Sunday School | The Teachings of Christ

Introduction

What we've been doing for the last couple months is a series on doctrine. We're going to do a comprehensive doctrinal survey over the next couple of years. We began looking at theology proper, the doctrine of the first person of the Trinity, the doctrine of God. We've just moved a few weeks ago into the doctrine of the Son, our Christology study.

When we did that, we made the observation that really, if you want to understand the work of Christ, you want to see that through ten categories. There are basically ten things that Jesus did, ten broad groupings. And I'm curious if anybody — don't cheat yet. You can cheat in a second. But does anybody remember? Could you walk through these ten boxes that we can sort the work of Christ into?

And by the way, and I'll say this again in a minute, but you are always allowed to get things wrong on the way to getting them right. Okay? In fact, I got something wrong last week that I'm going to clarify with you guys. But take a shot at it, okay?

Incarnation, Adam, thank you. Then what? Teaching in miracles, then what? The resurrection. We're missing one but yes, that's coming. You got it wrong but you're going to get it right, Gary. It's great.

Okay. His obedient life, then Gary. Death, resurrection. Death and resurrection. That's six, right? So, so far, we've got his incarnation, his teaching in miracles, his obedient life, his death, and resurrection. Seems like we're done but we're not. There's four more biggies. What are they?

King of the ship. Yes, he's so he's ascended as king to reign forever. Very good. What did he give us? Holy Spirit. Gives us his Holy Spirit. What is he doing for all of time? Interceding. Interceding for sinners. And what's the final thing? It's yet to happen. Return. He's going to return to do two things really. Raise the dead, restore all things.

Okay? That's the work of Christ. His incarnation is teaching, his miracles, his obedient life, his death and resurrection, his ascension as king to reign over the cosmos forever. He gave us his Spirit. He intercedes for sinners, and he is coming again to restore all things and raise the dead.

Cool. Cool? That's what he does. Now, we began last week looking at that. We talked about incarnation. And what does it mean? The incarnation is one of these things that just, as if it's not already hard enough, then the incarnation shows up. It just kind of blows all your categories.

How can he be corporately present here while still omnipresent? How can he be a six-month-old in a cradle and still omniscient? It's just, it's just hard to get your head around. And in fact, even that reality tripped me up last week. You might remember, Saloop asked the question, in his incarnation, I don't know if it was a question or a comment, but we had this brief little exchange.

That in Jesus' incarnation, he came to learn what it's like to be us. Right? And I tripped on that because I'm like, well, I don't know that we can fairly say that an omniscient being learns. If he's omniscient, then he can't really learn. And so I'm like, I don't know. Threw some shade at that idea. But as I said, what you're doing here, guys, when we're trying to develop theology, your theology should always be rough draft. Okay? And what I mean by that is that we're always learning. We're trying to understand.

This is literally infinite stuff. And so you don't want to have your theological category so rigid that you can't consider new information that you've missed. And so when Sloop said, well, I think he learned what it's like to be us. I'm like, I don't think he did because I think he's omniscient. I think he always knew what it's like to be us. But then as I thought more about that and then Sloop and I had a conversation about that, you have to add into the equation.

Not only is he omniscient, but he also... Luke two, you guys know Luke two says? That he grew. Remember this? What does he grow in? Wisdom. Wisdom and stature. Well, do you grow in wisdom if you're not, in some sense, learning something? Right? So not only that, but if you look at the primary passage on this, on Jesus' being a sympathetic high priest, go to it. It's Hebrews four fifteen. Look at this.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Right? And that's pretty well known that we've got a sympathetic high priest. But listen to the logic of it.

But we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin. I think that seems to suggest, it's not super tight, but I think it does suggest that it was his experience of being tempted in every way that somehow has enhanced his sympathy for us. Does that make sense? Right? Judy? That's why talking to Harry on the way out. I mean, it's that there's knowing and there's knowing.

Yes. He created us so he knows. But it's okay. Not to be overly graphic, but it's like having a male OB and a female OB who's had a baby. You know. It's just like that. Yeah. You know how to go. Yeah. Yeah, this experience of knowledge, right? And so, and then as we further considered, what does that, what would that suggest about his omniscience? Is it like there's omni and then there's omni? Okay, maybe. And I'm not super, I'm still not super comfortable with that because I think he's omniscient. I think he knows everything. Not everything except what it's like to be Tim Henderson. Okay? So, so hang on a second. We'll come... I'll... you guys a shot. So, as we were processing this, what if, and I don't, I don't know if this is true. Okay? But what if Jesus in eternity past knew exactly what it was like to be us because he lives outside of time and in some regard, bear with me on this, in some regard he was borrowing the knowledge that he would have when he experienced it in our life.

We necessarily think of time in sequential moments. But he's outside of that. And so it might be both that his direct understanding of what it's like to be with us, to be us, is born of his experience of being one of us. But that experience was his in eternity past because he lives outside of time. Right? Can you live with that? Now that might not be true, but it might be. In any case, what we have is a God who is omniscient and yet who grew in wisdom and knows just what it's like to be tempted as we are. Right?

And so what we want to try to come up with. So some of the time when we're developing our theology of any of these things, it just requires a little bit of flexibility because these things are ultimately, you know, imponderable. Okay. A couple of comments here. Harry and Jason, I think, wanted to say something? Yes. When God came down as man or was born, he had to live as a man. He had to learn as a man. So he grew his wisdom as he grew and grew that he was.

I know. It's so strange. Literally, as a god who was perfect from the beginning, in the middle, in the end, he already knew it, but he hadn't experienced it as us. I think that is correct, and I think that's what we would group that up. We used the word last week, I think, the kenosis of God. It's the Philippians two, the emptying of God, that there's something that happens that we're that we see described in Philippians two that though he was God, he did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. The idea is that he, he it's all his but he, it's almost like you have this is not exactly right, but you have information in your head. If I asked you what five nine times six is, you could look it up in your brain. You could be like, 54, right? But before I ask you that, but you have to look it up. You know what I mean? You have to access that part of your brain. And it seems like perhaps, again, this is all speculative because it's really hard to understand this. Some measure of his omniscience was on the hard drive. It's in his brain. It's there. But he didn't look it up. Right? He's living absent that full access of those things.

Jason? Same thing. Think when, you know, God is omniscient. He can't technically forget our sin, but he chooses to remember it no more. Yeah. That's another one of the the omniscient God who does not remember sin. Like, how, like, the same kind of a category. What we hope that he does is he, like, shreds that hard drive. You know? But, but, but who knows? Bobby, you wanna add to that? I wasn't here last week, but, the next chapter in Hebrews where it says, in chapter five, verse... Hey. Although he learned obedience. He learned obedience through what he suffered. Right. Same, yeah. The same thing. What complicated language that not only did he, we get, we can sort of get our head around it. He had to learn calculus. That makes a little bit more sense. But how does the holy one of Israel learn obedience? What did that mean prior to the, I mean, are, so this is, this is where the incarnation is so filled with these imponderables that we can be, I think, a little bit gracious in evangelism when somebody are like, oh, please. Like, I know. I get it. It's weird. Like, it's, it's incredibly difficult to understand how, how would those things be, right? Okay. So incarnation. All right. We're never gonna get forward. This is gonna be a seventeen-year series. Yes. It is. We're working on it. Yeah. I mean, Jesus himself admitted he wasn't omniscient. Because nobody knows the time or date. Right? This is the classic picture. You know, but God above the father. And we also see things like Jesus being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. Mhmm. Yeah. You know, so it wasn't he was going there because he knew he had to, omnisciently. There was, like us, he was responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. You know, how how you measure sort of omniscient, you know, it's it's kinda like sort of pregnant. Right? Again, with the pregnancy, what is going on with you people? Yeah. For the day. Yeah. But yeah. I mean, it's an either or, and he said he wasn't. Well, and yet, but you see him reflecting knowledge that he has that a normal person couldn't have. Right? So in John one, when he's like, Hey, I saw you while you praying under the fig tree. You know? So it's a crazy thing. The best way that I can understand that is he has the information, just simply doesn't access the file. But it's complicated. And I suspect that he knows now when he's coming, but I'm not even certain of that. Yeah. See, I think the Holy Spirit can do. Sounds like you were there. Yes. Really in touch. The Holy Spirit. No question, Dan, that he lives like a human being dependent on the spirit rather than like a god who is in cheat mode. Right? Absolutely. And that's puzzling. Yes, it's absolutely crucial for us. For sure, yes. He is choosing to live in his humanity. His humanity is a real humanity and he accepts the constraints of it. How about the fact that God can't be killed and Jesus actually died? Right? So I'm telling you, the incarnation, it is a head twister in all these things. Okay. So here's we're gonna do. We're gonna move on. We're gonna talk about his teaching and his miracles, but mostly his teaching today. Maybe. We'll see. Turn to Mark one. I want you to see this passage. You'll see these things braided together. Go to Mark one. We're gonna start at verse 21. And I want you to notice some of the things that Mark in particular, and by the way, do you remember who's the author behind Mark? Whose ideas are these? It's Peter. Mark is basically the secretary of Peter. He's recording Peter's reflections on the life of Jesus.

And so Mark one twenty-one, check this out. They went to Capernaum and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

Now if you skip down, what you're gonna see immediately is miracles. He heals this guy with an evil spirit. And then in verse 27, the people were also amazed that they asked each other, what is this? A new teaching and with authority. There it is the second time. Luke's gonna repeat that, by the way. And then they comment on his teaching. They follow-up on that comment on his teaching by saying, He gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him. So now we're back from teaching to miracles. News about him spreads throughout the region. He heals another woman, in particular Peter's mother-in-law, which is consistent. This is Peter's Gospel.

And then down in verse 35, after healing, you know, driving out other demons, one thirty-five, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him. And when they found him, they exclaimed, everyone is looking for you. And in verse 38, check this out. Jesus replied, let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages so that I can preach there also. That is why I have come. So he traveled throughout Galilee preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons.

Okay? Now, if we'd asked the question before we started this, why did Jesus come? What would—how would you have said, Why did Jesus come? Save us from our sins. Great. What did you say over here? To reconcile man to God. Reconcile man to God. What else? How about this? If I were to say the phrase, the Son of Man has not come—finish that? To be—to serve. And what's that last clause? Do you have this in your brain? Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I think we have a tendency to jump to the cross. Why did he come? He came to die, to be raised from the dead, that he might redeem sinners. Right? And that's all true, of course, that's true. And we'll get there, you know, in a couple of weeks. But according to Jesus in this passage in Mark one, when he says, that is why I have come—what's the that? Look at verse 38. Let us go somewhere else to preach. Preach. That is why I have come. So we traveled throughout Galilee preaching in their synagogues.

It'd be very difficult to understand the work of Christ apart from his work as an explainer of ideas. He has come to teach. Okay? So let's talk a little bit about that. What does Mark say is so striking about his teaching? He points something out that is like unique. Authority. Okay. So think about this. So he shows up, and when Jesus explains things, he does so. He has—do you guys realize he has no credentials? Right? He is not a rabbi. He's not trained under Gamaliel. He doesn't have any of the... He's not allowed to dress like a priest because he's not a priest. Except P. S. Is the priest. He's the high priest. He's the high priest to which all priests point. But he has none of the credentials.

And yet, when he stands up and explains things, everybody has this sense that he's not just parroting what someone else says. He speaks with his own authority. And in fact, what is the tag that the prophets would always use to identify their—their voice, and to give power and weight to their words? "Thus saith the Lord." They say it all the time. Blah blah blah. And I'm like, I don't have any power to say this. I have no authority behind this, so I'm gonna simply say, "Thus saith the Lord." Right? It's a way to a little bit distance yourself from it. This isn't my idea. This is His idea. Do you understand that Jesus never uses that phrase? He does. What does he say instead? Truly, truly, I say to you. Right? Now, John makes it very clear that he never says anything that he hasn't heard the Father say. So it wouldn't be a resignation of his responsibility to make the observation, but he never says it. He only ever says, "Truly, truly, I say to you." He is the source of his own authority. Even though he lives radically submitted to the Father. Right? He teaches with authority. And when he does, he's gonna deploy all sorts of things. So let's talk about his teaching. What are—what what have you seen him doing in the way that he teaches?

Kelly? One of the things about him teaching with authority— I mean, that mic drop moment in the temple when Isaiah's scroll reads from it. He says, oh, PS. This is about—The scripture is fulfilled. What I mean, what more authority is there—than to pick up the scroll and say, the scroll itself is fulfilled in me.

What Kelly is saying is that when we see Jesus teach in the synagogue and He reads the scroll from Isaiah and He scrolls it up and He sits down, He's like this today, and you're hearing scriptures fulfilled. He's saying this whole book is about me. And He says this over and over again, right? He was convinced that the entire book was about Him.

In John five, do you know John? Go to John five for a quick second. See this, here's another expression of that. John five, Jesus is gonna say— let's see, where is this? This thing goes on for ages. Where is it? What's the line I'm looking for? What is it? It's where He says, you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me, and yet you refuse to come to me to have life. Where the heck is that?

John 5:39-40. Thirty-nine? Forty. Yeah. Okay. 39. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is they that bear witness about me. He was convinced the whole thing is about him. Luke 24 is the Road to Emmaus. He does the same thing.

So, He sources His authority. He says, I’m the one this whole thing was about. He's gonna teach from that perspective. Now, when He does, what are the methods Jesus employs when He's teaching? Parables, Mike? Mean, he's famous for his parables. Okay? So, let's talk about those for just a minute. What is the nature of a parable? What's what's going on? Why does he do it?

Trojan horse. Okay. Who said that? Okay. Chris, Trojan horse. What does that mean, that it's a Trojan horse? Be be nice and loud so they can hear you. Putting something into your head for you to unwrap so that when you get later on to the core of it, you realize that it's much bigger than just the simple idea that he puts in front of your face.

That's exactly right. So does this make sense? Parables in their very nature are subversive. So he tells you a story, and you accept the story on its own right. But then it's not until you're walking home and you've already admitted the truth of the story that you realize it was about you. Right? And the trap is sprung. This is what, who is it? Who's Nathan. This is what Nathan does to David. When David, this is maybe the most subversive parable—it's not even in Jesus' kind of canon here. But, you know, when Nathan wants to go to rebuke David for sleeping with Bathsheba and killing Uriah and that whole ordeal, but he doesn't tell him a story about a man who stole a man's wife and murdered him. What does he tell him a story about? Sheep and little pet lamb that slept in this guy's bed and all this kind of whatever. And then David accepts the truth of the story, says that guy needs to die. And then what's Nathan's famous phrase in response to it? "You are the man." Right? Are—but it's too late because David has already admitted that if someone were to do that, they would deserve to die. And then Nathan's like, yeah, and guess who did that, David? Right? This is how the parables work. They're Trojan horses. Okay? What else? What else did Jesus do with his parables that makes them so memorable? Such powerful teaching.

Fred? He crafted what he said to the audience's ability or framework to understand. So good. Okay. Now, you guys may have heard me say this before, but the art of teaching is this: teaching is the art of building bridges from the known to the unknown. We've all had a professor that began a bridge at what you didn't know, to go from what you don't know to what you don't know. And now, like, it's worthless to me. You've gotta come back to what I do know, and then build a bridge from that to that, to that, to that. And if you'll come back to where I am, you come back to what I do know, then there's some hope of bringing me to what I don't know.

And Jesus is a genius at building bridges from the known to the unknown. In his parables, just think about what is the subject matter of his parables? What are the sorts of things that he talks about? Farmers. These guys know what farm—a farmer went out to sow his seed. You're like, okay. I've seen that happen. Now, you may not have seen that happen but they have seen that happen.

Alright, what else does he tell stories about? Loss coin. Lost coin. We've all lost something and swept the house looking for it and then rejoiced when we found it. We know what that is like, right? What else? Sheep, fish, farm, all of these things. Fathers and their sons. He's gonna tell stories about very— The stories are about very concrete things to illustrate things that are grandiose and maybe beyond our understanding. And they're pithy. They're tight, short, concrete stories. And very often they've got some emotional piece to it.

So we know what it's like to lose something that's so frustrating because you just don't know where the stupid thing is and how joyful it is when you find it. We can all imagine what it's like to have your child who has rebelled against you and gone far from you, to come back to you and the haste with which you would run to them. Right? So he's brilliant at telling these stories that are gonna land for people, are gonna stick with them. But, but, but, but, not only are these stories going to end up being Trojan horses, there's more in them, but they often have a surprise twist. Right?

Have you ever noticed that his stories—He'll tell a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector, and they're gonna be praying in the steps of the altar. Right? And which one of these guys, as the story begins, is the good guy? The Pharisee. Absolutely the Pharisee. If I were to tell you a story in our immediate context about—I mean, pick a thing—an Anglican priest and a neo-Nazi went to the steps of the altar. We know where this story is gonna head, right? Except if Jesus is telling the story, it is going to flip. Right? The tax collector thing maybe has some negative context for us but not as negative as it did for them. Same thing, the story of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan is the bad guy. Nobody likes the Samaritans. Like, they despise them by the Jews, they despise them by the Gentiles, nobody likes them. But the Samaritan is the hero of the story.

So Jesus is gonna tell these stories that are subversive. They're concrete but they're subversive. And they're also absolutely filled with these surprise twists because he's trying to convince us of something in particular. And this is a recurring theme in his teaching. We have a tendency to think that there's really two ways to live. We can be religious or we can be irreligious. And religious is better. And Jesus is gonna say, no, it isn't. There is religion, there is irreligion, and they're both bad. And what we want is gospel. And he tends to get to the gospel track by propping up the religious and then smacking it down. And it is subversive, but it is incredibly powerful.

If you read his stories, you understand what he's doing, what he's saying. He's like, you and we've said this before in this group, but he's training us that we must repent not only of our unrighteousness but also of our self-righteousness. Righteousness. Did I miss a syllable in there? We are—we just repent of our unrighteousness and our self-righteousness, both. And he is framing these stories out as a way to—I know where you're going. I can see where this is going. And then there's a surprise twist. He does it all the time. And if we will learn to read the story and not fall into the traps of these stories, oh my goodness, the things that you're gonna discover there.

Now, for a little bit of pro, a little bit of an alternative study, there's one chapter in all of the Gospels, I think, that is the secret to his parables. Do you guys know what it is? I really think its purpose in the canon is to be your seminary class on how to read Jesus' stories. Do you know it? It's Matthew 13. Okay. So you can just jot this down. We're not gonna—like, I'm not gonna take the time right now to run through all of it. But Matthew 13, if you read through it, it's filled with stories and it's filled with strange things. So maybe just bookmark it or jot it down. Take some time, work your way through Matthew 13, look at all the myriad of stories he tells, many of which have a surprise twist and not what you think they're gonna be. You might be tripped up by them. But it'd be amazing to see what you discover if you really work these things through. It's the only place, one of the very rare places that He explains an actual parable. It's also where He explains why He teaches through parables. So Matthew 13 is gonna be your friend if you really wanna understand his use of teaching through parables. Okay?

Kelly? He might be moving into this in a little bit, but you talked about the parables are a subtle way, a sneak attack way for him to smack righteousness. But he's also really explicit. You know? He doesn't have to sneak it in an assuring horse. Sometimes he just confronts the Pharisees directly in his teaching. Absolutely. Yes.

So his teaching, he's not—we—we talked about all of his parables. He's not limited the use of parables. It is his favorite thing. It is his go-to thing. Did you know that there is one of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, that has zero parables? John. John. Not a single parable anywhere in the whole book. Which is interesting. So when John—we—we call Matthew, Mark, and Luke—do you know what you know what the grouping is for those? The synoptics. So like they look the same. The optics are synonym-ish. Right? Or they're similar. Same optics. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke are full of parables. John doesn't have a one. And so he has other teaching methods. Right?

If he's not using a parable, how does he convey—what are his other teaching strategies? Miracles. Okay, so we're gonna put miracles. This is actually, I'm gonna accept that answer because we're gonna talk about what miracles are. In fact, okay, we'll do that in a minute. Yes. But for a funny reason, so we'll get to that in a minute.

What about questioning? Yes. Brilliant, Kristen. Yeah, absolutely. Jesus loves questions. Christians love statements. We're so smart that we can just tell you things, but Jesus constantly uses questions. It'd be fascinating. This is another thing you can do in a quiet time. Just read through Matthew, read through Mark, and just keep a little journal. Every time Jesus asks a question, jot it down. The dude asks questions constantly, not only to initiate a conversation but very often to respond to a conversation.

So they come to him and say, Hey, should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? And what’s his response? Give me a coin, and he asks a question. Whose picture is on this? Right? All the time Jesus uses questions. It's His favorite kind of engagement strategy. So why, okay, we—we got a little bit thought about why his teaching involves parables. Why do you think his teaching is so focused on the asking of questions? He wants to be able to think about it credibly. Yes, that's right. Because questions engage. If I just keep talking and saying stuff, and you might write it down, it's easier to just kind of drift off. The very fact of you answering a question forces you to engage the process, to think through things.

Yeah. What else? Robin? Or part of the article that says you're always hearing or seeing and you're not seeing or— Yeah. Exactly, how it goes. It's like purposefully—and unless the Spirit opens your eyes to be able to see what he's talking about. Yes. That's in Matthew, so what you're saying is Matthew 13. So Robin is asking a question, but doesn't he say something that the parables aren't even supposed to teach? They're supposed to obscure? And that's exactly right. For some of the population, in Matthew 13, he quotes Isaiah and saying, I'm going to speak in parables specifically so that if you're not really willing to do the work, it's gonna go right by you. Right? It is. He uses parables as a sieve to filter out those that are hungry to learn, that want to know. We—we talked about this in a sermon recently—that it's like a game of hide and seek. Why do you hide when you're playing hide and seek? So that you will be found. Why does He hide His message? So that you will do the work to come and discover it. And that is very similar to the value of a question. He wants you to chew on it. He wants you to process it. He wants you to have to tease it out and figure out what it means. Then when you do it that way, you'll never forget it. Right? And then you'll remember it. It has a greater chance to change you. He's not interested— a lot of teaching just is entertainment. Right? Just, you know, an amusing little story and then you forget it on the way out. He's not interested in that. He wants there to be penetration, transformation, change.

Adam? Also taught by example, how he lives life and models how we should also live ours. Yes. Okay. So, meaning he wants us to essentially be good question askers. He wants us to be good storytellers. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. But also like good teachers also live out their teaching. Oh, so you okay. Are you suggesting that one of the ways that he teaches is simply by being, by his modeling? Yes. That is true. So in the same way that Proverbs says, consider the ant. We can watch an ant and learn things from it. Jesus is saying, consider me. Look at my way of life and imitate my way of life. And then Paul is gonna say the exact same thing, right? I'm gonna imitate Jesus, you imitate me, that's all kinda get in line behind the fall of the leader train. So his teaching, there's the explicit use of his parables. There's the use of all these questions. Then there's simply the supremacy of his life, which, as we were saying earlier, is not the life of God who is cheating but the life of a man who is depending on the Spirit. Come and do this what I do. Yes. All good. Good. Good. Good. Yeah. Massey? I think it all you're saying, like, his teachings are because he's looking for kids. It's like an Easter egg hunt. He's not hiding treasure from us. He's hiding treasure for us. He's waiting. Yes. That— I wanna go search. It's a great preposition change. That's beautiful there. He's not hiding things from us. He's hiding things for us, that we might discover these things. That's absolutely right. Spot on. Right? And he wants us to come in. So he's teaching not only them in his immediate context, but in his brilliance and his plan, this is all getting written down. He knows that Matthew's taking notes. Right? He knows that Peter is gonna record all this, and so that we get to be the beneficiaries of the things that he says and teaches.

Okay? All kinds of things. Scotty? Would it be easier or better to say that he's hoping to gain perspective? That he's hoping that we will gain perspective? For sure, right? Because we have a tendency to live in our little, you know, I'm suffering right now. Everything is bad. God clearly hates me. Right? That's kind of our thing. It's like, hey. Well, hang on a second. Let's see what he's doing. Let's zoom it out. He—that's absolutely part of what he's trying to do there.

Okay? Kelly? I think he's also teaching in John, especially through the I AM statements. Anything that's, you know, where he's taking like, it's a little different from the parables. It's explicit. I'm listening. I'm the—you know. That's right. Now, when I said that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are—that's where all the parables are. There's no parables in John. That might raise in your mind the question, well, how does he teach in John? And how does he teach in John? Do you know what tends to be His methodology there? Or if you walk through, what do we see there?

Statements. It's true. And of course questions. Look at that. Just what Kelly said, the I Am's. Yes, yes. So what we tend to get in John's Gospels is what you might call discourses. So, it is largely because John is gonna give us an upfront, close, personal view of what he's saying to the disciples. Huge, massive chunk through the middle of John, like I don't know, fourteen to twenty or something, is what we call the upper room discourse. So this is like the super intimate inner circle. He is here with the twelve and just telling them things. Right? Explaining stuff to them. And John is capturing and writing it down. So, He does use that more normative, like John has him just telling these stories. But it's always very, very imagery based. Right? I'm the light of the world. I'm the bread of life. I'm the living water. I'm the gate. I'm the good shepherd. Right? He uses lots and lots of—it's not parables, but it's metaphors. Again, to make it concrete, to make this stuff land. And He's brilliant at all of it. Herrick? When he's doing that, when he's making all those references, he's using existing scripture, the Old Testament, as a teaching. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. So, Jesus, Herrick, you're just saying, he's using the Old Testament, and that's—I'm sorry, did I over speak to you? Okay. So he all the time, Jesus is gonna refer to the Old Testament. You'll sometimes hear him say things like, you have heard it said, but I say to you. Right? And gonna tweak their interpretation of things. But he is so deeply grounded in the Hebrew Scriptures. That's going to be the basis for his teachings. Okay? Now, let me just use this as a segue. We don't have a whole lot of time, so let me just kind of bridge this to what we're going to do next week on miracles with something that Brenda said. She suggested that one of the ways that he taught was that he did miracles. Okay? Now, we're trying to frame this that there's teaching and there's miracles, which are two separate things. But in fact, the miracles were a form of teaching. And in—you didn't know, John again, John never uses the word miracles. Do you know what John prefers in place of miracles? Signs. Over and over. Listen to this—this is how he does. This is John. I'll just give you a couple. John 2:11.

This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. This is, of course, what is that one? Turn the water into wine. Right? He revealed his glory and his disciples put their faith in him.

In 2:18, the Jews demanded of him, what miraculous sign can you show to prove your authority to do this? Later on in the chapter, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing. Chapter three, no one performed the miraculous signs you were doing. Chapter four, this is the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed. Chapter six, they saw the miraculous signs he performed, another sick, miraculous signs. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Okay? John loves the word sign.

You guys forget the whole miracle thing. Okay? Just say—we weren’t in Sunday school. You just were walking down the street and saw a sign. What’s a sign? A piece of metal. It’s an instruction. Information. Information. It’s a message. Yield here. Stop there. This is the name of the street. Signs are messages. They signify meaning. And what that is saying is that every time He does a miracle, maybe we think of the miracles as simply acts of mercy. You might think of the miracles as a suspension of natural law or an exploitation of another natural law that we don’t know about. However that works, right? But what John says over and over again is that they are messages. They’re saying something. And a huge part of his teaching therefore is not just done through words but through actions.

So I’m just curious—well, maybe we'll end it here and then we'll pick this up. We'll pick it up here next week. Of his miraculous signs, which do you find the most compelling? Which conveys the information that is the most meaningful to you?

Brenda? I think healing of the blind. You think of the spiritual aspect of that. We don't realize we're blind— Yeah. Before we're saved. So John nine is maybe the most developed healing of a blind man. That's the one where it says, Why is this guy blind? His sin or his parents' sin? Jesus is like, No, dummy. That's not how this works. And then you have this whole big thing designed to reveal his identity.

Healing the blind. What else do you guys say is most compelling to you? Fred? The situations where many were healed or helped. Large clusters of people healed. Few gave thanks. If you could have any supernatural gift, right, you become a prophet, you're gonna pick a thing. Would you not pick healing? Like, would that not—I would pick healing. Massey, what would you pick? Healing. Healing. I mean, would that not be the jam to walk to some kid strapped into some chair and to, like, unbelievable. It's incredible.

Were you gonna say most compelling? I—to me, like, because he did seven—God gave us seven miracles, like the seven I AM statements. He only gave us seven, eight with the resurrection. Yep. The nail in the coffin was John 11, Lazarus being raised from the grave. Of course. Nail in the coffin of, I am the Christ. It’s kind of the unnailing of the coffin, if you will. You know? You know? Right? Right. I mean, ability to raise the dead. Most compelling, Dan? I would say that for me, in a lot of ways, it’s the calming of the storm. Does that—and they go, who is this? That’s hands down my favorite.

What I love about it, it shows up a couple times, but Mark 4, I think is my favorite depiction of it. Because what’s so amazing in Mark 4, they’re all in the storm, they’re all terrified, right? Because they’re all gonna drown and Jesus, you know, Jesus is asleep on the cushion. Jesus, don’t you care if we drown? And then he gets up and yawns and is like, yeah, calm down. Know, calm—you know, everything’s fine. And then they’re not relieved. They’re even more afraid. Because it makes sense to be afraid of a storm. Right? And even to a certain extent, storms make sense. But somebody that rebukes a storm and hushes, I mean, they’re like, who who? Who are you? Right? And that’s because it was a sign. It was meaningful. It was information. Something that we cannot control is here. And that is freaking terrifying. Right? It is Mark 4.

So great. Gary? Beating 5,000 out of just a few fish and a piece of bread because the message is, I am God the creator, and I am God the provider. Amen. Amen. He's in charge of all of it. Kelly? For me, it’s the woman that touched his cloak and it went out from him. The faith that she had. Well, and that one is so strange because Jesus is, I mean, she touches the hem of his garment. She gets healed. And then Jesus is like, hang on a second. What just happened? Who touched me? And you're like— Yeah. Talk about omniscience. Like, what do we do with that? Right? So, so it’s just absolutely astonishing. Okay. Well, this is a fun game. You guys are gonna want to play this all day long. Okay? Yeah. Zach? While maybe not a specific parable, it’s the one that I didn’t hear the most at the current time, it’s the most compelling one. It’s the feeling of when Jesus is reading my mail. Yes. It’s a compelling parable. Right? Right? When when and there are—the there are a number of moments where Jesus, you know, He knows what’s going on with, I saw you, you know, praying under the fig tree. Different moments where He reads Simon’s mind when Simon is throwing shade at the scandalous woman that is, you know, snuck into the party. All these things and you're like, wow, you really, you know all things. Brett, you can get the final one and then we gotta go. John nine, where the blind man is in front of the Lord and the disciples are wondering whose sin is it that he is blind? Yes, and the Lord's really baffled by that. And he says, so that the work of God may be shown today in his life, and then he restores sight. Amen. That's like what the rest of us— Yeah. That whole John chapter nine, that whole story, there are so many fascinating things in there. And that guy that gets healed, the blind guy that gets healed is so cheeky, right? He's so saucy with the Pharisees in a really, really pretty fun way. Okay. So here's your assignment. Just for the week, you— a couple of things. You might go through Matthew 13, if you wanna try to understand a little bit more about the parables. But maybe just come back prepared to say, these are my favorite. This is my favorite miracle. We'll pick it up there, we’ll— and kind of get a little bit deeper into what is he doing and what's happening with all those miracles. Okay?

Alright. And you might remember those ten categories. Right? There's his incarnation, there's his teaching and his miracles, his obedient life, his death and his resurrection, his ascension, king, his giving of the Spirit, his intercession for sinners, and his return to restore all things and raise the dead.

Cool. Cool. Alright. See you next week.