Can We Know It All?

CAN WE KNOW IT ALL?

1 PT 1:5-9

Faith is putting your trust in Jesus Christ and what He has done.

Goodness is the real meaning of who God is.

I am sure that many of you have read the book of Job which is the book that comes just before the books of Psalms. Whether you have read it or not I would like for us to consider what it has to do with knowledge which is what we are going to talk about in adding to our faith. As the book opens we find man of God named Job. In the first two chapters of the book we find that he losses his source of income for all his animals are destroyed. He loses his children as they are killed at once. He loses his health as he is plagued with boils all over his body. His wife tells him to give up and curse God. Three of his well known friends come to visit him Eliphaz the Terminate, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite. They are so stunned by what they see they just sit and stare for a week. Then they take up a discourse in which they use powerful, blunt and outspoken words. They talk with knowledge that is with fearless confidence. They think their words are unbendable weight. They talk as if they know what is going on with God and how Job should respond. Their voices come as I imagine with thundering sound of a lightening storm. Then a younger man named Elihu speaks some more condemning words about Job. When Chapter 38 begins God lights up the sky with a thunderstorm that quiets the men who have been speaking. Job 38:2 "Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words?” God then throws out some questions that man cannot answer such as "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” "Who defined the boundaries of the sea as it burst from the womb?” "Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?” "Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you walked about and explored their depths?” Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know! "Where does the light come from, and where does the darkness go?” "Have you visited the treasuries of the snow? Have you seen where the hail is made and stored?”

“Who makes the rain fall on barren land, in a desert where no one lives?” "Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Have you watched as the wild deer are born?” The question He gives what do you know?

Bill Bryson wrote, “About 4 or 5 years ago I was on a long flight across the Pacific, staring idly out the window at a moonlight ocean, when it occurred to me with a certain uncomfortable forcefulness that I didn’t know the first things about the only planet I was ever going to live upon. I had no idea, for example, why the oceans were salty but the Great Lakes weren’t. I didn’t have the faintest idea. I didn’t know if the oceans were growing more salty with time or less, and whether ocean saltiness levels were something I should be concerned about or not. And ocean saltiness of course represented only the merest sliver of my ignorance. I didn’t know what a proton was, or a protein, didn’t know quark from a quasar, didn’t understand how geologists could look at a layer of rock on a canyon wall and tell you how old it was, didn’t know anything really. We live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t know altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.”

My question to you is, “What do you know?” We find it is not much.

1. We all need knowledge. 2 Peter 1:3, 5 “As we know Jesus better, his divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. He has called us to receive his own glory and goodness! Add to your faith goodness; and to goodness knowledge;” Would you not agree that we need knowledge? What knowledge do we need to know? We need to know what we need to know before we can know it. Consider the order in which Peter gives us this add-on to. Everything has to be built on faith. Goodness which we learned is not doing Good but it being good. We have no goodness apart from Christ in us. Next we are to ad knowledge but did you know that by itself knowledge is fatal. It makes one a know-it-all or a show off. When we think we know it all we want everyone else to believe we know it all. When we get to this place in our lives it makes us think we are better than others. 1 COR 8:1 “While knowledge may make us feel important, it is love that really builds up the church.” “We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people conceited, but love builds them up.” Knowledge is desirable but by itself it is very dangerous. We are tempted in using it as weapon or a prize instead of a characteristic from God. Without goodness our knowledge is used to put down, intimidate, and distance others. God wants us to use it to build others up, to bless others and even to serve others. Without goodness we become very self-important and detached from others. It is goodness that takes the poison out of knowledge. It is goodness the knowledge that helps one to be a benefit for others and not just to impress others.