Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in him. But Jesus didn’t trust them, because he knew human nature. 25 No one needed to tell him what mankind is really like. (John 2:23-24 NLT)Everybody likes a good sideshow. It is a fact. Everybody likes to be amazed and entertained. And on one level, Jesus provided that.
He always had something happening. He always was doing something interesting. He always had something good to say. They even enjoyed his skewering of the Jewish leaders. He was entertaining.
And there were some who also believed in him. They saw the things he did and heard the things he said and believed that he was from God.
The problem is: people are fickle. One moment they love you, the next, they will turn on you with a vengeance.
Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart know that. Both made a mistake – and it was a rather large one, to be sure – but the minute people found out, they were gone from their affections. Ten minutes before the revelations of the problems, they were the greatest people in the world. ten minutes afterwards, they were the butt of jokes in almost every situation.
Of course, they deserved some of what they got. But they went from top to bottom in no time.
Jesus knew this. Something like it even happened to him a couple of times. In John 6, he had fed people and they had seen his miracles and thought he was great. Then he told them the things he did in verses 53-56 about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the son of man and they were through.
In John 8, they were listening it him and he told them that he had come from God. All of a sudden, it was time to stone him. He barely got away.
On the Sunday before he was killed, they were ready to proclaim him king of Israel. The next week, they screamed for his blood.
They loved him and followed him as long as he did what they wanted him to do. When he deviated from it, they were finished with him. It made no difference that he was the same guy.
They wanted entertainment and someone dedicated to making them happy. The last thing they wanted was for someone to challenge them with words from God.
All pastors know this. In many churches, pastors are sometimes only a few minutes away from being fired. In one church I was acquainted with, the pastor had been there eighteen years. He was summarily fired on a Sunday night because one of the elders felt he had made a disparaging remark.
The tide can turn so quickly for anyone in a position of authority. One minute they love you, the next they hate you.
I was talking in a Wednesday night devotional several years back. I had bought a new car, a black Mustang with T tops. It had begun to own me and I mentioned that things did not matter. One of my best friends felt I was talking about his Amway venture (which tends to get its adherents into a materialistic mindset) and got mad. I didn’t even have him in mind, but I suppose it hit something he was already thinking about.
He almost, in spite of his wife telling him he was acting silly, quit being my friend, even though we had been friends for a couple of years.
And more ad nauseum could be recalled. A church will love you to death when you come, and then something will happen, some small thing that irritates a prominent member, and it will be through.
Jesus irritated the prominent members. He knew he was going to and he knew he would.
He had just cleared out the sellers of animals from the temple, and had made a lot of people mad. Then he told them he would rebuild the temple in three days after they destroyed it.
He was speaking of himself and the temple that was his body, of course. And he spoke obliquely, as he did often, so that those who wanted to understand would, but those who didn’t care wouldn’t (Matthew 13:12-14).
What he had to say was vital, but the more education and the more tradition rested in one’s heart, the less they would want to understand what he said.
His understanding of their human nature wasn’t supernatural. Anyone in any degree of leadership understand that.
And anyone with any sense will remember it as he or she goes into a leadership role.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.