Mark 9:42-50 Choosing Your Fire
Good morning! Thank you for your prayers this last week as my family gathered to celebrate my Nana’s life over in Maine. It was a wonderful gathering and a very special time together. Thank you also to Nate for bringing the Word last Sunday.
This morning we are returning to Galilee, to Jesus and His disciples in a house in Capernaum, maybe Peter’s house. Jesus has been dealing with the selfish ambition and exclusivity in the hearts of His disciples and He’s not done yet.
So let’s turn together to Mark 9:42-50, page 845 in the pew Bibles. Jesus is speaking here, probably still holding the little child that He had called into their midst back in verse 36.
42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. 43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Let’s pray.
So there is a lot going on in these few verses, but though it seems a little broad, maybe even scattered, Jesus is really only dealing with one main idea, all those sermon points really only boil down to one…
But let’s look at each of these ideas and we’ll see how they all really work together.
The first is in verse 42. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Ministry to children is so important but Jesus isn’t just talking to children’s ministers here. In truth, He is not just talking about children either, but anyone who is immature in their faith.
Jesus said that anyone who causes one of these little ones to stumble, to falter in their faith, it would be better if a great millstone were tied around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
The word, “great,” is actually the word, “donkey,” in the original Greek, a donkey millstone. This is just opposed to a smaller handheld millstone used by women, this is more like the millstones that dot the countryside here in New England that rotated on a large wooden axle pulled around in a circle by a donkey to mill grain into flour. In other words, really big, maybe even… great.
All that to say, that the offense is significant, protecting the faith of the immature, whether it is a child or otherwise is vitally important. We must do our best to help them grow not make them stumble, to help them mature, not stunt their growth so as to falsely elevate ourselves.
That’s exactly what Jesus had been dealing with in the hearts of His disciples, the desire to be first, to be best, to be exclusive, to elevate themselves above everybody else, and not just them as a group either, but themselves as individuals. The consequences for their behavior was dire, nobody could escape a millstone hung around their neck and tossed into the sea.
As Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:14, instead of treading on the immature to elevate themselves they ought to…admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.
There are countless ways in which leaders in the church have been guilty of causing little ones to stumble and sin, the history of the church is riddles with atrocities, but something seemingly innocent as saying, “do as I say, not as I do,” is destructive to the faith of children.
The point that Jesus is driving at is that we must all, as disciples, elevate the needs of others, to seek to help the faith of those who are weak, or immature in their walk with Christ regardless of their age. If our teaching, or our actions, cause ones such as these to sin or to stumble, if we are the cause of their sin we are to be dealt with harshly because it’s that serious, we deserve that millstone.
It’s the treatment of the cause of sin that Jesus is after here. If it’s the disciples causing little ones to sin, or even if it is our own hand, eye, or foot.
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’
Now you may notice with careful reading that verses 44 and 46 are missing, which is kind of weird but they are identical to verse 48, “Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”
So what is Jesus after here? First of all, this is not a treatise on the doctrine of hell or eternal conscious torment for those who die without faith in Christ, it is, however, a treatise on self-denial and humility.
So to deal with the obvious first, the word translated, “hell,” in English is the Greek word, “Gehenna,” which means, “the Valley of Hinnom.”
The Valley of Hinnom is an actual place, it’s a sort of ravine on the southern end of the City of Jerusalem. It’s a place where the pagan kings of Israel sacrificed their own children to the false god Molech and burned them. Under the good king Josiah it was turned into a garbage dump where fires burned continuously to consume regular deposits of maggot ridden trash. I’ve been to this place and even two thousand years later dead animals are thrown there.
So when Jesus speaks of this place people understood what He meant, they could picture it, they may even remember the smell of it, it’s repulsive. And the imagery of entering life with one hand, one eye, or one foot, rather than being tossed into that maggoty, burning, garbage dump, would be especially strong if you had been there.
But rather than try to stretch the imagery to say that when Jesus said “hand” He was implying this, or when He said “eye” He was implying this or “foot” really meant this, I think we can simply conclude that if something causes us to sin, or tempts us beyond what we can bear, we are better off without it.
We must cast of the delectable as detestable, because sin is a serious issue!
Matthew Henry wrote, “We must put ourselves to pain that we may not bring ourselves to ruin; self must be denied that it may not be destroyed.”
And that’s really the whole point of this, sin doesn’t come from our hand, or our eye, or our foot, it comes from our heart and saying “no” to our own heart requires discipline.
Jesus said back in Mark 7:21-23, “21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
When we put our trust in Jesus, he deals with the punishment for our sin, the consequences for our sinful nature and our sinful choices were placed on Him on the cross, but that does not remove the temptation to sin from us, and it does not remove the natural consequences for our sinful choices.
We must continuously say “no” to our own pride which gives birth to all other sin in our lives.
Sin is a serious issue and as verse 49 says, everyone will be salted with fire, we just choose what kind of fire.
We are constantly faced with the choice or humility or pride, godly self-renunciation or fire of judgment, the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit, or the fire of condemnation and destruction, the fire of God’s altar or the fire of Gehenna.
50 Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Salt is good… especially on corn on the cob… but how can salt lose its saltiness?
In First Century Palestine salt was from deposits near the Dead Sea, a big lake with no outlets so it is extremely salty. Swimming in it is really strange as the human body is much more buoyant in water so salty so you float really high in the water.
Anyway, that salt is not like the table salt we use today, it was nowhere near as pure, and when the calcium chloride leached away due to humidity, you were left with basically lime which wasn’t salty at all and pretty much useless.
That’s interesting, but what did Jesus mean?
Based on this context, the flavor and preservative qualities of salt, was spiritual discipline, the result of which is peace, or at least behaving peacefully.
The lack of this saltiness was the lack of self resignation, the lack of the Spirit’s discipline, and the lack of consecration to God. It was choosing pride over humility, choosing sin versus choosing to cut it off or tear it out.
Having salt in ourselves is choosing to retain those precious qualities of humility and discipline that will make us a blessing to one another and to everyone that we are around.
Peter would later echo this same teaching in 1 Peter 5:6-11, and I can’t help but think he had these words of Jesus in mind when he wrote:
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Amen.