Prostithemi Means Add

If Your Brother Sins

Luke 17:1–4 ESV

1 And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

Most bible readers and scholars agree that this reference in Luke 17 is the same one as the statement recorded in                                                             . There Jesus teaches a specific process for confronting sins and rebukes in love and humility.

license to rebuke

Jesus in both instances gives license to rebuke a friend in christ when they sin with their attitudes or their actions.

think of a story where you saw someone, maybe even a leader make a grave and needless mistake. Jesus’s command to not judge is clearly not applicable here. Jesus very clearly invites                    among brothers and sisters in Him.

registered to forgive

this license is predicated on a                                and                    to forgive them when they turn back or even when they say they will turn back.

this willingness must go beyond reason. Even if the same person sins seven times, but turns back in repentance seven times, jesus says you must forgive him.

(quick note on abuse and endangerment: Please notice that Christ does not say, enable that person, nor believe that person, but only in love to forgive them. If you are suffering abuse, or feel unloved and unwanted, it is not part of christ’s command to remain in that persons life. You can forgive and still protect yourself.)

The Apostles Respond

Wow. increase our faith lord, this is too hard a thing for us to do

Prostithemi is the word for increase in the request: “Increase our faith Lord”. This greek term simply means add. Add or unite to an existing amount. It would be like ordering a pizza topped with jalapeños and deciding it’s not spicy enough so you take the red pepper packet and you           it to the pizza.

Jesus’s response is peculiar: If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed...

The problem isn’t you don’t have                   , the problem is you don’t have          !

The problem is not the size

The two bombs dropped in japan in the early august of 1945 split the atoms of only                            worth of plutonium and uranium. The explosion was so massive that if the same 2 pounds were detonated above the intersection of 30 road and North avenue, all of grand junction would be one enormous crater stretching from Sam’s Club to the edges of Clifton, not to mention the devastating shock-wave and radioactive fallout. All from 2 pounds.

We do well to remember that faith taps into the power of a god that thinks reality into existence and establishes universal constants by speaking  monosyllabic phrases like “let there be light”. The problem is not the size of faith, because faith is a request, faith is a hope, and hope cannot be measured - Hebrews 11:1 “1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith: the seed

The word used for grain of mustard seed is different from the word used for seed. It’s distinct, and it’s used in distinctive places.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all present the parable of the kingdom being like a grain of mustard seed.

Matthew 13:31 ESV

31 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.

Mark 4:31 ESV

31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth,

Luke 13:19 ESV

19 It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

The mustard seed specifically is only ever used in the synoptic gospels and only in the context of the kingdom of God — except for this rebuke that jesus makes. Unless this is no exception and it is in fact the underlying point.

My Interpretive Leap

faith isn’t about                             rewards. Faith is about                   .

Seeds were made for planting

i believe this interpretive leap is responsible on account of two bible parallels

John 12:23–25 ESV

23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

1 Corinthians 15:35–38 ESV

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.

Both are using the idea of a very small grain being most useful only after it seems most useless. This is the                                of Faith.

•     For faith to be effective it must be like the mustard grain that rather than be used for immediate results must grow in secret to produce visible results

•     Your trust in god will inevitably grow and change into something different.

•     Faith for faith’s sake is as useful as having one grain of mustard seed.

•     the size of the grain, doesn’t actually matter.

The faith that you had to ask for a new car (Having real faith that your god would make the finance work) may grow in maturity to trust that god will bless your current vehicle. That prayer in faith for a child that will return to the church some day, may grow into a maturity of accepting that God has called us to love and accept people in their unsaved or estranged state. The faith that you had in asking that god find you the perfect house can grow into a maturity of trusting that god may place us in the un-ideal so that we might reach a neighbor that needs a friend.

When you ask from God in prayer, remember that sometimes god may not give you the thing you seek, but instead god may take the hope you brought and change it into something different, something that              past that Hope you once had.

In Conclusion

hope cannot be measured because when hope is at it’s smallest it is most powerful. when your faith is at it’s weakest, god is glorified the strongest.  fear not the trials that push your faith to it’s limits, fear the complacency of easy trials that trick you into relying on yourself. Faith is like a mustard seed. You have to bury what little you have in the ground and be prepared to grow.