"Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words." (Luke 19:47-48)
I have a Twitter account, but I'm not very good at it. In more than a year that I've been on Twitter I've tweeted exactly six times. I have three whole followers on Twitter. On the other hand, I follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter (from time to time) and he tweets several times a day every day. Lance Armstrong has 2,651,017 followers on Twitter. Now that's impressive.
Nevertheless, whether it's lowly me, or the mighty Lance Armstrong neither comes close to the impact Jesus had, and that's without TV, radio, internet, blogging, Facebook, Twitter and anything else to promote Himself. Nevertheless, Luke tells us that the Jewish leaders were afraid of trying to do away with Jesus, "because all the people hung on his words."
What was it about Jesus' words that made them so compelling? Some might argue that people hung on His words because He was such a great story teller. Jesus' parables are compelling. Others might say it was because He challenged the status quo. But neither of those is the real reason that people hung on Jesus' words.
Peter said it as well as anyone could on the one occasion when many people were turning away from Jesus because of His words. Jesus asked it the disciples wanted to leave as well and Peter replied: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
People hung on Jesus' every word because He had the words of eternal life. Jesus spoke the truth about sin that brings death, about his own death that paid for sin, and about his resurrection that brings eternal life. In a world where life itself is "terminal" those are words worth hanging onto.
1 comment:
You rock!
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