Tag: scandal

  • Scandalous Faith – a Millstone around our neck

    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:

    cross hanging from car mirror - Christians wear a symbol of a scandalous faith in Jesus Christ as God and Lord

    Christians in the shoes of Jonah

    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.


    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
    Rembrandt - Jonah before the walls of Nineveh

    “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.

    Luke 17:3


    But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry.

    Jonah 4:1 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


    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

    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)
    Thanks.

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  • Are You the One? – 2

    Are You the One? – 2

    Jesus to the multitudes

    Speaking of John the Baptist…

    Luke 7

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    26 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is he of whom it is written,

    “‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
    who will prepare your way before you.’

    28 I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” 29 (When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, 30 but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.)

    31 “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

    “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
    we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’

    See the contrast of walking into two very different churches and hearing the complaints of the ‘worshipers.’

    33 For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’

    We will have only grape juice (and only on occasion).

    34 The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

    We will have wine (and every time).

    35 Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.”

    One preacher is loud; one is soft. One place of worship is grand; another quaint. One has an organ and a choir; another only one with a guitar. One place they kneel; in another they jump up and down and fall to the floor.

    And what do the multitudes say?

    Jesus is not John… and John was not Jesus.

    Perhaps they were pious before John, while they were joyful around Jesus. Yet they complained of John’s piety and Jesus’ lack of it. Two brothers of the faith; two sons of God — yet both were more than that.

    God has a family of his own children. The speech and ways of one child of God will win the heart of another, while a very different way of  witness will not win this soul.  Our brother or sister of the family of God may win a soul that we cannot.

    John and Jesus (even cousins) were so different in so many ways. And you are so different from me.

    Wisdom is justified by all of her children (and God has many children). The words and ways and witness of the children are important, each for different times, different purposes and different souls for the family of God; but it is the Father and the wisdom of the Father to which all must yield.

    Worship is not for the multitudes; worship is of the Father.

    Wisdom is justified by all of her children.

    John was one child of God (none greater, according to Jesus). Jesus was One child of God. They taught different. They had different purposes for our Father God.

    Some children were chosen for the family of God long before their birth. (Jews.) Some children were chosen by adoption into the family of God before we were conceived in the womb. (Gentiles.)

    I thank the Lord for my inclusion in the family of our Heavenly Father by His redemption for my sin. I thank God for all of my brothers and sisters in the Lord – the multifaceted family of believers who have eternal life in Christ Jesus.

    And the merciful and Almighty God is justified by ALL His children.

    God is NOT justified by those who refuse to worship Him and honor the Lord our God humbly as a child of God. Jesus, John, Peter, Paul, the Prophets have always pointed out that these are children of their father the devil.

    Consider for just a moment the individual living souls of two witnesses:

    Jesus was NOT John and John was NOT Jesus, yet both are children of the Father.

    I am NOT my brother Ed nor my brother Ken nor my sister Jenny. I am NOT my wife Lissette. I am NOT my father Bill nor my mother Marie.  I am NOT my daughter Rachel nor my step-daughter Ashley nor my step-son David. I am not even the same as any Christian brother or sister in the Lord.

    Jesus asks John’s messengers (and the multitudes) to stop comparing one child of God to another and to take no offense.

    Luke 7:23 KJV And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

    It is good advice for ANY brother or sister, whether in the Lord at this time or not.

    Do not be skandalizō by the teachings and miracles of your ‘brother’ Jesus or the right teachings of any child of God our Father.

    The religious ones and outwardly righteous ones in the crowds (as recorded in Luke 7:30) were scandalized by the teachings of Jesus.  The common sinners, tax collectors, drunkards and others (v. 29) repented when they heard John and changed their ways to continue to follow Jesus as their brother and our Lord.

    My dear brother; my dear sister; my beloved wife and beloved children:

    What is my message for you?

    Do NOT be offended by the teachings of Christ Jesus.

    What is the fruit of your witness?

     

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