Summary

In the second installment of the series Jesus Over Everything, Pastor Dave preaches from Colossians 1:9-14, centering the message on what he calls "Real Knowledge." He opens with a striking illustration: a 1979 article noting that knowledge was expanding at 2,000 pages per minute, and that even if a person read 24 hours a day from age 21 to 70 and retained everything, they would still be one and a half million years behind. In a world drowning in information — and arguably even more so today — the question isn't just how much we know, but what kind of knowledge actually matters. Pastor Dave argues that the explosion of data pulls people in two directions: cynical postmodern skepticism on one hand, and an obsessive confidence that we can figure everything out on the other. Colossians cuts through both with a clear answer: real knowledge is found in Jesus.

To frame this Biblically, Pastor Dave draws on the Old Testament understanding of knowledge as intimate relationship, not mere data. In the Hebrew scriptures, "knowledge" was sometimes even used as a euphemism for the deepest human intimacy between a man and a woman. By contrast, modern people tend to think of knowledge as watching a YouTube video and sort of figuring something out. Biblical knowledge is more like a 33-year marriage — deep, practiced, experienced, and trusted. This is the kind of knowing we're being called into with Jesus: not a one-time encounter, but an ongoing, growing, walking relationship. With that framework in place, Pastor Dave outlines three realities that flow from truly knowing Jesus.

First, knowing Jesus makes us fruitful. In Colossians 1:9-10, Paul prays that believers would be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that they might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, bearing fruit in every good work. Pastor Dave is careful to hold together the finished work of Jesus — the tetelestai, "it is finished," the absolute assurance of forgiveness — with the ongoing process of sanctification. We don't bear fruit to earn God's love; we bear fruit because we believe he loves us. As he puts it, Jesus has brought us from the dumpster into the buffet — so why would we keep going back to the dumpster? Fruit, he explains, includes the character traits of Galatians 5 — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control — as well as the fruit of new believers coming to faith, as seen in the parable of the soils in Matthew 13. Practically, Pastor Dave encourages the congregation to take next steps: meeting with one or two other believers over the summer, welcoming newcomers, serving with kids, and stepping into areas of discomfort where they'll quickly run out of their own strength and learn to depend on Jesus.

Second, knowing Jesus builds endurance. Colossians 1:11 speaks of being strengthened with all power according to God's glorious might — but the purpose of that power, Pastor Dave notes with some humor, is not bullets bouncing off our chests. It's endurance and patience, or in the King James, long suffering — the Greek macrothumia, which literally means exactly that. Sometimes walking with Jesus looks less like Superman and more like crawling through the desert. Pastor Dave is careful not to dismiss the prayer for relief — he encourages both the Psalm 13 prayer ("How long, O Lord?") and the Psalm 23 prayer ("Though I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I will fear no evil, for you are with me"). Both are legitimate, and both are needed. But he also pushes back against a growing victim mentality in the broader culture, reminding the congregation that even while limping, by God's grace, we can serve someone else. The supernatural work of God in our suffering — producing genuine joy and thankfulness in the midst of hard things — is itself a testimony to the world of why Jesus makes sense.

Third, knowing Jesus is deliverance. Colossians 1:12-14 piles on some of the biggest words in the Christian vocabulary: inheritance, light, darkness, deliverance, redemption, forgiveness. Pastor Dave unpacks each one. The inheritance isn't something we're waiting on — it's already ours in Jesus, more than we can ask or imagine. Deliverance means being transferred out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. Redemption means being bought back from slavery. Forgiveness means our sins are no longer held against us — they've been laid on Jesus, and through his resurrection, his perfect righteousness is given to us. This, Pastor Dave says, is true spiritual deliverance — not a special formula, not knowing a demon's name, not finding the right teacher with secret knowledge. That kind of thinking is precisely what Colossians is written to counter. Instead, Ephesians 6 gives us the actual blueprint for spiritual warfare: pray, pray, pray, and put on the armor of trusting in the Gospel of Jesus every single day. The one offensive weapon is the sword of the Spirit — the word of God — used to fight temptation, speak truth to our own hearts, and proclaim the Gospel to others.

Pastor Dave closes with a personal story from seminary, where he was juggling two part-time jobs, a growing family, night shifts, and Hebrew exams, watching his grades slip and wondering what he was even doing there. What kept him going, he says, was the seminary's vision statement: "We believe that a seminary education is successful only if at its end, the student knows Jesus Christ more intimately than at its beginning." That, he says, is the heart of the whole message. More information is good. Knowing the Bible is good. But what Jesus wants — what the Father is doing — is conforming us to the image of his Son through an ever-deepening, ever-trusting, ever-growing knowledge of Jesus himself. That's real knowledge. Trust him.