Sermon Tone Analysis

Who are you offending?

Why are you offending them?

BIG IDEA: Jesus Offended People

#1 Are you offending anyone?

“How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”

Penn Jillette (famous atheist from Penn and Teller)

Here is the reality, whether people like it or agree with it, the truth is Jesus offended people, he was offensive to many.

Sometimes I am known as being offensive, but let us first understand that being offensive and offending someone are two different things.

When someone is calling me offensive the reality most of the time is that I just value the truth and people are offended by truth.

There is a fine line there but for me it is in the intent.

One of the often misquoted or misunderstood scriptures on offense comes from the NKJV or KJV in

However the Greek there for offense, that word is proskope, actually means to cause a misstep.

So literally it is a stumbling or an occasion of sin.

So in that term it is true as Christians we should not create opportunities for people to sin, but that does not mean WE DO NOT KEEP THEM FROM SIN.

Jesus offends many times, Matthew 15:12

The reality is Jesus spent a good part of His ministry in peoples faces, minds, and in their lives when He saw they were doing it wrong.

Jesus tells you how to live.

He tells you what to say.

How to live.

What to do.

He wants to control every single aspect of your life.

He wants you to do things you don’t agree with.

He wants you to change everything about you.

He wants you to stop living for yourself and start living for him

• He spent lots of time going around offending people.

Religious people.

Civic people.

Government people.

Normal people.

Random people.

• I believe that Christians should be offending periodically- if they are not- what are we saying and doing?

Charles Spurgeon “You are the salt not the sugar candy; something the world will spit out, not swallow.”

• What offended people about Jesus?

He told the truth.

That is it.

So let us be clear, Jesus offended people with the truth, so did Peter, John, Stephen, Phillip, and Paul.

So let us take a look at what people were offended by in Mark 6

#2 They were offended by what He knew—They were astonished

Mark 6:2a “…and many who heard him were amazed.”

One of those fascinating points here to me is that Jesus chose this point in His ministry to go back to the country from where He came to do ministry.

So He returns, His disciples follow him and He goes into the synagogue to go and do some preaching.

Now His reception was entirely negative, they did not hate Him or what He had to say, it was all in His level of knowledge and the power in which He spoke.

I think if you read this passage carefully and correctly you see that what is happening here is something that can still tear the church apart today, they were envious of Him and angry with Him because He is preaching the truth better than they did—and here is the real grinder for them, Jesus did not have to go through the same processes and educational endeavors that they had to go through.

Why does that matter to us today?

First, if you are a Christian and you stand firm, People are going to be offended by what you know.

We see this with Peter and John, just a couple of guys speaking before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:13

The Sanhedrin was upset about the power they had as speakers and they did not expect this from them.

If you know the truth of the Gospel, you are smarter than people that do not.

SPEAK IT

So what was the response from the Pharisees?

Acts 4:18

#3 Offended by what He had—Where did He get these things?

Mark 6:2b “Where did this man get these things?”

they asked.

When Jesus was speaking they could not fathom the level of knowledge that Jesus had, it was like it just locked their brains right up because they had this prescribed path of what it would take to become a master teacher.

Think about that, let us say someone comes into your job tomorrow as a brand new hire and they are already 200 percent better at your job than you.

What would you think?

It is really part of human nature, it is of the flesh, when someone has something better than we have or something we wished we had and we perceive it was achieved without due credit it often creates envy.

The old “must be nice” comment people make so often.

All to often we like to sit in our little judgment throne and decide do people deserve praise, punishment, provision, blessing, or whatever.

We like to put ourselves into a position of decision maker about who gets what and how—Thankfully for all of us that is not how God works.

He is sovereign, He can give what He wants to who He wants when He wants.

Receive whatever Jesus has for you!

Followers of Jesus will be taught by Jesus, walking in the truth allows us to become the truth.

God can and will speak through you—it is like the Holy Spirit can download information right into your brain, even past your fleshly thinking.

God can give you knowledge and words, God will provide.

#4 Offended by what He did—What wisdom that was given Him

Mark 6:2C What’s this wisdom that has been given him?

What are these remarkable miracles he is performing?

These men became frustrated with what Jesus was able to do, he was doing great things in their midst and they could not fathom where He got this ability.

Again, we see envy at work here, they believed that somehow they should have what He has also.

Often times when we walk in the truth with God the Father you will be able to do things that other people do not understand, you will receive blessings that other people do not, you will have knowledge and wisdom that people envy.

God will give wisdom to anyone who asks.

The blessings you receive and the wisdom the Father gives will OFFEND people.

Why should the unlearned have wisdom?

Why should the unlearned have power?

Because God the Father GIVES YOU WISDOM TO CONFOUND THE WISE

Be a person that God can use to show His power in this world.

#5 Offended by who He was—Isn’t this the carpenter?

The greatest offense possibly to these people was the belief that Jesus was not worthy to be doing what He was doing because after all, He was just a carpenters son from Nazareth.

They just did not believe he had the right to be who He was based on where He came from.

That speaks to someone here today, you are holding back because you believe the world would reject you but God has bigger plans for you.

I know some of what I am saying may be offensive to some of you, but Jesus was offensive.

#6 If you are not offending anyone with the Gospel (in a loving fashion) you are offending God.

So many people have used this to say “I am just like Paul” I am struggling to do good but that is okay.

God clearly knows that my sin is just part of my flesh, see here Paul was the same way.

There are countless men’s ministries and responsibility groups that fall back on this short portion of scripture and justify their fleshly way.

But they are not reading far enough in.

The only person Jesus cared about not offending was not you or me, pharisees, lay people, common folk, Jews, Samarians, Romans, or anyone else earthly.

THE ONLY PERSON JESUS DID NOT WANT TO OFFEND WAS GOD THE FATHER

When we ignore the gospel in any part, when we fail to hold ourselves to a standard, when decide to accept sinful behavior as the norm, when we tolerate sin without lovingly speaking up we are OFFENDING GOD

Question: Do you know of the truth or do you know and are walking in the truth?

There is a difference between knowing of the truth and knowing the truth while walking in truth.

You can know of the truth and still sin, you can know of the truth and still walk in ignorance, you can know of the truth and still perish in hell.

If you know the truth then you do the truth, when we walk in truth we are changed to be truth.

So the question is how do I know the truth.

Well first, everyone knows of the truth.

The Bible is often referred to as the good book, or one of my favorites is the idea that the Bible contains Basic Information Before Leaving Earth.

I hear all the time people say things like “I didn’t get a manual for raising my kids, parenting is hard that way.”

Yes you did, here is the manual [HOLD UP BIBLE].