WORD STUDY – BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge: [but] fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

“Knowledge is power.” Sir Francis Bacon

The name of the High School I attended was Steinmetz. It was named after Charles Potius Steinmetz. You really don’t hear much about him the history books. Most of the students could not tell you what Steinmetz was famous for. So I did some research on our school’s namesake and discovered a very unusual man. Charles Steinmetz was a man who suffered from dwarfism and had a hunchback. He immigrated to the United States from Germany at the request of Henry Ford. Henry Ford was building one of the biggest industries in America and he needed a lot of electrical power and Charles Steinmetz was an electrical engineering genius. When he passed through immigration the immigration agents refused to let him in. Not because he was a terrorist but because he was ugly. I‘m not joking, they refused to let him immigrate into this country at the turn of the 20th century because he was so disfigured. I would like to see that go down today.

It took the personal appeal of the great industrialist Henry Ford to convince the immigration department that he needed Steinmetz to build his generators to make America great. Anyways, Steinmetz went on to design the powerful, state of the art, generators that powered the factories of Henry Ford and then moved to New York where was granted citizenship despite his appearance.

One day the generators stopped running. The auto plants shut down and when they shut down no automobiles were being built and if no autos were being built Henry Ford was making no money which he could not stand. For one week his engineers worked 24/7 trying to get the generators running. Finally in desperation Henry Ford called Steinmetz to come down and see if he could get the generators running. Steinmetz came and he tinkered a little here and tinkered a little there and in one half hour had the generators humming. A week later Ford received a bill from Steinmetz for $10,000. That is like a quarter million dollars in today’s money. Ford sent the bill back to Steinmetz with the notation: “Charlie, don’t you think $10,000 is a little too much for a half hour of tinkering?” Steinmetz revised the bill and sent it back to Ford. “For one half hour of tinkering, $10.00. For knowing where to tinker, $9,990.00.” Ford paid it.

Sir Francis Bacon said in the 17th Century, “Knowledge is power.” Steinmetz knew he could command such a high figure because he had the most knowledge of those generators and that was power. The word knowledge in Hebrew is yada’ is really a word used for intimacy. You know, “Abraham knew his wife and she had a child.” I mean that was more than just being familiar with her. The sexual relationship is called knowledge or knowing in the Bible not just because it was a politically correct term to use. The Hebrews viewed a true sexual relationship as knowing a person, knowing that person better than anyone in the world.

I’ve written about this word fear many times, yara’ and in this context in Proverbs 1:7 it means to fear that you may do something to offend God, wound His heart or even break His heart. If you have such a fear, God will give you knowledge. Note Ephesians 1:17-18: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: (18) The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,”

It is interesting that the word in Aramaic for hope is savra which really means purpose. The word knowledge is yada’ in the Aramaic the same as in the Hebrew meaning an intimacy. God gives you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in your intimacy with Him so you can know the purpose or reason for your calling for what you are and why you are what you are.

There are six billion or so people in the world and no two are identical. Each is a little different, even twins have some differences. Yet, for some reason we all have to worship God the same way, like the same music and express our love to Him the same way. If I was God I would really get bored with all those praisealleuiahs not to mention the music where we tend to repeat over and over.

The word calling in the Aramaic is qeryana which really means a vocation or what you are good at doing and enjoy doing. Everybody can be good at something, you just have to search for it and in your intimacy with God that is where you will find it. You won’t find it from some Christian Education director telling you: “I think you would be good working with children and we just happen to have a need right now.” This is between you and God and your church leaders job is to find a place to use that gift that God gave you rather than telling you what the needs are and you trying to fit your gift into it. There are many gifted Bible teachers sweeping floors in the church hoping to build up enough credit with the pastor so he will let them teach maybe once or twice. You know, prove faithful in the little things and I will give you big things. Somehow the years go by and not big roles are offered. Generally, it is the really tithers, and members of the pastor’s inner circle that get those plumb roles.

Yet, all of us have a little Charles Steinmetz in us. There is something each of us can do, something we are expert at, that no one else can do as well as we can. It may not be in a traditional role. I knew a priest who was very skilled in wood working. He said he felt closer to God when he is working with wood than celebrating the Mass. Eric Liddle the gold medalist sprinter in the 1926 Olympics who became a missionary said when he ran he felt God’s pleasure. Your calling, your geryana, is the thing you are really good at and enjoy doing and when you do it you begin to understand the reason for your geryana.

People want to pray over me to deliver me from my Asperger’s Syndrome, but if God did that, then I would not be me, I would not relate to God the way I do now and he created me to relate to Him in the way I do. I have a young man in a wheel chair that I drive to school everyday, he said he has found a special way to pray to God in his wheel chair that he could not do if he could walk.

To discover your own, special way to be intimate with God, to be intimate in a way no one else is, that is the beginning of yada’ knowledge.