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I spoke last Sunday and am speaking again this Sunday. In both cases, my goal is not to tell folks things they don’t know, but to lead them in applying the scripture to life. Jesus was clear:

But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. (Matthew 7.26, MSG)

James echoed it:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1.22, NIV)

My job as a teacher is to make applying the Word easier for people. Andy Stanley in his marvelous book Deep and Wide talks at length about “practical teaching” in chapter 7:

Jesus taught for a response. He taught for life change. He didn’t come to simply dispense information…Remember the first time you were challenged at that level? Remember how interesting the Bible suddenly became? You sat on the edge of your chair. The time flew by. You took notes…Your faith intersected with his faithfulness and your confidence in God got bigger. Practical teaching that moves people to action is one of the primary things God uses to grow our faith...That being the case, our messages and lesson preparations are not complete until we know what we want our audiences to do with what they are about to hear. To grow our congregants’ faith, we must preach and teach for life change.

Andy is blunt with us teachers on this score:

As long as you are dishing out truth with no “here’s the difference it will make” tacked on the end, you will be perceived as irrelevant by most of the people in your church, student ministry, or home Bible study. You may be spot-on theologically, like the teachers of the law in Jesus’ day, but you will not be perceived as one who teaches with authority. Worse, nobody is going to want to listen to you…You will end up with a little congregation of truth seekers who consider themselves superior to all the other Christians in the community. But at the end of the day, you won’t make an iota of a difference in this world.

The good news is that if the goal of teachers is to help people apply the scripture to life, we can all fill our God-given role as teachers!

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, … (Hebrews 5.11, 12, NIV, emphasis mine)

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom … (Colossians 3.16, NIV, emphasis mine)

Ezra had committed himself to studying the Revelation of GOD, to living it, and to teaching Israel to live its truths and ways… [and King Artaxerxes said,] “Anyone who does not know the Teaching, you teach them.” (Ezra 7.10, 25)