Today, I journey with the High School Students to Move, a summer conference to help them with their relationship to God. We are taking ten students (5 boys and 5 girls) to Indiana for the week.
Pray for the students as they deal with their struggles in life
Pray for God to break their walls down completely
Pray for wisdom for the sponsors as we build them up in encouragement
Pray for a spirit of peace amongst the group
Pray for our journey there and back
Pray for the leaders who are taking students all over the country
Pray for the programming to impact lives
Pray for the gospel to be clearly heard and received
Pray for a fire to be ignited in the hearts of our young people.
I'll try to find a computer to give some small updates while we're there.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
James 3 - Teach? Well, Maybe Not.
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Let's pick our study back up with the book of James.
James 3:1-2 - "1Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check."
"1Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers" - In the Jewish culture, young boys are trained in scripture at an early age. By a certain age, they had to have committed the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Pentateuch, to memory. If they could accomplish that feat, then they were to move on to memorizing the rest of what they called the Torah, which is most of the Old Testament as we know it.
Can you imagine that? I mean, I have trouble sometimes remembering what day it is, let alone Scripture, but in an age without computers, these children memorized almost the entire Old Testament. That's absolutely amazing.
As students, they were also tested on what they knew, as our students are today in their proficiency exams, but the catch in Jewish school was this: If you couldn't pass your proficiency test, you were removed from school and the possibility of ever becoming a rabbi, and you had to usually take up the family business of fishing or carpentry, etc...
In James' time, he was instructing people not to try and presume to be teachers. It was an arduous road to memorize everything, but for those who made it, it was a good thing. Why was he stopping people from becoming teachers? Read on.
"because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." - Teachers are held more accountable to God than others because it is our responsibility to teach the truth. Something I learned in college that I will never forget my professor saying - "The truth you teach to your students will be their reality, so make sure your truth IS truth."
The same applies to teachers of Jesus and of God's Word. The truth we teach will be people's reality, so let's all make sure that what we're teaching is God's truth. We'll be held accountable for what we have taught.
"2We all stumble in many ways." - I love the bluntness of James. I can imagine that being the half-brother of Jesus, you might have picked up some of his blunt nature with people, but James has this tendency to really paint things in a clear light.
All of us have faults. No one is perfect. Jesus was the only one who lived a sinless life.
And the other key word in that verse is the word "many". We don't just stumble in one or two ways, we all stumble in "many" ways. We need Jesus' grace because we are all imperfect.
"If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check." - There has only been one perfect man. No one else was ever able to do what Jesus did. He was tempted in every way we are, yet he was able to keep himself always in check. He never sinned. All of us have and will. We are imperfect - He is perfect.
James 3:1-2 - "1Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check."
"1Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers" - In the Jewish culture, young boys are trained in scripture at an early age. By a certain age, they had to have committed the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Pentateuch, to memory. If they could accomplish that feat, then they were to move on to memorizing the rest of what they called the Torah, which is most of the Old Testament as we know it.
Can you imagine that? I mean, I have trouble sometimes remembering what day it is, let alone Scripture, but in an age without computers, these children memorized almost the entire Old Testament. That's absolutely amazing.
As students, they were also tested on what they knew, as our students are today in their proficiency exams, but the catch in Jewish school was this: If you couldn't pass your proficiency test, you were removed from school and the possibility of ever becoming a rabbi, and you had to usually take up the family business of fishing or carpentry, etc...
In James' time, he was instructing people not to try and presume to be teachers. It was an arduous road to memorize everything, but for those who made it, it was a good thing. Why was he stopping people from becoming teachers? Read on.
"because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." - Teachers are held more accountable to God than others because it is our responsibility to teach the truth. Something I learned in college that I will never forget my professor saying - "The truth you teach to your students will be their reality, so make sure your truth IS truth."
The same applies to teachers of Jesus and of God's Word. The truth we teach will be people's reality, so let's all make sure that what we're teaching is God's truth. We'll be held accountable for what we have taught.
"2We all stumble in many ways." - I love the bluntness of James. I can imagine that being the half-brother of Jesus, you might have picked up some of his blunt nature with people, but James has this tendency to really paint things in a clear light.
All of us have faults. No one is perfect. Jesus was the only one who lived a sinless life.
And the other key word in that verse is the word "many". We don't just stumble in one or two ways, we all stumble in "many" ways. We need Jesus' grace because we are all imperfect.
"If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check." - There has only been one perfect man. No one else was ever able to do what Jesus did. He was tempted in every way we are, yet he was able to keep himself always in check. He never sinned. All of us have and will. We are imperfect - He is perfect.
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