Knowledge

THE APPRENTICE
KNOWLEDGE
DR. JIM DIXON
2 PETER 1:3-19
SEPTEMBER 17, 2006

In the year 1852, a new political party was formed in the United States of America. That party was called the “Know Nothing Party.” Now, they did not originally call themselves the Know Nothing Party. They were originally called “The American Party” but they gathered in secret societies, and they were told to never disclose the things they discussed. And so when someone came up to a member of The American Party and said, “What were you discussing in your meeting?” they always responded by saying, “I don’t know. Just do not know,” and pretty soon they were called “The Know Nothings.” Their platform was pretty simple. They were against immigration. They did not want people born in other countries to hold office in this country. They were anti-Catholic and they did not want Catholics to attain elected positions in the United States of America.

In the year 1854, the Know Nothings, in that election, took the State of Massachusetts and the city of Boston. They almost won New York. They almost won Pennsylvania and the garnered millions of votes across the southern states. Of course, as the Civil War approached, The Know Nothings were divided on the issue of slavery and after the Civil War they just ceased to exist. Today, there is no Know Nothing Party. I think it is true that the Republicans would sometimes think of the Democrats as Know Nothings and the Democrats would think of the Republicans as Know Nothings, but I think everybody knows something. I do not think any of us would want to be labeled by our ignorance. I think everybody wants to have knowledge and knowledge is what we are going to talk about today, a particular type of knowledge.

We are disciples of Jesus Christ. We are His apprentices. We follow Him and He is seeking to transform us. He is seeking to grow us. He is seeking to make us like Himself, and He wants us to grow in a number of areas. He wants us to grow in our knowledge, and that is what we are going to look at today, in order that we would not be Know Nothings.

I have three teachings and the first teaching is this: Knowledge for us as Christians is based supremely on the Bible. This is the first teaching. Knowledge is based supremely on the Word of God, the Bible.

When Mao Zedong ascended the leadership of China in the year 1949, he established the People’s Republic of China. Of course, in him and through him, Communism reached it ascendancy and China became a Communist nation. They shut their doors and they shut themselves off from the outside world and from the other nations and they began to persecute Christians within their nation. At that time, 1949, there were millions of Christians in China. The Communist government in China began to persecute Christians and the rest of the Christian world wanted to know what was happening to our brothers and our sisters in China.

The years passed, and in fact decades passed, and in 1972 we began to get messages from a group in China called themselves the “This I Know People.” The Chinese government, which blocked many messages that were sent out of the country, did not block these messages because they seemed nonsensical to the Communist government. They did not know who the “This I Know People” were. But here in America, we know who the “This I Know People” were. The “This I Know People” were Christians. They were quoting Anna Warner’s famous song, “Jesus Loves Me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Anna Warner is buried today at the military cemetery at West Point. She is one of only two civilians buried at the military cemetery at West Point. She and her sister are buried there with full honors because for 40 years they taught Bible Studies at West Point. Even to this day, their house on Constitution Island still stands at West Point. Anna Warner wrote this simple song and missionaries taught this song to children and adults alike in every nation of the world. “Jesus Loves Me, this I know… “. You’ve sung the song, and it says, “for the Bible tells me so.” The song in its own simple way is really about epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know truth. Epistemology is the study of how we know, how we attain to knowledge, how we know what is true. Of course, we know truth supremely through the Bible. “This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

In the Hellenized world, Greek philosophers studied epistemology. “How do we know what is true?” They came up with various epistemologies, various methods of knowing what was true—sensory observation, inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning. All of these are means of knowing the truth. Of course, during the enlightenment, in the age of reason, European philosophers studied epistemology and they came up with the scientific method. We can know something is true by virtue of the scientific method.

As Christians, certainly we use the scientific method just like everyone else. We use inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and sensory observation. All of these things are important in our epistemology, but as Christians we also believe in revelation. We believe in divine revelation, and we believe we have it here. We have divine revelation in this book we call the Bible, all sixty-six books—39 in the Old, twenty-seven in the New. All 66 Books of the Bible represent divine revelation and our source of knowledge. Knowledge comes supremely from the Bible.

I guess I would just pose this question. Do you study the Bible? Do you meditate on God’s Word? Evan sang that beautiful song, “Word of God Speak,” but of course the Word of God does not speak if you do not read it. If you open this Book, God will speak, and you want Him to speak into your life. I want Him to speak into My life. And we need this daily.

There was a time in the European Continent in the Middle Ages when Bibles were called “catenati.” Catenati is a Latin word, and the word means, “chained.” The reason Bibles were called catenati is because there was a time when all Bibles, virtually all Bibles, were chained. Did you know that? Bibles were so rare. This was prior to Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press, prior to Tyndale and Wycliffe and all the translators who mass marketed the scriptures. Bibles were very rare, and they were chained. You found Bibles chained to pulpits in churches. You found Bibles chained to desks in the homes of the wealthy. They were all handwritten and they were works of art. Their covers were adorned with precious jewels. Catenati. They were chained.

They are not chained today. We live in an amazing time. Everyone can have a Bible. My guess is all of you have multiple Bibles. If we went and searched your house, we would probably find at least five Bibles there. I will bet you there are forty Bibles in my house. They might as well still be chained if we do not open them. They might as well still be chained. They might as well still be rare if we do not open them. What a privilege we have to have divine revelation that we can hold in our hand, that we can sit down and read at home, that we can take a little walk and maybe read in a quiet place the Word of God. It is our supreme source of knowledge.

There are a lot of Bible quizzes that people give. Some of them are just really meant to be funny questions. Sometimes we give kids Bible quizzes, and we say things like, “Where is baseball first mentioned in the Bible?” There are two answers. One is, “In the beginning” (big inning). Genesis 1:1. And then the other place is, “The prodigal son made a home run.” We ask questions like, “Where’s high finance mentioned in the Bible?” Of course, the Bible tells us that “Noah floated his stock while the world was in liquidation.” That is high finance. My favorite, which always gets me into trouble is, “Where is PMS mentioned in the Bible?” The Bible says that “Mary rode Joseph’s ass all the way to Bethlehem.”

Those kinds of quizzes are really just fooling around. They are not serious. It does not matter whether you know the answers to those kind of questions, but what does matter is whether you meditate on this book and whether you study this book because it is God’s Word. I take time every day… I try to carve out time every day to be in the scriptures. It is not just because I am a pastor, and it is not because I am always preparing to teach or to preach. I just need to hear God speak into my life. I need it every day. I try to carve out a little time every day in the afternoon. You need to find time every day. Maybe it is in the morning, maybe the afternoon, maybe late at night, but carve time. We are His disciples. We are His apprentices and He’s told us we are to grow higher in our knowledge and this is where we find it.

The second teaching this morning is this: The Bible is our source of theological knowledge. The Bible is our supreme source of knowledge and the knowledge we get from the Bible is first theological. Theology comes from two Greek words: “Theos,” which means, “God,” and “logos,” which means, “to study.” So, theology is the study of God. It is also the study of the supernatural realm. We study, in the Bible, the whole realm of the supernatural. Of course, in the Bible this theological knowledge relates to a variety of subjects. In the Bible, this theological knowledge relates first of all to cosmology, to our understanding of the cosmos and the creation. You can read science books and you will acquire a certain type of knowledge. You can read about the Big Bang, which allegedly took place at the birth of the universe as all matter was condensed and just exploded outward, filling the cosmic void with galactic systems. If you believe in the Big Bang, that is fine, but it really does not answer the ultimate question. It does not say where matter came from. Where did all that energy and matter come from? The Bible answers that question.

If you just are a secularist, if you script God out, you have to believe that matter spontaneously generated, which is a ludicrous assertion. Or you have to believe that matter was eternally existent so that you have an effect without a cause, which is also ludicrous. The Bible gives us a very rational explanation. God created. “In the beginning God created … ” “ex nihilo,” Latin meaning, “out of nothing.” He just called it into being.

Our cosmology is shaped by biblical theology. And of course, our anthropology, our understanding of man, is also shaped by biblical theology. So we understand that man is not some kind of accident through secular Darwinism. Man exists by the plan and by the purpose and by the design of God. We are the crown of His creation, created in His image, the imago Dei. We are complex. The Bible tells us that we are dichotomous or perhaps trichotomous—body, soul, spirit—”soma,” “psyche,” “pneuma.” We are able to operate in this natural physical world but also in the spiritual or supernatural world as we commune with God. We are complex beings. Our understanding of anthropology is shaped by biblical theology, so we study seeking knowledge in these areas.

We understand angelology and demonology from biblical theology. So we understand there is a spiritual realm, not just a physical realm, but there is a spiritual realm. God created spiritual beings—what the Bible and the New Testament call the “angeloi,” in the Hebrew in the Old Testament, “the mal’a?im,” and they are angels. They are holy and they are fallen, and they are engaged in spiritual warfare. This spiritual warfare impacts nations and individuals. It impacts you. It impacts me. So, our biblical theology shapes our understanding of these things, and it shapes our understanding of Christology. Who is Jesus Christ? Why did He come into the world? What did He seek to do? What has He done? Where is He now? What is His divine nature? What is His human nature? All of these things.

We grow in knowledge through our reading of the Bible and its theology. The same is true of pneumatology. Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. If you want to study pneumatology, where do you go? You go to the Bible, biblical theology, and you learn all about the person of the Holy Spirit and His role in regeneration and rebirth, His role in our sanctification, His role in the gospel and its proclamation. Did you know that whenever you share Jesus with anyone, the Holy Spirit attends that moment and empowers it? Of course, the Holy Spirit gifts His people, the disciples of Jesus Christ. He gives gifts and the Holy Spirits bears the fruit of Christlikeness in our lives, and we will be looking at that next week when we look at character and what it means to grow in character.

Biblical theology shapes our understanding of soteriology and so soteriology has to do with salvation. What must I do to be saved? The Greek word is, “soterias,” salvation, “sozo,” to save. What must I do to be saved? Well, we know biblically that we are saved by grace through faith. As we saw last week, faith is expressed in discipleship. A Christian is a disciple of Jesus Christ, and a disciple of Jesus Christ is a Christian. This does not mean that we are saved by works. Some of you, on the basis of your e-mails this week, have misunderstood that. We are not saved by our works. No matter how good a disciple you are, you will never earn heaven. Heaven is solely by His grace, but His grace is given to His disciples. His grace, His saving grace, is poured out on Christians, followers of Jesus Christ.

We understand eschatology from biblical theology. We spent the whole summer looking at eschatology, from the word “eschaton,” which means, “last things.” We spent this whole summer looking at the Last Things. Where do you find out about the last things? In the Bible. It is biblical theology and so it does not matter what area… even if you are looking at ecclesiology and the Church and the purpose and life and mission of the Church, all of this knowledge comes from the Bible, and it all has to do with theology. It has to do with God in the supernatural realm and how it relates to all these various subjects and disciplines. So we study the Bible. The second teaching this morning is simply that in the Bible we gain knowledge of theology.

There is a third teaching, a last teaching. In the Bible we gain knowledge of morality. It is important not just to have knowledge of theology, theological truth. It is important to gain knowledge of morality, moral truth. So when we go to the Bible, we are looking for theological and moral truth. This Book is not given to us primarily as a textbook on history or science. It is given to us that we might come to theological and moral truth, and I believe this Book is without error. It is infallible with regard to theology and morality. We can trust it. If you want to know what is morally true, open up the Word of God.

We live in a changing world. In many ways this world is changing. Today you could take a drive through Iowa, and you will not see as many barns as you once did. In 1950 there were 300,000 barns in the State of Iowa. I do not know who counted them. Today there are only 50,000 barns in Iowa and Iowa is losing 1,000 barns a year. The whole agricultural world is being reshaped. It is changing. The world changes. The world of course changes in terms of its moral values, too, and how cultures and societies view morality.

I know most of you have heard of Nathaniel Hawthorne and you know that Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of America’s finest authors. Hawthorne wrote books about morality. He wrote books about sin and redemption. In the year 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne published his famous book The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter was about the sin of adultery and its setting was Puritan New England. Of course, in Puritan New England sinners were to be publicly exposed in order that they might experience societal shame. This does not sound very loving to have sinners be publicly exposed for the sake of shame, but Puritans believed that it was very loving. They believed that it was ultimately redemptive for society to experience shame. They believed that if societies did not publicly expose sin and if there was no shame, societies would pretty soon just ignore sin.

The same thing was true in Israel in biblical times. Sinners were publicly exposed for the sake of societal shame. In fact, in the Bible when you see the Christmas story and you read about Joseph and how, when he discovered that Mary, his betrothed was pregnant, and he assumed she had committed adultery, the Bible tells us that Joseph resolved to divorce her quietly. He was not willing to put her to shame. What would have been normative in that culture would have been to put her to shame so that her sin might be public. The Jews believed this ultimately created a better world.

I think there is probably no one in this room that wants us to go back to the Puritan days. I do not think there is anyone in this room who would want us to go back to the days of Israel and biblical times, but I think we would all agree that maybe we do not have enough shame in our culture and in our society and maybe we do not take sin seriously enough today. There is definitely a problem today in terms of just casual attitudes about sin. Of course, our cultural values are changing. You take the Greek word, the New Testament word, “porneia.” The word porneia originally meant, “sex prior to marriage.” It is fornication. In fact, fornication, our English word, comes from the Greek, “porneia,” as does the word “pornography.” They both come from this Greek word, “porneia,” but originally porneia meant sex prior to marriage and it was shameful in biblical times. The New Testament and the Old Testament both teach that pornea is a sin, that sex is this beautiful gift meant to be opened only within the context of marriage and that sex is in fact an expression of the marriage union, the marriage commitment, the marriage bond. So it is sin when we take it out of that context, the Bible says. Of course, our culture used to think like that.

Here in America we used to think like that, but not anymore. You know that is not true anymore. Most people in America today view fornication and sex prior to marriage as almost a given. They view it as just kind of good clean fun. That is the way our mores have been reshaped in this culture and time. But understand this: In the sight of God, morality does not change. Understand that God’s truth transcends time and culture and what was true 2,000 years ago is still true today. If it was wrong then, it is still wrong now in the sight of God. It is not easy to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and to live by his teachings, but it is the call to His apprentices.

In the Old Testament, morality centers on the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. In the New Testament, our morality centers on the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave us a deeper view of morality. Jesus said, “You’ve heard it said of old, thou shalt not kill. Whoever kills will be liable for judgement. I say to you whoever is angry with his brother or sister will be liable for judgement. Whoever says to his brother, ‘You fool,’ will be liable for counsel, the Sanhedrin. Whoever calls his brother morally bankrupt will be liable for hellfire. You’ve heard it said of old, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.” That is a deeper view of morality. “You have heard it said of old, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ I say to you, love your enemy. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those that abuse you.” That is a deeper morality.

Of course Jesus taught us that ultimately all moral truth is summed up in love. It is all summed up in love. If you want to know what love requires, here is the Word of God. You could go out on virtually any street, or any street corner, and you could say, “Do you believe in love?” Everybody believes in love, but many people do not want to know what love requires. If you want to know what love really requires, go to the Word of God. See what it means to love God. See what it means to love our fellow man. This is the knowledge we seek, and the Bible is where we find it—knowledge and its moral truth and its theological truth. That is the knowledge that we are called to grow in as disciples of Jesus Christ.

I want to tell you a little story. I know there might be a few of you here who have heard it. Richard Mentor Johnson was born in 1780 and he was born in the little town of Bear Grass. Bear Grass today is called Louisville, Kentucky. Richard Mentor Johnson was born there in 1780. In 1819 at the age of thirty-nine, Richard Johnson became a United States Senator. A year later in 1820 he formed a friendship with a man named John Symmes. John Symmes was kind of a pseudoscientist, kind of a wannabe scientist, and he bought into what was called the “hollow earth theory.” John Symmes believed that the earth was hollow and that deep within this planet is like another inner world and there are lakes, rivers, meadows, and animals, maybe even people. He believed that there was a little sun, just a miniature sun, orbiting within our planet giving light to that inner world. That is the hollow earth theory. He tried to convince scientists all over the world that the earth was hollow, and they suggested that maybe something else was hollow.

John Symmes really believed this, and he convinced his friend Richard Johnson that the hollow earth theory was true. So here is a United States Senator, and he believes in the hollow earth theory. What does he do in 1823? Richard Mentor Johnson brings a motion to the floor of the Senate that, using taxpayers dollars, the government of the United States mount an expedition into the center of the earth, a journey to the center of the earth. This was in 1823. Of course, the Congress voted that down and we can be grateful for that. But incredibly, 25 United States Senators voted for it. They joined Richard Mentor Johnson and voted for a journey to the center of the earth.

In 1837, Richard Mentor Johnson became the Vice President of the United States serving under Martin Van Buren, the first Vice President appointed by the Senate, the only Vice President in United States history appointed by the Senate. I think it is safe to say… is this not true Richard Mentor Johnson had a warped worldview on the physical level? Just in terms of his view of this planet, he had a strange worldview, didn’t he? A really strange worldview. It did not fit reality.

Of course, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, Christ is seeking to shape your worldview and He wants it to fit reality. Christ is trying to shape my worldview and He wants it to fit reality. Worldviews are changing in society. Worldviews are changing out there in the culture. You cannot be sure anymore that your next-door neighbor has a biblical worldview. You sit down to have a cup of coffee with an associate at work and you cannot be sure that they have a biblical worldview. There are all kinds of strange world views out there now that are not shaped by the Bible. They are not informed by biblical knowledge. There are people out there that I talk to who actually think that children are born without sin, that they are just intrinsically, innately good and if you just give them freedom they will turn into a wonderful garden. You do not even have to pull weeds. That is part of their worldview. It affects the way they raise their kids.

There are people out there who believe in reincarnation, and they believe that, “Oh boy! We are just going to get to do it over and over and over again. You don’t have to take this that seriously because you’re going to get a chance to do it all over again and again and again.” The Bible says, “It’s appointed unto men once to die and then judgement.” You are going to have to take life more seriously and have a biblical worldview.

I guess as we close, I just want to encourage you to let God shape your worldview and to grow in theological knowledge and in moral knowledge and to make a commitment with me to spend time every day in the Bible. In fact, as we close this morning, I want to give you a chance to make a commitment to God to read your Bible every day. I do not want this to be legalistic. I know you are going to have some crazy chaotic days where you cannot get to the Bible and God understands that, but I want you to make a commitment to seek to read the Bible daily from this time forth, for the rest of your life, to seek to read the Bible daily as part of discipleship as His apprentice. Would you make that commitment with me today? That you will carve a little time out of every day? And every day we will all be in the Word of God, and we will be growing in knowledge theologically and morally. Let us look to the Lord with a word of prayer.