Christian Education — Unit 3: Jesus — The Master Teacher

Jesus called himself the Master Teacher. "You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am" (John 13:13). He did not flinch from the title. He claimed it. And then he gave the disciples the only definition of "Teacher" that the New Testament will accept: "I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you" (John 13:15).

The Master Teacher does not float above his students. He gives them an example. He does what he asks them to do, and he asks them to do what he has already done. He teaches by being.

In Unit 2 we listed six characteristics of the Christian Education teacher. In Unit 3 we will see those same six characteristics in the only Teacher who possessed them all without exception. Jesus was a person of God. Jesus was a student of the Word. Jesus was a servant. Jesus was a student of his students. Jesus was a master of the teaching process. Jesus was a person of prayer. Take any of those six and trace it through the Gospels, and you will find Jesus on every page.

This unit takes them in the same order. We will end where we began — not behind a lectern, but at the feet of the Master, where every Christian Education teacher learns to teach.

Luke gives us only one window into the boyhood of Jesus, and it tells us everything we need to know about his preparation for the teaching ministry. Jesus was twelve years old. The family had gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover. When his parents began the journey home, Jesus stayed behind in the temple. Three days later they found him — "sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions" (Luke 2:46). When Mary scolded him, he answered with his first recorded words in Scripture: "Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" (Luke 2:49).

Eighteen years would pass before Jesus stood up to teach in public. Eighteen years between the question in the temple and the sermon in Nazareth. We do not know exactly what Jesus did during those eighteen years. We know he worked in the carpenter shop. We know he was subject to his earthly parents. We know he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52). The Master Teacher did not begin his public ministry until thirty years of private fellowship with the Father had filled his soul to overflowing.

The lesson for the Christian Education teacher is plain. Jesus did not rush. Jesus did not improvise. Jesus did not teach out of an empty cup. He spent thirty years filling the cup before he ever poured a drop into the cup of another. The teacher who tries to skip the filling will find himself dry within a few months. The teacher who is filling now — in the carpenter shop, in the kitchen, in the morning quiet — will have something to pour for the rest of his teaching life.

The Master Teacher's relationship with Scripture was tested in the most public possible way at the very start of his ministry. Forty days in the wilderness, forty days without food, and the Devil himself came to the weakened Christ to tempt him. Three temptations came; three answers were given. Each answer began with the same three words: "It is written" (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). Each quotation came from the same book of the Old Testament: Deuteronomy.

Notice what Jesus did not do. He did not argue with the Devil. He did not negotiate. He did not improvise a clever original answer. He drew from a deep well of memorized, internalized Scripture, and he answered every temptation with what God had already said. The Devil left him. The Master Teacher had won the first battle of his public ministry without saying a single original word.

This is the pattern of his entire teaching career. Jesus quoted the Old Testament more than ninety times in the four Gospels. He quoted from the Law, from the Prophets, and from the Psalms. He quoted to teach (Matthew 5), to rebuke (Matthew 22), to defend his ministry (Luke 4), to interpret his own death (Luke 22). He even quoted Scripture from the cross (Matthew 27:46, quoting Psalm 22:1). The Master Teacher's lips were full of the Word of God because the Master Teacher's heart was full of the Word of God.

The Christian Education teacher who is not in the Word himself cannot teach the Word to others. He will be reduced, as Andi said in Unit 2, to teaching opinions about the Bible. Jesus modeled the alternative. Know the Word so well that when the test comes — whether the test is a temptation, a hard question from a student, a heresy from a stranger, or a sorrow at midnight — the answer that comes first to the lips is, "It is written."

The most famous teaching moment in the upper room was not a sermon. Jesus did not stand. He stooped. He laid aside his garments, took a towel, and girded himself. He poured water into a basin. And then the Master of the universe knelt at the feet of fishermen and tax collectors and a man who would betray him in less than three hours, and he began to wash their feet (John 13:4–5).

The disciples never forgot that lesson. They never forgot that the Master became the slave. Years later, when Peter wrote his first letter, he reached for the same image and told elders to "feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:2–3). Peter learned that from a Master who had washed his feet.

The Master Teacher's heart for service is seen most clearly in the smallest learners. When the disciples tried to send the children away — "thinking, perhaps, the great Teacher had no time for them," as one writer put it — Jesus was "much displeased" and said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:14). Then he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them. The Master of the universe held a four-year-old in his lap. The Christian Education teacher who will not kneel at a child's eye level has not yet understood the kind of Master he serves.

A teacher who will not serve cannot teach. A teacher who will serve can teach almost anything. Jesus modeled both: real authority and real service, in the same person, on the same evening, with the same towel.

If you want to see the Master Teacher's pedagogical genius in a single lesson, study John 4. Jesus is sitting at a well in Samaria. It is noon. A woman comes alone to draw water. Everything about that picture tells the careful reader that Jesus had already studied his student before he opened his mouth.

He knew her culture. She was a Samaritan, and the Jews "have no dealings with the Samaritans" (John 4:9). He knew her gender. No respectable rabbi would speak to a strange woman alone at a well. He knew her hour. Women drew water in the cool of the morning or the evening, in groups, with conversation. Many interpreters suggest that she came alone at noon to avoid the morning crowd, but John does not tell us why. He knew her history before she said a word about it: five husbands, and the man she was now living with was not her husband (John 4:18). And he knew her spiritual longing — she was waiting for the Messiah, even though she did not know she was speaking to him (John 4:25).

And so the Master Teacher did not begin with a sermon. He did not begin with a verse. He began with a request: "Give me to drink" (John 4:7). He met her where she was, with what she had, in the role she was already playing. From there he moved her, step by step, from physical water to living water, from her need to her sin, from her sin to the Messiah. By the end of the conversation, she left her waterpot at the well and ran into the city saying, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" (John 4:29).

Jesus taught one Samaritan woman so well because Jesus had first studied that one Samaritan woman. The Christian Education teacher does the same work with every learner who walks into the classroom. Know the student's culture. Know the student's age and stage. Know the questions the student brings, and the questions the student cannot quite ask. Then meet the student there, with what the student already has, in the role the student is already playing. The teaching that begins with the student is the teaching that ends with the student running into the city to tell others.

The Master Teacher used every method known to good teaching. He used the lecture — the Sermon on the Mount is three chapters long. He used questions — over three hundred of them are recorded in the four Gospels. He used parables — more than forty stories from the everyday life of his hearers. He used object lessons — a child set in the midst (Mark 9:36), a coin produced from the mouth of a fish (Matthew 17:27), a fig tree withered in the morning (Mark 11:20), water turned to wine (John 2). He used demonstration — he washed feet, he broke bread, he wept at a tomb. He used field trips — he took the disciples up the mountain, across the sea, through the grain fields, into the temple courts.

And he used different group sizes for different purposes. He preached to crowds of five thousand (Matthew 14). He taught the Twelve in private (Mark 4:34). He had inner-circle moments with three (Peter, James, and John). He had one-on-one conversations with Nicodemus at night (John 3) and with the woman at the well at noon (John 4). The Master Teacher fitted the method to the moment and the audience.

The Christian Education teacher who limits himself to one method is limiting Jesus. A teacher who only lectures has not yet imitated the Master who told stories. A teacher who only tells stories has not yet imitated the Master who asked sharp questions. A teacher who only asks questions has not yet imitated the Master who sometimes simply showed his disciples how to do something and let them imitate. The classroom is a place for many methods, varied as the Master Teacher varied them, suited each Sunday morning to the lesson and the learner.

Units 6 through 9 of this course will unfold the methods one by one — lesson planning and aims, methods and strategies, questioning and case study and experiential study, Bible learning activities. Each unit exists because the Master Teacher used the method, and we are still learning how to use it after him.

Mark records a single quiet sentence that ought to undo every busy teacher: "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed" (Mark 1:35). The night before had been a long one. Jesus had healed the sick at sundown until late. The disciples were sleeping. The Master Teacher was praying.

This was not a one-time event. It was the rhythm of his life. Before he chose the Twelve — the most consequential teaching decision of his ministry — he "continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12). Before the cross, he prayed in Gethsemane until "His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (Luke 22:44). When the crowds pressed him so hard he could not eat, Luke says, "He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed" (Luke 5:16). The busier he got, the more he prayed.

The teacher who does not pray relies on himself, as Andi warned in Unit 2. The teacher who prays relies on the One who breathed the Scriptures, who set the lesson before the lesson plan, and who knows each student by name. Jesus's teaching was bathed in prayer because Jesus's life was bathed in prayer. The teacher who prays as Jesus prayed will, in time, teach as Jesus taught.

Notice what the Master Teacher does NOT pray for. He does not pray for a bigger crowd. He does not pray for a better classroom. He does not pray for a different student. He prays for the Father's will, for the disciples by name, for the unity of those who would believe through their word (John 17). The Christian Education teacher learns from him how to pray, as well as how to teach.

Luke 10 tells of two sisters in Bethany. Martha was busy serving. Mary "sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word" (Luke 10:39). When Martha complained, Jesus answered, "But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:42).

The Christian Education teacher's first place is not behind a lectern. It is at the feet of the Master Teacher, hearing his word, before ever attempting to pass that word on to anyone else. Six characteristics of the teacher: a person of God, a student of the Word, a servant, a student of the students, a master of the teaching process, a person of prayer. Six characteristics in Jesus, perfectly embodied. Sit at his feet, and you will learn how to teach.

The teacher who never sits at his feet will eventually have nothing to give. The teacher who sits there often will never run out.

In Unit 4 we will turn from the Master Teacher to the learners. We will discover, as Jesus did at every well and on every roadside, that the learner is not a problem to be managed but a person to be loved. The teacher who has sat at the Master's feet is the teacher who can love a learner the way the Master loved that woman in Samaria at high noon.