The Unoffendable Heart: Week 2 Notes

The Offense TRAP (It's A Trap - IYKYK)

Review:

• You can’t “offend” anyone. Offense can’t be given; it can only be taken.
• You can be offensive, but that only gives someone the opportunity to be offended.
• We are responsible for what we let affect us, good or bad.
• We have to guard our hearts.
• Offense starts as a fence and ends up as a fortress. The walls we build to protect ourselves end up imprisoning us.

Offense is guaranteed.

• Luke 17:1: “It is impossible but that offenses will come…”
• Matthew 18:7: “…it must needs be that offenses come…”

What offense really is:

• Greek skandalon: the stick in a trap that holds the bait. (Think old school trap- it lets the critter get inside and then it trips. The animal goes for the bait, touches the stick, and the trap slams shut.
• skandalon- it's where we get our word scandal! Have you ever been a part of one? Seen one on TV?

The bait always looks justified: “I have a right to be upset.”

The trap is what it does to you once you take the bait. The bait of Satan!

Do you recognize any traps the enemy has set for you or someone in your life?

Satan sets the trap.

• 2 Corinthians 2:10–11: Paul forgave “lest Satan should get an advantage of us… we are not ignorant of his devices.”
• Offense and unforgiveness are among the enemy’s favorite devices.

Why offense is everywhere now (2 Timothy 3:1–5, 13)
It's a sign of End Times.

• “Men shall be lovers of their own selves…” (v2), “more than lovers of God” (v4).
  • When I love myself most, everything is about me, so everything feels like an offense against me. (That sound familiar?)
• “A form of godliness, but denying the power” (v5). You can look the part and still carry a fence.
• “Evil men… shall wax worse and worse” (v13). This generation needs people with unoffendable hearts.

There’s a better way.

• Psalm 119:165: “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.”
  • Nothing! You can have a heart the trap doesn’t work on.
• Proverbs 19:11: “…it is his glory to pass over a transgression.”
  • It’s to your glory to step over it, not pick it up.
• Matthew 11:6: "And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me."