About the King
Trawling the bible for quotable quotes has been an interesting exercise. My target was at least 365, and in the end I found more than enough. But at one point I was doubtful. I’d finished with the first three-quarters of the bible – the Old Testament – but my tally stood at just 167.
Yet, as the good book says, salvation was at hand. When I turned to the Gospels I hit paydirt. The words of Jesus gave me well over half the phrases I needed.
And this holds true no matter who compiles the lists. It seems that, in all the bible, it’s the words of Jesus that tower over all others. He speaks around 5% of the bible’s content but provides most of it’s enduring sayings.
There is a surprising supremacy to Jesus Christ. His impact seems to so outweigh His humble circumstances that it demands an explanation.
Born in a shed, laid in a feeding trough, He came into the poorest of poor families. He spent his childhood on the run from the authorities. From asylum seeker to builder’s labourer, he eventually grew up in a northern backwater of a tiny oppressed nation, ruled by a ruthless super-power. His own people constantly taunted Him over His perceived illegitimacy – taunts that stuck throughout His life.
Then aged 30 He collected together an unlikely assortment of no-hopers and miscreants. Ill-educated fishermen, despised tax collectors, political zealots, notorious sinners. And for three years He toured little Israel as a penniless, homeless, sometimes wildly popular, sometimes wildly unpopular preacher. Just three years in little Israel, an occupied province under the thumb of mighty Rome. Three years before His own people hated Him enough to hand Him over to the Romans, and they did what Romans did best. They snuffed out this upstart who claimed to be King.
Or did they? Because this unlikely mob of followers swore, even as it cost each of them their lives, that Jesus had risen bodily from death, just as promised. And that He had ascended to the throne of the universe. These former fishermen, tax collectors and sinners, spread the word that Jesus was indeed the eternal King, the long promised Messiah, the Son of God. It was a truth that turned the world upside down. And within a few hundred years the empire that executed Jesus confessed Him Lord and King.
It is the most stupendous fact of all history. How is Jesus the central figure of human history?
In His day, He was insignificant to the powers that be. When He caused a minor and short-lived stir He was despised, rejected and condemned. Yet today, He commands more allegiance than any other human being ever has or ever could. Not bad for a kid born in a shed.
This is the surprising supremacy of King Jesus. It is the penniless preacher, who never entered the military or political office or religious orders. He was never schooled by the elites nor did He found such institutions. He never wrote a book, never led an army, never had an ounce of earthly power. He was butchered as a blasphemer aged 33.
And He is the single most important human ever born. Billions call Him Lord.
I wonder how you account for this?
The bible gives us the answer. It insists that the baby in the manger, the teacher on the mount, the victim on the cross, is the One who was there “in the beginning.” He is the long promised King of the Scriptures and this world’s true Lord.
I pray you’ll taste and see something of His goodness as we read His biography – the bible.
