Spiritual "know-It-Alls" Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, but how many of you know a person who is a “know-it-all”? And again, I don’t need you to answer out loud, but how do you feel about people like that? Perhaps some of these quotes will hit home with you.

[Slide show of quotes about know-it-alls will run automatically]

TENSION

Unfortunately, Christianity is not free from know-it-alls either, and the problem with that is that most of those people are not only annoying, but they tend to cause unnecessary conflict within the body of Christ.

By nature, I am the kind of person who likes things to be explained in a very systematic, logical manner And my guess is that there are probably others here this morning like that, too. So a number of years ago when I picked up a book about the end times that contained this chart, it was right up my alley. I really liked how the author laid out all the significant events in the Book of Revelation on a timeline like that. And when I read the accompanying book, it seemed like the author was intelligent and had done a great job of using Scripture to support his conclusions.

But it wasn’t too long later until I was introduced to other, equally intelligent authors who had produced similar timelines, only theirs were quite different – different enough that they couldn’t possibly all be right. And unfortunately some of those people are so convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong that it has led to warring “camps” within Christianity when it comes to the end times.

No doubt there are some things in the Bible that are absolutely clear that we ought to hang on to at all costs and which are worth fighting for:

• The Bible is clear that all men are sinners who deserving of God’s wrath and are incapable of earning favor with God by any human works that we can do.

• The Bible is clear that salvation is by faith in Jesus alone and that, as we sang earlier this morning, He is the way, and the truth and the life and that no one comes to God except through Him.

• The Bible is clear that those who choose to put their faith in Jesus will spend eternity with Him in a place of unimaginable beauty and that those who do not put their faith in Jesus will spend eternity separated from God in a place of torment and suffering.

But there are many other places where God has only given us a limited amount of information and left us with a certain degree of mystery. And it is in those areas where being a spiritual “know-it-all” causes needless controversy and conflict.

TRUTH

As we’ve been working our way through the book of Romans, and especially through the section that began in chapter 9 and concludes at the end of chapter 11 that we’re in right now, there is a lot that is pretty clear. But there is also a good amount of mystery. Certainly the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility fits into that category. While those two ideas might seem to be in conflict each other from our perspective, they are both clearly taught, not just here in Romans, but throughout the Bible. So even though we may not be able to reconcile them completely in our minds, we can nonetheless hold them both to be true.

And as we’ve seen in chapter 11 so far, there is certainly some mystery when it comes to God’s relationship with His chosen people, Israel. Last week, we saw how Paul revealed part of that mystery with the illustration of the olive tree. And as we continue in chapter 11, Paul is going to explain that mystery further. But, as we’re going to see, that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t some degree of mystery that remains even today. And so I want to use this passage to see what we can learn about why we don’t want to be spiritual “know-it-alls” when it comes to that kind of mystery and see if we can’t develop some steps we can take to avoid becoming a spiritual “know-it-all”.

[Read Romans 11:25-32]

Much of the content in this passage is further confirmation of what we learned last week about how God is dealing with both Israel and the Gentiles, and I’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, I want to spend some time looking at the first part of verse 25 that deals with the concept of spiritual “know-it-alls”.