“Be Not Wise In Thine Own Eyes”

Rev. Jeremy Walker

Proverbs 3:7 – Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

Genesis 3:4-6
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Transcript: Jeremy Walker: 00:00 You’re listening to the Preschool Pioneers Podcast. And I am your host, Reverend Jeremy Walker. Today on the Preschool Pioneers Podcast we are you’re going to talk about what it means to not be wise in our own eyes. And Preschool Pioneers is brought to you by the GCS Apprenticeship Program, an apprenticeship program which seeks to find young men and women and to train them to be successful Christian school teachers and how to own and operate their very own Christian school. If this sounds of interest to you or someone you might know, you can visit the website at gcsapprenticeship.com. Jeremy Walker: 00:34 Now, let’s go ahead and get started. We’re going to be discussing a few things. The main focus of the Preschool Pioneers Podcast is going to be one thing. And if this is something that you’re tuning in to for the very first time, that you need to know is that we want to explain why Christians should become teachers, and that’s a very important subject to us here on Preschool Pioneers. Jeremy Walker: 00:57 We focus on early Christian childhood education, and that’s specifically between the ages of infancy up through of course the age of kindergarten or first grade, or up through the age of about 11 or 12. The main focus we have is going to be important because the main moral values and the main focus that people have, religious core values, those are taught at a young age. The main focus is not normally on young children, choose young elementary age groups, middle school, high school, or college. Jeremy Walker: 01:31 And the reason for that is that people for some reason falsely believe that religion and moral values is a thing of the intellect, when in fact it’s not. It’s actually a thing of the spirit. So we’re going to discuss and begin here about why Christians should become teachers. And we’re going to be starting with something from Proverbs 3:7. The Bible verse here we’re going to find is, “Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil.” That’s Proverbs 3:7. Jeremy Walker: 02:06 What we’re going to be discussing is why is it that Christians should become teachers? And this verse right here is a prime example of what we’re talking about here and. We have these nice little image quotes we’ve been creating about why Christians should become teachers and they’ve been very popular with people on the Internet, and social media, and things like that, on our GCS apprenticeship website. At gcsapprenticeship.com you can find a whole bunch of these little quotes we’ve made, little image quotes about why Christians should become teachers, gcsapprenticeship.com. Jeremy Walker: 02:37 But it’s very popular. Why are image quotes popular? Why are these little Bible verses popular? I think the reason why they’re popular is because people don’t really put too much thought into them. They seem to agree with it when they say, “Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord. Depart from evil.” People can kind of get behind these kind of Bible quotes; they’re kind of inspirational. Jeremy Walker: 02:59 But I don’t think people really putting much thought into it at all, at least where education is concerned. This Bible verse goes back to, if you didn’t know it, the very first original sin in the garden, to be wise in your own eyes. Now, if you’re not familiar with the correlation, going back to Genesis 3, you have the serpent in the garden. You have Eve, the very first woman. She is of course being talked to by the serpent. And of course the serpent is talking to her about what God said and all the rest. Jeremy Walker: 03:32 And then of course you could jump into verse 4. “And the serpent says unto the woman, ‘You shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This is Genesis 3:4 through 5. That’s the basic original sin, the basic original lie that was given to mankind that “You can be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Jeremy Walker: 03:59 If you go into verse 6 and you move along from there, it’s very simple what happened next. And in verse 6 it says, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Jeremy Walker: 04:21 The idea from the very beginning is how to be wise. This is all the way back to the garden, what it means to be wise, what it means to know good and evil, to be a wise person, to be an intelligent person, to be a reasonable person. As far as education is concerned, as far as our children are concerned, this is one of the reasons why Christians should become teachers. We have to teach our children where wisdom comes from, what it means to be wise. Jeremy Walker: 04:49 The very first problem here is like in Proverbs 3:7, “Be not wise in thine own eyes.” This means not to trust yourself. All of education … I’m probably sure our listeners may or may not know this, but early childhood education at the very core, humanistically speaking, is teaching children how to become reasonable beings, how to determine for themselves good and evil. This is what they’re doing, how to think clearly, how to be reasoned. People have a problem with the new math we have, Common Core math. So they’re not just teaching them how to solve problems, but why we have these problems, of why two plus two equals fours and all the rest of stuff that goes with it. Jeremy Walker: 05:33 It’s only crazy if you don’t understand the premise behind it. It’s only crazy because you don’t actually understand what the current educational field is trying to do to students with this new math and all kinds of other stuff that goes with it, specifically their views on early childhood education and their methodologies of how children are supposed to not have authority figures and they’re not supposed be told what to do. But it’s best to kind of put them in the environment and let them kind of learn from their own. Jeremy Walker: 06:03 This goes back to Russo and lots of other books that are out there where the teacher was not the teacher; teacher kind of like was the facilitator, kind of sat beside the student but didn’t command; they didn’t tell them things, kind of helped them learn as they went. So basically they learned on their own. They learned at their own pace and lots of other things like this, basically teaching them how to know something. That’s what the new Common Core math and all those other things were about, how things were two plus two is four and how we come up with all these answers, instead of just what the answers were. Jeremy Walker: 06:39 The reason for it is because they didn’t want people just to know the answers to things because this is what they were: two plus two is four. They wanted them to know how to come to those answers and how in the future to come up with new answers, because if they could know the way to think, the way how decisions are made, then in the future, as they grow, they’ll be able to make their own decisions. They’ll know for themselves. They don’t need people to teach them or tell them what to do or how to do something, they’ll just learn it on their own. They’ll come up with their own answers out of their own abilities. Jeremy Walker: 07:16 That’s exactly what happened with the original sin because take away authority, take away being told what to do. And we’ll just come up with the own idea. I think this is a good idea for me. This will make me wise. Well, the problem is it gets rid of the sin nature. It denies it altogether. And Proverbs 3:7 is not denying the sin nature. It says don’t do this. Don’t try to be wise in your own eyes. Don’t try to determine for yourself. Don’t try to trust yourself. Don’t look at yourself as if you can come up with the answers without God. That’s the main thrust here with Proverbs 3:7 and of course with the original sin from the garden. Jeremy Walker: 08:00 The next part is “fear the Lord and depart from evil.” “Fear the Lord” means, if you go back into other Proverbs, which I’m sure we’ll get to eventually, to fear the Lord is to hate evil and the evil way. To hate evil means you have to know the commandments. And to know the commandments means that you are trusting and bowing to God’s authority, God as creator, God telling you what is right, God telling you what is wrong, and then you agreeing with that. That is the fear of God. Jeremy Walker: 08:30 To hate evil means to hate to steal, and to hate to lie, and hate to covet, and hate to be disobedient and all the rest that goes in between. And then to depart from evil, how can you depart from evil unless you have a standard? The reason why Christians should become teachers, and basic here in Proverbs 3:7, comes to, number one, teaching about the original sin. Jeremy Walker: 08:56 The original sin of mankind, man’s original problem is that he does not want anyone to tell him what to do. He does not want any authority figure—it doesn’t matter if it’s a teacher, or a parent, specifically God—to tell him what to do. And the new modern education field tells people not to set yourself up as an authority; don’t set yourself up as an authoritarian figure, as a teacher or as the parent. And of course there is no authority of God because there is no such thing as God. So it’s not a very big surprise for these people because their very premise is that there is no God. Jeremy Walker: 09:40 The reason why Christians should become teachers, and I’m hoping is becoming evident here as we discussed this and talk about it, is because the entire educational field has taken this verse and turn it on its head, turned it on its head completely. Every humanistic educational facility, that’s every public school in America, is teaching the opposite of here. It’s not saying, “Be not wise and then own eyes.” The humanistic educational field is saying you can learn to be wise on your own. That’s what our goals are, for you to learn how to be reasonable, logical, how to learn it for yourself, not to have somebody tell you what’s right and wrong, but you to actually create morality, you to determine for yourself what is right for you and what is not right for you. Jeremy Walker: 10:25 You’ll see it all throughout media and TV and news, how the young people today are being taught not to agree with what any type of morality that happened in the past, not to have anybody tell them what to do. So they are deliberately and purposely teaching against this type of a Bible verse right here. They are teaching children to attempt to be wise in their own eyes, back to the garden, back to the original rebellion against God, back to the idea that I don’t need somebody to tell me what is right and wrong. I will not have somebody to tell me what is right for me or not right for me, I will determine it for myself. Jeremy Walker: 11:07 They’re not teaching people to fear God, as here it says, “Fear the Lord and depart from evil.” The humanistic educational field is teaching there is no Lord. There is no God. So how can you fear God? How can you find the standard? What is evil? They don’t know. Evil to them is whatever they determine is evil. See, people with communism and socialism and all the things in between, theft isn’t evil. Theft becomes a virtue. Stealing from the rich guy, giving to the poor guy seems to be a virtue, and all the things in between. Jeremy Walker: 11:43 If you don’t agree with somebody nowadays, they can completely destroy you politically, personally, verbally. It doesn’t matter. You have become the enemy, so they will depart from you, but not from the breaking of God’s commandments. The reason why Christians should become teachers is this concept right here, which is not being taught. As a parent or a teacher, you need to focus on this idea, this idea, especially as parents: What are your children being taught? Are you sending your children to a school that’s teaching them not to be wise in their own eyes, or are they being sent to a educational facility which teaches them the opposite of this? Jeremy Walker: 12:26 Are you sending them to a school where they learn to fear the Lord or one being told that there is no Lord? Are you being told, are your children being taught to depart from evil, evil being defined as the breaking of God’s commandments? Or are you sending your children to an educational facility that says there are no commandments, you come up with your own idea of morality, you determine for yourself what you think is reasonable? Jeremy Walker: 12:56 What we don’t realize is the entire humanistic educational organization, everything about it is just the rehashing of Satan’s original temptation and his original lie. See, Christian are supposed to, as the Bible says, “turn the world upside down.” But we’re not turning the world upside down because these little image quotes, which, like I said, they’re fun, they’re interesting, people love little Bible verses, but why Christians should become teachers is really paramount in these little Bible verses, like Proverbs 3:7: “Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil.” Jeremy Walker: 13:34 No one can teach children to do this except for Christians. They have to have a biblical foundation where, number one, there is a God. Number two, he has a law. And number three, the way to prosperity is by obeying that God, by obeying that law. That’s how you’re going to prosper. That’s how you’re going to succeed in life, not the opposite. The entire humanistic educational structure is teaching the complete opposite of Proverbs 3:7, the entire opposite of everything that’s in the Bible. And they’re deliberately teaching against the Bible. And they knowingly are doing it. Jeremy Walker: 14:19 So the real question is, why are Christians putting up with it? Why are they doing it? You have to ask yourself that question. Why if Christians would like such Bible verses such as these, why would they then send their children to humanistic institutions or think that there’s no harm in it? There’s no harm in it. Well, there was harm in it, the harm of such a thing like we read earlier in the book of Genesis. The harm is that your children are going to be taught something that they’ll want to hear. Jeremy Walker: 14:53 Eve didn’t hate what the serpent was saying. Adam didn’t hate what the serpent was saying. They liked to hear that. They liked to hear that God wasn’t actually telling the truth. That’s not changed from Genesis to 2019. Satan and the basic premise of the lie of every humanistic education facility is that the word of God is not true, period. That is lie number one. Lie number two, you will prosper. You can be as God. You can be God. You get to determine for yourself what is right and wrong. You get to determine for yourself what is moral and not moral. You get to determine not just for yourself but for others as well. Jeremy Walker: 15:47 So Christians need to become teachers because without Christian teachers, actual Christian teachers, then children will not be taught this. And currently they’re not being taught this. If anybody wants to know why America is in the current state that it’s currently in, this is number one. We might have teachers, but we do not have Christian teachers. We have Christians that are in schools. We have Christians that are teachers, but we don’t have true Christian teachers, because to be a Christian teacher doesn’t mean to just hold a private personal Christian faith. To be a Christian teacher means that is what you are teaching. You are teaching the word of God to your students. You are teaching them, “Do not be wise in your own eyes.” Don’t trust yourself. Trust God. You need to fear God. Jeremy Walker: 16:46 One, yes, it does mean in the garden they did not fear death. They did not fear death. And when we say right now to obey God, we’re also saying the same thing because God says, “All those that hate me love death.” And here it’s not just physical death but also spiritual death. As a we are teaching people to fear God, they should be afraid. It is the most reasonable thing on the planet. A person that has their faculties are afraid of harming themselves, they’re afraid of danger, they’re afraid of hurting themselves. That is the height of reason and logic. Jeremy Walker: 17:24 The irrationality is to not be afraid of that thing which is going to hurt you. In this case there is a God, and God is saying you are going to be punished if you do things against what I tell you to do, like in the garden. And sure enough Satan lied, mankind fell, all the punishments came with it. But here, if Christians become teachers, they can teach their students to not be wise, to fear the Lord, and then to depart from evil. And by doing that, they will be giving life to their students. Jeremy Walker: 18:00 The opposite is what’s actually taking place. The current educational institutions in America and across the world are not giving life to their students. Instead, they’re teaching them the lie from the garden. And instead of giving life, they’re going to give them death. Jeremy Walker: 18:22 So I want to thank everybody for joining with us today again for Preschool Pioneers. We want to thank you for this little episode here about why Christians should become teachers and what it means not to be wise in your own eyes, but to fear God and depart from evil. And as we do that, we are going to prosper, both ourselves personally as parents, as teachers, and of course our communities as a whole as well. Jeremy Walker: 18:51 So we’d like to thank everybody for joining us again for this episode of the Preschool Pioneers Podcast. You can find this episode and more on our website at cr101radio.com. And for those who would like to do more than talk about why Christians should become teachers, but actually like to learn how to become a Christian teacher yourself, please remember you can visit our website at gcsapprenticeship.com for more information about how we can help you learn how to become a Christian school teacher and how to own and operate your very own Christian school. Until then, thank you for joining us, and God bless.