So Jesus shows up on earth and He launches something brand new; a brand new kind of relationship with God, a brand new covenant, and a brand new movement; He launches the church. And then He died, and when He died it was like “game over.” And then He rose from the dead and punctuated everything He taught and everything He claimed to be. And then He freed His movement from the Mosaic Law, and then He left.
And basically His first century followers were left with a resurrection religion; not a lot to go on…they were fired up and excited because they saw someone die and then later on they had breakfast with Him. Not a common occurrence; but they were absolutely convinced.
But they were left with an assortment of parables and teachings and some commands; and there were some miracles that He’d done. But that’s pretty much what these early followers of Jesus had to go on. And Paul, who wrote about half of the New Testament, he didn’t start writing for about 20 or 25 years; and even the things that he wrote weren’t widely circulated for about 5 or 10 years afterwards.
So for the first 50 or so years of the church, all they really had were the teachings of Jesus based on eyewitness accounts of those who heard Him teach, who’d began to write these things down and circulate them. What would it be like to be a Jesus follower like those early first century Jesus followers if all we had were what Jesus taught as it related to how we’re to live our lives…?
No they didn't. They had the Stars...............................look up.
