The Character of God as The Teacher Pt I

I know when people think of the teaching ministry of God, they think in terms of Yeshua (Jesus), but I want to start back at the beginning and explore how the very set up of the scriptures teaches us about the character qualities of God as our primary teacher.

If you have never read the Bible cover to cover, I want you to stop reading my blog and start reading God’s blog — the Bible. Nothing that I or anyone else writes about the Bible is of any importance whatsoever in comparison to God’s written words about Himself. I’m not telling you to go learn Hebrew or Greek first, I am telling you to simply go and open it up in Genesis and start reading it in whatever language it is you speak. Because if you haven’t read it, then you haven’t submitted to the greatest teacher you have available — and whatever I write might be interesting, but unverifiable. You can’t afford to trust me or anyone else, you don’t know whether I want to honor God or misrepresent Him for my own purposes. But as you read what He says about Himself, you will learn more about me and the claims I make about His character. I am not bringing new revelation to the table, there is no new revelation — everything is already written and we simply go look for it.

The Bible is set up in a beautiful way. Indeed the very way it is set up tells us how God sees us, and how God sees Himself.

God sees Himself as the Teacher, and the primary way He teaches is through repetition — and blessed be His Name, He never ever gets tired of that repetition. The very first examples of this mode of teaching are found in Genesis 1. Six times this phrase is repeated, “And the evening and the morning were the ____ day.” And within each day was a creative act, a cycle of creativity within a revolution of the earth on it’s axis. There is something, a great many things really, that He desperately wants us to grasp in this repeat of the same exact words. His repetition always underlines a concept that He believes is crucial, throughout scripture, something we cannot afford to miss. That unwillingness to cease the repetition until there is true understanding, His inability to grow bored with it, is the underlying trait of every excellent teacher — patient determination. God is a teacher who sticks with us until we have the understanding we need on the foundational issues. He repeats things over and over again, not because He thinks we are stupid, but because He believes that we are worth teaching.

Whatever concepts He strives to impart to us are as important to Him as we are, because the foundation upon which our lives are built is life to us, and it is His revealed will that He desires for us to have life in abundance. There are teachers out there who hate to teach the basics, who think it isn’t worth their time, but teaching the basics year after year to believer after believer is something God never, ever stops doing. The truth is, that He never stops teaching any of us the basics — because the basics are not really basic, and time and repetition show us their deeper meanings. Everything in the Bible is cyclical, in order that we go through the same things over and over again, so that we will learn, and have understanding, and grow to maturity. While we rush to and fro seeking esoteric knowledge, God is still there calling us to listen to Him so that He can set us on a firm foundation. As He is a patient and diligent teacher, we are called to respond by being patient and diligent students — students of His Word first, and of men second.

How does this relate to our conduct as representatives of His character? Frankly, it means that we must not despise the learner. God willingly teaches the same principles over and over again and so to be like our Master, we must be willing to do the same. Regardless of whether or not we are actual teachers, by divine calling or profession, we are all commanded to teach our own children.

Deut 6:

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

We are commanded to teach the same things over and over and over again, because repetition is the way of the good Teacher, it is the way of a Father with his child. But more than that, repetition is how we were designed to learn. Therefore repetition shouldn’t be considered boring, or insulting, or a waste of time — repetition is compassion, it is a reflection of the character of the God who doesn’t want His people to be in darkness, ignorant, unable to serve and please Him, but to be fitted to good works in His Name. Repetition is the foundational principle of how God instructs us — and so perhaps we ought to learn to sit and listen intently and when those “boring” and “repetitive” parts of the scriptures keep popping up with the same exact wording, or something is said multiple times using slightly different language — because that is supposed to sound like an alarm in our minds. He is repeating it because He is trying to tell us something and He is afraid we will miss it if He doesn’t say it over and over again.

How we respond is everything, and He loves it when we go to Him with our questions first, “Father, what is it You are trying to tell me here?” If we keep seeking His answers, we will find them. Maybe not today, or tomorrow or even next year, but when we are ready, He will make sure that we see what He has been showing us all along.

That is the way of a Father teaching His child. That is the way of the Good Teacher.

The Creative Character of God

Bereshith bara Elohim et Hashamayim v’et Ha’arets.

(In the beginning – created – God – alef tav – the heavens – and (alef tav)- the earth)

Yesterday as I was praying about the revealed character of God, I realized that two of his most important attributes are mentioned before He is — primarily, that He was here in the beginning (bereshith), and secondly, His status as Creator. I thought about how fascinating that was, that the Hebrew word “bara” was mentioned even before God Himself, and how significant that had to be.

If I was writing my biography, I would have started it with the word “I” and then the word “was” or “am,” but God started out His biography with an expression of His eternal nature and creativity. And as I meditate on it, I see it as the ultimate expression of His revealed majesty. Unlike us, He was, is and is coming. Unlike us, He can create anything out of nothing.

Everything that is good, He created it from nothing. Every particle of energy, every drop of water, every spec of sand on the seashore, every plant, every star, every fish, every animal, and man – created from nothing. That is bara, the ultimate expression of creativity far, far beyond our comprehension.

But it goes so far beyond that — He created time, rest, the eternal plan of salvation, every shadow picture. He created every situation in the lives of the patriarchs that would serve as good and bad examples for us, He created within the minds of men the ability to write those things down, the ability to commune with the Divine consciousness of the Ruach (Spirit). He embedded the great mysteries of truth into those written words, and he created our desire to run after them.

He created us as social beings, and then defined what it is to be a social being. He set forth the obligations and privileges of being in relationship with Himself and others. He created the laws that science follows without question, the laws that water and wind will not violate, the laws that the very cells in our bodies adhere to. He created the way of the stars in the firmament, the ways of animals that we call instinct, and the ways of man that we call laws.

He is creative. Not wantonly and without purpose, not in the abstract, for He seems incapable of doing anything without eternal purpose. He is neither random nor careless, nor does He take delight in chaos the way we do. He does not create systems to fail, He creates them to be perfect. He created both form and function in absolute harmony.

What does this mean? This means, at its core, that He is trustworthy in His magnificence. And we have to try to grasp that truth. We have to look at the seeming randomness and understand that somewhere beyond our understanding is an absolute order that we are incapable of seeing. We must establish our trust upon that, that He created everything good for a purpose, and that purpose was us. We must never look at anything He created and call it bad just because we lack understanding, or just because we are using it wrong. After all, if a toddler uses a banana for a hammer and then calls it bad because it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the banana is bad — the banana is good for food, and was never created to be a hammer. We are so very much like that toddler — basing our understanding of God’s goodness on our ability or inability to perceive and use things as intended.

What God calls good is good, and what God calls bad is bad. Our opinions, our definitions, our cultural norms do not move this. Technology does not change this, science cannot alter it. God is the creative one, He sets the standards, He alone has absolute understanding. There is a veil we must pass through in our relationship with Him, a veil created by our desire to understand things according to our own understanding but the truth is this — we will never have that kind of understanding and we have to accept that. What we must accept, in order to truly acknowledge the Lordship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is that He is the Creator and He will always possess wisdom, even when we lack it. He will always understand things we are incapable of understanding. Unless we beat down our pride and come to terms with our limitations and even embrace them as further proof of His magnificence and dominion over us, we will never be able to truly call Him Master and believe it.

He is the Creator. We have no right nor cause to question His definition of truth — because He created that too.

Remembering God

We are called, as the created, to conform to the image of the Creator.

This has always been so and always will be. From Genesis to Revelation, the call has always been to become more and more like our Heavenly Father as exemplified in Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. We are commanded to conform our minds, our flesh, our very being into vessels of love towards both Him as well as our neighbors. To love Him is to obey Him, therefore to love Him is to love others.

Lev 19:18 And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHVH.

Over the millennia, people have struggled to define for themselves what that love should look like. But we were never called to define it for ourselves, it is too great a burden. The Bible defines it for us, from the first word to the last word. That very character of God Himself defines what love looks like. And that is what I am exploring this year, day by day, striving and straining and pressing forward so that I become more and more like Him — not just in what I write, but in what I do, and even in how I respond when I fail.

We are called, more than anything else in our lives, to love God. And we love Him best by how we represent Him to the world. We can either cause people to glorify Him or curse Him, we can be a helping hand or a stumbling block. We owe it to our beloved and blessed Creator to represent His character as perfectly as we possibly can, by turning our backs on our own flesh, our own agendas, our own character flaws — on the things which cause the people around us to hate Him, not for His sake, but for our sake.

Things are serious. We have come to a point in history where we are not hated for the sake of the gospel, the gospel is hated for the sake of a church that has not gotten to know the character of the Father or His Messiah well enough to represent it.

I want to change that in my own life. This blog will be a year long exploration of the revealed character of God, with an emphasis on how I think it should change my behavior, my attitude, my everything. I want this blog to be about glorifying His character, so maybe we can all represent Him as He deserves to be represented, that perhaps we can become the faithful ambassadors we were always called to be.