Christ our Prophet. Christ came in one portion of His threefold office to be a teacher and a speaker forth to us of the will of God. As, on the one hand, those are deeply in error who limit His office to this portion of it, and omit to dwell on His High-priesthood and His Kingship, so on the other hand it would be an error equally fatal to the entering into and realizing His redemption to forget those other essentials of His office, this His great work of teaching. Consider Him as our Prophet our teacher sent from God; enquiring into His practice and the peculiar characteristics of that He is teaching.
I. His teaching was earnest and continuous. The power of His anointing ever abode upon Him, ever wrought in Him, and spoke forth from Him. "He taught them there," is the constant record of the Evangelists. The Lord wrought at His appointed work while it was day with Him, and He filled the day with His work. It was no accident of His course, but its very purpose and substance.
II. It was a powerful teaching. They were astonished at His doctrine, but He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. No man could withstand the power and wisdom with which He spake.
III. It was a spiritual teaching: a teaching not bound down to the exposition of the law or prophets as they stood, but designed to fill them out, to clothe their dead and bare forms with life and sinews, and to establish them where they never were planted before in the hearts and lives of men.
IV. Again, His teaching was popular teaching. We are told that the common people heard Him gladly. His teaching went straight to the heart and laid open the life. Hence it was that it moved and convinced the hearers.
V. It was bold and unflinching. In what burning words did He unmask the decent sanctity of the scribes and Pharisees, who were even then conspiring to kill Him!
VI. His teaching again is full of the most varied and profound wisdom.
VII. It is supernatural, and above the power and grasp, as it is also above the character, of all human teachers.
VIII. It is prophetic.
IX. It bears witness of the Father.
H. Alford, Sermons,vol. vi., p. 126.
Reference: John 4:25; John 4:26. J. Kelly, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 120.