When Paul traveled from Athens to Corinth carrying the gospel, he went straight into the synagogue. He testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah that Israel had been expecting for centuries. But the people rebelled against that truth and the Spirit’s conviction – they “opposed themselves” and forced the evangelists out of the synagogue. Nevertheless, when the Holy Spirit told Paul that the Lord had many elect in Corinth, he found another place from which to base his ministry. “And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.”
Notice the word that Luke used to describe Paul’s eighteen month ministry – it was “teaching.” Even though Paul later wrote to that church, emphasizing the importance of “PREACHING the cross,” here the Holy Spirit spoke of Paul’s “teaching.” A quick survey of the Book of Acts reminds us that there was a two-pronged ministry in the early church. In Syrian Antioch, Barnabas and Saul spent a whole year “assembling themselves with the church, and TEACHING much people.” In chapter 13, before Barnabas and Saul were sent out as missionaries, they were known as “prophets” and “teachers.” Before their second journey the missionaries returned to Antioch, preaching and teaching the word of God. At the end of Acts, Luke tells us that Paul spent two years in Rome, “preaching the kingdom of God, and TEACHING those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ…”
I think I’ve told you before that there was a man in our church in Calgary, who refused to come to Sunday school, because he said that the only ministry of any real value was gospel PREACHING. Such an attitude is unscriptural. Not only is it important to know what God reveals to us from Genesis to Revelation. But we need to be familiar with Bible doctrine – bringing scriptures together from all sixty-six books, when they teach us things about specific themes. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians and the Ephesians, he mentioned that God supplies many churches with multiple messengers – prophets, evangelists, pastors and TEACHERS, “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, (and) for the edifying of the body of Christ.”
That leads me to an examination of what the OLD Testament says about NEW Testament teaching. We need to remember that Paul was an Hebrew of the Hebrews. He had grown up in the synagogue and eventually attended the school of one of the premier rabbis in Israel. He most likely taught people the way in which he had been taught. And how had he been taught? There are seven different Hebrew words translated “to teach” and then come several variations. Some of those words highlight different aspects of Old Testament teaching.
This lesson tonight may not be the most important you’ll hear this week, but I hope it will be as interesting to you as it has been to me. And I need to add that there has also been some degree of conviction brought upon me. Am I keeping the right balance between teaching and preaching? And when I do teach, am I firing all of the arrow in the quiver?
One of the Old Testament Hebrew words about teaching highlights the ministry of the SHEPHERD.
Of course, a shepherd is someone who tends and feeds a flock of sheep – or perhaps goats. The ideal shepherd is the Lord Himself as Psalm 23 reminds us. “The Lord is my shepherd” and as I submit myself to His leadership and instruction “I shall not want.” He leads me to drinkable water and makes me lay down in nutritious green pastures. He is the one who prepares a table of tasty and healthful food, even while in the presence of mine enemies.
And the Lord has said, as in Jeremiah 3:15 – “I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with KNOWLEDGE and understanding.” Jeremiah’s ministry came during some of the last days of Judah, prior to her captivity. There were short periods of blessing after that, but it appears that the primary fulfilment of that prophesy came in the New Testament and later. God has supplied pastors – teaching and feeding the sheep meals of knowledge and understanding.
A spiritual shepherd, as found in the New Testament, is called a “pastor.” The pastor/teacher’s commission is to lead God’s flock into pastures of truth. He is to try to make the sheep understand their need to dine on that spiritual nutrition. Interestingly, there are more references to “pastors” in Jeremiah than in any other book. And after the Lord said that he would raise up pastors, or shepherds for the people, He added, “WOE be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.” The ministry of the teacher is to feed the flock of God, over which the Holy Spirit has made him overseer.
Another word translated “to teach” speaks about SEPARATING and DISTINGUISHING between things.
One task of the teacher, or the parent, is to enable their students to evaluate, separate and make wise choices.
Satan came to Eve and said, “Yea, hath God said, thou shalt not eat of every tree of the garden? Ye shall not surely die. God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The Devil raised, or questioned, four points. He said, “Eating the forbidden fruit will open your eyes.” Eve, consider that point when separated from the other four. Do you need your eyes to be opened? Aren’t you already seeing something new every moment of the day? What more do you need? And Eve, do you need to be a god or like a god? Can you even handle the truth about good and evil? Did God forbid the fruit of every tree? Of course He did. Instead of listening to all four aspects of the temptation when blended together, if Eve had considered each point individually, she would have been in a better position to say “No.” A part of Biblical teaching is helping students to separate the bad from the good, the good from what is best, and what is righteous from what is not righteous.
In Daniel 8, the man of God was filled with questions, causing him to plead with the Lord for a teacher. And as he did, he “heard a man’s voice… which called, and said, Gabriel, make this man to UNDERSTAND the vision.” In that verse, “understand” is that same word as “teach.” God ordered one of the greatest of all heavenly teachers “to explain” the meaning of the vision Daniel had seen of the ram and the goat.
In Hebrew education, one of the roles of the teacher was to impart understanding, as well as as knowledge. He taught his students to think by evaluating arguments and sorting out the questions. Eve would have benefitted from some of this kind of education. She needed to reverse Satan’s attack and to ask him the questions. Sure, the Devil would have lied – that’s what he does – but it would still have given the woman more of a defense.
Another Old Testament form of teaching is revealed in Deuteronomy 6:7.
Verse 4 begins with the well-known: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and will all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” “Teach them diligently” is a word which means to teach by “piercing” or “pricking.” A derivative of it is used to speak of swords and arrows. In Psalm 73:21 the word is translated “pricked in my reins,” meaning “to feel sharply stabbed in the kidney.” The Old Testament teacher was to wield the sword of the Spirit, cutting and piercing, if necessary, as he drills points home to his pupils. Teaching God’s word isn’t always fun for the student – or for the teacher as far as that is concerned.
Think about tattoos for a moment. I have never been tattooed, so I don’t know if the procedure hurts or not. I have been stabbed by pencils and slivers of wood that have left their mark, and those stung a bit. But again, I don’t know if tattoos hurt. The Jews didn’t tattoo themselves, but that scripture in Deuteronomy 6 which I just quoted goes on – “And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” The Jews didn’t tattoo themselves, but if they had it should have been with scripture, carved into their bodies by their teachers. Even if it stings a bit – to have the Word of God tattooed onto someone’s heart is a good thing.
One common Old Testament word translated “TEACH” is related to “TORAH” – meaning “LAW.”
The idea behind this word is direction. In Psalm 32:8, God says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding…” “I will guide thee. I will guide thee with mine eye.” Adam told his wife about God’s prohibition of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He taught her to some degree, but she wasn’t pricked by the truth, and she wasn’t forcefully directed toward other options and other fruit.
I can’t say that this lesson tonight has a sharp point to it, but some of our lessons and sermons do. Even if the arrow isn’t meant for you, and it doesn’t enter your heart, still the direction of the arrow might be instructive. Watch the direction of that arrow.
There was a curious incident in the life of David that you might remember. The wrath of Saul was beginning to fall on David, but his friend, Jonathan, Saul’s son, wasn’t aware of it. In I Samuel 20 a plan was hatched for Jonathan to probe the heart of his father and to let David know what he discovered. David was to hide in a certain field on a certain day, and Jonathan, with the desired information was to come out and report. But perhaps as a ruse, lest Saul’s men were watching, Jonathan pretended to practice his archery skills. He said that he would shoot three arrows and then tell his servant to retrieve them. If after he sent the boy out, he yelled that he had gone to far – “come back this way” – he was telling David that he could return to the palace in peace. But if Jonathan told his servant to keep going, “the arrows are farther away,” the message was that David should not to return.
My point is this: the arrows, even though they were not meant for David’s heart, still had a lesson to teach. The Old Testament teacher was to direct his students down the strait and narrow road of life. Psalm 25:8 – “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way.”
Only slightly more common than the last word, is one which suggests learning in the sense of TRAINING.
Moses, was not only the conduit God used to give the law, but he was also a divinely inspired musician and poet. God said to him in Deuteronomy 31, “Write ye this song for you, and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that his song may be witness for me against the children of Israel.” How do you suppose this music and these words, were shared with that nation of millions of people? Did they have copy machines? Were the tune and the words emailed to everyone? It was shared verbally by Moses with the princes of the tribes, who shared with other leaders, who passed it on to family heads, and so on and so on. Parents went over it again and again with their children until it was planted in their little hearts. It was catechized into the next generation who were supposed to catechize it into their children. Learning music – learning to play an instrument – usually requires a great deal of time and practice.
This is the meaning of this particular Hebrew word. David uses it rather harshly in Psalm 18:34 – God “teacheth my hands to war…” Not only is skill involved, and practice required, to sling an arrow with deadly accuracy. But in order to wield a sword for hours on the battlefield demands even more hours of preparation and practice. Here is one Hebrew word which speaks of training and discipline.
During Israel’s 400 years as slaves in Egypt, they learned the word “discipline” in both Hebrew and Egyptian. But the Egyptian language is nothing like Hebrew; it is a pictographic language. And I am told that the picture used to speak of “teaching” show a man hitting someone with a stick. And the word could mean either “teaching” or “punishing.” An Egyptian inscription from the period when Israel was in that country records the words of an Egyptian teacher saying, “The ear of the boy is on his back, and he listens when he is beaten.” Certainly few of us would advocate that teaching style today, but still, discipline – self-discipline – is essential to learning.
Taking the lessons of the Old Testament and applying them to the ministry of the New Testament – Teaching involves leading to the truth, separating the truth from error, providing direction, and helping the student to learn self discipline. Pray for your teachers. Pray for your teachers – not only for their sakes but for your own.