“IYKYK”
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 40:28)
As the popular tautology puts it: “If you know, you know” (or, more economically, “IYKYK”). A tagline which implies, of course, that if you don’t happen to know, you simply cannot count yourself among those on the inside of this particular joke. And as no 21st century person likes to admit to not being “in the know”, when we do find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of “unknowing”, most of us will choose to just smile, and nod along, and hope that no one calls our bluff.
But knowing, and knowledge, is serious business in the economy of scripture. Biblically speaking, one could say that all of the brokenness and evil and sin and consequences that we encounter upon the face of the earth can be fundamentally traced to a failure of knowledge; the failure to rightly KNOW - intimately, relationally, faithfully - the LORD in the truth of who He is, and who we have been created to be in relation to Him. When we no longer know God as God, we untether both ourselves and the world which we steward from the sustaining, eternal goodness of our Creator, and spin off into the darkness of our own ignorance. The prophet Hosea describes the results in stark terms:
“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish…
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me.” (Hos. 4:1-6)
“My people perish for lack of KNOWLEDGE”, says the Lord. “There is no steadfast love… bloodshed follows bloodshed… the land mourns…” IYKYK.
Conversely, inasmuch as the failure of knowledge is the root of unrighteousness, death and destruction, scripture says that the RETURN of knowledge - right knowing - is synonymous with the coming of salvation; the establishing of the Kingdom of God. Such is the messianic promise of Isaiah 11:
“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD…
…They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”
We seek the Lord together for Revival and Awakening, because we know that it is not better tools, strategies, or circumstances that a spiritually moribund Church and a hopelessly lost world need, but a complete and wholesale renewal of mind, through living encounter with the knowledge of the “God-ness” of God. IYKYK.
Lord Jesus, teach us to KNOW you, that the WORLD may know you; unto the increase of your glory and the renewal of all things.
Rev. Chris Bannon
Area Coordinator North, Revive New England