| From the Church on the Hill by D. Eric Williams Pastor, Cottonwood Community Church pastor@CottCommChurch.com The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Proverbs 9:10). The Bible tells us the knowledge of "the holy one" is critical to a sound mind. The Hebrew word translated as "knowledge" in the passage above is dahath. Generally it means "knowledge" in the sense of apprehending facts about a person or thing. The word can also reference the idea of awareness. In other words, to have knowledge of something is to, first, be aware of it. This reaches back to something we talked about in earlier articles. The Bible tells us it is the height of stupidity to deny God. Here, we see that knowledge of Yahweh requires awareness of his existence. Therefore, a person cannot accumulate knowledge of God as a skeptic. That is to say, no one may legitimately start with the question "does God exist?" His existence must be presupposed. One debate that has been a part of the Christian landscape for centuries is the question of when a person is reborn in the process of salvation. Some say a man is reborn after they express faith in Jesus Christ. Others contend the new birth must take place before any true expression of faith. It is the second point of view that is biblically sound. The Bible clearly states that apart from Christ a person is dead in their trespass and sin. Now, it should be obvious that a dead person is incapable of expressing faith. Rather, a person must be regenerate, a new creation, in order to place faith in Jesus Christ. This means the Holy Spirit enables a person to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and believe in their heart God has raised him from the dead. No human being can generate saving faith; it is a gift of God lest any man should boast. Likewise, a person must be born again in order to gain knowledge concerning the Lord. It is only the man who is aware of the existence of God who is able to gain knowledge of him. And it is only the born again person who has moved beyond the question "does God exist?" In other words, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit no person can unequivocally accept the existence of God. Certainly, there are many who claim to believe in a "higher power" or a god of some sort. Nevertheless, no human can accept the existence of God of the Bible - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - apart from the rejuvenating power of the Holy Spirit. As a result, no unsaved person can gain true understanding because no unsaved person can come to a knowledge of the Holy One. Again, we acknowledge the unsaved can gain knowledge and understanding to a certain degree but it is always limited apart from the saving knowledge of Christ. Moreover, every shred of knowledge and understanding they have is borrowed from the truth of the Christian faith. Unregenerate intellectuals and thinkers use the very building blocks of knowledge they deny in order to arrive at any conclusion of any sort. Think about it; if one denies God there is only the material realm or, perhaps, the chaos of ungodly spirituality. In either case there is no rationality. Materialism means everything happens by chance and there is no guarantee that what is evident today will have any meaning for tomorrow. In the confusing world of impious spiritualism there are no rules at all. Everything is relative and the deeper one goes into the occult religions the further removed one is from certainty concerning everything, including life itself. We will return to this subject next week.
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