Now look at his teaching.

His teaching is widely thought of being the greatest and most original human teaching to have ever existed.  No one is quoted more than Jesus.  Many people, even those who are not Christians, have the greatest respect for Jesus and try to live by his teachings.

A friend of mine once proudly quoted to me: “Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’”  I had the joy of telling him that Lincoln was actually quoting Jesus!

Remember when I began my Masters degree – I read through the grading structure – what constitutes an A, B, C, etc.  Description of an A+ was Profound and Creative – Strong evidence of original thought.  A rare thing indeed – someone who can come up with completely original ideas, rather that simply quoting, or worse, stealing the work of others.

Yet, everyone, even his enemies, saw this in Jesus.  “He teaches as one with authority” meaning he wasn’t quoting the great teachers of the past, like other Jewish Rabbis always did. He just taught, and people recognized his words as good and true, despite his lack of citations.

He was acting as if he was the source of all wisdom, knowledge and morality, and could just say these things under his own authority.

Because he was!

Lets look now at his fulfillment of predictions that were made about God coming to earth, before he actually did in human history. The Bible is written in 2 sections, one section before Jesus called the Old Testament, and one after him, the New Testament.

In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament.

It could of course be suggested that Jesus was an extremely clever con artist who deliberately set out to fulfill these prophecies to show that he was the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament, but this really would have been very difficult to do.  Or, that people changed the Old Testament after Jesus, to make it appear he fit.

The problem is that the sheer number of prophecies makes that extremely difficult.  He fulfilled over 300 prophecies, written over 500 years by many people, with many different copies of each book existing in the world.  This included 29 prophecies in a single day—the day he died, when he had very little control.  This included his manner of death, place of burial, and the way soldiers gambled for his clothes as he died.  Roman soldiers in the midst of an execution are not likely to help him become famous by taking requests, these things were out of his hands.  He also had no control over the place of his birth (Micah 5:2).

Question: What teaching of Jesus has most inspired or challenged you?