The Ship Is Built with Teaching
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Just to make sure I’m understanding you correctly; you’re referring to stuff like spiritual eunuchs, and various evenings where you said that you had been considering these things for several weeks, and even months, and then tonight someone said something, and you felt released to share those things.
Yes, that’s an example. It wouldn’t need to be quite as large scale as that. It might be 15 minutes of a chapter in Philippians. But again, an exhortation, an admonishment, a prophetic utterance --those things might just key off on one small thought that is just meant to shoot right at the heart. Those things are in abundance at our gatherings and in our conversations and our daily routines. But the thing that has not been in abundance is a thorough, comprehensive, drawing out of a theme of God or a passage of Scripture that builds in an orderly way in our minds and sits there and holds.
A prophetic statement or an admonishment or exhortation has a way of adjusting an attitude or changing a direction, but usually not for a sustained period of time. Because those things are meant to be built upon the truths of God that have been laid out in our hearts and lives in an orderly way. An exhortation only has long-term value in my life if I’m building on the principals and the foundation, the bedrock of God’s thought and mind for my life and for His character and for His church -- if I don’t have teaching to build exhortation upon, it is going to be fairly short-lived.
The essentiality of these things -- I don’t have any way to emphasize it enough. It’s just time. I think we’ve reached a level of maturity as a corporate entity where if we don’t take some steps and take these things seriously to begin to view ourselves not just as a bunch of children in the household, but some will be taking responsibility. Not to be somebody, not to exalt themselves in any way, but to consider the needs of others, and one primary need being, “Man does not live by bread alone.”
Let’s make sure God’s people are in the green pastures. Let’s make sure they’re along the waters, the refreshing waters. Let’s make sure that we’re helping God’s people move in places where they can receive the nourishment that they need, not just let everybody run around the house rampant and call that a priesthood of believers. Just because nobody takes responsibility that makes it a priesthood. I don’t think that’s a definition of a priesthood, is everyone running rampant in the house. There has to be some responsibility-taking. If service, serve. If encouragement, encourage. If teaching, teach. That word is not a dirty word. It’s not anything to be afraid of.
We’ve had our share of it over time, but I think the broad responsibility, the baton being passed on a broader level to take responsibility for that, the time is definitely now. I think anything short of that will result in malnutrition and chaos in the House of God in a way that we don’t want. Man does not live by exhortation alone. That isn’t the only thing that we need for a diet. Like I said, exhortation is meant to redirect the ship, but the ship is built out of the planks of the solid teaching of God’s counsel and His ways. The exhortation is just a puff of air in the sails to move it. But you can’t build the house, you can’t build the ship out of exhortation and prophetic utterance and blasts of instruction or admonishment. The seams of all the planks need to be there with the tar of love in between to hold the thing together. Then the puffs of wind of exhortation, can take it some place proper.
Teaching by itself is a ship that’s just sitting in a harbor with the sails down. There does need to be the prophetic, there needs to be the exhortation, there needs to be the blasts of admonishment and utterance, the wind to catch the sails and to blow the ship off onto a destination that has some meaning. But the ship is not built out of those things. It’s built out of a thorough, comprehensive understanding of God’s heart and mind regarding His plan, His purposes, His character, how to build, how to comprehend the meaning of life. I just want to thrust us all forward together into hotly pursuing that path, being fully aware that we won’t always know how to walk it out. We may not always know how to do it.
Some of you guys have heard some recent discussions about Peter and the fact that erring on the side of activity is far more God’s heart than erring on the side of passivity. When God had all of creation, all of humanity and all the generations to choose from, there was one guy that he paid special attention to and gave special responsibilities to, and that was a guy that was best described as someone that continuously erred on the side of activity.
Peter was always messing up. He was half crazy. But out of all the people that God could have chosen, all the people on earth, and all the generations that Jesus could have landed on to entrust His foremost pivotal beginning message of changing the human race, He chose a guy that was best described as someone that was erring continuously on the side of activity rather than passivity. He was correctable, he recovered, he was resilient, he didn’t get destroyed by his own mistakes. He had the courage to go on in spite of his mistakes. He was easily retaught even though he had a conviction about something, but again and again and again he erred on the side of activity, not on guarded passivity. I want to encourage us towards that same end. It’s better in God’s mind, if Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, then I know the Father’s mind on this. He would much rather you try and fail, than to be so wise and so spiritual that you err continuously on the side of passivity. He would rather you be a little wild-eyed and crazy.
As long you’re correctable and as long as you’re resilient, and you bounce back quickly rather than have a pity-party, He would much rather you try and fail than to not try at all. If we are really about pleasing the Father, if that’s our primary goal rather than just not making mistakes, and if Peter is the man that the Father, through Jesus, chose as the model starting place, then let’s make it a goal to be a little more like that. It makes a lot of sense to me. He was very pleased with Peter and entrusted infinitely more to him than just about anybody else on earth. I would really like us to take that model seriously and invest in that model of life that Jesus handpicked to entrust the keys to as a starting place.
