Jesus Is...Knowledgable

What makes a good teacher? What kind of teacher helped you learn the best? I can think of three common characteristics of great teachers:

• They are passionate about their subject.
• They make the material relevant and interesting.
• They are authoritative in their knowledge of the subject.

Jesus is called Teacher over 40 times in the Bible. Obviously, He had all three of those things in spades.

Passion
The first thing that He preached (as written in Matthew) was "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." Wherever He went, His message was consistent and passionate, and the message was that He was the only way to receive eternal life.

Relevance
While His passion was repentance and salvation, He made it relevant by showing them that simply following the Law of Moses wasn't enough...that they had to take that and apply it throughout their daily lives instead of getting lost in ritual. That the way to believe in Him was to apply His teaching. For example, it was no longer enough to simply not murder anyone. To truly repent of your sins, you no longer should even hold any anger in your heart or be subject to the same judgement as a murderer. I call that pretty relevant.

Authoritative Knowledge
Many of the lessons Jesus taught were in the form of parables, and they usually were preceded or followed by the words, "He who has ears, let him hear." I absolutely love that. He knows what He's talking about and He wants you to actually think about it and search out the meaning as opposed to having it spoon fed to you. He covered all of the subjects of the law and wasn't afraid to call out those who clung to the law without applying it appropriately to their lives.

This is one of my favorite things about our Lord and Savior. There was just no messing around in Him. Everything He had to teach you and me is still right there in the pages of the Gospels. He delivered the material passionately, with relevance, and with the authoritative knowledge of The Most High God.

I challenge you to take time over the next couple of weeks and read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...even if you've done it before, and see if you can't find ways to apply His teachings to your life.