Jesus Changes His Accent – Part 1 Series

• Sometimes the most honest, truthful and lovingly Christ-like response to foolishness or evil is anger. Jesus couldn’t have any integrity if He was indifferent to either one. The person who is always nice, always demure, always even-keeled is like a person who ultimately does not care about what God cares about. This is not a license for viciousness or vengefulness, but it is a wake-up call to call sin, “sin”, and to be passionate about what He is passionate about;

• The risk in loving the theologically or morally wayward is that we may become tempted to compromise our values to be nice to them. But true love is robust; it includes compassion and confrontation, empathy and truth-telling, kindness and sternness.

We’re not talking about shame and fear here, but we are talking about the very real and very unfeigned anger that God has toward unrepentance and continuing in sin – especially when it is knowing and willful.

The good news? Jesus doesn’t leave it at that. Leaving someone to Him is many times the kindest and most loving thing we can do for them. Protecting their feelings is often not only a disservice, but is actually more un-Christ-like than open honesty.

Next time we will look in-depth at His call to us to rest.

Let me leave you with the words of Jesus that we will study at length next time. Let these words recorded for us in Matthew 11:28-30, saturate your soul as you consider the message from today:

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

There is a balance and we have to find it and live in it.

Let’s pray.