Teaching and Working

9/25/2018

Thinking about how to teach, from the bible, along the lines of, “How Then, Shall We Live?” that’s a book by Frances Schaeffer. For most of the 40+ years I’ve been teaching, it hasn’t been the main subject. At this moment, it still isn’t at the top of teaching priorities, yet it does enter in. The difficulty comes by knowing not only am I not an example of how to live, I don’t know of one outside the Lord Jesus Christ—and He is God, though manifest in the flesh.

We could look at the several men whom the Lord chose to write His word, but they are all flawed beyond even most of us. Moses was a murderer, David was a “bloody man” and an adulterer, Paul called himself several different things and in the first person—“in my flesh dwells no good thing.” So, studying how to best handle the world around us is not about getting good in the flesh: it is about avoiding the “wiles of the devil.” His wiles, while ravishing the flesh, are centered on religious activity! The “enemy of all righteousness” had prompted a man to interfere with the preaching of the gospel in Acts 13. 

So it isn’t just our weak flesh which creates these problems. It is the things (called the rudiments of the world) which take us away from God’s will and take us subject to and enticed by the “do-gooder” mentality of religion. Decidedly then, we must teach how to know the Lord’s will, how to stay in the Lord’s will, and thus avoid the religiosity of the day.

Don’t throw rocks—it is great to do good works! But all the good works which can be performed by us in one lifetime are simply accounted as nothing before the Lord. Take a really good but lost person: The Lord doesn’t even see the good works, He judges according to His immutable principles, such as “the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his”—then , He isn’t “knowing” the unsaved. Another place we can see the Lord doesn’t look upon the unrighteous. So the lost one, who may even be a believer, cannot gain anything with the Lord since he isn’t known by the Lord.

The saved person, one who has trusted in Christ for the saving power behind “Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised from the dead for our justification, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” (there’s the righteous individual) in fact, all who are saved by the gospel of Christ are going to be judged by what they do with God’s word. You can examine that in 1 Cor.3; 2 Cor.5; Rom.14; Col.3, and other places. So we teach according to the way the judgment seat of Christ is going to be administered, and that’s not easy. Takes vigilance in the Word.

SIMH today is “The Cubs Are Gonna Win Today!” recorded by some chorale group, but sang by us all—right? Well, they didn’t last night, so the race gets tighter with 6 games to go. It matters, but not a lot. I won’t be biting my nails. Heck, I never thought I’d live long enough to see them win a World Series, and they’ve done that. This may not be their year, I see 2-3 teams I think are much stronger.

This is going to be an even better week! some old friends are coming by to visit. We really enjoy when that occurs. It’s the final week of September, can you believe it? Coming up is a rare thing—5 Sundays in September. It’s the last Sunday of my regular scheduled teaching in Alexandria—they have a new pastor, Ryan Poe. You pray for Ryan and for the folks at Alexandria.

Looking for the next open door. (As I said yesterday, I have a lot of ideas, maybe one of them will come to fruition.)

Thanks for reading, the Elder