What Jesus Began To Do And Teach
Psalm 63
What a freshing psalm when considering some of the more personal specific life struggles presented in several Psalms preceding it. Those presented more challenge when asking if Jesus would have used each one as a personal prayer to His Father. In fact reading those psalms asking that question seemed to be out of place and awkward. Yet part of asking a question like that, Would Jesus have prayed this psalm as a prayer when coming to His Father brings to mind things to remember.
I have made the former treatise, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach,
Acts 1:1 GNV
Jesus began to do and teach... Recently in our discussion class at church class, our gathering of believers we spent two or three months learning from Matthew 5-7 beginning at the Beatitudes and ending with the comparison of the wise man and foolish man when it came to doing the sayings of Jesus. So when Luke does due diligence in his research to sort out bogus things said about Jesus against the actual accurate information about what Jesus did and taught he identifies the a vital reality of teaching. And when reading the end of Matthew 7 about the likening of those to do or do not do as Jesus taught to the wise or to the foolish I question if I need to be asking the question, and not just going ahead simply doing? But when Luke writes that He began to do and teach it becomes even more thought provoking. It is important to learn what Jesus did or could possibly have done. The very end of Matthew 7 says:
And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these words, the people were astonied at his doctrine. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.
Matthew 7:28 - 29 GNV
More than thirty years ago now I had the privilege of co-teaching a software programming night school course at a local college. The friend who asked me to teach with him had been asking me his questions he faced writing programs at our work. In teacher reviews at the end of the semester a common theme was that we were teaching what we were doing in our day job and not as a teacher lecturing something they had only learned or had used one time years ago.
So now when I think about Jesus teaching "as one having authority" He was teaching what He had already done. It makes me want to say when people ask what did Jesus do the first thirty years of His life as the Word made flesh dwelling among us? According to that which Luke says in Acts 1 I dare say He was doing what He was going to be teaching. That indeed this would combine with His fully God part of His life when people heard Him speak with authority. He wasn't just teaching as having come from God, (which He had), but He was teaching also from practical experience over thirty years of His life.
So even reading Psalm 63 and beginning to say a definite Yes, Jesus could have prayed this psalm as a prayer. Easy sneezy. No problem. Before you say Yes and move on to other things you have in your day reread verses 9 and 10 of this psalm. Ask, would Jesus as fully man pray asking the Lord to see to it those opposed to Him would go to the lowest part of the earth? It is like asking God to reveal something new to you about the verses that are the most familiar to you. Ask God to reveal a new truth about "Jesus wept". Be like Mary keeping and pondering all these shepherds piling into her delivery room, a stable, with stories of angels and angel choirs. Just remember pondering doesn't necessarily yield the expect and final answer. That's why I would say this is Richard's Meditation Journal and not Richard's Final Answers Journal. It's my pondering on what Jesus began to do and teach.