Columbus was on his fourth voyage in 1504. His ships were
grounded in St. Ann's Bay in Jamaica, and the natives revolted
and refused to supply the Spaniard with food. There seemed to be
no way of escaping the agonies of starvation. Columbus was
looking at the almanac, and he learned that a total lunar eclipse
was coming. On the evening it was due he called for the natives to
assemble and told them that unless they repented and helped
them God would blot out the moon, the sun, and the stars, in that
order. He pointed to the moon which had already begun to
darken. The natives were terrified and begged Columbus to
intercede for them. Delivering food was resumed at once, and
Columbus promised that disaster would be averted. The darkness
passed, and nothing happened, of course, and the natives never
revolted again. Here is an example of the power of knowledge.
Because Columbus understood the workings of God's creation, he was
able to save his life and the lives of his men. Knowledge enabled
him to dominate and manipulate the natives who were ignorant
and superstitious. The weak are almost always weak because of
ignorance, and the strong are almost always strong because of
superior knowledge. This is supported by Scripture, reason,
history, and experience. Knowledge is power because it leads to
the discovery of the means of power. America is the strongest
nation in the world because of its superior technological
knowledge, and because it has been able to tap the resources of
power in God's creation. Only those nations that are also in
possession of this knowledge are any challenge. In some nations
wood is still the primary fuel. As nations advance they use greater
sources of power right up to nuclear fuel. Growth in knowledge
leads to growth in power. This is beyond dispute.
This being so, it follows that growth in the knowledge of God
should lead to greater power in the spiritual realm. We do not
need to speculate on this, for this is precisely what Peter and the
whole of the Bible teaches. Paul longed to know Christ and the
power of his resurrection. The two go together. In the knowledge
of God and of Christ is the power to be and become all that we
should be. Peter says in verse 2 that "grace and peace be
multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord." Grace and peace are two major values for the Christian
life, and Peter says they are multiplied in the knowledge of God
and of Christ. Growing in grace and peace is a matter of knowing
God better.
Then Peter goes on in verse 3 and says, "His divine power has
given us everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him..." In verse 5 knowledge is one of the things
that we are to diligently add to our faith. In verse 8 the goal of all
is from the negative side that we shall not be unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then in 2:20 Peter says the
power that enables men to escape the evil forces of the world is
the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He closes this
letter by writing, "But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." If we had nothing but II Peter, we
could say that the knowledge of God is the power of God, and the
means to all His benefits and promises.
This means modern man is so close to the truth and yet so far.
The worldly wise know that knowledge is power. In fact,
knowledge has become their idol. The success of science in
demonstration the power of knowledge has led to knowledge and
education being held forth as the panacea for all our problems,
and the cure for all our diseases. Knowledge is the modern
Messiah, which will bear our burdens and heal our diseases.
Salvation through science is the only hope that millions even
consider today.
The tragedy is that they have the right answer, but the wrong
object. Knowledge is the answer, but not knowledge of the
creation, but knowledge of the Creator. Modern man is making
the same foolish mistake the ancient wise men made. Paul in
Romans 1 says they had the revelation of God, and they could
have chosen Him, but in their wisdom they became fools and
chose the impersonal handiwork of God and ignored the personal
love and purpose of God. Man is becoming an expert on the
disease, but ignoring the cure completely. He has the right idea
that knowledge is power, but he is blind to the highest and most
necessary kind of power that man needs, which is spiritual power.
He neglects the knowledge of God, the only source of such power.
Modern men, in general, have a thirst for knowledge of
everything, but what they most need they most neglect. They are
like Mark Twain when he received an invitation to dine with the
Emperor of Germany. His little daughter said to him innocently,
"You'll soon know everybody except God, won't you papa?" This
is the judgment on modern man. He is anxious to know
everything and everyone but God.
God is being pushed out of the curriculum in the college of life
for masses. There are too many supposedly more realistic and
practical subjects to study. The feeling is that what cannot be
known according to the scientific method is not really knowledge,
but myth and superstition. Science is like the self-sufficient college
head who said, "I am the master of this college, and what I don't
know isn't knowledge." God is excluded, and the result is man
has been able to develop cures for almost everything but the
major things, like sin and alienation from God. Science alone is
like the medicine chest that one wrote about.
Is my finger bleeding and cut nearly off? In my medicine chest
there's a cure for a cough.
Is a tooth shooting pins out in every direction? Here is something
that's good for a hang nail infection.
Have I poison ivy and need for a lotion? Well, here, all unused, is
a seasick potion.
My medicine chest's never known to fail me...It's bursting with
cures for what doesn't ail me.
This is the weakness of science when it comes to the issue of
solving the sin problem, which keeps individuals and the world in
the same miserable mess in spite of all the scientific successes.
Physical power is not enough, for man need spiritual power, and
this can only be found in the knowledge of God and of Jesus
Christ. The task of the church is not to denounce science and
growth in the knowledge of the natural. This is both futile and
foolish, for man's mistake is not in studying God's creation. It is
in neglecting to study God Himself. This would enable man to use
his knowledge of creation for even more good to fulfill the
purpose of its Creator. The Christian is not for the prevention of
the knowledge of creation, but for the promotion of the
knowledge of the Creator.
Over half a century ago Thomas Huxley praising the advances
of science declared that the nation which sticks closest to the facts
will dominate the future. Edward Miall, a member of Parliament
agreed, but he added, "The greatest fact is God." This is what we
must believe and persuade others to believe; and not just
non-Christians, but Christians as well. They are often the cause
for the unbeliever ignoring God. Believers often have such a poor,
small and pathetic conception of God that the unbeliever feels
that He is an irrelevant fact. Goethe wrote, "As a man is, so is his
God, therefore was God so often an object of mockery." Someone
said that if a triangle had a god it would give him three sides. In
other words, God created us in His image, and we tend to return
the favor and reduce Him to our image. Emerson put it, "The god
of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusader a crusader, and
of the merchant a merchant." Walter Bagehot wrote,
The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips,
Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair,
The Grecian gods are like the Greeks
As keen-eyed, cold, and fair.
All of this is natural, and usually harmless, but it can lead to
great danger, and even evil, as men develop a god to justify all
they do. Willilam James, the great student of religious experience,
said, "The God of many men is little more than the court of
appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures
by the opinions of the world." A very non-subtle example of this
is the little girl who insisted that there was a lion in her front
yard. Her mother ordered her to go up to her bedroom and ask
God to forgive her for lying. In a short time she returned with this
happy report. She said, "God said never you mind Mary, that bid
dog pretty near fooled me too." It is funny as a girl, but tragic if
she continues to use God to justify her stubbornness as an adult.
A false knowledge of God is possibly even worse than lack of
knowledge. We must avoid the practice of being chummy with
God. It only reveals our ignorance and not a depth of
Knowledge. It is often our false pretense that drives people away
from God. Let us be honest and admit that we are pilgrims with a
long way to go, and let us stand in awe and silence before that
which we already know of God. Let God be God and tremble,
and do not cloud His light with the darkness of our ignorance. Do
not hold the puny candle of your mind before the infinite depths
of the mystery of God and pretend that you see. Be still and know
that e is God, and that we, like Paul, only see through a glass
darkly. Christopher P. Cranch wrote,
Thou so far we grope to grasp Thee,
Thou so near we cannot clasp Thee;
All pervading Spirit flowing
Through the worlds, yet past our knowing;
Artist of the solar spaces
And these humble human faces..
Though all mortal races claim Thee;
Though all language fail to name Thee;
Human lips are dumb before Thee;
Silence only may adore Thee.
Hab. 2:20 says, "But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the
earth keep silence before him."
We must stress the majesty and mystery of God even as we
grow in more and more intimate knowledge lest we become too
familiar, and by loose language bring offense rather than glory.
Let us never reduce God to our image, and our puny
righteousness. We never will if we obey the words of Peter, and
grow in the knowledge of God. This is the way to the mature,
abundant, and powerful Christian life. The idea was not new
with Peter, for the knowledge of God was also the very essence of
Judaism. The knowledge of God is a key theme in the Old
Testament. The whole purpose of the book of Proverbs was to
help men understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge
of God. One knew nothing of importance until he knew God, for
the fear of the Lord was the beginning of knowledge.
When Israel lacked knowledge of God she lost all the values of
life that made her useful to man and pleasing to God. For
example, in Hos. 4:1-3 we read, "Here the Word of the Lord, O
people of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the
inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness, and
no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lying,
killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break all
bonds and murder follows murder. Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish." It sounds like today's
newspaper report on our own society. The difference is it states
clearly the cause and solution for the mess. In verse 6 God says,
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you
have rejected knowledge I reject you.
When a nation departs from the knowledge of God every value
of the good life departs from them, and evil and decay take their
place. Grace and peace, and all the blessings of God come to the
individual and the nation by the same means. They are found in
the knowledge of God, and so the only true solution for personal,
national, and international problems, is to grow in the knowledge
of God. In Hos. 6:1,3,6 this is made clear: "Come, let us return
to the Lord; for He has torn, that He may heal us; He has
stricken, and He will bind us up...
Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord....(God says,) for I
desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God,
rather than burnt offerings. God wants us to know Him. This is
the essence of biblical religion.
God wants no part of thoughtless and mechanical ritual. To
worship God right we must worship in spirit and in truth. We
must be students we wrestle and struggle with language and ideas
as we seek to know God in truth, and love Him with all of our
mind as well as heart and soul. Christians need to become better
students of God's Word. We should think of the church as a
university, and not merely a place for fellowship. We should be
coming to church to learn what God has revealed about Himself.
It is not enough just to get good feelings, for the goal of all we do
in church is to grow in the knowledge of God.
I am convinced that American Christians are the greatest
wasters of resources for knowing God in history. We have
resources beyond the imagination of the Apostle Peter. We could
know far more about God's Word than he did if we made diligent
use of these resources. Our problem is that we do not invest our
time in the study of His Word. The most important thing we can
do in this world is to grow in the knowledge of God and of Christ
our Lord.
Nathanial Michlem of Mansfield College, Oxford has written a
poem of a blind girl who sewed by day and read her Braille Bible
each night. Her fingers became callused and the letters in her
Bible were no longer readable. Frantically she sought a way of
restoring her sensitive touch by paring away the calluses. She
discovered the pain was so great that she could not sew or read.
Then came the evening when she raised her Braille Bible to her
lips to kiss it farewell before she placed it on the shelf. She
discovered that her sensitive lips quivering in sadness were able
to distinguish the letters, and she could kiss the words into life
again. She found a new method of knowing God's Word through
her lips, and she went on growing in the knowledge of God.
If your method of Bible study has become stale, and your mind
callused and no longer sensitive to the Word of God, do not put
your Bible on the shelf, but search for a new method to kiss the
Word into life again. Experiment and never cease, for all the
blessings and power for the abundant life can only be yours as
you grow in the knowledge of God.
