Our choices can create a huge offence and stumbling blocks; or our choices can bring grace, and we grow and become a great person; and you become a great person by making lots of little choices regularly, over and over and over and over and over. I thank God for the wonderful people around me that show a lot of grace to me. I need every bit I can get [laughs] - so here's the thing. When something happens, you can either reach out in love and show grace; or you can react and become offended. Once you become offended - now here's where the scandal comes - it's actually sitting in your heart; and once you're offended, a lot of things are going to happen.
Let me just give you examples of how some people responded to offence. Let me just give you a few people in the Bible that actually become stumbled by something; and at that moment of stumbling, they had an offer of a choice to go a different way, and they failed to make it. The consequences are unbelievable.
You don't realise that your relationships, your life, and what's going on in your family and in your future, depends on you not stumbling. It depends on you not stumbling. It depends on you handling things in a Biblical way; so let me give you a few examples. The first one you can find is found in Genesis 4. It's the guy Cain. Now Cain got offended. Why did he get offended? Because God seemed to accept his brother's offering, but didn't seem to accept his offering. Now without going on to the reason about it, God spoke to him, and said: don't be cast down, don't get all upset about this, just learn from it and grow. But instead he became angry, he became depressed, he hated his brother, and then killed him. Now that's in Genesis 4, how a person became offended, and an offence ends up with hatred, and can end up in murder.
Now you'll find this consistent right through the Bible. Genesis 37:4-8, remember another guy Joseph? Now what was great about Joseph? The first thing was, he was the youngest son; and his father seemed to like him, and gave him a special coat; and so the brothers hated him. They were offended by the father, and they took out their offence on Joseph. Then Joseph was given some prophetic dreams by God, he had a great dream for his life; but he began to, out of immaturity, share his dreams. I saw this dream, and you all bowed down to me; and they hated him more. They were offended by what he seemed to have in God. Don't tell me that doesn't happen in the church; and instead of blessing him, they decided to kill him. Don't tell me that doesn't happen in the church. It's true, it's what happens. If we don't deal with offence properly, hatred and a spirit of murder will arise in our heart; and we will seek to find a way to deal to that person. It always will happen, and in very subtle ways. We don't go killing. We find other, subtler ways.
Here's another one, 1 Samuel 18:7-13; Saul was very offended that David was so popular, so Saul went out one day; and he's the king. The next thing you hear is, the ladies are singing and they're singing songs to Saul - oh, how lovely. Saul's killed a thousand, wonderful, isn't that great; but then they start singing: but David has killed ten thousand; and immediately he's offended. What does he try and do? He immediately tries to kill David. He had hatred in his heart. This is what happens. You find this pattern runs right through the Bible. I'll give you a few more examples of simple ones. Here's one, 2 Kings 5:9-17, and in this one here it's Naaman. Now Naaman was a leper, and Naaman was looking for a healing; but when he came there, he thought the prophet was going to wave his hand over him, and say: ooh, POWER! He thought he'd see that. That's what he came expecting. Instead, the prophet didn't even come out to see him. The prophet said: just go down in the water, and dip in the water seven times in that muddy old stream, you'll be healed; but he didn't even come out to see him. He was offended and furious. He was offended, and he was furious, and he nearly lost his healing and died prematurely, because of offence. Now what was he offended about? He was offended because God did not work in his life the way he expected.