'Best Practices' for Bible Teachers (Part X)
By Buddy Hanson The Covenant News
Your Learners Expectations: Do They Result in Motivations, or Limitations?
A person's behavior follows his presuppositions, which means that his cultural outlook will be based upon his ethical in-look. This also means that your learners will be filtering the truths in your messages through the various presuppositions they bring with them to your sermon or class. For example, if you are discussing a particular promise from God to bless our obedience, your learners who are either premillennial, or amillenial in their eschatology will mentally kick that promise out of their mindset by concluding that, while it is true that God blesses obedience, such blessings won't be fulfilled for our culture until a later time. Or perhaps they will conclude that the promise refers to an earlier generation. So, even though they don't disagree with what you are teaching, the truths in your message will not impact their lifestyle, because they are basing their interpretation of Scripture upon the cultural circumstances they observe, rather than the Word of God. As the saying goes, "What we see depends upon what we are looking for." This being the case, it is extremely important to present your message in a way that will cause the learners to question whether a presupposition they have about a particular portion of Scripture is accurate.
Any learner that you can awaken to challenge his presuppositions is a great accomplishment!
The 20th century novelist and Nobel prize winner John Steinbeck writes: "It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him." Sadly, the prevailing expectation among the vast majority of American Christians is that the creature Satan is in charge of our Creator God's earth, and that any promises of victory will have to be realized by another group of Christians at a future point in time. Rather than get into a subjective discussion about when Jesus will make His triumphant return to earth,[1] and what the consequences of that return may or may not include, your accountability to God is to keep your learners focused on the objective truths in your message and how they can apply them to their everyday situations and circumstances.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for 21st century American Bible teachers is to replace the attitude among many Christians that God's Word is true, but is irrelevant to everyday decision-making.
As long as they continue to think of God's Word in these terms, they will approach a Bible study, or a worship service with the goal of being comforted by God's Word, instead of being counseled by it. Your goal must be to transform this blasphemous idea to one of coming to a Bible study or a worship service to be comforted by God's Word plus instructed in how to become a better servant of Christ's Kingdom by basing our entire worldview and lifestyle squarely upon God's perfect and inerrant counsel!
Sadly, the false presupposition about being called by God to be winners in heaven, but losers on earth has caused many Christians to suppress the inclinations to leave this earth better than we found it. One method you might use when presenting a promise of God to your learners is to ask:
Does everyone agree that God created a cause-and-effect universe, wherein, sooner or later, our biblical obedience will cause good things to happen, and our biblical disobedience will, sooner or later, cause bad things to happen?
This being the case, where is the "time stamp" on this particular promise? Where is the asterisk that explains, "This promise was fulfilled by God for the ancient Jews?" Or, where is the asterisk that explains, "This promise refers to a future generation?" Could if be that the editors of our Bible left out this particular asterisk? Or could it be that the editors didn't leave out the asterisk because there is no asterisk? The clincher question to ask your learners is:
How can we not be certain that this promise of God applies to us, and is based upon our obedient behavior?
As Paul teaches, God never puts us in a situation that we are unable to accomplish, even though we may not think that we can accomplish it![2] Even in our darkest hours, we must not doubt that "the judge of the earth" will come through for us.[3] God is always our "Helper," and no non-Christian can do anything to alter the eternally perfect plan that He has for each of us![4] So, regardless of our situations or circumstances, we must keep our focus on consistently living according to biblical ethics, being confident that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose."[5]
God's wisdom trumps our circumstances, and His perfect counsel enables us to successfully deal with anything in our path, whether that be an emotionally draining "defeat," or an emotionally exhilarating "victory." Either way, we must emphasize to our learners that they should keep their concentration on carrying out the fundamentals of the faith. To stop doing this is to begin living as though we are smarter and more sovereign than God. There is no way to put His perfect ethics and wisdom "on hold," in order to attempt to achieve better results by living according to our sinful ethics and wisdom.
Point out that the next time they are tempted to behave in this manner, they should ask themselves how they can expect God to get them through their trial when they are intentionally turning their back on His perfect counsel?
May we not forget that if we live by our wisdom, we are going to receive our results, but if we live according to God's counsel we will receive God's results.
Which "results" do you really want?!
Next week's topic is, "Training is what we do, not something we do."
Buddy Hanson is President of the Christian Policy Network and Director of the Christian Worldview Resources Center and has written several books on the necessity of applying one's faith to everyday situations, circumstances and decision-making.