The world has come after Him

“The world has come after him”

As the story of Lazarus spread, as amazing and compelling stories tend to spread the pharisees would have been desperate to regain the focus on themselves. As the news of this story spread throughout the land the number of people who grew in anticipation to see Jesus for themselves began to multiply. Remember that these are people that are living under both Roman and Religious Jewish law. They were oppressed, looked down upon, seen as less than and ultimately unimportant or having no value. As they heard of this and other Jesus stories, hope began to grow among them. This hope culminated in cries of “Hosanna” as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. The crowd may have had a misunderstanding of what Jesus was about to do, but they did place their their hope in Him. As these cries for Hosanna, and declarations of hope filled the air is when the religious leaders claimed that:

“The world has come after him”

This would have been a statement of desperation for the religious authority. They were seeing their grasp on power and privilege slipping away and were willing to do anything to hold onto it a little longer. They needed to combat these stories and steel hope away from the masses. It’s easy to see how they arrived at the conclusion ahead…