Printer Friendly VersionSupportive Scriptures: Matthew 28:18-20; Romans 12:7; Proverbs 19:2; 2 Chronicles
17:7-10; 2 Timothy 2:1; Psalm 78:1-8; Deuteronomy 6:4-9
The Epistle to the Ephesians is filled with references that are tied to the
idea of education – words like knowledge, wisdom, knowing, truth, deception,
understanding, ignorance. It affirms the role of teaching in the church. It
models teaching people how to apply the gospel in the relationships of the
home and workplace.
For this sermon, you could also draw on the idea of loving the Lord with
all the mind and point out that learning is always about transformation, not
just information.
The service could close with a call to recommit ourselves to being disciples
who are being transformed into mature Christlikeness, with a time of affirmation
for all who teach (whether in the classroom or in the home, or in the Sunday
School – perhaps presenting a card of appreciation or a copy of the reading
at the end of this sermon – and with prayer of blessing around the altar
for all those who are starting school.THE SERMON
Everywhere we look, we are reminded that it is “that time of year again.”
It is a time that is all about anxious parents taking their 5-year old to
the first day of Kindergarten. It’s about the insecure adolescent making
the change to high school. It’s about tearful parents who just left their
daughter alone at the University, 8 hours from home – knowing that home
will never be the same again. It’s about the suddenly unemployed person
who is struggling with classes designed to help him retool for a new career.
It’s about the graduate student who is struggling to hold on to her faith
in a secular context that challenges and perhaps mocks the things she believes
most deeply. It’s about getting back to school.
In a more comprehensive way, it’s about the fact that on thing that
separates us from all other species – that enables civilized society
– is our ability to teach and to learn. It is our capacity to pass information
and skills on to the next generation so that we do not need to re-invent fire
or make the mistakes of the past. It’s about education.
But these days should also remind us of the fact that Jesus is the Rabbi
– the teacher. And we are the disciples – the learners. The Great
Commission charges the church with the task of educating all those who are
evangelized and baptized – the task of teaching them until they learn
to “obey” everything that Jesus taught. And that kind of learning,
like all education, is transformational or we haven’t learned at all.
In addition, “going to school” is also about the fact that God’s
Spirit gifts some people to be teachers – a role that must be honored
in society and in the church.
The Kingdom says all of this is important. The calendar says that it is timely.
Common sense tells us that this is the stuff of our ordinary life. If grace
is not at work here bringing understanding, wisdom, and growth, then we are
in deep trouble.
Our text this morning reminds us that one of the effects of teaching is to
be built up in “the knowledge of the Son of God” so that we will
come to maturity, unity, stability, and spiritual discernment. Or, as Simon
Peter put it, we are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18)
Moses understood that. After giving the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, Moses told
the people of Israel that these commands were to be upon their hearts. “Impress
them upon your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you
walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deut. 6:7-8.
The Psalmist understood that.
I will utter . . . what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told
us.
We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children,
so that the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
Psalms 78:2-6, NIV.
In His Great commission to us, Jesus made clear that this concept also applies
to those who are newborn children of God. He told us that in addition to baptizing
new disciples, our responsibility including “teaching them to obey”
everything Christ had commanded. (Mt 28:20)
Paul is always operating in this teaching mode. In 2 Timothy chapter one,
he observes that Timothy is who he is because that pattern was followed in
the lives of both his mother and his grandmother. By that time in Jewish history,
the synagogue had become a partner in that process, serving as congregation
and school – a pattern that found renewal when Robert Raikes started
Sunday Schools in England in the 18th century. He used them to teach child
laborers (who worked 6 days a week) the Bible, but also how to read, write,
and do math – the basics of education.
As parents and as a congregation, we must take seriously this responsibility
to teach each new generation the things of God – the things of life.
When each is working at its best, the home, the school, and the church form
a powerful partnership for shaping and nurturing each new generation of children
and of believers.
One way of looking at the Scripture is to understand that it is all designed
to teach us. The book of Proverbs is filled with reminders that we need to
keep learning from our “parents” and from those wiser than we are.
Certainly Paul’s epistles take the task of teaching very seriously. He
writes to the Thessalonians about things that are “lacking” in their
faith – even though he has already “instructed” them in much.
Peter tells us that we are to grow, not only in grace, but in the knowledge
of our Lord. That is what it means to be a disciple. We are students of the
Rabbi – Jesus, the Messiah.
A good example of this truth is found in Acts 18 where Apollos, the “learned”
pastor who had been instructed in the way of the Lord, is willing to learn
more about the things of God from a lay couple in his congregation. And so
Aquila and Priscilla took him home “and explained to him the way of God
more adequately.”
In our text for today, Paul shows us the practical importance of this ongoing
learning mode.
God has given us preachers and teachers “to prepare God’s people
for works of service,
so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the
faith
and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves,
and blown here and there by every wind of teaching
and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
Instead, speaking the truth in love,
we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament,
grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Ephesians 4:12-16, NIV
This passage reminds us that as we learn more about God we become more mature,
Christlike, strengthened, discerning, and secure. In these days of relativity
and pluralism, of uncertain voices and secular teaching, we all need to remain
learners – thirsty persons drinking from the well of God. While everyone
is in this back to school mode, it is a good time to recommit ourselves to
going back to the school of Christ to be taught by the Master Teacher.
If God’s Kingdom is centered around these concepts of transmitting the
gospel to each new generation and of committing ourselves to being perpetual
pupils in the school of God, then teachers also must be important persons
in God’s plan.
Romans 12 lists teaching as one of the gifts of the Spirit. And our text
here in Ephesians also combines pastors and teachers (or pastor/teachers)
as among those God has given to the church to bring about the maturity that
only comes as we go deeper into the things of God.
We live in a world where many reject the authority of teachers and feel they can learn only from their own experience. They have replaced the idea of truth with their own personal opinion. In such a world, we need to affirm the role of teachers – and admit that we ourselves need them to guide us (like Apollos) into a deeper understanding than we now have.
Every sermon needs to be applied. And every class has its homework. Here
is yours for the coming week.
#1 Thank a Teacher. Write a note, send a card, make a phone call, give a
small gift to someone who has taught you or who is teaching your children.
#2 Be a Teacher. Recommit yourself to that responsibility in your home. Take
a Sunday School class. Help with Bible Quizzing or Caravan/Scouts. Start a
Bible Study group. If you are in college, consider a career in the classroom.
Mentor a new disciple.
#3 Be Teachable. Read the word. Bring your mind to worship. Find good devotional
literature. Listen a bit more. Let God transform you through the preaching,
teaching ministries of the church. Learn from Jesus Christ.
(Read the following piece The Master Teacher as the conclusion of the message.)
Possible Songs:
SL # 91 Teach Me thy Way
SL # 686 Thanks to God Whose Word was Spoken
SL # 693 Break Thou the Bread of Life
SL # 690 Father Speak Your Word Again
Teach Me Lord (MCB I)
Thy Word is a Lamp Unto My Feet (MCB II)
Word of God Speak
O Word of God Incarnate The Master Teacher
He was a teacher too.
They called him Rabbi.
Sometimes He taught the teeming multitude.
Sometimes He taught that special group of avid
learners whom He had called to follow Him.
Sometimes He taught a single person standing
by a well or sitting in a tree or walking by the sea.
He was a good teacher.
Like all good teachers He knew His subject
and He knew it well.
He knew more about it than those who sat at his feet,
but somehow He managed to communicate it
to them in terms that they could understand.
And if sometimes they were slow to grasp the truth,
He patiently repeated it until understanding dawned.
He taught them to obey the truth
-- to apply the lessons learned.
He understood that teaching is more than dispensing knowledge
-- it is transforming lives.
He taught with compassion
-- with awareness for the other concerns of life
like hunger and illness and grief.
He was a teacher who was a model
of all He taught
and all He believed
and all He wanted us to become.
And He who taught so well
-- Who came to teach as well as preach
-- He commissioned us, in our going into all the world
and in our making of disciples, to be teachers too!
-- teachers who would rely on his promised presence
-- teachers who would not stop until others had learned “to obey”
the Truth.
O Master Rabbi,
Thank you for every teacher who has shared with me some portion of the truth
about you, about life, about your world.
Make me a teacher too,
Compassionate, informed, patient, clear, authentic.
But help me always to remain a learner.
AMEN!
