Sit Under the Apostle's Teaching

INTRO.

Welcome. Happy Wednesday y’all! I am so glad that you made it out tonight. If it’s your first time here with us I wanted to personally say welcome, we’re honored that you took time out of your Wednesday night to be with us this week. If we haven’t met yet my name is [Name Slate Slide] and I’m the student pastor around here.

Series. This month as a student ministry we’re talking about the best ways to engage with the things we do at church, asking the question: Why do we do what we do at church? Specifically looking at:

Why we do a Teaching every week and how best to engage.

How and why we sing Worship songs most weeks.

How to get the most out of your Small Groups every week.

And why we practice Serving one another as a church and how to best get involved.

TENSION

[Communicator Note: Talk briefly about a teacher that made a big impact on you and/or a teacher that you had a hard time with. The goal is to bring up the fact that teaching is important and can really make an impact on us, but it also can be difficult if we don’t see the point of it.]

Tonight we’re talking about teaching, has anybody had a really great teacher before that made a subject make sense? For me that was Mrs. Turner when I was in 6th grade math. She brought snacks in, let us eat snacks in class, told jokes, and somehow made math fun. I had the best math grade of my life while Mrs. Turner was my math teacher.

On the flip side, have you ever had a teacher that was tough to pay attention to or understand? I had a teacher named Mr. Sepsey who taught economics. The content was interesting, but he was a stereotypical economics teacher. A bigger older dude with wire rim glasses, wore an old suit, and spoke incredibly slowly and in a monotoned voice. It was hard to see the value in what was being said or why it mattered to me, so I really struggled and didn’t look forward to that class.

What’s true is that students across our country are in school for hours out of their day for five days a week sitting under teaching. Sometimes that teaching makes sense, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it feels applicable for your life, and sometimes any application of the things you’re learning feels so far away that it’s hard to see the point.

On the flip side, teaching is something that we do here at church every single week as well. We teach a passage or an idea from the Bible, and we spend time talking about it and our lives after. The danger for some of you, is that this time can start feeling like school. You like seeing your friends at church, but you don’t really see the point of what’s being taught. You sit through it because you’re polite, but if you’re honest your brain is somewhere else most of the time, and sometimes you end up talking to your friends or on your phone without even realizing.

So whether you love hearing sermons and sitting in teachings every week, or you honestly have a hard time paying attention, our goal tonight is to answer the two-part question:

Why do we teach every week, and how do I get the most out of it? My goal for tonight is that you would leave here crystal clear on the value of teaching and why we do it, and based on that value what the expectations are for our church family while we sit under God’s word together.

To kick it off, we’re going to be in the book of Ephesians 4:11, which is page 1175 in our worship center Bibles. We have those in the room so you can follow along as we read and teach, and know where these passages are at so you can do your own reading at home. In Ephesians 4:11-13, here’s what it says about teachers and teaching for the Church Family:

Ephesians 4:11–13 NIV

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

This is saying that God Himself called and gave certain people to the church to teach the church family, and that their job is to share the knowledge of who God is from His word so that the church would be equipped, united, and matured. Here's the main takeaway for tonight and Part A of the answer to the question we asked at the beginning. Why do we teach from the Bible every week? If you’re taking notes you can write this down: Teaching truth is God’s “Plan A” to equip, unite, and mature His church.

[Communicator Note: Either go in depth on one of the teachers from earlier, or pick somebody whose voice you respected that helped you find success in life.]

I shared a couple teachers earlier that made an impact on me one way or another, but I want to share one more that probably made the biggest mark on me in high school, it was actually the best lacrosse coach I ever had, coach Feuerstein. Maybe it was just the German last name that demanded respect haha, but coach Feuerstein was amazing. In my opinion, a great coach is a great guide, and coach Feuerstein was exactly that. He took a solid team and made us a great team by making us better players individually, but more importantly by giving us a vision to win a state championship and a gameplan to get there.

Coach Feuerstein KNEW lacrosse. When he coached me up, I was equipped to do my job and to be the best lacrosse player I could be. Our team was united because we knew the plan and knew what to do. We matured as players and individuals because he pointed out where we were immature in our thinking and behavior. When he spoke in the huddle, people listened. There are always a couple knuckleheads who wouldn’t focus, but as a team we quickly corrected them and made sure everybody was paying attention, because when coach Feuerstein was speaking, we knew his words were important.

And if we treat coaches like that, how much more should we treat the word of God when it is being read or taught? See, we share and teach these stories from this book in particular because we believe they’re not just a book, we don’t share our best ideas up here, we sit under God’s word. It’s what our family does. We believe this book is made up of…

2 Timothy 3:15–17 NIV

15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

When we open up the Bible together, it’s because we believe God is speaking to us. Elsewhere the Scripture says that God’s word is LIVING and ACTIVE, meaning when it is read it isn’t like any other book. The God of the universe inspired it and speaks through it to guide our lives and point us to Jesus. It makes us wise, directs our faith, and equips us for what God has for us.

And by the way, the church has been doing this for thousands of years. After the Church begins at Pentecost in Acts 2, this is the very next verse after the story:

Acts 2:42 NIV

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

That’s why you’ll hear a teaching every Wednesday that we gather, that’s what the church family does. The Apostles were the foundational leaders of the church, the people who walked with Jesus. They wrote what He taught them and shared His teachings with the churches they led. When we open up this book, we are opening the word of God to learn together, and when this word is read or taught, God himself is speaking through it.

When coach Feuerstein was teaching, I was listening. If somebody else talked, everybody else made sure they stopped, because we knew he was the guide to our team, and we respected him. How much more so should we respect and honor God’s inspired word when it is read and taught to guide our spiritual life? If somebody wasn’t paying attention, or was talking during huddle, we all saw it as disrespect, because disrespecting someone’s word disrespects them.

Disrespecting God’s word disrespects God. Ignoring God’s word is ignoring God’s plan to grow us up and by default is choosing spiritual immaturity. Failing to be attentive when somebody is preaching God’s word, and failure to open it on our own is the equivalent of disrespecting your coach and not practicing at home: there’s nobody to blame but yourself when you’re disciplined for it or when you find yourself on the sidelines spiritually.

So I have serious questions for you. Do you want to Know God? Do you want to know His plan for your life? Do you want to grow in your faith? If you’re taking notes write this down as a reminder to yourself, and the second part of the answer to our question earlier. How do we get the most out of our weekly teaching moment? If you want those things here’s how I found them, and truly how God has ordained them to happen: Devote yourself to the Scriptures. If it’s true that teaching the Scriptures is God’s plan A to equip, train, unify, and grow us up like it says in Ephesians, we would be foolish to not be devoted to them. The first thing the Church did in the book of Acts was what? “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.”

One of the earliest church leaders we have writings from named Cyril of Jerusalem was teaching new believers about how to receive teaching from the Scriptures, and he told them this:

"If your body is here but not your mind, it profits you nothing." This is a church, and it should be the place above every other place that God’s word is honored. And if you show up every week and do not engage with it, it’s like showing up to practice and ignoring the coach. My hope is that every week you grow and are enriched because of your time here.

APPLICATION

We do this every week because we believe that the Bible is God’s word to us, and we get the most out of it by being devoted to it. So with that said, I want to paint a picture of what it looks like to be devoted to God’s word, I even made it into an acronym so you can remember it. Being devoted to God’s word means that you CARE:

Be Consistent

Be Attentive

Be Responsive

Be Expectant

Consistent. First off be consistent. There’s nothing that you’re truly devoted to that isn’t a consistent part of your life. I’d love for you to consider making attending Wednesdays and Sunday mornings a consistent part of your life, sitting under the teaching of God’s word. But consistency under God’s word is more than that, it means building the habit of reading it daily. In fact we’ve got reading plans on bookmarks that you’ll get from your group leader tonight that will help you be consistent in God’s word. They would love to help walk you through God’s word.

Attentive. Next, being devoted means being attentive. There’s nothing that says a person isn’t devoted to you clearer than when their attention keeps drifting to other things. When we sit under God’s word together every week, there’s no good reason for Instagram, or your messages app, or Snapchat, or TikTok to be open. In fact, even talking to a friend instead of listening will do the same thing. Your body may be here, but your mind isn’t.

The best way for me to make sure my mind isn’t wandering is I take notes. You’ll never see me sit in a teaching where I’m not taking notes, because I want to be attentive to all that God wants to teach me. Same thing when I’m reading the Bible. My phone is out of the room and I’m journaling as I’m reading because I know God has something he wants to say. Being devoted to God’s word means being attentive when it’s opened.

Responsive. It also means being responsive. God speaks through His word, and when He speaks to us, He expects us to respond. And honestly, as pastors and teachers we LOVE seeing y’all respond to God’s word. This room is too big for us to have individual conversations and answer questions live in the room, but you have full permission to say a good amen or a stank faced “mmmmmmm” when God is speaking to you. And at the end of the day, when God speaks to us through His word we should never view it as “optional for us to respond. Whether we’re sitting under a teaching or reading the Bible for ourselves, we should never open God’s word without being ready to do what it says.

Expectant. Last but definitely not least, being devoted to God’s word means being expectant to meet with Him. Any time we open up God’s word, we open up writings that 2 Timothy said are “God-Breathed.” The God of the universe wants to meet with you, so we should approach our time with Him, together or alone, expectant for Him to speak. Being devoted means you CARE about God’s word when it is taught or read.

Close. We teach every week because God, who is the head of the family of the Church, chose teaching the Scriptures as His way of equipping us, uniting us, and growing us up. I hope you get the most out of our time together every week by being devoted to His word on and off Wednesday nights, by being consistent, being attentive, being responsive, and being expectant. Now we’re going to do something else we do every night and head to small groups where we’ll process what God was speaking to us together.

So I’m going to pray for us, and we’ll dismiss to groups.