Hi, this is John Eldridge, and welcome to the Ransomed Heart podcast. What we are doing over this series is

exploring the personality of Jesus from my new book, Beautiful Outlaw.

There is absolutely no one and nothing that is more captivating than Jesus when you can see him as he really is.

And to know Jesus as he really is is to fall in love with him.

So what we're doing in this series, I am reading some excerpts from a new book called

Beautiful Outlaw, discovering the playful, extravagant disruptive personality

of Jesus.

And so let's explore Jesus together.

Cunning. In a piece of advice that could have been lifted from a CIA training manual or the whispered meetings of a revolutionary cell,

Jesus tells his little platoon,

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.

Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes, and as innocent as doves.

Matthew 10-16.

We like the innocent as doves part.

That sounds very nice, very Sunday school.

But that first bit, hold on now, shrewd as snakes?

When you hear someone say, he's such a snake, do you think, oh, what a fine Christian?

The things Jesus says. Let's get the

religious drapery off this. A dove and a snake. Now surely they remember

the dove descending on Jesus. As for the snake

metaphor, these Jews would have connected that instantly to the serpent in the

garden. Be as holy as the spirit and be as cunning as Satan. You want us to do what?

...