Knowledge is the illumination of the mind.
Understanding is knowing what the knowledge is.
Wisdom is using the understanding of the knowledge.
- Knowledge, there is energy
- Understanding, how energy works
- Wisdom, utilising the energy.
- Knowledge, knowing that God exists
- Understanding, knowing how God works
- Wisdom, putting God into action.
Mystery is only another name for ignorance.
All things are mysteries when they are not understood.
James tells us to pray for wisdom,
Jas 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Wisdom by itself is no good if we do not have knowledge and understanding. Wisdom can only come from understanding the knowledge that we have.
We gain knowledge of God from reading His word, the Bible.
We gain understanding of God by studying and meditating with pray on the knowledge that we have learnt.
If we have no knowledge and no understanding we cannot have wisdom.
You cannot gain knowledge of the bible by cherry picking verses as we often do, as we do not always use it in the right context. You need to see the whole bible in context before you can start breaking it down. We often take a verse that makes us a promise and claim that promise for ourselves without checking on the terms and conditions that go with it. The terms and conditions are not always obvious and we may need to look for them, it is only when we know the whole bible that we are able to find them.
All God’s promises have terms and conditions.
Increase in knowledge.
Until 1900 knowledge doubled every 100 years.
By the end of WW2 (1946) knowledge was doubling every 25 years.
On average today, knowledge is doubling every 18 months.
This speeding up of available knowledge is due to, television, satellites and the internet. The more knowledge that is out there the more we have to discern to find the truth.
In Jesus day the only knowledge available was from the religious history of the Jews and what had been passed down from word of mouth through the generations. Particularly amongst the Jews the main interests were the knowledge of God and the coming of the Messiah. Therefore when the people heard about Jesus is was very topical with the present knowledge that they had.
Today there is so much knowledge that people do not know what to believe. The truths of God have been watered down and changed by man. Religions have been built on half-truths: Some being purely for the benefit of the designers. There is also so much knowledge about the world that people are more concerned about that rather than about the creator of the world. People are becoming more and more self-centred because of the knowledge that is available to them.