Rembrandt offers us a remembrance of one of the stoning instances in the New Testament. Stephen was stoned as a false prophet. It was technically legal under ancient Jewish law to carry this out.

A few years earlier. a town tried to stone Jesus as He announced a Year of Jubilee and Himself as a fulfillment of that — again as a false prophet in their eyes.

He slipped through the crowd. He still had work to do.

Jesus' only personal involvement with the practice was to break up the stoning of a woman caught in adultery. Of course, the crowd was forcing the issue on Him. They had probably never done this before, but they wanted to back Him in a corner.

His push-back was nothing short of genius and lays the ground work for our application of this practice – self-stoning.

No, I am not suggesting you go out and get stoned.

What do we do with the violence, retribution, subjective judgment, and pitiless punishment described and mandated here in the scriptures when the desert community is called to stone its false prophet?

It sounds like something lifted out of context from the scriptures of other religions that we criticize for this.

Americans and Christians (not that they are the same) would never tolerate a summary judgment or capital punishment for apostasy!

Jesus rejected it for adultery. What do we do with it? How do we embrace it as part of the history, the story, the living parable of truth that has, after hundreds of years of revealing itself/Himself, come to us in a person – God among us?

We embrace it and we take the essential lesson from it.

Love and serve God radically, ruthlessly, and exclusively no matter what other influences come. Shake them off. Spiritually execute those voices even if they come from the mouths of those most precious to you. Let nothing dissuade you from your love for and service to God.

"The second (commandment – in order of importance) is this," Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Jesus taught in context, historical and contemporary, with an understanding of the intent of the law to bring humanity back to that intent.

It was communicated effectively in its original context and comes to us as core truth in every time of history and cultural context.

We do not put the false prophets to death, whatever they say. We have more scripture that informs us of that. We do "put to death" the "straw man" that influences us away from fidelity. There are hardly enough rocks to stone that voice inside of me that persistently cries …

"Worship this …" or "serve that … It will really pay off for you."

Hand me a stone!

I need to purge some evil from me. I have a plank in my eye and cannot see the stone in your eye.

Those dreams sound attractive.

Help me yank this plank out!

That prophet sounds credible and the promises sound sweet.

Where is that rock?!?

I am not going to lay a hand on anyone or throw a rock at anyone's direction because I am not in the desert anymore trying to get a society organized in a violent world. We are hundreds and thousands of years past those days and that theocratic government of governments.

But we still have the voices and the temptation.

It is daily and it is loud.

How do we execute those inner voices and expel those influences from outside that would turn us away?

Hint – That is what I am working on in me at this very moment,.

" “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst."

“If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you."

(Deuteronomy 13:1-11 ESV)