Scandalous Faith – a Millstone around our neck

Lent 2023 AD +

Original post date: 29 March, in the year of our Lord 2022

Today’s topic is scandal!

ASH WEDNESDAY in the year of our Lord 2023, we begin with TODAY’S subject:

Repent, Jonah!

It’s raining and you are NOT Noah who will save only his own family from the flood.

The ground is shaking in the year of our Lord 2023 and you are NOT Abraham who will rescue only his family from the evil and the fate of Sodom or the judgment of Gomorrah.

This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says:
“I, myself, have risen against Babylon!
I will destroy its children and its children’s children,”
says the LORD.

Isaiah 14:16 NLT

Yet the Prophet Jonah REFUSED to preach to the few who could be saved from the wrath to come to the city of destruction.

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So YOU claim to be an evangelist of JESUS to the nations?

GO into all the world and preach Good News, the Gospel of forgiveness and eternal life for those who will REPENT of their sinful past and FOLLOW Jesus Christ as our Lord.

The Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection, however, becomes BAD NEWS to any who turn the other way – in the direction away from God’s grace.

Such bad news for evangelicals! christians who suddenly turn in the other direction + a direction of SELF and a gospel of what God has done for ME (and should do for you).

• Have you turned to a path AWAY from the word of God, even like Jonah?
• Won’t sailing away from the command of the Lord have dire consequence?

I WON’T PREACH THAT, Jonah responded by sailing away from the command of God.

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness

1st letter of Paul to the church at Corinth 1:23 KJV

Christians proclaim a scandalous faith. Our Cross worn as jewelry may well be a millstone worn around our neck.

Repent, Jonah! Lest Christ who hung on a Cross hang a millstone around your neck.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness;
but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18 KJV

Jesus Warns disciples

As we have learned in ACTS of the Apostles, disciples are followers of Christ Jesus.

Evangelical christians who claim His Name but turn away from God’s command become obstacles to the Lord saving others from the cities of destruction.

At the moment Jonah turned away from Nineveh even this Prophet of God was not an obedient disciple ‘chosen‘ for eternal life.

A last-days appeal to the Evangelical

Evangelicals who claim other cause of the world above Christ cannot boast of the burden of the millstone placed around their necks.

And evangelicals who embrace condemned cultures of the cities of destruction without revealing the cost of the Cross may find the weight of the Cross around their neck weighing down their witness with veiled hope while singing of ME and JESUS.

Scandal – Do you recognize it in the warnings of Jesus?

Luke 17:

Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!

“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

Luke 17:2 NKJV

Then the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. – Jonah 4:4-5

The Millstone

“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck..

• Does this punishment (even self-inflicted) remind you of Jonah?

And he said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me.”

Jonah 1:12 NKJV

So what’s the scandal?

Returning to the Gospel of Luke (NASB20) and Jesus’ warning:

“It is inevitable that [temptations to sin] stumbling blocks come, but woe to one through whom they come!

σκάνδαλον – skandalon

the movable stick or trigger of a trap, a trap stick

(And evangelicals with ears to hear, now hear this:)

any person or thing by which one is (entrapped) drawn into error or sin

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Scandal: fig. applied to Jesus Christ, whose person and career were so contrary to the expectations of the Jews concerning the Messiah, that they rejected him and by their obstinacy made shipwreck of their salvation

Is your faith scandalous because you dare Talk of JESUS?

‘But I have a few things against you, because you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling ^G4625 block ^G4625 before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 2:14 LSB
+ for one of the most influential churches of 1st c. AD Christianity at Ephesus

OR will your reluctance to share the Good News of Christ, including the cost of His CROSS, leave you in the same boat as Jonah?

‘Therefore repent. But if not, I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.

‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John 2:16-17a LSB

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Your comment on this post and these Scriptures encourage the witness of this author. RH  (original post date 29 March in the year of our Lord, 2022)
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