Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this lesson on Jesus' Life and Teachings.

I'm Miss Kendrick and I'm doing all of the lessons in our Christian Beliefs Unit so it might be that you've already seen my face a few times.

Hopefully, it's not been the worst thing ever.

Like I said, today we're going to be looking at Jesus' Life and Teachings and in particular some of his actions and his miracles that are recorded in the Bible.

There are so many stories I could tell you that we see in Christianity about Jesus but for the GCSE, you generally need to know some of Jesus' core teachings, such as how we should treat one another, as well as knowing some reasons why Christians believe that Jesus' teachings have authority.

So, before we get started and this is going to be what we're going to look at in more detail in this lesson.

So we're going to have one example of one of Jesus' miracles, we're going to have one example of some of his actions and a few examples actually of his teachings.

And you are going to need a pen or a pencil and some paper, ideally a different coloured pen as well for when you write down additions or corrections to your work.

Make sure that you have got a good working space so that you've turned off any TV or radio, anything that's going to distract you.

If you're working on your phone, just try not to get too distracted by those notifications and things like that.

So, we'll get down to business.

Now, if you've completed some of the previous lessons in this unit, you'll know that we've looked at Jesus' birth and after this, the Bible actually tells us very little about Jesus' early life.

Aside from the fact that he was probably a carpenter because that's the job that his father did.

What we do know is that when he was around 30 years old, Jesus began teaching.

Now, he started by being baptised by John the Baptist and then he goes out into the desert and spends 40 days and nights fasting.

And in this time, he is tempted by Satan in lots and lots of different ways.

Now according to the story, Jesus resists these temptations.

And when he returns from his 40 days in the desert, he chooses his 12 disciples and he starts to teach.

Now, as I tell you that about the beginning of Jesus' ministry, you might be thinking, why do I have a picture of a policeman here? And the big word, authority? Well, authority means to have the right or the power to give orders and expect obedience.

So for example, the police have authority because they're given authority as part of their job.

So if a policeman tells you, "Oh, this road is cordoned, cordoned off actually, you can't go down there." You need to follow their advice.

Your teachers have authority when you're at school but they might not have the same authority when you're at home.

Now, Christians believe that God has authority over the whole world because he, they believe he's the all powerful Creator.

And if you remember in previous lessons, we've looked at the Christian belief that Jesus is God, that he is God incarnate, so God taken on human flesh.

And that means that his teachings would have authority.

If Jesus says, "Well, you need to live like this so that you can go to heaven." Christians would say that that has authority because he's God.

Whereas if I was to tell you, "Oh, you have to live like this so that you could go to heaven." You're going to think Miss Kendrick, you're getting too big for your boots there.

You are just human and you do not have the monopoly on what is right or wrong.

And I would agree with you for questioning me.

So, what we're going to look at in this lesson is these different ways in which Jesus' authority is expressed in the stories of the Gospels.

And we can look a little bit about how this might influence Christians and how they're going to live because of these beliefs.

We're also going to look a little bit about how Christians believe that things that Jesus did made the world a better place.

So, brought about the Kingdom of God.

Now, the Kingdom of God is a really important phrase in Christianity.

Essentially, it refers to heaven in a way.

The Kingdom of Heaven become on earth.

So, that would mean that earth would be a much better place.

A place with no suffering, a place where God's will is done.

So, Christians would say that lots of things that Jesus did, brought about God's kingdom on earth.

Before we look at our first story, I'm going to get you to pause the video and answer some questions on what I've talked about so far.

So, get ready to get thinking and do your best in your answers.

Write them in full sentences 'cause this is really good practise for your GCSE.

Okay, so we're going to start with one of Jesus' miracles, which is The Feeding of the 5000.

And this is a really famous miracle story so it's likely that you have heard it before.

Now, the Bible refers to Jesus doing miracles pretty much everywhere he went.

And often these were healing miracles which were usually accompanied by Jesus telling someone that their sins were forgiven.

And we can again talk about the idea of this being a restoration of how the world should be.

This Christian idea that there was no suffering when God first created the world and that there will not be suffering in the Kingdom of Heaven and that Jesus is preventing this suffering when healing people.

We're going to look particularly at the feeding of the 5000 and one of the reasons for this is because in this story, we see Christian beliefs about God's abundant provision, that God would provide everything that people need and that this is a restoration of the relationship between God and humans.

So again, if you've looked at a previous lesson where I've talked about the story of creation, I said that the Genesis story says that Adam and Eve had everything they needed in the garden.

Well, in the story of the feeding of the 5000, we see people having everything that they need.

So just a reminder, Jesus' miracles include him healing people, raising people from the dead even, showing that he has power over death and miracles over nature.

And the feeding of the 5000 would sort of fit into miracles over nature.

It's an event that breaks the laws of nature.

That's one definition of miracles.

There's also other miracles over nature, such as Jesus calming the storm.

There's lots of stories, I very much encourage you to look into them.

So, the story begins.

And Jesus is travelling around Israel teaching people and he's being followed by this huge crowd because he keeps on doing amazing things like healing people so obviously, everyone is very interested.

So, he goes to a remote place and he's been teaching the people and it starts to get late in the day.

And Jesus looks at all the people who've been following him and thinks we're in the middle of nowhere and none of these people have brought any food with him, with them.

So he says to his disciples, these people need feeding and he asks them what they're going to do.

Now, the disciples freak out a little bit because they, number one recognise they're in the middle of nowhere and number two, they think oh my goodness, how much money would it cost to feed all of these people? We do not have that sort of money on us to do that.

So, whilst the disciples are trying to figure out, a small boy approaches and he has two fish and five small loaves of bread.

And he offers these to Jesus, to the disciples.

Now, some people might be quite cynical and say, "Well, that is never going to feed everybody, "how ridiculous to offer this little picnic to over 5000 people." But Jesus takes this food and he tells all of the people to sit in groups and he tells the disciples to start to distribute it.

And as the fish and the loaves are passed out, they're miraculously multiplied so that all of the people there have enough food.

And the food is multiplied to the extent that after the meal, the disciples go around and they collect 12 baskets of leftovers.

Do you remember what I said about abundant provision? This idea that there's even more than people need because there's all of these leftovers in these baskets.

So, this miracle is really famous.

It's a very well known one.

And it's a really useful miracle story for you to be able to write about as evidence in your exams and things like that when you're asked about Jesus' authority and the different things that Jesus did in his life according to the Gospel.

What I'm going to do is get you to pause the video and I want you to write down as much of the story as you can.

You're going to have some key words to include in your answer as well.

Okay, I do wonder what you thought about that thinking question.

How did the feeding of the 5000 bring about the Kingdom of God? Well, I dropped in lots of answers for you.

Lots of Christians would say that it helped bring about the Kingdom of God because it has this abundant provision that God is providing for people everything that they need and that's what the Kingdom of Heaven would be like according to many Christians.

Next, we're going to look at some of Jesus' Actions.

It would be really good if you write the subtitle, Jesus' Actions, here.

And we're going to look at The story of Zacchaeus.

Now again, this is quite a famous story.

And a bit of context will really, really help us to understand it.

Just as a warning, I'm definitely going to get you to practise spelling the word, the name Zacchaeus because it's a tricky one.

Just to warn you in advance, you got to watch out for the A and the E because we don't really expect the A come first but it does.

But, you'll practise that in a minute.

So, a bit of context.

This story would have been really funny to anyone hearing it early on, early on at Jesus' time.

Now, this is because Zacchaeus is actually quite a comical character.

He's the one hiding in the tree in this picture.

Now in Jesus' culture, it would've been considered really undignified for a grown man to be hiding in a tree.

Just imagine if you were walking to school one day and you were to spot your headmaster, your headmistress hiding in a tree.

It would definitely go around the school very, very quickly.

You would probably all find it absolutely hilarious and unbelievable.

So, that's just a glimmer of the way that people would have reacted to Zacchaeus climbing a tree.

But, the other thing is Zacchaeus is also considered a bad guy by the Jews at the time.

And this is because he was seen as a traitor.

So at the time Jesus was teaching, the Roman Empire had taken over Israel and they were ruling there.

And this was really devastating to the Jewish people because this was the land that they believed God had given them.

It was the promised land.

And here comes the Romans and they're ruling over them and they're taxing them as well.

They're taking money from them.

But then Zacchaeus and others like him are collecting taxes from the Jews for the Romans.

So, he is seen as an utter traitor.

People would have spat at him when he was walking down the streets.

And not only is he seen as a traitor but he's also cheating people out of their money.

He is charging them more taxes than he should be.

So, no one likes him.

But, Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is coming to his town and he's really excited.

He's heard about Jesus.

He's heard about his teachings and his miracles and all he wants is to see him.

And so, he goes and joins the crowd but he's really short.

Again, another reason why he's seen as a comical character in this story.

He cannot see over the heads of everybody else around him.

So, he runs ahead to where Jesus is going and he climbs a tree so that he can just see Jesus walk by.

That's all he wants.

But what happens is, as Jesus is passing, he stops and he says "Zacchaeus, I'm going to come and eat in your house tonight." Now, everybody would have been absolutely blown away because Jesus was expected to go and spend time with the most important, most religious people in the area because in the culture at this time, the people that you ate with were the people that you approved of.

And so, if Jesus was going to eat with traitors like tax collectors, is giving the impression that he approves of the way that they're living.

So, everyone's muttering and they're quite annoyed about Jesus' choice.

They say, "Don't you know who he is? Don't you know he's a sinner?" Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus into his home and in response to Jesus' love and acceptance, he dramatically changes his ways.

He says, "You know what, I'm going to pay back everybody "who I have cheated and not only am I going to give them back what I owe them, I'm going to pay them four times over." And Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house." That means that that day Zacchaeus was saved.

He was saved from his sin and the consequences of it because he had changed his ways and recognised what he did was wrong.

So, what we see here in this story is Jesus showing love to those who are outcasts in society, those who were considered sinful and in response to that love, people are flourishing and they're changing their ways.

And this is one way in which Christians believe that Jesus' actions are really important.

That they're a model for how they should treat other people today.

I'm going to get you to pause and write some, sorry, write some answers to some questions.

Again like I said, watch out for that spelling of Zacchaeus and there's some other questions as well.

So, next we're going to look at some of Jesus' Teachings.

And this was one of the main things Jesus was doing as he was travelling around.

He was sort of teaching and healing people and doing miracles on the side in a way.

Now, there are again lots and lots of different teachings of Jesus that I could talk about, that you can read about in the Gospels and in particular, The Sermon on the Mount.

And we need to make sure that we understand these and that we can write about them.

So in a minute, I'm going to show you a table that has several teachings from Jesus in one side of the column and as you go through the table, you need to explain a bit of what they mean and a bit of how they help people to live a more godly life according to Christianity.

So, I'll put the next slide on the screen.

And I've also got an example answer of the sort of thing you need to fill this table with.

You can see the first teaching here it says, "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too." So, you can see the first column asks what this means.

So my example says, "This means people shouldn't retaliate, hit someone back if they are attacked." It says, "How does it help people get on with each other?" Well, "It stops fighting from continuing "because if you refuse to carry on the fight "then it's going to stop.

"Why would this please God? "God loves all people, he wants us to treat one another as loved children of God." So, that's what Christians believe.

And question four, "Is this easy to follow?" Now, this is a bit more of your opinion but my example answer says, "This can be difficult "as we might feel justified in hitting someone back or feel very angry about something." We could even talk about self defence.

You might say, "Well, maybe you need to hit someone back to defend yourself." The next quotation says, "You have heard that it was said love your friends, "hate your enemies.

"But now I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." So I want you to think about what this means.

I've got a clue for you for the second column so think about how it might help stop people from being enemies.

Think about how this might please God and whether you think this is easy to follow.

So to do this, you need to go on to the main task which is, so you'll need to pause the video and go onto this main task slides.

Do your best.

You can copy out the table or you can write it in full sentences and then come back for the feedback after you have finished.

Okay, so just a reminder.

Well done by the way for all of your hard work on those questions.

As we go through the answers, I want you to remember two different things.

Number one, just because my answer says something different, it doesn't necessarily mean your answer is wrong but I want you to think carefully about it.

For some of these boxes there might be more than one correct answer, especially that last one that's your opinion.

Secondly, it's always good to get down the answers I've got there for you as feedback.

So, even if they're just a bit different or maybe if they're going to add something to your answer, it's really good practise to use a different coloured pen and add to your own because this is all about learning more.

We don't want to stop at what's good enough and think, oh, I've got here is good enough.

We want to think, okay, how can I be even better? So, that's the whole point of feedback.

It's not to just think, oh, I did something wrong.

It's to think, how can I be the very best I can be at this? So again, you will need to pause the video as you look through the feedback and write in your additions and corrections.

Okay, thank you again for everything that you've done in today's lesson and all of your hard work.

I hope you've really enjoyed learning about some of those stories from the Gospels about Jesus' life and they're going to be really useful evidence for you, for lots of other units in Christianity and in your GCSEs like the themes on how to treat people and things like that.

I'd always advise you to make sure you learn those quotations.

In this lesson I've not asked you to do cover, write, check, repeat or anything like that.

But if you were in my class, I would be setting you that for homework.

So again, if you want to really do well in knowing those quotations, it's going to be really helpful.

So, I'd encourage you to do that as well.

But thank you so much for all of your hard work today and I hope you join me next time.