This was originally written as a sermon for the the evening service at the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle on 12 November 2005.
A man tried to commit a robbery in Renton, in Washington State. It was probably his first attempt at armed robbery, as suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choices.
First, the target was H & J Leather and Firearms. A gun shop.
Second, the shop was full of customers – firearms customers – in a US state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places.
Third, to enter the shop, he had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
Fourth, an officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before reporting to duty.
Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, covered by several customers who also drew their guns, thereby removing the confused criminal from the gene pool. No one else was hurt.
This man wasn’t really using his mind when he planned his heist. I mean, if you’re going to commit armed robbery, surely a gun shop is one of the worst possible places to do it. And while this is an extreme example, it seems to me that sometimes we take a similar, albeit milder, attitude when using our minds as part of our faith.
But why should we involve our minds too much in our faith. Surely, Christianity is about relationships: our relationship with God, and our relationships with others. If we thought too much about the details of our faith, surely that would undermine faith itself? I mean, if we knew how everything worked, wouldn’t that remove the need for faith in God?
Well, there are several reasons why God wants us to use our minds in our relationship with him. Firstly, he commanded it. In Mark 12:30 Jesus said: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’. Jesus said to love God with all our minds. It is placed on par with loving God with our hearts.
If we think of any relationships we have with other people, we can immediately see that a strong relationship requires knowledge of other party to that relationship. For example, I could hardly have a deep friendship with someone if I didn’t know anything about them, and didn’t make any effort to get to know them better. If you don’t know the interests of a person, what they are like, what are their goals, what are they doing, it is very hard to find common ground and have a relationship at anything other than just surface level. It is hard to trust someone that you do not know well. But as our relationship with Jesus deepens, we learn more about him. And as we read our bibles, we learn more about God, and this knowledge enriches our relationship with him. Jesus said to love God with all our minds, but it is difficult to love God with all our minds if we do not know anything about him. This type of knowledge actually increases our faith rather than decreasing it. As we learn more about God, it becomes possible for us to place more trust in him, and that is the essence of stepping out in faith.
The bible warns about having zeal without knowledge, and that is something that I have experienced myself. When my own faith really came alive, I had a quite an amazing experience with Jesus. I had been going to church for a number of years with my parents, but my relationship with Jesus was very much on the surface level until I did a Youth Alpha course, and went on the Holy Spirit weekend. That weekend I felt God speaking to me personally. I felt his amazing love for me, and so it really was a turning point in my life. It wasn’t quite a ‘road to Damascus’ experience, but it was definitely a significant event in my relationship with God. After that, my relationship with God was very big on emotional involvement and prayer, but very little on bible study and intellectual awareness of what God was really like. I was a bit suspicious of involving the mind too much in the God stuff – it was like I had segregated my life with school and normal things on one hand where I was using my mind all the time, or at least most of it. And on the other hand I had church stuff where I tried to not use my mind much at all. I didn’t think too much about what I believed, or about what God was really like and how that should affect the way I lived. The little bit of God I knew, I felt like I knew really well because I was really into it. But my knowledge of God was extremely limited, and so that bit of God that I knew was only a very tiny bit.
I was eventually challenged about this by the pastor at the church that I was going to in Palmerston North during my first year at university. He pointed to all the study, effort, and thought I put into my course at university, and asked me if I was putting the same study, effort and thought into my faith. He said to me that it was obvious that my heart was working for God, but asked me if my head was working for God as well.
That was something that really struck a chord with me at the time. Loving God with all our minds implies that we need to put a conscious effort into using our minds as part of our faith. The same effort in fact that we put into other things that we use our mind for.
So what actually is knowledge? Well, the Collins dictionary defines it as the facts or experiences known by a person or group of people. And that’s probably the normal way that we use the word today. We say that someone is knowledgeable when they know a lot about a particular topic. We refer to a body of knowledge to mean to facts or specific information about a subject. But is this the meaning of knowledge that would have been understood by the New Testament authors? What did they mean when they referred to knowledge?
The Hebrew word for the verb ‘to know’ is yada, but it does not simply refer to knowledge in the normal sense of the word. The Hebrew understanding of knowledge was primarily concerned with life in its dynamic process, and therefore conceived knowledge as an entry into relationship with the experienced world which makes demands not only on a person’s understanding, but also on their will. Knowledge, in the Hebrew sense of the word, includes experience.
So the Old Testament speaks of knowing the loss of children in Is 47:8; of knowing grief in Is 53:3; of knowing sin in Je 3:13; and knowing God’s hand and his might in Je 16:21.
But it also goes one step further. In the Old Testament, knowledge of God is not simply being aware of his existence, as that for the most part is just taken for granted. In the Old Testament, knowledge of God includes obedience to him. Those described as ignorant in the Old Testament are generally not those who don’t know him, but those who know of him, but don’t obey him. To know God is to recognise him for what he is, the sovereign Lord who makes a demand on a person’s obedience.
Knowledge of God on the one hand is literally what we know and understand about God and his ways – but it is also much more than that. Knowledge of God also includes our experience of him, and obedience to him.
It just stands to reason that one should follow safe practices while filming a safety video, but Peter, the fifty-two year old owner of a machinery and equipment training school in Perth, violated that rule of common sense while filming a forklift safety demonstration.
With the cameras rolling, he piloted the forklift across the yard, lost traction on a patch of loose gravel, and was thrown from the cabin and crushed. Subsequent investigation confirmed that the factors responsible for the fatality were driver error in using high speed over varied terrain, coupled with the imprudent decision to omit a seat belt.
Peter’s final safety demonstration was the most convincing of his career.
Being the operator of a safety training school, presumably he knew how a forklift should be operated, but didn’t put his knowledge into practice. Knowledge that is not put into practice, is really of no use at all. While knowledge that tickles our intellect may be very interesting, it must be put into practice for it to be of any use. Knowledge of God should help us move into a deeper relationship with God.
A Christianity that is merely a mental acceptance of truth is not sufficient. If faith is purely something that tickles our intellects, then it is only an academic exercise. And Jesus did not come just so we could spend all our time speculating academically about the nature of God. He did not come so we could spend the rest of our lives in theological debates. Jesus did not spend all his time in the temple having theological arguments with the scribes and teachers of the law. What would the point be in him dying simply so we could talk about it academically? James 2:19 says: ‘You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.’ An intellectual knowledge of God is not enough – the demons have that, and they are definitely not saved. If you turn to Jn 17:3, READ. Eternal life is to know God, not to know about God. It does not say: ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know about you, the only true God, and about Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’ It is so that we may know God. Jesus came that we may have life, and have it in all its abundance. Jesus calls us into a relationship with God, not just a knowledge of God.
This is something that is quite a challenge for me. While initially after my experience on Youth Alpha I didn’t use my mind in my faith much, I have changed somewhat now. I now really enjoy thinking about God. I love studying theology, contemplating the character of God, the nature of the Trinity, the work of the Holy Spirit. I enjoy reading about differing views on some disputed theological points. I love studying the bible, reading commentaries, struggling to learn some Greek, and comparing different versions of the bible to see why a particular translation was used. But it can be easy to run into the opposite danger to that which I had initially. Instead of not using my mind at all where God was concerned, there is the danger of only using the mind, and treating God as if he were just some theory to be considered, as if he were just another topic to be learned. Instead of a faith that knows very little about God, there is a danger of a faith that is purely academic. I have to always remember that even though I find bible study and theology very interesting, it is pointless if it does not lead to a deeper relationship with Jesus. It is no good if I know all about God, but do not know God.
In one of his talks on Alpha, Nicky Gumbel tells the story of buying a new Toyota car, which of course comes complete with a manual telling you how to use the car. You could read the manual a number of times, and study the more difficult parts of it in some detail. You might buy some other books in which people give their opinions as to what the authors of the manual meant when they wrote it, and you could join a group of people meeting regularly who also love Toyota cars and study the manual together. You could learn Japanese so that you could study the manual in its original language. But all of this is absolutely no good if you never get around to actually driving the car. The point of the car manual is to enable you to drive the car. The point of knowledge about God is to have a relationship with God. Knowledge about God that is not put into practice is not really of any use.
So, how do we walk in knowledge? Well, knowledge of God is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The purpose of knowledge of God it to help ourselves and others grow closer to God. I want to take a quick look at two biblical examples of people who did walk in knowledge. Firstly, the apostle Paul.
Paul, who was Saul at the time, grew up in Judaism. He said himself that he was a zealous Pharisee. Paul was very well educated – he would have known the Old Testament very well. Paul became a Christian after his experience on the road to Damascus in about 33AD. He then immediately left for Arabia for about a year, before settling back in Tarsus. Barnabas didn’t bring him to Antioch until about 43AD – 10 years later – and they didn’t begin their first missionary journey until around 47AD. So there was about 14 years between Paul’s conversion, and the time he started his first missionary journey. He had 14 years to walk in the knowledge of God before then. During that time he had the opportunity to learn a lot about God, and to grow very close to God. And this knowledge of God paid huge dividends when on his missionary journeys later.
He spoke about the history of Judaism and how it lead to faith in Jesus while he was in Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:13-52).
He explained the nature of God to a crowd of people in Lystra after they assumed that he and Barnabas were the gods in human form (Acts 14:8-18).
He argued strongly for Jesus being the Messiah in the synagogue in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9).
He defended himself before Felix the Governor (Acts 24:10-23), and then again before King Agrippa (Acts 26:1-30). And then again he defended himself before Caesar shortly after the end of the book of Acts. And there are many more examples of Paul using his knowledge to help himself and others grow in the knowledge and love of God.
If we look at his epistles, a number of them show quite clearly the depths of his knowledge of God. In particular, the book of Romans shows his understanding of God’s purposes in depth. But at the same time, he had a deep relationship with God, and a strong commitment to the pastoral care of those he had brought to faith. A large proportion of the content of his letters was not focused on teaching correct theology, but focused on growing faith in the people he was writing to, and pastoral care of them.
Paul was someone who really did walk in the knowledge of God. He had a great knowledge and understanding of God, and he put it into practice.
Jesus was also someone who walked in the knowledge of God. While he had a minor advantage in that he also is a member of the Trinity, nonetheless his example is still a good one to follow. Jesus spent 30 years preparing for 3 years of ministry. He knew the scriptures very well, and used them to fight off temptation, help his disciples understand the purposes of God, answer the Pharisees, and bring others closer to God. Jesus had a great knowledge of God, but that was never an end to itself. His purpose was always to bring people to God.
Both Paul and Jesus walked in the knowledge of God. Their knowledge of God was impressive, but it was never just knowledge for the sake of knowledge. They used their knowledge to grow closer to God, and to bring others to God. They seemed to have the balance about right.
It seems to me that it is possible to err both ways. We can either forget using our minds at all in regard to our faith, or focus solely on the intellectual side. Neither of these are what Jesus had in mind. Jesus said we were to love God with all our minds – the intellectual effort we put into our faith should be the same if not greater than the effort we put in when using our mind in other aspects of our lives. But he also said that eternal life was to know God, and to know Jesus. Eternal life is a relationship. Loving God with all our minds leads us deeper into a relationship with God.
I’ve fallen into both those traps so far in my walk with God – both not using my mind at all, and having a faith that has been almost purely intellectual. The correct approach is somewhere in the middle. The challenge for us tonight is to get that balance. So which way are you in danger of going? What should you be doing to address it?reason 3 serien nummer
A man tried to commit a robbery in Renton, in Washington State. It was probably his first attempt at armed robbery, as suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choices.
First, the target was H & J Leather and Firearms. A gun shop.
Second, the shop was full of customers – firearms customers – in a US state where a substantial portion of the adult population is licensed to carry concealed handguns in public places.
Third, to enter the shop, he had to step around a marked police patrol car parked at the front door.
Fourth, an officer in uniform was standing next to the counter, having coffee before reporting to duty.
Upon seeing the officer, the would-be robber announced a hold-up and fired a few wild shots. The officer and a clerk promptly returned fire, covered by several customers who also drew their guns, thereby removing the confused criminal from the gene pool. No one else was hurt.
This man wasn’t really using his mind when he planned his heist. I mean, if you’re going to commit armed robbery, surely a gun shop is one of the worst possible places to do it. And while this is an extreme example, it seems to me that sometimes we take a similar, albeit milder, attitude when using our minds as part of our faith.
But why should we involve our minds too much in our faith. Surely, Christianity is about relationships: our relationship with God, and our relationships with others. If we thought too much about the details of our faith, surely that would undermine faith itself? I mean, if we knew how everything worked, wouldn’t that remove the need for faith in God?
Well, there are several reasons why God wants us to use our minds in our relationship with him. Firstly, he commanded it. In Mark 12:30 Jesus said: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’. Jesus said to love God with all our minds. It is placed on par with loving God with our hearts.
If we think of any relationships we have with other people, we can immediately see that a strong relationship requires knowledge of other party to that relationship. For example, I could hardly have a deep friendship with someone if I didn’t know anything about them, and didn’t make any effort to get to know them better. If you don’t know the interests of a person, what they are like, what are their goals, what are they doing, it is very hard to find common ground and have a relationship at anything other than just surface level. It is hard to trust someone that you do not know well. But as our relationship with Jesus deepens, we learn more about him. And as we read our bibles, we learn more about God, and this knowledge enriches our relationship with him. Jesus said to love God with all our minds, but it is difficult to love God with all our minds if we do not know anything about him. This type of knowledge actually increases our faith rather than decreasing it. As we learn more about God, it becomes possible for us to place more trust in him, and that is the essence of stepping out in faith.
The bible warns about having zeal without knowledge, and that is something that I have experienced myself. When my own faith really came alive, I had a quite an amazing experience with Jesus. I had been going to church for a number of years with my parents, but my relationship with Jesus was very much on the surface level until I did a Youth Alpha course, and went on the Holy Spirit weekend. That weekend I felt God speaking to me personally. I felt his amazing love for me, and so it really was a turning point in my life. It wasn’t quite a ‘road to Damascus’ experience, but it was definitely a significant event in my relationship with God. After that, my relationship with God was very big on emotional involvement and prayer, but very little on bible study and intellectual awareness of what God was really like. I was a bit suspicious of involving the mind too much in the God stuff – it was like I had segregated my life with school and normal things on one hand where I was using my mind all the time, or at least most of it. And on the other hand I had church stuff where I tried to not use my mind much at all. I didn’t think too much about what I believed, or about what God was really like and how that should affect the way I lived. The little bit of God I knew, I felt like I knew really well because I was really into it. But my knowledge of God was extremely limited, and so that bit of God that I knew was only a very tiny bit.
I was eventually challenged about this by the pastor at the church that I was going to in Palmerston North during my first year at university. He pointed to all the study, effort, and thought I put into my course at university, and asked me if I was putting the same study, effort and thought into my faith. He said to me that it was obvious that my heart was working for God, but asked me if my head was working for God as well.
That was something that really struck a chord with me at the time. Loving God with all our minds implies that we need to put a conscious effort into using our minds as part of our faith. The same effort in fact that we put into other things that we use our mind for.
So what actually is knowledge? Well, the Collins dictionary defines it as the facts or experiences known by a person or group of people. And that’s probably the normal way that we use the word today. We say that someone is knowledgeable when they know a lot about a particular topic. We refer to a body of knowledge to mean to facts or specific information about a subject. But is this the meaning of knowledge that would have been understood by the New Testament authors? What did they mean when they referred to knowledge?
The Hebrew word for the verb ‘to know’ is yada, but it does not simply refer to knowledge in the normal sense of the word. The Hebrew understanding of knowledge was primarily concerned with life in its dynamic process, and therefore conceived knowledge as an entry into relationship with the experienced world which makes demands not only on a person’s understanding, but also on their will. Knowledge, in the Hebrew sense of the word, includes experience.
So the Old Testament speaks of knowing the loss of children in Is 47:8; of knowing grief in Is 53:3; of knowing sin in Je 3:13; and knowing God’s hand and his might in Je 16:21.
But it also goes one step further. In the Old Testament, knowledge of God is not simply being aware of his existence, as that for the most part is just taken for granted. In the Old Testament, knowledge of God includes obedience to him. Those described as ignorant in the Old Testament are generally not those who don’t know him, but those who know of him, but don’t obey him. To know God is to recognise him for what he is, the sovereign Lord who makes a demand on a person’s obedience.
Knowledge of God on the one hand is literally what we know and understand about God and his ways – but it is also much more than that. Knowledge of God also includes our experience of him, and obedience to him.
It just stands to reason that one should follow safe practices while filming a safety video, but Peter, the fifty-two year old owner of a machinery and equipment training school in Perth, violated that rule of common sense while filming a forklift safety demonstration.
With the cameras rolling, he piloted the forklift across the yard, lost traction on a patch of loose gravel, and was thrown from the cabin and crushed. Subsequent investigation confirmed that the factors responsible for the fatality were driver error in using high speed over varied terrain, coupled with the imprudent decision to omit a seat belt.
Peter’s final safety demonstration was the most convincing of his career.
Being the operator of a safety training school, presumably he knew how a forklift should be operated, but didn’t put his knowledge into practice. Knowledge that is not put into practice, is really of no use at all. While knowledge that tickles our intellect may be very interesting, it must be put into practice for it to be of any use. Knowledge of God should help us move into a deeper relationship with God.
A Christianity that is merely a mental acceptance of truth is not sufficient. If faith is purely something that tickles our intellects, then it is only an academic exercise. And Jesus did not come just so we could spend all our time speculating academically about the nature of God. He did not come so we could spend the rest of our lives in theological debates. Jesus did not spend all his time in the temple having theological arguments with the scribes and teachers of the law. What would the point be in him dying simply so we could talk about it academically? James 2:19 says: ‘You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.’ An intellectual knowledge of God is not enough – the demons have that, and they are definitely not saved. If you turn to Jn 17:3, READ. Eternal life is to know God, not to know about God. It does not say: ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know about you, the only true God, and about Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’ It is so that we may know God. Jesus came that we may have life, and have it in all its abundance. Jesus calls us into a relationship with God, not just a knowledge of God.
This is something that is quite a challenge for me. While initially after my experience on Youth Alpha I didn’t use my mind in my faith much, I have changed somewhat now. I now really enjoy thinking about God. I love studying theology, contemplating the character of God, the nature of the Trinity, the work of the Holy Spirit. I enjoy reading about differing views on some disputed theological points. I love studying the bible, reading commentaries, struggling to learn some Greek, and comparing different versions of the bible to see why a particular translation was used. But it can be easy to run into the opposite danger to that which I had initially. Instead of not using my mind at all where God was concerned, there is the danger of only using the mind, and treating God as if he were just some theory to be considered, as if he were just another topic to be learned. Instead of a faith that knows very little about God, there is a danger of a faith that is purely academic. I have to always remember that even though I find bible study and theology very interesting, it is pointless if it does not lead to a deeper relationship with Jesus. It is no good if I know all about God, but do not know God.
In one of his talks on Alpha, Nicky Gumbel tells the story of buying a new Toyota car, which of course comes complete with a manual telling you how to use the car. You could read the manual a number of times, and study the more difficult parts of it in some detail. You might buy some other books in which people give their opinions as to what the authors of the manual meant when they wrote it, and you could join a group of people meeting regularly who also love Toyota cars and study the manual together. You could learn Japanese so that you could study the manual in its original language. But all of this is absolutely no good if you never get around to actually driving the car. The point of the car manual is to enable you to drive the car. The point of knowledge about God is to have a relationship with God. Knowledge about God that is not put into practice is not really of any use.
So, how do we walk in knowledge? Well, knowledge of God is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The purpose of knowledge of God it to help ourselves and others grow closer to God. I want to take a quick look at two biblical examples of people who did walk in knowledge. Firstly, the apostle Paul.
Paul, who was Saul at the time, grew up in Judaism. He said himself that he was a zealous Pharisee. Paul was very well educated – he would have known the Old Testament very well. Paul became a Christian after his experience on the road to Damascus in about 33AD. He then immediately left for Arabia for about a year, before settling back in Tarsus. Barnabas didn’t bring him to Antioch until about 43AD – 10 years later – and they didn’t begin their first missionary journey until around 47AD. So there was about 14 years between Paul’s conversion, and the time he started his first missionary journey. He had 14 years to walk in the knowledge of God before then. During that time he had the opportunity to learn a lot about God, and to grow very close to God. And this knowledge of God paid huge dividends when on his missionary journeys later.
He spoke about the history of Judaism and how it lead to faith in Jesus while he was in Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:13-52).
He explained the nature of God to a crowd of people in Lystra after they assumed that he and Barnabas were the gods in human form (Acts 14:8-18).
He argued strongly for Jesus being the Messiah in the synagogue in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9).
He defended himself before Felix the Governor (Acts 24:10-23), and then again before King Agrippa (Acts 26:1-30). And then again he defended himself before Caesar shortly after the end of the book of Acts. And there are many more examples of Paul using his knowledge to help himself and others grow in the knowledge and love of God.
If we look at his epistles, a number of them show quite clearly the depths of his knowledge of God. In particular, the book of Romans shows his understanding of God’s purposes in depth. But at the same time, he had a deep relationship with God, and a strong commitment to the pastoral care of those he had brought to faith. A large proportion of the content of his letters was not focused on teaching correct theology, but focused on growing faith in the people he was writing to, and pastoral care of them.
Paul was someone who really did walk in the knowledge of God. He had a great knowledge and understanding of God, and he put it into practice.
Jesus was also someone who walked in the knowledge of God. While he had a minor advantage in that he also is a member of the Trinity, nonetheless his example is still a good one to follow. Jesus spent 30 years preparing for 3 years of ministry. He knew the scriptures very well, and used them to fight off temptation, help his disciples understand the purposes of God, answer the Pharisees, and bring others closer to God. Jesus had a great knowledge of God, but that was never an end to itself. His purpose was always to bring people to God.
Both Paul and Jesus walked in the knowledge of God. Their knowledge of God was impressive, but it was never just knowledge for the sake of knowledge. They used their knowledge to grow closer to God, and to bring others to God. They seemed to have the balance about right.
It seems to me that it is possible to err both ways. We can either forget using our minds at all in regard to our faith, or focus solely on the intellectual side. Neither of these are what Jesus had in mind. Jesus said we were to love God with all our minds – the intellectual effort we put into our faith should be the same if not greater than the effort we put in when using our mind in other aspects of our lives. But he also said that eternal life was to know God, and to know Jesus. Eternal life is a relationship. Loving God with all our minds leads us deeper into a relationship with God.
I’ve fallen into both those traps so far in my walk with God – both not using my mind at all, and having a faith that has been almost purely intellectual. The correct approach is somewhere in the middle. The challenge for us tonight is to get that balance. So which way are you in danger of going? What should you be doing to address it?reason 3 serien nummer
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