What does it mean when God calls us to “knowledge” as a way to bolster our faith? What is God’s knowledge like? That’s the subject of this week’s Steadfast.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome back to Steadfast. I am so glad to have you here again this week. It’s so exciting to dig back into this series, Follow Me. We began it last week thinking about what Peter says about virtues that should show up in the Christian life in 2 Peter chapter 1. And as we thought about that, we thought about how those virtues are things that actually describe Jesus. And so when Peter says these are the things that should be showing up in our lives, what he’s really saying is we’re called to do the same thing that the very first disciples were called to do — to answer that call that Jesus gave, follow me.
Tonight we’re going to think about knowledge and think about knowledge in that context. Depending on your life experiences, maybe I say the word knowledge and you think, oh, this is so exciting, I’m really excited. Or maybe you think, I don’t even know if I want to stay on this because I’ve had some bad experiences where people had lots of knowledge and I was just miserable. But what we’re going to think about tonight is God’s knowledge. So let’s come before him and pray and ask for his guidance and then see the wonder of the knowledge of God.
Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your love, that you are the God of the universe, the author of all knowledge, and you care to spend the time to teach us the truth, to teach us what is true. Lord, would you be with us tonight? Would you encourage us through the power of your Holy Spirit? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
I couldn’t help thinking about a sermon on knowledge this week as we’re looking towards the school year. Some schools are starting back up. I’m seeing all kinds of pictures on social media of people going back to college, either from those actually going or from their parents who are wishing them a great school year. Thinking about that, it made me think about probably one of my very least favorite moments in a school year, and that would be whenever the exams would come up. I start worrying, had I studied enough? Did I have the right kind of knowledge? Maybe you’ve had this experience too. You walk into that classroom on exam day and you sit down feeling almost like it’s a death sentence. You sit down in your desk and you get out your pencil and your scratch paper and you start trying to go through your head. Did I know everything? Did I have all the right stuff jammed into my head, all the right knowledge?
Then the professor hands that sheet, and I couldn’t wait to see it because I wanted to know, are the things that are ready to come out of my head the things that are on that sheet? If there are essay questions, are they the essays I was anxious to write that I felt ready to write, or are they the ones I was hoping really didn’t show up? If you remember an experience like that and you remember seeing that sheet and seeing that essay you were hoping wasn’t there, your hands would just start sweating and it was hard to hold onto the pencil, and nothing seemed to want to come out of your head because we’re trying to prove that we have this knowledge and we weren’t sure that we’d studied the right things, and maybe in fact we hadn’t studied the right things.
As we look to 2 Peter’s list here of virtues in the Christian life and Peter says knowledge, I believe a part of that call is to make sure that we have the right kind of knowledge, that we’re studying the right things. Are we studying the knowledge of God? So we’re going to go and survey some of what Scripture has to say about knowledge tonight and think about that, to think and reflect on how the God of the universe has given us his word that we might have knowledge about him.
Maybe you have a negative view even of that. I remember someone once said to me, I don’t need a bunch of knowledge about the Bible and theology, I just have a simple faith. And in a sense that’s great; it’s great that we have a simple faith in the sense that we just believe what God has said is true no matter what, but God calls us to grow as Christians, to know his word, to know who he is, and to share who he is with others. Knowledge in that sense is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “Knowledge is power, and power corrupts, and corruption is a crime, so if you keep reading you’ll be broke, because crime doesn’t pay.” Sometimes we think about knowledge in that sense — it just is going to lead us astray, it’s just going to corrupt us. But knowledge of God doesn’t corrupt us; knowledge of God refines us. That’s what’s so amazing when we come to his word and we learn more about who God is.
When we understand what kind of knowledge Jesus demonstrated in his life, again we’re looking at these virtues that we see in the life of Jesus, and as we follow him, what are we doing? We are following the author of all knowledge. It’s appropriate we start at Psalm 136 verses 4 and 5 to think about that. Let’s go ahead and turn there.
The psalmist writes: “To him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who by understanding made the heavens, for his steadfast love endures forever.” Think about that for just a moment. Who made the universe? By his understanding, by his knowledge. We see that at the very beginning of Genesis, God speaks words. He says words that bring about everything that exists, everything there is to know. God spoke it into existence. He has perfect knowledge of the life we live, of the world we live in, of the entirety of everything that there is, because he’s actually the author of it. He spoke it. His understanding brought it into existence.
So often in this life we encounter less than perfect understanding, less than perfect knowledge. Maybe it’s when we go and try to buy something. If you’re like me, I like to research before I make a big purchase. Maybe you can think back to a time that you were going to buy a car, and you go and you dig through all kinds of consumer research websites, and you’re reading about it. You go on the forums. Whatever features you want in that car, you know all about them. You know about the navigation system, and whether it has CarPlay, and whether it has traction control, and all-wheel drive, and all these different things that you can get on a car.
You go to the lot, and you start talking to the salesman that comes out, and he’s trying to tell you that this is the best car ever. He’s describing all this stuff. And you know because you’ve researched this car, you know he’s getting it wrong. He doesn’t actually know about this car. He’s trying to convey lots of ideas about knowledge, trying to make you think he really knows what he’s talking about, but you know he doesn’t.
Sometimes we’re the person standing there scratching our head thinking, how does this person actually think he knows what he’s talking about? Sometimes we find ourselves in the opposite position, where we’re saying things, and we’re just dead wrong. But what we know is that even in our most perfect moments, even when we have the most knowledge that we are capable of having as human beings, it’s flawed and imperfect.
But as we look to Jesus, as we follow him, what do we see? We see one who has perfect knowledge. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? The disciples followed Jesus for the entirety of that three-year period of ministry, hearing Jesus preach, seeing miracles, seeing all this stuff, and they genuinely had their minds boggled. How is it that this man can do these things?
And so it is on the night that he was betrayed, in the upper room, he’s having that upper room discourse, that last conversation with his disciples before he goes to the cross. He’s describing things with this intensity to make sure they understand what he’s about to do for them. And through the power of his Spirit, something finally clicks in those disciples’ heads. Clearly not all the way, because they’re about to abandon him, but it starts to fit some pieces of the puzzle together, and we see the reaction in John chapter 16, verse 30. They said, “Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you. This is why we believe that you came from God.”
They hear the knowledge of Jesus as he’s describing his relationship to the Father, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the new commandment to love one another, all these things, and their reaction is, “Now we know that you know all things.” In that moment, at least for that moment, they understood that Jesus had perfect knowledge.
But I think there’s something even more important in that moment. It’s not that he just has perfect knowledge, that all the encyclopedias, the best-edited version of Wikipedia ever to be written, is right in front of them. It’s something more than just facts that they’re seeing here as Jesus talks. It isn’t just mind-boggling. As they hear what Jesus says to them, they know that God knows us, that God knows them, that God knows me, that God knows you. Not just all the facts, not just data about how human beings work. As Jesus spoke to them, he was assuring them of his care for them as those very twelve disciples around that table.
Maybe they were thinking about this in that moment. Back in the earlier days of his ministry, in Matthew chapter 6, he’s giving the Sermon on the Mount and he’s about to introduce the Lord’s Prayer to the people. He says this about how we pray: “Do not be like them,” that is, the unbelievers, those in other nations, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” He says we should bring the things that we need to him. He goes over that in a number of different places. Jesus himself goes to the Father and prays in his moments, especially in the moment of agony before the cross, but at different times he goes and prays.
He says go and pray with confidence, go and pray knowing that God knows you, that God knows what you’re facing, that God knows whatever it is that you’re going to bring to him before you even do. And again, as we’re thinking about how we follow Jesus, how we follow our God, what we’re really thinking about is how do we follow someone who knows us? He knows our needs, but he knows more than just our needs, he also knows our failings. We see that in Hebrews chapter 4. The author of Hebrews says, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.”
When Jesus looked at those disciples, he knew they were going to abandon him. In the entire span of history from the very beginning until whatever amount of time God allows in the future, God knows the failings of every single being, including us that are here tonight. It’s kind of overwhelming. And if you think about those who have been the worst to you in life, those who have betrayed you, those who have said cruel things to you, if you knew that ahead of time, how would you relate to them? Would you still trust them? Would you still serve them? Would you still love them? Or would you back away and protect yourself?
You might say, “If only I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have been friends with that person. I wouldn’t have trusted to go into business with that person. I wouldn’t have shared this secret with that person that turned out to not be trustworthy.” What does God do? He knows all this about us, but what does he do? We see the answer to that in 1 John 3, 19-20.
As the Holy Spirit works in our heart and we start to understand ourselves better, what does our heart do? Our heart condemns us because our heart says, we’re not fitting into these virtues. We’re not fitting into God’s law. We’re not following Jesus faithfully. But what does God do in those moments? John says that God overcomes our heart. He shows us mercy and grace. We can have confidence, he says, in our faith, the one that we follow, not because suddenly there’s nothing for our heart to condemn us about, but because the God of the universe has shown us mercy through the cross of Christ.
As Jesus looked at those disciples and looked at everyone through history, all the people who would fail him, all the people who would fall short, including us, he gave the knowledge that he did and does and called all of us to follow him because he loves us. If you think back to that Hebrews chapter I just referred to last week, we looked at how it says that Jesus is our high priest. That’s the very next part of that passage. Jesus is our high priest who intercedes before his Father for us.
He knows all this about us. He knows all of our failings. He intercedes for us because he loves us. What’s the appropriate response then? What is it that we should do? As we seek to follow him and follow even the gathering of knowledge like God does, what does that mean?
I suspect that most of us have experienced a really awkward moment at some point in life where maybe you go to an event and you run into someone that you can barely remember the name of, or maybe you can’t even remember the name of, and you think, who is that, who is that? And before you even get a chance to greet the person by name, they just see you and they start bursting out with questions that show their care for you. They’re asking about how your family’s doing. Maybe you were struggling with something at school or at work, and they immediately start asking you about that, and you think, I’m just trying to remember who they are.
And I think maybe that’s the person whose spouse was having surgery, but maybe that’s not right. And you feel this shame and this embarrassment because this person clearly knows so much more about you and has cared to gather that knowledge about you and you can barely remember some basic facts about them. In that moment, what do we commit to doing? If I can avoid hurting this person’s feelings so much that he or she never wants to talk to me again, what do I want to do? I actually want to know something about them. This is someone who cares. This is someone I should know something about.
How much more so with God, the God of the universe who knows in that moment, he’s caring about us. And he already knows that we get distracted, that we chase after other things. The creator of everything that there is to know cares to know about us. And that brings us to our first question tonight, which is, am I seeking the right kind of knowledge? Am I seeking knowledge of God?
So often, it seems like we want to chase after other things, but am I seeking after knowledge of God? Galatians chapter 4, Paul writes this, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn your back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world whose slaves you want to be once more?” It’s a question that the early church struggled with. Peter talks about that as well, the people chasing after alleged forms of knowledge.
I think that’s why he feels it’s so important to mention here that the Christian life should have knowledge in it because we’re going to, in our curiosity, in our interest as human beings, we’re going to seek after knowledge and we need to make sure that we’re actually filling our hearts with the right kind of knowledge, with knowledge of God. Because as much as the early church chased after that, so too do we chase after that today. It’s going to be different things for all of us.
Maybe it’s statistics about a sport that we really love. Maybe it’s Hollywood celebrities and we care about all that sort of stuff. Maybe it’s even people, friends, and family, and we make sure to know every detail about what’s important to them. Wonderful. That’s a wonderful thing, by the way. But what we need to ask ourselves is, am I taking time to fill my heart with the most important kind of knowledge, which is knowledge of God? How often is it that I think, we all run into this experience that we open God’s word and we think, okay, I’m going to just read through… I’ll read through Jeremiah today. I’m going to read through this. I’m going to know more about who God is.
And as soon as we start, the phone rings and something happens and the next thing we know, we’re ready to go to bed. And the day has just whizzed by. And everything seems to be able to pull our attention away from spending time looking at the truth, looking at God’s knowledge. But we need that knowledge to do everything else we do. I think that’s one of the ironies in ministry, and if you’ve spent time as someone doing ministry in any form, and hopefully all of us are doing ministry in some form, there are times that we’re going to face where it feels like we’re so busy doing God’s work, quote unquote, that we don’t have time to actually spend in God’s word.
But the first thing we need to do is we need to have knowledge about who God is. We need to be constantly filling our hearts with that. Listen to what Paul says in Philippians 1, verse 9. “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”
What happens when we continue constantly to refine ourselves and to study together, to share in Bible studies and encouragement with each other? What happens as we come to God’s word? It enables us to approve of what is excellent and to show love to others. The funny thing is when we become so busy trying to show love to others and to serve others that we aren’t focusing on the one who loves us, the one who is the best one of all to know, we’re not even very good at loving other people.
And sometimes that comes out even when we are studying his word. We start to accumulate facts. We’re trying to pull all that from the pages and put it into our heads. And what does it become? It becomes an opportunity to exalt ourselves. I think that’s why that one person once said to me, “I don’t need all that knowledge, all that information. I just have a simple faith.” I think what she was thinking of was how some people will use that knowledge to exalt themselves.
We probably all know someone like that who wants to make sure that we are put in our place, that we know that that person knows more than we do, that wants to pull out fancy words and experiences to emphasize what he or she knows. But that’s missing the point. It’s not just about knowing a ton of stuff, not even knowing a ton of stuff about scripture, but knowing it in a way that changes our heart.
I saw this comic strip this week and it made me think about what we’re talking about tonight. It’s a comic strip called Technically Correct Man. And there’s this little guy, and if you’re watching on video, you can see that he’s saying, “Help, help, I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake.” Then Technically Correct Man appears and says, “Actually, poisonous means it’s deadly to eat or touch. Venomous means it has a deadly bite or sting.” And the little guy says, “Thank you, Technically Correct Man.” And Technically Correct Man flies off after saying, “I’m here to help.” And the final cell is just the skeleton of the guy that died from the venomous snake bite.
At least he knew that it was a venomous snake, right? Oh, wonderful. Isn’t that great? No, of course it’s not great. What he needed was the guy not to just give him great knowledge about how to use words. He needed the guy to actually care that there’s a person dying of a venomous snake bite.
That’s where we should ask the question when we share the knowledge of God: What is my objective? And if we truly are getting to know who God is and we’re truly following him, we look at the God of the universe who says, “Follow me,” because he loves us, because he wants us to be in relationship to him. So much so that we know, as Jesus is conveying this to the disciples, that he’s going to the cross to take on their sin and our sin that we can have that relationship with him and be restored.
If that’s who we’re getting to know, if that’s who we’re filling the knowledge of in our hearts, then we’re going to show love to others. We’re going to show that fruit. And others are going to want to know more about that God. Others are going to want to know what we’ve learned in scripture because they see that that knowledge isn’t knowledge to hit someone over the head with. It isn’t knowledge to make people think that we’re great. It’s knowledge to make people think that God is great and God loves them.
It comes back to what I said earlier that I think is so central to reflecting on knowledge of God, and that’s that the creator of everything that there is to know cares to know about us. Tonight, if you’ve never believed that, if you’ve never really thought that God cared to know about you, know that that’s a lie straight from the pit of hell. God cares to know about you. He cares to know about each and every one of us. He does know about each and every one of us. He has perfect knowledge.
And what does he do as he cares to know about us? He loves us enough to show his knowledge, his truth to us, and to call us into relationship with him. If that’s who we’re following, if we’re fixing our eyes on Jesus, if we’re following him and we’re looking to his word, then we show love to those around us. And that knowledge becomes life-giving. And that’s a wonderful thing, a gift from the one who there is no one better than. There’s one who’s better to know. That’s God.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you that you allow us to know you. And as we know you, you transform our hearts. Because as we know you, we see how you have perfect knowledge. You see not only the times that we seemingly do something right, but you see our bad motives behind that. You see the times that we just outright do wrong things. And that you care to transform us and to call us into your family. That you choose to use us, that as we gain the knowledge that you give us in your word that’s applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that you do so so that we can use that knowledge to show love to others as well. That more might know you, that more might know you, that we can look forward to that heavenly banquet someday where we see the family of God, all those that you’ve adopted, and we see that banquet table stretching out beyond the farthest sight that we can see because you have redeemed so many because of your love. Lord, would you help us to show that love this week. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, we’re going to pick back up next week and we’re going to think about two more aspects of following Jesus. And we can sum those up with two questions. What does it mean to be steadfast? Peter says that that’s part of the Christian life. And what does it mean to be self-controlled? Again, we see these things in Jesus. So as we study these things, we understand better who our God is. And as we understand better who he is, he enables us to do them and to exemplify these things in our lives through the power of his Spirit.
So please join me at 7 p.m. next Monday night once again. We’ll dig back in. It’s going to, I believe, be a really encouraging time, and I hope you’ll invite someone else. In fact, if you have been encouraged tonight, please give us a like, subscribe, or follow us, depending on what social platform you’re watching on, so that you can help us get the word out. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, subscribe on YouTube. These things actually do make a difference. If you think, it doesn’t really matter if I click the little like, it really does. It shows others that you appreciate what’s happening here. And if this has been an encouragement to you, maybe you can bless someone else with that encouragement about a God who cares to know about them.
Our next event I want to talk about is our upcoming prayer walk. It’s this Thursday. And it’s so appropriate that we’ve been talking about a God who cares to know about us as we come before him in prayer. Because what is the amazing thing about coming to the God of the universe and praying is that he knows our needs and he says, come, come before me, come and pray.
And so we’re going to spend time. The prayer walk will go from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday. You can come at any period of time during that day. If you have one minute, if you have an hour, whatever you have, come by. It’s so encouraging. Maybe you’ll want to come several times throughout the day, if time permits. It doesn’t really matter. Just come whenever you can.
There will be prayer prompts to help us to think about how to pray for our community, for students and teachers as they go back to school, for our nation as we face so much this year, for our world, for our churches. We’re going to spend time lifting these things up. There will be people online all day to pray with you as well. If you have prayer requests for yourself, for your family, for friends, or you can come on and pray for someone else, it will be a truly wonderful time, and I so hope that you’ll take a few minutes and take part in this.
You can find out more on our website. You can go to littlehills.church.org or go on Facebook and look up the Faith Tree Online Community Prayer Walk and RSVP. It would be so great if you’d invite others, too. Let’s get as many people together as possible, celebrating a God who knows us by praying together.
I hope you’ll be there August 20th. That’s Thursday. Well, it’s been so great being with you this week. I look forward to hopefully seeing you on Thursday, and I hope that you’ll join me once again next Monday night at 7 p.m. Have a wonderful and blessed week.