Ultimate Fighting Part 2

Jesus is a great example of an Ultimate Fighter. He told his followers: ">I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! Luke 12:49-53, The Message. In his example, Jesus challenges us to be willing to pick a fight for what is right.

• Jesus picked a fight with the religious elites & insiders when he included religious & social outsiders in his movement: recruiting the poor, the outcasts, the rejects, the failures

• Jesus picked a fight with religion-gone-wrong by confronting the hypocrisy, dishonesty, pride, selfishness, and unconcern for others in their leaders. He called them hypocrites, white-washed tombs, murderers, blind guides.
• Jesus disrupted their lame religious services by healing people, and confronting those who were demonized right in church; he confronted the religious traditions and rules that had no basis in the bible, and that were hurting, not helping people.
• Jesus picked a fight with the greedy businessmen who were ripping off religious pilgrims right inside of the Jewish national temple
  Jesus stuck up for a woman when a mob of these religious hypocrites dragged her to him, locked and loaded to throw stones at her until she died –is that brutal or what? Religious people! Jesus steps up, stands them down, and sends her on her way: safe, forgiven
• He picked a fight with an army of demons who had reduced a guy to a violent, naked, maniac, and restores his sanity… gives him back his life.

What's right all the time is God's rule in our lives, and God's Truth. Where God is not in charge, and where deception operates, we must be willing to pick a fight. Have you called any truces where you should be picking a fight?