Hanging on Every Word

When it comes to Jesus, Christians believe that He is God. That He is Lord over all. That He lived a perfect/sinless life. With these being key beliefs about Jesus, I have noticed that many Christians, including myself, simply do not listen to everything Jesus said. We like to take the things we like to hear about love and peace and use them as common cliches. But when Jesus says something that is a little hard to swallow we start dissecting it and trying to figure out "what Jesus really meant to say." Or there is the problem of apathy towards the words of Christ. We hear or read something He said but don't understand it so we just forget about it and don't care instead of trying to understand that the Messiah meant. We listen to Jesus when we understand Him or like what He says but then tune Him out when the message is hard or we just don't understand.

Recently I have noticed that there is one group of people that ALWAYS listened to Jesus, the Pharisees. They couldn't stand Jesus. They believed He was demonic. They absolutely hated Him. They hated him because He told people that they were wrong. He embarrassed them. He challenged them. But they still listened to Him. They hung on every word He said because they hated Him. They listened carefully, in an attempt to trap Him in His words if He misspoke. They understood what Jesus meant when He used phrases like "I Am," and when He said that He had the power to forgive sins. They knew what "I Am" meant. They knew that only God had the power to forgive sins and when Jesus said that, He was referring to Himself as God. They listened to Jesus. They understood what He was saying and they murdered Him because of it.

If we call ourselves Christians, people who are trying to be like Christ. People who follow Christ. People who LOVE Christ. Shouldn't we listen and try to understand EVERYTHING He says? The Pharisees did and they HATED Him.