God Our Teacher

[00:00:00] All right, let's get our Bible and go to the Book of psalms. Psalm number 25 is where we're going to be tonight, Psalm number 25. [00:00:15] Now, to be honest with you, you could go in a number of different directions with this psalm. But there was one particular truth that kind of stood out as I was going through the psalm, and that's where we will concentrate. So we will not go necessarily go verse by verse through the psalm. But I want to point out a recurring theme. [00:00:34] The principle of recurrence is a biblical principle of interpretation, and this is a recurring theme in this psalm. In fact, I don't know what your Bible says as a heading, but under the subtitle, A Psalm of David. My Bible says, teach me your paths, teach me thy paths. And so let's read the Psalm, Psalm 25. Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed. Let them be ashamed which transgress without cause. Show me thy ways, O Lord. Teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth and teach me. [00:01:20] For thou art the God of my salvation. On thee do I wait all the day. [00:01:25] Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses, for they have been ever of old. [00:01:32] Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. According to thy mercy. Remember thou me for thy goodness sake, O Lord. [00:01:44] Good and upright is the Lord Therefore will he teach sinners in the way and the meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. [00:02:11] His soul shall dwell at ease, and his seed shall inherit the earth. [00:02:16] The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant. Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me. For I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. O, bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins. [00:02:42] Consider mine enemies, for they are many and they hate me with cruel hatred. O, keep my soul and deliver me. Let me not be ashamed, for I put my trust In Thee let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on Thee. Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles. Let's pray together. [00:03:06] Father, thank youk for your goodness to us. Thank youk that yout are a God who is near to us. Indeed, Lord, you are us. [00:03:15] Not just one who is beside us, but one who leads us from within by the presence of your Spirit. Thank you for that, Lord. As we look at this psalm tonight, we just ask that you would bless our meeting and bless our, our lesson and our focus on your word as we try to see this one little characteristic about the way that you deal with us. [00:03:38] And we pray that these things. I pray that these things would be clear and would be truly helpful and encouraging to your people. In Jesus name I ask. Amen. [00:03:49] So the one thing that stood out to me and you, hopefully, maybe you saw it as we were reading through the psalm, is this starts in verse number three, which is when the psalmist prays to God, just like, you know, as I've said, just to reiterate the Psalms. As we've gone through the Psalms, we've seen so many of the Psalms are prayers directed at God. And it is really, really helpful to us because we can take these right up and put them right in our own mouth and use them. And this is one case where we can. In this subject, in verse four, it says, show me Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths. And so what I wanted to look at just a little bit is the idea that God is our teacher. That God is our teacher. In the psalm here, the psalmist asks God to be his teacher. The psalmist asks God to be his teacher. You drop down just a few verses down to verse number eight. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners in the way. You see that as well. And I get the impression that he's teaching sinners. And of course, that's all of us, right? But the idea being that even those who aren't really into being taught, who don't really necessarily are asking for a lesson, who do not want to be in school, God teaches them as well, the Lord, because God is known as a teacher, our Lord Jesus Christ, a teacher, the Spirit of God in us. Remember what did the Book of John say? It was John chapter, I think 16 John 14 and 1 John chapter two. They both say that we have been given the spirit of God to be our teacher. Need not that any man teach you, for when the comforters come, he will teach you all things. [00:05:43] So even the very presence of the Spirit of God. Within us is the teaching ministry of God. [00:05:53] God has taken it upon himself to teach his people. What does that mean? [00:05:59] It means that he is not, you know, you think of teaching. We think most of the time we think of teaching as the imparting of knowledge. Right. Like brother Mark and Mrs. Mark. Ms. Mark. You were a teacher too, right? Yeah, both of them were teachers. That's the idea when you go to school, is you're trying to impart knowledge. Now, it's not just about knowledge, and we'll talk about that as well. But that's kind of the way we think of it, is showing something or giving knowledge to someone to increase their understanding. [00:06:30] And that's what the Lord does with us. He does not want us to remain as we are now. [00:06:37] He is at work. He has taken the burden upon himself to work in us, to teach us so that we will know more and be different and do better than we are now in the future. [00:06:51] You see, he wants us to grow, and he has taken it upon himself to enable us to do that. The Lord also does not leave us to figure things out on our own. [00:07:03] And sometimes that's a temptation. You know, when you have a difficult concept, well, you just figure it out. But God doesn't. God never says to us, you just figure it out. [00:07:12] He says, no, I will come alongside you and I will be your teacher. [00:07:18] But there's three things I want to point out. If you want to write these just little statements down as kind of an outline, is this. The first thing I want you to see is that God teaches us his ways. God teaches us his own ways. Now, if you look in the psalm, it's clearly spelled out in verse number four, the psalmist prays, show me thy paths, O Lord, teach me thy paths. Verse 9 says this. The meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. You go down to verse number 10 as well. The next verse, it says this. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimony. So when you see God's ways, His paths, thy paths, we're not talking about. That's not just another way to say, you know, this is what God wants you to do. No, what the Lord is drawing attention to is his own actions, his own character, his own works, his own values, his own viewpoint and perspective. So when we. The first thing that God teaches us is he teaches us about Himself. He teaches us. God says, come alongside. You know, I have some things about me I want to show you I have some things about me. Let me just say this just came to my mind, just on the fly. If you're a parent. If you're a parent, you need to teach your kids about you and about your family and about your history, right? You need to teach your kids about where they came from. They need to know where you went to school and they need to know what you did when you were small and what led you to this point. That's just listen, you should teach your kids those things that builds that continuity in the family that's so important. This has nothing to do with, except the one word teaching anyway. But that's what the Lord does with us. He says, come, I want to show you some things about me. [00:09:25] And you know how he does that? [00:09:28] The primary way he does that, at least initially, I think you can see it in the psalm here, at least initially, is by the Scripture. Is by the scripture. [00:09:40] When we look in the record of Scripture, what do we see? The Bible is not about for sure. You know, some people characterize the Bible as, you know, just a book of do's and don'ts and a bunch of laws. But that is not what the Bible is about at all, although it includes those things. You know what the Bible is about. The Bible's about God. [00:10:03] It's not about me, it's not about you. It's not about creation. Ultimately and supremely, the Bible is about God. God gave us the Bible as a revelation of himself to us. So when we read the Bible, we see all the things that God did, we see all the things that God said. We see God's value, we see God value system. We see the way God judges both good and evil. We see all about God. We see the way God interacts with people who do right and people who do unrighteousness. We see all of these things and we learn God's ways. When we look at the Gospels, what are the four Gospels, which are the kind of core of the, of the kind of the New Testament, the incarnation, the advent of Christ is not just one story, but four perspectives of a single life, which is the life of our Lord. [00:11:04] Why did the four Gospel writers write that? Why did God give us that? Because God's trying to show us something about Christ. [00:11:12] He's trying to say, this is who he is. This is his character. This is what he loves. This is how he was. The Bible is a revelation of God, and we see those things. When we read the Gospels, we see described in great detail what our Lord Jesus Christ was Like, this is the whole theme and purpose of the Bible. You know, unlike false religions, we. We do not look to saints. We do not look to a popish figure. We do not look to a head of the church, a human head of the church, or even a line. We don't even look to the figures in Scripture. We see examples, but we don't look to them as the ultimate example, the one to whom we are. No, no, no, no, no, no. We look at. And we appreciate Peter and Paul and James and John and David and. And Samson. Samson's kind of harder to preach. But Moses, you know, we appreciate. We see their examples, but we definitely do not look to them as, like, the ultimate example to emulate. But what we do see above all of that is our great, thrice holy God, perfect in goodness, his mercy endureth forever. We look at him. That's where all the focus is. [00:12:41] You know what? He wants to show us his ways. Lord, teach me thy ways. Another way you might say that is, lord, teach me about you. [00:12:54] Teach me about you. Look at a couple of verses with me, if you would. Look at Exodus 33. [00:13:02] I thought this was an interesting verse that Moses said, Exodus 33. [00:13:13] And this kind of goes right into what I want to say. Moses put it the best. Exodus 33, verse number 13, verse 12. For context. [00:13:25] Exodus 33, verse 12. And Moses said unto the Lord, see, thou sayest unto me, bring up this people. And thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou has said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. I love this. Can you just kind of put that in your brain real quick and just keep it there? [00:13:46] What's happening with Moses? [00:13:49] Moses is frustrated. [00:13:52] He's frustrated because God said, bring up this people, and Moses feels inadequate to do it. [00:14:01] But yet he remembers what God said to him. [00:14:06] Are you following me in verse 12? That's what it says. But let me ask you, when you read verse 12, do you get the impression that Moses, he already knows what God has said about himself? [00:14:21] Right? He said, I know thee by name, and thou hast found grace in my sight. That speaks to who God is, how God is in his interaction with Moses. But do you get the impression that Moses knows that? [00:14:34] You get the impression that Moses, by personal experience, knows that's true. [00:14:42] I don't. Because he's whining. [00:14:46] God, you said you were gonna do this and you're gonna be with me, but what's up with this? [00:14:54] In other words, doubt, right? Frustration Even at the Lord, even though he has the statement of truth, he has the statement of truth. Now remember that, because I'll come back to that in a minute. But look at verse 13. Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in Thy sight, show me now what thy way that I may know thee. You know how you know God. [00:15:29] You know God by knowing his way. [00:15:32] Another way of saying, you know God by seeing him in Scripture. But listen, it is not just about the scripture. [00:15:44] You know God first and foremost by the scripture, obviously, because that's his revelation. But it doesn't stop there. But see, by God revealing His way, we know him better. [00:15:56] That's why he teaches us his way. Lord, show me Thy way. Lord, I want to know more about you. How you are, what you do. Show me these things about you. Because here's what happens as we learn, little by little, more and more, line upon line, precept upon precept of God's attributes, of God's character, of his actions, obviously, as recorded in Scripture, of his responses to circumstances that came up, of his values, of his viewpoints. As we learn about God, here's what this is. And this is what is unique to true faith in God. That is having a God who is your God, who is living. [00:16:45] As you learn about him, those attributes begin to rub off on you. [00:16:52] Those attributes rub off on us. They begin to affect. Not they begin to affect our way, such that our way becomes his way. You know, you think of. Just peruse the stories of the Old Testament. You think of how God dealt with the sin of Sodom. [00:17:14] You know, when you read that, you're not. [00:17:17] Nowhere in Genesis, in the section with Sodom does God say, now you need to make sure that you have. That you hate the sin of Sodomy and immorality. He doesn't say that. But by you reading it, you learn about God's intense hatred for this abomination, Right? You know what it does? It affects your view toward that abomination. Because you see God's view. In other words, you see his ways. And it affects your ways. [00:17:47] But not only in the negative, but also in the positive. You think when David sinned with Bathsheba, you see several things about God. When God came and confronted David, you remember Nathan said, what? Thou art the man. You know, Nathan man. He's my kind of prophet. I like Nathan. Look at the king of Israel, the guy whose life, who has your life in his hand. And you just. You don't bat an eye. That's what we need, right? We need some Nathan's. But anyway, you see Nathan and David. But so God went to Nathan, he confronted God, went to David rather through Nathan, and he confronted David. But when David repented and he confessed, what do you see? You see a God who is immediately ready to forgive. [00:18:34] He said immediately in that conversation, David said, I have sinned against the Lord. And what is the next sentence? Says, the Lord hath put away thy sin. Just like that. But then you see the results that the Lord denies. Stop. Right? [00:18:49] All of these things are God's ways. You think about the shepherds who were the sole recipient of the announcement of the birth of Christ, and how the Lord condescended so low to announce it not to a king, but to the shepherds. You see something about God. God sent those angels to announce the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. [00:19:14] You think about Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. You know, there were four, and they were the first two who were priests and they offered strange fire. You see something about God's strict holiness. [00:19:27] He was willing to kill them over it. [00:19:31] All of these things combined draws a picture about God. But here's the thing. It's just like. Just like if you took a pencil and you took, you know, you drew a picture of God. You know, a literary picture of God, of the way God's character is. [00:19:48] That lead graphite is going to end up on you, on your hands. [00:19:56] This is the way. Knowing God and knowing his ways via the Scripture affects us. [00:20:05] This is unique to biblical Christianity, biblical faith. Knowing God comes to us. Listen to these verses. I just want to quote them and I'll move on. Romans 15:3. For even Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. [00:20:25] So we see that example where Christ. We see what Christ did on the cross and how that. How that is supposed to affect us. Philippians 2:4. Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. He goes on to say, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. [00:20:48] God's ways, our ways. 1st Peter 2:21. For even here unto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us God's ways, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps, ways. [00:21:03] First John 2:6. He that saith, he abideth in him ought also so to walk even as he walked. [00:21:13] The second thing I want you to see is this. So the first thing is, God teaches us his ways. Second thing, God teaches us far more than mere Knowledge. [00:21:28] Now, when we talk about God being a teacher, we think of the word teach. [00:21:32] We think of the word teach. We think of the impartation of knowledge. We think of a school, a class, a lesson. We think of a book, right? We think of questions and answers. [00:21:46] This is not the limit of how God teaches us. [00:21:51] The teaching of God is not just imparting knowledge or book learning. It is not just a matter of filling our head with theoretical information. [00:22:02] Because knowledge we should know from First Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 1. Knowledge. [00:22:07] Knowledge alone will puff us up. How many, how many people do you know? You know, in churches, throughout your church life, you know, how many people have you known that have known the Bible? But you know, and they just, they were so smart and intellectual when it came to Scripture, but had no practical. It seems there were so many things that were left untaught that they didn't know anything about, but they knew the Bible. [00:22:34] When God teaches us his lessons, always have a practical element, a way to use them and a way to put them in practice. We can say it like this. God does not teach us just to know, but to be and to do. That's also teaching. You know, that you think of an apprentice, you think of someone going, you know, in a. An apprentice or a journeyman, you know, under a master tradesman. He's not just. He's got to read this book. And he says, now we're going to go to page 59, and you can see the diagram, 5.3. And no, no, no, no. He says, come here. Come over to the forge. You come over to the machine. Let's look at how we do it. You know, there's hands of practice. And this is, this is also the way God teaches us. It's very practical. God's school is less of a classroom and more of a boot camp because he's not just trying to fill with Sam, myself, those that have been in the military. It's not just about knowing the rank insignia and knowing the UCMJ and knowing the things. No, no, no, no, no. It's to transform you into that. [00:23:42] Right? That's what it's about. [00:23:45] And this is the way the Lord wants to teach us. [00:23:49] It's never enough to just know the Bible. [00:23:52] We, of course, have to know the Bible because that is the basis, that's the foundation of our knowledge of God. [00:24:01] But Bible knowledge alone is not the whole of the lesson. [00:24:08] And the sum total of our relationship to God cannot be measured just about how many verses we know. [00:24:14] Although knowing verses is super. Important, obviously, because here's what we have to remember. That the same God of Scripture that we read about and know about is the God of our everyday life. [00:24:28] He lives in us. He lives with us, the same God. So if that's true and God is alive, then what we read in Scripture about the same God relating to others should be demonstrated in our lives also. Right? [00:24:50] Right. If God is alive and the same God was alive to them to Abraham and to David and to Paul and to John and to should not is not. Are not those things true of us as well? They are. He is in no way diminished in his life. [00:25:10] Think about this. Here's the way God teaches us. God teaches us. These are just some things I wrote down. [00:25:19] God teaches us. And think. What I want you to think about is how many of these things are more than just Bible knowledge. [00:25:29] You might say Bible knowledge applied, for instance, how to recognize God's will and how to do God's will. [00:25:41] You know, it's one thing to know and recognize God's will, and it is an entirely different question to do God's will. And this is what God teaches us. How to see it, not in the Bible, although that's the basis, but to take those truths and to see it in us and then to do it. How to respond when we're mistreated. [00:26:03] What brings us joy in our life and what takes away our joy. These are things God teaches us. God teaches us how the voice of the spirit sounds inside of us when he speaks to us and leads us. [00:26:18] God teaches us how to have peace and how to have joy in the midst of suffering. [00:26:24] Again, that's not book knowledge. That's learned in practice. Right. [00:26:30] That's God says, All right. You know what the Bible says? Just like with Moses. Remember in Moses 33, Moses, Exodus 33. Hey, that's a good name, too. I mean, the whole book's about him almost. [00:26:43] In Exodus 33, Moses said, well, God, you said you were going to be this. And then later he found, God is this, and I know it. [00:26:58] How to have peace and joy in the midst of suffering. God teaches us how to love unconditionally, even when that love is unreturned. God teaches us that even when all of our confidences and things upon which we might trust is gone, that God is enough alone. God alone is enough. God teaches us the brevity of life and vanity of its pursuits. God teaches us the suffering and the pain and the loss that accompanies our sin. God teaches us all these things we know. It's written in the Bible. But God says, okay, see that lesson you read in that verse, that lesson in that passage, that story, that example. You see that now you're going to live it and you're going to come out of the other end knowing the truth of that verse by personal experience. [00:27:48] I will teach you. You see that all of these things and many, many more, these principles, these truths are found in Scripture. [00:28:03] But God teaches us these things personally and practically in our own ways, in our own life. And so we learn the reality of these truths. We prove God's word as true and reliable. [00:28:20] And these kinds of lessons and this method of teaching. In other words, God doesn't just teach us with books. He takes us in to the shop, he takes us into life and he says, now I'm going to prove these things. I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you that you can go through suffering and be joyful. I'm going to show you that when you are betrayed, I am with you. I'm going to show you what it's like to have joy. I'm going to show you what you did to take away your joy. And I'm also going to show. I'm going to teach you using your own sin. Imagine that. Isn't that amazing? [00:28:58] That's what he did with David with Bathsheba. David learned a hard lesson. That means God's teaching him. [00:29:07] We learn lessons that not only increase our knowledge, but also make us practically more holy, more gracious, more joyful, more compassionate, more patient, more sober, and more intent on doing God's will. [00:29:24] In other words, he changes us. [00:29:30] He changes us. Last thing and the shortest. [00:29:37] God teaches us by experiences with him. [00:29:44] Notice verse 8 in Psalm 20, 27, 25. Rather, Psalm 25, verse 8 says, this good and upright is the Lord. Therefore will he teach sinners in the way. Verse 12. [00:29:58] What is man? That what is man? What is what? Man is he that feareth the Lord. Him shall he teach in the way. So you got this idea, at least as I read it, as I perceive it, this idea that God's going to, you know, you're walking along the path and as you go, he's going to. He's going to use your experiences to do that. And that just brings just a remarkable truth to my mind, and I hope you see it too, which is this. [00:30:22] God is going to use our experiences. God is going to lead us. [00:30:29] Don't just take my word for it. Look at verse number. Psalm 25, verse 5. [00:30:35] Lead me in thy truth. Lead. Look at verse 9. The meek will he guide in judgment. That means he's ahead of us. We're following him, right? Here's what God the Lord, because he is intent on teaching you and me, he is going to lead us into circumstances that are designed to teach us, to make us learn these lessons and to prove what he has said so that we come out of the other end not just knowing it theoretically, but knowing it personally. And you know what he does? He uses experience to do it. He uses experience to do it. And you know who will bring us into those experiences? God himself. [00:31:20] You know what that means? [00:31:23] That means the circumstances of our lives are sanctified to God, his purposes. [00:31:33] Think about that sometimes. That's kind of a hard pill to swallow, isn't it? [00:31:41] But God takes the circumstances into which he leads us and he sanctifies them for our good. You know these verses. [00:31:50] And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. He sanctifies all things to teach us because he is our teacher. [00:32:09] In fact, this leadership that leads us into circumstances that he uses to teach us is one of the undeniable hallmarks and one of the ways you can know for certain biblically that you are truly a born again believer. [00:32:28] Romans 8:14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. [00:32:36] That's one of the biblical ways you know that you're saved is the fact that you have God leading you. And of course he's leading you, just like in the psalm, to teach you. [00:32:47] He's leading you to teach you lessons beyond just words. [00:32:53] And so God uses suffering. God uses service. [00:33:03] God uses our relationships with one another in the body of Christ. God uses our disappointments. God even uses our sins, though he is displeased with our sin. There's no question about that. But yet he is not bound to only use good. He can use evil too. And that's a remarkable fact of scripture. [00:33:29] Even when we sin, God uses that for good to teach us. [00:33:35] And everyone in this room who is a child of God knows what that's like when you blow it and God says, okay, you blew it, you did not listen to me. [00:33:48] But now let's come in here and I'm going to show you a lesson. I'm going to learn you a thing or two. [00:33:55] And you were better for it. [00:33:58] You were better for it. [00:34:03] God is our teacher. [00:34:06] Let's pray.