Articles
Why Teaching?
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From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." . . . And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. (Matt. 4:17, 23)
Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. (Jn. 8:2)
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The signs and wonders that Jesus performed drew large crowds, but it was His teaching that had the biggest impact on His contemporaries. Whether in a synagogue, from a boat, on a mountainside, in the temple, or in a private home, Jesus never passed up an opportunity to impart a message that challenged His listeners. His teaching spanned a wide range of subject matter: rebuking sin, encouraging the weak, enlightening the foolish, foretelling the future. Even now, two thousand years later, people are still astonished at the wisdom of what He taught.
Jesus devoted so much of His career to teaching because we humans are so ignorant of life. We live out our days beset by a cascade of problems. Some are not our fault; others can be linked directly to our own moral failings. We exacerbate our troubles by our bungling attempts to deal with them. As the problems pile up, so do our anxieties. We end up lost in a world of pain and heartache, having no hope of finding our way out of the mess we're in.
This is the world Jesus came to confront. He knew that humanity's problems cannot be fixed by doling out free goodies. What we need more than anything are changed attitudes and behaviors. "Repent!" is the plea of a God who knows what we are capable of being, and weeps at our failure to realize our potential.
The only way to change hearts and lives is through constant didactic instruction. People must be trained to think more clearly, to behave with dignity and honor, to talk more optimistically, to react to adversity with greater maturity. Somebody has to teach them how to do all that.
That's why we have the Bible. That's why we have elders and preachers and teachers and parents. We all need to spend more time reading the Bible and listening to those who instruct us from it. If we're serious about self-improvement, it will begin by submitting ourselves to the teaching of God's word.
Pay attention, class . . .
--David
