For the message, we're turning back to 2 Corinthians 10 and especially looking at verses 3 to 5. Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. We've been looking at some of the principles from the early days of our church because it's our 45th anniversary and from the very early days of the existence of our congregation in 1951 onward, there was a great deal of discussion amongst us about Christian education. There was a basic concern to be faithful, to train up our children in the fear of God. And there was an instinctive awareness that the non-Christian world was at the opposite pole of trying to do with children what we were trying to do with our children. In the late 1950s our congregation held some seminars so that we as a people might be taught philosophy of education and especially how to instill a worldview that is biblical into the hearts of children. So there was a careful study of the purposes, the goals, the methods of Christian education. And although today there remains a deep commitment to Christian education in our congregation and because many of our people do send their children to our Christian elementary school. Yet, as we look back, probably there was a greater ability of the average parent in those early days to discuss intelligently an outlook on education. A greater ability to do so than is probably present today and we need to renew our efforts to as a congregation, have a consistent outlook on what Christian education is. In the earliest days when we held these seminars, we did not immediately launch a Christian school, partly because of the cost. It is costly to have Christian schools, and it always is costly, and it always has been costly to have Christian schools. And the other reason was that we had some difficulty in finding someone who could guide the shaping of a curriculum and the forging of a faculty that agreed with our outlook on what education of children ought to be. And we definitely did not believe that any person could do that with ease. In the early 1960s we did form a school board to look for such a principal who could guide our school and the Lord eventually led us to a man named Lauren Rine who was an experienced educator and certainly held the views of Scripture that we do. So that in the fall of 1968 we opened our Christian elementary school with Mr. Rine as one of the teachers and a second teacher And the second teacher is still teaching in our Christian school. She's teaching kindergarten and mathematics in the upper grades and basic computer skills. And that's Mrs. Kronheim. She was called Miss Diller in those days. And then Bruce came to town and he thought he would take her away from us, but we wouldn't let her go and he had to settle in Carlisle. Or maybe you better let him tell the story from his viewpoint. But we're glad that Judy is still with us as a teacher. And throughout the history of our Christian school, we have maintained this school with teachers who are Christians with much prayer and at much sacrifice and expense to aid parents in a task that they could not do all by themselves and to labor to provide foundation for the faith in rising generations. And Christian churches throughout the history of the Christian church have started schools at all levels, elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges, graduate schools, to defend the faith that was once delivered to the saints. And next week we will begin our 28th year of Christian education. And through those 28 years we've probably averaged about 100 students. That would be an average. We'll have 125 this year. And we want to look at a text of scripture that goes to the heart of the philosophy of education. There are Christian parents today who send their children to Christian schools for very surface reasons. Reasons like, we want a school with better academics than we can get in a public school. Well, that's a very surface reason. We want, I've even heard of people who chose schools on the basis of where there were good sports teams. Parents, not just the children. That's a surface reason. Or people say, well we want our children to go to a school where there's not a problem with drugs and violence. Again, a very surface reason. Although to some individuals that may seem like the whole world to them, it is a surface reason and does not enter into the heart of a biblical view of education. In 2 Corinthians 10 we have these verses that I've read to you at the start of the message and in the immediate context Paul is talking about a conflict in Corinth between the truth that he taught and error which was leading the people astray. And it was going to be a conflict and so he talks about waging war and how he's going to go about waging war when he shows up in Corinth and faces down this error that is being taught in the church. But as you see in verse 5, Paul is talking about knowledge and he is talking about thoughts and he is talking about truth confronting error. And therefore, in many books on Christian education you will find a prolific use of this passage of Scripture because it has always struck teachers that education is a war and it is an exercise in spiritual or mental warfare. It is a mental conflict. The teacher warring against the mind of the student and the student against the teacher. Education involves a hostile engagement. And that is a biblical view of education as we shall proceed. And it points up again the absolute necessity of a teacher that knows what the teacher is doing in guiding the process of education, the centrality of the teacher in Christian education. You cannot give a student workbooks and put him in a corner and have him educate himself by personally covering certain material through personal discipline. It takes a teacher to enter into the engagement and the warfare that is involved in education. And that begins, of course, in our text with the condition of the student. What is the condition of a student who enters a school and needs to be educated? What about the subjects of education, the people who are to be educated? Now, whatever the state, I mean our government, claims about religious neutrality, it is impossible to have a discussion on education with religious neutrality. It is impossible. When our state, when our government chooses teachers, it chooses teachers who come out of schools, sometimes they're state schools, like Shippensburg University, Sometimes they're private schools like Dickinson College or Messiah College that are around us. But the first thing that they expect of a teacher is that early in the process they study what is called child psychology or developmental psychology. And in any class of child psychology, the very first question to be raised is when a child is born into the world, is the child good, is the child evil, or is the child neutral? And that is the question that is faced in these psychology classes. And all of the answers of education are drawn from the conclusion to that religious question, that theological question. Is the child at birth good or evil or neutral? The vast majority of teachers who teach in the public school system believe that the children are either good or neutral. Probably most believe that at birth they are neutral, they are like a blank sheet of paper, and that education is to form them. They come like putty to be formed into, molded into, a certain way of living. And actually, I'm amazed at how many Christians get ecstatic over the statements by the modern Republican Party that they believe in the goodness of the American people. Sorry, I left you at that one. And so did the Bible. We do not believe in the goodness of man, not in the goodness of American man. Not any Christian who has read his Bible believes that. We all like to be positive, we all like to be optimistic, but the Christian cannot be optimistic about the character of the students that enter his school. And I would guess that when it comes to formulating the idea of what the Bible teaches about a child, you may in your Sunday school class think the thoughts of the Bible, but when you take that sweet little five-year-old to kindergarten, you don't believe that that sweet little five-year-old is depraved like the Bible says he or she is. We want to protect them from the evil influences. But the Christian view is that the most evil of the influences are within those little hearts that arrive at school on the very first day. A. A. Hodge, a theologian at Princeton at the end of the last century, used to like to say to his students, If you roll a pair of dice a thousand times and every time you roll them they come up sixes, you can be sure that the dice are loaded. And when you find children born into the world and every single one of them turns out to be a sinner, you can be sure that the dice are loaded. And so it is with the Christian outlook on education. Verse 5 tells us that every child arrives at school with arguments ready at hand against the truth, against morality, and against authority. They have arguments within their little hearts, and they may not be able to formulate them very philosophically, but they are there in attitudes and in words. They arise from an evil fallen nature, and the teacher has a battle on her hands. It is a war. They have pretensions or high things that arise from pride. No one has to teach a child pride. Why the public school system or any school system thinks that we have to raise the self-esteem of children, they have not read the Bible, which tells us that men are born in pride and that that pride is there by nature. There are ramparts that are daring you to bring the truth. And it is because they are children of Eve and Adam. And it was Eve who first said, in effect, I am not going to take God's Word for anything. I am going to think for myself. And I am going to decide what's true and I am going to decide what is best and I am going to decide what is good. And so she overthrew the Word of God and investigated for herself. And it is that attitude that is sown in the heart of every offspring of Adam and Eve. So the Christian educator may never assume that deep in the child lies all the potential needed to discover truth. He cannot just somehow urge the child to bring out all that he needs to know because it's there. How we've gotten to the place that we take the youngest children to comment on world affairs and to tell the rest of the nation that we need to listen to what the children have to say, I do not know. They need an education and they need someone to teach them what's true and what's right. And we certainly cannot allow the children to place their own values on things. I don't even know how Christians have gotten to the place that they will use the words of public education that talks about values instead of ethics. A value is the work that we place upon something. If you walk into the store and an item costs $100 and you say, I'm only willing to pay $50, you've placed a value on it. And education is not about placing values on anything. It's about declaring absolutes. What God has said is true and what God has said is right and moral. And what God has said He has set up as authority over us. And the process of education is in realizing and bowing to God's declaration of truth. So we are not encouraging children to be all that they can be and to realize their potential. But we are encouraging children to realize what they are and repent of it. And to seek to be more in the image of God instead of what they are. And that is a battle and that is not easily done. The best education and the only real education begins with humility and honesty. The student must realize what he is and what world he is part of. He is a part of a race against which the wrath of God is already being revealed from heaven. Not it will come, it is on us right now. Just look at the cities of America. The wrath of God is upon us. And it has come upon us from heaven because of the godlessness and the wickedness of men. And men and women are suppressing the truth by their wickedness. No one is in search of the truth. Human beings are suppressing the truth. God has made certain truths very plain to everyone so that no one is excusable for having this activity of suppressing the truth. But men refuse to glorify God. And their hearts are darkened by God in judgment. The hearts of men are darkened. Those who claim to be wise are fools. And the students have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, just like their fathers and mothers and the society around them. And that has resulted in our society in a flood of social, pathological wickedness that the children cannot wait to participate in. Indecent, perverted and self-destructive acts of behavior are everywhere and the young are eager to join in. God has given them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. Now there are many people who disagree with the Bible. who think that although I may be sinful and society around me may be sinful, at least the mind of man is not affected. So that if we educate the mind, the mind can lift us to higher moral levels. What the Bible says is that the mind has been darkened. The foolish heart has been darkened. It has been delivered over by God to perverse and wicked things. The Christian believes then that children have already decided that it is not worthwhile to have the kind of knowledge that they need to have. And the teacher has a war on her hands, on his hands, to persuade the child otherwise. Again I say this has come from the devil's statements to Eve who said to Eve, did God really say to you that you can't eat the fruit of this tree? No, you will not surely die as God said you would surely die. Can't you see, Eve, that it is desirable to have this fruit? Think for yourself, Eve. Don't listen to what God said. Some years ago when I read Alan Bloom's excellent secular book on the closing of the American mind, a man who was recognized as a great teacher. I was absolutely fascinated with the honesty with which he spoke. He said, as a college teacher, the thing that I used to love is getting children who had been taught by their parents and taught by their churches, who would arrive and as a teacher I would persuade them not to bow to the authority of their parents and not to listen to the authority of the Bible or the religion that they were taught. And if I could succeed in knocking down their confidence in all other authorities, then I had the excitement for a few years of leading them into my ideas. But now the nation has learned the lesson too well and parents aren't teaching the children anything by authority. And the lower schools have already told the children not to think as their parents think and not to use the Bible as an authority. And so when they arrive at college, There's nothing to knock down and there's no excitement about learning. And there's no ability of the college professor to teach them anything. This is the method of the devil. Knock down the authority of God. Use your mind for yourself. Think for yourself. Investigate. Be inductive. You decide what the truth is. That is not education. Of course, modern state education has enshrined that system in the public schools. If there is a God, lock him inside the churches and don't let him be discussed in the school. Don't bring God into any discussions in the classroom. He is not an acceptable authority. The minds of men will decide all things in our classrooms. And of course, when children come to the Christian school, we teach them by rote, like it or not. Why do you need a prophet? Because I am ignorant. Because I am ignorant. And we hope they repeat it day by day until they get that idea in their minds and in their hearts they are ignorant and they cannot determine the truths for themselves. But it's worse than that ignorance. There is antagonism within the heart and if there were time we could talk about the attitude that I don't want to know the truth. Or the attitude that I know all that I need to know already. Or the attitude that if there is anything to be known, I'll find it out for myself and I don't need the teacher or the textbook or the parent or the church or the Bible to tell me. Or the attitude, I already know something better than what you're trying to teach me, teacher. I live on the streets and I know the important stuff and you don't. or the attitude of despair. You never can really find out any truth, so I don't even want to start. Well, the public school knows this, at least those who have formulated the philosophy of education in public schools know very well that when the human mind sets out to discover truth, it never discovers the truth about anything. Not anything. And those who teach child psychology and those who teach philosophy in our universities know it very well and have reached the conclusion of the matter, only they try not to tell the children. But the dirty secret leaks out and the children begin to find out sooner or later that there isn't any truth to be discovered. And then there isn't any reason to study. And they want to drop out. They want to drop out Just like the kindergarten student who, after one week of class, announces to the mother, I'm not going back next week. I've already done the school thing. I've gotten all the wisdom that I need to know. But when they realize that there isn't any truth to be found, when you start out with the human mind in investigation, when it dawns upon them there's no longer any reason to pursue study of anything, except perhaps. the pragmatism of Dewey, who said, well, facts are facts, and numbers are numbers, and it's at least useful to learn some things. It's at least useful for getting a job and earning money. But what if the students don't care about getting a job? And what if they think that there's something wrong with all of the passion for money in the world today? Then what reason do they have to learn? Why not cheat and get a job? Why not cheat? If there's no truth to be known, why not cheat and move on to a good college and then a good job? Well, there are many reasons that people have for Christian education or for education in general, but the Christian view of education is that we have students. who are at enmity with God and at enmity with truth and at enmity with authority and the teacher has to do battle. Now the task of the teacher is also mentioned in our text. The good news is that education does have tools for the job. You notice that in verse 4. The weapons we fight with Well, maybe it starts with the bad news. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world, not the weapons of the public school. They don't have any weapons that will work in this warfare. Not any. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, we have divine power to demolish the strongholds. Divine power attending the divine word. Divine power in answer to prayer. Divine power when absolute truth is stated to the children. We have divine power with our weapons that are not the weapons of the world. You can't do it that way and have divine power attend. And this divine power does demolish the arguments and pretensions that are set against the knowledge of God in the hearts of all children. There are weapons that work. and it does demolish these things. Teachers must know the inward arguments of the child and how to batter them down. And the teacher must know the weapons with which to labor so that divine power will attend and our confidence is not in human things. There are the battering down of the arguments and the walls of defense against learning that children set up automatically in their hearts. And then there is the work of taking captive every thought. Actually, the word is everything that comes out of the mind must be captured and made obedient to Jesus Christ. And the principle of truth in action is morality, obedience to Jesus Christ. Every thought obedient to Christ. Why the thought? Why not just the morality? Because thoughts have consequences. And moral actions arise from what men think. And education makes sense because the only way to change the behavior of a man effectively is to change his thinking. And every thought, none accepted, must be brought into obedience to Jesus Christ. Because we love Christ, because Christ is the Lord every thought, no subject in science, no subject in the humanities, no subject in philosophy or religion must be allowed to run away on its own, but must be brought into subjection to Jesus Christ and conscious obedience to Jesus Christ. Nothing in the child must be undevoted to God. And for this, the teacher must study all subjects on a level that the world does not. And grapple with the fallen student until all, every thought is brought into obedience to Christ. Knock down the defenses. Then grab every thought before it runs away and bring it captive to Jesus Christ. You see Paul talking about his master plan of assaulting the fortress which is against the truth. And it's out of Christ that we do labor. Out of love for Christ that we labor. Notice then the goal of education. Verse 5, the knowledge of God in Christ. That sounds like religion, not education. The world tries to drive them apart. They cannot be driven apart as we've already mentioned. They cannot be separated. Such knowledge leads to obedience to Christ. Notice the text in our bulletin. It's taken from Job 28.28. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. It's repeated in just slightly different words in Proverbs 1.7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the principal part of wisdom. It is the starting point of wisdom. And the school that says, we will make you wise without any talk about God, is foolish. And those who will not begin with God will end in despair, as all systems of human philosophy have ended. The chief subject of education is who God is until the child comes to fear him. He is the one who made me. He is the creator. I am a creature. He thinks creatively. I think analogically. I must think his thoughts after him or I will never know any truth. He is absolute. He is infinite, eternal, unchangeable. He is God. His thoughts are not like our thoughts. His ways are not like our ways. We do not think as God is. The answer to the devil when he came to Eve, Eve, can't you see for yourself that this fruit is good? The answer is, I am not infinite and I am not eternal and I am not unchangeable. Only God is and God said that I must not eat of that or I will be cursed. So there is no blessing in the fruit because God said so and He is altogether different than me. And my thoughts are not like His and I am not capable of doing combat mentally with God. Fear of God, the recognition that He is absolute is the starting point of wisdom. All the experiments in education and all the flights of human imagination without the knowledge of God have ended up in despair. But even when they are in despair, they are fiercely determined that God will not enter into the question. Well, people say, let's be pragmatists. I mean, all of this sounds philosophically so high, as a parent I don't even understand it. kind of school for my children. It is the nicest building where they'll get to the best college and then get the best job and earn the most money and they will live happily ever after on earth. So we teach the boys mechanics. And the boys become very good locksmiths. But when they become locksmiths, do they crack safes? Or do they protect homes and banks? Just knowing the mechanics of how you deal with a lock is not the answer. Without morals, it means nothing. We make men and women great doctors, but what if they decide to use their skills in putting people to death? What if they had preferred to abort fetuses for any and every reason for the mere convenience of the woman who is having the child. What if their driving motive is money alone through their surgery and then sewing up people again? What if they have no moral courage to stand up against the insurance companies that determine what the treatment of a patient will be? And the doctor himself no longer cares about whether he's doing what's best for the patient, but only what will continue to bring him money from the insurance agency. The ethical problems in medicine are the biggest problems of the day. We train good police officers, but what if they become cynical about the system of justice? What if they can't distinguish any longer who the good guys are and who the bad guys are? After all, our society is changing its mind on that, and what a few years ago we told the policemen they're the bad guys, we're saying no, change your mind on that, they're the good guys. So who's to know? What if they use all of their forceful skills for personal ends? And on and on the questions can go. The Mad Bomber, after all, wrote some very eloquent words on paper. Profound words of thought about society and technology. Well educated and blowing up people. The questions of society are not ability to function and to get other people to pay you for functioning. The fear of God, the knowledge of God, the Maker, the Judge, the Redeemer is the only foundation of ethics for time and eternity. So, godless education is on a futile mission. having given man no basis to know anything true for certain, no absolutes in morality, and not having addressed the defenses in the human mind, but having reinforced them. Don't listen to your parents. Don't listen to what the Bible says. Don't even talk about that. We're going to start with the human mind and investigate and reach all of our conclusions without those things. And then society becomes outraged at the logical products of their own system. Let's get tough on crime. We don't want criminals on the street. Why not? They grew up in your schools. They decided to be most consistent with your teachings. Now we'll get bigger and meaner jails. That's conservative, isn't it? But who really says what the bad crimes are? the community in its consensus. There's less and less consensus because of schools that are teaching that you can't know for sure. And bashing the teachers union will not help this problem one bit. School choice is not working. There has been school choice. I think what people mean by school choice today is We want to make the choice without any cost to us. Put the money in our pocket and then we'll feel like we have the choice. But years ago we determined to have Christian education as the only acceptable education and believed it was worth the cost to work at it. And we thank God for our little school and its effort in this battle for the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. And we salute the men and the women who have sacrificed because they believe in God-centered education, and teachers who may be sacrificed even more than the parents. But you see, we're talking about an antithesis, an antithesis of view. What is the condition of the student? What is the chore of the teacher? What are the tools that are needed? What is the outcome that is desired? Different answers. by the world and by the Word of God. There really is no choice in education if you follow the Word of God, but to work with all of your heart, to do what Paul says here, to use the weapons that are not of the world, to demolish the strongholds that are in the hearts of young people, and to demolish the pretensions, the high, proud ideas that are within them. and to take every thought captive and obedient to Jesus Christ. May God give us grace to keep working at it. Let's bow together in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the clarity of your word on some things. And yet, where there is clarity, it leaves us with more questions. And we come to you in prayer to ask for strength and determination and faith to do for our children what we should do at home, in the Sunday school, the youth groups, Christian school, wherever there's an opportunity to do so. But we cast ourselves upon you. It takes divine power to cast down the strongholds within the heart. It took divine power to cast down those strongholds within us. We pray that you will make in the rising generation a young people who are humble, fearing of God, believing in His truth, walking in His righteousness. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.