Text: Nehemiah 8:1-8
Education is leading our children and young people into Thoughtful Acceptance of God’s Calling in Their Lives.
Israel’s 7 feasts were God’s way of educating Israel – adults and children.
Those 7 feasts which began with the Feast of Passover and ended with Feast of Tabernacles (Nehemiah) were God’s educational system. They were the schools which God established in order to lead, train and educate his people, both children and adults into GOD’S CALLING.
EVERY SCHOOL IN THE WORLD SHOULD RESEMBLE THOSE FEASTS!
(Not in every detail, but in principle- God’s way of educating! Can’t beat it!)
THROUGH THOSE FEASTS GOD SHOWED ISRAELTWO AWESOME WONDERS!!!
(1) THE WONDER OF THE ORIGINAL CREATION – Calling them into the joy of creation
(2) THE WONDER OF THE NEW CREATION – Calling into the joy of the New Creation
PARENTS, TAKE CHARGE: Students, Listen to GOD CALLING you:
MAKE EDUCATION A CELEBRATION OF GOD’S TWO CREATIONS!
CELEBRATE HIS CALLING INTO THE JOYS OF LIFE !!!
CALLING INTO VOCATION IS CALLING INTO THE JOY
OF LIVING YOUR LIFE WITH GOD, FOR GOD
3 possible PARENT formats:
(1) Traditional Christian Schools like WCA
(2) Home-schooling – many in Evangelical congregations
(3)Public schooling with parents who monitor and guide (My own parents)
In all 3 of these – parents are in charge until mature young people take over, usually sometime during college career.
PARENTS AND TEACHERS: YOU must bring the beauty and power of GOD’S TWO CREATIONS into the educational experience. This includes bringing the JOY of the feasts into that educational experience.
ILLUS: OUR 2 Family Reunions in Minnesota, a real feast – Cousin Sheldon bringing 5-6 horses, all the kids being educated in horse-back riding – wonder of creation.
3 MAJOR POINTS IN THIS CELEBRATIVE EDUCATION
POINT 1: THE TWO CREATIONS CRY OUT FOR CELEBRATION
As God called Israel to feasts, so He calls all of us to celebrate his creations
THE FIRST CREATION SINGS GOD’S GLORY WITH GREAT JOY!!!
- ALL THE DATA IN THE UNIVERSE IS SINGING IN HARMONY WITH GOD.
- Genesis 1 & 2 (“good” and “very good”) starts the song.
- Sabbath Day opens Gen. 2= God calling Adam to celebrate original creation
- “Good”, “Very Good” pronouncements of God build to climax in MARRIAGE, end of Chapter 2. When Adam first sees Eve His 1strecorded words are a poem about his wife, = WOW! Anticipating Marriage Supper of the Lamb, Rev. 19:6
Psalm 19 puts the facts, data, information of original creation into lyrical expression C.S. Lewis: “I take this to be the greatest poem in the psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world”. Lewis hears God calling him and all of us to celebrate the wonder
- Not Just horse-back riding but reading, writing, arithmetic, biology, psychology, physics, astronomy, computer science, VAST SPECTRUM of wonders as created by God.
THE NEW CREATION SINGS GOD’S GLORY WITH THE GREATEST JOY
Our Lord Jesus Christ is leading the band, Celebrating:
(1) His victorious atonement on the cross,
(2) His glorious Triumph in RESURRECTION/ASCENSION
(3) The forgiveness of our sins
The Holy Spirit is calling the Dance – better than the Virginia Reel!
Celebrating New Life, a whole new reality in a RESTORED WORLD!
Kick up your heels = Praise Him with the Timbrel and Dance.
ALL DATA IN THE RE-CREATED UNIVERSE IS SAME AS THE FIRST CREATION
THAT DATA ITSELF SINGS IN HARMONY WITH THE REDEEMER
AND DRAWS US INTO THE SONG AND THE DANCE
ILLUS: GEORGE FRIEDRIC HANDEL was called by God to write his great oratorio masterpiece, the Messiah. Working with his friend Charles Jennens who wrote the text of the lyrics, their intention was to challenge the DEISTS, 18th century version of Humanists. When Handel received that text he began to compose the musical score which included 259 pages.
Handel became so overwhelmed with the pure delight of writing the music that he could barely sleep at night and he wrote the entire composition (259 pages of musical score) in just 24 days. Handel was absolutely captivated by the texts of the Bible that he was setting to music. He was illuminating the story of Jesus – his birth, death on the Cross, Resurrection from the dead, Ascension to glory.
HIS WRITING OF MUSIC WAS HIS CALLING FROM GOD A CALLING
THAT INVIGORATED HIM, ENERGIZED HIM, FILLED HIM WITH JOY!
G. K. Beale: “THERE IS A POWERFUL PHILOSOPHY PULSATING THROUGH SCRIPTURE INTENT ON THE ENTHRONEMENT OF MESSIAH”
POINT TWO: OPPOSITION TO GOD-CENTERED EDUCATION
The Humanists are infuriated by GOD-CENTERED education.
Humanists do not believe in God nor first Creation, nor NEW CREATION
To them, “Messiah is an oratorio about a fantasy – God & His glorious CREATIONS”
This Humanist prejudice RULES IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS… SO:
- Handel and Jennens were ignorant peasants because they still believed in God/Creation
- You and I are a bunch of dumb peasants, building education around God, 2 Creations.
- Humanistic-Atheism is the truly elite class of smart people, really know how to educate.
- Slouching Towards Gomorrah, book by Robert Bork [1stpublished 1996], (1927-2012) Ronald Reagan appointee to Supreme Court, denied by liberals in congress. Book describes Modern Liberalism as the road to American Decline. His thesis in the book is that all of Western culture is in a state of decline caused by the rise of the New Left [Humanistic Atheism]. American education from University down to kindergarten is controlled by Radical Left wing, leading us into the moral and spiritual oblivion of SODOM AND GOMORRAH.
HUMANISM IS DEAF TO GOD
- Humanism does not hear God speaking in education or any other part of life.
- GOD IS MUTE, AND THERE IS NOTHING TO CELEBRATE!
- Horace Mann, A DEIST, HUMANIST EDUCATOR – chief architect of American Public Education wrote in THE COMMON SCHOOL JOURNAL, January 1, 1841:
“The common school [public school] is the greatest discovery ever made by man…Other social organizations are curative and remedial; this is preventive and an antidote; they come to heal diseases and wound; this to make the physical and moral frame invulnerable to them. Let the Common School [public school] be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible. And 9/10 of the crimes in the penal code become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.”
REFLECTIONS ON THIS PROPHECY – Is this what we see in our humanistic public schools?
Post Dispatch last Friday- Sep 12, 2014 – Teacher hospitalized when student hit her in the nec with a text-book
CONTRARY PROPHECY FROM ARCHIBALD A. HODGE, Princeton Seminary, quoted from the Princeton Review, 1871
“I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.
“It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the states has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter how small the minority of atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country the United states system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen.”
WHO WAS RIGHT? HORACE MANN 1841 or ARCHIBALD HODGE 1871?
SIMILAR DRAMA IN RUSSIA AT ALMOST SAME MOMENT IN HISTORY
Distribute document on EDUCATION IN RUSSIA/UKRAINE
- Peter the Great (1682-1725) Preferred secular education to that of Orthodox church
- Catherine II, the Great(1762-1796) She read atheist Denis Diderot’s encyclopedia, like Bible. Contemporary of Thomas Jefferson, had his Deistic ideas of education.
- Czar Alexander I (1805-1825) contemporary with Horace Mann and similar philosophy
SAD REALITY –
WHOLE WESTERN WORLD CHOSE HUMANISTIC EDUCATION AT THIS POINT IN HISTORY
WHILE EASTERN WORLD LAY IN THE GRIP OF VARIOUS OTHER IDOLATRIES
ISLAM, BUDDHISM, CONFUCIANISM, SHINTOISM
PREVIOUS SUB-THEMES
- The Two Creations Cry Out for Celebration(Christian philosophy of Education.
- Humanists Oppose this God-centered idea of Education.
POINT THREE: Challenge: HEAR GOD CALLING YOU
God is calling you TO CELEBRATE LIFE
IN THE VOCATION HE GIVES YOU JESUS IS SAYING TO YOU:
When you accept the vocation I give you and work at it with all your heart, You will be working alongside me to build…
- MY KINGDOM, MY ULTIMATE TEMPLE
- THE NEW JERUSALEM, REVELATION 21-22
- Where we will live FOREVER CELEBRATING LIFE
- CELEBRATING THE MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB
- CELEBRATING COMMUNION WITH FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT
NOTICE A FEW EXAMPLES OF THOSE DOING THAT RIGHT NOW IN A VARIETY OF CALLINGS!!
- SOCIAL WELFARE: William Franklin Graham – Samaritan’s Purse
Graham is in effect taking over from the government all kinds of Charitable Giving for the sake of social welfare – Work he is doing for “Wounded Warriors” through a retreat he is operating in Alaska, bringing veterans whose marriages have been seriously injured by Post Traumatic Stress Disturbance to that facility. There they come under the guidance of Godly Chaplains and Christian Counsellors who can genuinely help them.
- CHRISTIAN COUNSELLING – David Powlison, executive director of ChristianCounselling and Educational Foundation, Similar calling at work in our members – DeAnn Yount and Susan Luedde
- PRACTICE OF LAW: Jay Sekulow, John Whitehead, Robert Bork, Trey Goudy, Our daughter Charysse Alexander
- POLITICS – Todd Akin, Petro Poroshenko speech on Thursday, appealing to our congress to give more than blankets in their fight agaisnt Putin.
- LITERATURE – C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Eric Metaxas, WORLD magazine, Joel Belz,
- ART and MUSIC – Rembrandt & Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Handel
- Science – Ken Hamm and Hugh Ross
- PASTORING/EDUCATING: God was teaching Dr. George Knight how to build a WCA in St. Louis at the same time he was teaching me and my wife to do the same thing in Huntsville, Alabama.
- Multiple Skilled Leader: Holland’s Abraham Kuyper – pastor, educator, politician, Prime Minister 1901-1905
CONCLUSION
OUR PRESBYTERIAN Pastor Turguy in Istanbul Turkey, pictured baptizing his first Jewish convert to Christ – The Kingdom of God at work in a converted Muslim leading a Jew to Christ and baptizing him.
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