Call A Spade A Spade

 July 8

“Then Saul, who also is called Paul,
filled with the Holy Spirit,
looked intently at him and said,
‘O full of all deceit and all fraud,
you son of the devil,
you enemy of all righteousness,
will you not cease perverting
the straight ways of the Lord?'”
Acts 13:9-10

Whoa! Hard words. “Son of the devil”?

Paul surely was not politically correct. He arrives in Pathos and is opposed by a false prophet, a servant to the governor, then Paul lets out this tirade against him right in the presence of the governor. How intolerant! How unloving!

John the Baptist called both the Pharisees and Sadducees “a brood of vipers.”

"But when he saw many of the Pharisees
and Sadducees coming to his baptism,
he said to them, ''Brood of vipers!"
Matthew 3:7

“Brood of vipers?” These were the religious leaders of the day! How dare he!

Today, Paul and John would be called intolerant right-wing fundamentalist haters, unloving, unkind, and most of all un-Christian.

But WHO is the hater? His accusers are. They hate anyone who calls sin SIN.

The Word of God tells us that we must test all things.

“TEST ALL THINGS;
hold fast what is good.
Abstain from every form of evil.”
1 Thessalonians. 5:21-22

We ARE to be fruit inspectors.

“Jesus also said, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits…”
Matthew 7:16

Brothers and sisters, call a spade a spade and do not fear retaliation. There is a fine line between judging and testing. We cannot take it upon ourselves to condemn someone, that’s God’s right and not ours. But in testing, we are not pronouncing sentence, we are exposing evil, exposing deception.

"And have no fellowship
with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather EXPOSE them."
Ephesians 5:11

That is not only our right, but our responsibility.