You As A Teacher - 07
The meek shall inherit the earth.
Many young men would like to teach. It is understandable, even admirable. Most people with a heart for God want to share with others the wonders that God has shown them.
And when a younger man grows up in a congregation, people are able to spot in him a willingness to help others grow in Christ. You can see him working at it. He loves God and others. Whether he realizes it as such, he is improving his teaching skills. Certainly, he is apt to teach.1
Sometimes, however, the reasons for wanting to share can turn crooked in man. It is when teaching becomes more about him than about God. Even when a person teaches something that is biblically correct, he will undermine it if he’s motivated by his flesh rather than by God’s Spirit.
Here is a passage that demonstrates the challenge of maintaining proper motives before God as a teacher. It is Numbers 12:1-4.
1Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. 2And they said, “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the LORD heard it. 3Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth. 4And suddenly the LORD said to Moses and to Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” And the three of them came out.
If you were one of the three, I suggest it be Moses! I’ve never seen a more wonderful thing said of a man than, “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.”2
More meek than all the people who were on the face of the earth?! Incredible! I want to be that guy. (Or so I tell myself.) There is, however, a lifetime of decisions and trials and experiences with God that are required to make a Moses. I’m pretty sure I don’t choose the hard things, whereas Moses was willing. I fear I’ve often chosen the smoother paths.
Jesus made it clear in the beatitudes of His sermon, ““Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”3
I like the idea of inheriting the earth. And I’m a firm believer that the kingdoms of this world are “given to the people of the saints of the Most High.”4 I believe Jesus has been giving His church the world (incrementally) throughout history, ever since His Ascension to the right hand of God the Father. But I don’t believe the Church can succeed without humility. She must be meek to inherit the earth. And Her teachers will find the greatest success only in meekness.
Look. You don’t want to be Miriam or Aaron called out by God to come meet ME at the tent.
If, as a teacher, you’ve become full of yourself - puffed up while teaching in the “name of God” - you are dismantling the church, not building it. You are hurting things, not helping. Accuracy is not enough, either. Your soul must be right. Indeed, as I’ve told my children and grandchildren, “It is more important to be good than to be right.”
When your heart deceives you, and pride becomes your undergarment, your efforts to build up the Church will be in vain. Your teaching will be like constructing with hay, stubble, wood and cardboard, and it will be burnt up, because God is a consuming fire.5 You may even teach things biblically (as I’m sure Aaron and Miriam had) yet if your heart is not set on the Spirit of God it isn’t serving the people of God. You’ve got to be FOR God and FOR people.6
I believe Paul provides a wonderful corrective in 1 Corinthians 13. Pride was a big problem for that particular church. And he says in that chapter something that teachers should take to heart. Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
How do you avoid teaching what is right but for the wrong reasons? How do you become meek like Moses? In one sense, you have to take yourself out of it. Miriam and Aaron had invested too much in what people thought of them. They were concerned with positions. Not so for Moses. He seemed ever concerned for God and God’s people.
The problem is that we can fool ourselves. Our sin is pretty dastardly at times. Jeremiah gives a clear warning of what ails us, along with the remedy for healing. He writes, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”7
So then pray to God that you will not victimize yourself. Pray that he will search you and know you and keep you from sinful motives. Ask Him to give you a heart like David’s and the meekness of Moses.
Then put Him and His people ahead of yourself. Love them both. If you love God and others, you will rely on Him to do whatever He wants with those you’re trying to teach. And you will love the people enough that they know that you’re on their side even when you need to correct them.
One of the characteristics a congregation should look for in an elder. It is hardly the most important characteristic.
There is one other comment made about a man that I find very noble. It is where Samuel tells King Saul, “But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.” David was that man. He pursued the heart of God. Later on, in Acts 13:21-22, Paul is summarizing the history of Israel leading to Jesus and he recounts the transition from Saul to David, saying, “Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’”
Matthew 5:5
Daniel 7:27
In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Paul says, “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
This does not mean that God cannot prevail upon a fellow congregant by your teaching, but it will be in spite of you, not in credit to you.
Jeremiah 17:9-10