Knowledge

We’ve been talking about what it means to be doing well spiritually, and know you know if you’ve been here the last couple of weeks, and if you haven’t I’m going to catch you up that it isn’t about the disciplines of religious belief. They are great. Prayer is wonderful. Reading your Bible is powerful and regularly coming to church is outstanding. Yet if you were asked how are you doing spiritually saying that you praying, reading your Bible, or attending church is as inadequate as saying your physically fit because you went to the gym last week.

Instead we have the apostle Peter who points what really is the marker for spiritual health. It is in our character.

2 Peter 1:5–8 NLT

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The very popular promises of God. Love that God loves you? I love that, another one, Do you love that God will never leave you or get rid of you as a follower of Jesus? Promises that you can count on.

Really good promises are promises that you can make other decisions because you know those promises will come through.

I like to buy things online, actually enjoy that feeling of when the package arrives and I kind of forgot what I ordered and then when I open it, surprise, it’s what I wanted. But some friends don’t like it, they say, what happens if its the wrong size, or one time I got it and it was broken. Or others will say what if it doesn’t work the way you want. I say, I will just return it. I have a promise that I can return for any reason. It’s a promise the company has backed up again and again. I can take risks in ordering because I count on that promise. I have faith in the company following through on their return policy.

Friends, God’s promises are way better than a company’s return policy and because of this, we who call ourselves Christians, followers of God, need to act on God’s promises which is why it is written

2 Peter 1:5 CSB

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge,

We are to “supplement,” which we talked about this weeks ago, is not the best translation for our modern times, the word translated supplement is not like a vitamin supplement. It isn’t like adding a little extra. It is pouring on more, like the way a child does with Kool-Aid, like an incredibly generous person does for a gift and a party. Like the best giving ever, the kind of adding where it takes your breath away, might even border on the giving too much, think like that, so we are to give to our faith, with that kind of giving, we are to give to it doing good.

We talked all about being good last week. Even pointing out that most of you would not be surprised that in church the pastor would tell you to be a good person in your life.

But what is good? It is good to be honest but as many of you know honesty without love is cruel. It might be honest to say you look pregnant in that outfit, but it is never a smart thing to say to a woman. But how does someone know not to say something like that? How does someone know honesty needs to come with love? They need to learn it. They need knowledge.

The flow of Peter makes perfect sense

2 Peter 1:5–6 CSB

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness,

So this week we talk about knowledge and knowledge is from this greek word,

gnosis, you can see that we still use a lot of words in English almost directly from the Greek language. We just change the way they sound or get spelled, just a little bit. The gn of greek becomes our kn digraph which is way too much ridiculous nerdy stuff but if you are willing keep coming with me to learn some of this,

we get some english words when pre-fixes are added like

Diagnostic (dia) and (gnosis) - “through knowledge”

when you ask the mechanic for what is wrong with your car they will hook it up with to the computer to do a diagnostic so that through knowledge they will figure out what is going on

Prognosis (pro) and (gnosis)- “before knowledge”

like when you ask the doctor will happen in the future, what knowledge does he have before the future, are you going to feel better or is your knee always going to hurt.

So that might let you know what kind of knowledge this is in this Bible verse, but here is the fancy definition.

Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek Γνῶσις

It means the insight which manifests itself in the thorough understanding of the subjects which come before it, and in the conduct determined thereby; which hits on what is right, in that it allows itself to be guided by the right knowledge of the object with which it has to do.

Oooo! That’s a of words but did the pastor say manifests! I know that word, saw that word on tic-toc. That means you say manifest and it just happens.

If the spiritual world works with manifesting in that way there is no God and there are many who are failing our sick, injured and those who are in the midst of war torn areas. Please do not be insulting. Most people who say manifesting are usually joking because they realize how ridiculous the concept is and before any of you fall down even a bad Buddhist interpretation of how the world works,

Prayer is not the same as manifesting. Prayer is not a wish. Prayer is not bringing something into existence. Prayer is going before a mighty God and hearing from God what He is doing in this world and also sharing with Him what is on your heart.

Now, that was a total digression, big word, for talking about something totally off the point, but dropping some gnosis, some knowledge, because often we can think something is harmless or no big deal and not realize how that really shapes our faith, shapes what we know as good, shapes how effective we are for Christ Jesus.

We must learn something, that is exactly right, and then do that right in our world. This is gnosis.

So this definition has nothing to do with that popular manifesting but with the real one, when something actually happens,

so this gnosis from the bible is when something is so well understood, so a part of a person, so automatic, so second-nature that it just happens and it is the good and right action.

Anyone ever driven home and not remembered how you did it. It was automatic. Perhaps you made your breakfast, or got ready for bed but never stopped to really think about what you were doing it just happened.

We do many things with just a little bit of thinking but they are things we know so well that they are a part of us.

This is how the knowledge of what God says is right should become in our lives. But if any of you have ever taught a child anything, you realize how much a child needs to learn to just live. Children can’t wear clothes, use a toilet or even make themselves food. They certainly do not know what is right.

Since all of us were or still are children, we also still need to be learning.

Which is why teaching others our faith was a command of God to the people in Moses day,

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 NLT

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.

What is interesting about this is that it isn’t the priestly duty, not even the duty of the Levites, one tribe of the 12 tribes in the days of Moses but the job of every father, every person to teach the children.

But the fathers failed. Gnosis didn’t happen, because this Knowledge did not manifest into action of doing good. Instead the people continuously did the wrong thing, over thousands of years.

Then God came himself and changed everything, God came in Jesus, He showed us how to follow Him, He died on the cross as a sacrifice to punish our sins, he took those sins upon himself, and paid that price dying, He then rose again and making the way for all of us to follow Him.

So then since all has been fulfilled what is our roll with this gnosis, this knowledge that we must generously add to the good that we are to do in regards to our faith?

Well Jesus told his disciples to teach us,

Matthew 28:19–20 NLT

Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

They did! They taught the people who were alive in their day. They wrote letters further teaching them. And these writing are this instruction through the Bible. We are supposed to grow in this knowledge, and even more

Romans 15:14 NLT

I am fully convinced, my dear brothers and sisters, that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well you can teach each other all about them.

That’s right we are instructed to teach each other, teaching each other grows our gnosis, our knowledge in what is good so that our actions are rooted in faith and goodness because we know what is good, but God doesn’t leave us alone in this task,

John 14:26 NLT

But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

The Holy Spirit, God himself, teaches you. God gives you this gnosis, through the Bible, through others and even reminds you directly of what you need to know to add now to the good that you do to show your faith in Christ Jesus.

You are supposed to learn, God teaches it, God reminds you of it, this gnosis is so manifested in your life the good just happens, and I am going to guess that no one here is surprised that people who follow Jesus are supposed to

Learn to do good and then do the good

Followers of Jesus are supposed to be good.

Ask your neighbor, is that new to you? Are you surprised?

Good thing the pastor told us to be good people, never would have saw that coming. The pastor says sarcastically.

I am guessing that even more than 4 out of 5 dentists would know that truth.

So if we all know that we are supposed to learn to do good and then do the good.

Than why am I telling you what the Bible says about learning to do good?

I don’t usually give sermons on not murdering people. We all kind of understand that right? Ask your neighbor if they knew Christians shouldn’t murder people.

So, this is learning to do good actually isn’t a knowledge problem. We know we are supposed to do good, it’s a motivation problem.

Perhaps we think that doing good is second nature to us. That what we think is ok is good and what is not ok, is really not that bad, unless of course we are killing somebody. We covered that we all know murder is bad.

Think of how many times you will hear people excuse immorality because they say, “it’s not like I’m killing anyone, I’m just having a good time.”

I have to remind all of us of the ancient wisdom of proverbs,

Proverbs 12:15 NLT

Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.

Proverbs 21:2 NLT

People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their heart.

With finally

Jeremiah 17:9 NLT

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?

The biggest liar in our lives is often ourselves.

I can confess to all of you that some of the things I have confessed to Jesus about the most are things that at the time I thought were no big deal or even, that I was more right than everyone else.

If I did that back then, it only makes sense I can still do it now unless I regularly work at learning and being right. Unless I go for what is the right thing to do. Which is done through the ways God says he teaches us the right: the Bible, regularly seeking out conversations with God and with others about God and doing right. Because if you don’t regularly seek it out, who or how will you get the knowledge you need to love God and love others?

It doesn’t just happen. If doing good is vital to what it means to be a follower of Jesus than it is that important it should be a priority in our lives.

Two examples, the first is an example from me getting old. I know getting old, I am old. Anyway, I was the chaperone for the McNair band and orchestra yesterday to their music competition. It was interesting and with some down time I got to talk with the students. We talked about spring break and she said she would be playing video games. So we discussed favorite games. She shared hers and of course I had no clue about the game she was talking about. I told her what I learned about older people like myself. I do so much learning during the day, so many decisions, that when I come time to relax I don’t want to learn anymore, I want to play a game I already know, watch movies I know I will like, I get it know. I like familar in my time of relaxing.

Life is not relaxing. Yes some good will be instantaneous like its nice to help kids and my fellow teachers out in doing nice things for kids in chaperoning them for a field trip. But lots of life isn’t easy. Even when I’m old I learn what is right in all new circumstances: Holding people accountable, helping people not to gossip but actually care about others, making decisions about power and responsibilities. Lots of life is not easy and knowing the good takes a lot of prayer and work. Its not always fun and engaging.

My other example,

I recently trained in de-escalation training for school. That is where if a student is beginning to get wild, get dangerous, get aggressive, how do we calm them down so everyone can be safe and all students can learn. As part of that we learn safe ways to hold students so they won’t hurt themselves or others. In Lodi Unified we do this training once a year for 3 hours. Where I used to work, we used a completely different system for de-escalations and for holds. We did this training every quarter, every 3 months and if we ever used the restraint we might even train on it again.

So one training I get once a year for a couple of hours and the other training I got every quarter, 4 times a year, with repeated follow-ups. Any guess which system I have gnosis about, where it comes to me automatically, without even thinking?

Of course, it is the one I was repeatedly trained on. Because in a crisis, in a hard moment, we have to be ready and remember everything we are supposed to know.

That is why we must repeatedly, often, seek out knowledge about God and His words and His ways.

Yes, we may not get it. Church is full of hypocrites, because we are trying to be something that we are not, we are trying to be good. We are trying to be righteous, we are learning what our faith and what goodness really means.

We know it doesn’t come automatic. We know it isn’t simple. We know we sin. We know we fail. We call that learning, which is the heart of knowledge and he is our great and forgiving God leading us into His righteousness if we will seek after it.

We don’t sit back saying we are bad people, entertain us, and remind us that we are forgiven. No, we are always seeking after doing and being right, because that is the marker of spiritual health for the follower of Jesus.

Let us

Matthew 6:33 NLT

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.