January 19 - New Teaching

January 19 – New Teaching

Mark 1:27 “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching – with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’”

In Mark 1:22, we read “The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.”

Jesus came to the people of Israel with authority that they had never seen before.  He came to proclaim that the Kingdom of God had come.  He spoke with the authority that only comes from the Father and He taught the Israelites that God’s law had been corrupted through the centuries – that the spirit of the Law was being destroyed by the way they had interpreted the letter of the Law.

We take much of Jesus’ teaching for granted today.  We are used to the words and this teaching has been incorporated into our lives to the point that is ingrained in nearly everything we do and say, but to the people living in first century Judea, He startled them out of their complacency with the things He taught to them.

The Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7, was filled with statements that contradicted all that they knew.  We see over and over the words, “You have heard it said ….” Followed by, “but I say to you” in that passage.  Jesus was re-ordering their thinking about the way they perceived the Law.

In Matthew 5:17, just as He begins teaching, He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

His teaching was new because it brought hope in the darkness, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

Jesus astounded the people of Jerusalem and surrounding areas with His teaching.  And even later, this new teaching continued to astound people.

In Athens, among incredibly learned men, Paul astounded them with the Gospel of Jesus and the resurrection.  “Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we want to know what they mean.’” (Acts 17:19-20)

Jesus’ teaching continues to astound us today.  These ‘new’ ideas still have the power to change our lives and the world around us.