Is Your Life a Reproach to the World?

The past month or so has been an interesting time. See, I began listening to Messianic Jewish radio. And I like it.

I like it not because it is "different", or "strange" but because of the God and Scripture centeredness of it all. It puts regular "Christian" programming to shame, easily. Most all the music is saturated with Scripture. And there is a sense of "Hey, this is the way it was supposed to be from the beginning!" because the message of salvation was entrusted to the Jews who were to share it with the Gentiles. So it is, in a sense, a restoration of God's intended order.

And you learn some things that you never understood before.

Recently, Johnathan Cahn has been speaking of the scandal of the cross. Nothing new there. We all know that. But let's step back a second and take a fresh look at something else....

Remember the plagues that led to the freedom of the Hebrews? What did they do in preparation for the last plague? Yes, they put blood on their doorposts. Nothing new, you say? Well, that's what I thought. But it wasn't just something they did out of obedience and faith to God. It was more than that.

See, the painting of the blood on the doorposts would have been a reproach to the Egyptians. In a real sense, they were showing their allegiance to God and saying "We are separate unto the Lord" and the act of putting the blood on the doorposts would have been a reproach to the Egyptians.

Can you imagine how difficult it may be to do something like that? Yet they were obedient. They didn't try to just "go along" and "get along". They did what the Lord commanded, even though it was offensive to their captors.

And we are called to be separate to God. We are called to show that we are separate unto God. And we preach the Cross, which is a reproach to the world.

The Cross is a scandalous thing, just as their was scandal on the doorposts before the Hebrews were set free.

If we live rightly, we are a rebuke to the world. And the world will hate us, sooner or later. In one form or another.

So, it was no light thing for the Hebrews to act in faith, painting the blood on their doorposts. It was no casual thing. And neither should our lives be as they depict the scandal of the cross.