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The Bible calls us to believe in Jesus. Members of his Body,the Church, profess certain truths about him. Christians choose to be committed to the Jesus Way. But Paul goes even farther than belief, profession, and commitment: He declares that we can know “the hope to which God has called us.” How can we obtain such knowledge in a secular world that denies certainty about spiritual things?

 

Expedition Ephesians
Yes, We Can Really Know
May 15-16, 2010
Glenn McDonald

Ephesians 1:17-18

Psychologist and author Patrick Carnes grew up in the Catholic Church. As a first grader he was given the honor of serving as altar boy for the Christmas Day mass. His family was thrilled. But Carnes was nervous. He had never been through the altar boy training program. Father Yanny assured him that all he had to do was to move the Bible from one place to another, and to ring a set of bells – the ones that signified to the congregation that it was time either to kneel, to sit, or to stand – whenever he, the priest, put his right hand on the altar.

What Father Yanny apparently did not realize is that as he had grown older he tended to put his hand on the altar rather often in order to steady himself. Carnes spent the whole service ringing the bells, and people were jumping up and down like Pentecostals. His mother was mortified. Everyone else in the extended family thought it was the liveliest mass they had ever attended.  

Carnes, for his part, ultimately began to wonder if that service represented the essence of organized religion. Somebody rings a bell and everybody else jumps. Is spiritual life nothing more than a set of conditioned reflexes that completely bypasses the mind? This week I visited the website of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which purports to worship “his Noodliness” and pokes fun at anyone who thinks belief in God is a rational proposition. Some critics go considerably further. Consider Dr. William Provine, professor of biology at Cornell, who recently wrote:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear… There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

This is what followers of Jesus are up against: outspoken intellectuals who are absolutely certain that they are right and that we are off our collective rockers for placing trust in a God who cannot be seen. It’s worth noting that the 21st century isn’t all that different from the first century, and that the apostle Paul regularly mixed it up with philosophers and self-described experts who wouldn’t give Christ the time of day. But Paul insisted that this crucified Jesus was not only alive but could actually be known. That’s our backdrop as we continue to study Paul’s letter to the disciples who lived in the ancient city of Ephesus.

Week by week we’re tackling just a few verses at a time, and encouraging each other to make the special effort to memorize this part of God’s Word. Do you recognize the letters GIGO? That stands for “garbage in, garbage out.” GIGO originated in the world of computers and describes the simple truth that we shouldn’t expect to receive something qualitatively different than what we choose to put in. “Garbage in, garbage out” describes the functioning of the human mind as well. If we frontload our minds with sitcoms and trivia and darkness, we shouldn’t expect to download virtue and character. But if we expose our minds to the very thoughts of God – especially through the discipline of Scripture memory – the Holy Spirit will have resources to work with that will transform our very lives.

This weekend we’re leapfrogging Ephesians 1:15-16. We’re saving those two verses for next week when Samuel Stephens of the India Gospel League, a ZPC-supported mission endeavor, will be preaching to us about Paul’s practice of prayer. Today let’s turn to verses 17 and 18 and speak them aloud either by reading from our own copy of the Bible, by looking up here at the screens, or by reciting them from memory. Let’s stand together and declare the Word of God:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

Twice in this text Paul assures us that following Jesus involves actual knowledge. He prays that we can “know [Christ] better,” and that we might “know the hope to which he has called” us. What exactly do we mean by knowledge? It is personal conviction concerning what is true that is based on adequate evidence or insight.

In that regard, knowledge is fundamentally different from three other words that get plenty of air time in religious circles. The first of those words is “profess.” To join a church I must profess or publicly announce that I think certain things are true. It’s widely known, however, that myriads of people make professions every Sunday that have little or nothing to do with how they actually live Monday through Saturday. Plenty of church attenders have mastered the Apostles’ Creed – they stand up and say it word perfect when somebody rings the bells – but that doesn’t mean they would bet their lives on those words. Still others profess belief in Jesus just in case he is actually there – hedging their bets as a kind of next-world “fire insurance.”

The word “believe” is considerably stronger, and has the added advantage of appearing throughout the New Testament. But there is a problem. What the Bible means by “believe” is radically different from what many Western people think when they hear that word.

Did you hear about the little girl who was sitting on the couch with her grandmother looking at a copy of National Geographic? She turned the page, smiled, and said, “Look, Grandma, it’s a frickin’ elephant!” The grandmother was appalled. How could children so young be using such inappropriate language? Then she noticed the two words beneath the picture: African Elephant. There’s a difference between what we think we are saying and what other people hear. That’s definitely true when it comes to the Bible. When Paul says to the Philippian jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,” what many modern people hear is that Paul is recommending a personal religious preference that may or may not have anything to do with objective reality. Today the word “believe” has come to mean, “I have my truth and you have yours, and let’s agree that we’re both right and should keep our personal beliefs to ourselves.”

The third word that gets a lot of play in churches is “commitment.” But commitment is not the same thing as knowledge. We can commit ourselves to something that we don’t even believe in, and in fact most churches have members who are serving in ministry as enthusiastically as they can in the absence of anything that resembles spiritual certainty.

What does all this mean? Millions of people who regularly show up at church – including many of us in this room – have settled for what we think is a “spiritual life,” when in fact we do not know God at all. In the words of Thom Rainier, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, “We have dumbed down what it means to be part of the church so much that it means almost nothing.”

Secular observers, by the way, are perfectly happy if followers of Jesus choose to profess, believe, or be committed to whatever spiritual ideals happen to suit our fancy. But what is disallowed in the modern world is for a Christian to announce that he or she has actual knowledge of God. That would be claiming way too much, and at that point we must not be taken seriously.

There is no substitute, however, for real knowledge. If I am paying to have my roof repaired, I intend to hire someone who knows what he’s doing – not someone who believes in roofing with all of his heart. We want political leaders who know how to fix the economy, not men and women who have a couple of hunches as to how to create more jobs. In the Bible, trust in God is always based on actual knowledge. Biblically, there’s no such thing as a leap of faith. Real faith is a commitment to action based on real knowledge of God and God’s ways. And that is the very thing that Paul advertises in these verses.

In verse 17 Paul describes God as “the glorious Father.” The original Greek actually reads, “the father of glory.” Now this is important because God’s glory, according to the Bible, is what makes God visible. You might remember that Moses prayed back in the book of Exodus, “Lord, show me your glory.” This was another way of saying, “I want to see who you really are.” This Father of glory we worship is a God who reveals himself. He does not hide.

Note that Paul is praying that people might receive a specific gift from God – that the Holy Spirit would continually reveal knowledge of God. Last week we learned that the Holy Spirit has been given to every disciple as a kind of down payment on all of God’s future gifts and promises. In I Corinthians 2:12 Paul reveals that one of the Spirit’s main tasks to help us know the fullness of what God has given to us in Christ. It’s quite clear that knowing God does not happen accidentally. It happens through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul also prays “that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened.” This is a wonderful turn of phrase. Human eyes are considered the instrument of both sight and understanding. In conversation we frequently say to others, “I can see that,” as a way of communicating, “I get what you are saying.” In the movie Avatar, members of the Pandoran culture say, “I see you,” as a tender expression of personal insight into each others’ hearts.  

Throughout Scripture, in fact, a relationship with God is directly equated with knowing God. Thus Jesus says about his Father in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know you.” Paul writes in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” And at the end of life he is able to say, “I know the one in whom I have put my trust.” (2 Timothy 1:12)

According to verses 17-18, God intends for his Son’s followers to know two important realities. The first is what Paul describes as “the hope to which he has called you.” We can actually know what it means that God has chosen us, and how that should transform what we think of both the present and the future.

Here we need to pause and say something as clearly as we can: Our culture offers no basis whatsoever for hope. We live in the most advanced society the world has ever seen, yet our problems are so vast that a significant number of people have flat out given up trying to solve them. We have just lived through the most murderous 100-year period in human history. An NBC poll released last week revealed that Americans are angry and cynical. The prevailing mood is that all of our leaders need to be thrown out onto the street, regardless of whether I voted for or against them 18 months ago.

Dallas Willard declares that Western culture, after centuries of struggle, has found no answers to the basic questions of human life. Any one of us can verify that the place the world is most counting to come up with real answers – the university – has utterly failed to provide intellectually responsible solutions to the classic human dilemmas regarding purpose, meaning, and hope. As kids we loved stories and movies that ended, “And they lived happily ever after…” But secular colleges haven’t yet been able to produce a single compelling reason why human beings should feel hopeful about the future.

Thus William Provine the Cornell biologist has no fear of being contradicted when he writes, “There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind.” Now Dr. Provine may be a brilliant man. But with all due respect, his assessments have nothing to do with spiritual Reality. Not a single one of his propositions springs from sound biological research. Darwinism has assumed all the passions of a new religion; it claims in fact to be the only way that we can know anything at all.

The New Testament begs to differ. How can we know that there is life beyond the grave, and if any one of us has a real future? Two incredible things happened during the first century – that is, during the lifetimes of Paul and the other early followers of Jesus. The first was the resurrection of Jesus. The future has always looked and felt like an impenetrable bank of fog. When Jesus rose from the dead around A.D. 30, it was as if someone came out of that fog – visiting us from the future – coming back to meet us here in the present. The apostle Paul even reports that on several occasions he personally experienced the risen Jesus.

Now if that leads you to think, “Well, la-dee-dah for the apostle Paul, but what in the world does that have to do with us?” that’s where the second signature event comes in. Fifty days after the resurrection the Holy Spirit was poured out on all of Jesus’ followers. The Holy Spirit is still given as a gift to everyone who surrenders to Christ. And it is by the Spirit that we can experience Jesus for ourselves. I used to think how wonderful it would have been to be a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth. But I am in fact a contemporary of Jesus. And so are you. He is alive amongst us right now. That is something we can know through the Holy Spirit.

This is why Paul says, “I pray that you will know the hope to which he has called you.” Through his crucifixion and his resurrection Jesus has become the ultimate game-changer.  He has changed our present and our future. Death, meaninglessness, and hopelessness need never again be the last word for humanity. This is something we can come to know.

Paul also prays that we might know “the riches of his inheritance in the saints.” Notice that the Bible is talking about God’s inheritance, not our inheritance. And what inheritance might that be? It’s the saints. We are the inheritance of our heavenly Father. He gets to spend his future with us. His glory will actually increase because we, having been transformed into the character of his Son, are going to be with him forever.

So what role do we play in all of this? It’s been the experience of generations of disciples that God doesn’t just zap us with knowledge and understanding by means of mountain-top experiences or spiritual liver-shivers. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. But we need to bring our textbook to class. This is our textbook. We must open our Bibles. We must read and study and memorize as if our lives depended on it. Our lives do depend on it. But we must not be content just to know about God. Our goal is to know God himself – to live every moment in joyful awareness of his presence, to the praise of his glory. The only way that will happen is if we get beyond the pages of this book and experience God for ourselves.

Now let’s be honest about something. We will always hear the voices of other people telling us that there is in fact no God for us to experience. God has chosen, for his own reasons, to present himself to the world in such a way that people who want to disbelieve him will be able to do so. But God gladly makes himself available to those who seek him. As Dallas Willard puts it, “Eternity is now in process. Silently it moves along. But it will not run over you. You have to really want it – deep down – or you will miss it. That is why Jesus said to seek it more than anything else.”

What does it mean to seek God? We must want God to exist, and want him in fact to be God. Then we must learn of him through firsthand acquaintance. That means following the pathway of surrender.

I learned about the Dead Sea more than 30 years ago. It was during a Bible geography class at seminary that I was reminded it was the lowest spot on the face of the Earth, about a quarter of a mile below sea level. The Dead Sea is aptly named because nothing can live or grow within it. Its waters are eight times saltier than the world’s oceans. Therefore human beings have no problem floating on its surface, and cannot in fact keep themselves underwater even if they try.

Now, it’s one thing to know something about the Dead Sea, and even to get an A on the quiz. But it’s quite another matter to experience it personally. Three years ago, on a trip to Israel, I stood on the shoreline of the Dead Sea and wondered if everything in the textbook was actually true. There was only one way to find out. What’s the difference between knowing about the Dead Sea and personally coming to know the Dead Sea? The difference is taking the plunge…getting wet…going beyond the pages of the book to find out for yourself that that salty water really does keep you floating.

Faith in Jesus means coming to believe with my whole body, with my actual life, with the choices that I will make today, the very things I say I believe with my mind. Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations. It is the confidence that if I throw myself into the person of Jesus, I will be able to learn from experience – I can really know – not only that he is there, but that will never let me go.