All That Jesus Taught : Bible Study Part 8 | Zac Poonen

Continuing our study on ‘All that Jesus Taught’, this is based on Matthew 28:20, the neglected part of the great commission as I call it, go therefore in to all nations, make disciples, baptize them and teach them to do all that I have commanded you. It’s our responsibility to teach that to those who claim to have given their life to Christ. We must satisfy the heart of the Lord by bringing people to obedience, to all that Jesus commanded and there’s little of that being done today in Christendom. That is why Christians have such a bad testimony. Generally speaking, that is the reason why there is so much of conflict and lack of love among Christians. Why there is such a lack of humility among so many of God’s servants. Why there is so much sin and the love of money among God’s people and even among God’s servants. It’s because all that Jesus commanded has not been taught diligently by God’s servants. So this is what we’re looking at in these series. We’ve already sin a number of things that Jesus commanded. Beginning with the first words that Jesus spoke after his anointing & baptism and that is to the devil in Matthew 4.

We looked at the importance of hearing God’s word continuously, Matthew 4:4. The need to compare which scripture so that we are not deceive by the devil miscoding the scripture and not tempting God by foolishly claiming promises, expecting his protection, Matthew 4:7. Then learning to worship God’s spirit, Matthew 4:10. Moving on from there, we read John the Baptist, his primary message was as described in Matthew 3:2, repent for the kingdom of heaven as it had. He was the last of the prophets to the nation of Israel. He was the forerunner for Jesus Christ who was going to open up the way to a new covenant that God was making with man, which would bring people of all nations in to a relationship with God as their Father. So, he’s message to the nation of Israel was to repent. Repent means turn around. The best definition of it could be from the military term/ military command “about turn”. When a soldier is facing front and a sergeant major or major in the play ground says about turn. He turns right around and he puts his back to the direction he was facing and looks in the direction in which his back was facing formerly. That is the best definition of repent. To turn around and we have to turn around in our mind. In English the word repent doesn’t express it more clearly. And most languages the translation of repent is not very clear but in Tamil language it’s very clear. Repent is (Inaudible 3:51). That is the turning of the mind. That’s exactly what it means. The about turn of the mind and that’s what John the Baptist was telling the nation of Israel. See, the nation of Israel was promised a whole lot of earthly things. Throughout the covenant there’s no promise that they could partake of the divine nature. There was no promise of treasure in heaven. There was no promise about a heavenly life on earth, etc. They were promised material wealth; especially in Deuteronomy 28 it is very clear.

Material prosperity, physical health, number of children, their business would be blessed, their farming would be blessed, their cattle would be blessed. And that was the job on those days of the Israelis and they would be very prosperous. They would never be in debt and their earthly enemies would be destroyed. They’d be a great nation and they would have a land which is the land Canaan which is called Israel. So, all the blessings were earthly and their face was completely set towards the things of earth all the time.