Knowledge Or Faith?

Pastor Bruce Ball

CrossWinds Bible Church

Please turn with me as we read today’s Bible text.

One morning at a local elementary school, all the teachers were called into the teacher’s lounge for an unscheduled meeting. This meant they all had to leave their classrooms unsupervised. Mrs. Miles had the most unruly class in school, and being worried about them, she turned on the intercom just to find out if her suspicions of rowdiness were true.

Her class was indeed making all kinds of noise, and one voice stood out above all the rest. Mrs. Miles recognized that little voice, grabbed the intercom and in her sternest voice, said, “Mary! Sit down and be quiet!”

Everything got very quiet very quickly. Then, out of the silence, a small voice said, “Okay, God.”

That little girl obviously knew there was a God, but didn’t know too much about Him. Sometimes, I wonder if we know any more than little Mary knew. I mean, we have all kinds of questions for which we do not have answers.

We don’t understand all of the numerology in the Bible, like the number seven representing perfection or the number three representing the Godhead; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Most of us accept the concept of the Trinity, but we sure don’t have a full understanding. It is like an egg. An egg is comprised of a white, a yoke and a shell, but it is still only one egg. The Trinity is like a clover: A clover has three leaves, yet it is still only one clover.

In our text this morning, Jesus tells His disciples that there are many things He wanted to tell them, but they were unable to understand them. We tend to be like them, don’t we? We just don’t understand everything we would like to understand.

A Sunday school teacher was teaching the children once about believing in Jesus so they could all go to Heaven. At the end of his talk, he asked them where they wanted to go. All of them yelled out, “Heaven”.

He asked then what they had to do to go there, and there was silence. Then, one boy spoke up and said, “Die”. Sometimes, we too just understand a part of the whole.

All who acknowledge a belief in Christ have questions. God knows we are unable to understand His Godly thoughts, and so He only gives us a glimpse here and there of what He wants us to know. He doesn’t give us everything we may want to know, but He gives us everything that we need to know. I believe there is a perfectly good reason for this.

If we knew everything that God does, would we still feel the need to be totally dependant upon God? I don’t think so. I think that as arrogant and self-centered as man is; as much as we think we are the ones in control, we would turn our backs on God even faster than we already have.

God has given us enough knowledge for us to know that He does exist, but we have to understand that we are not saved by that knowledge. In EPHESIANS 2:8, it tells us that we are saved by God’s grace, through our faith. In other words, we are only saved because God loves us enough to give us that gift – but the catch is that we must believe upon His Son before we can accept it.

We are saved because we believe in Christ as our Savior, not because we have the knowledge of Christ. To know about somebody is to have the knowledge of what they have done: For instance we know about Tiger Woods, but how many of us really know him? We know about Saddam Hussein, but do we know him? I am very saddened that many churchgoers know all about Jesus, but very few really have taken the time to see that they need to know Him.

Last week, I spoke about how our founding fathers did create one nation under God. Now that didn’t mean that every one of our forefathers were Christian, though. I think we would all agree that Thomas Jefferson was a very smart man, but I don’t think anybody here would buy into his brand of belief in God. He was what they refer to as a Deist. He believed that God created the world and then left it to evolve on its own. He thought that God was not only not in control, but that He had lost all interest in mankind.

And, he did what many people do today. When he read the Bible, he found passages that disagreed with what he believed in, so he ignored them like they didn’t exist. Jefferson’s Bible deleted all references of Jesus’ deity. Every gospel in his Bible ended with the crucifixion. I think it is safe to say that Mr. Jefferson found out rather quickly how wrong he was right after he took his last breath.