Teachers in Corners (Matt. 11/Luke 7)

“If teachers be removed into corners, it is better to go after them than to be without them.”  - Matthew Henry

Dr. Richard Freeman, my children’s Auburn pediatrician when they were babies, told me often when I would ask about one of my children not liking anything I put in front of him, “He will eat when he gets hungry. Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t starve to death physically (spiritually is quite another matter) and he did eat but only what he wanted when he wanted it regardless of my battles otherwise. In my own life, I too have often felt the need to be “fed” what I wanted when I wanted it, and at the time thought I was starving to death. In fact, I still get hungry at times, but nothing like I did in my youth when I was starving. Let me explain.

I grew up in a tiny rural church where truth was preached but growth was limited, where the gospel was proclaimed but lives were often stunted. What I looked at as a youth as being limited mainly due to numbers in reality was limited because of hunger, a different kind of smallness. 

When people are starving to death in God’s house with a feast waiting on the table, there is a problem that needs to be addressed and often cannot be by the leadership. Contrary to popular belief, the problem is not always with the clergy or church leaders or teachers, especially if they are obedient in preaching or teaching what God has laid on their hearts to speak. Often the problem is with the lay people, the hearers, who expect someone else to do the heavy lifting of getting the fork and placing the food in their mouths because they are infants who have never grown past infancy: 

Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. (Heb. 5:12-13, NAS)

How often in my young adult (and even into my “maturity”) I have experienced the feeling of privation, but Hebrew’s writer says, “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their sense trained to discern good and evil” and the “dull of hearing” need not expect a feast at God’s table (5:14). 

Don’t mishear me. The problem was mine. I had everything I needed for both life and godliness through the knowledge of Jesus found in my Bible, and it was often proclaimed from the pulpit (2 Pet. 1:3), yet I failed to partake of that knowledge and often placed the blame for my own spiritual discontent on the shoulders of others.

This is the connection to Henry’s comment about teachers in corners. It wasn’t until I began eagerly pursuing the truth to be found in God’s Word and the wisdom of godly teachers and began praying for wisdom and help and understanding that I began to grow from the infant diet of strictly milk that I had been partaking of for so many years. It wasn’t about someone else lifting the fork to get the meat to my mouth, it was about seeking Him diligently and consistently without fear.

What I found surprised me. My teachers were in there but in corners I had not yet explored—a wilderness consisting of the nooks and crannies of the Word and consistent quiet time ferreting them out, a scary world (to me at the time) of ladies' Bible studies in strange churches filled with women I didn't know, the conversations about Christ, the active listening with a willing heart when I read something hard, the application of truth to my life instead of just a pursuit of knowledge to add to what I already had collected and stored away. These teachers didn’t always look like I thought they would, and I almost missed them, feeling sorry for myself that I wasn’t in a “different” or “better” place., focused on my lack. Thus, Henry’s admonition has been true in my life; It was better for me to go after them than to exist without them.

At some point, something in me changed and has kept changing—don’t ask me to put a particular date on it as it is ongoing and I don't ever expect it to stop. I don’t go to “see” or be seen. I don’t go to listen with my own expectations of receiving what I want to hear, thus defeating or overwhelming the voice of the preacher or teacher speaking truth. I don’t go expecting the road to be paved flawlessly before I can travel it—sometimes, the roads are rough cobblestones that stub my toes, and I stumble over them. I don’t go expecting to be elevated when I am the one teaching or be flattered because someone comes to listen because it isn’t about me. I don’t go expecting it to be easy or effortless; in fact, Jesus says “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence” (Heb. 5:12). I go because I am “willing to receive it,” because I “have ears to hear” and listen because “all the prophets and the law prophesied until John” (v. 13-15), and it is worth the investment of my time to listen to the Teacher, every second of it.

Unfortunately, I can relate Jesus’ comments at the end of this section of Scripture to myself in my younger years; I was a petty child unwilling to be satisfied with what I had been given because in my immaturity I craved something more, just as my son in his infancy wanted what he wanted and refused any other food. It isn't pretty, but it is true, and I hope it encourages you if you are stuck right now in the same holding pattern.

Matthew Henry says people are ignorant because of the lack of will rather than the lack of power or ability to hear, and this couldn’t have been more true in my life. I was determined to be unsatisfied because I didn’t have what I wanted and thought I knew what was best for me, that which would make me happy and content. This is a painful and scary way to live, and gracious is my God who changed my heart within me and made it beat for Him and long for Him to the point that I got so hungry I was willing to eat what was in front of me even if it meant my diet and location had to change (thus, going out into the wilderness to get it). 

Just as “Jesus cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits, and to many blind He gave sight,” AT THE VERY HOUR that John’s disciples came to Him seeking the truth about who He was; He still gives evidence to us when we go to Him, seeking the truth about who He is (Luke 7:21. He doesn't play hide and seek. Some unlikely people heard the truth that day, tax collectors who justified God and were baptized in obedience to John's message of the coming Christ; some very likely people rejected the truth that day, refusing to be baptized into God’s will for themselves, the Pharisees and lawyers who should have recognized truth when they heard it (v. 29-30). We, too, have choices to make about seeking good teachers, and as Jesus’ said in relation to this, “wisdom is justified by all her children” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:35).