Wising up to Wisdom
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Good morning! We are in our series in 1 John entitled Radical Community this and this morning message we are going to be looking wisdom… and How wisdom should be part of our growth strategy in our spiritual formation..“Wising up to Wisdom.”
Buckminster Fuller is responsible for creating the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”; he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years.
Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth.
For example, nano-technology knowledge is doubling every two years and clinical knowledge every 18 months.
But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months.
According to IBM, the build out of the “internet of things” will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours…
We all know that knowledge is increasing at a rapid rate…
How about wisdom? As we look at our culture and world today -
would say that wisdom has increased a
the same rate?— we have more knowledge at our finger tips than any other generation.. But do have wisdom?
What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?
Knowledge is the awareness or understanding that is derived from information that we have gathered and obtained.
The other characteristic of knowledge is that its incomplete… I was reading an article that said that there is one new book for sale on Amazon every 5 minutes ... Solomon wrote in Ecc 12:12 of many making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh…
In other words knowledge… will always increase because its incomplete.. Not only is it incomplete --- knowledge will never be fully realized on its own.
John Wesley wrote sermon entitled the “imperfection of Human knowledge” --- His text was 1 Cor 13:9 — We know in part.... we prophesy in part… but when perfect comes… the partial will pass away… No matter how far we go with world knowledge it will never be complete....
There is a fundamental difference between knowledge and wisdom
Charles Spurgeon made this observation...
Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. -Charles Spurgeon
We have a whole Genre of wisdom literature in the Bible… Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Job and Eccesiates... Book of proverbs introduces us to the topic of wisdom by giving us several words associated with wisdom.....
1 The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:
2 To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight,
3 to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth—
5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance,
6 to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Solomon introduces Wisdom as understanding words of insight… Then putting them into practice — There is a range of words that describe wisdom..and it has to do with the living out of wisdom.
Practicing righteousness (doing the right thing)
Practicing Justice has to do with discerning right and wrong - good and evil.
Practicing Equity or Fairness—
Wisdom Grows..
Wisdom is Received -
it increases in learning,
obtains guidance,
understand riddles..
We told that the begining of Wisdom… is the fear of the Lord… Now - fear is normally associated with our concerns for our life or future… and cause anxiety and other disorders… There is an actual website called the phobialist.com… There are 100’s of phobia’s out there…it is kind of amusing to go through the list... Some strange ones like the Fear of Chickens, Fear of books, fear of clowns, Fear of the Dutch, fear of Moths, Fear of Flutes, fear of numbers, fear of theology..
Proverbs says that God alone is to be feared…The begining of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Not in sense of feeling threatened but in the sense that God is the Controlling principle of wisdom. The Reverence for God means the inclusion of God in our lives..
Tim Keller said it like this..
“The difference between wisdom and knowledge is when the knower has been left in…. ”
The writings of John is similar to proverbs in that it also is wisdom litrature..
John is writing to the church at a time where there are false teachers were confusing people in the church… When you have “prophets” claiming to have special knowledge of revelation and it was causing confusion… What can happen is when someone comes with knowledge it can make us question our own truth… It can diminish ones own confidence in what we might know is truth…
John is concerned about the community that they are both growing in love and in truth… It’s as if John is saying.
Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
T/s Throughout the book of John there have been these tests that he has presented between what is true and what is error… John deals with having spiritual discernment.
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
How to we wise up to wisdom?
1. Develop a Discerning Heart.
1. Develop a Discerning Heart.
John begins with this word Beloved - Cherished - preferred above all others. It’s amazing title that John keeps using… its because there is genuine love for those whom he is writing..
This is one of the most straight forward letters in the Bible when it comes to faith and practice… Every page of the Epistle of John you are going sense love… John wants us to know that we are the true Children of God…
Frank pointed out to me person pronouns in this text... and if you are in his small group… I am sure you are going look closely at the “You” and “they” that is used interchangeably… John is making a distinction between the true Children of God… those who are false teachers.
John say Don’t Believe Every Spirit? When we think about the early church we need to remember that it was a charismatic church in the sense of there were gifts of the spirit in operation…you have prophecy.. faith and healing...
One of the spiritual gifts is the discerning of Spirits.
But one of the problems in the church is that teach of the “Gnostics.” Spiritual elites saw themselves as spiritually above the rest… above sin… everything good was spiritual and the body evil.. One of the biggest problems was they accepted the divinity of Jesus but denied his full humanity..
In 1 john 3:23 we are given this impertative to believe...
Now John gives us a prohibition what not to not believe… John has done this before where injunction to love and then prohibition to not love as the world. (1 John 2:15). There are times when we are to believe and there are times to discern..
Why do we need discernment?
John’s concern is that they were living in the last days…(1 Century). That even thought the anti-Christ is coming in the last days...He will appear to bring world peace — he will appear to be light — but He ultimately is against Christ…In the mean time there will be a spirit of anti-Christ that is already arrived - This simply a spirit that is in Opposition to Christ in the world… This spirit comes in the form of false teachers and the world system..
John Stott has points out something interesting to say on this verse..
“He says you mustn’t make the mistake to think religious diversity and religious views are merely intellectual or cognitive phenomena like political views. You have a lot of political views. You have a lot of religious views.
Because what this text is saying is behind the range of religious views there is a range of real spiritual influences. There’s a spiritual realm. There’s a transcendent realm.”
In other words John warns Christians to pay attention to the spirits that are embodied in the form of spiritual teachers and leaders.. We should ask the question what are the spiritual influences at work?.
There are forces of light and there are forces of darkness in our world.. We need to understand this cosmic battle… John tells us that these spirits have gone out into the world… Now this is important statement…Because It imply’s that there is “sending out” a “commissioning” of spirit of deception in our world… It is not an accident… but there is a reason there is confusion around faith… there is deception surround truth… the enemy tries his best to keep people in darkness.
As Children of God we need the wisdom to discern what is error and what is truth.
In his book The Gospel According to Starbucks, Leonard Sweet tells the story of Ed Faubert. Faubert is what you call a "cupper"—in layman's terms, he's a coffee-taster. And his perspicacious taste buds are actually certified by the state of New York!
So refined is Faubert's sense of taste for coffee that even while blindfolded, he can take one sip of coffee and tell you "not just that it is from Guatemala, but from what state it comes, at what altitude it was grown, and on what mountain."
John says we can discern truth — we can develop a taste for truth… then he tells us how..
John uses the word “Test” - it’s a positive injunction… it means to scrutinize v. — to look at critically or searchingly, or in minute detail (whether genuine or not)… Why because many false prophets have come out into the world… they started with them but they departed from the truth… .
How do we test the differences between “s”pirit AND “S”pirit.
John uses the word Know — Knowing is through acquired knowledge through observation but it is also to know through ones senses and experience. John has said that you know the Message from the Begining, You have know Jesus (who he was), Now as Children of God, John says you know the Spirit of God…
We see a Trinitarian view of God that is at work in the life of a believer…We’ve known Jesus, we’ve known the father now we know the Holy Spirit. The Holy spirit is the agent of Christs and active presence within the church.
We know of the abiding presence of Christ in our lives because the confirmation of the Holy Spirit.
What does the Holy Spirit do? The Holy Spirit seeks to Glorify the Son… and to point us toward our relationship with Jesus and move us towards our mission in the world.
When God Spirit is speaking he is continually exalting and professing Jesus… Jesus came in the flesh… He took on a physical body… He came in the flesh..and is from God… “every spirit” is not going profess Jesus — rather this spirit is going to be against Christ…
When you start to hear teaching that is more about an experience than the person of Christ…(red flag should go up) When the gospel becomes about Self… me… and rather about Jesus… (red flag) The Holy Spirit is always going to default to Glorifying Jesus… The Holy Spirit is a guide who is leading us to the fullness of truth of Christ…
And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me;
John tells us the HS will lead us into orthodoxy… truth… truth leads us to the person of Christ.
It comes down to more than a doctrine about Jesus… but its involves faith in the Jesus the incarnate Christ/savior.
T/S John now brings us to the main subject of this text and that is that we are the Children of God because his spirit abides in us.
4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
How to we wise up to wisdom?
1. Develop a Discerning Heart.
2. Develop a Relationship with the Holy Spirit.
2. Develop a Relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Normally, I don’t get too technical in sermons… This one case where I think it kind helps to understand the structure of this verse… There is type of writing that we find in Hebrew writing and poetry… it’s called the Chiastic structure or arrangement of ideas.... What happens in Chiastic structure is it build to the center… Notice how the color corollate with one another!
A . Spirit of God vrs 2
b. Spirit who is of God
c. Spirit not of God
D — main idea… big point ---YOU ARE FROM GOD - and you overcome SPIRIT IS IN YOU.
c They are of the world
b We are of God
A. The Spirit of truth
This verse is bang in the middle… which means that it’s imperative that we understand this… John reminds them that that we are from God — We have been born of God… and one of the characteristics of a Christians is that we have overcome… John Stott makes the comment here that the overcoming here is intellectual — as false Christians had failed to deceive the Christians…
George Whitefield, the great British evangelist, was speaking to a man about his soul. He asked the man, “Sir, what do you believe?”
“I believe what my church believes,” the man replied respectfully.
“And what does your church believe?”
“The same thing I believe.”
“And what do both of you believe?” the preacher inquired again.
“We both believe the same thing!” was the only reply he could get.
A man is not saved by assenting to a church creed. He is saved by trusting Jesus Christ and bearing witness to his faith
John points out that all true Christians know God and have received the Spirit of God! And because they have believed the truth, they recognize a lie when they meet it.
There is a reason why we overcome…its because we have the spirit of truth..… GREATER IS HE WHO IS IN YOU… THAN HE THAT IS IN THE WORLD....
In the 60’s there was this nuclear submarine called the Thresher. It had heavy steel bulkheads and heavy steel armor so that it could dive deep and withstand the pressure of the ocean. Unfortunately, on a test run in 1963 the Thresher’s nuclear engine quit and it could not get back to the surface. It sank deeper and deeper into the ocean. The pressure became immense. The heavy steel bulkheads buckled; the Thresher was crushed with 129 people inside.
The navy searched for the Thresher with a research craft that was much stronger than submarines. It was shaped like a steel ball and was lowered into the ocean on a cable. Finally they located the Thresher at a depth of 8400 feet, one and a half miles down. It was crushed like an egg shell. That was not a surprise, for the pressure at that depth was tremendous—3600 pounds per square inch.
What was surprising to the searchers was that they saw fish at that great depth. And these fish did not have inches of steel to protect them. They appeared to have normal skin, a fraction of an inch thick. How can these fish survive under all that pressure? How come they are not crushed by the weight of the water? They have a secret. Their secret is that they have the same pressure inside themselves as they have on the outside. Survival under pressure.
John assures us, “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” We will be victorious in the battle against Satan because Jesus poured his Spirit into our hearts. “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:3–4). No matter how hard the battle, God is faithful in preserving his church till Christ gains the final victory.
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.
6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
How to we wise up to wisdom?
1. Develop a Discerning Heart.
2. Develop a Relationship with the Holy Spirit.
3. Develop an Appetite for Truth
3. Develop an Appetite for Truth
In the text we see those pronouns again…they and we.
“They” speaking of false prophets and spirits that are against Christ… “they” are of the world… they speak from the world… and the world listens...
What is confusing about spirit of deception.. is people will be attracted to this kind of teaching or these kinds of prophets… John tells us that there is an audience for this… they have “familiar spirit” they are of the world and they speak from the world… likeness.. We need understand…
Enthusiasm is good but enthusiasm does not equal truth.
Because something is popular does not mean that it is truth. You have churches today that full up stadiums… they are popular… People tend to flock to something they feel they identity with… but they are not always proclaiming truth.
The Church farther Irenaeus said
Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. (Error can seem)...more true than the truth itself. Irenaeus of Lyons
John is wanting believers to exercise discernment…We are living in a day where the lines are not so clear between what really defines evangelicalism… John says that..
The way that you get discernment is by getting an appetite for truth… Desire truth..
Jesus said..
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
What an amazing promise… When we get hungry for truth —God fills us..
Do you have an appetite for truth?
There is Palestinian in Gaza is willing to pay triple the normal price for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The delivery includes a border trip into Egypt to get the food. Then it is taken through a smuggling tunnel to a front door delivery in Gaza.
Because of the delivery fee, the cost is triple the normal cost. But that doesn’t matter to a man who craves KFC chicken.
John introduces another pro noun..says - “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
Who are the we?
According to Boice This is one of the apostles citing the collective testimony of all the apostles and making that testimony the measure of truth and sound doctrine.”
It is ‘we inclusive’ and includes the author and the readers [AB, EBC, Herm, Lns, NIC, TH, WBC]. This refers to the same people as ‘we’ in the last part of the verse [AB]. All believers are called upon to proclaim Jesus [WBC].
The we are
Those who listen to true apostolic teaching are genuine children of God, who “know” him by faith, those who practice and pay attention to the true word of God.
We are to be commited to listening to truth
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
American journalist Doug Larsen said “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would have preferred to talk.” — Doug Larsen
Some times things in our lives can get a little bit foggy… Some morning driving on the midway and you hit fog… What do you do with fog… put on your fog lights you slow down.. You can use the word for as an a acrostic… You consider Feelings… sometimes what you feel is not what actually whats happening on the ground… feelings can mislead… feeling or facts..The next thing others.. impacting others… maybe need consult other for another perspective…the last one is the most important and the is God.. pray ask God to lift the Fog...
Conclusion
Wising up to wisdom is about developing Wisdom..Gaining wisdom does not happen overnight. Becoming wiser is not a one-two-three, step-by-step process. There is no simplistic formula that rushes the results. Gaining wisdom is a process—a slow, continuing process that unfolds over a lifetime. Since one of the characteristics of a wise person is lifelong learning, you need to settle in for the long haul. Having accepted that, there are some specific, practical things you can do to speed up this process. Doing them again and again, over a lifetime, will help you become wiser
When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, he was on scaffolding within arm's reach of the ceiling. Each day he painted only a small portion. Yet, in his mind, he could see the entire ceiling as it would ultimately appear. God is like that with you. Each day he paints a little understanding into your life through his Word. You only see the little bit you learn that day, but God sees the big picture. Ultimately, the daily shaping by God's Word creates a dramatic impact. Your entire life takes new form and wise thinking becomes the norm
We are to Continue -
Develop a Discerning Heart.
Develop an Appetite for Truth
Develop a Relationship with the Holy Spirit.