Proverbs 1:1-6 The Personality Of Wisdom part 2 “To Know” 

The Aim v.2-4

 To Acknowledge v.2        To know wisdom and instruction;

To Apply                               to perceive the words of understanding

To Accept v.3                      To receive the instruction of wisdom

The Aim v.2-4

 To Acknowledge v.2

Development                  To know

“To know,” means to comprehend by observing, to realize by reflecting and thinking, and to comprehend by experiencing.

The Hebrew word for “know” is the term “yada”.  This knowing signifies, to deeply recognize and to genuinely identify. This knowing is direct and personal through intimate contact.  Everything depends on what we are seeking to know.

J.I. Packer writes: The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it. Knowing in the realm of this term refers to life-giving intimacy, as in marriage where our lives are exchanged in completing tenderness.

This knowing God is pinpointing the Lords original intent, design, dealings, and detecting His transactions with us, and distinguishing His actions, activities and accomplishments all around us and in us.  This is discerning God’s intervening providence that structures our outcomes, even when we deface and disfigure them, as we’re prone to do.

Knowing is not an abstract theory, but feelings that involve all our inner beings desires and energy to see God, to realize Him in a growing grasp of His power, provision, perception, and personalizing practice in us.

David’s advice to his son Solomon is:

1 Chronicles 28:9 As for you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought. If you seek Him, you will find him…

The eternal life, which Jesus Christ gives, is the knowledge of God.

This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

In Psa. 1:6 “the Lord knows the way of the righteous”

And His knowing of us is what instills in us that desire for His righteousness.

To know God, also implies that we first determine whether what we are about to take in hand is really in harmony with his principles.  That is what we’re looking for, and contemplating into knowing, is to experience God’s direction and illumination.

Psalms 9:9-10 states: The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.  And they that know Your name (character) will put their trust in You: For You, Lord, have not forsaken them that seek You.

John Phillips comments:  The word for “refuge” is sometimes rendered “a high tower.” David was no stranger to trouble. He had spent most of his youth and early manhood hiding in the hills, forests, wastelands, and foreign countries from Saul’s executioners.

A high tower, is a place of security into which he could run and hide, secure from his enemies, problems, difficulties.  We face an complex array of general snags and complicated obstacles in our experience.  To know the Lord as our shelter and safe asylum we have to be lowered into the problems and agitations as it’s all by God’s design.  His ways of knowing are not our not our ways of finding intimacy with Him, but this is how God reveals His character.

Prov. 3:6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t lean on (human) knowledge, in all our ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct your paths

To acknowledge means to recognize, to admit and accept.  I often resist problems, personal pain and struggles.  I whine and complain at trials, sleepless nights, and injuries that seem senseless and aggravating.  God wants us to admit, accept and acknowledge His ways.  He is directing us into His hiding place of Himself.  God is teaching us to know Him in every circumstance and incident.

God makes our path straight, or level, showing how to rise above all obstacles in our safe hiding place of Christ.  It’s under God’s direction that we prosper and come to His successful release.  By God’s course we’re kept from deviating into the incorrect path.  We’re guarded as He guides us, “to cut straight”

This power is credited to God, for “it is not in man to direct his steps” Jer. 10:23.

I have the unfortunate inner actuation that appears as a strong willed trigger to keep pushing forward.  It’s often severe pain, which redirects and harnesses my brash assertive nature.

“To know” is spiritual joining where we are living in intimacy with God in prayer that conceives His handiwork of weaving His blessings and victories even in the face of our discouragement and defeat.

“To know” defines an intimate acquaintance that grows. It’s not the weaker type of knowledge, (to know about) in the sense of an objective, intellectual comprehension.  Instead, this is a personal relationship between God and us.

“To know” is intimate contact where we are increasing in contact with Jesus by prayer that secures a sense of the unseen reality of God’s Spirit activity.

As we respond to God’s voice in His Word we know Him in direct, intimate contact with Christ.  This knowledge of His wisdom and instruction is the assurances of His promises to direct our paths toward fruitful, life-begetting endeavors. We see this process of knowing in Exodus 3:7.

Exodus 3:7 the Lord said, I have seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;

The Lord viewed the harsh treatment, and then He heard the cry of His people.  Seeing and hearing is what leads to knowing.  The Lord knows our sorrow.

Jesus knows and is touched with our feelings and moved with our weakness.  Touched is the Greek verb sumpatheō, to suffer with another, to be affected similarly (English sympathy).

Heb.4:15 Jesus is touched with the feeling of our infirmity 

This suffering with, is more than pity; it is compassion that is tenderhearted.  Jesus enters the feelings of our suffering because of what he himself has suffered. He has experienced every form of trial and affliction.  He knows by experience all of our feelings.

The term “know” conveys growing in closer and closer intimacy.

We need to challenge ourselves that it’s not what we know, but it’s who do we really know, and who are we intimate with?  What are our passions, what consumes our heart and mind?  It’s our thirsts and cravings, that reveals who we know, or who we want to be close too, and what or who is supreme in our life.

To KNOW GOD, is not just piling up an accumulation of information about God.  On the other end it’s not just a passing acquaintance with Him, and it’s more then a casual familiarity.

To know God is at a deeper level where we experience God in a right relationship with him. To know God is to bow each moment to acknowledge, accept, agree with, and consent in approval to God’s doings, seeing Him in everything He’s allowing

As I examine what I really know, not what I claim to know, or posture and pose as if I know, I’m shocked at what little I know.

The Credit of Our Knowledge is Christ 2 Corinthians 3:1-5

   Our Commendation of Knowledge is seeing how we’re Head Empty v.1

Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or need we, as some others, notes of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?

It’s nice when others think good of us but it’s the Lord’s approval that we sense in knowing Him as our hiding place that endorses the real inner need.

It’s empty nonsense to self-advertise. Phillips N.T. says:

Do we need… to exchange testimonials to be friends?

  Our Credentials of Knowledge is seeing our Heart Evidence v.2

Relationships Are Heart Knowledge   You are our epistles written in our hearts

Relationships Are Shared Knowledge known and read of all men

A true measure of our influence is knowledge where heart touches heart in life change.  It’s not what we write on paper in head to head knowledge; it’s how we touch each other’s hearts.

    Relationships Are Christ’s Knowledge v.3

True Knowing is Jesus Inscription on Our Heart

…We are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

When we initially receive Jesus He etches Himself in our heart.  First He is engraved in our heart as our Savior, and the proof of our trust is to grow in knowing Him as He carves the mark of His Lordship in our heart.  He’s the Author of Eternity who permanently carves His truth and character in us, inscribing all real knowledge.  The real story of knowledge our life is telling is how we’re responding to daily problems and aggravations.  Are we connecting with God’s directions of knowing Him in what He allows?  These are the engravings in our heart by the Spirit of Jesus.

When the Lord places His mark in our life, it’s a living influence.  His is a perpetual mark that lasts forever

Spurgeon stated, “A good character is the best tombstone.” It is those who Jesus loves through us, who were helped by us, and remember us when earthly sentimentalism is withered. We’re to carve Jesus love on hearts, and not on marble.

This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent John 17:3