Message preached Sunday, April 10, 2016 from Mark 9:43-48
Theme: Even if something precious to us causes us to sin, it’s worth taking extreme measures to separate ourselves from it.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
In the southwestern portion of the old city of Jerusalem—just a short distance away from the city wall—is a small valley. Today, when you drive past it, it seems like a quiet and peaceful place, with green grass growing along gentle slopes–spotted here and there by trees. It looks like it’d be a nice place to spread out a blanket in the shade and have a picnic lunch. In fact, some people do. But I’m not sure I’d ever be comfortable doing that. It’d be too hard for me to ignore the dreadful significance of that place.
This valley that I’m thinking of was a place were one of the most horrible and destructive acts of sin in all the history of ancient Israel occurred. A king of Judah named Ahaz—a very wicked man—had rejected the God of his fathers and had turned instead to the false gods of the people that God had driven out of the land of Israel. Ahaz declined so far down in his depravity that he actually made human sacrifices of some of his own children to the false god Baal–offering them up in the fire upon the altar that he set up in that valley. And then later on, his grandson Manasseh did the same thing to some of his own sons in this valley—and even setting up more altars to more idols, and practicing witchcraft and sorcery. He drew the people of Israel into terrible depths of sin along with himself, and caused a great deal of bloodshed to be spread throughout the land. And then, Manasseh’s son Amon—a son that was apparently not offered in the fire—proceeded to do the same kind of things when he took the throne.
This place—a place called the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom—came to be dreadful to the memory and history of Israel. It was a place that would be, from then on, associated with the horrible stumbling of the people of Israel from their faithfulness to God. The sins that were committed in that valley became the reason why God brought terrible judgment upon His people. In time, a godly king named Josiah was placed upon the throne. He led his people in repentance toward God; and he chose to display that repentance by defiling that dreadful place so that “no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire” to the false gods ever again (2 Kings 23:10). This valley became used as a garbage dump—where the refuse of the city, and the dead bodies of animals, were dragged out and thrown away. A fire was constantly kept burning there; and the smoke of burning debris was constantly rising from the place. The worms were constantly at work there, eating away at the rubbish and waste.
And this Valley of Hinnom—called “Gehenna” in Hebrew—came in time to be a symbolic representation of the place of God’s judgment. (I’ll never forget riding in a tour bus once past the now very pleasant-looking Valley of Hinnom, and hearing the tour guide tell us that if we’d look out the window on the left side of the bus, we’d see Hell. Personally, I was glad when we drove on quickly past that particular spot of interest!)
Now; you may be wondering why I’m telling you the terrible history of this valley. It’s because it represents the far more eternally-consequential place called Hell—the place of God’s judgment for unrepentant sin. Most people nowadays think that it’s bad form to talk about the place of God’s judgment called Gehenna—or as it’s translated in our English Bible, Hell. They believe that it’s wrong, in such an enlightened age as ours, to ‘scare’ people with such a distasteful mythology. A lot of preachers, in fact, choose not to talk about Hell in their sermons anymore. But I believe we should speak of it. Jesus Himself spoke about it. He spoke of it often—and not as a myth, but as a literal place. The word Gehenna shows up twelve times in the New Testament—and eleven of those twelve times was from the mouth of Jesus. He is our gentle and merciful Savior, who gave Himself in love to save people who trust Him. Nevertheless, He spoke more in the Bible about Hell than anyone else.
He speaks about it in the passage we’ll be looking at this morning. In fact three of the eleven times He mentions Gehenna is in this morning’s passage alone.
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Let’s get the context of today’s passage.
In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the Lord Jesus had been teaching His disciples about true greatness. Perhaps you’ll remember that, in teaching them about this, He picked up a child and held him or her; and then told His disciples that whoever receives such a little one in His name receives Him.
And then, He also gave this sober warning;
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:42).
With those words, our Lord introduced His disciples to the danger of what He called “offenses”—that is, those occasions when someone leads a tender, growing Christian down a path of unbelief or sin; and intentionally causes them to stumble for their obedience to Christ or fall out of a faithful walk with Him. We considered this last week. It’s a very serious matter. If anyone should dare to cause one of even His littlest ones who believes in Him to stumble from Him, He doesn’t say that they’ll have a millstone tied around their neck and that they’d be thrown into the depths of the sea. Rather, He says it’d be better for them if they were! It’s a very ominous warning, isn’t it?
And that’s when we come to our passage this morning. In a very natural way, Jesus turns His focus to speak about the kinds of offenses that those who seek to be His followers might bring upon themselves. I’m reading this verses 43-48 from the New King James Version—though it may appear a little different in the translation you might be using. Jesus goes on to say;
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell [in the original language, géena or “Gehenna”], into the fire that shall never be quenched—where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell [there’s that word again], into the fire that shall never be quenched—where
‘Their worm does not die,
And the fire is not quenched.’
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire [that dreadful word once again]—where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
What a terribly serious passage this is! What disturbing words He uses to describe the danger! In fact, it’s important to know that Jesus didn’t give this particular teaching only once. It’s something that He spoke of a couple of times, on a couple of different occasions during His earthly ministry—and using very similar words. It’s a lesson that He was willing to repeat; because it was important to Him that those who heard Him not end up being led away into sin and experience the dreadful prospect of the unquenchable fires of the place He called Gehenna.
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Now; let me shift gears just a bit. Let me turn from my role as ‘preacher’ for a moment, to the role of ‘counselor’. I want to help you understand why this passage is so important to our practical Christian living.
I have, on many occasions, talked with people who had fallen away from the Lord. They used to profess a faith in Him; but because of some prevailing habit of sin in their lives—because of something that they just never seemed to get rid of in their life—they blamed the Lord for their failure and turned away from Him. “I tried following Jesus,” they’ll often tell me; “But following Him didn’t work for me. He didn’t take my temptations away. He didn’t help me overcome this problem. So I just accepted things as they are, figured that that’s just who I am. I quit going to church and just gave up on following Jesus. Christianity doesn’t work. Following Jesus doesn’t work.” Perhaps you’ve heard people say that kind of thing too.
In those kinds of situations—if they will allow me to—I explore their experience with them and ask them, “Tell me, then, what exactly it was that you did about this sin problem.” And if we explore the chain of events together, we discover that it wasn’t that Jesus failed had them at all. (That’s never the case, by the way. Jesus never fails those who genuinely trust Him and obey Him.) Usually I find that the problem was that they were expecting Jesus to do for them what He very clearly commands, in this passage, that they must do for themselves.
In this passage, Jesus says that if something is causing us to stumble in our walk with Him, then it’s our responsibility to take decisive action to separate ourselves from that thing—whatever it may be. We have to practice what one noted Christian counselor calls “radical amputation”. We must, as it were, perform a kind of spiritual surgery on ourselves and “cut off” that thing that makes us stumble and sever it from our lives—even if it is something very precious to us. Very often, I find that the problem was that that thing that caused people to stumble into sin—whatever it may be—was so precious to them that they wouldn’t let go of it. They tried to overcome the temptation that thing brings into their lives while—at the same time—still keeping that very thing in their lives. They tried to overcome the problem while not ridding themselves of the cause of the problem.
I believe that the Lord Jesus helps us to part company with that thing that drags us down into sin—whatever it may be. He empowers us to overcome the addictive power of sin when we trust Him, so that we can separate ourselves from whatever it is that causes us to stumble. But He makes it very clear in this passage that, in the end, it is our responsibility to do our part. We must take the extreme action—with the grace that He provides—of severing ourselves from that thing that drags us down, and of getting it out of our lives completely.
I wonder if that might describe a situation you’re facing today—or if it it might describe the situation of someone you know. This very serious passage has a very practical lesson to teach us; one that might save us from eternal loss. It’s that even if something that is otherwise very precious and meaningful to us causes us to sin, the potential eternal loss—and the greater prospect of eternal gain—makes it well-worth taking extreme measures to ‘severely sever’ it from ourselves.
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Okay. I’m done being a counselor and am back to being a preacher now (although I’m never quite sure when one role ends and the other role begins). Let’s look a little closer at this passage and see what it has to teach us.
First, notice . . .
1. THE AREAS WHERE STUMBLING BLOCKS MIGHT COME.
Jesus mentions hands, and feet, and eyes. And I don’t believe He’s just randomly naming off body parts. I believe that these particular parts have a strategic symbolic significance to some important areas of our lives.
First, consider that He tells us, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” I’m sure you’ll agree with me that He doesn’t mean for us to think that our hand actually causes us to sin. It’s not our hand that does that; but our hearts that operate the hand. Cutting off our hand isn’t really going to solve a sin problem. I believe that the hand is meant to represent the things we do—the habits and practices that we lay our hand to. It’s the part of our body that we primarily use to perform work or to take action.
And so, I suggest that one of the areas of life in which stumbling blocks come is in the habits of life that we have, and the practices of life that we perform. If anything in the area of our practices or our habits cause us to sin—the works of our hands, as it were—then we must sever ourselves from those habits and practices.
I think a possible example of this might be found in Ephesians 4:25-30. The apostle Paul was teaching his fellow Christians about laying aside the ‘old man’ of our old way of life, and putting on the ‘new man’ of the new way of life in Christ; and he wrote,
Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another (Ephesians 4:25).
If you have a habit of lying, then situations that tempt you to lie are a cause of stumbling for you. You must separate yourself from conversations or situations or activities in which you are tempted to stretch the truth or to lie. For some, that might mean something as simple as ‘fishing’. For others, it might be as important as ‘business dealings’.
Or suppose you are are prone to destructive anger. Paul wrote;
“Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil (vv. 26-27).
You must stay away from situations or conversations that provoke you to holding on to anger or to acting out in rage. You might need to stay away from certain topics of conversation, or certain activities that bring such uncontrolled anger out of you.
Or consider a very practical example of the trouble one might have with the hand—theft. Paul wrote;
Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need (v. 28).
If you can’t be trusted with what belongs to others, or if you can’t be honest with money, then you need to sever yourself from situations in which you are tempted to take what doesn’t belong to you.
Or if you have a tendency toward gossip or slander or bad-mouthing others, you need to stay away from situations that tempt you do toward such sins. Paul wrote;
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (vv. 29-30).
You might have to stay away from political discussions, or to remove yourself from the kind of social media that tempts you to say wrongful and unkind and hurtful things about others.
Now; that’s what I think is represented by the hand. But then, Jesus also mentions the foot. And of course, I don’t believe He means for us to literally cut off our foot. Our foot doesn’t make us sin. But it’s what we use to go to the places we go, and to walk in the associations with others that we might have.
And so, I suggest that one of the areas where stumbling blocks come into our lives—as represented by the foot—is in the relationships we keep and the associations we make. If relationships and associations with others drag us down into sin, and habitually lead us down sinful paths, then we need to break off those relationships and sever ourselves from them.
When I think of this, I think of the first few verses of Psalm 1. That’s where Kind David wrote;
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper (Psalm 1:1-3).
The blessed man is the one who delights in God’s law and meditates in it. His feet don’t follow in the paths of those who reject God’s word. But look how subtly it can happen! First, he walks in the counsel of the ungodly—that is, he heeds their advice. Then, he ends up standing in the path of sinners—that is, he is out of the path that God’s sure word sets for us, and is standing in support of those who do what He says not to do. Finally, he finds himself sitting in the seat of the scornful—that is, he has become one with those who mock God’s way and who belittles those who seek to obey Him.
If our relationships and associations—symbolized by the places our feet take us and the paths we walk with others—leads us into sin, we must take decisive and extreme measures to break off those relationships. As 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Evil company corrupts good habits.”
And then, there’s the eyes. And again, I don’t believe that the Lord Jesus means for us to literally remove our eyes. Rather, our eyes represent yet another area of life in which stumbling blocks come; and that is in the stimuli we take in.
It doesn’t seem to me that it’s very hard to think of a very practical example of this. Perhaps you saw that Time Magazine came out this week with an issue that had the word “Porn” emblazoned on the cover. It’s cover story addressed the pandemic problem of pornography that is destroying the lives of many people today—especially the younger generation because of its abundant availability through the internet. When I think of the stumbling blocks that come through the eye, I think of what the Lord Jesus said in the Sermon on The Mount from Matthew 5. His words from that passage might sound familiar. He said;
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30).
I believe that if the things someone is seeing on their computer, or their tablet, or on their smart phone, is causing them repeatedly to sin in this area, then they need to separate themselves from the private use of their devices, allow other people to hold them accountable, and only use their device under the observation of someone else. And if that doesn’t work, they need to REALLY get serious about it, take a baseball bat, and smash their device to bits.
That’s how serious we are to treat the kind of stumbling blocks that come through the eye, or through the foot, or through the hand.
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Now; why do we need to take things so seriously—and even suffer the loss of things that might be precious to us? It’s because the consequences of NOT doing so are even more serious, and because the potential loss is even greater! This leads us to what Jesus says about . . .
2. THE DANGER SUCH SUMBLING BLOCKS PRESENT.
There is something that Jesus repeats three times in this passage. It’s better to be maimed, He said, or to be rendered lame, or to suffer the loss of an eye, than to “go to hell”. I don’t believe that our Lord and Master is simply using scare talk. I believe that He means that if someone repeatedly, consistently, unrepentantly practices certain sins—if they allow themselves to be dragged down by the stumbling blocks of life into doing certain things God said not to do—they will thus exclude themselves from eternal life.
The apostle Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 6:
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
The good news, of course, is that someone can be completely washed clean by the blood of Jesus and leave those practices behind. But we’re not to be deceived about the matter. If someone will not leave them—and allows themselves to be constantly dragged down into them by things that they will not separate themselves from—then they will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Jesus meant what He said. How important it is that we take seriously the danger that such stumbling blocks present in life!
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And that leads us, finally, to consider . . .
3. THE EXTREME MEASURES THAT IT’S WORTH TAKING.
Because such things drag us down into sin, and cause us to suffer eternal loss, and may even lead us down into sin so far that we exclude ourselves from the kingdom of God, then it is worth doing whatever we must do to sever ourselves from such things!
It’s hard do to that—especially when such things may be valuable to us in other ways. It might be hard to break ourselves away from certain habits or practices that might otherwise be beneficial to us or that might be a part of our working life. It might be hard to break off certain relationships that might otherwise be important to us. It might be very hard to stay away from sources of information or entertainment or communication that might otherwise be helpful to us. But no loss we might suffer in such temporal things is as great as the loss of eternal life; and no sacrifice on earth is to great to make in order to protect our ability to hear our Lord Jesus one day say to us, “Well done!”
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May I close with a truly positive example? It’s the example that our Lord Jesus Himself set for us. The writer of Hebrews put it this way:
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Let’s follow His example. Let’s use our hand to set aside every weight. Let’s free our feet from every sin that easily ensnares us and causes us to stumble. And let’s keep our eye on Jesus—the author and finisher of our race.