You can read every book on the shelf and still miss the truth because books cannot teach you the truth. Truth is not something you study. It’s someone you meet. Hey, before we get started, grab your cup of coffee. I want to help you set the tone and the stage for a great week.
Share this video with a friend who might need some encouragement and some hope. Also, I hope you’ll subscribe to the channel and also sign up for our email newsletter. Lots of great stuff that goes out about faith, family, and our country. You might be wondering what I mean books can’t teach you truth. I mean, I’m a guy surrounded by books.
I love books. I mean, I’ve collected lots of them and I have learned so much from books. But books have limitations. For instance, books can teach us information. Books can give us insight. Books can teach us about history. Books can give us perspective, but information is not the same as truth. Our culture assumes that more information equals more truth.
But the Bible teaches us the reverse. It says that truth is what allows us to understand information. The Bible actually teaches us that truth is not something that we learn academically. It’s something we learn relationally. And this whole idea of truth being learned relationally, not just intellectually, goes all the way back to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6.
Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart with all your soul and with all of your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
Did Did you hear that? Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and with all of your strength. And parents are commanded to teach truth to their children all throughout life. When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise up, truth is supposed to be woven into all of life and relationships, not just lessons.
Truth moves from heart to heart, from parent to child, from husband to wife, from friend to friend, not just from page to mind. Okay. Now, check out Ephesians 4. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus. Now notice there it doesn’t say that as you learned about Christ.
It says as you learned Christ himself the person. Christianity true religion is not just information about God. It’s knowing a person. Books are great. I have lots of them that teach me about theology and worldview and perspective and devotionals, even the Bible itself. and they all point to Christ, but it’s not a replacement for knowing him.
Okay, let’s jump now to Ephesians 6 verse 4. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. That word there, admonition, is also the instruction of the Lord. But if you look at the root of the Greek word, the idea there is really to nourish, to nourish them up in the Lord.
