Jesus, in his own words
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock."- Matthew 7:24
Jesus' words dominate the Gospels, comprising fully 60% of Matthew's Gospel a total of nearly 13,000 words from 647 of the 1071 verses. Over half of the Gospels of Luke and John directly relay Jesus's parables, admonitions, promises, and sayings.
Only Mark, with his fast-moving journalistic capturing of the events of Jesus' life, has fewer than half of the verses devoted to Jesus's own words.
So we have plenty of material to choose from!..., and that is before we add his words found in Acts, Corinthians, and Revelation.
Red Letter Days
If you have a "red-letter" Bible, these statistics will, of course, come as no surprise to you. The first red-letter New Testament was published in 1899, with the full Bible following two years later. Louis Klopsch, an editor for the Christian Herald, conceived the idea of printing Jesus's words in red to reinforce the understanding that Jesus's blood was spilled for us.
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20)
Klopsch noted in his introduction to the first edition;
"Setting aside mere human doctrines and theories regarding Him, it presses close to the Divine Presence, to gather from His own lips the definition of His mission to the world and His own revelation of the Father"
Throughout the series, we'll cover his parables, teachings, conversations, and proclamations of Who he is, Why he came, and How we should respond. Many will be very familiar to us, but we'll doubtless encounter a few surprises and less familiar passages along the way.
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock."- Matthew 7:24