November 5
What made Jesus so effective as a healer and a preacher in His day? Why did throngs of people follow Him into the desert and to the seashore? Why did they abandon their daily routines in order to hear this itinerant preacher proclaim the Word of God in a new way?
There are the standard reasons given for His amazing influence over the people who heard Him, and there is great veracity to each of them. Yes, people flocked to hear Jesus because there was little in the way of diversion available to them and He provided an extraordinary one.
Yes, miraculous events occurred wherever He went and this was a tremendous blessing—blind eyes were opened, lame legs could walk, deaf ears could hear, broken lives were made new in whatever way the need required. In an age when medical and financial resources were negligible, Jesus offered free solutions to life’s most challenging problems.
But it was more than any one of these reasons or the sum of all of them that compelled people to turn to Jesus and to follow Him. It is the same reason Paul tells us will compel the unbelievers of our day to turn to the Lord. In Ephesians 4:15 he says, “Speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way to be like Christ Jesus.” The truth in love—mighty then; mighty now—just like Jesus.
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