“The things that you have heard … commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
When in my teens I was asked to teach Sunday School. As I remember it the qualifications were that I was old enough and had been taught in Sunday School most of my life. At the time I believed that I was a Christian but I later discovered that I wasn’t. I knew nothing of Biblical requirements to teach others. I was given a class of boys about 10 years younger than myself. One of those boys was my brother. He knew me at home, at play and something of my social life. We didn’t get along at all. Perhaps he saw what Jesus saw in the Pharisees, “they say, and do not.”
That church was careless in the selection process for a Sunday School teacher and those boys may bear a terrible outcome. To this date, decades on, my brother is quite indifferent to the Gospel.
Not having been born of God I was easily attracted to the things of the world. I was out late three or four nights each week and very late Saturday night. It wasn’t unusual for me to role up at Sunday School to teach my class with no preparation and only a few hours sleep. As I reflect on that now I am absolutely mortified.
In the two or three years that I lived like this my role was never reviewed and no one ever spoke to me about the way I lived. Not only my own brother but several other boys suffered. Their parents may have thought their sons were receiving faithful Biblical teaching.
This has been a perpetual lesson to me ever since I received Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. The church had the responsibility to ensure that the sons and daughters of the church were being taught by faithful men and women. If we fail this, we fail our children in a most awful way. I sometimes wonder if any of the parents of the boys I taught have wondered why their sons did not follow the Lord.
We need to be sure that the children of our church are receiving faithful teaching from godly people. This is not just the responsibility of parents but the whole church family.
Please be in prayer concerning who the Lord would have teach our children in Sunday School and please let Him know that you are available for Him to ask should He wish to do so.
Only faithful men and women can train others to become faithful men and women.