What food is to the body, information is to the … ? Brain? Heart? What possible impacts does the information I allow in my child’s mind have on this life? Their eternal life?

<p>What food is to the body, information is to the … ? Brain? Heart? What possible impacts does the information I allow in my child’s mind have on this life? Their eternal life?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Oakwood SDA Church

Adventist Education

Ariel Roldan

Education: Knowledge

We're going to be starting the first part of a series of sermons throughout the whole month of August.

So, the school is starting for some of us in just a few weeks for our Christian school, and for some of us, school starts in September.

So, I thought it would be worthwhile to spend some time looking at this topic from the scriptures and we're going to be taking a journey starting today with exploring knowledge.

What is knowledge according to the Bible?

We're going to look at education in its relationship to character, to the person, the character of the person.

On the 15th is gonna be a very special Sabbath.

We're gonna be dedicating our teachers and our staff.

And that Sabbath, we're gonna be exploring from the word of God what it is to be a teacher, according to the Bible.

We're gonna look at the Bible and its relationship to education, and education and its relationship to eternity.

So It's gonna be a pretty comprehensive month looking at this topic.

And if you're saying to yourself, well, I've already gone through high school, I've already gone through college, I'm done with education, these series will help you expand and broaden your definition of what education is.

And we're gonna start with a little lesson in Spanish.

Laura Jacobus, if you have any problems throughout the sermon with understanding Spanish, she can translate for you.

She will be able to readily take my Spanish and convert it into English.

In the screen, you see a word on the left, comida.

Laura, do you know, do you remember what that is?

And you came this morning wanting just a sermon, but I'm a pastor that feels like when we ask God for this much blessings, he gives us this much, so you're going to get some Spanish as well today.

So if you're ever stuck in a place where they only speak Spanish, at least you'll be able to have food.

In a little bit we will be at Sandy Weaver's house and there may be some pies there.

And if people don't hurry up through the dessert line and people will say, where is the comida, where is the pies?

Elliot's hopefully going to be patient with the dessert line.

And in English, it's hard to, you know, it's food, and we don't really have a way of saying food that has been eaten except for that long sentence.

There was a play of words I saw in a restaurant in Pennsylvania.

And I don't know if it's in Pennsylvania only, but sometimes people would say it like that.

Instead of saying food, they would say eats.

I don't know if it's Pennsylvania Dutch, what it is, but I haven't heard it elsewhere.

But the restaurant was called Good Eats, but really what it was trying to say is good food.

This is how we're going to start the series on education.

Because what I want us to do is have a comparison.

This illustration kind of like a parable.

Information is like food that is on the table.

And it doesn't become knowledge until it goes inside your mind.

Just like food is comida on the table, the moment you eat it, it becomes what word?

It's only information when it is out there in a book or a DVD or in the mind of a teacher.

But it becomes knowledge when it has entered our mind.

And not just that the information has entered, it has been processed, understood, and applied.

Just like when we eat the food, we don't just masticate and swallow.

There's a digestive process that happens.

And whatever we eat becomes so small, it actually becomes what we are.

And in the same vein, information becomes knowledge when it goes inside our mind.

And whatever information we put in there determines what effect it has upon us, Food quality and knowledge.

The information we become exposed to or intentionally take in becomes what we know.

The transition from information to knowledge.

It becomes inside when I understand it and apply it to life.

That's the difference between information and knowledge.

What we know affects what and why we believe, and what we believe affects who we are and what we do.

And as Christians, it takes time for us to mature, because we typically do Christianity backwards.

We focus on the doing, on the behavior, and don't spend too much time analyzing this process of, that's why many Christians learn things but don't live them.

Information becomes knowledge when it goes inside our minds and is understood and applied in the life.

What we know affects what we believe and what we believe affects who we are and what we do.

Not all that is cold food is nourishing food.

And in North America, this is a reality, right?

We are the ones that have come up with the term fast food.

That's something that has become a phenomenon here in North America and it's gone elsewhere.

And for the most part, even though McDonald's is trying to change its menu, we know that junk food, is it good food for you?

There's a documentary called Super Size Me.

That's all this individual eats and he ends up getting really, really, really, really, really, really sick.

So just because something receives the label food doesn't mean it's food.

In order for something to qualify as being food, it has to provide nutrients that nourish and heal us.

Our body is going to constant damage, UV rays going through our cells, pollution, the atmosphere.

Education: Character

You'll see it in a little bit when I put it up there.

And the quiz asks, it's almost like a riddle.

And I want you to think, what food is yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and it's very sweet.

As my colleagues up there frantically look for the clicker, I want to make sure that it's not up here.

The riddle is what is yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and it's very sweet.

I was trying to think of an illustration on how to start.

Since last week we were talking about, you know, comida, comido.

I was teaching you a little Spanish related to food.

Thought I would continue with that illustration.

But though we came up with banana, if you think about it, Yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and very sweet also fits the Twinkie.

The reality is though that I'm asking for something that falls under the broader canopy of true food.

How many of you guys have seen a US Open or Wimbledon tournament?

If you've seen those, my brother played tennis and he loved watching those.

We noticed that between sets, these professional athletes would sit, sip on water, and you know what they nibbled on most of them?

It would restore their electrolytes, bring some potassium, some vitamin C, some sugar.

But not the kind of sugar high that you would get from a Twinkie, but the sugar that you would get from a fruit, which is loaded with fiber.

And so it allows for the sugar to escalate gently, normally, and then de-escalate and go back to normal.

Whereas with a Twinkie, I mean, you give my Gianna a Twinkie, you will see the sugar spike, right?

You won't need to take a glucose testing to see that her sugar is, choo, through the roof.

1 nourishes us, 1 promotes health, meets our needs of life.

The other 1, though outwardly may fit the description, really a Twinkie is not food.

It's not something that qualifies it as food because it has no fiber.

It has pure sugar and of course fat and all the other stuff.

Remember in New York City they had discovered that if you, They would sell as hotcakes when they would take Twinkies, freeze them, and then quickly deep fry them and sell them to people because the creamy inside would still stay frozen while the outside would get crunchy.

Knowing what I know as a nurse, and you don't have to be a medical professional to know that there are certain things that They may taste good, but they just ain't right.

Education, I mean, Jason, do you have a pencil left?

You know, the greatest part that makes this pencil such a great learning tool, what was it?

Because it...now, what core value is found in the gospel that fits the principle of the eraser?

Can you have forgiveness without the view of God in that model?

In essence, When information filters out God, when information, when education filters out God from the content, the foundation of what is being presented, in essence, it rips out the eraser.

You are left on your own to scribble and try to blot out on your own, your own mistakes.

Leaving God out of the equation hinders education.

Any educational system that filters out God completely out of its process provides a worldview in which we are left to fend for ourselves.

It's a very, Can you imagine giving an exam, you get an exam, a written exam, and you get 1 of these without an eraser?

True knowledge is that which develops in me an ever-increasing awareness and discernment of what is good and evil.

Just like the banana has certain qualifiers that makes it true food.

It will nourish us during a tennis match.

It will nourish me during my soccer matches.

I did not take a Twinkie to eat between half time in a soccer game.

I will be running pretty fast for the first 5 minutes, but what will happen after that?

Education, in order for it to provide a true benefit to those receiving it, has to have God in it because it will produce morality, it will produce a sense of ethics.

It was weird, last month, in a 1 week period, 3 members from our church asked me via phone, text, and Facebook, Pastor, how do we know God's will?

The will of God, His desires for us, how He wants to lead us is founded upon morality and ethics.

We touched on this some sermons ago when we were talking about Sabbath, how Sabbath is an emblem of morality and ethics.

During Sabbath, every human being was equal before God.

It prevents these social class disparities that are so prevalent in our world.

The God we serve is a moral, ethical God.

And because he is the beginning of wisdom, and he is the beginning of knowledge, it goes without saying that true Education should bring those elements because it includes God.

It should bring an awareness, a heightened understanding of things that are evil and things that are good.

If I don't know what a mistake is, how will I know I need to erase it, correct?

What good is it to have grace and forgiveness if I don't know what I need forgiveness for?

Without morality and without ethics, what's evil?

Oh, man, I have to go back and redo this sermon next week.

Education: Teacher

We've been going through a series that has caused a lot of personal reflection in my own life, in my own attitude, searching my own heart as to how to relate to them, and how to apply the biblical perspective to what we have as a society today, especially in regards to education.

When a way for it to come through, as Mrs.

Bailey said, there was a time when we didn't have PowerPoint or computers or all the other accoutrements.

And this morning I intentionally want to use it because I want to begin to wrap up some of the themes and concepts that we've been talking about in regards to education, in regards to Christian education, especially for us as a church.

And this morning we're going to be looking at it specifically in the context of how it relates to the Word of God.

Last week, you can probably see it there on the screen already, we were comparing 2 things and I asked you sort of a pop quiz, What comes to your mind when you think of something that's yellow on the outside, white on the inside and that is very sweet?

When it came to what is true food, there was a time in my life that I would have answered it's The Twinkie, not the banana.

That's the first thing that would have come to my mind.

Fruits were not part of my repertoire, my culinary repertoire.

My mom would try to push those things on us, and we didn't like them.

If she had us choose between Now and Laters or an apple, the apple flavor of Now and Laters, you know, took precedence.

And if we had to choose between a banana and a Twinkie, we certainly chose the Twinkie.

And this morning I wanted to start picking up on that comparison again because we used that as an illustration.

Yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and sweet.

Just because something is described that way does not make it a banana.

And when we look at education, just because something gets the labels of math, English, history, doesn't mean we're talking about education.

It doesn't mean that we are talking about what education really is, what true education is.

The Bible is a document that by its own claims supersedes other human documents because the Bible is not a document that has been generated or developed by humanity.

God through His Holy Spirit has inspired men to write on His behalf.

So the Word of God claims to have precedence over every other written document, whether it be a document regarding history, a document regarding the sciences, and the Bible doesn't say it is a science book.

What the Bible presents is that the laws that govern science have an origin, and it's a personal being, it is God the creator.

In that sense, the Bible overarches and touches everything that is related to academia.

All the disciplines, all the various ways in which education, as we come to know it as math, science, history, music, etc., we have somehow divorced these disciplines from the 1 that originated all of them.

Light, sound wave, our eardrums, the way we perceive music.

Music is highly mathematical, yet we don't experience the mathematics of it, we experience the emotions of music, do we not?

But yet, the frequency of the sound waves and how those sound waves travel through the air, enter into our drums, and it's not just words.

God designed us, and God created music for us so that he could evoke and we could express things that sometimes words fall short from.

I mean, why do we have, you know, when we're in love and we're wanting to make sure that the person we love knows that we love them, we don't simply tell them, I love you.

Many times, either we pick a song that says the same words, but putting melody to it does something.

Education needs to be rebooted in our minds because education, as we come to think of education, we have separated education from its origin, from its creator.

Math, science, biology, chemistry, ourselves, the way we relate to history, the way we relate to math.

And education needs to be rebooted in our minds.

What this series has done for me is coalesce things that should have never been separated.

Put together things that should never have placed a part in my worldview.

As Christians, we have a tremendous responsibility to the world, and education starts at the center.

We have in our country a blessing that many times we misunderstand.

Many Christians decry the fact that we no longer have prayers in our schools.

And what we mean by prayer is prayer to the Father in the name of Jesus.

And we complain that and protest that prayer is no longer part of public schools.

Now I want to present to you a biblical perspective of how we should be relating to the links between government and the church.

We need to have separation between church and state.

The moment you have government endorsing or suppressing any religious movement, any religious groups, we no longer have a democracy.

Things that have made our country beautiful.

So yes, we may complain that prayers are no longer in the schools because the government has taken prayer out of the schools.

My question would be to the Christians, is that all that it took for you to stop praying in school?

Do we need the government telling us you need to be praying in public schools?

We shouldn't want a government that tells us that.

We shouldn't want a government that spells out through civil laws how you should relate to God spiritually.

That's why the United States has become the safe haven to pretty much every religion in the planet.

Because we have this beautiful phenomena, unique phenomena of religious liberty.

Where the government cannot dictate my conscience and how I relate to God.

So, though we may not have prayer in the school anymore.

Actually, this is where I began to realize that the secular government setting up a school system has 2 choices.

If we want the government to include the Judeo-Christian God in it, then we should also want or say you need to put the Muslim God in there too, and all the Hindu gods as well.

Otherwise, we as Christians like having the upper hand suppressing the other religions, but that's not a democracy.

We would not like it if Muslims or Buddhists or whoever, other religious groups, were in cahoots with the government and they were suppressing Christianity as we see it in other parts of the world.

And the Bible, once humans ask God for a king, that's the moment that God made a separation.

The king settles secular matters, but a king will never officiate as a priest.

The priesthood is separate from the kingship.

So in the Bible we have this principle of separation of church and state, and public schools by definition should not endorse any God.

Thus presenting for us Christians, I believe, a simple choice.

I don't think it's going to work, so we'll just go from here.

This is the question that I want us as parents, soon to be parents, to think about.

A public school system will present, and we should not protest this, a public school system, educational system will present a worldview in which God is not essential, God is not relevant, God is not to be tolerated, God is actually harmful when we put him in the picture.

In the scientific arena, as an example, there's great animosity towards God.

There are many, I've read articles in academic journals of high position scientists decrying and denouncing any inclusion of a God picture in the sciences because they're saying their argument is it will harm children.

Why teach children fictitious myths as facts is their argument.

We should only be presenting to children empirical, factually verifiable information.

Therefore, God should be completely filtered out of all academic pursuits.

And I don't really find that offensive because he is speaking specifically about a public school, about a tax government supported school system.

Many Christians have been given a wrong version of Christianity in this country.

The reason you and I can worship according to the dictates of our conscience is because we have always advocated for a separation of church and state.

The moment we cross those cables, what church will the government endorse?

Therefore, the creating of, listen carefully, the creating of, the development and support of a Christian school system becomes imperative.

Because we have 2 choices, a school system that should and does leave God completely out of the picture, at least it tries to.

There may be exceptions, but legally it leaves God out of the picture.

Education: Eternal

We've been going through this whole list of Bible topics, knowledge, character, Bible, teacher.

And this morning we're going to see how education is not just something that will happen while you're in college, something that will happen just in this life, but how education is an experience that will transcend into eternity as well.

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Series

Adventist Education

Education: Character

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Essential

01 Realigned Just in Time

35m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God is the Great Teacher

53m

Education

The Core of Adventist Education is Not Common

1h 5m

A Stolen Generation

28m

Adventist Education

Education: Teacher

53m

Continuing the Reformation

Educational Reform

1h

Plenary Sessions

Taught by God

43m

The Bible and End Time Education

52m

Adventist Education: Respectable and Conventional

58m

Sound Doctrine