This message looks at the importance of making the Word of God a practical experience and not just a mere theory.

<p>This message looks at the importance of making the Word of God a practical experience and not just a mere theory.</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>

Ilam SDA Church

Daniel Pel

The Hebrew Mind

My last message that I'll be sharing with you this morning is entitled, The Hebrew Mind.

And before we dive into God's Word, I would like to have another word of prayer that God will direct my words and that the Holy Spirit will be our teacher this morning.

I will kneel as we ask God's Spirit to be with us.

Father in heaven, we thank you that we can come before you this morning.

Thank you Lord for the fellowship that we've been able to enjoy over the last weeks together.

And Lord as we come before you this morning we pray for again the outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

We pray that your Holy Spirit will be our teacher this morning as we open your word and study it together.

May the words of truth not just be a theory, but may they become an experience.

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Deuteronomy.

The book of Deuteronomy, that's the fifth book in the Bible.

Where we will start Our journey together this morning.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we're going to begin in verse 1.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 beginning in verse 1.

These are words of Moses, the spokesman of the Lord, as the Lord speaks through Moses to his people just prior to their entering into the promised land.

And the Lord says, Now this is the commandment, and these are the statues and judgments, which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess.

Verse 2, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all His statues and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.

Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligent 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 up.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So shall it be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abram, to Isaac and Jacob, to give you a large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of good things which you did not fill, hewn out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant.

When you have eaten and are full, then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage." These are the words of the Lord through Moses to His people, just as they are about to enter into the promised land, the land of Canaan.

And I love the way that the word becomes so practical and real in these commands, in these words.

It is as if the Word of God becomes the living Word.

It says, "...and these words which I command you today shall be where?

In your heart." These words are to be in your heart.

And then it goes on to say in verse 7, you shall teach them diligently to your children.

Verse 8 it says, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes." The Word of God is not just a theory, the Word of God is an experience.

And hear the Lord speaking through Moses to the people, He says, I want my word to be binded on your hand and between your eyes.

Now, later on the Jews took this very literal and actually they took the scriptures and would write it on scrolls and would literally bind it to their hands.

They would literally bind it on their forehead.

What God wanted is that His words would be in their minds and His words would be in their actions.

That's why when you go all the way to the book of Revelation, it is interesting to note that in the book of Revelation you read about the seal of God in the foreheads, on the foreheads of God's people.

This is not the name of God written literally on our foreheads.

It's the character of God revealed in our lives, in our hearts, in our minds.

So the words that were to be bound on the hands and the front, between the eyes of the people.

This was representing the Word of God, which was to take deep root in their experience.

It was to be an intellectual understanding of the truth, but more than that, it was to be a practical experience of the truth.

And this is a little bit what I want to talk about this morning.

The connection in scripture between our understanding of truth and our experience with that truth.

In other words, I want to dig deeper this morning into the Hebrew mind because in the Hebrew way of thinking, the truth was directly applied in the actions of life.

The true biblical way of thinking, the true Hebrew mindset, is not just the truth as a theory that somehow floats up there, but it is a truth that comes down, that sinks into the hearts, into the, into our hearts, and takes form in our actions.

The truth is to be bound, is to be bind, to be binded, not only in the mind, on the forehead, but also in the hand.

It is to be an experience in our everyday lives.

Now, when you look at the education of the Jews, it is very interesting how they would emphasize the practical side of the Word of God.

As a matter of fact, if you were a young Jewish boy, by the age of 6, your training would begin with what they would call a Bet Sefer.

And that was a period from basically from the age of 6 to the age of 12, in which you would learn the first 5 books of the Bible, the Torah.

They would memorize these scriptures, but not only would they memorize these scriptures, but they would also learn the application of these words.

How that the Torah, the Word of God, became an experience into their lives.

I heard that when they would be introduced to this educational program, this Bet Sefer period, that their teacher, the rabbi, would take some honey and would give it to the child.

He was, remember, he was only at the age of 6 at that time.

And the child would take that honey and would eat it.

And then the rabbi would say to that young child, may the word of God be like honey to you.

And so you can imagine the child is the experience that he has with the honey, the sweetness of it, was to be the experience that he had with the Word of God.

It is an astounding to see that in this period of Beth Sefer, which was approximately from the age of 6 to the age of 12, the Jewish child would learn the entire Torah by heart.

And then they would enter into another learning stage which would be referred to as the Bet Talmud, which was approximately from the age of 12 to about the age of 14 or 15, and during this time, the Jewish child would learn the entire Old Testament scriptures by heart, memorized.

Now some of you might think to yourself, yeah, they were smarter back then.

Well, I think the reality is that they focused on different things.

As a matter of fact, they can memorize entire movies.

I remember when I was a teenager, There was this movie, it was called Dumb and Dumber.

Which teenager does not know every single sentence in that movie?

You know, during that time they memorized these sentences, and yet we take the scriptures and it seems so difficult.

It has to do with what we focus on in our lives.

And so in the Jewish education, in order for the Hebrews to grow up and to be that people of God, in order to put His character on display, they realized the very much importance of a education rooted and grounded in the Word of God.

Central for them was an understanding of Scripture.

Not only a theoretical attainment of an understanding of God's plan for their lives, but an experience in which they would enter.

Remember according to the words in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6, the words of truth were to be bound not only on their foreheads, which represents in their minds, but also on their hands.

It was to become a practical experience in their lives.

Another stage of this educational experience was called Bat Midrash, which came after Bat Talmud.

And basically this was for the best of the best.

Those that really were talented in their understanding of Scripture, that were seen to be future teachers in Israel, would be chosen by rabbis, and the rabbi would come and say to that student, follow me.

That was the call to be trained by the rabbi.

Which I find very interesting because when Jesus called his disciples what did he say?

Now we look at the disciples and certainly they don't come across as the best of the best.

And isn't that interesting that Jesus chose those that humanly speaking did not seem to accomplish, that did not seem to be successful in life, and yet He made them the dispositors of truth.

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The Hebrew Mind

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