Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:18-20 (NLT)]
Since 1890, a common teaching method in a surgical residency is to “see one, do one, teach one.” The med student learns the basics by watching an experienced physician do a procedure and then puts his knowledge into practice by doing the procedure himself. He hasn’t mastered the procedure, however, until he’s taught someone else to do it; it is only when we can teach something that we truly understand it.
While Jesus doesn’t call us all to be physicians, he does call us all to be disciples and discipleship follows much the same “see, do, and teach” philosophy of med school. Almost anyone, if they studied hard and observed enough of them, could learn how a coronary heart bypass is done, but that wouldn’t make them cardiovascular surgeons any more than just knowing about Jesus makes someone a disciple of Christ. The first disciples did more than just watch Jesus perform miracles and listen to His parables and, if we’re to be Christ’s disciples, we need to do more than just learn about our Lord.
For the budding heart surgeon, just knowing how a heart bypass is done isn’t enough; he actually has to do one. He actually has to do it by making an incision, opening the chest, touching the heart, and grafting blood vessels from other parts of the body to reroute the blood around the clogged arteries. For Christians, the equivalent of doing one is living like Jesus—applying the Lord’s teachings to our lives and becoming like Him. We put into practice all that we’ve learned about love, forgiveness, redemption and salvation. While few of us would be able to take that second step in medicine and perform bypass surgery, we can take that second step in our faith and put into practice what we’ve been taught by Jesus.
Just seeing and doing, however, aren’t enough if we really want to comprehend something or master a skill. It’s when we try to help someone else understand a concept or technique that we learn in greater depth. In the third step, the training physician teaches someone else how to do the procedure. Because this new student sees things from another viewpoint and asks different questions, the teacher has to think harder and dig deeper to answer and explain his reasoning. It is when the new surgeon can clearly explain and demonstrate which arteries have the best results when grafted and how to remove and reattach them, that he has become a competent surgeon. It’s successfully taking that third step of teaching that eventually turns a med student into a skilled physician.
In Christianity, we often hold back when it comes to that third step: teaching, talking about, and demonstrating how our faith in Jesus works. The command to be disciples was given to us so the gospel message could spread far and wide but, perhaps, in His wisdom, God also knew that it is in sharing our faith that it becomes deeper and stronger. The faith of those early disciples intensified as they spread the gospel message and their knowledge expanded as they taught. When reading Acts and the Epistles, we see how the men who abandoned Jesus in the garden became mature disciples as they shared the gospel, clarified points, answered questions, and explained their belief. Most of us have no hope of ever becoming a surgeon and we’re probably not going to become theologians or even Sunday school teachers. Nevertheless, we have an opportunity to teach about Jesus whenever we open our mouths. Our faith will grow stronger and deeper not just by seeing Jesus in Scripture and doing as would He, but by sharing the gospel message with others.
To teach is to learn twice. [Joseph Joubert]
My morning’s reading took me to Deuteronomy 6 and the words that Jesus cited as the first, and most important commandment. Known as the Shema and found in verses 4 through 9, it is the essential declaration of the Jewish faith. Its name comes from the first Hebrew word of the verse, shema, which means “hear.” Observant Jews recite its words twice a day (morning and evening), on the Sabbath and religious holidays, and as the last words before death. The Shema is so entrenched in Judaism that a story is told about Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog who, in 1946, went searching for Jewish children who’d been hidden by Christians during the Holocaust. As he walked through European convents, monasteries, and orphanages, the rabbi would start to recite the Shema. He easily found the Jewish children because they immediately joined in saying the sacred words.
Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect (or governor) of Judea from 26 to 36 AD. He was responsible for the collection of taxes, managed construction projects, and had the sole authority to order a criminal’s execution. His most important duty, however, was to maintain law and order and, if he couldn’t do it through negotiation, he did it by any means necessary.
The Great Sanhedrin was the Supreme council (high court) of the Jews. Formed around 200 BC and modeled after the 70 elders who helped Moses in governing the Israelites, its 71 members consisted of scribes, priests, and elders with the high priest acting as its presiding officer. Along with religious and ritualistic Temple matters, the Sanhedrin addressed secular criminal matters, proceedings in connection with the discovery of a corpse, trials of adulterous wives, tithes, the preparation of Torah Scrolls, and drew up the calendar. As long as the Sanhedrin maintained public order and the Jews kept paying their taxes to Rome, the Romans were content to leave most of the nation’s judicial matters to them. While the Sanhedrin were supposed to administer justice, in the case of Jesus, they were anything but just; in fact, they sought perjured testimony.
Rather than a religious sect, the Herodians were a political group who favored Herodian rule over direct Roman rule. Unlike previous kings of Israel, the Herodian kings were appointed by the Roman emperors. It’s been said that “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard,” and it seems that way with the various Herods we meet in the New Testament. It was Herod the Great, ruler of Judea from 37 to 4 BC, who enlarged the Temple Mount and began rebuilding the second Temple around 20 BC. This Herod was the “king of the Jews” who questioned the Magi and sought to kill the Messiah by slaughtering boys under the age of two. [Jesus was born between 6 and 4 BC.] After Herod’s death, his kingdom was divided among his sons and Herod Antipas became tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. This is the Herod who ruled Galilee throughout Jesus’ ministry—the one who married the wife of his brother (Herod Philip II), beheaded John the Baptist, and sent Jesus back to Pilate.
Along with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two other major sects or philosophies mentioned by the historian Flavius Josephus were the Zealots and Essenes. Religion and politics were one and the same in ancient Palestine and the Zealots movement originated with Judah/Judas of Galilee and Zadok the Pharisee. Their most basic belief was that any and all means were justified if it led to political and religious liberty for the Jews. When Judah was killed while leading a revolt around 6 AD, his followers fled to the desert and continued in guerilla warfare against the Romans.
Devotions of the Heart 