The Danger of "Knowledge"

1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 1.

1 Corinthians 8:1

We're not really looking at the context of 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

You can read that.

It's a short chapter.

You can read it later.

In the context, Paul is dealing with food that's being eaten here.

Food offered to idols in particular.

But what we see in the first verse I think is applicable in a lot of areas, not just

our knowledge about food offered to idols, which is what he was dealing with.

But I think what he's addressing here is something we can all think about for a second tonight.

So 1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 1, he says this, about food offered to idols.

1 Corinthians 8:1

We know that we all have knowledge.

Knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up.

Let's pray.

God, we come to you.

We thank you for your word.

And I pray, dear Lord, that we would learn from your word tonight.

I pray that we would check ourselves to see if we are puffed up with pride in our knowledge,

dear Lord, or if we are being built up and building others up in love.

So God, I pray that we would listen to these words.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would be among us tonight.

I pray that you would speak through me this evening, dear Lord.

I pray that you would hide me behind the cross.

I pray that you would help us to be free of worries and distractions, dear Lord, and any

attacks from the enemies tonight, dear Lord, but that we would listen to you and that we

would hear from you.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now, some of your Bibles may have a part of this verse as a quotation.

He says, we know that we all have knowledge.

We all have knowledge.

It may be in quotations in some of your translations, and it may not.

But I think that it probably should be.

There's some difference of opinion.

But it appears as though that Paul is quoting something that the Corinthians have told

him, and he's rebutting what they have told him.

He's coming back at them.

They had an answer to something he had addressed them about possibly, and he's repeating what

they have said and addressing while they are wrong in what they have said.

And we see this kind of throughout the book in some of these things.

We see some of these quotations or what appear to be quotations in which Paul is saying,

you guys said this, but I'm going to tell you where you're failing and what you said.

And so it appears as though what the people of Corinth said in regards to food offered

to idols, but in our case, I think it's applicable in any area of our life.

What they appear to have said was, we all have knowledge.

That is, we know everything there is to know about this.

We know about this subject.

We don't need you to tell us anything about this, Paul.

You're writing these letters to us, and you're telling us how to deal with things, and we

know stuff.

We're as smart as you are.

We have knowledge, and that's their argument.

We don't need to listen to you.

We have knowledge.

Now, it's hard for somebody that knows everything to learn anything.

That's important for us to remember.

If you know everything, you're not going to learn anything because as soon as somebody

starts to tell you about something, you're going to say, I know more than you about that,

and perhaps we're guilty of that.

And then we follow that up by saying all that we know.

We put our knowledge out there.

We open our mouth and we spill our great knowledge that we have.

Now, maybe we don't do that in many areas.

Maybe we do it in every area.

There's some people that know everything about everything.

You may know some of those people.

You may be some of those people.

I don't know.

Maybe we don't do it in every area, but maybe there's one or two things that we feel pretty

confident about that we have a lot of knowledge about.

And anytime we get in that condition, we get ourselves in trouble.

One, because we cannot learn anything new.

It hinders our own learning if we have the attitude that the Corinthians had.

So they tell Paul, hey, we know about stuff.

We know things.

We know everything there is to know about this.

Now, he doesn't say that exactly, but maybe that's the mindset and the heart and the attitude

that they have.

And so what does he do to combat this, to correct them in this?

He says, knowledge inflates with pride.

Now maybe some of us have experienced that before.

Have you ever thought you knew something about something?

You felt pretty good about it.

And then you proceeded to use your knowledge and your pride of how good you are in something

only for it to blow up in your face.

For you to realize you don't know quite as much about that thing that you thought you

did and maybe you got a little bit of learning to do.

I can tell you guys a good experience here recently that happened to me.

Now, I considered myself, not so much now as I'm telling this story, but I considered

myself to be pretty good when it came to cleaning vehicles and maintaining vehicles and making

sure they looked good and polishing them up and taking a lot of pride on the materials

that are used to clean certain parts of, you know, this is for plastic and this is for

metals and don't use this on the paint.

Don't use this on the plastic and don't do this.

And I really took a lot of pride and thinking that I knew what I was doing.

And then what happened was my truck had some swirl marks on it, not put there by me because

I know everything about how to not put a swirl mark on there.

And so knowing everything, I was going to remove those swirl marks, which I proceeded

to do.

However, in the process of doing that, there magically appeared some big spots on the side

of my truck where something had scratched through after I got through buffing.

Now it may or may not have been my fault.

I would like to say I didn't do it because after all, I'm pretty much an expert on that.

But nonetheless, it happened.

And so then I got to thinking, maybe I got a little bit of learning to do.

Maybe I don't know quite as much about that as I need to know.

So I had to take it to an expert to get it fixed.

Praise the Lord, he's able to fix it.

And so there are times in our life that we think we know stuff and then we go through

stuff like that and it helps us to realize that maybe we don't know quite as much as

we thought we knew.

Now before this, I would have, boy, somebody would have come to me.

I ought to give them all this advice on what they need to do and not do.

But since this, if somebody tells me something about their car, I kind of bite my tongue

because how can I give anybody advice?

I done messed up my truck.

I better not dare tell somebody how to fix something on theirs.

So maybe I do know some stuff or maybe I don't know much at all.

I don't know.

But things like that kind of put us in our place.

And maybe there are times that you've had those experience, a topic that you really

thought you knew about and you were talking to somebody and you wanted to show how good

and smart you were and you begin to say stuff.

And then somebody that you're talking to knows a little more about it than you do.

And they call you out on something that you thought was right and you were wrong about.

Boy, that makes you feel pretty foolish, don't you?

So sometimes it's better just to keep quiet and keep our knowledge to ourselves.

But what happens is we get a little knowledge about something and it gets us into trouble

because we all of a sudden think we're an expert in this thing and we get puffed up

and that might be a one area, two areas, three areas, a dozen areas of our life.

And the more we know, boy, we puffed up and puffed up.

And then there's that temptation that we want to make sure that everybody else knows that

we know all there is to know about cleaning our vehicles or about our technology or about

whatever it is.

And then all of a sudden, what comes before a fall?

Pride comes before a fall.

Similar idea here.

He says, knowledge inflates with pride.

That's a good use.

That's a good English word for the Greek word there.

Inflate.

We understand what it means to inflate.

Anybody ever inflated balloons before?

We inflated some balloons at Christmas.

Well, my mom did.

I couldn't figure out how to do it.

We had this machine.

You put the balloon on there just right.

It'd blow right up.

You'd have your balloon inflated.

But inflating a little bit's good.

But what happens if you just put that balloon on there and you just keep inflating?

It's going to pop.

It's going to burst.

And sometimes that's what happens to us.

We get so caught up in what we think we know and how knowledgeable we are.

We can't be taught.

We can't learn from other people who may be wiser than us.

We can't learn from the word of God because we get to the point sometimes, better be careful,

maybe not probably none of us, but do we say, I know what God's word says.

Sometimes you may encounter people.

I know the word of God better than you do.

I've read the word of God more times than you've read the word of God.

And we get to this point sometimes where we read and we just think, here's what this verse

means.

I know what this verse means.

And nobody can tell me any different because I have read it more than they have read it.

And sometimes even in the word of God, we may get to a point where we know it all and

God can't even teach us anything.

So maybe we know the word of God pretty good.

Maybe we don't know the word of God quite as good as we thought we knew it.

Here's a good thing.

I learned this when I worked at the Apple store.

This is one of the first things that they taught us.

And this is a game changer.

This is the greatest thing that you can do.

If somebody asks you a question and you don't know the answer to that question, here's what

you can do.

You can tell them this.

I don't know.

That's a, that's a, ain't that crazy?

We don't like to do that, especially if somebody's coming to us for our expertise and our opinion

and we don't want to look like a fool.

And so we might just open our mouth and just say something and try to make it sound good.

But there is no harm in saying, I don't know.

Let's find out.

I don't know the answer to that.

You know, I'm going to look into that.

Hey, let's, let's, let's think about that.

Let's meet later and talk about that.

There is nothing wrong with saying, I don't know, because people might think you're a

fool if you say, I don't know.

But then again, you might open your mouth and leave no doubt.

They may leave there saying, oh, that guy's a fool.

But if you say, I don't know, they say, well, you don't know.

Maybe you'll know and take some time to learn it.

You might learn something too along the way.

Don't pretend like you know it.

That's a good skill in life for us to learn.

And so he says, knowledge inflates with pride.

So we want to be those who grow in knowledge of God's word.

That's a good thing for us to do, but we don't want to get to the point where we think we

know it all, where God's word can't even speak to us.

And those people around us can't even speak to us.

Here's a good thing for us to do is listen.

Listening is one of the best things we can do, but that's hard to do because what we

want to do is talk.

What we want to do is tell other people what we know.

And that's not in and of itself a bad thing to share if you have some wisdom and knowledge.

That's not a bad thing.

It matters what heart in which you're doing it with.

If you're doing it with a heart of pride to show off what you know, then that's not good.

It's not bad in and of itself to share knowledge.

That's a good thing.

But we don't want to have that I know it all type of attitude so that we won't become inflated

with pride and we won't inflate ourselves to the point where our bubble is burst and

then we do look like the fool that we really are to begin with.

So it's better for us to acknowledge that and keep our mouths shut.

And so he says, knowledge inflates with pride.

Okay, so this is a bad thing, this type of knowledge.

But then what does he say?

He says, but love builds up.

But love builds up.

He goes on to say in first Corinthians chapter 13, some of you may be familiar with that,

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

the love chapter, he talks about these things, about having knowledge and all these other

things.

But what does he say is the most important?

Love is the most important.

Love surpasses all these things that he lists in first Corinthians 13.

And knowledge is one of those things.

So the question is, are you really loving people and caring about people and trying

to help people?

Are you just going to people to show off your knowledge?

Well, it's important for us to figure that out.

Do we really go see people, check on people and do for people because we care about them?

Do we come to church because we want to learn God's word and grow in God's word and have

a knowledge in God's word is going to shape us so that we can use what God does in us

to help others in a humble way?

Or do we simply come to church or go to events, whatever they may be, just to show off our

knowledge?

So it's not about knowledge.

It's about using that knowledge to do what God's will is in our life.

It's good to know, but blessed are those who do.

That's what Jesus said.

I believe it was Jesus said that.

This is scripture nonetheless.

It's good to know, I'm paraphrasing, but those who bless those who do are the ones who are

blessed.

So don't be one who's, who's inflated with, with knowledge and that leads to pride, but

he says love builds up.

So we need to, we need to check ourselves to see if we really love people.

If we care about people, if we're pouring into people from a right heart, do we really

care about people?

Because people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

And so maybe there is some knowledge that you can impart on somebody, but maybe you

just need to not worry about what they're going to think about you and not worry about

how smart you look in front of them, but just go love them for who they are and try to impart

some wisdom on them when the opportunity presents itself.

But maybe we just need to take more time to listen to those that we encounter than to

open our mouth and spout off what little knowledge we have.

And maybe we need to say, God help me to be humble and not think that I know everything

that there is to know, but know that there's always something more to learn.

There's always areas in which we can grow and we don't know everything and it's okay.

We don't have to know everything.

And sometimes there's pressure on us.

You know, we feel the pressure of the world, like we're supposed to know everything, whatever

your career is, if you're an expert machinist or if you're a preacher or if you're a barber

or whatever you do, if you're the expert in that field, people will come to you and they'll

ask you a question.

And there's a lot of pressure that you feel like you're supposed to know the answer to

that question.

And it would be fantastic if I knew every answer to every question in the Bible, but

there's, sometimes I feel like I know less now than I did 10 years ago.

I realized that I still got a lot to learn and there's no shame in us saying that we've

got a lot to learn in whatever areas it is in our life.

But I think there is some harm in us saying and acting like we know it all when really

we are just trying to grow in the Lord.

Hopefully we are.

So let us not be those who are inflated with pride, but those who received the love of

God and are built up by the love of God and use the love of God through Jesus Christ to

build up others.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this word and I pray dear Lord that we would not fall into that

trap of pride.

It kind of creeps up into our life dear Lord.

And if we're not careful, it's easy for us to think a little too much about ourselves,

to think that we are really hot stuff dear Lord.

But we might not be quite as hot as we thought we were dear Lord.

And we might be a couple of pumps away from the inflator of busting us wide open dear

Lord.

So I pray God that you would help us to be humble, that we would seek you, that we would

not be one who knows it all, that we would be one who is continually seeking to learn,

especially in the areas of your word and in service to you.

God, let us not be one who wants to show off our knowledge to others, but let us be one

who wants to love others dear Lord.

Love is something that can be built upon.

Love is something that can help us and those that we are trying to minister to.

So God let us be those who are built up in your word and growing in your word and using

what you do in us to build up others with love.

I ask these things in Jesus name, amen.