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Don't Cut Off Their Ears!


John 18:10(NASB)

10 Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave’s name was Malchus. 

I once saw a documentary on the Hutterite Brethren. A family among them lost both parents and began to explore life outside their sect. Lo and behold, they went to a tent meeting and got saved. A “people group movement” began when they returned home. Folks who saw the difference between their own law-bound lives and the vibrant joy of these new Christians wanted to hear the gospel, liberated, as such, from Martin Luther’s  old German translation of the Bible.

Amazingly, the secular documentarians recorded the preaching of the eldest brother. He was urging those who were sharing their faith to learn from the Apostle Peter’s mistake in the garden of Gethsemane. When Peter went on the attack, he cut off a man’s ear. How apt; when we share as if on offense, we cut off the ability of our listeners to hear us. God can heal them and restore them, but it’s much better if we don’t ‘cut off their ears’ to begin with.

There’s a viral video of a little tot at a church in Indiana, singing about “no homos in heaven.” His church, no doubt, believes that they are taking a Biblical stand against the onslaught of religious liberalism which wants to make us ashamed of scripture and embrace the world’s definitions of right and wrong. They should take such a stand, but not in this way. They are doing it in such a way as to cut off the ability of those who need to hear the gospel from hearing it from them. They are not pointing the way to God’s grace which is greater than every sin; to the victory over temptation which can be had by everyone of God's children. Until they do, I wonder how many from among their membership will miss the Way as well?
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