Why Was Jesus’s Teaching So Astonishing?
The Way Jesus Answered What was so unusual and so attention-grabbing about Jesus’s teaching? Part of it was that once people began to challenge him and ask him questions, Jesus proved to be a masterful chess player. He simply refused to get caught in verbal or intellectual traps, and in fact, always managed to turn the heat back on the one who posed the challenge in the first place. And even then, he did it in a way that would not only win the argument but also spiritually challenge everyone listening. Let me show you an example. Matthew 22 recounts a time when Jesus was teaching in the temple in Jerusalem and a group of Jewish leaders approached him in order to challenge him. Now, this wasn’t an accidental meeting. These leaders had planned the whole thing; the story even starts by saying that the Pharisees “plotted how to entangle him in his words.” They also wanted to do it publicly, so they walked up while Jesus was teaching in the temple, probably pushed through a crowd, and inte