Living water

18. Enough Milk, Already!

And God has appointed these in the church ... teachers.

- I Corinthians 12:28

When I was in seminary, the most brilliant professor there did not have the gift of teaching - and his class was the most boring on campus. Other less brilliant professors did have the gift of teaching, and they made us want to learn. They made it exciting.

I hate to admit it, but I can't remember a thing I learned in the brilliant professor's class. But my other professors - the ones who had the gift of teaching - shared truths that are still part of my life and understanding today.

The truth is, it's not your brilliance that counts. It's whether you have the gift of teaching.

Paul tells us that God has set in the church, first of all apostles, and then prophets, and then teachers. All three have been ordained by God to instruct the people in the Word of God.

There is a gift of teaching, just as there are other spiritual gifts. I recognize that God has given me this gift for the building up of the body of Christ.

As I prepare to teach, I wait upon the Lord in my study, seeking the mind of the Lord and enlightenment from the Holy Spirit on the Word of God. God ministers His love and truth to my heart. Only then am I prepared to share that which I have received from the Spirit, ministering God's truth to God's people.

To the Corinthian church Paul wrote, "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you" (I Corinthians 11:23). Whenever I stand before a congregation to teach God's Word, it is always my prayer that I can preface my remarks with these words of Paul: "That which I have received from the 'Lord, I also deliver to you."

Yet it's interesting that the gift of teaching doesn't always work. There are times when I get up to teach and the anointing of the Spirit just isn't on me. That puts pressure on me, and I hate it. I push and push; there is no natural flow. I know the message is falling flat, and the reason is that the anointing is simply not there.

There are other times, however, when I get up and the message just flows. The thoughts, the ideas, the inspiration, the anointing - it all comes out like a river going downhill. Then it's easy. There are few things more joyful and exciting than when God is flowing through you to communicate His Word and His truth to others. The fact that sometimes the gift is there and sometimes it isn't indicates that teaching is not a natural ability; you can't do it anytime you choose. It is a gift of God, and you must depend upon God for its exercise. just when you think you have it, God takes it away and lets you enjoy one of those evenings in which you push and shove but get nowhere. Then you say, "Oh, Lord, never again. Don't do that to me again! I need You. I depend upon You. I can't teach without You." Teaching is a gift that depends upon the anointing of the Spirit to make it flow.

Teaching or Preaching?

The apostle Paul enjoyed a three-fold ministry. He says he was "appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles" (II Timothy 1:11). His distinctions tell us there is a difference between the gift of preaching and the gift of teaching. The church has suffered tremendously because we have failed to recognize this difference.

Preaching is declaring or heralding the truth of God to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. It is evangelistic, proclaiming God's Good News that He has provided for the forgiveness of sins through His crucified Son, who took our guilt and died in our place. Preaching persuades people to receive Jesus Christ as their lord.

Teaching, on the other hand, is not for the unconverted, but for the converted. Teaching enables those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord to grow in the grace and the knowledge of God. Preaching is for the sinner; teaching is for the saint.

There has been far too much preaching in the church, and far too little teaching. In fact, the church has almost been preached to death. The church needs teaching so that more believers will grow and become mature in their relationship with Jesus Christ.

The author of Hebrews lamented over his readers: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe" (Hebrews 5:12,13). It's as if he said, "Look, you've been around long enough. At this point, you ought to be able to teach the Word of God, but you're still in need of being taught." Why? Because their diet consisted only of evangelism. They had been preached to, but they had not been taught so that they might mature.

A couple of verses later the writer says, in effect, "Let's go on to maturity. Let's not go back and keep laying the foundations over and over. Foundations are important, but you have to build on them. Once the foundation is laid, you must construct the building - that's the whole point. So let's develop, let's grow in our relationship and walk with the Lord. Let's not stay in this infant state. Let's mature."

The Corinthian believers had a similar problem. Paul wanted to teach them the deeper things of the Spirit, but found himself restricted because they hadn't grown. 'And 1, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able" (I Corinthians 3:1,2). In other words, "There are a lot of things I'd like to tell you, but you're not ready for them. So I've given you milk. It seems as if it's still necessary that you be bottle-fed because you haven't grown."

The purpose of the gift of teaching is to enable a believer's spiritual growth and development. Many people make a great mistake in thinking that spiritual growth comes from experience alone; it doesn't. It is only as the Word of God feeds our spirits that real spiritual growth comes. That is why this gift of teaching is so vital and necessary in the church.

If ever there were a time when the gift of teaching needed to be exercised, it is today Carnality in the church is as rampant today as it was in Corinth, and as a result the church stagnates in a state of arrested spiritual development. At a time when we should be mature, having grown and developed, we are still babes in Christ. That's a tragedy, indeed.

Once a person has come to faith in Jesus Christ, his or her greatest need is to be taught the Scriptures. The purpose of the pastor-teacher is "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head - Christ" (Ephesians 4:12-15).

Without the solid teaching of the Word of God, believers remain in a state of arrested spiritual development. Through the prophet Hosea the Lord cried, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children" (Hosea 4:6).

When all the church hears is preaching - when all we hear is that we should repent and forsake our sins and believe in Jesus Christ who died for us - we remain babes in Christ. The gospel message is glorious - and the sinner needs to know it - but Christians already know. We have accepted the truth that Jesus gave Himself for us, dying in our place. Now, let's go on in our walk with the Lord. Let's grow up and reach full maturity in the things of Christ. That only happens through the teaching of the Word of God.

Teaching in the Old Testament

The gift of teaching is first mentioned in Exodus 4:12, when God says to Moses, "Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say. "The Lord promised Moses that He would be his Teacher, enabling him in turn to teach the Israelites. Just three verses later God says about Aaron, "Now you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do." In the first reference the Lord promised He would teach Moses what to say; now He tells him that He will instruct him in what to do. Both things are necessary

Centuries later, the nation of Israel found itself in dire circumstances. The reason for their calamity was that "for a long time Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest" (II Chronicles 15:3). Their terrible situation was caused by a lack of teaching, which in turn caused God to be absent from their midst.

Teaching always has been crucial for the people of God. That is why the promise of Nehemiah 9:20 is so precious: "You also gave Your good Spirit to instruct them." How we need this gift at all times and all places!

The ministry of Jesus Christ was largely a ministry of teaching. Throughout the Gospels we find Him teaching the people about His Father. Fifty-eight times in the Gospels Jesus is addressed as "master," which means "teacher." He was known and recognized as a teacher.

It is no surprise, therefore, that at the end of the first Gospel Jesus tells His disciples, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19,20).

The apostle Paul took this command seriously. After his conversion and sojourn in the Arabian desert, he visited Jerusalem. The church there found him a little too hot to handle - he was too eager to go after the religious leaders, especially the Pharisees - so they sent him into forced retirement at Tarsus.

But he was too good a man to just sit around in Tarsus. Barnabas knew Paul had a Grecian cultural background, as well as fine Hebrew training, so he concluded that this former enemy of the church would make an excellent minister to the growing Gentile church in Antioch. Acts 11:26 tells us, 'And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people."

Paul (Saul) is named in Acts 13:1 as a teacher in the church in Antioch, while Acts 15:35 tells us, "Paul and Barnabas also remained in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also." Paul not only taught but preached, exercising a combined gifting that we still see today. These combined gifts accent and complement each other.

Paul spent a year teaching the Word of God in Antioch, a year and a half teaching in Corinth (Acts 18:11), and two or three years teaching in Ephesus. In Acts 20:20, he declares to the Ephesian elders how he kept back nothing that was profitable to them: "Therefore,"' he said, "I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:26,27).

What a a marvelous declaration for any minister to be able to make to his people: "I have declared to you all the counsel of God!" I know of only one way that a person can make that declaration, and that is to take a congregation through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Only when you have gone through the Bible from cover to cover can you safely say, "I have declared to you all the counsel of God." God has been pleased to allow me to take the people of Calvary Chapel through the Bible seven times during my ministry, and it has been tremendous each time. Nothing can compare to digging into the Word of God, verse by verse and book by book.

It was this kind of expositional preaching that Ezra the scribe gave to the Israelites who, with Nehemiah, were rebuilding Jerusalem at the end of the Babylonian exile. The people gathered and the words of the law were read to them and then explained. Nehemiah 8:8 says, "So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading." This is the expositional teaching of the Word of God, and it feeds the flock as nothing else can.

Anointed to Teach

It is all-important that the Holy Spirit anoint us for the gift of teaching. Without the Holy Spirit we cannot even know spiritual truth, much less teach it. "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14).

Recently there has been another classic example of why the Holy Spirit is so necessary if we are to accurately understand the Word of God. A group of scholars, calling themselves "The Jesus Seminar," meets regularly to bless the church by telling us which of the Scriptures contain the genuine sayings of Jesus and which ones are fabrications. These men give the impression that if we don't accept their conclusions, it's only asign of our ignorance. After all, they are the scholars.

In their latest meeting, these men determined that Jesus never did promise to come again to establish a kingdom on the earth. That idea, they said, was conjured up afterward by the disciples who were disappointed by the crucifixion. To cover their embarrassment that Jesus died without bringing in His kingdom, they fabricated this whole concept.

They say Matthew got a little heavy-handed when he reported that Jesus said, "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30).

A similar explanation is given of John 14:1-3, where Jesus is recorded to have said to His disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." They say this was John's idea, not Jesus' - that John put those words in the mouth of Christ.

The same is true when the thief was hanging on the cross and saw the inscription, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Luke records that he turned to Jesus and said, "Lord, remember me when You come into your kingdom." Jesus "supposedly" said, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise." But of course, they say that's only what Luke recorded. That in fact, Jesus had expected the kingdom to be set up in His lifetime and was as disappointed as everybody else when it didn't happen. So say the scholars of "The Jesus Seminar."

We have a decision to make. Are we going to believe the writers of the Bible who were inspired of the Holy Spirit, or are we to believe these modern-day scholars who have applied their scholarly training in a futile endeavor to understand the Word of God through human reasoning alone?

The Bible declares that when Jesus ascended into heaven, a cloud received Him out of the disciples' sight. As they were looking up into the sky, watching Him until He disappeared, suddenly two men in white clothes appeared and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). That's what the Bible declares and there is no reason to doubt it.

If you really want to understand God and His Word, unaided human scholarship, devoid of the Spirit, will be of no value. No man can understand the things of the Spirit unless the Lord teaches him. There is a realm of understanding beyond our human reason and intellect. The Spirit teaches us the things of God through His power and His anointing.

That's the lesson we learn from no less an authority than the apostle Paul. Now remember, Paul was a brilliant man. You cannot read his writings without recognizing his brilliance. He declared that he had been schooled at the feet of Gamaliell one of the leading rabbis of the day. Yet Paul had no interest in trying to persuade men intellectually. Rather, he desired that his preaching would be a demonstration of the Spirit's power. That is why he wrote to the Corinthians, "My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God" (I Corinthians 2:4,5).

There's a difference between intellectual conversion and heart conversion, between believing in your mind and believing in your heart. Paul was interested in reaching the heart. He knew it is the Spirit that reaches the heart of man, not mere human intellect.

How desperately we need to remember this today. Trust in the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom, to give you guidance, to give you the understanding you need. John wrote, "You do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true" (I John 2:27). The Holy Spirit will teach us and anoint us with His understanding. Without Him, there is no true teaching of the Word of God.

I have said it more than once: An uneducated, Spirit-filled man of God is a more reliable source to the truth of God than an unconverted scholar who understands Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Only the Spirit can help us truly understand and walk in the way of God. And He has repeatedly said that is exactly what He longs to do.

It is generally not hard to see the results of good teaching in a believer's life. Isaiah 54:13,14 paints a tremendous picture that I have seen lived out over and over in the lives of well-taught saints of God: 'All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near you."

Great peace is the result of good teaching; fear and terror will be gone. Why? Because through the teaching of the Word, you come to understand the greatness of God, the love of God, and the concern of God for you. When you catch a glimmer of how much God loves you and how much He works for your welfare, you don't have to fear the uncertainty of the future. You're not terrorized by the events bombarding your life. Instead, you have great peace, great confidence. You think, God loves me. God's on the throne. God's watching over me. God's going to see me through.

What a blessing this gift of teaching is to the church. For you who teach Sunday school, please recognize what a vital and important ministry God has given to you. You have the opportunity to bring into those pliable young minds many of their primary and first impressions of God. Encourage them to memorize the Scriptures. Let them know how much God loves them, and plant in their hearts the foundational truths of the God we worship in spirit and in truth.

If you have the gift of teaching, use it. Seek the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit to make you a better teacher. Pray that through the Spirit of God you will plant into young minds and hearts the lasting truths of the eternal God. So many of us can go back in our memories to the Sunday school room and remember the lessons we were taught concerning the Lord. We recall those beautiful illustrations that enabled our young minds to grasp the truth. Those lessons last a lifetime.

Exercise your gift of teaching. Invite the children from the neighborhood into your home and teach them about God. Use the gift that God has given you. As Paul said to Timothy, "Stir up the gift of God which is in you" (II Timothy 1:6). Stir it up! And then stand back and see God do marvelous things through you.