And Hebrews chapter number five, the part of the chapter that I'd like to focus on is
beginning in verse number 12, where the Bible reads, for when for the time you ought to
be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again, which be the first principles of the
oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat.
For everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness.
For he is a babe, but strong meat belong it to them that are a full age, even those who
by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
And the title of my sermon this morning is learn by doing, learn by doing.
Now in this scripture here, he's talking about the fact that they are unskillful in the word
of God.
They are spiritually babes and that they're not ready for the strong meat because the
Bible says strong meat belong it to them that are a full age, those that are more spiritually
mature, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercise to discern both good
and evil.
According to the Bible, you grow spiritually, you grow in knowledge by using the word of
God, not simply just by hearing the word or just learning passively, but by actually being
a doer of the work.
Okay, keep your finger here in Hebrews chapter five and go if you would to James chapter
one.
There's a couple of pages to the right in your Bible from where you are in Hebrews.
Couple of pages to the right.
Look at James chapter one verse 22.
Again the title of the sermon is learn by doing.
Look at James chapter one verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving
your own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his
natural face in a glass, for he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway
forgetteth what manner of man he was, but who so looketh into the perfect law of liberty
and continue it therein.
He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in
his deed.
So what the Bible is saying here is that there are two types of people.
There are those who are forgetful hearers.
They hear the word of God and they don't even remember what it was that they heard.
And then there are those who are the doers of the work.
And the doers of the work are the ones who do the real learning.
They're the ones who actually retain the knowledge and don't forget it.
Why?
Because they're putting it into use.
By reason of use, they become spiritually mature and they grow in the faith.
If you're ever going to be a mature Christian, if you're ever going to learn the word of
God and know the Bible well, it's only going to be through using the Bible and doing the
work.
And it's like this with anything.
The Bible that we learn by doing, pretty much everything in life you learn more effectively
by doing it than just hearing about it.
Now first of all, if you're still in Hebrews there, I want to really focus in on this word
in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 13 where the Bible says, for everyone that uses milk is unskillful
in the word of righteousness.
Now notice he doesn't say unlearned in the word of righteousness or ignorant of the word
of righteousness.
He says unskillful and what's interesting about that choice of words is that when we
think of skill, it has to do with doing something, not just knowing about something.
Usually we wouldn't talk about someone being skillful when it comes to just knowledge.
We would talk about someone being skillful at a certain activity and what that shows
me is that the word of God is something that we need to do, not just hear, learn, talk
about, but actually put into practice and use.
That's why I use the word skillful.
Let's go back to the Old Testament and understand the word skill.
Go back to 1 Kings chapter 5.
I'm going to show you just kind of starting with the first time skill is used and just
go through some of the mentions of skillful so that you can understand what the word skillful
means.
God doesn't just want us to know the Bible.
He wants us to be skillful in the Bible because the Bible is a tool.
The Bible is a weapon.
The Bible is something to be used, not something to just admire, although we should admire
it.
We need to put it to use.
Go to 1 Kings chapter 5 verse 6.
The Bible says, Now therefore, command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon,
and my servants shall be with thy servants, and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants
according to all that thou shalt appoint.
For thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto
the Zydonians.
Now, when it comes to hewing timber or chopping wood, how do you suppose you become skillful
at hewing timber or chopping wood?
Do you think that that happens in a classroom?
Do you think that that happens with a book or a worksheet, or do you think it happens
by getting out there, picking up an ax, and hewing some timber?
That's obviously a learned skill.
That's obviously something that involves a lot of muscle memory and practice and getting
out there and physically doing the work.
That's the type of thing where God used the word skillful.
Go if you would to 1 Chronicles chapter 5, a few pages to the right there.
After 1 and 2 Kings is 1 and 2 Chronicles, look at 1 Chronicles chapter 5 verse 18.
The Bible says, The sons of Reuben and the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh, of
valiant man, man able to bear buckler and sword.
Buckler is a type of shield.
Man able to bear buckler and sword and to shoot with bow and skillful in war were four
and forty thousand seven hundred and three score that went out to the war.
Again, when it comes to being in battle, shooting a bow and arrow, fighting with a sword and
a shield, that's not something that you learn by just hearing about it or reading about
it or even just by watching other people do it.
You're going to have to get in there and wield those instruments of war yourself.
You're going to have to learn by doing if you're going to be a warrior.
You're going to have to learn by doing to be a woodsman that would cut down trees.
Go to 1 Chronicles chapter number 15 verse 22.
First Chronicles 15, you're in chapter 5, flip over to chapter 15 verse 22.
This is the way the Bible uses the word skillful and the Bible says that God wants us to be
skillful in the word, skillful with our Bibles.
First Chronicles 15, 22, and Canaena, chief of the Levites, was for song.
He instructed about the song because he was skillful.
So this is talking about a skillful musician.
You don't have to turn there, but in Psalm 33 verse 3, it says, sing unto him a new song,
play skillfully with a loud noise.
Speaking of playing on a musical instrument, skillfully, again, do you think that you learn
how to play piano or trumpet or guitar or any other musical instrument by sitting and
watching someone or by reading a book about it or listening to a seminar about it or do
you learn by getting in there and actually doing it?
You're going to have to put the trumpet to your lips and you're going to be like, make
all kinds of weird noises and keep trying it until you get the right sound.
You're going to have to get on the piano and mess up and make mistakes and sound terrible
and drive your parents insane and then you will become a great piano player.
You're going to have to get on the guitar and you're not going to be able to hold down
the strings and you're going to have to build the calluses.
Look, you have to learn by doing when it comes to music.
You have to learn by doing when it comes to cutting down trees.
You have to learn by doing when it comes to warfare, fighting, martial arts, boxing, whatever.
The Bible is no different because the Bible is using that same word, skillful.
It's not just a knowledge set, it's a skill set when it comes to the Bible.
Look if you went to chapter 28.
Chapter 28, let's look at the next example in the Bible of the word skill.
First Chronicles 28, chapter 28 verse 21, and behold the courses of the priests and
the Levites, even they shall be with thee for all the service of the house of God.
Now the context here when it talks about the service of the house of God, a lot of what
this is talking about is the actual building of the temple.
There were a lot of cunning and skilled workmen that were employed that worked with wood,
that worked with stones, they did masonry, they worked with metals, they worked with
fabrics and textiles, and they actually built the building of the temple.
Before that they had built the tabernacle itself.
These are skilled laborers that have been working with their hands for many years or
even decades to acquire those skills.
Not just from reading a book, not just from hearing about it, and not just from watching
others do it, but actually getting in there and doing the work themselves.
Look if you would at Second Chronicles chapter 2.
Second Chronicles chapter 2 verses 7 and 8 the Bible reads, send me now therefore a man
cunning to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in iron and in purple and crimson
and blue and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah
and in Jerusalem whom David my father did provide.
Look at verse 8.
Send me also cedar trees, fir trees and algum trees out of Lebanon for I know that thy servants
can skill to cut timber in Lebanon and behold my servants shall be with thy servants.
And there are many other verses we could turn to in the book of Second Chronicles, verses
throughout the Old Testament that explain to us what it means to be skillful and how
it has to do with doing the work.
And that's what the Bible said.
Anyone that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness for he's a babe.
And notice he says useth milk.
Even the milk.
Even if all you know is the milk of the word, you say, Pastor Anderson, I'm just newly saved.
I don't know my Bible very well.
I've never even read the Bible cover to cover one time.
I'm new to church.
Hey, that's great.
Use the milk.
Even the milk should be used.
Even if you just know this much Bible, use what you know.
And if you use what you know, you'll never forget it.
And then you'll be able to add to that knowledge and build on that knowledge and you will grow
up into him and you'll be edified and built up and grow in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But so many people think that they can learn without doing.
And they think they can learn the Bible without doing.
Now don't get me wrong because I do believe that there is a place for reading, of course.
It's very important.
You would to James Chapter three, obviously, you can't use what you've read if you haven't
read anything.
Right.
Or you can't use what you've heard if you've never heard anything.
So there is a place for taking in information.
There is a place for reading and listening.
Obviously you're in church right now listening to the word of God being preached.
And hopefully you're learning some things this morning about what the Bible means when
it talks about people being skilled.
And you're learning a truth here about learning by doing.
But once you've learned, you have to also put that into practice or you will forget
what you've learned.
Now we already know this anyway because of many of the things that we learned in school
that never ended up having relevance in our daily lives.
Therefore we don't remember them.
Now there were a lot of things in math class that we use all the time.
And I'm not one of these bills, oh, you never use all this advanced math.
I find myself using a lot of advanced math in my life.
But there are certain things in math that most of us are probably never going to use
when you get into the really advanced and theoretical stuff.
Unless you're a physicist, unless you're an engineer, unless you're some kind of a mathematician
or scientist or in those fields, you're probably not going to use really high level math.
And therefore most people who don't go into those fields 10 years after leaving high school,
if you were to put that Algebra II final exam in front of them, they may have gotten an
A plus on it, but right now they'd fail it.
Or if you were to put that pre-calculus final exam in front of them, they could barely even
fill in any of the answers even though maybe at the time they got an A in it, why?
Because if you don't use it, you lose it.
How many people went to Spanish class and maybe even they did Spanish I, II, III, IV
and they don't speak a lick of Spanish.
They don't know Spanish at all because they never put it into use.
They never put it into practice.
Listen, if you don't put the Word of God into practice, it'll be the exact same way in your
life.
I don't care how much you've studied or learned.
And there are many people like this today, so-called theologians and scholars.
But I'm telling you, theologians and scholars do not know the Bible the most in this world.
If you want to go to the people who know the Bible the most, I promise you it is the guy
who's using the Bible the most.
The one who's getting up and preaching sermons, teaching the Word of God, or at least the
one who's going out and knocking doors and preaching the Gospel and putting it into use.
The guy who's following the Word of God in his daily life, the guy who is applying the
principles of the Bible that he learned about marriage, and he's applying that to his marriage,
and he's applying the principles on child rearing every day, and he's applying the business
principles every day in his business, and he's going out soul winning, using the Gospel.
Let me tell you something.
The people who go out soul winning, they don't get into stupid salvation doctrine usually.
It's usually the people who don't go soul winning that get into squirrely salvation
doctrine.
Why?
Because the people who are using it are skilled in it.
The people who are preaching it at the door and preaching it to their friends, family,
and loved ones, they're the ones who understand it the most.
But today we look to commentaries written and oftentimes by people who aren't really
doers of the work, but they're more like navel gazers up in an ivory tower somewhere surrounded
by books on shelves, and they're going to tell us the deep things.
Look, I'm all for studying and reading and learning and going deep.
I like to study.
I like to learn.
But unless you couple that with a practical experience and works where you're actually
going out and doing the work that God gave us to do when God said, go ye therefore and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you.
Hey, that's the guy who knows the Bible is the guy who's going and teaching all nations,
and he's baptizing, and he's training people, and he's teaching them to observe, and he's
raising his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, then some celibate guy locked
up in some room somewhere with books all day, not a soul winner, not a practical teacher
and preacher of God's people or anything like that, and then we go to him and say he's the
expert.
No, he's not.
You know who the expert parent is?
The one who has children.
There are literally parenting books written by people who've never even had a child.
It's out there.
There are literally marriage books written by single men.
It's unbelievable.
It makes no sense.
Why?
Because you learn by doing.
You don't just learn through theory.
Where did I have you turn?
Book of James?
Look at James chapter 3, because in James 1, we had this concept of being a doer of
the work versus a forgetful hearer.
This is reiterated in James 3, verse 13.
Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?
Oh, the theologian.
You rang?
Right?
The theologian pops up his head.
Oh, that would be me.
I am a wise man and endued with knowledge.
You know, the guy who is full of his knowledge and full of himself, and this guy, he knows
the Greek and the Hebrew and all these different things.
Even though if you drop this guy in Israel or Greece, he couldn't even find a hot dog
stand to get a hot dog.
You know, even though if you drop this guy off, you know, he wouldn't even be able to
check in at the hotel because he's boasting himself of a false gift.
But who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?
Let him show his college degree so that we can know that it's really true.
Is that what it says?
Let him show us his doctorate and his PhD and his master's degree.
No, it says, let him show out of a good conversation his works, his works with meekness of wisdom.
See, what that says is that, number one, we can tell your knowledge level by the quality
of your work.
And number two, it tells us that the people who know the most are probably the people
who brag about it the least because there's meekness of wisdom.
And when people go around tooting their own horn about how smart they are all the time
and really trying to tell everybody, hey, I'm an expert on this, I'm an expert on that,
you know what, oftentimes they're not as smart as you think.
Look at the works.
I mean, if I wanted to know who was the best carpenter, I wouldn't say, well, where'd you
go to school?
Well, can you explain to me the difference between this wood and that wood?
Let's talk humidity control.
No, I would rather just see the work and say, well, this guy's clearly skilled.
Look at the work he's performed.
Right?
I mean, if I wanted to know who is the best plumber or the best electrician or the best
artist, I'd say, show me the portfolio.
Don't just tell me, don't rattle off a bunch of dates to me of 17th century French Renaissance
art or something.
I want to actually see the work.
And God says that is there a wise man and dude with knowledge among you?
Okay.
Well, let him show out of a good conversation.
Conversation is the way he lives his life.
Let him show out of a good conversation, his works with meekness of wisdom.
Why?
Because you learn by doing and the person who's not doing is not learning.
There's a great saying that I learned that I often think of the one who's doing the work
is the one who's doing the learning.
The one who's doing the work is the one who's doing the learning.
My dad is a, is a very good mechanic.
He's really good at fixing cars, fixing motorcycles, fixing boats.
He's an extremely skilled mechanic, yet I know almost nothing about being a mechanic.
I'm not very good at it.
And it's kind of odd that I would have a dad that's so good at it, but yet I didn't learn
any of it.
But the reason why that is, is that my dad, he wouldn't really let you do the work.
He would, he would show you, he'd tell you about it and explain it to me.
I can even remember him taking a piece of paper and a pen and drawing diagrams and explaining
to me how a two-stroke motorcycle engine works versus a four-stroke engine and going
through all of it with me and showing me.
And I watched, I can't even tell you how many times I watched him work on cars and watched
him work on motorcycles.
But he wasn't the type to let you get in there and do it because he didn't want you to mess
it up, all right?
And this was the saying that he would always say, well, those who can do and those who
can't teach, all right?
So he would, he'd always say, well, I'm not a good teacher, you know, because I don't
have the patience because he, and he's also extremely skilled electrician and he, but
he'd just be like, get in there and let me do it.
He'd do it so fast and make it look so easy that you just, you didn't really learn much.
Then later on, so I grew up going on electrical jobs with my dad and I learned a little bit,
but I didn't really learn a whole lot.
I worked with a different electrician for like one month and I learned more in that
one month than I learned in a lifetime growing up with my dad just because that guy actually
just let you mess it up and make, you know, here, why are this thing up?
You'd wire it up, it's wrong, he'll come, okay, here's what you did wrong, here's what
you did right, you fix it, then you're learning.
Why?
Because you're doing it.
You're doing the work.
You learn by doing.
You can't learn to be a mechanic by watching your dad.
You got to get in there and get greasy and get the wrench and get in there and do the
work because the one who's doing the work is the one who's doing the learning and this
is a biblical principle as well that if you're a doer of the work, you will remember and
retain that which you've learned and if you're not, you'll be a forgetful hearer.
And we know this to be true from the experience we've had in our lives.
Go to Matthew chapter 4 and another interesting scripture on this is where the disciples Peter
and John are boldly preaching unto the Jews in Acts chapter 4 and their preaching culminates
with that famous phrase, neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other
name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.
They preach this powerful sermon that ends in those famous words and here's what the
learned and educated Jews respond with.
It says in verse 13, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that
they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled and they took knowledge of them that
they had been with Jesus.
Let me tell you something.
Peter and John, you're in Matthew 4.
I'm reading from a different passage.
That's why you're confused.
Sorry.
I'm going to get to Matthew 4 in a moment.
But Peter and John were not ignorant and unlearned men.
Nothing could be more foolish.
They were absolutely not ignorant and unlearned.
They were ignorant and unlearned in the minds of the Jews who are examining them.
Because when they say, well, these guys are ignorant and unlearned men, what they mean
is, well, they didn't go to the school that we went to.
They haven't come up through our ranks of either the Pharisees or the Sadducees.
These guys are just a bunch of ignorant, unlearned fishermen.
Well guess what?
They obviously weren't ignorant or unlearned or illiterate because they wrote books of
the Bible.
And obviously they wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Obviously they spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
Obviously God taught them the word, revealed them the word, and it was all God-breathed.
It was not of any private interpretation.
It wasn't their own word.
It was God's word that they penned down.
But they still obviously were smart, intelligent, educated men that God used to deliver his
word.
But they said the same thing about Jesus.
I mean, do you believe that Jesus was ignorant and unlearned?
No.
But here's what they said.
Well, this man hasn't learned letters.
How does he know how to read and preach all this stuff?
Because Jesus stood up in the synagogue, pulls out the scroll, and starts reading it.
And whoa, how does this guy know?
Because he learned it on his own.
So these guys had great knowledge and skill and literacy, not through the learning institutions
of their day.
That's why they said, well, this guy doesn't even have a degree.
These people are unskilled.
They're unlearned.
But they were actually extremely skilled and learned.
That's why they turned the world upside down.
And they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and they marveled at the eloquence of their
preaching.
And it says they took knowledge of them that they'd been with Jesus, said, well, these
guys know all this stuff, and they're smart because they spent three and a half years
walking and talking with Jesus.
Now if you spent three and a half years not only walking and talking with Jesus, but working
with Jesus, because Jesus didn't do all the work while they watched.
He was constantly sending them into the villages, sending them into the towns.
They did the work also.
They were the ones that baptized.
He didn't even baptize anybody.
He delegated the baptisms unto his disciples.
So they're doing the baptizing.
They're laying hands on people.
They're performing miracles along with Jesus.
They're preaching sermons.
They're doing soul winning.
They're gathering up all the fishes and loaves and distributing and doing all these things.
They were right there doing the work with the greatest teacher who ever lived, the greatest
man who ever lived, obviously God in the flesh.
They are going to be pretty smart after three and a half years.
That will be three and a half years at Devil State or Satan U, right?
Three and a half years of intensive daily training with Jesus.
They took knowledge of them that they've been with Jesus.
How'd they learn so much?
How'd they get so good at preaching?
How were they so eloquent?
How were they able to turn the world upside down?
Because they used what they heard from Jesus and they were doers of the work.
That's why.
And you learn by doing.
So number one, you learn the word of God by doing.
Be a doer of the word and you will learn the word.
Number two, you learn a trade by doing, whether that's plumbing, electrical, whether you're
working with computers, whether you're working with any type of landscaping, whether you're
working with artwork, graphic design, whatever field you're in, you learn by doing.
But number three, you learn soul winning by doing.
You learn soul winning by doing.
Look if you would at Matthew chapter four verse 18, the Bible says, and Jesus walking
by the Sea of Galilee saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting
a net into the sea for they were fishers.
And he sayeth unto them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
And they straightway left their nets and followed him.
How do you become a fisher of men?
You follow Jesus.
You get in there and go soul winning with Jesus.
Well, how are you going to become a fisher of men in 2016?
Jesus is not physically here amongst us, is he?
To take you out.
Soul winning.
Hey, at one 30 if you show up here, Jesus is going to be here.
He's going to take you out soul winning and teach you.
No, that opportunity is not available for us today, but you learn the same way they
learned except instead of following Jesus, you follow someone else.
You follow someone who Jesus has trained.
You go out.
So you say, well, you know, I really want to learn how to go soul winning.
And once I'm ready, I'll go.
I'm going to study.
I'm going to memorize the verses.
I'm going to watch the seminar.
I'm going to watch the sermons about it.
And look, those are all good things to do.
I'm not downplaying that.
Watch the seminar.
You know, listen to the sermons, memorize the Romans wrote, underline the verses in
your Bible.
But you know what?
None of that's going to do you any good unless you get out there and go soul winning on a
regular basis.
It'll all just be theory.
It'll be like Spanish too.
It'll be like algebra too.
It'll be like everything that you've forgotten because you didn't use it.
And you don't have to be ready to be a silent partner.
I mean, Jesus didn't say, Hey, are you, are you sure you guys are ready to become a fisher
of men?
I mean, have you memorized the Romans road guys?
He just said, Hey, come follow me and I'll show you how it's done.
You learn on the fly.
You learn while doing, and look again, yes, go home and memorize the verses.
Yes.
Study to show yourself approved unto God, but you must have both.
We don't want to go to either extreme of just, Oh, don't read, don't study.
Just go out and do the work.
Well, then you might be doing it wrong, but get out there with an experienced person.
They'll teach you how to do it while you're learning.
You get out there and do it.
Now, the reason why people don't like this type of learning is because they have this
attitude that says, well, if I go out and do the work before I'm ready, I'm going to
make mistakes.
Isn't that how people feel?
I don't want to go out and do it wrong.
I don't want to make mistakes.
I don't want to practice wrong, but here's the thing.
You learn by making mistakes.
Making mistakes is how you learn.
You have to just get it through your head that when you'd learn a new skill, you're
going to make mistakes.
You're going to make a fool of yourself sometimes.
If you can't get over that embarrassment, then you just can't learn and you just can't
succeed at anything in life because people who succeed in life are people who try and
fail and try again and fail and try again.
You don't just go out and say, well, I'm going to go out totally prepared so that nothing
can go wrong.
Well, then you'll just never get out there.
You'll just never get out there and do it.
I mean, when you go out soul winning, there are going to be times when somebody might
stump you.
Somebody might stump you.
They might ask you a really hard question and you don't know the answer and make you
look stupid.
Well, you know what?
It's just your pride then if that will keep you from soul winning.
If you're too proud to ever be stumped or if you're too proud to ever drop your Bible.
We've all done it, right?
Accidentally drop the Bible while you're soul winning.
You know, I mean, you're too proud to be giving somebody the gospel and a bug flies in your
mouth while you're giving them the gospel.
You're too proud to walk up to the door and have somebody mock you or ridicule you or
slam the door in your face.
Well, you know what?
Then you're just too proud for God to use you.
You need to be humble enough to get out there, make mistakes, stammer and stutter, say the
wrong thing, drop your Bible, make mistakes.
And you know what, but you're going to get better at it and you're going to win souls
and God's going to use you greatly.
Get over yourself.
And by the way, people that are self-conscious need to just realize that nobody cares.
You know, people sit there and they stare in the mirror and preen themselves and they
realize that most people aren't even looking at them or even caring what they look like
that much.
I mean, I remember when I was a teenager, you know, when you're a teenager, that's what
you do.
I remember when I was a teenager, just being really worried about my parents, really worried
about my clothes, really worried about my hair and the way I looked and everything like
that.
And when I became a man, I put away childish things.
But when you're a teenager, you really worry about what people think of you and everything
like that.
And consequently, you miss a lot of opportunities as a teenager because you're too shy to get
involved or you're too shy to meet new people.
And youth is truly wasted on the young because you're just completely wrapped up in yourself
And then you get older and you realize, nobody even cared what I looked like.
Nobody even cared what my hair looked like or what my clothing looked like.
Nobody cared.
And looking back, some of the most popular people in school had the weirdest clothes
and the stupidest hair and nobody, they just didn't care.
But they just were friendly to people and they had friends.
And that leads me into my next point, which is a key point here.
Learning how to speak a foreign language, you learn by doing.
You have to use it.
You have to learn by doing when it comes to a foreign language.
One scripture that came to mind on this was 1 Corinthians 14, verse 18, if you want to
flip over there.
1 Corinthians 14, verse 18.
And speaking of being a teenager and being self-conscious, I remember when I first got
into learning foreign languages, I was about 17 years old when I really started to take
that up as a big hobby.
And when you start learning foreign languages at age 17, there's a pretty good likelihood
that you're never going to sound perfect in any of those languages because in order to
really sound perfect and roll those Rs and hock all the right phlegm in those languages
that have those kind of sound, thank God we don't have any of that in English.
But in order to hock phlegm and roll the Rs and make all these weird sounds, sometimes
you have to start that stuff when you're a little kid to really be expert at it.
And so I started when I was 17, so I got kind of a late start and I'd learned very little
foreign language training before that.
But when I was 17, I really wanted to just get serious about learning a lot of languages.
And so I really put a lot of work into learning German.
I'd learned Spanish in school, so I spent a little time on Spanish, but my main language
that I studied was German.
And I remember when I was 18, I went to Germany.
And I was in Germany for three months when I was 18, and I remember just being so embarrassed
and self-conscious that I didn't really talk.
I remember going out with a big group of teenagers and just kind of sitting at that pizza restaurant
on multiple occasions, just saying hardly anything.
And everybody's laughing and having fun and talking, and I'm just kind of sitting there
feeling a little uncomfortable.
And I understood what was being said, and I was able to say a lot of things myself,
but I was just too embarrassed because I knew I was going to say it wrong, because I'm not
fluent at that point, right?
So you don't want to blurt out something weird in German.
But I guarantee you, if I had it to do over again, I would have just blurted out every
stupid thing in the world in German, because that's how you learn.
Because later I learned that the only way to get good at a foreign language is by speaking
that foreign language, even if you have to do like a Tarzan mode, where it's just like
me, eat pizza.
That's how you learn.
You just keep talking, you just quit thinking of it as like, well, I want to sound like
a native, I want to sound perfect.
And just think of it as like, I just want to communicate.
And if you understand that language is to communicate, and you just start communicating,
and just start saying stuff and saying stuff, you'll advance ten times faster just by speaking.
And in later years I got a lot faster and better at learning foreign languages, because
I started just getting out there and making a fool of myself, and just speaking it and
doing my best.
That's how you learn.
But the people who expect everything to be perfect, they never get to succeed at all.
Look at 1 Corinthians 14 verse 18, and by the way, there are people who live in foreign
countries for 20 years and never learn the language.
There are people who live in Phoenix that have lived here for 20 years and don't speak
a lick of English.
Why?
Because they just hide somewhere in their little bubble or cocoon, they don't get out
and blurt out some English and learn how to speak the thing.
And by the way, learning a language is more like a skill than knowledge.
It's a skill.
It's something that you learn by doing, by practicing.
Look what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14 verse 18, I thank my God, I speak with
tongues.
Tongues is another word for foreign languages, like your mother tongue is your native language.
I speak with tongues more than you all, yet in the church I'd rather speak five words
with my understanding that by my voice I might teach others than 10,000 words in an unknown
tongue.
I believe that the reason why Paul could say, I speak with tongues more than you all, is
that honestly Paul did more traveling than any of these people.
I mean, look at Paul's life.
Look at the map in the back of your Bible where it has all these arrows, you know, Paul's
first missionary journey, Paul's second missionary journey, Paul's third missionary journey.
We know that he walks up to the guy that is there in Acts chapter 23 and he starts this
or 22 and he's talking to him and the guy's blown away that he speaks Greek well and he's
able to communicate fluently in Greek, then he starts speaking in the Hebrew tongue and
he's going to all these foreign countries and speaking all these languages, why?
Just because he did it, he's doing it, he's going and doing it.
But it's not just because he's traveling, it's because he went to those places and you'll
notice he'll get to town and he's soul winning just amongst the common people.
He goes down to the river where women are washing clothes and filling buckets of water
and just starts soul winning down there by the river in the book of Acts with just the
common man who's speaking the language of the street and he's able to communicate with
people all over the world.
That's how he got good at speaking a foreign language, by doing it, by speaking it, not
by just studying and, now look, there are some people that take this to another extreme
and say, oh, don't waste any time memorizing anything or don't waste any time studying
anything.
Look, if you're going to learn a foreign language, you have to study, you have to memorize vocabulary,
you know, you have to do some reading and learning.
But if that's all you do, you will fail.
You must get out there and I don't care if you know 20 words, you start speaking with
those 20 words.
Just bust out those 20 words and mix them up in as many combinations as you can and
make as many and you'll learn.
You'll get good at it, honestly.
And look, I don't consider myself a really talent, like I'm really talented with foreign
languages.
I think I'm okay at foreign languages, but I've been able to effectively communicate
in Spanish, German, Norwegian, Romanian.
I've been able to communicate in a lot of languages, but you know what?
Anybody who hears me speaking those languages would say that, hey, he's making a lot of
mistakes.
He's not perfect, you know, but I've been able to win souls in those languages.
You know, it's about communication, right?
And I'm getting better.
I'm going to improve.
You know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm going to start preaching in Spanish for the first time
in my life in a couple of weeks here, you know, and, and you say, well, are you sure
that you're ready?
No, but I'm going to do it anyway, you know what I mean?
I'm going to get up and preach the sermon anyway, because that's how you, that's how
you learn.
I want to learn how to preach sermons in Spanish, so I'm going to start preaching in Spanish
and by hook or by crook, I'm going to learn how to do it.
I'm going to get good at it.
You know, by the grace of God, you have to learn by doing, get in there, be a doer of
the work.
And in order to do that, you have to get rid of shame and embarrassment.
And look, this is, this foreign language thing is kind of a pet peeve of mine.
Okay.
Let me just get this off my chest, all right.
I remember being in a church that was really big on missions.
And so they had constant missionaries coming through and they have missionaries all over
the wall with the prayer letters and they say, we support 40 missionaries.
You know, of course they're only supporting them for like 50 bucks a month or something
or a hundred bucks a month.
So you know, obviously these missionaries have to be supported by like tons of different
churches.
But anyway, they have all these missionaries.
So these missionaries are constantly coming through on deputation and missionaries are
constantly coming through gaining support.
And because I was a guy who liked foreign languages and I've, geography was always one
of my favorite subjects.
I love maps, I love things of that nature.
I would kind of gravitate toward the missionaries when they would come through and I would always
talk to these missionaries and I would always ask them, hey, you know, are you learning
the language?
How's the language going?
Are you working on the language?
And these people would all say the same thing to me and it was just like, oh, they would
all say to me, I'm just going to wait till I get there to learn it because everybody's
telling me that, you know, if you learn it here, you're just going to learn it wrong
anyway.
So just wait and just learn it there.
It's just like, no.
I don't know who all these everybodies are, but somebody needs to take these people and
slap them around and tell them that they don't know what they're talking about.
Why would it be easier to learn it there than to learn it?
It's easier to learn it here because there's no pressure.
Okay?
They say, oh, learn it there, you'll learn it right.
You know, you're going to get the pronunciation wrong if you learn it here.
Well, guess what?
I'd rather go over there and know thousands of words, pronouncing them all a little wrong,
than to just get there and know nothing because you can adjust your pronunciation and it'll
take a week or two to clean up your pronunciation, but these guys are lazy is what it comes down
to.
They want to go.
They want to drive around in deputation doing nothing.
They show up at your church.
They don't even go soul winning yet.
They're supposedly going to be a full time evangelist over in a foreign country.
They show up at church and they skip the soul winning time.
They're not winning souls in America and then you take them to the store and you buy them
CDs and you know, I used to take them to the store and say, here, let me buy you this course.
It works.
I use this to learn German.
You're going to be a missionary to Germany here.
This works.
It comes back through a year later.
Hey, sprechen Sie Deutsch and it's like nothing.
They don't know anything.
They've learned nothing.
Well, cause somebody, yeah, somebody told you what you wanted to hear.
Somebody told you to sit on your rear end and do nothing in that car when you could
have had the Pimsleur German on learning something, gaining something, and then they go there
and then they spend like two years sitting in a language school learning the language
and then they come out of that language school.
They can't necessarily speak that language because sitting in a classroom and learning
is not always the best way to learn anyway.
And I'm telling you, these people don't, they need to get this, this principle that you
learn by doing okay.
And you learn by doing it wrong, right?
Making the mistakes growing, you know, you got to get past.
And then what I, and then the, here's my other pet peeve while I'm kind of just airing some
of my grievances is these so-called Greek and Hebrew scholars that want to tell us that
our King James Bible is wrong because they've studied the Greek, but they don't speak it.
They don't speak it though.
Now, here's the thing you have to understand.
Language involves a part of our brain that has to do with speaking.
It's a communication part of our brain where language resides.
Therefore, a person who only learns a language through reading and writing does not know
that language 100%.
It's a verbal communication skill.
That's why the translators of the King James Bible, even when they were studying dead languages,
for example, Latin, they spoke that dead language of Latin.
They spoke it to each other.
They would get together and chat for hours in Latin.
Why?
That's the only way to become an expert in a foreign language is by speaking.
Reading is not enough, but yet the Greek scholars of today, you'll never see them walking through
the streets of Athens.
You'll never see them over in that giant country over in Europe known as Greece where there
are millions and millions of Greek people to talk to.
No, they'll never be caught dead there.
And if you told them, hey, why don't you go to Greece and show us how good your Greek
is, you just don't understand that the biblical Greek is a totally different Greek.
Guess what?
It's not.
The difference between modern Greek and biblical Greek is about as different as the English
we speak today and the King James English.
Is the King James English exactly what we speak today?
It's archaic, right?
Okay.
Well, guess what?
The Bible in Greek is archaic onto a modern Greek speaker.
But you know what?
People over living in the country of Greece today, they read in Koine Greek, the New Testament.
They don't need an update.
Now, some of them have an update just like people here have a new living because they're
too lazy to learn a few new words, but new living translation or whatever.
But the bottom line is though, people in Greece every day are reading the textus receptus
are reading Koine Greek.
And then people will try to use this straw man of classical Greek is different.
Well, that's because classical Greek is about 700 years usually before the New Testament
because the biblical Koine Greek is somewhere between classical Greek and modern Greek.
Even classical Greek is not a totally different language.
But they have this goofball pronunciation, En-ar-kay-ain-ha-la-goss.
Okay.
So then they pronounce it this goofball American Erasmian pronunciation and then they wonder
why it sounds like a totally different language because you're pronouncing it wrong.
Because look, I bought flashcards, I bought biblical Greek flashcards that were the most,
the thousand most common words in the New Testament.
You go through these flashcards.
These are 1,000 most common words.
And if you learn all these flashcards, you'll know over 80% of the Greek New Testament if
you learn these 1,000 words, okay?
So as an experiment, I took the first 100 cards in the stack and I took a modern Greek
dictionary and a Koine dictionary and I compared them and literally 95% of the flashcards were
identical.
The words were identical between modern Greek and Koine Greek.
Does that sound like a totally different language to you?
I mean, yeah, people over in England talk funny.
But is that a totally different language?
People in Australia, okay, that is a totally different language.
People in Australia talk weird.
That's not a totally different language.
The King James talks different.
That's not a totally different language.
It's dialect.
It's not just a dramatically different language.
So look, if somebody ever wants to tell me that they're a Greek scholar, they better
be able to order a gyro sandwich at the Greek food festival.
And if they can't do that, then I don't think that they know the language.
And people will make fun of me and say I'm ignorant and uneducated for saying that.
But you know what, folks?
It's like the emperor's new clothes and I'm blowing the whistle on it.
The emperor's not wearing any clothes.
You know, the James whites of this world have been caught with their pants down.
They can't speak Greek.
Okay.
And therefore they're not expert in the language period because language is a skill.
It's not just knowledge.
It's a skill that you learn by doing and using.
Children learn to speak a language by speaking that language with their parents.
My kids talk to me in weird English all the time.
My toddlers come to me and say him did this and him did that.
They don't say her.
Me did this and him did that.
But they learn how to speak it perfectly.
And by the time they're adults, they're going to be perfect.
And they'll have a perfect accent.
Because people who are raised in California and Arizona speak the proper English the way
it's supposed to sound.
Right?
Amen?
All right.
Not like all these other parts of the world that have ruined it.
So anyway, I've got to hurry up.
But that's an important principle.
Don't be fooled by these modern Greek scholars.
They're a fraud.
The modern Hebrew scholars are a fraud today.
Don't be fooled by them.
Trust your King James Bible that for 400 years has stood the test of time.
It's the rock that we can anchor our soul to, our accurate English Bible for the last
400 years that's been responsible for countless salvations, countless sermons, countless revivals.
This is the Bible.
And don't let some goofball, dilettante, amateur, fake Greek scholar who can't even pronounce
it right, even in his own stupid Erasmian fake pronunciation, they don't even pronounce
that right.
But we're supposed to believe that they're an expert.
I don't believe it for one second.
I'm not buying it.
Number five, I got to hurry.
You learn about marriage and parenting by doing.
Go to first Timothy chapter three, first Timothy chapter three.
How do you learn how to have a great marriage?
How do you learn how to have children?
What am I doing?
Sometimes it cracks me up when people have been married for years and they say, well,
I'm just not ready for kids.
Well guess what?
You're never going to be ready for kids.
Well, I don't know if I can ever afford to have.
You're never going to afford to have kids.
I, you know, it, I don't even know how, you know, we even survive.
When I look at how much these kids eat and how much they cost and everything.
And I remember when my wife was pregnant with the first one, I remember thinking, I don't
know how we're going to afford this.
But we did it anyway.
And then with number two, I didn't know how we were going to afford it.
Somehow, you know, God provided, I got a raise, I was able to make more money, you know, God
provided.
The third one, I don't know how we're affording this ninth child.
I don't know how we're affording to support 11 people in our family on one income.
But you know what?
You're never going to afford it.
You're never going to be ready.
You're never going to be this expert parent.
I don't care if you memorize what to expect when you're expecting forward and backward
and all the other, but is that even, you don't recommend that book, do you or do you?
You don't?
My wife's like, oh, not what to expect when you're expecting.
You read it when you were with the first, right?
Guilty?
All right.
God bless you.
I see that hand.
What's it?
Yeah.
But you know what I'm talking about.
When my wife was pregnant with the first baby, she went to the library because this is before
the internet was a huge thing.
She went to the library and just got stacks of books at the library.
She read every, did you read every parenting book or pregnancy book or, you know, out of
breastfeed, rear infants?
I mean, she studied and studied and studied.
But I guarantee you, she probably just learned more just by doing it.
And you know, when you're a first time parent, you do all this stuff that you're not going
to need.
Like you buy the crib and the bassinet and you know, you know what the, here's another
name for a crib, laundry hamper.
All right.
We never, we have this big nice, oh, we got to have a crib, you got to have the nursery,
you got to have all the different accoutrements.
You end up using like 10% of them, 90% of them you don't need.
By the time you get to where you're having the ninth baby, being ready for the baby pretty
much means I got some clothes, I got some diapers and pretty much that electric swing.
That thing comes in handy.
This is all we need.
Electric swing, bouncy chair, bumbo, clothing and diapers.
No, we don't do the crib.
We don't do all that.
Okay.
You need a car seat.
Okay.
You need a stroller.
All right.
You need a lot of stuff.
I'm the man in this relationship, so I'm not the expert on it.
I'm not the primary caregiver.
But honestly, there's a lot of stuff you end up not needing that's overkill, you know.
The diaper genie.
That thing is the worst.
That thing's a fraud.
It makes that, those sausage links of the diapers, who knows what I'm talking about?
The diaper genie.
It puts the, it puts dirty diapers into like a link of sausages, like a link of dirty diapers.
But the problem is, it gives you this false sense of security, like, oh, well, these aren't
going to smell because they've been turned into sausage links.
So what happens is, you'll leave them in there for a day or two, and then when you go to
throw it out, it's like, you know, you're just dying of the smell.
You know, whereas, you know, once you get to our level, they just straighten the trash
and you just take out the trash frequently.
You know.
When you have 11 people, you produce a lot of trash.
Sorry, Al Gore.
We have our own personal landfill, just for our family.
But anyway, you know, the point is, you learn about being married and you learn about parenting
by doing.
Are you in 1 Timothy 3?
Look at 1 Timothy 3 verse 4, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in
subjection with all gravity, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall
he take care of the church of God?
What the Bible's saying here is that a guy who is not married and doesn't have kids does
not know how to rule a home.
You say, well, wait a minute, Pastor, he read Ephesians 5.
He read Proverbs.
He read Colossians 3.
Of course he knows how to be married.
Of course he knows how to have kids.
Of course he knows how to rule his house.
No, he doesn't, because you learn by doing.
Reading Ephesians 5 is not enough.
You better put Ephesians 5 into practice, and you're going to make mistakes, and things
are going to go wrong, and you're going to have problems, and you learn, and you grow,
and you gain the skills of marriage.
And you gain the skills of child rearing by doing, according to the Bible.
And look, this is what the Bible says, that a guy who doesn't, and before this said, hey,
he's got to be the husband to one wife, and then it says that he has his children in subjection,
because anyone who doesn't, doesn't know how to do it, because you don't know how to do
it until you've done it.
Marriage is something that you have to do.
And that leads me to my conclusion, which is this.
Don't talk about things you don't understand, because you've got to learn by doing.
Get experience.
Don't just pipe up about things you don't understand.
There are so many people who are constantly telling me how to pastor a church, but they've
never pastored a church.
They've never even had a Sunday school class.
They've never even run a hot dog stand.
But they know all about how to run a church.
I mean, I remember there was a guy one time in our church who literally couldn't even
feed his family, couldn't even provide for his own family, couldn't even, I mean, we
were constantly having to bail this guy out and buy groceries just so that his wife and
infant children could even exist, right?
And this guy was taking me aside saying, hey, I have a problem with the way that you're
running some of the things in the church, and I have a problem with the way you're running.
And he was going to explain to me, and I flat out told him to his face, and a couple people
were there at the time, I flat out told him to his face, I said, you know what?
You have a lot of nerve to come tell me how to run this church.
When I've been pastoring this church for, you know, eight or nine years, and we've never
had any debt ever, and we've always paid our bills on time, and we've never run out
of money, and you can't even feed yourself and your three other people in your family,
and you're going to sit here and be an expert on Baptist polity and how to run a Baptist
church when you can't, I said, why don't you spend a little more time worrying about your
own screwed up situation than to come in here and start telling us how to run things?
You're not even close to being qualified to be a pastor.
You're not even close to being qualified because you're taking drugs.
You're not, you know, you're spending the money on who knows what bad habits of drugs
or gambling, or we didn't know what this guy was into, but there was money disappearing,
the guy would disappear for a few days, his wife's calling us, I don't know what, I haven't
seen him in days, we don't know what he was into.
But he'd come back and the paycheck was gone.
And this guy literally comes to me and starts telling me how to run the church.
What in the world?
So we've got to be careful and go to Psalm 131, this is the last place we would turn,
to understand that you learn by doing.
So if you've never done stuff, you can't really speak as an expert on that subject until you've
done it, or at least done something similar, or at least had some experience.
Because you learn by doing.
You know, I saw somebody had some kind of a meme on Facebook or something somewhere,
I saw something where it was a picture of some, it was like a girl just coming out of
college walking on a job site and telling all these guys that they're doing it wrong.
You know, all these guys who are carpenters and masons and everything, she's got a clipboard
and a real clean hard hat and a safety glasses and she's like, I just finished four years
of school and you guys are doing everything wrong, you know, or whatever.
That's the mentality, right?
You know, just being a know-it-all, right?
I mean, there are people in this world that are know-it-alls and they're not actually
doers of the work, but they can sit back and tell you what you're doing wrong.
I mean, how many times have you seen people who don't do any soul winning saying like,
well, you guys are soul winning wrong.
I can't even count how many times I've had, and here's what I always say to those people.
Well, I tell you what, why don't you show me how, I'm going to go soul winning with
you and you can show me the right way.
But they sure know you're doing it wrong.
You're turning people away from the gospel.
It's like, well, how many souls did you win last week or last month or last year or last
decade?
I don't keep track, but I think it's zero.
Look at Psalm 131 verse one.
Lord, my heart is not haughty.
Haughty means prideful or arrogant.
Lord, my heart's not haughty nor mine eyes lofty.
Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.
So we don't want to talk about things that are overhead.
People ask me questions about things and sometimes I just tell them like, hey, that's over my
head.
I don't really understand that technology or I don't really understand that subject.
What do you think about what's going on in this part of the world, current events in
the Middle East, here, there, whatever.
If I know about it, I'll pipe up, but sometimes I just say, you know, I'm not following that.
I don't know.
I don't really know enough about it to speak intelligently about that subject, so I'd rather
just not, not pipe up.
What do you think about it?
You know, you tell me, I don't know.
Don't be that guy that just thinks that he knows about everything and just pipes up about
every and you're single and you're telling people about marriage and you don't have kids
and you're telling them how to raise their kids and say, you know, no, no, no, just no.
You know, King James, King James had a guy that came to him and was, was, you know, arguing
with him about marriage and the wedding vows and he famously told this Puritan who was
arguing with him about marriage, he asked the guy, are you married?
And the guy's like, well, no.
And he said, as for you, Dr. Reynolds, many speak of Robin Hood who never shot a bow.
You know, he said, look, you're not even married.
You know, don't tell, that'd be like, you know, schooling Robin Hood on archery.
You know, come back, get married and then come back and we'll talk.
And so many people today, you know, they have a wrong idea of what learning is.
They, look, the average person today thinks that ASU is where you're going to learn things.
Now a person could learn things at ASU if they actually went there and actually studied
on their own and applied and practiced the things that they learned.
But I guarantee you that probably a majority of people coming out of that institution don't
really learn a whole lot by being there.
Because they just kind of sit in a class, do their time, check it off and get, not to
mention the, the toxic waste that's, that's served up daily in the cafeteria down there.
And I'm not talking about the food, I'm talking about spiritually and, and mentally the garbage
that's taught.
But my point is though, going to school doesn't make you smart.
There have been plenty of people that have come out of a four year school with that degree
and they don't know anything about that subject or know very little.
And then other people who maybe started working when they're 12 in that field.
And they're an expert, you know, and a lot of successful people, you know, didn't have
formal training, right?
But I guarantee you they learned by doing.
Because anyone, and even if you have formal training, if you're not a doer of the work,
you're going to be a forgetful here.
I don't care if it's the Bible, soul winning, marriage, foreign language, trades, anything.
Again, the title of the sermon, learn by doing.
Learn by doing.
That means you want to be a godly, knowledgeable Christian, show up for soul winning.
Start putting into practice the things that you learn.
When you learn something from the Bible, apply it to your life.
Find a way to use it or you will lose it.
Father, we thank you so much for the Bible, Lord, and for all the knowledge and wisdom,
Lord.
But help us not to just be a hearer of the word.
Help us to be a doer of the work that we might learn more by doing.
Help us all to take our learning to a whole new level in all areas of life, but especially
when it comes to spiritual things.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.