Learning in a World Blind to God
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Today we're learning about learning, looking at learning as a crucial part to the Christian life,
00:00:10.880 | lifelong learning specifically is what we're talking about today. The discipline is essential
00:00:16.480 | for local churches as well, so much so I'm reminded of APJ 1804, Pastor John, where you
00:00:22.720 | encouraged pastors to build a lifelong learning habit into their churches so that as God's people
00:00:29.680 | disperse out into the world after that Sunday gathering, when they go out into all their
00:00:34.800 | various professions and fields of influence, they can learn how to bring biblical truth to bear
00:00:41.680 | in the world at school, at work, without expecting the pastor to be the expert to answer all the
00:00:49.440 | ethical challenges that they will uniquely face in the world. And so pastors are equippers
00:00:55.600 | getting their people ready to make wise and discerning decisions in their lives. And to do
00:01:01.280 | this well, it requires a congregation to learn how to learn on their own. For the next few weeks,
00:01:07.520 | we are going to focus on this discipline of lifelong learning, and we focus here because,
00:01:12.240 | well, it's an important theme, and we focus here because it's the theme of your brand new book
00:01:16.880 | titled "Foundations for Lifelong Learning, Education in Serious Joy." In this new book,
00:01:25.600 | as to be expected, Pastor John, you employ hundreds of Bible texts to make your points,
00:01:30.000 | over 500 citations throughout this little book. But of the most frequently cited texts in this
00:01:37.040 | new book that I see include two texts that stand out, Matthew 13, 13 and Psalm 34, 8,
00:01:44.640 | texts that also factor prominently in your book, "Reading the Bible Supernaturally."
00:01:50.720 | So that leads me to ask this question. In your mind, how do these two books and these two
00:01:58.160 | different themes work together? What are the similarities and what are the differences between
00:02:03.200 | talking about Bible study on one hand, in "Reading the Bible Supernaturally," and the purpose of
00:02:10.480 | education more broadly, which is the theme of "Foundations for Lifelong Learning"? How does
00:02:16.640 | the wise study of Scripture set the stage for us to be wise Christian students of all of life?
00:02:22.480 | In your new book, you write a statement that really stood out to me. You said,
00:02:26.640 | "If we never observe the world through books, especially the book, we will be very limited
00:02:35.840 | in what we can know." Expand on that. Let me see if I can take all those threads.
00:02:42.720 | That's a lot of different threads. And weave them into some kind of coherent fabric of an answer.
00:02:51.120 | So let's start with quoting those two passages. I mean, I found this really helpful the way you
00:02:56.240 | posed the question. It was really helpful for me to think on how the books relate and how those
00:03:00.640 | texts relate to the two books. So let's start by quoting those two passages and relate them to the
00:03:07.200 | two books. Matthew 13, 13 says, Jesus says, "This is why I speak to them in parables, because
00:03:14.960 | seeing they do not see, seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they
00:03:21.680 | understand." And I'm pretty sure that the reason this text is a common question for our APJ
00:03:31.280 | listeners is because Jesus says he's actually aiming to conceal things by his parables from
00:03:41.680 | people who are resistant to truth. A couple of verses later, he says, "This people's heart has
00:03:49.040 | grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes have closed, lest they should
00:03:59.840 | see with their eyes and hear with their ears." But then Jesus says to his disciples, "But blessed
00:04:07.040 | are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear." So the point is that there are two
00:04:16.640 | kinds of seeing. Seeing they do not see. Seeing is one kind of seeing they do not see. That's
00:04:23.840 | another kind of seeing. Now, Psalm 34, 8, the other text you mentioned, gives the key to the
00:04:32.560 | difference between a seeing that sees and a seeing that does not see. It says, "Oh, taste and see
00:04:43.440 | that the Lord is good," which I take to mean that there is a seeing which is also a tasting of the
00:04:52.240 | goodness of God, and that tasting of the goodness of God is the other kind of seeing. So some people
00:05:01.280 | read the story of the gospel of Christ. He dies for us. He rises triumphant. He reigns.
00:05:09.280 | And they see these facts. They see them. They see them. But they taste no goodness at all.
00:05:15.520 | These facts don't taste good and delightful and pleasing and satisfying. They don't taste
00:05:22.240 | anything pleasant. Their spiritual taste buds are dead. The only kind of seeing they have is
00:05:30.160 | natural seeing, seeing with the eyes of the head, the mind, nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual,
00:05:37.840 | nothing from the Holy Spirit. But someone else reads the story of the gospel, and that person
00:05:45.200 | tastes the sweetness of it, the goodness of it. They taste and see, and this is the second seeing.
00:05:55.280 | Paul calls it seeing with the eyes of the heart, Ephesians 1, 18. God has worked a miracle. He has
00:06:03.760 | made the taste buds of the soul alive. It's not nonsense to say taste and see. I mean, suppose I
00:06:13.360 | tell you this dessert is really rich, and you say, "Well, I'll take your word for it." And I say, "No,
00:06:21.680 | no, no. Taste it." And you taste it, and you say, "Oh, I see." Now, that's not nonsense, right?
00:06:31.200 | You see. That's what happens when we hear the gospel and God makes our spiritual taste buds
00:06:40.400 | alive. We taste and say, "Oh, I see. This is wonderful." So now here's the connection between
00:06:49.200 | those two verses and the two books that you mentioned. The new book is called Foundations
00:06:55.200 | for Lifelong Learning, subtitled Education in Serious Joy, and the older book, Reading the Bible
00:07:01.200 | Supernaturally. There are two main differences between the books. The new book, Foundations for
00:07:07.760 | Lifelong Learning, is built entirely and explicitly around six habits of mind and heart that form the
00:07:16.640 | foundations of lifelong learning or education. But these habits are only assumed and implicit
00:07:27.040 | in the earlier book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally. That's one difference. So,
00:07:32.720 | assumed in the earlier book, made explicit, built around them in the second book. The other difference
00:07:40.000 | is that the newer book applies these six habits of mind and heart not just to the Bible, but to both
00:07:50.320 | of God's books, the Bible and the world. So, Reading the Bible Supernaturally is about how
00:07:58.240 | to read the Bible, and Foundations for Lifelong Learning is about how to read the Bible and how
00:08:05.040 | to read the world. So, it's built around the question, what habits of mind and heart are
00:08:12.320 | necessary for lifelong learning from the world, learning from the world as well as from the Bible?
00:08:20.480 | The six habits of mind and heart that form the foundation of lifelong learning are observation,
00:08:30.560 | understanding, evaluation, feeling, application, and expression. There's a chapter on each of those
00:08:39.920 | and how they are a, at least to my taste buds, a delicious challenge for a lifetime of learning
00:08:48.000 | from the Word and from the world. This is what we try to do at Bethlehem College and Seminary,
00:08:55.760 | build these six habits of mind and heart into our students so they are catapulted into a lifetime
00:09:04.800 | of fruitful learning. That's what I hope is happening on every APJ as well.
00:09:08.880 | Now, the reason those two texts, Matthew 13, 13 and Psalm 34, 8 are relevant to these two books
00:09:18.320 | is that the problem of seeing but not seeing is a problem not only for what we see in the Bible,
00:09:26.800 | but also what we see in the world. In other words, not only do people look at the gospel
00:09:34.160 | and fail to see the beauty of its reality, but people also look at the birds and the lilies
00:09:43.280 | and the ants digging in the ground and fail to see the beauty of the reality that God has designed
00:09:49.840 | for them to see and what He means to communicate. Some people will say that if we would just study
00:09:57.440 | our Bibles more and more carefully, we wouldn't have to study the world. Now, not to put it too
00:10:04.960 | strongly, that's crazy. Not only because the Bible assumes on every page, I mean, virtually
00:10:14.960 | every page, the Bible assumes that we have looked at the world and learned from it so that we know
00:10:21.440 | what the Bible is talking about when it refers to vineyards, wine, weddings, lions, bears, horses,
00:10:28.880 | dogs, pigs, grasshoppers, constellations, businesses, wages, banks, fountains, rivers,
00:10:35.520 | fig trees, olive trees, thorns, wind, bread, armies, sword, shields, sheep, shepherds, cattle,
00:10:43.920 | camels, fire, green wood, dry wood, hay, stubble, jewels, gold, silver, law courts, judges,
00:10:52.240 | and advocates, for starters, right? I mean, the Bible assumes we've got our eyes open and are
00:11:01.760 | looking carefully at the world and learning what things are and how they work and at society,
00:11:09.120 | that we have a great store of knowledge of things of the world when we come to the pages of
00:11:15.920 | Scripture. And not only that, not only does the Bible assume that we have paid close attention to
00:11:22.320 | the world that we live in, it commands us to go back to the world and learn. Go to the aunt,
00:11:29.680 | you sluggard, like sluggard reading the Bible, go to the aunt and consider her ways and be wise,
00:11:37.440 | learn from her diligence, look at the birds of the air and learn how your father will take care
00:11:44.240 | of you, consider the lilies of the field and learn how your father will clothe you.
00:11:49.920 | And the relevance of those texts, Matthew 13 and Psalm 34, is that millions of people seeing do
00:12:00.160 | not see when they look at the world. They see birds and lilies and ants and sunrises and stars,
00:12:10.000 | bright blasts of God's glory everywhere, and they don't see it. They don't see God,
00:12:18.080 | they don't see his glory and what he's revealing. So the good effects of Bible seeing and world
00:12:27.040 | seeing go both directions. If you see the world accurately, you will bring a fund of knowledge
00:12:37.120 | to the Bible that will enable you to know many things, many of the kinds of things it's talking
00:12:43.360 | about. But even more importantly, and you picked up on this, Tony, in the last part of your question,
00:12:51.280 | even more importantly, if in reading the Bible, God gives us eyes to see the glory of Christ,
00:13:00.320 | to taste and see that he's good, then when we turn to the world and look with these new eyes,
00:13:10.400 | the birds and the lilies and the ants and the sunrises and the stars, they all have a new
00:13:19.280 | message. They have a new glory. They show us something of God. So that's what I want for myself.
00:13:29.280 | That's what I want for our students at Bethlehem College and Seminary. That's what I want for
00:13:34.560 | everyone who reads this book. That's what I want every time you and I talk on this podcast for our
00:13:41.280 | listeners. When we see the word and when we see the world, to really see, to taste and see
00:13:51.600 | that the Lord is good, the Lord is glorious. Yeah. Amen. Truly understanding the world
00:13:59.520 | in what it says of God is essential for comprehending the Bible better and vice versa,
00:14:06.720 | all leading to the delight of learning. There's an essential feeling, an essential joyfulness that
00:14:12.400 | we aim at in all of our learning. I think, Pastor John, you're sort of getting at that. You're
00:14:17.200 | pushing in that direction towards the end of this episode, and I want to pick up on that theme next
00:14:20.800 | time. Thank you, Pastor John. Thank you for joining us today. If you have a question for
00:14:25.440 | Pastor John, ask him. Type out your question as briefly as possible and email it to me at
00:14:29.840 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Monday,
00:14:37.200 | learning for joy. That's the theme next. See you then.
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