One Tough Passage with Pastor Ben Carruthers

“Increase our faith.” The disciples don’t say that because Jesus asked them to do something flashy or heroic. They say it after He describes what life together is supposed to look like. Ben Cruz walks through Luke 17:1–4 and shows why Christian community is one of the hardest callings of the Christian life: we’re responsible for not becoming the trigger that trips someone else, we’re called to real accountability, and we’re commanded to forgive in ways that stretch our limits.

We dig into the meaning behind Jesus’ language, including “scandala” the root of “scandal” pictured as a bent stick holding up a trap. That image turns the spotlight on everyday habits that can quietly damage faith: gossip, public posts, prideful certainty, and the refusal to admit “I don’t know.” Jesus’ warning is intense because God fiercely protects His people, especially the “little ones” still growing.

From there, we talk about rebuke and judgment with clarity and care. Jesus rejects hypocritical, superficial, and unforgiving judgment, but He calls us to right judgment that restores. Paul confronting Peter in Galatians 2 becomes a model, along with a real-life story about the courage it takes to say “I love you, but I can’t help you do that.” Then we land on repentance as real turning and forgiveness that keeps resentment from turning us into the stumbling block.

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Transcript

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Welcome And Baptism Celebration

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Well, good morning. Uh again, my name is Ben Cruz, associate pastor here. Just excited to have you all here because we're the big baptism families. That's awesome. Uh, I think baptism is another one of those things where, you know, we do a lot of them here at Central. Praise God. That's incredible. Uh, but it's also one of those things that can just kind of keep moving in the cycle of what we do in the morning. And we just had two kids that decided for themselves that, man, this is what I want to do with my life. I want to follow Jesus. And that's incredible in today's world. And so to the family and friends of those of those young ones, thanks for walking alongside of them and being a part of that journey. That's awesome. Uh, so yeah, glad you're all

You Pick Series And A Tough Text

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here this morning. We are in uh the second week of our You Pick series, which is you guys pick the question. So about a month or so ago, we had a bunch of questions emailed in, and then we do our best to answer them. Last week, we looked at uh one tough parable, which was Luke 16, the shrewd manager, and we talk called it the one tough parable. This week there's a passage from Luke 17. So last week was Luke 16, this week's Luke 17, and the question addressed this idea of rebuking and judgment and forgiveness. And again, not an easy subject. So this morning, it's not one tough parable, but it's one tough passage, right? And what I love about, we're gonna talk quite a bit uh in about each one of these verses, but that last verse where the disciples hear this teaching from Jesus about four verses in, and their response to it is help us. Help us. So he are they are responding to what Jesus is saying, right? And sometimes you guys have been out in public where someone has responded to something, and you're like, what in the world is going on? Is that person okay? Do they need an adult? And there's this reaction to something.

A Disney Story About Big Reactions

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Years ago, on our first Disney World trip, and I will say it's been a long time since I've mentioned Disney, so it's a good, good run for me. Our first Disney trip, which was about nine years ago, my in-laws brought our entire family. There's six of us, and it was not great, but it's it was okay. It was a good time. However, one night in particular, we rode a ride called Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And it's uh it's a roller coaster, it's not very big, it's not very fast, there's no huge hills. And our oldest, his name is Isaiah. He also works custodian here on Sunday morning today. So if you see him, just go, you know, laugh with him about this because he'll he won't laugh with you, but you should laugh with him anyways. And we're like, dude, you're gonna be fine. He doesn't like roller coasters. We're like, it's not huge, it's not high, it's not fast. Just come on, man. So we hop on the train, and my wife Anna's with our two oldest, Isaiah and Maya, and I have our youngest at the time, Arlo. And so we ride the ride, good time. We come off, we're smiling, we're laughing, except one of us. And all of a sudden, in the quietness of what can be Disney, you hear a small voice yell at the top of his lungs, you lied to me, you lied to me, I hate you. And I'm like, I turn him up, I'm like, man, some kid is not happy, right? Like someone is angry. She's like, that's our kid. And I look over, and there's Isaiah, my oldest, he's about nine years old. He's sitting on the curb, just repeating, I hate you, I hate you, you lied to me. As loud as he can. If you were there, you'd be like, someone called child services. This is a serious situation. And I went over, I'm like, buddy, what are you talking about? What are you doing? He's like, No, it was horrible, it was awful, it was huge, it was fast, you lied, you lied. And he just kept going on and on. The kid was traumatized to this day. So traumatized that if you go out there and ask him about it, he will say he never said any of that stuff. The whole family heard it. We can all vouch for it. He said it, right? But his reaction to something would think, what in the world happened? What happened in the life of this kid to get that kind of response? In this passage, it's kind of like that. Jesus gives a teaching on how to live. And the response of the disciples is, God help us increase our faith, which as the reader would probably mean whatever Jesus is asking or teaching us to do has got to be incredibly difficult for the disciples to have that kind of response. And so if you go and read it, you're like, man, it must be something about maybe he's telling what they're gonna do, that they're gonna be persecuted for their faith, that they're gonna go and take a message that the world rejects. Maybe that's what he's saying. Maybe he's saying that you guys are gonna, you guys are gonna be able to heal people. You guys are gonna be able to pull people away from possession and oppression from evil in this world. You guys are gonna be able to do that. Maybe it's something like that where they say, Lord, increase our faith, because this is incredibly difficult. It's not it at all. Jesus is saying something that is so difficult for the disciples to understand, maybe more to live out, that their

Why Community Requires Bigger Faith

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response is to cry out, increase our faith. God help us. And this topic is living in Christian community. It's living with each other. Jesus gives them a blueprint on how we are to live with each other. And it's so difficult that the disciples cry out, increase our faith. So it's a tough passage. So our goal this morning is to break down these four or five verses to see what living in Christian community is all about, and to make sure that we are living a life that honors God, that brings people closer to God and not further away. So will you pray with me this morning? God, we give you thanks and praise for this morning an opportunity to dive into scripture and to dive into this tough passage, to learn from it, to learn from the disciples, to apply it to our life. Lord, I pray that as we do, this is a this is tough stuff. It's tough because we have to open up our hearts a little bit and be honest with ourselves in areas where we have missed the mark. But the goal of as a Christian community is to bring others to know you. And so it's too important for us not to go into this stuff. So help us to be open and honest in our own lives and speak truth to us this morning. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Personal Responsibility And The Bent Stick

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So this passage that talks about what it means to live in Christian community. Jesus starts off right away with verse one, and he lays out the first thing that we have to know and understand is personal responsibility. Personal responsibility. Luke 17, 1 says this. In the NIV, it says, Jesus said to his disciples, Occasions for sin are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. Now, sometimes it's kind of fun when you read scripture to go ahead and pull out a different version or different translation, because man, this is an ancient language written in Greek, the New Testament, and translations can look different. And so the New King James says this. Then he said to the disciples, It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they come. Same passage, different words. One is using the word sin, which when we hear the word sin, I think we have a certain idea or picture of what that looks like, versus offenses, which might be a little different than sin. So what exactly is he meaning here when he says, Whatever comes our way, we should be aware of it. The Greek word, which is what the New Testament was written in, is scandala. Everyone says scandala. Sounds familiar, right? This is where we get the English word scandal from. And this is the word that Jesus is you, Jesus uses here. And what's interesting about this word is its meaning. This word means bent stick. Yeah, here's some Jesus truth for you this morning. Bent stick. Why in the world would he use a word that says that meant bent stick? Well, it provides an image that the disciples would have understood. An image like this. The scandala is the bent stick that holds up some kind of trap. Right? So we've seen these in movies or cartoons as a kid, right? Like someone's trying to catch the gopher or the rabbit, and they put a cardboard box up and they have a stick to hold it up. So when the animal hits it, the box closes on it. This is what he's using. This is the image that he's putting in his disciples' mind. He's saying we have a responsibility not to pull people away from God and trap them in their own life circumstances. We have a responsibility not to be the bent stick in people's lives that pull them away from the truth of God and pulls them into the lies of this world. And it's such an important part of who we are, this personal responsibility, that Jesus not only says this, but this comes with a warning. He warns his disciple of how important this is. In verse two and three, Jesus goes on to say this.

Millstone Warning And Modern Scandals

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So he says, Don't be that bent stick, don't pull people away from the truth. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck. Now he's talking about the people who are deceiving people or bringing people away, not the people who are being deceived. So he's speaking about us if we don't have personal responsibility. It's better for us to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. And this little one doesn't mean children. The passage always points to little ones, people in their faith, right? We are always continuing to grow in our faith. We're never old enough. We never stop learning or growing. So little ones just mean believers. So watch yourselves. This is so important to Jesus. It's so important to God that he ties this image to it. A millstone was used to crush grains or to crush olive oils to get the juices and what they needed out of it to use it. These millstones that he's speaking about can range from anywhere from 30 pounds all the way up to 2,000 pounds. Some of them were hand cranks, but what Jesus is uh referring to here are these large thousand-plus pound millstones that had to have a donkey in the barn to turn to crush the seeds. So he's saying it's better for you to put this around your neck and dive into the sea than to lead one person astray. That's a pretty intense visual that Jesus is giving his disciples. Because that's how important it is to God. God is fierce when it comes to protecting his people. So we are not called to be benchsticks, but we are called to be light. What does scandala look like today? Because I don't think the church is out there, sometimes you see it and all that stuff, but really the church isn't out there trying to pull people away into evil of this world. I don't think it looks like that. There might be some examples. But in your own personal life, in your relationships as the body of God, what does that look like to be the bent stick? I think it more looks like speaking behind people's back. I think it looks more like posting something on whatever social media you cite that you are super passionate about, and you put something out there that may be harmful or hurtful for people, but they know that you're a follower of Jesus. They know that you believe what you believe, and they see this and they wonder: is that how Christians are supposed to act? That's what I think it looks like more today: a lack of accountability, an unwillingness to forgive, or our personal pride. I think a lot of this bent stick comes from our wanting or desire maybe to be the center, or that we know it all, or we think we have to know it all. And when very early in my youth ministry career, I was probably 20 years old and I was leading a youth group of like 400 kids. Bad idea, right? Holy moly, that's way too young. And I remember a kid, we did a U-Pick series just like this, and one kid asked, Do pets and animals go to heaven? And I got the question. It was one of those, I just pulled them out of a jar. I didn't have any prep time or anything because I was 20, I knew everything, anyways. I didn't need prep time. That's fine. So I pulled it out of the jar and I'm looking at 400 students, all who probably have a pet puppy or kitty or bird at home. And I look at them and I say, no. Pets don't have souls, they don't go to heaven. Next question. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I didn't know. I was 20 years old. I'd done no research. Now I believe completely the opposite today, by the way, and this is not a sermon about that, but we can talk about that later. Believe the complete opposite. But this is why I said it. Because I thought I had to have an answer. Because I was the youth guy. I had to have an answer. It wasn't okay for me to say, I don't know. How often does our own pride pull people away? Because we're unwilling to say, I don't know. I don't get it. I don't have all the answers. I'm in this race of life with you, trying to figure it out. But pride can get in the way. That's what I think the bent stick looks like today. And Jesus warns his disciples and he warns us today of how dangerous this can be. So he says there's a personal accountability on how you live your life. But he also starts off and reminds us that says, you're gonna stumble. He's not asking us to be perfect. He's not asking us to have all the answers. He says right away, listen, there's plenty in this world that is gonna cause people to stumble. There is plenty that the world is gonna throw at people. Just don't be one of the things. Do your best. And he talks later about repentance and forgiveness. So Jesus speaks on personal responsibility in just one verse of this. You can start to see why the disciples acted

Accountability Through Right Judgment

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like they did. The second thing that Jesus points to is he speaks on accountability. Accountability. Luke 17, 3 says this. And if they repent, forgive them. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke. Now that's another Greek word here called epitomeo. Everyone say epitomeo. Now the Greek translation of this word means censure, warn, or sharply charge someone. So when we think of Christianity, these are probably your top three highlights of who we are, right? Gently charge someone. This is this doesn't sound like Christianity at all. This doesn't sound how Jesus lived. This doesn't sound like love and compassion. So why would Jesus say to rebuke? Didn't he say, do not judge? Matthew 7. Do not judge. But also in John 7, he says, stop judging by mere appearances and make right judgment. Right judgment. You know, one thing we hear in the world today, oh Christians, you're so judgmental. We might be called to be. We are called to be. But are we judgmental in the right way? So if there's a right way, if Jesus says to be judgmental in the right way, that means that there has to be a wrong way. A wrong way of being judgmental, hypocritical, superficial, untrue judgment, unforgiving judgment. I'm gonna read those again. This is the wrong kind of judgment. Hypocritical, superficial, untrue judgment, unforgiving judgment. Quick question, as I read those four, which one do you fall into? Because I think this is how we judge. What do people look like? What is our perception of them? Are we living correctly or are we just pointing out other people's flaws? Are we willing to forgive or are we willing to hold on to that? Are we speaking truth or what we want to speak? Because the unfortunate part is that kind of judgment is the judgment that the world sees in Christianity. And it's why they reject it. If you go to Google Machine or any kind of thing like that, you can go and say, what's the main reasons people leave the faith? Hypocrisy of Christians, judgmental of Christians, this is what they see. This is what the world sees, and this is what Jesus is saying. That's the wrong kind of judgment. So if there's a wrong kind of judgment, there's got to be a right kind. Jesus calls to us that in John chapter 7. What does that look like? I think we know what the wrong kind looks like. What does the right kind look like? I think there's a great example in Galatians chapter 2 of Paul and Peter. So this happens later. Jesus has died, been resurrected, and gone back to heaven. And now the missionaries have gone out. Paul has gone on his missionary journeys and set up churches along the way. And one of those churches happened to be in Galatia in a huge town called Antioch. And so this is a church there, and Peter is there, and Peter is working with people who are just coming to faith. They are here working with people who aren't Jewish. They know nothing of the previous faith. They're just hearing the story about Jesus. And so Peter is meeting with them and he's having meals with them, and this is good. Jesus calls him to do this. However, one of his buddies named James sends some people to Antioch and they see what Peter's doing and they say, Peter, what are you doing? You know our law says that you're not supposed to eat with these people. You're only supposed to eat and have meals with us. The bent stick had come to Peter, and Peter starts to change. Peter starts to stop having meals with people who don't know Jesus, people who need to hear the gospel. He stops meeting with them because these people have influenced him. And Paul gets word of this. And Paul goes to Antioch, and Scripture tells us in Galatians 2 that he stands face to face with Peter and says, What are you doing? What are you doing? What happened? You were living the correct way, and all of a sudden this bent stick came into the life, and you started to pull back to

The Courage To Confront In Love

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your old self, the world's way. What are you doing? He confronts his brother with the truth. He confronts his brother with love, and this is what judgment looks like. We shouldn't judge. Of course, we should judge. You judged a hundred million things on the way here. We judge things all of our all the time to keep us safe and to keep us moving forward. Jesus calls us to judgment to build the kingdom, to build relationships. There is such a thing called right judgment. And that's what we're called to. I think there's the other flip side to this coin, though, that it's not just making sure that we judge in the right way, it's having the courage to do so. The courage to do it. I have a good friend of mine, he's been a friend for a long time, and he struggled with alcohol for a long time. He's had great highs and long time of sobriety, and he's fallen back down a few times as well. A few months ago, he called me up, and this is when he had fallen down, and we had talked about it and stuff, but he was he was in a bad place. And he had been out on a hike and he hurt his ankle, and he's someone who doesn't like doctors, doesn't like going to doctors, believes in just holistic medicine, which is great, but he's like, I don't need anything, I don't need anything. He called me up and he said, Hey man, the pain's really bad. And if you could just, and I can't drive anywhere, so if you could just swing by the liquor store and pick up a bottle of whiskey, just leave it right outside the garage, man. I'd really appreciate it. I just need something to numb the pain. I just need just a little bit. This is a really good friend of mine, and we've had really hard talks. He left that message on my phone, I didn't know what to do. Because I care for this guy, I love this guy. I know he's hurting. But I know this isn't the right choice. But what if I was to call him and say, I can't do that? How would that affect our friendship? After all these years, could this be the thing that breaks it? I don't know, and I didn't want that to happen. Thankfully, the cool thing with Christian community is that you have people to go to. So I called some people in my life and said, Hey man, what do I do? I mean, I knew what to do, but it's really hard. And praise God, man, these people just gave me some good wisdom. And so I called them back. I said, Dude, I love you. But I can't do that. I will come and pick you up and I'll bring you to the doctor, I will come and hang out with you, but I can't do that. And I knew by saying that I could be risking a friendship or a broken relationship. But it was the right thing to do, and I had people in my life to help me with that, to figure that out. Man, praise God, this is a good guy. And none of that happened, thankfully. He just said, he called me back the next day. He said, dude, he's like, I love you for that. I love you for that. But having the courage to have the right kind of judgment in this world is hard. Because there can be things that go along with it. Broken relationships, maybe broken careers. But God calls us to the right kind of judgment. Personal responsibility. Responsibility, accountability. I think we're really starting to see we're only three verses in, and the disciples are hearing this and understanding how difficult it is. And I think we haven't gotten to the hardest part, and

Repentance And Forgiving Again And Again

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this is it. Luke 17, 3 through 4. Jesus says we need to be people of forgiveness. If your brother or sister sins against you, you rebuke them, personal accountability, holding them accountable. And if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, I repent, you must forgive them. I think this is when the disciples kind of like, You gotta be kidding. How do we do this? We hear that word repent, and I think again, something comes to our mind, this idea that repentance simply means going to someone and saying, Hey, I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry I hurt you. My bad. That's a piece of it. But repentance or repent is this Hebrew word shuv, which means to turn away from. So it's not simply going and saying, I'm sorry about that, but it's something where people can see that you are doing your best to turn away from whatever that is. That's repentance. And so Jesus is saying, man, don't be just a doormat for someone coming over and over and over again saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yes, forgive them when you see them trying to shift away from that. And man, this life can be hard. Like you started off saying it, there's enough in this world to be stumbling blocks for us to trip over. So could it happen seven times a day, eight times a day? I mean, I think he's speaking a hyperbole here, but we get the idea. That man, if they are doing their best and they see their mistakes and they're doing their best to turn away, to shove, to repent, then welcome them back with forgiveness. Now, the trickier question, the harder question, I think, is what if they don't repent? Are we still supposed to forgive? Yes. And what's best about this is this was a you pick question that Sonia's gonna preach on in two weeks. So come on back and hear Sonia preach on that really hard question. But yeah. This is tough. We are called to be people who forgive. And there's a danger, there's a danger holding on to this resentment and hurt. We stop living like Jesus, we stop loving like Jesus, and we start to become that stumbling block. We start to become that benchstick. This is the teaching that the disciples heard that caused them to respond, God help

Knuckleheads Need Grace Together

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us. And this is what I love. Just I think this is hilarious. Maybe you won't, but just picture this if you will, right? Jesus is hanging with his disciples because remember, he addresses them at the beginning. He says, Jesus was with his disciples. So again, he took this moment with the crowds around to look at his followers and say this teaching. And so he goes on to list what Christian community looks like personal responsibility, accountability, and this really incredibly hard thing called forgiveness, not just once, but multiple times. Imagine these 12 guys standing there, hearing this message on Christian community, how hard it is, forgiveness over and over. I see these knuckleheads, man, standing, looking at each other, and that's when they realize they need God's help. Because they see who's in this thing with them. Look around where you are right now. This is the group of knuckleheads that we're in this thing with. Imperfect people who are gonna make mistakes. This is why they respond, God help us increase our faith. Because doing life alone is hard. Doing life in the world is hard. Doing life in Christian community in this world, where there's stumbling blocks and bent sticks and a world that tries to pull you away. God, increase our faith. This is what they yell and cheer when they hear this teaching about community. But it's so important because we need each other and the world needs us. The best way for Christian community to be is to simply live and love like Jesus. And that's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in this quote from Life Together, and I'm about to wrap up

Unity In Jesus And The Closing Challenge

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here. Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it is a brief single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ. Jesus is what connects us. No matter who we are, where we come from, what we think on certain matters, what we view politically, it's Jesus that brings us together. And I want to leave you with this image. Yesterday, uh, my son Arlo plays for Elk River Youth Football. And so yesterday was the Noka Invitational. And so teams from all over towns come and they get like three scrimmages, and we're there all day, and it's a blast. I love it. I love watching all these young kids play football. But what I noticed was, because I was sitting there a lot of time, I was thinking about this message, is that as I looked out at Arlo's team, he hasn't had the team, the same team, for four years. Different players come in and different players go. They all look different. They go and come from different schools within Elk River. There's even a case or two where a couple of the kids on the team are enemies at the same school. But on the football field, they're united because they love the game of football. What if the Christian community were united simply because we love Jesus? And that's what brought us together. Our passion to live a life that models Jesus, a passion for others to come and know and love Jesus the way that we do. What if that was our driving force? And none of this other stuff that tries to bleed in and take us away from what is true. So, central Lutheran church, let us be a Christian community, let us be a church, a body of believers that come together for one thing, and that's because we love Jesus and we want the world to know it. Amen.