Jesus' New Teaching

This morning I am reading from Mark and was thinking about how it was when Jesus first started ministering. Here are a few verses - Mark 1:21-22, 27-28 NIV:

[21] "They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. [22] The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law."

[27] "The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching---and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” [28] News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee."

I was thinking about the reality of the synagogue teachings they were used to hearing, and how dry those must have seemed. It had been 400+ years since they had a prophet write anything new, and the rest of their teachings were of the law, disected into 900+ rules. They probably had some sort of 3 year cycle, but never any new teaching, rather just explaining old teachings or rules that some one else made.

Along comes Jesus and He starts teaching things like His sermon on the mount (Matt 5:1- 7:27) which was based on familiar things but wholly new and personal and clearly authored by Jesus. At the very least, they must have thought that He sounded like one of the Prophets. There must have been real excitement, real interest in what He was saying. His language was relateable, using parables and examples they could understand. He was revealing the heart of the Father to a generation who knew only rules, and regulations. He was speaking the language of relationship, and speaking as one who knew. He was doing signs and wonders that they had heard about from the Books that become the Old Testament, but had never seen them in their life. He was confronting and defeating demons and setting people free. He was healing people's sicknesses. No wonder the whole countryside came to hear about Him.

My prayer is that the Church would once again experience this type of freshness and life, this excitement that accompanied Jesus. We have the words of life, and the path to eternal life in our midst, and yet it seems that the primary message the world hears is the judgmentalness of a few "Christians". I pray that the new teachings of Jesus would shake us up and breath life into us all.

Amen!