THE NEED FOR THE BIBLE TEACHER
The title of our present article may need some interpretation or explanation, I want to stress the importance and urgency of the work of Bible teaching, I distinguish at the outset between preaching and teaching, All preaching ought to be teaching in some sense; and yet there is a teaching office and work which is by no means preaching,
There are three Greek words in the New Testament, two of them referring to preaching, and one to teaching. The word kerusso means to proclaim, to herald, There is the word euanggelizo, which means to announce good news, The word didasko means, in the fullest sense of the word, to teach, All preaching is, or ought to be, an authoritative delivery in the name of the King, If it is not that, it is not worth listening to, All preaching should have in it the element of the Gospel, or the announcement of good news, When those two things are granted, in proportion as the prophet is obeyed, and the call of the evangelist is accepted, and men and women are brought into the place of submission, in that proportion the need for the teacher arises,
Our method is a very simple one: first the consideration of an account, and then the application of its values to the subject under discussion,
The account is in Acts 8:26-35, There are two things in it which will lead us to the point of our consideration, two questions, The first was Philip's question, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" and the second was the eunuch's answering question, "How can I, except someone shall guide me?"
There are three things to notice in this account. There is a sacred writing, and there are two men, First, a sacred writing, the Prophecy of Isaiah, It is interesting to note that evidently Luke, the writer of this account, believed that Isaiah wrote the second part of the prophecy, Looking back at his ministry, we see that it was conducted in difficult times, and produced great results temporarily; for all the work of Hezekiah unquestionably grew out of Isaiah's prophesying,
Then this eunuch was a remarkable man, a Hebrew proselyte, most probably a black man, an Ethiopian, In that remarkable civilization of its time, over which Candace was queen, he was treasurer in authority and office, Brought up in the midst of the paganism that characterized these people, he nevertheless had heard of the one God, and had become a proselyte to the Hebrew faith, and he had been up to worship at the feast, He was a man, devout, inquiring, singularly intelligent, That he was intelligent is gathered from the question he asked Philip, He was reading, and reading aloud, and when Philip joined him, Luke is particular to tell us he was reading in what we call our fifty-third chapter, and that the question he asked was this, "Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other?" It is a remarkable fact that that has been the question asked all down the centuries about that chapter of Isaiah, and some scholars are still arguing about it, and have given different opinions—that Isaiah was talking about Jeremiah, or of himself. So this man was moving in the realm of serious thought,
Philip had no question in his mind on the matter, "Beginning from this Scripture," he "preached unto him Jesus," Philip was not an apostle, but a deacon-evangelist, one of those elected to the office of deacon, but having the gift of the evangelist, Probably he had given up the service of tables, which was the service of the diaconate, and had abandoned himself to the work of evangelism, He had had a marvelous time in Samaria, He was filled with gladness with his knowledge of Jesus, That is what he had been preaching, and he had seen wonderful things happen in Samaria,
So the three things: a sacred writing; a devout, earnest, questing, inquiring soul, the eunuch; a Christian man, withal an evangelist, burdened with a glad burden, that of his Gospel, a man in such fellowship with the Spirit of God, and so with his Lord, that when he was told to leave successful work, he immediately obeyed, He did not know for what he was going, He had no program given to him, All he knew was he was to travel on a road through a desert country, and he went, Then it all happened,
We come now to the two questions, Philip heard the eunuch reading, and went to him, and asked this question, the simplest of all questions in the presence of any kind of reading, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" That is the real question with regard to all reading, What is the use of reading if one does not understand? It is an arresting question, We have all known what it is to be reading, and then suddenly to come to the consciousness that we do not know what we have been reading, and we have had to go back and read it all again, Do we understand what we are reading? The Greek word there simply means to know, do we know what we are reading? The parchment was unrolled before the eunuch of the court of Candace, but did he know what he was reading? Did he understand it?
That question is of special importance in the presence of the Sacred Writings, If it is important in the matter of all reading, it is most important here, Did we understand what we read this morning? Or was our reading just a fetish or a habit? Because if we did not understand, we may just as well give up reading. This is a most important question Philip asked the eunuch,
But more important is the eunuch's reply, "How can I, except someone shall guide me?" There was recognition on the part of the eunuch of the importance of Philip's question, He did not
challenge him, He did not say it was a rude question, He was reading earnestly and sincerely, but he did not understand, he was baffled, He did not know who was this strange suffering Servant of Jehovah passing through travail until now He broke into triumphant song, No, I do not understand, and how can I, except one shall guide me? If I am to travel the highway intelligently I want someone to guide me, who knows the way, and can show me the way, and lead me, That reveals the importance of Bible teaching, All over the land today, and everywhere, there are faithful souls picking up the Bible, and yet they are baffled by it, puzzled by it, Unfortunately, for lack of someone to lead and guide them, someone who knows the highways of the Biblical revelation, knows the pathway over the mountains, and the flowers and beauties under the skies of God with their clouds and stars, they are lost; and the trouble is they put the Bible down, and give it up as a Book not understandable.
In Bible teaching we start with certain facts, First, the Sacred Writings themselves, God-breathed, We may take up the Bible and treat it as we do other literature, but ultimately it cannot be done, It will prevent our doing it sooner or later, That is the Bible we have, God-breathed writings, Those are what we are called upon to teach,
Second, we have not only the writings; we have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God to guide us into truth, Not to give us the truth systematized and finished, and put out in parcels, so that we hold the truth, God help any man who thinks he holds the truth, It is the work of the Spirit to guide into all truth,
Then we have the gift of the pastor and teacher, On the other hand, we are confronted with the average student, whose life calling demands the principal part of time and strength, and refuses such from that attention to the Writings that he would fain give, When someone says with a sigh of regret, "I would like to give more time and attention to these Writings, but I am so fully occupied that I cannot escape," then I know I am facing a need in the soul that says that, for someone to help, someone to guide, and that is the place for the Bible teacher,
That is the ultimate work of the Christian minister and preacher, He is set free from the
secular callings of life that he may consecrate his time to these Sacred Writings, and work all the week at them, in order that when his people gather he may guide them, and lead them into the sacred truths of the Sacred Book, Any man in the ministry who is frittering his time away, on a hundred trifles, and neglecting the hardworking, sweating preparation for his pulpit, is renegade to his calling,
Some may say, "There are many who have not all that time"? But they have a certain amount of time, I think they would do well, many of them, if they would consecrate time to the helping of others, gathering a few round them so to do, Some of you women, why not have a drawing-room meeting for Bible study? I could select twelve to twenty different women who could do that work as they met groups of people here and there, who have not the time, who it may be are reading, but are not understanding what they read, I am thinking of this work for women especially more than men, I am not suggesting that they have nothing to do, but I do remember the old Scripture that says,
The Lord giveth the word;
The women that publish the tidings are a great host.
I should like to see that fulfilled; perhaps as it never has been, Why not make a hobby of it? Is that degrading it? What is a hobby? I looked it up in the dictionary, and I see that a hobby is "a subject to which one constantly reverts; a favorite subject of discourse, of thought, or of effort," Make a hobby of teaching the Bible! I will give another definition from another lexico‑
grapher, "A hobby is a favorite avocation," The definition goes on to draw a distinction we seldom make in thinking, but it is important, Vocation is something you are called upon to do, Avocation is the diversion to something else you are not bound to do, A hobby is an avocation, You have a vocation, but why not have an avocation, and especially such a sacred one as this? Multitudes of people are waiting for this, whom the preacher in his pulpit or the teacher at his desk never can reach; but it is a great thing if he can say something to send others out to reach them,
What are we to do with these people? First give them instruction as to methods of Bible study, Guide them in their reading, Try to show how the whole interprets every part, and every part has its connection with the whole, Take time yourselves to explore, and then to explain to them the words that are made use of, for words are carriages in which ideas ride. Then try and show them the spiritual values, A great method of teaching should be that of catechism, I do not mean the old idea of a man or woman with the book, and a boy or a girl without it, Let the student ask the question, and you answer it, That is the catechetical method, in that sense of asking questions, and holding fellowship around the Word,
The need and opportunity are great, The need is great for the teaching of these Scriptures, in the interest of religion, of economics, of society, of politics, of commerce, of art, of recreation, There is no department in life where these God-breathed writings have no value, As Paul said in that passage in 2 Timothy, these Sacred Writings are profitable for authoritative teaching, for reproof—that is, testing; for correction—pulling back into the straight; for discipline in righteousness, going on with the building, until it is complete, Take these writings, and put them by the side of personality, beginning with the baby until we reach the man at his work, There are those everywhere needing the help of these writings, We can go to them and say, "You are reading, Do you understand?" If they are honest, they will join with the eunuch and say, "How can we, except someone shall guide us?"
The teacher's great business is to make himself unnecessary, If the teacher is necessary, the sooner he is gone the better, In our little account, read on, and see what happened, The eunuch went on his way, and the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, But the eunuch went on his way, He had heard of Jesus, starting with the Sacred Writings, He had found a man who knew the road, and led him and guided him; and when that man had done his work, the Spirit of the Lord took him away,
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