On Saturday evening, our church folks and I had the opportunity to go to Chris Tomlin's concert at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine. As you can see in the picture there were lots of people out there we had a great time. (I have mixed reactions and impressions about that concert that night but I won't be talking about it here.)
Later I had found out there were about 14,000 people that came to the concert that evening. The amphitheater had been packed. The front part of the theater was rows of seats but as you go higher to the back of the theater it was just grass for the audience to sit. As we were sitting on the grass in the back part of the theater, suddenly the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 came into my mind.
This story is found in all four gospels and in Luke 9 it tells that Jesus was speaking to the people about the Kingdom of Heaven. Can you imagine Jesus 'speaking' to all the crowd that had come that night? The Gospels write that the counted people were 5,000 males, and the women and children didn't go into count. It means that on that day when Jesus 'talked,' the estimate of the whole crowd would have been no less than the number of people we had at Chris Tomlin's concert. And Jesus 'spoke' to them with His own voice. No microphones, no speakers, just His own clear and beautiful voice. I am just amazed at how He was able to speak to all those crowd like that...
Oh how I envy those people who were out there to hear Jesus speak. If we were hearing songs about Jesus the other night, these people were listening to Jesus Himself! It was that very voice that created the world in six days, the voice that raised Lazarus back to life from death, and that very voice that will say to me "Come!" when He comes again for the second time!
