A Call To Reclaim Education

Short Sermon on Education

IF you read our church newsletter, then you know I do a lot of thinking about education. And the reason for that is because God’s Word says a lot about education. The education of children, and the education of His people – the Church.

And historically speaking - - - the Church has been heavily involved in education. Now the biggest reason for that is because Christians have taken seriously the Great Commission.

“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel and make disciples.”

And Jesus tells us how we make disciples, we baptize them in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and TEACH them to observe (put into practice) all that He has commanded.

Teaching someone to “observe” or to follow and obey and practice is the essence of disciple making. So we’re not called to teach a bunch of obscure facts that have no bearing on how a person lives their life. We’re called to teach something that not only informs, but transforms.

So, I want to talk to you tonight – FIRST about education in general, and SECOND about what we do and can do as a Church when it comes to education.

Let’s go to God’s Word….

Deut. 6:6-7, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

So that’s a pretty clear command from God – to teach our children what He commands. To teach them HIS WORD.

In the late 1700’s John Adams said the following, “To find an illiterate man in New England was as rare as a comet.”

A lot has changed since then. Here’s the statistics for 2023:

- 130 million adults struggle with math beyond addition and subtraction.

- 54% of American adults read below a 6th grade level. That’s around 168 million people

- 21% of American adults are fully illiterate. That’s close to 70 million people.

- In 2022 only 24% of Oklahoma 4th graders tested proficient or better on reading.

- Interestingly enough, in 1920 we were spending $500 per student and were near full literacy, but in 2022 we spent $12,500 per student and were failing miserably (and those numbers are adjusted for inflation… so we were actually spending less in 1920, but that’s the inflation adjusted number).

GIVE HANDOUTS (1895, 6th grade final exam from Salina KS., and 1912 Bullitt County Schools 8th grade exam).

It’s not lack of funding… So what happened? Well……….

We can find correlation with the removal of Christianity and the introduction of secularism.

THE purpose of education in the Old Testament was to “teach children to know and understand their relationship to God, and to serve Him by keeping the Law and in holiness.” And to “teach them their history and how God has blessed, led, protected and corrected them down through history.”

By the time of the New Testament – there were synagogue schools in many towns and communities.

In Greece it was a little different.

In Sparta, education was designed to create totally loyal warriors who did everything for the betterment of the STATE.

In Athens, the purpose of education was to produce good citizens and citizens were taught letters’ music, morals and manners, math, science, athletics, and philosophy. The betterment of SELF.

In Rome, the purpose of education was to prepare a citizen to be mentally and physically fit for whatever service was required of him by the state (be it farming, war, trading and bartering).

Students would be specifically taught and trained for whatever career they were going into. So, SELF & STATE.

Later on John Calvin in Geneva Switzerland created a public school so that laypeople could learn to read the Bible. He changed the notion that education was for EVERYONE. Not just the elites, or the clergy, but all needed to know how to read, and rightly interpret Scripture, and be useful for the community they were part of. GOD, SELF, & STATE.

The education system he created was rigorous by todays standards.

This carried over to the United States with the Pilgrims. In 1647 they passed a law called “The Old Deluder Act” – which said: “It being one chief project of the old deluder – Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times… it is therefore ordered by this court and authority thereof, that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of 50 householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and read.”