All That Jesus Taught : Bible Study Part 5 | Zac Poonen

We want to look again at our subject ‘All that Jesus Taught’. Based on the great commission as found in Matthew 28:18-20 which as I’ve repeatedly said in our past studies is part of the great commission, the second half of the great commission which is not sufficiently emphasized in Christendom. The first half being Mark 16:15, going to all the world and preach the gospel is being emphasized. Here we are particularly looking at Matthew 28:20, to teach people to do all that Jesus commanded. I want to emphasize the word do. Teach them all that I commanded would be different from teach them to do all that I commanded. Jesus wants us to do and then to teach not teach what we have not done. So we don’t begin by teaching. We begin by doing. You can’t go to a Bible school and spend 3 years there, get a degree and think that you can now teach people if you have not done what Jesus has commanded in your own life.

I remember asking a person once who graduated after a 4 year Bible college course in a particular Bible college. He won the 1st price in the graduation ceremony where I was speaking. He came to see me and I asked him “What is your spiritual condition at the end of these 4 years of study, your inner life?” He said “it’s worse than I first came. I’m more defeated by sin.” He was honest. I said “Now you are going to go out with your degree and become a pastor someday. What are you going to teach people? Hebrew and Greek and interpretation of verses or are you going to teach them how to overcome the lust of the eyes, how to overcome anger? That’s what they need to hear. That’s what Jesus taught and if you haven’t experienced that overcoming in you’re own life, what are you going to teach?” “Theory” This is the sad state of so many preachers and pastors and that’s why you hear every now and then of some preacher or pastors who’ve been preaching so many years suddenly you discover he’s been living in adultery for so many years. How is it that the people who are in the congregation could not discern the impurity of this mans spirit? It’s because they were taken up by the eloquence of his preaching and the knowledge that he had. Jesus said, teach them to do what I commanded.

Now I want you to turn to Acts 1:1 and see Jesus’ own example. Acts was written by Luke, the coworker of Paul. Before he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, he wrote Luke’s gospel. There in the Acts of the Apostles, he refers to the gospel of Luke that he had written in these words. He wrote both of them to a person called Theophilus and he says “The first account I compose oh Theophilus (Which we know as the gospel of Luke) was about all that Jesus began to do and teach.” So if you were to ask Luke to give a title to his gospel. He would say “All that Jesus began to do and teach”. Not all that Jesus taught but what he did and taught. It was a principle in Jesus’ life that he would not teach what he had not done. It’s more than that involved in this sentence because the first two: his action and miracle and all that. But the principle is this: Do and then teach. Not teach and do but do and teach. Jesus did not practice what he preach but preach what he already practice and continue to practice. So that is the principle.