Who's Teaching You?
A teacher is a powerful person. Their words have the capacity to influence a whole generation; to shape the future of a nation. And a teacher doesn’t need a million students to do this, either. With just the right person, they can set in motion a way of thinking and behaving that can effect great change in the world. Even ancient teachers from history, still influence the way people think and live today.
It is understood that if you can get access to the hearts and minds of children, especially during their first seven years, and you can affect the course of a whole nation for decades to come. The World really understands the human dynamics of learning and overwhelmingly leverages it to great effect.
For good or for bad, the example of the Progressive Movement within U.S. public school system over the second half of the 20th Century is a fascinating case study of culture transformation through education. Whether or not people experience greater or lesser freedom by the effects of “progressive thought”, the change in how people think, speak and behave today are a direct result of this influence upon society over the past 50+ years.
From a young age we’re surrounded by many teachers. Whether it’s our parents at home or a teacher in the classroom, we’re continuously taught by one voice or another. The resulting sum of all we’ve learned from these teachers is manifested in the way we think and act today. In Truth, our thoughts, our words, and our decisions have been shaped by those have taught us in the ways of the World.
In spiritual terms, Paul called them guardians. In Galatians 4 he wrote that when we were children, we we’re under guardianship to the World, and enslaved to it’s basic principles. Meaning, we were subject to its authoritarian instruction—the way it thought, it spoke, and had it’s being. And as children, being no different then slaves, we were taught how to think and act—to walk “in-line”. We were required to conform to its fundamental philosophies and structures.
The World was our teacher, and we were bound to its laws and order of things.
“But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the [World’s] law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons.”
With the arrival of the Christ, he put an end of that age of guardianship and the World was no longer a necessary teacher. As adopted children through Christ, and by the help of the Holy Spirit our hearts now cry out, “Abba Father!” We have become sons and daughters, and heirs to His kingdom.
The resulting affect of this adoption, means that we have been delivered from the influencing voices of the World. We no longer are forced to conform to its way of thinking and acting. You might even say that Yeshua liberated us from the World’s education camps, and delivered us safely into the Father’s House to be taught by Him directly, face to face.
The Manna That Teaches Life
In John 6:33-58, surrounded by the crowds that had been following Him, Yeshua declares that He was the “bread of God come down from Heaven giving life to the world.” He compared Himself with the manna the Israelites received from God while living in the Wilderness, and stated that He was the true bread of life.
It’s right here in the middle of one of His greatest controversial teachings that Yeshua inserts a quote from Isaiah 54:13 saying,
“It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Me—not that anyone has seen the Father except the One who is from God; only He has seen the Father.”
Then He follows this up again and reiterates, “I am the bread of life.”
For those of you who have read my previous posts on eating, you’ve probably already made the connection. For those of you who have not. To the Hebrews, bread symbolized more than just food for life. It represented God’s words—His instructions to them. The correlation of eating bread and learning from God were synonymous to them and this understanding can be found all throughout the Old Testament.
So when Yeshua quoted Isaiah, even though they may have been uncertain of where He was going with this statement, the people certainly would have made the connection between bread and instruction.
Regardless, He laid out exactly what He meant by it. He told them that their fathers ate the manna from heaven given to them by God’s Law—the Laws that came as a result of transgressions designed to teach them the knowledge of good and evil—and yet they still died in the wilderness. In contrast He said,
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And this bread, which I will give for the life of the world, is My flesh.”
What He was stating in verse 51, was that unlike the manna and the Law given in the wilderness, He was the true Bread of Heaven, the Living Word of God sent to teach the World the way of life.
This was the real controversy for the Hebrews. It wasn’t the requirement of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, but in the fact that He was declaring that He was superior to the laws of their fathers—that He was a greater word, a better instruction then the Laws and Prophets.
He was the way, the truth, and the life. And anyone that would eat of Him would find true, eternal life, and they would be taught by God, Himself!
His Ways & Thoughts
When the Father declared in Isaiah 55, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts,” this wasn’t the end of the story. He had no intention of that remaining a permanent condition—a forever fact.
Even while Isaiah was putting ink to parchment and recording these very words, the Father was already looking through the age to the day of His Son’s arrival. He gazing upon that day when Yeshua would finally descend as the Bread of Heaven becoming the true instructions for life, and be the conduit that men could final come to know His ways and His thoughts, and to give them life.
As such, His mysterious plan in Christ has always been to bring many sons and daughters into His house that He may teach them His way of life; to deliver them away from the enslaving ways and thoughts of sin and death that mankind had been subjected to ever since Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden.
And now that the Word has been revealed to us, and we have been included into the Family of the Father, we are daily invited to sit before Him and learn all we need to know for life and prosperity. He has replaced all the world’s teachers, and His Spirit has become our guardian and instructor.
“We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” 1 Corinthians 2:10-13
When we were children in the World, we talked like the World, we thought like the World, and reasoned like the World. But as we have now become sons and daughters of God, we can now set aside those childish ways and thoughts, to look into the face of our Heavenly Father and to learn from Him, face to face.
Now we can know His ways and His thoughts!
Here’s the final thought. If we really want to stop thinking and behaving like the World—if we no longer want to fall “in-line” and conform to its ways, then the Father must become our Teacher. Truly the World will only ever teach us in part. But through Yeshua, we now have the ability to sit before the Father and learn fully, just as we are fully known by Him.
Until next time, continue to discover the you He designed you to be!
Shalom.
