Our Faith is based on knowledge

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Our Faith is based on knowledge

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 26 September 2010

Tonight we're coming to the Word of God again and looking at 2 Peter chapter 1. We're just getting started really still dealing with his introduction. And as we come to 2 Peter 1:2, I would like closely at this sentence, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”

Now the key word in that verse is "knowledge." Grace and peace are multiplied to those who have the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Our precious faith is built on knowing the truth and knowing the source of truth. Now you might think that's fairly obvious. And it is. But amazingly it does not appear to be so obvious to many today.

There was an article called, "Paganism American Style," written by John Wok. This is what he said. "The New Age Movement is not about discovering reality but about making their own. It is about power rather than truth," end quote.

The culture in which we live is not interested in discovering what is. It is interested in creating what it wants to be. They talk about mind power and the power of positive thinking. Because if you believe it strongly enough to be so, it will be so. Because you say it is so, it will become so.

Now in that system you have to create your own reality and your own values. And they say that if you choose it you can make it so. Spiritual power in your mind is the key to controlling the perception to the degree where you can perceive something so clearly that you create the reality you want.

Now in the pursuit of this inner power there is a combination of four things that sort of interplay a little bit, or four ideologies. Let me just share them with you. The first one is evolution. There is an evolutionary principle behind this that says you can wish something to be.

Evolution also indicates that everything that exists is equal. We're all in a long chain. Man is no more significant than anything else; he's just the latest result of monkeys' wishing. He is sort of the final accident, but he has no more value than a rock and no more value than a bird.

There's a second ideology bound up in this New Age thinking and that's pantheism. Since there is no creator, there is no God, the creation itself is God and since the belief is that it created itself, it's the God of its own creation. Pantheism sees the only God then as the energy that exists in everything.

So everything has a right to its own identity and a right to its own free course so there has to be human rights but there also has to be animal rights, there has to be tree rights and so on. In fact, as I analyze it, the only living creature that I can think of that doesn't have any rights is an unborn baby. Everything else has rights.

Now we just had Earth Day. And I have asked myself often, "What is Earth Day?" For some people it was elevating an environmental consciousness which is certainly good. But to the orchestrators and the fanatics, Earth Day is based upon a Pantheistic view which was "let's stop what we are doing and let’s worship the earth."

There's another component, another ideology in this besides evolution and pantheism, that's what we'll call amoralism. If everything is equal to everything else and everything is God, then all behavior is acceptable because it's just the energy of this religion. The only moral value is whatever you decide is moral. You're your own God and if it feels good and there's energy in it, then do it.

Now all this is built on the fourth ideology and the fourth component I want to describe to you and that's mysticism. Mysticism is the foundation for all of this kind of thinking we have today in the New Age movement.

"What is mysticism?" John MacArthur says, “Mysticism is beliefs and ideas which are the product of personal intuition only.” To put it simply, it is sheer speculation believed to be reality. Mystical belief systems are collections of ideas that have arisen out of emotion, out of self‐authenticated ideas unrelated to objective fact or evidence.

Arthur Johnson in his very interesting book “Faith Misguided” writes, "There are two aspects of mysticism that we must recognize to avoid confusion. First, there is a psychological aspect often called the mystical experience which is an event completely within the person," Then he says, "There are the beliefs that arise from that personal experience. These philosophical religious beliefs constitute a set of ideas collectively called mysticism."

Listen to me very carefully. Christianity is not mystical. Christianity is totally and completely contrary to anything that is mystical. Contrary to believing in imaginary feelings, Christianity believes in objective historical revealed actual truth from God.

The mystic rejects reason for experience and so the line between truth and lies is erased. The basic lie of mysticism is that my inner feelings tell me the truth about what is. That is not true. My inner feelings do not tell me the truth about reality.

The contemporary Charismatic Movement is full of this kind of stuff. People say, "Well the Lord showed me in my heart that this will not happen." Oh? That has nothing to do with whether it will happen or not. But that is how they start.

Another form of it that's surfaces is called visualization. The man who is a proponent is also known as the pastor of one of the largest churches in the world, located in Seoul in Korea, and his name is Paul Yunge Cho. Visualization, according to him is the idea that you can create reality with your mind if you visualize it.

Dave Hunt who writes about him in his book “The seduction of Christianity” and he says, “Anyone who imagines that because he thinks certain thoughts or speaks certain words God must respond in a certain way has slipped into sorcery.” Pastor Cho declares, “By the spoken word we create our universe of circumstances. You create the presence of Jesus with your mouth. He is bound by your lips and by our words,” end quote.

Cho declares that it was through the power of imagination that God created the world. This is in his book called “The Fourth Dimension” which says that God created the world through imagination and that because man is a fourth dimension spirit being like God, he too whether occultist or Christian can create his own world through the power of imagination.

When you look at those people over there in Korea and we are so amazed at their long involved prayer times, realize dear friends, they do not pray in the manner that you and I pray to God pursuing His will. They pray in a process that is very much occultic, they are attempting by visualization to create their own reality, and in the end to make themselves like God.

The Roman Catholic Church during the Dark Ages became very mystical. The Reformation gave people back their minds. The Reformation swept away superstition. The Reformation abolished mysticism and reestablished rational thinking. And the Charismatic Movement is bringing back the confusion and the bondage and the non‐rationalism of mysticism.

Mysticism then says people are saved by power encounters with miracles. But what does the Scripture say? Just the opposite. All you have to do is go back and look at the life of Christ. He went through Palestine, did miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle. At the end of it, what did they do to Him? They killed Him.

John 2:23, "When He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name." Why? "Beholding His signs which He was doing." Sure, they were attracted by the signs. They believed that He was from God.

"24 But Jesus on His part was not entrusting Himself to them for He knew all men and 25 because He didn't need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man."

Sure they believed but they didn't believe unto salvation. Sure they said, "Oh wow! That's supernatural. He's from God." That didn't save them. They had no other explanation. It was a superficial belief, it wasn't salvation.

Look at John 4:48, Jesus condemns them. He says, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe." But it didn't change their hearts because only the Holy Spirit can change the heart.

Look at John 6:2, "A great multitude was following Him because they were seeing the signs He was performing on those who were sick." Sure, it attracted a crowd. After seeing these signs and wonders and the miraculous way in which Jesus fed them all, they said to Him in John 6:28, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?"

This is strange. He said in verse 29‐30, "This is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He has sent. 30 They said therefore to Him, What then do You do for a sign that we may see and believe You?" That is really strange. This is the same crowd that saw Him healing people all day long. This is the same crowd that just ate the food He created.

Signs produce a very superficial curiosity and they may convince that He is a supernatural being. But the sign itself cannot save. In fact to show you the character of these people, go all the way to the end of the chapter in verse 66, some of them started to follow Him. When it became apparent what His message was, it says, "Many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore."

Verse 63 sums it up. "It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are Spirit and are life." That my friend is the revealed rational truth from God.

John 10:41 says, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true." And John the Baptist was the greatest prophet who had ever lived up until his day. Miracle power is not saving power. That we must understand.

Now how is a person converted then? Look at Romans 10:17, "So faith, saving faith, comes from miracles." Is that what it says? "Comes from signs and wonders." No, it comes from what? "Hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ."

Go back to verse 13‐14, "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But how are they going to call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?" They need a preacher, not a miracle worker.

Now listen to me very carefully to what I say. The miracle working power of Jesus and the miracle working power of the Apostles was not for the purpose of saving people but of authenticating the preacher. You believe the one with miracle power but it is the truth he preaches that saves.

Miracles were intended to authenticate messengers. And messengers are now authenticated by whether they square up with the Word of God. We as preachers don't need repeated authentication, all we need is to preach the authentic Word.

The Charismatic Movement on one hand affirms the truth of Scripture and there are many Scriptures they understand and believe, but on the other hand they interpret the Word by their perceptions of life flowing out of their own experience.

How does that compare with what God says? Well all of that to take you back to 2 Peter 1:2. And if you don't understand this verse now, you haven't been listening. "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Let us return to our first thought. Grace and peace come in unending abundant streams to those who know God and who know Jesus our Lord. Peter remember is teaching us how to face false teachers.

In 2 Peter 2 he presents those false teachers. But in 2 Peter 1 and 3 he talks about our defenses against them. The first defense is to know our salvation, and that's what he's into here in chapter 1. Last time we talked about the fact we need to know the source of our salvation, it's God. Now in verse 2 we need to know the substance of our salvation.

The word "knowledge," listen carefully, is epignosis, it is a strengthened form of gnosis. It implies a personal complete knowledge. Paul loves to use it in the pastoral epistles and he uses it with relation to the truth. In 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus he talks about the knowledge of the truth. John 8:32, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

The Bible says your heart will lie, your heart will deceive you, your emotions will deceive you and the truth is not in us. The truth is outside us. A man is a fool and he doesn't understand depravity if he thinks that man can create divine truth out of his own fallen heart.

Salvation substance is not based on intuition, it's not based on emotion, and it certainly is not based on experience. It is based on the revealed truth, the knowledge of the truth. And Peter goes further. Truth does not come from non‐rational urges. He says it's not only the knowledge of the truth as Paul called it, but here he says it's the knowledge of a person, in fact two persons, "God and Jesus our Lord."

Now we know the truth and we also know the person who revealed the truth. Man's relation to God is not only described as knowing the truth about God but it's knowing God through His truth. The substance of our salvation is knowing the God of truth, the Christ of truth and the truth they revealed, Amen?

Do you really know God and Jesus Christ? Does your life show others the truth of God? In other words do you live your life according to the truth that Jesus taught you? Do you love God with all your heart and your abilities? Do you love other people the same way you love yourself? Pray so you can.



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