Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Proverbs 28
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Luke 6:39-40
Jesus: What happens if a blind man leads a blind man? Won’t both of them fall into a pit? You can’t turn out better than your teacher; when you’re fully taught, you will resemble your teacher.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Have you ever thought about Jesus’ words about teachers and students? It can be pretty scary when you think about our education systems today, don’t you think? I’m not saying we don’t have intelligent teachers, but often they are not allowed to teach well because of the constaints put on them by the federal and state laws enacted by people who know little about education. Ask some of the classroom teachers and they will tell you what’s happening in today’s classrooms. That’s a discussion for another time, though.
The point, though, is that students can not gain information or education or skill beyond what they are taught. Some very few can advance beyond their teachers, but those are rare gems that are not average. It’s like those rare gems on a high school football field or basketball court. Parents push their kids to be the best athlete on the team at the expense of their school grades and everything else in life when in reality the professionals that make those multi-million dollar salaries we hear about are few and far between.
In fact, in 2013, the probability of a high school basketball player making into professional basketball, not as a star, but just making the team was 0.03%, that’s 3 in 10,000 players. It’s a little better in football, 8 in 10,000 and the best chance of making it onto a professional team, baseball where you have 50 chances among those 10,000 high school players. Of course, you must remember all those farm teams are also professional teams, so don’t expect to get spotlighted on television even if you are one of those few in those crazy probability statistics.
So if we think about Jesus’ words are really understand that we won’t be smarter or more skilled than the person that teaches us, who should we find to teach us about life? Who should we find to help us understand what’s really important and how to live successfully in this world and prepare for the judgment we know is coming one day?
We could latch on to one of those fly by night guys that tell us something we like to hear, but when we look closely at their lives, we find the chaos and disappointment and misery within their household and in themselves. We find a lot of their rhetoric is just that. No substance by which we can find real understanding about who we are and what God wants from us in this place.
We can look to those the world says are successful for instruction. But again, we will often find emptiness, self-centeredness, a lack of real peace and joy in their lives. It’s not the abundant life Jesus talks about, one in which we find peace and contentment because we are fulfilling the purpose for which God created us. They will teach us, but they won’t teach us the right stuff to get us to heaven and in touch with the One who can get us there.
We can chase false prophets that make us feel good about ourselves. They tell us our sins are just the natural expression of the natural instincts of all animals. We can’t help but do the things we do because we are just a higher order animal, no better than a dolphin or an ape. They tell us that we just had some gene mutate along the way and so we evolved at a more advanced rate than our other animal counterparts. We can learn from them, and never find the truth that God created us to rule over the rest of His creation and be its caretakers. We can ignore the truth of sin as the real problem we must resolve to find real peace and purpose in our lives. But we can learn from those folks if we choose.
We can learn from other religions and let them tell us about reincarnations, nirvana, and that god is found in all creation. We can learn from scientists that there is no god, but a mathematical explanation for everything that happens. Just do the math and the science and you’ll figure it out. Only no one has figured it out yet with all our science and all our math, because we tend to leave the piece of the formula “God spoke” out of the equation.
But learning from all these other sources will fall short of what you really want to know. Because none of those sources are God. But when you learn at the feet of Jesus, you learn from God Himself. You learn from the Master. What better source to learn all there is to know? Jesus is right, we can not be better than our teacher, we mimick their understanding under their instruction, but what if we learn from the expert among experts? What if we sit at the feet of the One who knows everything and can do the impossible? Isn’t that the right place to learn?
Easy answer. Be a student of the right teacher.
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