Welcome to lecture six in the practical ministry skills course, the church is nanny and Tutor. This is the second part of chapter three in pastoring the nuts and  bolts. Our key verse for this is one that we've already looked at. It's actually  three verses, Ephesians 4:11-13. These are the gifts Christ gave to the church,  the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists and the pastors and teachers. Their  responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church,  the Body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith  and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord measuring up to  the full and complete standard of Christ. That's quite a standard to have to  measure up to. But I don't believe that God would put that out there if it wasn't  possible. And it is our job as the church, and particularly as leaders of the  church, ministers, pastors, workers, Sunday school teachers, whatever it is our  job, para church, Kingdom ministers. It's our job to do those kinds of things, to  equip God's people to imitate God, to do God's work until they resemble God's  Son. All right, we've been talking about the church as a family. How does  somebody come into a family in the natural way? We are adopted into God's  family, of course, but this is one of those places where analogies break down,  because now I'm going to shift from adoption to a different, equally biblical  language. When somebody accepts Jesus, we very commonly call that born  again. Somebody receives a new birth, and that's just as true as the adoption  language, because the spirit is made new, the body and the human soul, the  psyche, the mind, emotions, will, and elect all of that kind of stuff is not made  new. That's adopted. We, as a person, are adopted. But the human spirit that  was designed to communicate with God and receive revelation in the spiritual  realm was broken in Adam and Eve, when we give our lives to the Lord, He  gives us a newborn, new made new generated, born again, spirit. So in that  sense, new believers coming into the family are just born. And what do you call  somebody who's just born? A newborn is a baby. New Christians are baby  Christians, no matter how old they are in their body, no matter how smart they  are in their mind, no matter how accomplished they are in their career, they're  babies as Christians. Now babies need a lot of care, and I have called this  section the church is nanny and tutor after two kinds of caregivers that look after children. Very often, a nanny typically looks after little babies, cleans up their  messes. How many of you know that new baby Christians can make some  pretty messes and they need to be cleaned up, and we, as the church, step in  as the older brother, older sister, the nanny. There again, a lot of pictures, a lot  of figures we can use. Our job is to take care of these baby Christians, to help  them clean up their messes, to help them begin to learn and grow, teach them.  Their ABCs and their colors and all of the kinds of things that you do teach them  to begin to walk as Christians. All the things you do with a baby, there are  analogies for what we need to do with baby Christians. So new believers are  babies, and the church needs to be nannies to care for these young Christians. 

But they shouldn't stay babies all the time. We can't leave them in the nursery all the time. We need to teach them to grow, to help them mature, because our  verse, our key verse back there said again, until this will continue, until we all  come to such unity and our faith and knowledge of Lord's son, that we will be  mature in the Lord he continues till we're mature. And so there is a big stage we  can get out of the nursery, but you're not ready to go into the world as a mature  person. And so that is the education, the learning. And in the kind of a house  that would have a nanny to take care of babies, they would have a tutor to take  care of the teaching of the older children, and so the church needs to step into  that as well. We need to step in and take care of the new believers and teach  them as they get older. Our verse again, these are the gifts Christ gave to the  church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists and the pastors and  teachers. I've kind of reordered that because I see it and it's I discovered this  about five minutes ago, honest to goodness, as I was going through these  notes, it all of a sudden struck me. I've got those in the wrong order. They have  these other comparisons, this analogy, and so I'm going to give you this in the  order that it just struck me. I just realized the five fold ministry, part of this five  fold ministry, refers to those five offices. It starts with the evangelists. They are  like the midwives. They're the ones that get the person born. Then the pastors  are the nannies. Pastors commonly do a lot of teaching. We expect a lot of that,  and that's part of a nanny, but an awful lot of the job of a pastor looking after a  local church is the pastoral care helping them out when you know a nanny  cleans off a baby when it falls down and skins its knee and gets a boo boo, and  the nanny takes care of it. Pastors take care of people when bad things happen  in their lives, comfort them. Bring the comfort of God to the family, show the  compassion. Visit in hospitals, grieving family, all that kind of stuff could be kind  of seen as the nanny role teachers and in many churches, pastor and teacher is  a combined role. And as a matter of fact, there is difference among Greek  scholars as to whether pastor and teacher should be seen as one function or  one role in this list. But anyway, teachers are the tutors who bring the  knowledge, the understanding, and that's personally where my gift is. My  strongest spiritual gifting is teaching. I served as a pastor for a long time, and I  think I have secondary gifts in the area of pastoring, but my main gift is teaching, and I hope that coming across in these these lessons, then the prophets, you  might consider them, the messengers that come from above, to all of the others, to the pastors, the teacher, here's here's this new, this coordinating kind of stuff.  And then I kind of might see the apostles, the grandparents, that pull the  different families together, the different if this congregation is one family and that congregation is another family, they're all part of the family of God, and the  grandparents bring them all together for the family reunion. So I haven't  developed that at all. Just thought I'd throw it out there. Maybe you might want  to develop that. The point is, all of this ministry, all of this church ministry, is 

supposed to help people grow. Helps us grow as we do. It helps other people  grow as they hear sermons, as they go to Bible studies, as they are trained in  hands on ministry training. We're supposed to grow more like Jesus. We're  supposed to be transformed into the image of God so the pastor says, This is  my fourth sermon on the transforming power of the gospel. Why do you look like the same old bunch? You could say, if your sermons were better, maybe we'd  change if you gave us opportunity, if you taught us, if you didn't just stand up  there and talk at us. But the point is, the church is supposed to be changing  people, not just making them feel comfortable, making them feel self satisfied.  Sometimes they need to be comforted, sometimes they need to be encouraged,  but they need to be changed and growing more and more like Jesus. We said  last time, if the people are not becoming more like Jesus, the church is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. So what do we do as church leaders, to serve as Nannies and Tutors and raise up God's children to be like Jesus and I see four  things. First, teach your people to carry out Romans 12:1-2 Romans 12:1 says,  Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let down your bodies be a  living and holy sacrifice. Now that doesn't mean throw yourself into a volcano,  you know, climb up on an altar and say, Here, light the fire. That's that's not what we're talking about. That's not an acceptable sacrifice to God. Let them be a  living and holy sacrifice. Sometimes it's a lot more sacrifice to give your whole  long life than it is to just do some quick momentary thing let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship  Him. So we talked earlier about worship in spirit and truth, but speak to that. Put  your money where your mouth is, as they say, practice what you preach. Give  your body to God. Do the things with your body that will please God. Now in the  past, there have been people that have tried to get around that there is the and  still a lot of there's still a lot of this in the church and in philosophy, the ancient  Greeks had a philosophy called dualism, which basically saw the human being  as having two parts, the physical part, you can see the body that's going to grow old and die and molder away, and then the mental, emotional, spiritual part.  They wrapped all of them, that invisible part, together, and they saw the that  part, the soul, spirit part, as being more important, because it was eternal and  the body was is not and therefore they said, that's the real important stuff. What  happens with the body didn't really matter. So then some people took that into  an to say, Well, if that's the case, and then especially, they combined that with  the fact that Jesus fulfilled the law for us, and they took that as an excuse, a  misunderstanding of the fact that Jesus fulfilled the law for us. And they said,  well, then if my body's gonna melt, gonna mildew and rot and die anyway,  doesn't really matter what I do with that, especially since Jesus already fulfilled  the law. So all those laws don't apply to my body. So I can go have all the fun I  want to with my body, and it doesn't matter, nice try. That's not what the Bible 

says. When Jesus became a human being, he took on our bodies and. He didn't just pretend to. He became a human. He suffered, he died, he got hungry, he  got tired, he wept. The theological word for that is incarnation, coming from the  Latin root carne or I don't know exactly how to say it in Latin. In Spanish, carne  as meat, I believe. But anyway, it means meat or flesh or enfleshment,  becoming meat, becoming flesh. Jesus actually became one of us, which is a  combination of spirit, soul and body. If the body wasn't important, Jesus wouldn't have done that. Jesus would not have risen from the dead in his body. You  mean, you remember after, after he rose from the dead, Mary grabbed him, and  he had to say, let go, because he was holding on to His body, His resurrected  body, but it was a physical body. Then he appeared to the apostles, and they  gave him some fish, and he ate it. My point is, the body is important to God. The human being is not a soul trapped in a body, but the human being is a  combination, a human Trinity, if you will, of spirit, soul and body, just like in the  image of God, who is a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So teach your  people to present their bodies to God. What they do with their bodies matters to  them and to God. And the way to worship God is to say, God, here's my body.  Show me what you want me to do with it, and I'll do it. Show me what you don't  want me to do with it, and I won't, present your bodies. And then he goes on,  don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person. And that's what we're talking about, transformation growing into  the image of Christ. How does that happen? By changing the way you think, let  God transform you into a new person. By changing the way you think. It's not  real clear in the original Greek, where you would want to put a comma here, and so I think that means God is perfectly happy for us to read it both ways and  learn from it both ways. So it could be, let God transform you into a new person  by changing the way you think. In other words, let God do the transformation  and the changing, let God change the way you think, and that will transform you, or it could be let God transform you. And how do you Let God transform you?  You change the way you think. I think there's truth in both of that, because God  has to help you change the way you think. But he's not going to do it against  your will. The point is somehow changing the way you think is the key to the  transformation. Then, once you have presented your body to God and changed  the way you think, to bring it in line with the way God thinks, with what God says about you, then you will learn to know God's will for you. You don't automatically  know God's will. You learn. It's another learned skill. Learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. You want to do this. So we've had  two reasons. The reason to present your body is because that's the way God  wants to be worshiped. And the way the reason to be transformed by changing  your mind, changing the way you think, is because that brings you into the will of God. And why do you want to be in the will of God? Because God loves you so  much that everything he wants for you is going to be good and pleasing and 

perfect. And now that's not just necessarily pleasing to God. When you are  finding out what God created you for and fulfilling your purpose for which God  created you for that is going to be the most fulfilling, the most wonderful, the  most exciting, the most good and pleasing and perfect thing you can do. So  teach your people these things. How do you do that? Well, there's a saying in  the. Computer industry, GIGO, G, I, G, O. It stands for garbage in, garbage out.  In other words, if you put bad data in a computer, it's going to give you bad  answers. It applies with your mind as well. You put garbage in your mind,  garbage is going to come out of your mind. Stop feeding your mind lies. If you  want to have the truth, stop feeding your mind lies. Learn and know the things  that God teaches you, the things that God says about you. Where do you find  that in the Bible? Learn the Bible, read the Bible, scripture memory, find a verse  that speaks to you and memorize it. Get it down in your heart so that the Holy  Spirit can bring it out anytime it's needed. And meditation. Meditation means  thinking about something deeply. It's not like in some Eastern religions, gazing  at your navel and saying, om, om, om trying to empty your mind. Christian  meditation is filling your mind with the things of God. Because if you empty your  mind, it's like a vacuum. Something's gonna get sucked back in there. And if you try to empty your mind, and you're not specifically filling it with God, the devil is  only too happy to fill it up with stuff. So meditate, scripture memory and  meditation. And then there's a little trick called an affirmation, which I think is  really cool, and it really helped me and my life and this, this is how it works. You  discover that you've been thinking wrong things. You need to change your habit  of thinking. We the way we think is a habit. If we think nothing good ever  happens to me, then we're going to convince ourselves of that, and then we're  going to subconsciously make it happen, just in order to give credence to what  we've been telling ourselves to make it come true. So that's a bad habit of  thinking you need to break. So what's the opposite of that? God loves me.  Okay? You need to start telling yourself, God, well, let's say, instead of nothing,  nothing good ever happens. God has good plans for me. God has good plans  for me. If you can find scripture, it's even better to use for an affirmation or  paraphrase it. But something you need to get into your mind. It's a changing  habit of thinking. And they say it takes 30 days to create a habit. So for 30 days  you do this, and here's how it is. It sounds like a gimmick, but it really works.  Take your statement. God has good plans for me. Write it out 12 times. Write it  by hand. Don't put it in your computer and hit repeat. You know, Copy, Paste.  Write it out by hand, because that helps it get into your mind. God has good  plans for me. God has good plans for me. God has good plans for me. 12 times.  Then shift it to the second person, as if somebody else is saying it to you, put in  your name. God has good plans for you. In my case, it's David, so write 12  times. David, God has good plans for you. David. God has good plans for you.  David, God has good plans for you. And so on. And then the third time, you write

it out in the third person, God has good plans for David. God has good plans for  David. God has good plans for David. You write it out 12 times that way, you've  got 36 statements there. Then every morning and every evening for a month,  you stand in front of a mirror, if you can, and you say you read these or repeat  them to yourself out loud, looking at yourself in the mirror. God has good plans  for me. God has good plans for me, 12 times, David. God has good plans for  you, so and so on. God has good plans for David, so and so on. And science  has shown that you're going to believe this because you're hearing it. Your ears  are hearing a voice that you trust say it. Your eyes are seeing a face that you  trust, a person that you trust. Say it. And even though your conscious mind  knows, well, that's just me in the mirror, your subconscious is hearing this, and it believes it, and it drives out those negative thoughts and it brings in the good  just a kind of a gimmick that God has given us to so teach your people to follow  Romans 12:1-2. I've got to really hurry with these next three. Teach your people  to act on God's word. The second way you become nanny and tutor Help, help  your people become like Jesus, is teach them to act on God's word. Acting on it. You don't need to just believe it. If I go to the doctor and he gives me medicine  and he says, Here, take this medicine, it'll make you better. I can say, Oh yes, I  believe that. I know the medicines there, and I believe it'll make me better, but if  I sit it on the shelf, if I never take it, if I never act on it, it's not going to make me  better. And it's the same with the Bible. You can't just have it in your head or  even in your heart. You have to act on it. You have to do something. James 2:26 says, just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good  works. So you have the Bible, and we'll get into this more a little later, but you  take basically three steps to it. You take what it says, and then you don't  necessarily immediately apply what it says. You look for the principle that it's  teaching. Because often these principles, the words, teach a principle in a way  that applies to the culture of that time that's different from this time. So you say,  what's the principle? For instance, greet one another with the holy kiss. You're  not disobeying God. If you live in a culture where that would be really weird and  you don't go greeting every Christian with a kiss, you know there are cultures  where you get a slap in the face if you try that. The principle is greet each other  warmly and lovingly. And in our culture, the application of that is usually a  handshake, maybe a hug, but find the principle and apply that. Do it if you if it's  not something from the Bible, if it's something you feel like God has told you,  answer to prayer revelation or something, check with somebody else. If it's  anything of any seriousness, confer with another mature Christian. Many Bible  verses have conditions you have to fulfill, and I'm going to run through this  quickly. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and  pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven  and will forgive their sins and restore their land. We know this verse, but there is  a condition to that God is only going to hear and forgive and restore if his people

humble themselves and prayer, many Bible verses have similar conditions.  Sometimes it doesn't have if in it seek the kingdom of God above all else and  live righteously, and he'll give you everything you need. This is not put in an if  then format explicitly, but still, the condition is, if you seek the kingdom of God  and live righteously, then he'll take care of everything else you need. So if you're going to teach people to do these things, don't just tell them about it. Organize  opportunities to practice what you teach them in the church. Say, all right, we  have a sermon about being taking care of the poor. God loves the poor. So after  church, we're going to gather at this place, and we're going to hand out  sandwiches to the homeless something like that, an opportunity to practice third  step when necessary, apply II Timothy 4:2 patiently correct, rebuke and  encourage your people with good teaching. Sometimes you have to correct  them because they're doing it wrong. Sometimes you have to encourage them  because they're scared. Sometimes you have to rebuke them because they just  won't listen to you. They want to do it their own way. When it's necessary do that that's any nanny has to apply discipline. Any tutor has to say, No, you did that  problem wrong, do it this way. Teach the people. You can't train them if you don't correct them, if they get it wrong. You are not just teaching concepts. You are  training lives. You're not just teaching concepts. It's your training lives and the  fourth way, very quickly, practice what you preach, because your people will  imitate your actions and attitudes more than your words. They will see what you  do, if they respect you, if they love you, if they want to be like you, they'll follow  what they see you doing much more than what you say, See you next time 



最后修改: 2024年08月12日 星期一 12:31