of the truth, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
