Southern Districts Alliance, 09.04.2006
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Col 1:9-10 [1]
Introduction
Many Christians suffer from undiagnosed and untreated spiritual depression. Pastors get depressed by a small church, older believers by their perceived lack of spiritual growth, some are depressed by their meagre Bible knowledge, spiritual dryness, weak prayer life, failure in evangelism etc. It is quite common, especially in charismatic –Pentecostal congregations, for people to be down because “their faith is not working for them” in the area of health and wealth. Australian Christians spend millions on seminars, books, DVD’s etc. with little measurable impact on their spirituality.
The church often reflects the culture. Emotional depression is an epidemic (JY came to Christ through depression). 1 in 4 Australian women and 1 in 6 men will suffer from it some time in their life, 4% suffer from it in any one year. (Geoff Gallop in WA). One of the factors behind the growth of both spiritual and emotional depression is the aspirational society in which we live – people expect more and more out of life, bigger homes, better cars, more job satisfaction, superior sexual experience and so on. When aspirations are not met, depression may result. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Prov 13:12)
We live in a society of multiple addictions with an endless quest for higher experiences. With the advance of popular culture into the body of Christ, sensuousness in worship is in. Yet just as anti- depressant medication cannot heal the relational roots of depression, neither can changing the mode of singing, preaching and so on. The symptoms are only masked. Cf. JY AW sleeping problem – what are you looking for, better sleep?
People so much want to feel better about themselves, but introspection is itself a disorder that produces either self- induced euphoria or unhappiness. We must turn our focus away from ourselves to what God knows about us in Christ.
Foreknowledge
God in fact, foreknows us in Christ. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Rom 8:28- 30) [2]
God’s “foreknowledge” is not some sort of divine clairvoyance, it is not like the accurate predictions received from psychics by a friend of mine. In biblical thinking, “knowledge” is primarily relational rather than informational. It is intimate knowledge. In God’s case, it is an eternal knowing of us in love.
When God says to Jeremiah “Before I formed you in the womb I knew [3] you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (1:5), he means he always had a relationship with Jeremiah. [4]
In eternity God was relating to my past, my present, and my future. This draws out of Paul excitement and spontaneous praise, 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (present), 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world (past), that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will( future). (Eph 3:5). I have and always will be, enveloped in the Father’s loving knowledge of me in Jesus.[5]
What then has gone wrong?
Creation and Fall
In Eden, Adam and Eve were surrounded by the good gifts that God created for them by his Word (Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26), but they lacked spiritual depth, to grow in the knowledge of God’s truth they needed to obey him from the heart, and this always requires a test.
For this reason the LORD their Father spoke a Word that required direct obedience, “…the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:16- 17).[7]
There can be no spiritual maturity, no penetration into the knowledge of the truth of God’s Word, without obedience in the context of temptation (Israel- wilderness, Jesus - desert/cross.). Temptation requires a counter word, “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (Gen 3:5)
Incredibly, Satan claims access to God’s foreknowledge of the future. He claims to know that God cannot be trusted, that God says one thing “you shall surely die” and knows another “you will not surely die”. He is asserting that you can hear God speaking to you and not know God. He is saying you are deceived, you do not know God at all. There is only one solution to God’s deceptiveness, abandon God’s Word listen to me and know me through my Word.
The sinner is wiser in his or her own eyes than God (Prov 3:7; Isa 5:21 etc.). For this reason, Jesus excepted, all human beings have trusted themselves more than they trust God in his Word.
Sin brings a new kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is so immediate that it seems to be undeniable, it is so close it requires no trust, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths”. Gen 3:7. No one told them they were naked, their inner eyes were now opened and they just knew it in themselves. Their conscience was their word to themselves (conscience = self knowledge) that they were guilty and ashamed.
Where does humanity go with the crises of painful self – knowledge, not to God, he cannot be trusted, we always go to the same place, to Idols.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. (Rom 1:21-23)
Images of possessions, jobs, sex, sport, recognition, families, nations, churches, ministries etc. Through serving the idol I can know myself as a successful businessman, good mother, talented musician, intelligent person, generous giver…and even a spiritual person. With idol reinforcement into my conscience to tell me how I am going, who needs to seek the Word of God. You can always tell an idolater, they have no passion to hear what God is saying to them about their life, their conscience tells them “I am …such and such a person.” Example- people in counselling who are so assured of what is wrong in their lives and what is right. Listen to them, “I know…” all I wait for them to tell me is what God is saying to them about Jesus.
Idolatry however comes at great cost, the cost is greater loss of the knowledge of God. According to scripture (Lev 1:17; Deut 32:17; Ps 106:37; 1 Cor 10:20) sacrifices made to idols are actually made to demons. Paul warns the Galatians, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Gal 4:8 -9)
The workaholic husband who sacrifices his relationship with the family (or God) so that he know himself to be a good provider, the woman who puts her family before her husband to know in herself she is a good mother (cf. Gen 3:16 -19), the “good pastor” who is too busy with church work to go on retreat, are all under the influence of evil powers who speak into their conscience and tell them that their sacrifices are justified.
God hates many of the sacrifices made in the church because they are being made to false images of who he is. 6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hos 6:6) Sacrifices to an image of God without the knowledge of God lead to dryness, predictability and in the end, burn out. In The Message version of Jesus says “Are you tired, Worn Out? Burned out on religion? Come to me….Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” (Matt 11)
God has only one way of releasing us from our self assured knowledge of ourselves and our idols, 31 “…I will make a new covenant …32 not like the covenant … that they broke, …33 …: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jer 31:31- 34
The inner knowing of God (intimacy) is a direct result of the experience of forgiveness of sin.
Jesus
The author of Hebrews quotes this new covenant passage (Heb 8:10- 12;10:16- 17) for a very specific reason, “Where there is forgiveness of these (sins), there is no longer any offering for sin.” (Heb 10:18) [6] The readers of the letter were in danger of reverting to a system of making sacrifices to God in order to appease their consciences, “To feel better about themselves.”). They were placing human effort between themselves and God, and the only way they could do this was to overlook Jesus.
The primary ministry of the church is to make Christ known. The uniqueness of Jesus is that he knows himself in the Father. “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. [From now on you do know him and have seen him.]” (John 14:7) “the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:15), “…and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matt 11:27).
The identity of Jesus is not in what he knows from himself (conscience, knowledge of good and evil), but in the knowing of the Father. Jesus does not know something about God, he knows God as God knows God. As the faithful Son (unlike Adam)he cannot “unknow” the Father.
What then of the terrible cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Jesus is in dreadful shock, but, didn’t he know the scripture that he had to be “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, (to be) crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men”. (Acts 2:33), was he not aware that he was “a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 … foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet 1:19- 20)? Was it not the case that in eternity he had adopted an identity as the Father’s sacrifice?
What he could not be prepared for was what it was like to be plunged into our guilt an shame where God becomes the “unknown God” (Acts 17:23; Gal 4:8; Eph 2:12) and where under the wrath of God, plunged into the hell of humanity, Jesus is “unknown by God” (Matt 7:23; 25:12; 2 Tim 2:19). Emptied of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge “he who knew no sin became sin” (2 Cor 5:21).
When he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) he exclaims the absence of God; he has no communion with the light (1 John 1:5) he does not know that he is the way, truth and life of the Father. Jesus is given to know sin, without the experience of being known by his Father.
The impact of the passion of Jesus on the disciples was enormous – when queried in the high priest’s courtyard, Peter, who always thought he knew something, replied “I do not know the man” (Matt 26:72, 24), then at the cross they all fled. Each one forfeited their claim to know God in Christ. Each one knew themselves to be guilty. (Like Adam and Eve in their shame and fear they went into hiding, John 20:19).
The resurrection appearances effected a remarkable reversal – the disciples lose their self- consciousness and are filled with Christ –consciousness , they worship him (Matt 28:9, 17) and Thomas exclaims “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) they are ready to take on the world. Jesus words of welcome “Peace be with you” (John 20:19, 21, 26) pacify their consciences drive out their guilty self knowledge and fill them with the revelation that in Christ they are as the Father has always known them to be –restored, forgiven, cleansed human beings – their consciences are clear, they now know God with an inextinguishable knowledge and it draws out of them spontaneous worship and whole – hearted devotion.
Union with Christ
Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father;” John 10:14-15. Amazingly, we know Jesus in the same way that he knows the Father. 1 John 4:17 says “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he (Jesus) is so also are we in this world. “As he is so also are we in this world” God can no more know you as a guilty, shameful, inadequate…Christian than he can know Jesus in this way. The sin of an adopted son can only be truly known as forgiven sin. Gospel knowledge erases guilt knowledge. To know forgiveness is to know salvation (Luke 1:77)
Every day I either choose to know “good and evil” according to the dictates of my own judgements or according to the way the Father knows me “in Christ” (1 Cor 8:3 Gal 4:9). Christians who follow their conscience more than Christ will be complacent, driven, proud or depressed – they will not be at peace with God.
Those who tell themselves they are not “good enough” for God and those who think they are doing ok can never live in the passion of the intimate knowledge of God in Christ.
Jesus said of the woman who was weeping at his feet, 47 I tell you, her sins–and they are many–have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” (Luke 7:47 NLT).
Love is always in proportion to the knowledge of sins forgiven – love boasts of the one loved, it passionately and spontaneously praises and sings to and about that one loved. If this is not a description of your life it is because you are choosing to remember what God has forgotten.
Remembering those things that Lie Behind
Something is dreadfully wrong with much of the church in the western world – it lacks fire, passion, and spontaneous (cf. rehearsed) joy and bursting confidence in mission. Let me tell you what is wrong; after listing a host of godly characteristics, Peter says (and he should know!) “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind (no wisdom in his eyes), having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Pet 1:8-9)
New Christians, in the first flush of forgiveness are soft, responsive, passionate; this is not just a “honeymoon period” but the natural outflow of the knowledge of God’s grace and love.
Then after they have been in the church a while they come under its expectations, it is like having to learn the school rules in order to be a good Christian. This could be the traditional rules of legislated Bible reading, prayer, tithing and evangelism, or the new law that says to be a “successful Christian” you need prosperity and happiness.
According to Paul, “through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Rom 3:20). He warns the Galatians, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God,” how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary spirits of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? Gal 4:9
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—[ 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)]—according to human precepts and teachings?] Gal 2:21
These elemental spirits are demonic powers that motivate religious behaviour – they stir up uneasy consciences to offer sacrifices to the object of worship, so that the worshipper may feel better about themselves i.e. know themselves to be a good and not an evil person. Only the complete sacrifice of the cross removes “the consciousness of sin” so that these religious dead works need be practised no more (Heb 10:2;9:14).
If you are tired from serving Jesus it must be that it is not Jesus that you are serving but some religious idol .
I use one of the most famous musicians of the 90’s, Geoff Bullock, as an example. (“The Power of Your Love, The Heavens Shall Declare, Have Faith in God, You Rescued Me”). Geoff’s marriage was terminally damaged before he left Hills. “It was over before I knew it. I was just too busy to even notice what was happening. People say, ‘Weren’t there signs?’ Of course, there were signs. But we just thought OK, we’ll just have to work harder – serve God harder – we’ll do more for God and he will bless us.” Later on he said that it wasn’t until he left Hills that he knew Jesus and he is now rewriting many of his earlier songs to take the focus off us and put it onto God’s grace.
Application and Conclusion
At times I wonder about the very sanity of the church – we are so persuaded we know what it takes to “run a church” successfully (Ken Morrison “run a family” quote), we have come up with a very male rule for leadership “the person with the biggest knows how to do it the best”. But Jesus said, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave”, (Matt 20:26-27). We have become so wise in our own eyes.
I lecture one day a week next to Koorong Books and there is a stream of people coming and going all day – I will believe that something is actually coming of all this when there is an explosion of Bible sales and people stop reading the popular self –help literature. Until then, we are only knowing more and more about ourselves.
How different are the words of the psalmist,
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Ps 139:1- 6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me”, knowledge of me in my past, in my present, in my future.
I used to be in prayer meetings with a Pentecostal pastor and every now and then, he would spontaneously break out in praise with the words, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” This provoked me in my search for a greater knowledge of God.
Such knowledge is not at all like our knowledge of ourselves (and others) – it is not impatient, harsh, condemning, superior, self- confident (extreme in some circles in the church – “50 top leaders”) or complacent. If God in Christ never despairs of us (Jesus never complains about the church to his Father), we should never despair of ourselves, we have no authority to criticise ourselves. Monastic saying, “To despair of the patient is to insult the doctor.”
Be wise brothers and sisters, if you want to know God more allow him to put to death your own self- assured and self- righteous way of understanding yourself. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
Let us share in the apostolic wisdom, Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Phil 3:8).
[1] May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 2 Pet 1:2
[2] “To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:” 1 Pet 1:1- 2
[3] Genesis 4:1 does not say Adam “lay” with Eve or had sex with her, it literally says, “Adam knew Eve”, the key word here (yada) means relational unity – Adam and Eve had a deep inner knowing of one another as persons in love. They were entering into a shared personal – knowledge because they were created in the image of a God who is a tri-personal community of love (Gen 1:26; 1 John 4:8)
[4] cf. when God says to Israel (Amos 3:2), “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; he means he was in covenant community with only one nation.
[5] “In Christ”, the Father has foreknown me as a chosen, justified person and glorified person. The apostle is very clear on this, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Cor 13:12 To be “fully known” by God is to be related to exhaustively.
[6] This is also the teaching of New Testament, Zechariah prophesies that John the Baptist, will “give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins”, Luke 1:77
“Even when God refuses the desire of our hearts, he never refuses the heart of our desire.” (Augustine’s mother prayed he would not go to licentious Italy, he went, met Ambrose and was converted.)
Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame. 1 Cor 15:34
I quote from Sebastian Moore. “Desire is love trying to happen. It is the love that permeates all the universe, trying to happen in me. It draws into its fulfilling meaning all the appetites of our physical being. It turns the need for shelter into the sacrament that is a house. And it turns the need for food and drink into a gourmet feast. It turns sexual passion into…ah, there we have a problem” (Moore, Sebastian. Jesus the Liberator of Desire. New York: Crossroad, 1989. p 93. Quoted by Dr Joan Timmerman at http://saintjohnsabbey.org/isti/ISTIArticles/desire.html).
Cross – 1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Prov 2:1- 5
[For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. 2 Cor 8:9]
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money (Matt 6:24).
“Desire like a God that you may be satisfied like a God.” (Traherne)
[What God know is that his Word is the creator of life, it is “the word of life” “living and active” (Phil 2:16; Heb 4:12; 1 Pet 1:23; 1 John 1:1) all right knowledge of God is born of obedience (Calvin). To disobey the Word God speaks from his heart (cf. Matt 12:34; Rom 10:8- 10) is to cut oneself off from the life that God gives in himself. (Relational, spiritual, community life.)]
[7] Something did not seem to make sense here, according to Genesis 2:9 “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, was pleasant to the sight and good for food. There was nothing in the tree that was destructive for human beings. The only grounds for obeying God was to trust his Word, trust that God had relational knowledge inside himself that neither sense nor reason could convey.]
The greatest lie is that apart from God you could know good and evil as God does and in doing so achieve deathlessness. But we are not God and when we try to make ourselves equal with God we must perish.
God as God can know good and evil within his life without dying, but man cannot. For man to know good and evil is for man to come under the power of evil and to come under its power is to be separated from the life giving Word of a holy God and to die. When Adam decided to know good- and – evil by obeying the snake, he could only come to know this as Satan knows it, he came to know it as a dead person out of relation communion with God.
“For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”Col 3:1-3. Paul believes that to know Jesus is to know God.