Video Transcript: Session 10 To Teach

This is session 10 of this class on making and preaching sermons titled preacher preparation and presentation. Now, the last time, we started looking at what it means to preach, we're in this division called Preparing to preach. And so we've been trying to find a definition a Biblical definition. And when you do that, you'll find that there are all sorts of different words that are used in the New Testament to describe this act of preaching, or of presenting to a group of people. And so our last time we began this process by looking at euangelizo or preach the gospel, or proclaim the gospel proclaiming the good news that all of those kinds of things can be used to translate that word euangelizo. And we found that that's a basic presentation of the good news about Jesus Christ, coming into the world to save sinners, being born, living teaching, dying on the cross as a substitution for our sins, and then rising again to new life and sending the Holy Spirit on his church. All of those things are part of the euangelizo experience. Well, there are other words, and we're gonna group them other words that describe a preaching event in Scripture. And so over the next couple of sessions, we're going to look at that I said that last time, and we're gonna look at a variety of them. Now, the reality is, is a particular message may have elements, various elements in it, that reflect these words, but we're gonna look at them individually and just try to find a definition for this, this dynamic that we call preaching. And today, the word I want to share with you, the New Testament is one that I'll start with a story about a little girl named Martha, who was talking in their school class Martha and teacher talking about whales. And somebody in the class that said, I've heard that a whale could swallow a human being and the teacher said, no, no, no, no, no, a whale can't swallow a human being their, their throat is just too small. They got a big mouth, but their throat is too small to swallow human being. Whales can't swallow a human being. At that point, little Martha raised her hand. Yes, but I've heard that whales can swallow a human being I hear that a whale swallowed Jonah. And the teacher who was not a believer and not a student of Scripture, you know, right away, it was kind of irritated. He says, No, it is a physical fact that whales cannot swallow a human being. There are gullets are too small. After which Martha thought for a moment, and she raised her hand and says, When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask Jonah how that worked. And the teacher now a little irritated and trying to get a dig in at Martha said, hey, but what if Jonah's not in heaven? And Martha replied, Well, then you can ask him. You know, that's an old, old worn joke in many ways. But the reality is that Martha learned about Jonah somewhere, she learned the facts about the story. She learned about how he went to Nineveh, how he preached, but how he was called to preach and then tried to turn away, and are all sorts of marvelous lessons, marvelous truths, marvelous facts that come to us through the book of Jonah. And somebody had taught Martha, the word for teaching in the New Testament is this word. There's an artist's conception of how John might have been swallowed by the whale. The word that is used for teaching is the word didasko. It's almost always translated as to teach. Here's just some lexicon, facts about the word. It's used 97 times in the New Testament. So this is an important word. This is not something you can gloss over. But you have to figure out what in the world does this word mean for me? And what does it mean for me in my ministry, now in the King James Version, it's translated consistently to teach every single time it's used, as translated as a one form of the word teach. Now, sometimes this word describes a formal teacher student relationship. For instance, Jesus taught his disciples. And as he teaches His disciples, they are in a formal student, teacher relationship with a teacher is conveying information to the student, for the student to take in and make real for themselves as well as to express it in life. In fact, back then, the whole idea of teaching was not just to convey facts, but it was to convey a lifestyle. And so Jesus when He taught his disciples, He taught them, giving him his life as an example of what that meant to teach. And so it's that formal student relationship, but it also describes informal instruction, such as learning a father, teaching a son or a daughter, about life in general. In other words, it just kind of passed on certain values are passed on, I have three children. And most of them reflect the values that my wife and I modeled for them during life. Well, that could be we taught them certain things. We taught them about life. And we didn't do it always in just a formal way of saying, Now sit down, I want to tell you about money and credit and borrowing money. And that, to my knowledge, that didn't happen until they were adults. But this word can describe that informal kind of interaction as well that we call teaching. Now, a definition of the word teach is this, to convey facts, or truths, in a way that causes students to learn. Look at that, again, because we're going to use that as kind of a background as we talk further about this word now, to convey facts, or truths in a way that causes students to learn. So there are facts or truths, and they have to be conveyed, they have to be passed on from a teacher, to a student. And in the preaching enterprise, this means there's a preacher who is passing on to students, listeners, certain facts, and certain truths, and is trying to find the ways to do that, that will enable the students best to learn. Now, when we look at the ministry of Jesus, here's from one of the many movies about Jesus, as he's sitting in teaching. In fact, that was the way teaching happened in that culture, they would sit down and talk to their followers talk to the crowd. Now, there are indications in scriptures that there were times that he stood to do that, especially when the crowd was large. And when he wanted to make a point such as, on the day when water is poured out outside the temple is a symbol of God's provision in the wilderness that Jesus stood up to teach. But His teaching was on conveying facts and information to these students. Now, here's just a few of the many passages that could be used to describe the teaching ministry of Jesus, Matthew 4:23, Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. That's what it says there. Now. In 9:35, almost the same thing is said, Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, supposedly, outside of the key of the synagogues, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. And then Luke 5:3, he got into one of the boats, which was Simon's and asked him to put out a little way from land. And he sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. And so Jesus is the teacher. And he is passing on information. He's passing on facts. He's passing on truths to the people. Now, other places, it says he did this, just to the disciples. In fact, the Sermon on the Mount begins in 5:1 of Matthew saying, He called His disciples to them, and began to speak. And so but but you can't understand the ministry of Jesus without understanding this idea of preaching, in the sense of teaching certain facts and truths, and proclaiming the gospel. In other words, he didn't just didasko people, he euangelizod people as we referred to last time. So he was evangelizing people is proclaiming the gospel, but he was giving information to people as well. Now, there are times when those two things probably crossed in fact at the end of the session, today, I'm going to have you watch a brief video of a man who defines the relationship between preaching and teaching as we find it in the New Testament. But for now, just note that there were both of them and they're treated separately. that teaching is one thing, proclaiming the gospel is another. When you go on to read, in the book of Acts, you'll find that a very similar kind of thing was the practice of the disciples who had learned from Jesus, their teacher, their rabbi, for instance, consider this passage from Acts 4:18. The setting here is that James and John have healed this man who was lame and the man goes dancing into the temple and the religious authorities get all upset and they call and arrest Peter, and John called him in and say, What name did you do this in? And Peter says, the name of Jesus, if you want to know how this guy's healed, it's the name of Jesus. And as a result, they call them in and they warn them, they warn them repeatedly, says when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. You'll notice that speak, and teach, next time, we're going to talk about speaking what what that might refer to but speak or teach, passing on facts, conveying truth about Jesus in such a way that students live, don't do that. It was their very, very clear message to the disciples, and so or to the crowd there and to the Sanhedrin, as they tried them, and then they released them. Chapter 5 of Acts as one of my most favorite sections in Acts, which is probably one of my most favorite books in the Bible, because of the excitement of seeing the Spirit at work in that place. In Acts 2, the disciples are released with all these warnings, and oh, don't speak, don't teach. And, and their response was a prayer, saying, God, look at what they're, they're accusing us of, I'll look at what they're threatening us with, and they're threatening you within your church with. And as a result, they pray for great boldness in teaching, and preaching. And this is what happens as a result, Acts 5:42, and every day in the temple, and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. In other words, teaching, and preaching. So they've got people house to house, they're, they're sharing information with them. They're conveying truth to them. They're conveying facts to them about Jesus Christ, they're teaching, and they're preaching. And so that was true of those original disciples, post Pentecost. Later, when you look at the life of Paul, you find that he defined his life. This way, when you get to Acts 20, you'll find that Paul, is in a position where he's on his way to Jerusalem, he's going to be arrested there. And eventually that's going to end with him being shipped to Rome. But he's meeting with the Ephesian elders and a little place called Miletus. And while he's there, he's defending his ministry, he says, I want you to remember how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly from house to house. And so he was declaring anything that was profitable to them, but he was teaching them conveying information to them. He was trying to show them truth in such a way that they can understand it appropriate it for themselves, and then pass it on to others. Now, that brings the question, okay. So what, so what? Well, this is a big deal, the kind of sermon you are going to preach is going to affect your preparation. Now, I, when I entered ministry, many, many years ago now a little over 40 years. I went to seminary and the teaching I got there, I don't remember anybody saying it, but what I took in from what they were conveying was that preaching is really teaching. And so my preaching ministry was supposed to be a teaching ministry where I was conveying facts to people. And so that's what I did. And it affected how I chose my scriptures and affected the illustrations that I had. It made my choice of follow up materials and testing. I'll talk about that in a moment. But so how did I preach? Well, I started with sections of Scripture. When I started in the morning services, I had two services in the first church, I served morning in the evening. And in the morning, I preached something like the Beatitudes. And then the Sermon on the Mount was actually the first series of sermons that I ever preached. And it took me six months to get through the Sermon on the Mount. And frankly, I was rather sick of the series by them. And I felt sorry for my people who were a little bit tired of it, too, I suspect. But that's what I conveyed, that I wanted to understand everything Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and so my, my choice of those scriptures were to convey this to them, and to help them appropriate it for their life. And that affected my illustrations about taking in information. And then I realized, however, that a monologue was not a real effective means of teaching. I actually had the weird experience of writing my master's degree on preaching in the New Testament for my master's thesis. And one of the things I learned there is that preaching was far richer and far more diverse and far more dynamic than I had pictured it. Because there's all these other aspects of it that I had not yet had a chance to, to explore. And I was not practicing myself. But in the past I did I picked a big passage in the morning, in the evening, we went through a doctrinal section of part of one of our doctrinal statements. And so I was teaching them about that particular doctrine of statements. But then as I realized that a monologue in today's world, at least where I live is is not a good teaching method. So what else could we do without throwing out the baby with the bathwater as a colloquium we use in the United States or dumping the whole system, what can I do? And so I began putting in the putting in the bullets in an outline of the message of so that people could follow along and take notes along and hopefully take it home. And when I was teaching, that they would be able to have a greater grasp of the material because they had it right there. And then I had, on the flip side of that half page of paper, I will put questions for them to discuss, they would discuss those questions, hopefully, in their small groups, or they would discuss them in their family as they gathered for a Sunday dinner. But the idea was that they would take what I have said, in the worship service in the teaching message, and take it home and discuss further how does this teaching these facts and truths are relate to my life. And so that's how I did teaching ministry back then now. Teaching, at least in my culture is a challenge these days, I suspect it is in yours, too. So let's picture here's two people in your congregation, and you are in front of them. And you are giving them a message. And you want them to understand certain facts, certain truths. And then you're giving them the best you've got, well, what's going to happen with those people? Well, all the studies that I've done, show that now people have this huge filter, and we naturally will filter out, they say up to 97% of the input that we get, especially if you live in a if you live in a developing world, that may not be true for you yet, but it's becoming that way. I suspect, because people have input from television, they have input from social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc, etc. We have, we have input from newspapers and other written media, we have input from television, we've got input from movies, we have all this input coming in. And as a result, we filter it all out. We filter out anything that we don't see relevant to us. And so we're called to teach as part of our preaching ministry. How in the world are we going to do that when you know that some students are going to be like this guy here? sitting there and saying, I don't know, just isn't for me it's not relevant. The only thing I can say is that if you're going to engage in teaching, and you should, you should, it shouldn't be part of your preaching pattern, that you have some periods where there's teaching going on, we really need to do is deeply add prayer to your ministry in your experience. Because prayer is the one that opens up the door. I put down they may not be able to see it. But down here it says very small Jim. He's a man of my first church who is I spent six weeks with him his wife had become a believer and became an attender at our church. And so he came along, trying to keep her happy. And, and he agreed to meet with me. And so we began to meet and explore the truths, and the facts about Jesus Christ coming into the world about the world being a place stained by sin, but Jesus coming and offer us new life, His death as a substitution for our own death, and etc. At the end of six weeks, I said, Okay, Jim, what do you think it came time to start pressing for a commitment? And he said, you know, he said, Do you believe in Mother Goose and fairy tales too? So I said, you know, there's really no reason for us to continue. He was willing to, but no reason for us to continue this. And so we broke it off. And about six weeks later, he quit coming to church. But about six weeks later, there he was back. And at the end of the service, it was a little tiny church. And so I knew he was there at the end of the service. I'm shaking hands with people as they go out and he comes out. He says, I really want to let you know that I've become a Christian. So what I got to hear this story, so we made an appointment, I think it was on Tuesday, that was Sunday. And I sat down with Jim and I said, what happened? And he said, One moment, I was sitting at my aunt's funeral, and I knew it was all all just fairy tale. The next moment, I knew it was all true. And then all the stuff that I had taught him, all of a sudden became relevant to his life. And he became a passionate, delightful Christian, who a year later, I think it was died of cancer, and now is in heaven. But it was the facts came through only through the power of the Spirit. So that's didasko teaching. Now, I do want you to watch this free video. It's by Dennis Kennedy, Dr. Kenneth Hatcher from the Austin Bible Institute. And he does a very engaging a comparison between teaching and preaching and how they do relate to each other and you You can have one or the other, but you can have both. And so I'll see you next time as we continue in this exploration of making, and preparing and making sermons. The question is, what is the difference between preaching and teaching? We see preaching and teaching in the church frequently. But what is the difference between preaching and teaching? Well, what I want to start with is that these two are not opposites. But there are opposite ends of the same spectrum. What do I mean by that, say, this is a spectrum, here and here would be preaching. And here would be teaching, and they are not opposites. In the middle, here, we have balance that includes both of them. It is impossible to teach without preaching. And it's also impossible to preach Well, without teaching, that's very important to know. A good preacher has to teach in a good teacher has to preach. An analogy that I like to use to explain the difference between preaching and teaching is like the Indicative and imperative modes in English, or any language for that matter. Teaching would be more like the Indicative mode. And preaching would be more like the imperative mode. The indicative mode tells us what is and this imperative mode says, what we should do what we should do. That's how what preaching it's preaching exhorts us to, to do something, to obey. And teaching tells us how to obey. Another way to look at it is that teaching appeals to the mind. Preaching appeals to the heart. So you can see it as teaching appeals to the mind. And preaching appeals to the heart of a person. And as such, preaching inspires us to action to increase our desire to obey God. But teaching informs us on how to do it say for, for example, I preach on prayer. Well, I would inspire people to desire to pray. I will show people the benefits that come with praying, and I will teach people the commands of God as regards to prayer. But I will not necessarily teach them in that sermon, that I'm preaching on prayer, how to actually pray, the goal will be to inspire people, everybody who gets out of the church door that day, will be saying, I want to be a praying person I want to pray. But many of them would not know how to pray. We then have to teach them to actually learn how to pray. So preaching, short, preaching is like showing the way to a person and say that's the direction to go and urges the person to take that direction. But teaching actually holds the person's hand and guides them through successfully. So preaching has a lot of passion and the appeal to the emotions and their heart. But teaching is not like that. See, to be successful in communicating God's word. Again, you have to use both of them. Both are important. And good teachers are going to preach and good preachers are going to teach. And you have to do both. To to really be successful. A preacher is going to of course, do more preaching and a teacher is going to do more teaching. A good teacher, for example, will give information and explain it. A good teacher will will be concerned about reasoning with the students reasoning with the people that he or she is teaching. A good preacher is not going to be focused too much on teaching even though he must first start with teaching before he absorbed but his his goal is to exhort people and and really have them implement the thing that is being taught. A good teacher may spend say 2/3 of his time teaching and then close with 1/3 preaching while a good preacher man may do 1/3 teaching and then close with 2/3 preaching. See a Bible teacher would would put the text into the historical context of the text would try to see if there are any, any translation issues or any grammatical issues that need to be ironed out to make the text clear, but he will highlight the text for the for the people to see. And that will be where he will spend most of his time. But a good preacher would be exhorting people more to take action, and do and preach some pastors, you know, that we see have strong areas in preaching. Okay. When you see pastors that have strong areas, as preaching, they usually have Christians that are very quick to move to obey. But they're not always moved in the right biblical doctrine. But if you see a pastor that is also very bent on teaching this, this pastor may have a church that understands and agrees with what the Bible says, but they're not moved to obey. They assent to everything the Bible says they agree, that's the right doctrine. That's how you should interpret it. But they're not moved and inspired to obey. So having a balance is very important. The balance point here is key for everything.