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The Kingdom of God
The Government of God – Teachers
Sam Soleyn
Studio Session 55
08/2004
God gave five gifts to equip the saints for the work of their ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ that the body might come to unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature to the fullness of the stature that belongs to Christ. These five gifts, according to Ephesians 4:11 and following are: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. (Inserted – actual verse—“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 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.” – Ephesians 4:11-13)
In the apostolic gift, order, power and revelation are imparted to the saint. In the prophetic gift, the confidence that every saint not only has been designed to hear God in their spirits but do regularly hear God and therefore are prepared for the future—that confidence is imparted through the prophetic office. The evangelist imparts to the saint the love of God for the lost and we are stirred out of our prejudices and the stasis and inertia that classically shapes our thinking—to remain very closed and remain only with people with whom we are not threatened—to move forward in the demonstration of the love of God for others. And that gift comes to the body and animates the body of Christ with respect to the love of God for the lost through the evangelist. God doesn’t simply bring people to himself but He cares for them. He grows them up so that they become capable of taking hold of their inheritance and operating in the power of God so they are able to fulfill their destiny, being empowered and having sufficient character so that they are able not only to demonstrate the power of the King and His Kingdom, whom they represent, but also to demonstrate the character of the King, whom they also represent. These things all go together.
And now comes the gift of “teacher”. The believer is put into the world not simply to be a reclusive and elusive figure. The Bible says, “We are the light of the world.” “We’re a city set upon a hill that cannot be hid.” And,
“Men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick. It gives light to all that are in the house.” (Inserted – actual verse—“ ‘You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. ‘You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’” – Matthew 5:13-16) Our presence in the world brings light.
What’s interesting to me is how Christians typically, especially in America today, are being perceived as people who have no insightful understanding of the times and the issues. It is almost as though we are irrelevant. What’s interesting is that among even Christians today there is a widespread move toward embracing postmodernism. Postmodernism being, in practical terms, the conclusion that modernism—together with the institutions by which it is to be seen and observed and measured—has failed. The church, in connection with the government, in connection with industry and the representative of the philosophy called “modernism”—the philosophy largely of profit-motivation and gain has produced all forms of injustice: economic injustice, social injustice, environmental injustice and the like. And therefore, since it is apparent from the results that this view of modernism has failed, then Postmodernism is an acceptable new direction to at least begin to explore what might be alternatives to Modernism and that’s gaining widespread acceptance even in the churches, especially among the older evangelical line of churches. And the reason is… I believe the reason is the failure to receive the gift of the “teacher” and even the failure to understand what the gift of the “teacher” is. For the Scriptures say that a teacher is someone who “…equips the saints to be able to give an answer for the reason of the hope that lies within you.” (Inserted – actual verse—“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” – I Peter 3:15)
What has happened to us is that the teachers have been perceived as the opinion leaders who are able to grab the microphone and have the television camera focus on their faces so that they could teach the people. What has happened now, for many decades—not just in charismatic circles but in evangelical circles as well—what has happened is the predominance of the popular opinion. But if you are simply teaching un-anointed jargon, un-anointed philosophy, you will come to the place eventually where the proof that the philosophy was wrong becomes unmistakable. Beginning in the 70’s—some may date it before this—but beginning in the 70’s, the church and its teachers began to speak a political doctrine to the body of Christ—people like Rushdoony, Rousas John Rushdoony, the author of Reconstructionism, and his son-in-law, wrote a series of articles, books, and published quite a bit of information (The Journal of Christian Reconstructionism as an example), and I’m using this whole genre as an example—that became the foundation of Christian political activism.
It was un-anointed teaching, reasoning from Scripture to political expediency and it launched the church on a direction of embracing one political party over another. The results of this were always foreseeable to be a betrayal, by the political system, of the hope and faith and confidence placed by a heavenly people, living on the earth, in such an earthly system. But it seems that a combination of the lack of inspiration and anointing, and the political ambitions and the opportunities that were available to the leadership of the church of that decade has, in fact, motivated the church toward this political alternative. Consequently, the internal rebellion, the internal revolt that is already fully underway manifesting itself in terms of Postmodernism is a rebellion against the cutting edge of Christian activism, taking the shape and form of political alternatives.
What’s interesting of course, is that Postmodernism is a reaction to, but it doesn’t offer a solution. It measures itself by the thing that it has set itself up to be the critic of. In other words, if you are a critic of a thing and your identity is in relationship to your ability to criticize “the thing”, all of what you come forward with is reactionary. It may not be urgent reactionary—it may not be an urgent reaction, it may be a studied reaction—but it is all reactionary and it means that there is no new thinking, it is simply a reaction to the old. And “new” is as in comparison to the “old” but no new model, no genuinely new model is being brought forward. It is time for the true understanding of the “teacher” to be restored. Men have used the gift of organizing speeches as a substitute for the gift of teaching.
Let’s begin where the gift of teaching ought to begin. The human being has two basic components to his being, the human being has—resident within his body—he has a soul and he has a spirit. The soul of the person has a mind—has an intellectual process, has an emotional process and has decision-making capabilities. So he has an intellectual process, an emotion process and decision-making capabilities. The spirit of the person has the same three components. Your spirit has a mind to it, your spirit has emotions to it and your spirit has decision-making capabilities. How do they compare? Your intellectual process, in the soul, is informed through reason—it is rational. Your intellectual process through the spirit is informed through revelation—it is not rational, it is transcendent… different—as different as the earth is from heaven—so is the intellectual process of the soul different from the intellectual process of the spirit. Do you see it?
The soul has—as its persuasive ability—the soul has reason. The spirit has revelation. The reason of man is obtained by precedent—looking at the past, overlaying the present, extrapolating to the future. The mind of the spirit is informed by the Holy Spirit speaking, and testifying and revealing to your spirit. The soul has emotions. Those emotions have to do with how the life of the person is to be preserved and enhanced. So the emotions of the soul—anger, frustration, fear, disappointment, love, hate, peace—all of those have to do with the perception in the moment of the state-of-being, whether “well” or “at risk” of the person. All of your emotions are reactions to your sense of well being. On the other hand, the emotions of the spirit of man are emotions of worship so when the spirit of man sees God, the result is that the spirit of man will worship God.
And finally, the decision-making capabilities—if you like: the will—the decision-making capabilities of the soul are advanced in pursuit of the preservation of the status quo or at least the preservation of life itself, so one doesn’t make a decision that puts himself at risk. But the spirit of man has a decision-making capability that will put himself at risk. “Greater love has no man than this, than that a man would lay down his life for his friends.” (Inserted – actual verse—“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13) We are to love as Jesus loves, but that’s not the love of the soul, it’s not how the soul loves; the soul’s love is self-preserving. The spirit’s love is self-sacrificing because the spirit is vested in the truth of who God is, for the spirit believes that whatever dies in the service of God is subject to resurrection—so that if you lose your life, you will gain it; if you give up the whole world that you might pursue Christ, that you have not come up short, you have not bargained poorly. That’s the difference between the spirit and the soul.
Now a teacher is not a teacher of the soul—it’s not about logic, it’s not about reason. It’s about revealing the hidden things of God, it’s about showing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, it is about saying what God is saying. If you teach the things of God, if you are saying what God is saying, you will be often as despised today as He [Jesus] was despised in his day. But the teachers today you see, are confusing the learned ability of the soul to construct arguments that appeal to the soul, as teaching. No, the gift of teaching—the five-fold ministry gift of teaching is to inform and instruct the spirit of man to believe that you might be given, at a moment’s notice, wisdom, understanding and counsel from the Holy Spirit.
So the Scriptures say, “Don’t take any thought about what you are to say in that day. If you have to stand before kings and governors, if you have to give an account; that the Spirit will give you—in that moment—what you need.” (Inserted – actual verse—“But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” – Matthew 10:19,20) The gift of the teacher is not primarily that of teaching us how to analyze, dissect and present things. It’s that that teaches us that not only does God speak to us, but we also can speak what we do hear. They [the teachers] speak what they hear and they do so in an orderly, clear, concise fashion so that the hearer hears it in his or her spirit. When you hear someone speaking by the spirit, even if your intelligence does not follow—even if your soul’s intelligence, even if your soul’s rational process is left behind—you instinctively trust the thing that you are hearing because your spirit already knows that it is the truth.
How many times, when you hear someone say something that rings throughout you with a resonance—an echo of authenticity, the authenticity of the truth—do you immediately identify with that person? I’ve had people come up to me all over this country and around the world who had never met me before but who had heard a message. Some only heard by tape and eventually came to see me in some public meeting—some heard on television, or however it was heard—and when they would come, they would say, “I know you.” And I will routinely say to them, “Of course you know me. I’m not an actor.” What it turns out to be true is, when you speak the truth to another, usually the Holy Spirit has gone ahead of you and predisposed the heart of the hearer to receive the truth—to quote the Scriptures, “To receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls.” (Inserted – James 1:21b KJV)
When a person hears that, their initial reaction is to agree with you. Sometimes, however, they will go away and consider the cost of agreeing with you. That’s when the disagreement comes. I have spoken to any number of preachers who, when they first sat and they heard what I was saying, they were delighted in their spirits because their spirits were animated by the truth that they were hearing. But they took into account what this would mean and sometimes they back up very quickly because they understand that it might cost them something. And as strong and as mighty as these men sometimes appear in the pulpits, when it comes to the cost of discipleship—the cost of following the word of the Lord—it is astonishing how many are just plain cowardly. God has no delight in the soul of a man who shrinks back once he sees the truth. He will feed you, He will clothe you, He will let you keep the house and let you keep on in the ministry, but you will never be entrusted with the serious things of the kingdom of God because you are untrustworthy.
The teacher is one then, whom God uses to impart to people the resonance of the truth within them and it stirs their confidence to believe that when they are in a particular situation that what they need will come to them immediately and they will be able—line upon line, precept upon precept—to relate those things. Whether or not we persuade someone to agree with what we are saying is not the mark of whether or not we are able to teach. Being faithful simply means delivering the thing that God has given you. The results are never up to you. Well what God does with all of this is to give the impartation of an anointed word and that anointed word causes the shackles to fall from people’s wrists and from their ankles or cause the scales to fall from people’s eyes so that, where they were blind and captive, they now can see and walk freely.
What’s interesting is we live in the time when among the greatest issues are being fought out, upon the streets and in the courts of our nation. There are great issues before the body of Christ in this day—issues such as the nation’s embrace, in its state legislatures of homosexual marriages. All we know to do is to say, “It’s wrong.” And to motivate our political abilities and resources to “try to stop it.” We talk about traditional values but we do not speak about where these traditions come from. We talk about the fact that the nation was founded upon certain principles, but we do not explain the origins of the principles. What we should be saying in the debate on homosexual marriages is this: homosexual marriages are an abomination to the Most High. That as long as men keep rebelling against God, they will find ways to rebel, and homosexuality and the marriages—the act, and the attempts to make the act sacred—are a continual affront to the Living God.
But let’s not pretend that the nation is godly or that it will even hear us. Sodomy is wrong, but it is wrong by God’s standards, it is not wrong by man’s standards. It is becoming not even wrong by a legal standard. Where do we stand? We are to be speaking clearly as to what the truth is and not trying to build political consensuses. Let’s say it is wrong because Jesus says it is wrong. Let’s say it’s wrong because the Almighty God says it’s wrong. Let’s not try to make it something more palatable than that; let’s not try to build a political consensus. The fact is that this nation will not long endure us if we speak the truth. The teachers are to restore the confidence and the courage of the body of Christ to stand up and say what is true, truly based upon what God is saying, not the political expediency and the consensus building that characterizes church doctrine in our day. We are sorely in need of the teachers “for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry.” I’m Sam Soleyn, we’ll continue our studies. God bless you and I’ll see you then.
Scripture References:
Ephesians 4:11-13
Matthew 5:13-16
I Peter 3:15
John 15:13
Matthew 10:19,20
James 1:2b
