Whatta Ya Know?

Proverbs 1:7 Whad’ ya’ know? Schools give tests to find out what you know. You might test what you know by watching jeopardy. But how do you know you know something? Is being able to spit out data like cud proof? The Bible talks about knowledge a little bit different. For instance, in Proverbs 1:7 it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” Notice 3 words in that verse: knowledge, wisdom, and…. Discipline?! This verse takes all 3 of these words and relates them together. The first two would seem to refer to information in the Bible about God that we have stored in our brains. But, the 3rd one is what I want to highlight here, “discipline”. Discipline makes us think about something different - our behavior. I think we’re going to see here that when it comes to what we know about God there is more involved than having a memory like an elephant. This verse indicates that “knowledge” encompasses wisdom and discipline. Now it is good to make a note here: Proverbs is written entirely in poetry. Hebrew poetry doesn’t rhyme, but, instead it is characterized by what is called parallelism, or intensification. This means that the lines in each verse are parallel in some way, and the 2nd line intensifies the 1st line. Now read verse 7 again and notice the 2 lines. It seems that “wisdom and discipline” in the 2nd line of the verse are a parallel to “knowledge” in the 1st line. What does this mean? Well, for one thing, people can see that we have Biblical knowledge by our disciplined living. We might say it in a negative way too: our undisciplined life shows a lack of Biblical knowledge. You see, we may be someone who is knowledgeable of what the Bible says, but, that’s not what the Bible says is knowledge. It’s not mentally store-housing chapters and verses. Instead, Biblical knowledge is Biblical truths visibly lived out in a disciplined life. What we know is demonstrated in what we do. Let’s make an illustration. Suppose someone says they know how to drive a stick-shift. And suppose they claim to know how because they read it in a textbook somewhere. But, put them in the driver’s seat and when the herky-jerky starts and stalling happens we’ll see right away they actually don’t know how to drive a stick shift. Even though they could tell you how, we can see from their not being able to do it that they really didn’t know how. Even though they could tell you what they know, they could not show you what they know. What if that measure were applied to our relationship with Jesus Christ? Perhaps we have read about Him and we might be able to explain Him to others. But, when it comes to doing what He has said do we show that we don’t really know Him? Even though we can repeat what He said does it become obvious from our lives that we really don’t have "knowledge"? Discipline is committing to conforming. Conforming in our every day lives to what the Lord has commanded in His Word. As we do that, we will show that we really do know Him and that we really do have knowledge.