God has made the wisdom of this world look
foolish. (1 Corinthians 1:20 NLT)
It is true that we may have a
tremendous amount of knowledge and information as this world can give it, and
yet the wisest, the wealthiest in knowledge or in any other way, coming into
Christ has got to learn the ABC in spiritual things.... It will not be long
before we are made to know that we do not know anything. The Lord said: “How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God!” I think if He
had been in another world from the one in which He was at the time, if He had
been in the Western world He would probably have said: “How hardly shall they
that have knowledge enter the Kingdom.” The boasted knowledge, wisdom, and intellect
of the Western world is the great obstruction to the Kingdom. It is not prepared
to know anything. When Paul got outside of the Jewish world, that was the kind of
thing he was saying all the time, that the wisdom of this world was the great
hindrance. With the Jews, gain along the line of wealth; to the Gentiles, gain
along the line of knowledge was the hindrance, and anything that appertains to
nature has to be set aside. It is a hindrance to our coming into the Kingdom.
The longer we live in
relationship to the Lord the more we know that we know nothing. One piece of
knowledge we have is that we do not know anything at all, and we are just
longing all the time to get some knowledge. There is no royal road to spiritual
knowledge, we have to start right at the beginning and learn the things of the
Lord as we go along. When we start as young Christians we do think that we know
something. But, of course, that is the folly of youth. We are learning
everything all over anew. With all the knowledge that we might have naturally,
if it should be anything, it does not count here. Spiritual knowledge is a
different thing. We have started all over again, but when we accept that place:
"Now I have everything to learn, I am open and eager to learn, I know nothing,"
then the Lord can teach. It is the proud one that never learns anything. The
Lord show us what it means to begin, what the meaning of the Cross is in our end
to the old and beginning to the new.