Avoid Presumptuous Knowledge “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?” (Romans 11:33-34) Often this verse is used encouragingly – we may not understand all that the Lord does, but we can know and trust that His ways are best and that all things will “work together for good” for God’s children. Certainly, this is a wonderful application of this verse. But I’d like to look at this passage today from a more “nuts and bolts” level, and make a somewhat different application than the usual. Specifically, the fact that this verse ought to also be considered a warning to those who might claim for themselves “knowledge” from God that they cannot have, and which it is presumption for them to suppose that they have. After all, as these verses openly tell us, His judgments are unsearchable, his ways past finding out, who has known the mind of the Lord to be able to understand the greater purposes and reasons for why He does what He does in any particular circumstance? Who can rightly claim that they know, for an absolute fact, why God has allowed or disallowed something to happen? For someone to think that they have this knowledge is, ironically, to show that they still have a lot of learning and growing in humility left to obtain. “And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” (I Corinthians 8:2) What got me thinking about this was a statement our pastor made a couple of weeks ago, which he had also mentioned before. He was decrying the tendency on the part of many to assume that when something bad happens to someone that they don’t like, then it *must* be that God is punishing that person. But if the person to which an adverse event happens is a friend of the one making the judgment or is liked by them, then they will say that this person is “suffering for the glory of God,” i.e. it’s just a trial to strengthen them. In essence, people will claim to know things that they cannot possibly know. This hits close to home for me because the “camp” that I and my family came out of when we left our old church had elements of this type of thinking in it. One example, in particular, continues to come to mind. There is a pastor of an independent Baptist church up in Maine (many reading this would know him if I called his name) who is good friends with our former pastor, and who would preach revival and missions conference services at our old church at least once every other year. On several occasions, he would mention an incident that happened with a man who had attended his church for a while, but had gotten angry about something and left. Apparently, this man had cussed out this pastor’s father (who is in fact the assistant pastor of their church under his son) at the post office one day upon seeing him there, had really just gave him the cat-o-nine-tails lash of the tongue up one side and down another for something like five minutes straight. If I remember the story correctly, this man also did the same to the pastor (the son) at the same place but a different day. To make a long story short, this man got drunk one evening and ended up planting his truck face first into a telephone pole, killing him. Now, this is a pretty tragic story – a soul, by everything we can see from his fruits, ended up in hell that evening. But I’ll never forget the little smirk on this pastor’s face as he told us about it while basically affirming that this guy was killed by God for attacking him and his father. He doesn’t know that. He has no idea that this is why God allowed that man to unsuccessfully try to plow over a telephone pole. There could be any number of other reasons completely unrelated to his dealings with this pastor or his church. To claim to know for certain that it was because of a personal offence against him is simply arrogant and presumptuous claim to knowledge that this pastor could not possibly have. But I’ll never forget the little smirk that seemed to say that it was good to have God as his personal hitman. What horrible dishonour that does to the Lord. But this type of thing happens more often than we’d like to think. I think of another church, in Ohio if I am recalling correctly, where a family left, and the pastor told the man that if they left, he would lose his wife. Unfortunately, a few years later (just recently), the man’s wife did pass away because of a medical complication involving some treatments she was receiving. It grieves me to think that the pastor of that church might even possibly lord it over this man about the death of his wife. Again, if he were to, he’d be claiming knowledge he cannot possibly have – that God “took care of” this man by killing his wife because of the offence of leaving that pastor’s church. I do not know if the pastor in that case is or has done so, but I do know that there are some who would do so – and that is a wicked thing. What is especially disturbing is that when we were in the process of leaving our old church, the pastor’s wife had the presumption to tell my wife that we would “lose our son” if we went through with leaving. I do not know if she was merely implying that because we left their church, our son would “be lost to the world,” or if she meant something a bit more sinister – I never had any interest in getting clarification from her. Either way, she could not possibly have any knowledge that this would happen, whichever way she meant it. I hate to say, but this type of things happens a lot. There are a lot of folks out there who will assume that bad things that happen to people who have displeased them are “chastisement” or “punishment” from God, while the same things happening to people they like are “trials sent from above to strengthen them.” The pastor up in Maine that I mentioned – his father fell and had a severe concussion several months ago, and his wife was dealing with a chronic condition that caused her a lot of fatigue, etc. (I still don’t know if the doctors ever found out what was going on). Would it be right to assume that the adverse circumstances that his father and his wife went through were “chastisement” for some wrongdoing on their, or his, parts? Certainly not. Indeed, I would answer “absolutely not.” We cannot claim to have a knowledge of what God is doing in someone else’s life based only on our observation of external circumstances. I know that there are some who would argue with this by pointing to the case of the members of the Corinthian church in I Corinthians 11:27-32 who were sick, and who had even died, because they were misusing the Lord’s supper and counting as a light thing the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Sure, we *know* that these folks were sick and had died because of this sin. But you know how we know this? Because God SPECIFICALLY TOLD US SO through the inspired and preserved words that He gave us through Paul. The same way with the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 – we know they were taken by God because the scripture specifically tells us this was the case. Barring that, I don’t believe we can rightly say that something that happens to someone else “must” be because of some sin (or perceived offence toward us) in their life. One question I hear frequently, especially up at the rest home, is whether someone is sick because they did something bad. My answer is, of course, I don’t know. I can’t speak for that about someone else, and neither can my questioner. But this assumption is a very typical one that the world makes because it does not understand God’s grace. They assume that God will pour out wealth and health on “good” people and that He will afflict and hurt “bad” people (forgetting that we are ALL sinners, and justly deserve death in hell!). Just read the book of Job to see that this is not always the case. Indeed, given what I Corinthians 1:26 says… ”For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.” …this is probably not even usually the case. One thing I will tell folks at the rest home is that while trials and tribulations can be due to either the chastisement of God or to His seeking to “try us as silver,” you will usually know, in your own heart, if God is dealing with you in chastisement about some sin you have in your life. I can’t see into their hearts, and I don’t see their lives most of the other six days that I am not there, but if they know the Lord, they will know if He is dealing with them to correct them about something – because that is His whole purpose, to CORRECT them. He WANTS them to get right – He’s not going to leave them in the dark about something that is causing them to be under His correcting hand. He will convict them, He will show them from the Word, He will use preaching to touch on it. Indeed, I would say that the “default position” for understanding trials and tribulations in a saved person’s life should be that they are being tried for the purpose of strengthening them, increasing their faith, etc. Some may be sick because of sin and need to get the sin right before they can be healed through confessing and repenting of it (James 5:15), but we should not assume this to be the case in any particular matter. For the lost person – God may be working in that person’s life to bring them to a place where they understand their own mortality and need for the Saviour. Or, they may be suffering the affliction of satan, who hates them and wants to harm them. Or there could be any number of other reasons know to God, but for which we cannot have any certain knowledge. What we DO know is that we ought to pray for them, both for physical healing, but also that they would yield to the Lord in faith and repentance unto salvation. Believe it or not, God isn’t so much interested in punishing and killing the lost (though they will have to stand before Him in judgment if they do not repent and believe on Him) as He is in seeing them repent, turn to Him, and receive eternal life, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9) In summation, let us never fall to the temptation to presume to “know” that God is “getting” someone else by means of tribulation or trial. Let us eschew the evil of presumption claims to knowledge about things that we cannot know of, being vainly puffed up. Instead, let us bear one anothers’ burdens and fulfill the law of Christ.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 20:41:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015