{"id":36736,"date":"2022-09-13T13:08:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T18:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/was-it-a-coincidence-that-god-allowed-paul-to-be-stoned-in-the-same-manner-as-stephen-had-been\/"},"modified":"2022-09-13T13:08:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T18:08:29","slug":"was-it-a-coincidence-that-god-allowed-paul-to-be-stoned-in-the-same-manner-as-stephen-had-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/was-it-a-coincidence-that-god-allowed-paul-to-be-stoned-in-the-same-manner-as-stephen-had-been\/","title":{"rendered":"Was it a coincidence that God allowed Paul to be stoned in the same manner as Stephen had been?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-content\">\n<p>God is not a god of revenge. When Paul accepted Jesus as his savior, his sins were completely forgiven. 1 John 1:9, &ldquo;If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to <strong>forgive us&nbsp;<em>our<\/em>&nbsp;sins<\/strong>, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.&rdquo; Additionally, God does not keep a list of forgiven sins and review them. Psalm 103:12, &ldquo;<strong>as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us<\/strong>.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Paul explains that he doesn&rsquo;t dwell on his past sins because that&rsquo;s the wrong focus. We daily confess our sins and seek forgiveness through Jesus&rsquo; blood. Then we focus on serving God the next day. Philippians 3:13(NLT), &ldquo;&hellip;I focus on this one thing: <strong>Forgetting the past<\/strong> and <strong>looking forward<\/strong> to what lies ahead&hellip;&rdquo; By following Jesus and keeping Him as our example, we are transformed into His character-likeness.<\/p>\n<p>Stephen was stoned because he was serving God and proclaiming light. John 3:20, &ldquo;<strong>Everyone who does evil hates the light<\/strong>, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.&rdquo;&nbsp;Paul was stoned (2 Corinthians 11:25) because he too was serving God. Both of these fine Christians were glorifying God in their characters, their words, and their actions. <strong>They were stoned because people hated the truths they were representing and thus wanted to kill them.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God is not a god of revenge. When Paul accepted Jesus as his savior, his sins were completely forgiven. 1 John 1:9, &ldquo;If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us&nbsp;our&nbsp;sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.&rdquo; Additionally, God does not keep a list of forgiven sins and review them. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/was-it-a-coincidence-that-god-allowed-paul-to-be-stoned-in-the-same-manner-as-stephen-had-been\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Was it a coincidence that God allowed Paul to be stoned in the same manner as Stephen had been?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}