One day long ago a young man stepped out from the throng, took a place on
a hillside, and began to teach the people. He did it in such a way that
they were amazed. They said he taught as one having authority, and not as
their scribes. Consequently, the common people heard him gladly.
From that day he has been known as a teacher. The years have taught us to
call him the Great Teacher, for they have shown us how well that title
is deserved.
I. Jesus is a great teacher because he teaches vital things. The shallow
and inconsequential have no place in his curriculum. Some spend years
learning what is hardly worth the trouble, but not in the school of
Christ. Whatever is presented there must really count. His test of
subject-matter is, “Is it worth-while?”
II. He is a great teacher because he teaches in ways so simple and plain
that none can mistake his meaning. Sometimes he speaks in the plainest
expository form with nothing of embellishment and utterly void of the
tricks of the rhetorician. Sometimes he makes it a story. The narrative
is always one with familiar settings and characters, and it always makes
a vital point before it is through. Jesus introduces a man and a truth
to each other and sees that they become friends. The person who can do
this well is a master instructor.
III. He is a great teacher because he always makes his own position clear
and lets the force of his own influence fall on the right side. In these
days, there are teachers who consider it a mark of scholarship to present
various sides of a question and then leave the helpless student to make
his own choice—and often a wrong one. Whether or not this is a scholarly
procedure, it certainly is not a helpful one. Jesus never followed it. He
went after the one vitally true viewpoint, committed himself to it without
reserve, and sought to influence his hearers to do the same. It is such a
teacher who builds history.