2. Practical Teaching

PROP: As we apply the practical teaching of the Bible, we learn to trust Jesus and our faith in him grows.

Good evening church! It’s so good to be back with you…after an exciting, event filled adventure to Nationwide Youth Round Up in Colorado! We’ll give you a few more exciting details about the trip at the end. While up on the mountain, I was able to pull together my notes for part two of our sermon series, 5 Things God Uses to Grow Your Faith.

Before we dive in, let’s do a quick review of last Saturday. The very first thing you need to do if you want your faith to grow is this: you need to make space for God in your life. God wants to grow your faith, however, many of us have such full, busy, and distracted lives we aren’t paying attention to all of the ways God wants to grow our faith. So we need to make space. That’s why we cut back on our busyness and attend worship service every week. It’s why we make space every year and take students to NYR. It’s why we cut back on or cut off social media and other distractions. It’s why we sometimes need to end relationships so that we are creating space in our lives for God to provide the resources to help us grow.

So now that we have created space in our lives for God, he wants to fill it with tools to help our faith grow. Starting today and for the next four Sundays, we are going to look at five specific things God uses to grow our faith in the space we have created for him. Today we are going to talk about practical teaching. You are probably thinking, “Practical Teaching, what does that have to do with growing faith.”

Simply taking in information, may not grow your faith. However, if you take practical instruction from God and apply it to your life, your trust in God will grow.

One of the TV shows my family likes to watch is called, Running Wild with Bear Grylls and I just saw that a new season is about to start in the coming weeks. If you don’t know who Bear Grylls is, he is was formerly in the British special forces, then turned into an adventurer…and he was probably made famous in our country with his show, Man vs. Wild.

In this particular show, Bear invites a celebrity to join him for 3 days in the wilderness. He usually does something intense, typically climbing or rebelling, to help them face their fears. For example, in one of the episodes he had ex basketball player Shaq, repel down a very steep cliff. It’s fascinating watching these celebrities face their fears and do these extreme things, but one of the reasons why is because they trust Bear. They put their lives into his hands because they have faith in him. Why do they trust him? Because he gives them practical teaching. For example, when has Shaq repel down the cliff, he walks him through the process, instructs him about what is going to happen, and the whole time he is very encouraging. The practical teaching of Bear Grylls builds trust and helps grow the faith of the participant.

The same thing can be said about you and your faith in Jesus. For your faith to grow, you need trust, and for their to be trust you need practical teaching. So, where is our source for practical teaching? Most of you know this answer, the Bible. The Bible is not a book, it’s actually a library of books collected and put together for us to understand God’s story and our role in it. But, it’s even more then that! It is our source of truth, of wisdom, and instruction.

If you have any questions about how the Bible was put together or why we know we can trust the Bible, I would love to talk with you about that. Talk to me after the service and I’ll connect you with some resources to begin to understand how the Bible is put together and how to begin to read it.

If you have a Bible or device, find 2 Timothy 3. If you are using the YouVersion Bible app, go to your menu, look for Events. All the Scriptures and Sermon Notes will be there along with a great Bible reading plan for the week.

This letter is written by the apostle Paul to one of the men he discipled, Timothy, who is now leading and pastoring a church. Listen to this important words. Keep in mind, there is no NT. That was being written, but had not been collected. Paul is referencing the OT. Here is what he writes.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 NIV

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.

Two key phrases to pay attention here. Useful for teaching. What we have in the Bible is useful for teaching, instruction. While there maybe a lot of other good books out there, smart people, or successful people…at the end of the day we fall back on the teaching provided to us from the Bible as our teaching source.

Look at the last phrase, “thoroughly equipped for every good work”. To have practical teaching from the Bible provides you with what you need to handle every good work. It prepares you to take on life. And when you are prepared to take on life, you build trust and as you build trust, your faith…grows.

Having a source of trustworthy teaching and instruction is so helpful, this is especially true for the culture in which we live. While at NYR, Chad Ragsdale used this illustration that I think is helpful here. Close your eyes. Imagine you are in the middle of a vast ocean, all by yourself on a raft. What emotions would you have? Anxiety? Fear? Hopelessness?

That is exactly what our culture calls freedom. Do whatever you want. Be whatever you feel. Live how you want. This is why the younger generations are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, fear, depression and hopelessness. Humans were not created to live un-tethered lives. True freedom is found by grounding our lives on truth and wisdom.

Friends, we have so much to offer our culture…but we have to continue to build our lives on the truths of Scripture…and that brings true freedom. Listen, for your faith to grow, you need to develop trust with Jesus. For trust with Jesus to happen you need to hear practical teaching about what he said. Does this make sense? Practical teaching develops trust and trust is what helps grow our faith.

There is one important aspect of practical teaching that we often overlook, but Jesus doesn’t! If you have a Bible or a device, turn in them to Matthew chapter seven. It’s the last section of The Sermon on the Mount, probably some of the most practical teaching in the Bible. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus covers topics like anger, lust and greed. He teaches on how to prayer, and how to live as his followers in this world. At the very end of this sermon he tells a story that should grab your attention.

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” ~ Mt 7:24

I’m just curious. Anyone here consider yourself wise? A lot of us here would probably consider the all the foolish things we have done and say definitely that we are not wise. But, according to Jesus we can change that! Jesus says that is we take his practical teaching and what? Puts them into practice. So, practical teaching means you understand it, however you still have to put that teaching into practice. Don’t miss this point: going to church or Bible study does not make your wise. Reading the Bible isn’t what grows your faith. It’s putting the words into practice.

Jesus says that every time we take the practical teaching he provides, and apply to our lives we are crafting our lives into a house that is drilled down into the rock. It has a strong, powerful foundation. So pay attention, when we make space in our lives for practical teaching, apply it to our lives, it builds trust, which in turn helps our faith grow. Why is this such a big deal? Listen to what Jesus says next. Verse 25.

25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.

Having a faith that is built into a rock will be able to withstand the storms of life. This is such an important thing to make note of. Everyone faces a storm. Jesus is clear to point out that everyone will face a storm. It’s a huge misconception to think that Jesus followers or even people with big faith will never have bad things happen to them. People who are able to overcome the storms of life are people who have heard the words of Jesus and put them into practice.

What happens if you don’t put the practical teaching of Jesus into practice? Jesus says this:

26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. 28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” ~ Matthew 7:26-29

Remember, everyone is going to face a storm. Storms reveal faith or lack of faith. If you have built a life based on your abilities or strengths or investments, you may very well find success. However, storms reveal flaws, storms reveal what is real and what is a façade. Storms reveal a person’s level of faith. How many of us know, or maybe this is you, know someone who appeared to have their life all together and then they lost their job, lost a loved one or had a serious accident…and they walked away from God, they gave up on church. They like Jesus’ words, they liked their church, and they believed in God, but they didn’t put the teaching into practice. Everyday we drive through neighborhoods that look amazing, see families who look the part, and interact with who have the appearance that their life is in order…yet they are not doing what Jesus said…and right around the corner is a storm that is about to reveal their foundation, their faith. Maybe that could be said of some of you here in this room. You look the part, but you know there are practical teachings that Jesus wants you to put into practice. If you want your faith to grow and withstand the storms of life you need to take the teachings and do what it says.

As we apply the practical teaching of the Bible, we learn to trust Jesus and our faith in him grows.

Now, there is one thing I want to prepare you for, in fact you may have already experienced it: There are parts of practical teaching which will offend us. Even though the crowds marveled at Jesus and the authority of his teaching, many walked away because they were offended. How many of you here have worked with a physical therapist or trainer? Good physical therapists are not there to be your buddy or friend, they are there to help you get better, they will offend you, push your make it hurt because they know that you can get better. This is why we trust is so important. As we do what Jesus wants us to do, we build trust, and that grows our faith. Then, as we come to some of those difficult teachings…love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you, we may be offended, but we trust Jesus…and though it makes no sense we do what he says, and our faith grows.

Think of it this way, we live in an amazing time. We can walk into home improvement stores, or even paint stores and find all of these different colors of paint. We can transform our rooms with candy apple red, or sea foam green. You can see all of these pictures or pallets displaying images about what your room can look like.

We do this with our faith. We envision what it could look like, what it could become. We look at the faith of other people or even how it is described in the Bible and say, “I want that…I want that type of growing faith!” I’m sure that there are some of you here in this room right now who know what I’m talking about. You want that type of faith.

You can have the space, you can have the vision, and you can even have the bucket of paint…enough paint to cover an entire room, but one very important aspect is missing…the application. There is a whole section on the back of this bucket of paint entitled, “Application”. For this vision for this growing faith to become a reality you have to apply the teaching.

As we learn to apply the practical teaching of the Bible, we learn to trust Jesus more and our faith grows.

We want to help you on this journey. What is it that you need to apply?

Every day at 6:25 am/pm stop and pray for our church.

Every Tuesday we are setting apart this day for fasting. Skipping food, meal, or social media to instead focus on praying for not only our church, but our own spiritual growth.

This week read through The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:29). If you have the YouVersion Bible app, I put in a seven day reading plan for The Sermon on the Mount.

Who can you share these truths with? Who would benefit from practical teaching from Scripture?

As we learn to apply the practical teaching of the Bible, we learn to trust Jesus more and our faith grows.