Some things are much harder than they look.
I've been surfing seriously, though inconsistently, for 25
years. I learned the basics when I was
a little kid, and I started to get real serious about it when I
was about 13. Over the years, I've had the
opportunity to try to teach several friends and family
members how to surf. What almost all of them discover
very quickly is that it's harder than it looks.
Before you try surfing, you think it will be an idyllic
paradise, the sun beaming down its golden rays on you, the
waves gently Bob under you. You effortlessly glide across
wave after wave while you're adoring friends and family
members chew you on from the beach, videoing your every move
and high resolution. Yeah, the reality?
Not so much. Depending what on where and when
you're learning to surf, the water might be cold, the weather
might be rough, and you pretty quickly discover that there is
nothing effortless about it. Paddling a surfboard is hard.
Pushing out through row after row of waves breaking on you and
shoving white water on you is hard.
Even sometimes figuring out how to sit up on the board and rest
and not fall off is hard. That's before you even try to
catch a wave. Spotting the wave, figuring out
how to line up, paddling into it, trying to jump to your feet
at exactly the right moment, also hard.
You might find yourself flying head first over the nose of your
surfboard dozens of times without catching a single wave.
If you fall in shallow water, you might come up with a
mouthful of wet sand. You might get hit on the head by
a 30 LB surfboard. You might get a six inch
fiberglass fin to the thigh. You might get stung by a
jellyfish. I could go on and on and on.
There are glories in surfing. There must be, or nobody would
do it. But for a beginner to taste any
of those glories typically involves quite a lot of effort,
even hardship, even suffering. Lots of people try it once and
then give it up forever. You call this fun?
What is wrong with you? If I wanted to get beat up, I
would sign up for boxing. Surfing is harder than it looks,
and so is Christianity. Lots of people make some kind of
decision to embrace Christianity, or as they
understand it, start following Jesus, but without really
understanding the difficulty of what they're signing up for.
What makes Christianity hard? One of the biggest factors is
this. To become a Christian is to sign
up for a lifelong battle against sin.
It's one thing to have to endure hardship and suffering that
comes to you from the outside. Every religion or philosophy in
one way or another has to confront that.
I would still submit the Christianity's resources for
enduring suffering are the best, but it's another thing
altogether to focus not on the threats that come from outside,
but on the continual threat that comes from inside.
If you're a Christian, your greatest enemy is not out there,
it's in here. If you're a Christian, you are
locked in a life and death battle against sin until this
life ends. But don't take my word for it.
This morning we continue our series in Mark's Gospel with
Chapter 9, verses 42 to 50. If you don't have a Bible,
please raise your hand and someone will bring you one.
If you're not familiar with expository preaching, we are
just continuing to preach section by section through the
Gospel of Mark. Every time I'm up here, I'm
preaching through Mark. When Michael's up here, he's
preaching through numbers. And we'll soon start a series in
First Thessalonians. So we're just taking the next
passage of Jesus's teaching and actions in the Gospel of Mark.
In this section, Jesus continues instructing his followers about
what it means to be a disciple of his.
And his main goal in these verses is to shock you into
taking your battle against sin more seriously.
He is telling you it's harder than you think.
He is telling you it's more serious than you think.
Here's Mark Chapter 9, verses 42 to 50.
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.
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.
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. 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 where their worm does not die and the
fire is not quenched, for everyone will be salted with
fire. 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.
Here's the main point of the passage in one sentence.
The path to life is putting sin to death.
Sin is an enemy inside you, and you have to put forth constant
spiritual effort to execute it, to eliminate it, to demolish and
eradicate it. We are not saved by killing sin,
but only those who kill their sin will be saved.
Killing sin is not the cause of our salvation, but it is a
necessary means to the end of obtaining eternal life.
That's Jesus main message for us and in the passage he gives us 3
reasons for it. There are three sections in our
passage. In verse 42, Jesus warns us
about the impact of our sin on others.
Then in verses 43 to 48 He warns us about our need to kill our
own sin for the sake of our own eternal destinies.
Then in verses 49 to 50 he uses the metaphor of salt in a couple
of different ways to show us our need to be different from the
world and totally devoted to Him.
The path to life is putting sin to death.
Why should you kill sin? 3 reasons, one from each of the
three sections of our passage .1 on verse 42.
Kill sin to protect others. Kill sin to protect others.
Looking at a 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 was thrown into
the sea. If you were here last week,
you'll remember from verse 37 that Jesus uses a child as a
symbol for all believers. In ancient Mediterranean world,
children had no status, and believers in Jesus are those who
have willingly surrendered any claims to status in order to
follow him. So when Jesus has these little
ones who believe in me, he's not talking about literal children,
nor is he talking about children who happen to be followers of
his. He's simply means all believers,
and he's warning of the consequences for everyone who
causes any believer to suffer spiritual harm.
His wording here is wide open, universal, whoever causes.
But throughout the context, Jesus is instructing his
disciples about how to be a disciple.
So I think his target audience for this warning is all who
claim to follow him. If you say you're a Christian,
listen up. Jesus has a warning for you, but
what exactly is he warning against?
The Greek phrase that the ESV translates as cause to sin is a
little bit tricky to bring into English.
The Greek verb is scandalizzo, from which we get our words
scandalized, but it doesn't exactly mean to offend.
It's literal meaning is to cause someone to stumble, to make them
fall. Like you put a stumbling block
in front of someone and they trip over it.
Now, in Jesus teaching here, it means to lead or influence
someone into wrongdoing. The stumbling is metaphorical.
It means to trip someone up so they sin.
But the implication is that you can trip up someone else in the
way of their following Jesus. They are trying to walk along as
a disciple of Jesus. You cause them to fall, and
maybe even in such a way that they don't get back up.
That's what Jesus means when he uses the same word in Mark 417
about those who look like followers of Jesus but whom
persecution causes to fall away. Same Greek word.
And it's also what Paul has in mind when he uses the same word
in First Corinthians 813, where he resolves not to use his
freedom of conscience in any way that would make a brother or
sister stumble. In other words, both Paul and
Jesus are teaching that your example and influence profoundly
affect whether others faithfully follow Jesus, and that has
eternal consequences for both them and you.
What's the consequence of leading another professing
believer into sin? Jesus offers a graphic warning.
It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around
his neck and he was thrown into the sea.
Now, you probably haven't seen a great millstone unless you've
visited like a historic preserved farmhouse or something
where they show you how people used to make grain.
There could be small millstones you would use by hand.
A great millstone is so big it would have to be pulled by a
donkey in harness. It's huge, it's massive.
Jesus is using this image as if you could take that huge
millstone, put it as a collar around someone's neck, and then
deposit them into a body of water.
That's a gruesome death. That is a way to ensure that
someone is dead, stays dead, is really dead, super dead.
It's a shocking image. What's he saying?
He's saying that God's eternal judgement is infinitely worse
than a gruesome death. He's saying there are eternal
consequences for you and others, whether you obey Him and
influence others to obey Him, or whether you disobey Him and
influence others to do the same. What will happen to you in that
latter case is worse than having a heavyweight tied around your
neck and being plunged into the sea.
Jesus is teaching that a basic part of following Him is being
concerned for others spiritual good.
An element of basic Christianity is being diligent to do
spiritual good and not harm to other people who claim to follow
Christ. How can you do that?
Here's a rule we can distill from Jesus teaching in the whole
passage that we'll unpack more later.
The more seriously you take your own sin, the better spiritual
influence you'll be on others. The less seriously you take your
own sin, the worse a spiritual influence you'll be on others.
In other words, kill sin to protect others.
If you are indifferent to Christ's commands, if you think
this one's not such a big deal, this one I don't really need to
be concerned about. Your life lies to other
believers. It tells them, yeah, it's safe
to ignore Jesus. You can be His follower, you can
be on your way to heaven, and you cannot really pay attention
to how he says you should live. Whatever truth your words might
be saying about Jesus, your life is lying about Jesus and it's a
dangerous lie because of the truth of your words you're
saying about Jesus. Other people will look to you as
an example of how to follow Jesus and then they will learn
from you not how to follow Jesus, but how to be self
deceived and on your way to hell.
That lie endangers other people. If someone sees you as a
professing Christian sin in a certain way and not care, not
repent, not turn away, not take it seriously, you're paving the
way of their disobedience and potentially they're turning away
from Christ. Instead of setting an example of
indifference to Christ's commands, put your own sin to
death. We'll talk much more about how
to do that in the next point, but for now, the point is change
starts at home. Putting sin to death is good for
your soul, and it's necessary for your spiritual impact on
others. Influence on others is
inescapable. There is no way to live your
life sealed off in a little bubble that other people cannot
see and will not notice. You will influence how other
people follow Jesus. You will influence whether other
professing believers around you go closer to Him or farther away
from Him. You don't have a choice in that.
Your only choice is what's the character of your influence on
other believers you only choose whether you will help lead
people closer to Jesus or farther away from him.
Kids and teens in the congregation.
I know many of you have departed the Trinity kids, but some of
you are still here Kids and teens in the congregation.
I know teens wouldn't go to Trinity kids, but you know what
I mean Kids and teens, this starts now.
It doesn't matter if you're six years old or 16 years old.
Your attitude toward Jesus commands will have a spiritual
impact on your siblings, classmates, teammates,
neighbors. You will impact how other
people, what other people think it means to follow Jesus and how
they will do it. When I was 15/16/17, one of the
best spiritual influences on me was a friend of mine who went to
high school together. His name is Jason Farrar.
He was very serious about following Christ.
He was a cool kid, he had cool friends, and yet even more than
that, everybody knew he was a Christian and it was a big deal
to him. When we were in maybe sophomore
year, junior year of high school, he got me to memorize
the book of James with him. We did the whole thing and it
stuck. Memorizing James with him 20
plus years ago still bears fruit in my life today, and it helped
kick start a habit of scripture memory that has served me well
on and off for 20 plus years. Jason is still faithfully
following the Lord today. He's a father of five, he's an
elder of his church in Colorado, and he had a pivotal impact on
my discipleship to Jesus as a teenager.
If you claim to follow Christ, whether you're 5 or 15, you will
influence others and you can have that kind of impact on
other believers. Who can you influence positively
in the way of following Christ today?
No matter how young you are, seemingly small decisions can
have eternal implications. Do you watch that movie?
Do you say that word? Do you visit that website?
In verse 42, Jesus wants you to consider what's better.
Not what's better for your short term selfish interest, but
what's better for your soul. And not just what's better for
your soul, but what's better for other people's souls.
To follow Jesus is to care about not just what's good for you,
but what's eternally good for others who follow Him.
Kill sin to protect others. Point #2 Kill sin to pursue
life. That's Jesus teaching of verses
43 to 48. Kill sin to pursue life.
And as part of the passage, Jesus says essentially the same
thing three times in a row. That means it's important.
Look with me again at those verses 43 to 48.
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.
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. 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, where their worm does not die and the fire is not
quenched. Here's Jesus point in a
nutshell. You must always be killing sin
or sin will be killing you. You must always be killing sin
or sin will be killing you. Because he says the same thing
in three different ways. I'm not going to sort of walk
through the verses in order, but I'm going to itemize 3 main
ingredients. The danger, the duty, and the
destination first, the danger. Either sin must die now, or you
will die eternally three times. Jesus says it's better to get
rid of a part of your body than to be thrown into hell.
Here we need to first note that Jesus explicitly teaches that
God will punish sin and sinners in hell.
This is not a doctrine that Christians made-up.
This is not a doctrine that later church tradition invented.
This is straight from Jesus own mouth and he says it three times
in verse 48. He adds emphasis.
He adds a detail to drive the point home.
He cites the very last verse in the book of Isaiah, chapter 66,
verse 24, where their worm does not die and the fire is not
quenched. Both of those images are of
everlasting torment. The worm is an image of being
gnawed away, eaten, tormented. The fire is not quenched.
It always keeps burning. Now, sometimes people are quick
to say, well, these are just metaphors.
He's not speaking literally. They'll use that observation to
suggest, maybe not in so many words, that hell isn't as bad as
these kind of gruesome metaphors make it out to be.
After all, they're just metaphors, brothers and sisters.
That has it exactly backward. The reality is just the
opposite. Jesus uses such horrifying
metaphors because the reality is worse than our minds can
comprehend. He speaks figuratively because
the reality is worse than literal language can capture.
Hell is real. Hell is God's just judgement
against sin and sinners. Hell is forever.
Hell is, scripture warns, where many, many people will spend
eternity, and it is nowhere that you want to be.
If you're not a believer in Jesus, I imagine you kind of
instinctively resist or reject the doctrine of hell.
You might bridle at it. You might find it emotionally
abhorrent. You might find it intellectually
unrespectable, but I want you to take a step back.
I want you to hop around and look at it from the other side.
What if the Bible is true? What if the God of the Bible is
real? If the God of the Bible is real,
then it is not your job to tell him how to run the universe.
You do not need to sit in judgement of God.
Instead, the most crucial task for you is to learn how you can
escape and be spared the judgement of God, and we will
talk about that. In order for all of us to
rightly relate to Jesus warning about hell, we have to keep a
glorious truth in mind. The eternal judgement of hell is
what Jesus has already endured on the cross for everyone who
believes in Him. On the cross, Jesus suffered
God's wrath that would otherwise be poured out on everyone who
believes. Our sin really is that big and
that bad that it took the crucifixion of God the Son to
pay for it. God's holiness, as we've sung,
Holy, holy, holy, God's holiness really is that absolute and
pure, that to do anything less than judge sin in that way would
be sweeping it under the rug. And God is not a janitor
cheating at his job and just sweeping sin under the rug as if
it doesn't really, it's not that big of a deal.
You can just kind of hide it. God's holiness is that pure,
that perfect. God's mercy is that vast that He
didn't just give us up to sin. He didn't just hand us over to
sin. He sent Jesus to die on the
cross and to rise again as an outpouring of mercy.
God comes to us in mercy. We don't work our way to Him in
righteousness. He comes to us in mercy and love
through the real events of what really happened in Jesus dying
and rising again and Christ's sacrifices.
That's sufficient. It really does pay for all the
sins of everyone who will turn from sin and trust in Him.
His love for us is that great that He would endure hell itself
on the cross in order to deliver us from sin.
If you're not a believer in Jesus, Jesus teaching about
putting sin to death is important for you, but it is not
the first thing you have to do. You would completely
misunderstand everything I'm saying in this entire sermon.
If you went home and thought, OK, what's the sin I got to go
take care of? The only way to begin to fight
sin is to be reconciled to God through trusting in Christ.
Have your sins forgiven, paid for, done away with by the blood
of Christ, and receive from Him the gift of the Holy Spirit that
you can change inwardly. You do need to fight sin, but
first you need to repent of sin and trust in Christ.
And if you do, you will be made right with God now and forever.
The glorious truth of the gospel is that everyone who believes in
Jesus is safe from hell through what he's done for us alone.
That's glorious truth. That's reassuring.
That's encouragement we all need.
And yet it still leaves us with kind of a lingering question
about this passage. If everyone who believes is safe
from hell, why does Jesus warn his disciples about failing to
kill, sin, and thereby being thrown into hell?
Again, consider his very words from verse 43.
It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two
hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
Now I think both these things are true.
Every believer is safe from hell through the blood of Christ
alone, and this is a real warning about what we must do to
stay on the path of life. How can we put those two things
together? One key truth is that Jesus came
to rescue us from sin, not to leave us in sin.
Jesus came to deliver us from the penalty of sin and He
accomplished that in his death and resurrection.
One day when He returns, he will perfectly deliver us from the
presence of sin. At Jesus return, there'll be no
more sin in the glorious new creation that he establishes.
There'll be no more sin in us. We will be perfect.
The creation will be perfect. He came to deliver us from the
penalty of sin. He came to deliver us eventually
from the presence of sin. And in the meantime, here and
now, in the course of our lives, he means to deliver us from the
power of sin that begins in every believer's life.
When you first believe you are not only forgiven of your sins,
but sins, power in you is decisively broken.
That's what it means to be born again.
That's what it means to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
As Paul puts it in Romans 6, you are no longer a slave to sin.
To trust in Christ is to be set free from sin.
And yet, as Paul also puts it in Romans 7, even those who trust
in Christ still have sin dwelling within them.
So Jesus delivers us from the power of sin, but in this life
he accomplishes that progressively.
He accomplishes it through the power of the Spirit in US, and
He accomplishes it through empowering our own effort.
He does not do that without us, but through us.
He doesn't do it despite us, but by enabling us to put sin to
death. As we read in Romans 8.
If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you
will live. Paul's echoing Jesus's teaching.
So what does all this mean? It means that a mark of every
genuine believer is constant warfare against their own sin.
If you do not put your own sin to death, you show that you are
not a genuine follower of Jesus. Putting sin to death proves the
genuineness of your faith. Putting sin to death is not the
cause of our salvation. We are not saved because we put
sin to death. We are not saved by putting sin
to death. But putting sin to death is the
path we walk to heaven. It is not the cause, but the
means to the end. So what's the danger Jesus warns
of? The danger is that if you do not
kill your own sin, if you do not mortify your own sin, you fail
to walk the path to heaven. As John Owen put it in his
fantastic book on the mortification of sin.
Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who
walks not over the bellies of his lusts.
He who does not kill sin in his way takes no steps toward his
journey's end. He who finds no opposition from
it and who sets not himself in every particular to its
mortification, is at peace with it not dying to it.
So that's the danger. Next is the duty.
The duty is puts into death. Why does Jesus talk about your
hand or eye or foot causing you to stumble?
It's because those are different ways in which we access sin.
The hand is the instrument by which you commit sin.
The foot is your means of transportation to some place
where you can sin, and the eye is the means by which temptation
enters in. So Jesus is pointing out that in
different ways. Rather, he's using different
images to point out that sin still dwells within us.
Whatever evil impulses you experience come from within.
No one forces them on you. In the believer, sin is like a
foreign, hostile force occupying territory that doesn't actually
belong to it. Sin is not you, but it is you,
and yet you're still responsible for it because sin is in you.
It's in your mind and heart. You're responsible for every
evil thought, every sinful impulse, and all the actions
that break the surface, that start out as evil thoughts and
impulses. So the duty Jesus is urging on
us is this. Don't commit sins.
Don't go anywhere near a place that would tempt you to sin.
Don't even think about or inwardly entertain sins.
Instead, kill sin. That's the point of Jesus
graphic hyperbole. When he talks about cutting off
your hand or foot or gouging out your eye, he doesn't mean that
literally, but he does mean it seriously.
He doesn't want you to harm your body.
Instead, he wants you to kill your sin.
Jesus point is that in order to kill sin, it's worth making any
sacrifice, it's worth suffering any inconvenience, it's worth
foregoing any earthly advantage. To kill sin and thereby pursue
eternal life is worth any earthly loss, even something as
dear as your hand or eye or foot.
Jesus saying that a test of whether you're serious about
killing sin is what you're willing to give up in order to
do it. How long does a gardener have to
keep pulling weeds? The answer is as long as they
keep growing. You must always be killing
weeds, or weeds will be killing your garden.
The only way to get rid of those weeds is to pull them up by the
roots. There's a nasty little weed in
our yard that grows on this kind of vine structure and then
shoots out all these little round green circle things.
It's a pain. It's everywhere.
It's gaining ground as I preach this very sermon to get rid of
that weed, what do you have to do?
Mowing doesn't do it. Pulling up handfuls of the
shoots doesn't do it. You got to get down on the
ground, feel around with your hands and find the vines that
all those stupid little things are going on and pull up as much
of the vine as you can. That's the only way to get rid
of that weed. That's a little picture of what
killing sin is like. You'll be tempted to perform
quicker, easier, more superficial solutions.
You'll think that just running it over with the lawnmower is
going to do the trick. It won't.
You have to pull them out by the roots indwelling.
Sin remains in every believer this side of glory.
The need to fight lasts as long as this life lasts, as the
Puritan John Flavell put it. The Saint, when he draws the
sword in this warfare against sin, throws away the scabbard.
No end of this combat with sin till life end.
Their life and their troubles are finished together.
So how, how can you put sin to death?
We're going to camp out here and have kind of a big long
application point on how to kill sin. 7 Practical Points of
Counsel for How to Kill sin #1 Resolve to obey God
comprehensively. Determine in advance that
anything God hates, you'll hate. Anything God loves, you'll love.
Anything he forbids you'll forsake.
Anything he commands, you'll do it from the heart.
Obedience that holds something back is not obedience #2 Know
what sin is and what is sin. Study the whole of Scripture to
educate your conscience. Labor to progressively bring
your conscience into line with everything God commands and
forbids. Third, learn to name your sin
with biblical language. Which of the 10 commandments
does a particular sin violate? Or does it express any of the
lusts of the flesh that Paul names in Galatians 519 to 21?
Does it express any of the vices Paul identifies in Colossians 35
to 9? Consider Paul's teaching just in
Colossians 35 how it echoes Jesus teaching here.
Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, Sexual
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness,
which is idolatry #4 Pray and search your conscience.
What sin have you committed but not confessed?
Confess it to the Lord. Ask for forgiveness.
Resolve to turn from it if you think it would be helpful.
Confess that sin to another believer, especially not a
fellow church member, and ask for their help in fighting
against it. Another crucial step here, which
is essential to the whole battle, is this #5 aim at heart
change. This is how we pull up sin by
the roots. Aim at heart change.
Every sin you commit outwardly comes from a disordered desire
in your heart. That's where it started.
That's where it comes from. As Jesus teaches in Mark 7, it's
out of the heart that all types of uncleanness come.
And as John Owen put it, every unclean thought or glance would
be adultery if it could. Every covetous desire would be
oppression. Every thought of unbelief would
be atheism. Might it grow to its head?
So how can you work to change your own heart?
Seems like a paradox. It seems like you're trying to
turn around and like, use your own eyes to look at yourself.
How do you work on your own heart?
The key is to cultivate a love for God that drives out love of
sin. To do that, meditate on the
greatness of God's character. Meditate on the infinite depths
of His love. Meditate on the love
specifically He showed you on the cross.
Meditate on His promises of heaven in the new creation.
Meditate on the heinousness and hatefulness of sin.
Part of how sin gets a foothold in our minds and hearts is that
we don't see it in its evil, gruesome, true, ugly colors.
It's especially crucial to unmask sin's deceptions.
Sin always lies. And sin doesn't just bait its
hook to lure you. It baits the hook to hide the
hook. It baits the hook to hide its
true intentions. Sin seeks to enslave you.
Sin feels like freedom until you're trying to stop, so search
your heart for the roots of disordered desires.
What sins are you particularly prone to?
You might be tempted by sins in a certain direction that another
believer barely struggles with. Even on a similar kind of issue,
your temptations might go in opposite directions.
Are you prone to be too ambitious and to let others pay
the cost for your ambition? Or are you prone to defer your
ambition for the sake of someone else, but then quietly smoulder
and bitterness and resentment? Search your heart for the idols
you're tempted to serve, and then find targeted biblical
remedies. Find truths that counter sins,
lies. Find glories in God and his
promises that answer and undermine the false promises of
idols. Find biblical prescriptions for
your specific struggles against sin.
If you need help with that, talk to a church member you trust or
one of the elders. That's all on how to aim at
heart change. Number six, take every action
necessary to stop the sin. It's easy to think you've done
everything you can when you've barely gotten started.
What action is needed to prevent you from falling back into this
sin? Is there any habit you need to
change? Is there any access to a
particular sin you need to cut off?
This is where you need to apply Jesus test of cutting off your
hands. And in all of this number 7.
Finally seek others help. Getting help killing your sin is
a great reason to join a local church, and as you consider your
relationships with other church members, assess whether they
involve any elements of helping each other kill sin.
Ask yourself what sin would keep you from heaven or drag you into
hell? Who knows about it?
Who's helping you fight it? And who are you helping to fight
their particular temptations? If you're not a committed member
of a healthy local church, you are in massive danger.
You're at an enormous disadvantage.
You're fighting alone when you should be fighting in a
squadron. A Christian who's not a member
of a healthy local church is an easy target for Satan.
One last element of Jesus teaching in these verses 43 to
48 to consider the destination, the danger, the duty, the
destination, killing sin is the path to life.
It's the path to heaven. That's what makes the hardship
worth it. Jesus says three times what's
better to enter life, to enter life, to enter the Kingdom. 3
Two different ways of saying the same thing.
For instance, verse 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. Now, when Jesus talks about
entering eternal life crippled or with one eye or lame, he's
not speaking literally. He's not implying that harms we
suffer due to our fallen condition persist into the new
creation. Instead, his point is simple.
Any sacrifice is worth it. Anything you give up is more
than compensated. Any sacrifice you make, any
price you pay to fight sin is nothing compared to eternal joy
with Him. The hope of heaven is one of
your greatest motivations to fight sin.
Every loss of pleasure now will be infinitely compensated by
better, purer, richer pleasures with Jesus in heaven.
What does Psalm 1611 say? In your presence there is
fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures
forevermore, though it lasts as long as this life.
Your struggle with sin is short, and eternity in God's presence
is gloriously long. Throughout this passage, Jesus
is telling you what's better for you.
There is a death that needs to take place, death to sin, the
death of sin. There's no way around that
death. And yet the whole point is, this
is better. The whole point is eternal life
is better. The whole point is the joys of
knowing Him and following Him are better.
Jesus is saying what's better for you, and what it means to be
a follower of Jesus is to believe him and to act on it.
Jesus is not a killjoy. Instead, he is only a killer of
false joys. He wants you to kill false joys
in order to pursue true ones. He wants you to kill fleeting
joys in order to pursue lasting ones.
He wants you to kill poisonous joys in order to pursue joys
that will make you healthy now and happy forever.
That's what Jesus saying is better for you.
Trust Him, He knows what he's talking about.
A third reason to kill sin in verses 49 and 50.
Kill sin to preserve devotion. Kill sin to preserve devotion.
Devotion to whom? To Jesus above all, and also to
his people. Let's start with verse 49.
For everyone will be salted with fire.
This verse is challenging. I think one key to interpreting
it rightly is to understand that Jesus is echoing an Old
Testament instruction about how to offer sacrifices.
Sacrifices are offered with fire.
There's one text in the Old Testament that says they should
all be offered with salt. So we get salt plus fire.
Leviticus 213 You shall season all your grain offerings with
salt. You shall not, you shall not let
the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your
grain offering. With all your offerings, you
shall offer salt. So the point of Leviticus 213 is
that every offering is to be offered with salt.
What happened to every offering? It was burned up with fire.
That burning symbolized the offers, devotion, and dedication
to the Lord. The sacrifice was completely
consumed, symbolizing that the one making the sacrifice is
completely handing themselves over to the Lord.
So salt symbolizes covenant. Salt symbolizes commitment.
Salt symbolizes devotion and communion.
What does Jesus mean by saying that everyone will be salted
with fire? I think he's trading on the many
different associations fire has based on the many different
things that fire can do. Fire can consume, fire can
destroy, but fire can also purify.
Fire can also reveal by bringing to light.
I think in verse 49. So in verse 48, fire clearly
stands for eternal judgement, eternal punishment.
But I think in verse 49, fire stands for purification,
testing, and revelation. In a nutshell, Jesus is teaching
in verse 49 that to be his disciple means to be totally
devoted to him. Not only that, but Jesus says
everyone will be salted with fire.
I think this means that as a disciple of Jesus, this offering
by fire is something you'll undergo, It's something you'll
suffer. It's not just something you do,
it's something that will be done to you, like an offering being
handed up into the flames. I think Jesus is implying that
every believer's devotion to him will be tested.
It will be tested through the process of killing sin.
It will be tested through suffering.
It will be tested through persecution.
Note that Jesus uses the word for to begin this verse.
He's giving us another reason to kill sin, or perhaps an
explanation of why it's necessary to kill sin.
Killing sin is one of the ways we prove our devotion to Him,
and it's one of the purifying fires that every believer will
pass through in this life. Everyone will be salted with
fire. The test will differ, but every
believer will be tested. The struggles will differ, but
every believer must put their sins to death.
The fires that God uses to purify us will differ, but every
single believer has to pass through the flames.
In verse 50, Jesus uses salt in a slightly different way.
I think he's kind of teaching from different angles, using a
kind of keyword to link his teaching.
So in verse 48 fires judgement. In verse 49 fires purification
of revelation. In verse 49, salt is devotion.
In verse 50, I think it stands for difference.
Verse 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.
Here I think salt is what makes us different from the world.
So what is that salt? It's our holiness.
It's the result of putting sin to death.
If you put sin to death, you'll be different from the world.
If you put sin to death, you'll be conformed to Christ's
character. Now sometimes people stumble
over Jesus saying about salt losing its saltiness.
Strictly speaking, the compound that salt is, sodium chloride,
is stable. It doesn't go bad.
That's true of refined salt. It has no expiration date.
But in Jesus region and time, the salt that people commonly
used may have been unrefined salt gathered from deposits
around the Dead Sea. It wasn't pure so it could leach
out and leave other minerals behind.
But that is all beside the point.
Jesus is not offering a chemistry lesson.
Instead, he's offering a vivid picture for something that is
utterly worthless. Good for nothing.
You have salt so that it can flavor or preserve your food.
If that salt is not salty, it's worthless.
If you accidentally put in sugar when you meant salt, the recipes
not going to work. If you put in baking powder
instead of salt, strange stuff's going to happen.
Salt is only good for what it's good for, and it has to have
that distinctive character or it's good for nothing.
What is he saying is worthless when you translate the image?
An unholy Christian, a believer who lets sin win rather than
putting sin to death. He's saying that we need to put
sin to death in order to be devoted to him and distinct from
the world. All the purposes that Jesus has
for us in the church and in the world depend on our holiness.
A holy Christian is useful for anything and everything.
An unholy Christian is useful for nothing.
Then Jesus points to one more payoff of killing sin and
pursuing holiness. He says have salt in yourselves
and be at peace with one another.
Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.
I think he's implying that the first one have salt is the cause
of being at peace. Holiness enables unity.
Devotion to Christ empowers devotion to other Christians.
Sin divides the church. Mortifying sin unifies the
church. Putting pride to death makes you
more able to receive instruction and correction from other
believers. Putting fear of man to death
makes you more able to give instruction and correction to
other believers. Subduing selfishness makes you
more forgiving. Subduing ambition and
covetousness and envy makes you more loving and selfless and
caring. The better you know the sin of
your own heart, the more gracious and gentle you'll be in
dealing with others sin. The more you mortify the sin in
your own heart, the better you'll be able to deal with
others sin in a way that actually unifies the church
rather than dividing it. Why kill sin?
To protect others. To pursue life and to preserve
devotion both to Christ and to His people.
There is no way to faithfully follow Christ without giving
yourself up to Him as a living sacrifice.
There's no way to give a sacrifice without handing it
over, putting it on the altar. You have to pay the cost.
You have to give it up. There is no way for you to live
as a burnt offering without your whole self going up in flames.
Jesus gave everything for you. Jesus is worth giving everything
for. Jesus promises to give
everything to you. Jesus is worth giving up
everything in order to gain Him. Following Jesus is harder than
you think, and it is more worth it than you can imagine.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for these loving warnings, and we thank you for these bracing
instructions about the path to life.
We pray that we would pursue them by your grace.
We pray that we would pursue them by faith.
We pray that we would believe your promises and so have the
confidence to make sacrifices now in order ultimately to
receive an eternal reward with you.
Father, we pray that by faith we would choose to give up anything
rather than giving up Jesus. We pray in his name.
Amen.