B, The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany - 1 Corinthians 1b-3 "A Conscience Known by God"

To see, to know, and to love.   Paul encourages the Corinthians to use their knowledge in a right way that upholds the person whose conscience is weak.  Use your God-given faith in a way, that encourages those who are weak, to have their consciences strengthened by God alone! 

Paul teaches the hearer about the direction of knowledge.  Paul says, “…we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up.  If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.  But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”  (1 Corinthians 8:1b–3 ESV)

To see, one is known by God, is to know that God knows the whole truth of who we are, and not just the half-truths we want others to see.  This is the faith to which God calls his church on earth, through Paul’s letter to the Corinthians!  It is a change of direction that sees knowledge, as not what we know, but that we are known by God!

For those who wish truly to be Christian in belief and practice, the organ of faith is the ear.  True God given faith is nurtured when one hears the Word of God.  Not to our immediate glory, but, to God’s glory.  This is how followers of Christ, see, know, and love. 

We see, know, and love, trusting that the bible is the Word of God.  So, truly believing, one allows the Holy Spirit to lead one to works that, glorify God, and love our neighbour, which encourages them to glorify God too.

Moved by the Holy Spirit, this is what Paul teaches the Corinthians about eating food offered to idols.  God schools the Corinthian believers to look outwardly in what they do, so the weak are not led into sinning with their conscience.

Those who are weak, are the weak in faith, new Christians, and those unbelievers before whom the Christian faith is lived, in the hope of winning them for Christ.  Those who are weak, are weak because they have not one organ of faith, but many.  The ear, the eyes, sensations, feelings, touch, and taste, all contribute to one’s heart, and therefore, the collective tastes and feelings of the community’s conscience.

The difference between a believer’s conscience and an unbeliever’s conscience is that being known by God, the flow of knowledge is reversed.  Our knowledge brings a knowledge of our weakness that leads to repentance, receptive forgiveness, and joyful service, rather than a knowledge that puffs up!

Because the Christian Church lives in the world, we continue to struggle with the knowledge to love our neighbour, and please God.  This comes about, by what the world teaches us about knowledge, and how we allow a worldly understanding of knowledge to be impressed on God’s church.

We need to know what the conscience is! 

There is both the conscience of an individual and then there is the conscience of a community, or a collective conscience.

The conscience of an individual is moulded by a group’s conscience.  Conscience comes from a Latin word that means, “being privy to knowing”.  Having a conscience is having “shared knowledge” or “knowing together”. 

For a worldly knowledge or conscience, one sees and experiences what is going on around them and it becomes the norm, and then it’s expected to be common practice.  When one works with a worldly conscience one survey’s the self, fashioned by their experiences and emotions, and then their conscience places faith within what one hears from there heart!  The heart becomes conformed to the world, to keep in step with the shared experiences of the world. 

With our hearts driven by the world and its opinions, the church is oppressed, when we seek to impress, or allow, a worldly conscience to steer God’s church.  The direction of the conscience is turned about face.  As a result, our knowledge of good and evil is gleaned from the world and driven by the feelings of the heart, rather than God and his Word having singular authority.

The bible, God’s written Word, becomes a book that just “contains” words about God, rather than “being” the holy and inspired Word of God, written down by faithful servants of God.  With worldly suspicions then one can pick and choose what one wants to take from God’s Word.  Parts can be rejected because, those who wrote it were working with an alternative agenda.  In short, one then can stand in judgement over God’s Word, rather than remain under and in submission to it.

So called believers, no longer believe the Word of God.  But believes what the heart feels about the Word of God.  Knowledge is not being known by God.  But becomes puffed up in protecting what one thinks is God. 

Dear friends in Christ, when we do this, we stand naked before God, with an idol of God in our hearts. This idol is an image of the heart that imagines that we know something.  The idols of our imaginations tell us plainly that we do not yet know as we ought to know.  This faith is not from the Holy Spirit but from the imaginations of our human spirit, without the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  This faith covers what is truly known by God, our sin!

The Old Testament word for conscience is heart.  A heart pleasing to God is that which sees with the ear!  However, one’s heartfelt feelings that misplace having a true heart for God, is a common teaching we’re called to hear in God’s Word as sin. 

Jesus says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21–23 ESV)

The first mention of man’s heart is recorded in Genesis chapter six, causing God to send the flood. 

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”  (Genesis 6:5–6 ESV)

When we become conscience bound by anything other than God and his Word, it grieves God to his heart. 

Jesus pleases God the Father.  He does not turn away from following the Father.  Therefore, he is set apart as holy.  In his holiness, he became like you, without doing what you do, to set you apart from the evil intentions and thoughts of your heart, that is your nature and its sin.  By his holiness he continually prays before our Father in heaven and sends the Holy Spirit to make you holy. 

Jesus came to cleanse you and me from the unholiness of our hearts.  Jesus seeks to cleanse your spirit from the common corruption that the Law of God reveals in the heart, but that the world feels and says is okay.

Humanity’s sinful nature, from Adam and Eve, throughout the ages, to the end of time, seeks to reject the Word of God, outrightly, as a lie!  Even within the church it’s in our nature, to water down God’s Word to the point where we, with the world, are tempted to regard the Word of God as a lie.  With the world, our hearts become deceived in a shared knowledge, that evil is good and good is evil.  Humanity’s collective conscience of the “good and evil” lie, replaces the truth. 

Isaiah warned the priests and the people of Jerusalem, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!  Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”  (Isaiah 5:20–21 ESV)

This same puffed-up worldly conscience continues to deceive pastors and people in the church today!  Many are shamed by the truth of God’s Word and have turned to idols of God in their hearts.  The love of God is exchanged for an image, a contrary imaginary puffed-up love.  

This love is a lie!  It’s love that’s opposite to a love of being known by God.  It’s a love that hinders the Holy Spirit, making us unable to serve our neighbour, like Christ serves us. 

Instead of hearing God in his Word, a worldly heart seeks the word within one’s conscience, deflating one’s knowledge of the power and holiness of God’s word within themselves.

However, knowing we are known by God; we stand accused by his holy Word of the Law.  We know, if we stand before God with a knowledge of good and evil based on the conscience of the world, we stand before God, calling what is written in his Word, a lie. 

Knowing that God knows our knowledge of good and evil is a lie, the Holy Spirit unites us with Jesus Christ, so we know Jesus Christ.  We know, he knows us, died for us, and now intercedes for us before our Father in heaven. 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, pleases God our Father.  The Holy Spirit pleases God our Father and God the Son.  We please God our Father when we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into God’s Word, to cleanse us.  We please God our Father when our hearts hear, receive, and believe Jesus Christ.  We please God our Father when we hear the Word of God, and not what’s within our sinful hearts or within the ways of the world.

Being a Christian requires that we are in the world and not a part of the world.  Jesus sets you apart from the world, so being known by God, you can love your neighbour in the world.

Let us pray.

Change my heart, O God, make it ever true.  Change our hearts, O God; may we be like you.  You are the potter; we are the clay.  Mould us and make us to be set apart as servants like Jesus your Son, in this we pray.  Amen.

B, Pentecost 12 Proper 15 - Psalm 34:9-14 "To Know is to be Known"

Oh yes I know!  I know how you feel!  I know! I know! I know!  Do you know?  I know!  We know how to do it? I know too!  He knows, she knows, they know! Okay smarty pants, how do you know?

You don’t know! You should know! I don’t want to know! I don’t know!  I know nothing!

How do I make it known?  How do I know?

How does one know that they know what they know?

If you haven’t guessed, today’s address is about knowing!  From where does one get knowledge?

People have been struggling to know how one knows since time began.  In fact, Adam and Eve wanted to know and they ended up finding out what they didn’t know, and probably wish they had never wanted to know in the first place.

The experience of all young people is they think they know everything.  Every successive generation has grumbled that their young folk think they know everything.  And the young, likewise, protest for being blamed for not knowing anything.  And as one ages and gains experience, they realise they don’t really know as much as one thought they knew. As teens and young adults there’s a tendency to believe one is invincible.  But failures, accidents, and bad experiences through life teach otherwise.

In Old Testament times elders of the people were those who had grey hair and beards through experience.  They were the knowledgeable ones; they were to whom one went for wisdom.

Wisdom literature in the bible is associated with the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.  However, for believes in God all of Scripture is the central true source of wisdom.  For believers, our life experiences are secondary to God’s Word and the events of our lives are measured in the Word of God.

However, the Word of God can be used in the wrong way too.  We hear in God’s Word how Adam and Eve first used God’s Word in the wrong way.  Rather than standing under his Word in submission they stood over his Word as they were encouraged by the serpent to question the knowledge of God and then gain their own knowledge of good and evil.  Satan encouraged them to trust in themselves and their own understanding of what God said, and they chose the wrong way even though it seemed so right to them at the time.

Ever since then humanity has struggled to know.  The leaders in biblical times learnt through bitter experience to not trust themselves, realising what they knew, was not going to sustain them.  Socrates and Plato began the western philosophical tradition by asking questions about our being, how we know, and why we do what we do with this knowledge.  Thousands of years of asking questions has left humanity with only more unanswered questions.

Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!  The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.  Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.  What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?  Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.  Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalm 34:9–14 (ESV)

Since Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and were thrown out of the garden, God has sought to teach us.  Here in Psalm 34, we are taught the wisdom of God.  Those who are familiar with the older version of Luther’s Small Catechism will be reminded of the “fear and love” language in what each commandment means for us.  Here, like the Catechism, we are taught to fear, love, and trust God over all things.

The lion is the king of wild animals.  Coming across one in the Israeli wilderness, I imagine, would have caused great fear, especially a lion that suffered want and hunger.  But we are taught this big proud predator struggles with poverty and hunger, but even in the face of death, suffering poverty, and hunger, and one’s desire to live and love many days, those who seek the Lord will lack no good thing.

So, how do we know what is good and what is evil?  Do we turn once again to experience?  What about the senses?  What we see, smell, taste, hear, or feel?  Surely all these things are open to deception because they find their origin in the person.  What seemed good or evil to Adam and Eve, was not so for God. In the same way, what pleases and displeases me is not necessarily what gives God pleasure or displeasure.

Knowing what is good and evil enables us to seek peace and pursue it.  However, when I look at what I seek and what I want, and my pursuit of it, I realise the peace I get from it is rather superficial and subjective at best.  Just like two farmers living next door to each other one wants rain to grow his crop to grain, but the other doesn’t because he has cut his crop and wants to make hay. What one of us believes is good is not necessarily good for the other!

Or like a person being chased by a hungry Israeli lion. As they run, they cry out to God yelling, "PLEASE LORD! CONVERT THIS LION TO BE A CHRISTIAN LION!" They run until they reach a dead end. The hungry lion approaches slowly, as they cry out louder: "PLEASE LORD HEAR MY PRAYER AND CONVERT IT!" The lion stops walking, and the person praises God. The lion kneels, puts its paws together and says: "Come Lord Jesus be our guest and let this food to us be blest, Amen."

What becomes evident in our knowledge, or in our pursuit of knowing, is that we really don’t know what is good and what is evil outside our own narrow perspective.  Generally, we are a little better at naming evil as eviI. But history has proven if a large enough group of people deem something good, it is regarded as such even if the opposite is true for God and those who choose to follow him.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15–16 (ESV)

We are called to wisdom.  Paul tells the Ephesians to be careful, to look where they walk.  One needs to be wise because the days are evil and there are many ways that aren’t wise.  And we know this from witnessing what happens in the world and the church is more that often contrary to what God has called us to in his Word.  Inside and outside the church in our fears and desires we continue clinging to many destructive idols because of what we think we know is good.

But God’s Word teaches us to know that we know what we know, only because God knows us.  He knows you better than you know yourself and he has known it from before you existed in the womb. 

“Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Proverbs 9:5–6 (ESV)

The way of insight is knowing God knows us better than we know ourselves.  Little by little he makes known to us the grave depths why he needed to send his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us.  He gives us knowledge of our sin and evil but at the same time increases in us our knowledge of the good which could only be done by his Son at the cross. 

Just like a proud lion whose lost his pride through poverty and hunger, we allow Jesus, the Lion King to devour the poverty and hunger of our sin. In fact, in knowing Jesus consumes our sin, the Holy Spirit increases our knowledge of God’s existence, and our trust in his providence.

Jesus says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:54 (ESV)

In a beautiful twist of God’s love, God fills us with faith to feed on him.  And this food of faith fills us with hope that once again we will be with him in the garden of paradise at our death and resurrection on the last day. Amen.