We do thank the Lord for gathering us together again this year. As our brother mentioned last night, this is the ninth conference of this kind.
I wonder if you noticed that at this particular conference there is a particular theme. The theme throughout this ninth conference is on things spiritual.
Before we knew the Lord, we knew only things that were earthly, worldly, physical, and temporal. Sometimes I think we were like eagles crawling on the ground, totally ignorant of anything that is heavenly, invisible, and eternal.
But since the Lord came into our hearts, something happened. We began to soar like eagles. We began to enter into a realm that we had never known before. We were introduced into a vast realm of the spiritual.
This is where we are, this is what we seek, and this is what we ought to be.
I think we are like Moses. God called him to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, and showed him a view of the promised land. And we are also like Joshua. God said to Joshua, “Rise up, and go over the Jordan and possess the land.”
In other words, we believe that God has gathered us together to have a view of the spiritual, heavenly realm—of things spiritual—and not merely to have a view, but also to walk in it. I do believe that this is the reason the Lord has gathered us year after year for this purpose.
We are supposed to live in the heavenlies, and we are supposed to touch spiritual realities. This is where we are and where we must be.
This year, we will focus our attention on spiritual knowledge. Our prayer is that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation unto the full knowledge of God. I do hope that throughout the few days we are together, this will be the cry of our hearts.
Please turn to Genesis, the book of Genesis, chapter 2. We will read verses 8 and 9.
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And in Colossians, the letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, we will read from verse 9 through verse 12.
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and make request for you,
that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work,
and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joy;
giving thanks unto the Father, Who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
May we have a word of prayer.
Dear heavenly Father, we do thank Thee for gathering us together unto the name of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We do praise and thank Thee that Thou dost give us a hunger and thirst after Thyself, and we do thank Thee that Thou hast promised that Thou wilt satisfy us.
Lord, we just pray that Thou wilt breathe upon Thy Word, and Thou wilt open our understanding, that Thy Word may become life, light, and spirit to us; that we may know Thee in a living way. Unto Thee be the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Spiritual knowledge is most essential to our spiritual well-being. The controversy of God with His people Israel was over this matter of knowledge. In Hosea 4:6, He said:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” So knowledge is very important to us as believers.
But, brothers and sisters, as we pursue after spiritual knowledge, one thing is essential: we need to know what kind of knowledge we are really seeking after.
There are two different kinds of knowledge in this world, and these two kinds of knowledge are represented by the two trees in the Garden of Eden.
As God created man in His own image, after His own likeness, He planted a garden—a beautiful garden—and He put man in that garden. The Bible tells us that in the garden God planted all kinds of trees bearing fruit, good to look at and good for food.
But in the midst of the garden, God planted the tree of life. Beside that tree of life, God planted another tree: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God placed man in the garden and gave him a choice. He could choose between the two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He could choose between life and knowledge.
Of course, when you contrast life with knowledge, you know that this knowledge does not come from life, because life itself is knowledge. You remember the prayer of our Lord Jesus in John 17:3:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
In other words, life gives us knowledge. Life gives us the knowledge of knowing God, the only true God; and life gives us the knowledge of knowing the One Whom God has sent, Who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
But there is another knowledge outside the life of God, and that is the knowledge of good and evil. God put man before these two trees and allowed man to make a choice: whether he wanted to live by the life of God, making life the principle of his living, or whether he would rather have knowledge apart from God—a knowledge residing in him, enabling him to live according to that knowledge as his principle of living.
We may say that one is spirit knowledge—the tree of life—and the other is soul knowledge—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Our forefathers made a choice. As we know from the Word of God, they chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life.
Remember that in the garden there were many trees. God planted all kinds of trees bearing fruit. Why? Because God loved the man whom He created, so He provided everything for that man. All these fruit trees were good to look at and good for food.
These trees were given to man for his physical needs. Man has a physical body, and because of that there are needs for the body. God created all these trees as provision for man’s physical needs.
Then, aside from all the trees, there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What was that tree for? Though it was good to look at and good for food, it was a different kind of food. It was not for physical needs; it was food for our soulish needs.
God created man in three parts: spirit, soul, and body. All these parts of man have their particular needs. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to satisfy the desires of the soul—to satisfy our intellect, our emotion, and our will. That is food for the soul.
Then you find the tree of life. The tree of life is food for our spirit. God created us with a spirit, and that spirit needs food. The tree of life is the food for the spirit.
Sometimes people think that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a bad tree. Personally, I feel that God would not put anything bad in the Garden of Eden. It was a good thing. As a matter of fact, it was better than all the other fruit trees. It was superior to all the other trees, but, of course, it was inferior to one tree: the tree of life.
God put man before these two trees and let him make a choice: whether he wanted to live by the life of God and, with that life, come to know God in a living way—to live by God and live for God—or whether he would like to develop his own soul apart from the life of God.
Man could have something within himself so that he might be independent of God and live by his rational mind, his reasonings, and his logic. Two different ways of life were before man.
Man made his choice. He would rather have the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He would rather develop his own soul and be independent, as Satan suggested: “Ye shall be as gods.” You do not need God anymore; you are god yourself.
Or would man be willing to accept God’s life as his principle of living? Unfortunately, our forefathers chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Brothers and sisters, in a sense, when our forefather made that choice, he did not choose only for himself; he made that choice for every one of us. Adam is our forefather, and all who are in Adam, all who are born of Adam, inherit that choice.
That is the reason why, since Adam made that choice, throughout thousands of years of human history, man has pursued after knowledge apart from the life of God. By that knowledge, men declare independence from God, and men think that they are gods themselves.
The Lord said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Why did God forbid man to take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil if it was a good tree, food for the soul?
The enemy suggested to Eve that the reason God did not allow her to eat of the tree was that He was jealous. He did not want her to be like Him; He wanted to keep her in the dark so that He might have control over her.
Was that the reason God did not allow man to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? We know that it was Satan’s suggestion. It was not God’s original desire.
God loves us so much. He wants to give us everything that is good for us, and He wants to keep us away from that which will bring death to us. By eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil apart from the life of God, and by developing knowledge separated from God’s life, the result is always death.
This is very clear when we go back to the story in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The moment they ate it, their eyes were opened. But opened to what? They saw themselves naked.
Why did they not know they were naked before? When God created all the animals, they all had clothing. They were born with clothes: feathers, skins, and furs. God clothed them when they were created.
Can you imagine that when God created man, He created him naked, with no clothing of any kind? If they were created naked, why did Adam and Eve not see it before they ate of the forbidden tree?
Personally, I feel that when God created man in His own image and after His likeness, God clothed man with glory. Glory is the clothing of man. Because they were clothed with glory, they could not see their nakedness.
But when they sinned against God, the glory faded, and they began to see that they were naked. Immediately they tried to cover themselves. They sewed fig leaves together as aprons to cover their nakedness.
But were they successful? Not at all. When God came into the garden, they hid themselves among the trees because they said to God, “We were naked.” The weather had changed, the wind was blowing, and it was cold. Their fig-leaf clothing was inadequate.
This is just outwardly what happened to man when he ate the forbidden fruit. The Word of God says, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Yet Adam and Eve lived hundreds of years afterward. They begot sons and daughters; they had family life and social life. They did not die physically on the day they ate, but God’s Word is accurate.
On the day they ate of that forbidden tree, something died immediately. Their bodies still lived for hundreds of years, and their souls still lived, yet their spirits were dead.
God is Spirit, and God created man with a spirit so that man could communicate with God. You cannot communicate with God through your physical body. Even though people may prostrate themselves before God, mere prostration does not touch God.
Neither can you touch God with your soul. You may have very noble thoughts about God, yet by searching no one can find God. God is Spirit; therefore, you need a spirit to communicate with Him.
But on the day Adam and Eve ate that forbidden fruit, their spirit was dead. Their communication with God was cut off. This does not mean that they no longer had a spirit. They still had a spirit as an organ, but the proper function of that organ was terminated.
That is why man could still communicate with evil spirits but could not communicate with God. His spirit was dead.
In trying to have knowledge apart from the life of God, the spirit was dead. That was only the beginning, because gradually death would conquer the soul and the body. God’s Word is always true.
What is the knowledge represented by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? That knowledge includes all the knowledge we know apart from the life of God—scientific and technological knowledge, philosophical and speculative knowledge, and moral, ethical, and religious knowledge.
As a matter of fact, the knowledge of good and evil is the top of all knowledge in this world. Sometimes we think scientific and technological knowledge is the highest. Not so. Or we think philosophical and speculative knowledge is purer than technological knowledge. No.
In human beings, the highest knowledge is the knowledge of good and evil. It is the rational, ethical, moral sense in man. Yet strangely, even that highest knowledge, instead of giving man life, puts man to death.
So, brothers and sisters, at the very outset we need to see the distinction between these two kinds of knowledge. Then we need to know what kind of knowledge we are really pursuing.
Let us illustrate this with scientific and technological knowledge. The world has made great progress in that area, and because of such knowledge, we feel life has become more convenient.
It does give us many physical advantages. But does that knowledge help us become better men and better women? Even though it gives us so much convenience in this world, it creates many more problems, and it brings us even to the brink of the annihilation of mankind.
What is the real purpose of scientific and technological knowledge? According to the Word of God, it should bring us closer to God. You remember Romans 1:20:
For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity.
When we look at the things God has created and discover these things, they should bring us closer to God. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. As we discover the laws of creation and apply and enjoy them, this should bring us closer to God.
But, on the contrary, such knowledge often brings us further away from God. It makes us feel that we do not need God anymore, that we are gods and can do everything and anything.
There is nothing wrong with knowledge itself. What is wrong is the person—the man or woman—handling that knowledge. Fallen humanity has become selfish and self-centered. With that degraded, fallen life, the more scientific and technological knowledge we have, the worse the world becomes.
It does not help us spiritually or morally. It does not bring us to God; it brings us away from God.
The same thing is true with philosophical and speculative knowledge. When you are trying to seek after God even with your mind, your thought, your will, or your emotion, it may seem to bring you closer to God. But in actuality, it can lead you away from God.
People can have very noble thoughts about God, yet they are deceived. They think that by this they know God. Well, they may know about God, but they are still in darkness. They do not really know God. Such knowledge becomes a substitute and leads them away from God.
For instance, read the letter to the Colossians. These believers had come to the Lord, but in their search for more knowledge of God, they were led astray.
Expositors and commentators speak of the Colossian heresy. What was it? It was a strange combination of heathen Gnosticism and Jewish ritualism.
They speculated about the universe, about origins, about a good God and a bad God, and about material things being evil in themselves. This speculation was combined with Jewish ritualism: “Handle not, nor taste, nor touch.”
These Colossian believers sought after such knowledge. They thought that by trying to explain the universe and its system, they would really know God and grow spiritually. But instead, they drifted; they were drawn away from God.
Paul had to write that letter to help them see that all the wisdom and knowledge of God are hidden in Christ Jesus, and we are complete in Him. Only in Him is there true knowledge. If you try to find knowledge outside Him, you are led astray.
If you read 1 Timothy 6:20-21, you find Paul exhorting Timothy to guard against knowledge falsely so called, which has caused some to miss the faith. When we seek philosophical and speculative knowledge apart from life, we miss the faith. We are led astray. It gives us death, not life.
Perhaps we may say that if scientific and philosophical knowledge does not bring life to us, but instead leads us to death, then surely moral, ethical, and religious knowledge will bring us to God and bring God to us. Is that true?
Take, for instance, the law. God gave the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel. Even though we Gentiles did not have that written law, God by His Spirit inscribed His law upon our hearts.
In other words, the whole world—all human beings—is under God’s law, whether it is written on stones or inscribed upon our hearts. We all have God’s law in us.
God is holy, and His law is holy. When that law is given to us, what is its purpose? The purpose of the law is to give us the knowledge of sin. By the law, we know that we have sinned.
The law drives us, or leads us as a schoolmaster, to Christ. If we do not know that we have sinned, if we are not convicted of our sins, then we will have no need of Christ as Savior. But the law shows us that we have sinned and brings us to Christ. That is the purpose of the law.
Unfortunately, instead of taking the law as a means to an end, we make law the end. We try to keep the law by our own works, the works of the flesh, and we discover that we cannot do it.
So we try to deceive ourselves. If we can keep only the letter of the law, then we feel that we are self-righteous.
You remember that young man who came to the Lord and said, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The Lord asked him whether he had kept the commandments: honor thy father and mother; do not steal; do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not covet. The young man said, “All these things have I observed from my youth.”
Then the Lord said, “Sell all that thou hast, give to the poor, and come, follow Me.” He kept the letter of the law, but he broke the spirit of the law.
The Pharisees were proud of themselves because they kept the law to the very letter, yet they violated the very spirit of the law. They were hypocrites. They deceived themselves. They had a form of godliness but without its power.
People may appear outwardly moral, but there is no life. It is not spiritual; there is no life.
The letter to the Galatians addresses this problem. The Galatian believers began with the Spirit, but they tried to be completed by the law. They thought that after believing in the Lord Jesus, they had to do something themselves, to keep the law, and then they would be made perfect.
But instead, they fell from the grace of God. They were led away from Christ instead of growing in Christ. That does not work either. The result is death.
We may even go a little further. What about scriptural knowledge—knowledge of the Bible? Certainly, there should be no problem with scriptural knowledge. The Word is true. Our Lord Jesus said:
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
That should be right. But, brothers and sisters, if we approach the Word of God mentally, intellectually, or emotionally—if we approach the Word of God with our old life and our own intellect—we may be able to explain it or expound it.
We may seem to have a good knowledge of the Word of God. We may even be able to reduce the Word of God into a system. We make the Word of God into dogmas, and eventually it becomes tradition. We become very knowledgeable in the Word of God.
But will that bring us closer to God? We may know a lot about God, but we may not have much of God in our lives.
Our Lord Jesus said, “The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” Paul said, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”
How often, when we approach the Word of God, do we approach it intellectually? That is why many theological seminaries begin very fundamental in their faith but eventually become very liberal in their faith. Why? Because they approach the Word of God with the flesh. They touch the Word of God with the mind of the flesh.
Only the Spirit of God can reveal the truth to us. It cannot be grasped merely with our minds. The Word of God is not a system, an “ism.” It is living; it grows with us as we grow in the Lord.
Even when we try to approach the Word of God apart from life, it brings in death. Even that kind of knowledge is the knowledge of good and evil.
I wonder, brothers and sisters, after we have known the Lord all these years, how much real knowledge of God do we have?
In all our past searching and pursuit, are we on the wrong path? Are we in the right way of searching for spiritual knowledge? It is not so much how much about God we know. We probably know a great deal. The question is how much of God Himself we have really touched and known, so that it has become a living knowledge within us.
What is spiritual knowledge? Spiritual knowledge is knowledge that comes out of life. We have already quoted John 17:3:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
Spiritual knowledge comes from life. In John 1:4, we read:
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
What is light? Light is knowledge. If we have the life of Christ in us, that life is the light of men. That life gives us spiritual knowledge.
That life shows us and reveals to us Who God is, what kind of God He is, what kind of character He has, what His heart, mind, purpose, and will are, what His counsel is, and what He is working after.
Brothers and sisters, it is the life in us that reveals these things to us. With this life in us, we have a new relationship with God.
Formerly, we may have known about God, but we had no communication and no relationship with Him. But once you believe in the Lord Jesus and that life has come into you, immediately you find that a new relationship has been established. You call Him, “Abba, Father.”
We do not merely address Him as God Who is in heaven. We call Him, “Abba, Father.” It is a new and different relationship. You know Him because you share one life.
You do not know God merely by people telling you about God. You know God because He lives within you. He shows you what He likes and dislikes, what is pleasing to Him and what displeases Him.
He is righteous and holy within you, and He shows you Who He is and what His nature is. We know Him by nature.
With this life within us, you find a light guiding your steps. How do we walk on this earth as Christians? It is true that we have the Word of God as a lamp unto our feet. That is true.
But in our daily life, the Bible gives us principles; and in our daily life, it is the Holy Spirit within us, as the light of life, shining within us.
If we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.
What is that light? That light is the light of life. That light is God, because in the preceding verse it says that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
This light is the light within. God dwells in us; He is our life. As we know Him inwardly, He leads us on. He reveals the darkness within us, and through the blood of our Lord Jesus we are continually cleansed. That is the way we grow in the Lord: we grow in life.
Brothers and sisters, the life within us gives us the knowledge of God and transforms us. It is not merely mental knowledge, but knowledge that transforms our lives and conforms us to the image of His beloved Son.
This is spiritual knowledge. This is knowledge that gives us God—or we may put it the other way: God’s life gives us that knowledge. This is the knowledge we should seek after.
What happens to the other kinds of knowledge, the soul knowledge? Does it mean that because we seek spirit knowledge, we neglect or reject all other knowledge—scientific knowledge, technological knowledge, philosophical knowledge, ethical knowledge, and moral knowledge?
Brothers and sisters, again we say that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a good tree. It is not bad in itself. These kinds of knowledge are not bad in themselves. The problem is that man has fallen, and when fallen man handles these things, they become disastrous and destructive.
But when we seek the Lord Himself and have life knowledge within us, something happens. It turns all the other knowledge into its proper use.
The more you know science and technology, the more you realize the glory of God. It brings you closer to God and enables you to benefit mankind, not destroy mankind.
It puts philosophical knowledge within its proper bounds, and it becomes helpful because it helps you express what God has revealed to you.
It gives life to morality—not merely dead morality, but living morality. That is spirituality. Spiritual knowledge sublimates all other knowledge and leads it to its proper place.
So, brothers and sisters, you find that the most important thing is spiritual knowledge.
I would like to use an illustration. We remember Solomon. Solomon was the wisest of men.
In 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, we are told that he really loved God. After he became king over Israel, he went to Gibeon, where there was the brazen altar, and he offered thousands of sacrifices on that altar to show his love toward God.
Because of his love toward God, God appeared to him in a dream that night and said, “Ask what thou wilt.” Whatever you want, just ask.
Solomon asked only one thing. He said, “God, I am but a child. Thou hast put me over a great nation. I do not know how to go out or come in among Thy people, nor how to judge Thy people.” So he asked for wisdom and knowledge.
The Bible says that he asked for an understanding heart. In the original, an understanding heart is a heart that hears. He asked for a heart that could hear God. That was what he asked for.
God was highly pleased with him, because God said, “You did not ask for riches, great fame, the destruction of your enemies, or long life. You asked only for a heart that can hear Me.”
God gave him an understanding heart, largeness of heart, a heart that could hear God.
In 1 Kings 4, you find that Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of the East. Generally speaking, the wisdom of the East was philosophical and speculative knowledge—meditative and mystical knowledge. Solomon’s knowledge excelled that kind of knowledge.
His knowledge also excelled the wisdom of Egypt. Egypt at that time was one of the greatest empires, famous for its architectural achievements. Even today people visit Egypt to see the pyramids—not only their size, but also the scientific knowledge found in them.
Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of Egypt: scientific and technological knowledge. His wisdom even excelled the wisdom of Ethan, Heman, Chalcol, and Darda—men associated with inspirational, poetical, and religious expression.
Why? Because he was given spiritual knowledge: a heart that heard God.
Solomon wrote three thousand proverbs. The Proverbs we have are only a small part of those three thousand. Proverbs are like moral guides for our daily life, but when you read Proverbs, you find something that sublimates the moral guides of the world.
Different nations and countries all have their proverbs and moral maxims. But because Solomon knew God, you find an element in Proverbs:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
This puts something into morality. Solomon also wrote a thousand and five songs, and the Song of Songs is the song of Solomon that we have.
There you find that he touched love in the deepest way—something more than human love. It is a love that exists between God and man.
He wrote about trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop growing out of the wall. He wrote about animals, cattle, and creeping things. Not as a zoologist or a botanist, but when he wrote, he saw God in all these created things. That is spiritual knowledge.
So, brothers and sisters, what do we need? We need spiritual knowledge.
The one thing we need, as our brother already mentioned, is to pray. We need to ask the Lord to give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation unto the full knowledge of God.
It is not natural to us. It should be supernaturally natural to us, but it is something we need to desire after.
We have sought the knowledge of this world, and now it is time that we really set our hearts upon that spiritual life—that God will grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may know Him.
In James 1, we are told that if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask, and God will freely give, if we ask in faith.
We do hope that all of us will see the need of spiritual knowledge. All of us will see that there is a difference between spiritual knowledge and the knowledge so called that we know.
When you really see it, I believe you will sense the lack of it. Only when you sense the lack of it will you ask for it. If you ask for it, God will give it to you. So may the Lord help us. Let us pray.
Dear heavenly Father, we do thank Thee that Thou dost want to give the best to us. Thou dost give Thy Son to us, and in Him are all knowledge and wisdom.
We do pray, Lord, that Thou wilt open our understanding and our hearts, that the one thing we will seek after is Thy beloved Son, Who is the knowledge of God. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.