Mark 9:41 I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward. 42 "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to turn away, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone around his neck. 43 If your hand causes you to turn away, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. 45 And if your foot causes you to turn away, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to turn away, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where "`their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'
Introduction: Hell and Mercy
72% of Americans say they believe there is a heaven. Only 58% believe in hell. And guess how many believe there is any chance at all that they might go to hell? 2.9. 2.9% of people think there is any danger of going to hell. In other words, pretty much nobody. In fact, they asked those people who believe in hell if they could think of anyone who might be sent there—ax murderers, child abusers, whatever. 80% of them said no—they couldn’t think of anyone at all who might be sent to hell. When it comes to the way people life and the decisions they make day to day, hell is an absolute non-factor. It has no impact. The attitude of our culture is summed up perfectly by an ad that ran during the Democratic debate on Oct.15. Ron Reagan, the son of President Reagan, did a commercial for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The tag line at the end of the commercial was this, with a smirk on his face he said: “Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.” Hardly anyone is. The doctrine of hell has been utterly rejected by our culture.
On the other hand, 84% of Americans believe in karma—just a generalized idea that what goes around comes around. The Universe somehow sees to it that you get what you got coming to you. It’s funny, I never hear of people talk about karma as an evil doctrine like they do with hell. People think the doctrine of hell is so horrible and abhorrent, and no loving God in his right mind would ever send people there. But karma—that’s fine. That’s remarkable because karma is a much harsher doctrine than hell, because there is no mercy in the doctrine of karma. If you deserve punishment, you get it, period. You can try to do better next time, but there’s nothing you can do about the punishment you already deserve. But with the biblical doctrine of hell, mercy is involved. In fact, the whole reason Jesus spoke so much of hell was to motivate us to seek that mercy. The amazing thing about hell is this: no one has to go there! Not even the worst sinner ever has to go there. Unlike with karma, no one has to be punished for their sin.
When I was growing up, there were certain things that, if I did them, there was absolutely no escaping the punishment no matter how penitent I was. But before God, no matter how much punishment I deserve… , no matter how many thousands of capital offenses I’ve committed against God… , no matter how many years I have kept my back to God… , no matter how thoroughly I have blasphemed him… , if I repent, I will never ever be punished for any of it. I may have some temporal consequences to train me, I may have to give an account on Judgment Day… , but I will never get what I deserve for those sins—I’ll never have to spend even one second in hell. But, in order to receive that mercy, we must heed the warnings Jesus gave us about hell like the one in today’s passage at the end of Mark 9.
Review
To refresh your memory, we left off last time with Jesus teaching the disciples about the greatness of his name. His name is so great that anything done in that name by anyone —even something as small as giving a cup of water, if it’s done in that name, will be eternally rewarded. That was the positive side. But Jesus goes on in the final paragraph of the chapter to spell out the negative side. If we’re dealing with a name that is that great—so great that anything done in that name brings eternal reward, how serious is it to turn away from that name? Not surprisingly, the warning about that is as extreme as it gets. Personally, I can’t think of any language that could be any stronger than what Jesus says here. It’s so strong that few preachers even preach it, and those who do (the ones I listened to) spent half their sermon apologizing for the passage.
But if we understand what we learned last time about how great Jesus’ name is, why on earth are we surprised at the severity of hell for those who dishonor it? If Jesus’ name really is so great that honoring it really is the best thing possible, then dishonoring it has to be the worst thing possible. So shouldn’t we expect that it would have the worst possible consequence? And that’s exactly what we see.
Don’t Destroy People
Mark 9:42 "And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to turn away, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone around his neck.
Millstone
That is a gruesome picture. If Jesus said, “If you do this, you’d be better off dead,” that would be severe enough. That would get my attention. But Jesus makes it even stronger to really get your attention. It’s not just that you’d be better off dead. You’d be better off even with a horrible death. A “large millstone” weighed between one and two tons. It’s like the mafia with their cement shoes, except a lot heavier.
I saw a drawing of this and it made my stomach turn. They are standing on a ledge above the sea and a bunch of guys shove this huge millstone off the ledge, and there’s a rope from the stone to the guy’s neck. Can you imagine dying that way? You feel it jerk your neck and you’re being pulled down to the bottom of the sea headfirst. And you keep plummeting down until you’re either crushed by the pressure or you can’t hold your breath any longer and inhale a bunch of water and drown.
It sounds to me like Jesus is getting emotional here. It would have been better for you to die a brutal, terrifying, violent death then cause someone to fall away. Why? Because what God’s going to do to you now is worse than being drown. Alexander Maclaren said, “What imagination shall fill out the details of the ‘worse than’ which lurks behind that ‘better’?” What will happen to you if you commit this sin is worse than you can imagine.
Causing a Believer to Turn Away
What sin?
42 "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to turn away…”
Your Bible might say “causes one of these little ones to sin,” but this isn’t the normal word for sin. The Greek word for sin is hamartia. But here the word is skandalizo. Interesting word—the noun form, skandalon, refers to an obstacle—usually translated “stumbling block.” So the verb, skandalizo means to put a skandalon , an obstacle in someone’s way so that they either stumble over it or it blocks their way altogether and they just turn around and go back where they came from. So it means to either cause someone to stumble, or cause someone to turn away altogether.
And when that word is used elsewhere in Mark, it seems to carry that second meaning. For example, in the parable of the sower.
Mark 4:17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
That’s the word skandalizo. They don’t just stumble; they fall away from the faith altogether. Same thing in ch.14—twice.
Mark 14:27 "You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written: "'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' 29 Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."
There’s another Greek word that means fall away , so I think a better translation of this word might be “turn away,” since the picture is that you’re turning back after hitting an obstacle.
How to Send Someone to Hell
So Jesus is warning us that we’d be better off drown than to cause a Christian to turn away from him. And he’s definitely talking about causing Christians to fall away. He ways, “one of these little ones who believes in me” so he’s talking about believers. What kinds of things could you and I do that might cause a fellow believer to turn away from the faith?
False Promises
I imagine there are a lot of things. I can tell you the things that have done the most damage to my faith. One was trusting in promises God never made. If you make someone believe God promised something he didn’t promise, when it doesn’t happen that can do tremendous damage to their faith. In my case, I became convinced through various preachers I trusted that the Bible promised that if a church was committed to the Word of God and prayer and fellowship, it would be a strong, healthy church. I was taught that, I preached it; I really did believe it. And when it turned out not to be the case at Agape, I became disillusioned and it really damaged my faith. It was hard for me to believe anything in the Bible after that. I thought, If I was wrong about that, who knows what else I’m wrong about? And I started questioning everything I believed. It was definitely the closest I ever came to walking away from the faith in my life.
So that’s one way. You can cause a fellow believer to turn away by misleading them about what God promises. You see this happen a lot with promises about healing or wealth—the things the prosperity preachers promise.
Inflicting Pain
Another thing that can put people over the edge is pain. When people in the church reject someone or inflict various kinds of emotional pain, it can be so excruciating that you can hardly maintain rational thought.
Again, in my case, if someone would have pointed out that God never really made the promises about the church that I was banking on —if someone would have pointed that out to me when things were going well, I think I would have just adjusted my beliefs and got on with my life. But the combination of that disillusionment and the emotional pain I was going through at the time combined to damage my faith.
I’ve known so many people who have walked away from the church because they couldn’t handle the pain. Neglecting people, hurting people with your words, gossiping about them, listening to gossip about them, assuming they have bad motives —the emotional pain from things like that can drive people from the church. And then, when they are isolated from the body, the enemy devours them.
1) Flaunting Freedoms
2)
Another way to destroy someone’s faith is to flaunt your freedoms in a way that tempts a weaker brother to violate his conscience.
1 Corinthians 8:13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to stumble/turn away, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to turn away.
You can tempt a fellow believer to sin by engaging in activities that are fine for you, but that his conscience doesn’t allow him to do.
Provoking to Anger
How about parents who exasperate their children? Treat a kid unjustly or harshly enough for long enough and he can get so exasperated that he tries to take his anger at you out on God. You can do that to anyone who is under your authority. Jesus gave this warning to the men who would be in charge of the church. Very often it’s leaders in the church who can provoke people to the point where they turn away.
How about provoking your spouse to anger again and again unnecessarily?
Bad Example
How about leading those under your influence into a pattern of unrepentant sin by your example of unrepentance? How about parents who train their kids to miss church and youth group for sports, so the kids grow up thinking recreation is more important than God. And when they go off to college that attitude keeps them in bed on Sunday mornings.
Temptation
What about women who dress in immodest ways without concern for whether they stimulate temptation in men around them?
Causing Doubt
What if you do or say something that diminishes their faith or makes it harder for them to trust God? You plant some kind of seed of doubt that will erode their faith over time like rust on steel. This is where I really don’t want to be standing too close to a lot of college professors on Judgment Day.
Grumbling
None of us would do that overtly, but we can do the same thing to one another in subtle ways. For instance, complaining and grumbling. If someone in the range of your influence hears you complain all the time, or sees you worry all the time, or sees your pessimism, isn’t that going to chip away at their ability to trust God?
You Never Know if They Will Repent
Most of the time, when we do these things and lead a fellow believer into sin, they just do what believers do after sinning—they repent. But not always. How do you know if the sin you pushed them into ends up being the turning point that leads to them ultimately turning away from the faith? If that happens, it would have been better for you to have been brutally killed.
Drowning with a millstone like this was done to people convicted of treason. It may be that by choosing that punishment Jesus was showing us that if we do this—we cause a believer to turn away, we’re committing treason against the King of kings. Which is the treason of treasons. And that’s why it carries such a massive consequence.
Accountable for Influence
Now, you might hear all that and think, Am I accountable to God for what other people do? No, those people have to answer to God for their own actions. You’re not responsible for their actions, however you are responsible for your influence. Your influence doesn’t force them to do anything. But it does exert force on them. They don’t have to succumb to your influence, but whether they succumb or not, you are accountable to God for whether the pressure you exert on them is good or bad. If you allow your influence to push someone into turning away from Christ, you’re guilty of gross negligence—wanton disregard for spiritual life. So make sure your influence isn’t destroying people.
Pursuing Greatness Causes Stumbling
And remember the larger context here. What started this whole discussion? The disciples arguing about who was greatest. Isn’t it when we pursue earthly greatness that we exert the worst influence on people? Any self-oriented focus inevitably hurts everyone around you and is a terrible representation of Christ. So instead of worrying about whether you are greater than other people or not as great—how you stack up against them , wondering if they like you or not, trying to impress people—instead of wondering all that, wonder this: ask yourself What influence am I exerting on them? It doesn’t matter how great you are compared to them, but it matters a lot what kind of influence you are exerting on them.
Don’t Destroy Yourself
Okay, so the point of v.42 is “Don’t destroy people.” The point of the next section is, “Don’t destroy yourself.”
43 If your hand causes you to turn away, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.
The warning about influencing others got one verse, but this point Jesus repeats three times.
45 And if your foot causes you to turn away, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to turn away, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where "`their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'
What’s the point of all that? What Jesus is saying is very simple: Don’t go to hell. Verse 42: Don’t send others to hell. Verses 43-48: Don’t send yourself to hell.
Hands, Feet, and Eyes
How could you send yourself to hell? Hands, feet, and eyes.
43 If your hand causes you to turn away, cut it off (because that’s better than going to hell).
45 if your foot causes you to turn away, cut it off (because that’s better than going to hell).
47 if your eye causes you to turn away, pluck it out (because that’s better than going to hell).
So sending yourself to hell is the result of things your hands do, places your feet go, and things your eyes consider. In other words, the things you do that have a bad influence on you. Watch your influence on others and watch your influence on yourself. There are things you can do with your eyes and feet and hands that can completely destroy your faith. And Jesus commands us here to take drastic action against those things. You’d be better off dead than to ruin someone else’s faith, and you’d be better off maimed and crippled and blind than to ruin your own faith.
How to Kill Your Faith
So what kinds of things can your hands and feet and eyes do that will destroy your faith? Well, your feet could walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers (Ps.1:1). Your feet could carry you into a college classroom where a professor is going to constantly attack the reliability of God’s Word. Or into a psychotherapist’s office where your confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture will be undermined. Your feet could carry you into a bar or a party or any place that will make the pleasures of this world feel more attractive than the things of God.
What about your hands? They could commit sins that feel good and deceive your soul into thinking those sins are the source of life and good days—better than God’s grace. They could indulge in sins that end up enslaving you so you can’t escape.
How about your eyes? Eyes are symbolic of several things in Scripture. They can represent desire—Job made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at a girl (Job 31:1). 2 Peter 2:14 speaks of “eyes full of adultery.”
So eyes can represent desire, or they can represent attitudes. Scripture speaks of haughty eyes (Pr.6:17). Jesus spoke of generous eyes and greedy, stingy, insincere eyes (Mt.6:22-23). Proverbs talks about being wise in your own eyes (Pr.26:5). So the eyes are the windows to our attitudes.
Can your attitudes damage your faith? Sure they can. I don’t know of anything that has more power to ruin your faith. Attitudes affect the way you see the world. When information comes into your ears, your attitudes color the facts—they filter certain facts out, blow others out of proportion, distort others. Pretty soon you can’t believe the truth because you don’t even know the truth because the facts have been so doctored by your attitudes that they are distorted beyond recognition. And sinful attitudes are especially damaging because they are stubborn. They don’t just appear for a moment and then go away—they entrench themselves in your heart.
Kill the Faith Killers
So we have all these deadly, hostile, faith-killers residing inside us. How do you defend against that kind of enemy?
43 cut it off.
45 cut it off.
47 pluck it out.
In other words, don’t mess around. Not a time for kid gloves. You’re in a battle for your eternal life. Nothing in life is more important at that point. Lose at this point and you lose everything.
This Means You
It seems like that would go without saying, and yet so few Christians take the threat of hell seriously. We’ve developed doctrines that rip all the meaning out of passages like this. I listened to sermon after sermon on this passage where the preacher said, “Don’t worry! If someone turns away from the faith, they never truly believed in the first place. So if you’re a true believer, this can’t possibly happen to you. Jesus uses this word for hell 11 times. Two of them he’s talking to the Pharisees. All the rest are warning Christians about going to hell—including the ones in this passage, where he is teaching his disciples in private, and telling them, “Don’t go to hell.” Jesus had plenty of opportunities to say this to the crowds, because he preached to crowds all the time. Why does he never say it to them, but when he gets his disciples alone for private teaching, he tells them, “Don’t go to hell.” And we’re supposed to think they would have heard that and thought, “Oh, he’s not talking to us”?
The argument usually ends up being something like this: “Jesus isn’t warning believers; he’s warning churchgoers —people who claim to be Christians, they look like Christians, act like Christians, but they really don’t believe. That’s who Jesus is warning, not true Christians.”
Is that a possibility? No. It makes no sense. Fake believers are already going to hell. Why would Jesus warn them not to turn away? Turn away from what? Is Jesus saying, “This lifestyle of pretending to be a Christian, associating with the church but not really believing—make sure you don’t turn away from that phoniness”? No. They should turn away from that.
The Solution
Jesus is not talking to fakers. These warnings are for us. And the solution Jesus gives is to cut off your hand, cut off your foot, and pluck out your eye. That’s how you can stay out of hell.
Is that talking about physical amputation? No. Jesus says, “If your body parts caused you to sin it would be better to cut them off, but Jesus was crystal clear back in ch.7 that all sin originates in the heart, not in your body parts. This is the same figure of speech we see many times in Scripture where the body part represents that part of you that activates that body part. Like when Proverbs says God hates feet that rush into evil or lying tongues. His anger isn’t on the body part; it’s over the thing inside you that tells your feet or tongue to do bad things.
So what does it mean to amputate these things? It means to destroy the impulses, desires, appetites, beliefs, attitudes, values, thought patterns—whatever it is inside you that activates your body to do things that result in damaging your faith. He wants us to do a deep dive and figure out what’s behind our sinful actions. And when you find it, destroy it. It’s not physical mutilation, but spiritual mortification.
The physical metaphor brings out the urgency of it. When it says to pluck your eye out, the word for pluck is ekballo—the same word for casting out a demon. Ek means out, ballo means to throw. Fling it away.
Imagine you’re exploring a cave. It’s pitch dark, you can’t see anything. Suddenly, something drops down on your back. At first you think maybe it’s a snake or something, but then you feel claws. You freak out, thrash around, finally you get a hold of it, tear it off your back, and throw it as hard as you can away from you.
Do you have that image in your mind? That’s the idea of this word here. Jesus is warning us about something that has its claws in you, it’s biting you, and will kill you if you don’t fling it away with all your might. Once you identify that attitude, desire, pattern of thinking, belief—whatever it is inside you that’s damaging your faith and leading you toward sin , throw that thing away with the same energy you would throw that creature in the cave.
Scaring Us?
People often say you can’t scare people into heaven, and so we shouldn’t use hell to try to scare people. If Jesus isn’t trying to scare us, what in the world is he trying to do? And who in his right mind wouldn’t be terrified of this if you believe it’s true? A place where the fire never goes out, … where `their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.' You burn forever. And the decay process—being eaten by worms, goes forever.
Sometimes preachers say, “God doesn’t send people to hell; they send themselves there.” But here Jesus warns us about being thrown into hell. People don’t throw themselves. Only God can throw people into hell.
Here it’s described as fire. Revelation 20:15 says it’s a lake of fire. The rich man in Luke 16:24 begs for a drip of water on his tongue, “because I am in agony in this fire.” Hebrews 10:27 says it will be raging fire.
Elsewhere it’s described as outer darkness. (Mt.8:12, 22:13, 25:30) where people will be crying in sorrow and gnashing of teeth in anger (Mt.8:12, 22:13, 25:30). In Luke 12 Jesus said it’s a place where the sinner will be beaten (Lk.12:47). While preachers are running around trying their hardest to soften the language about hell, God is doing the opposite. In Isaiah 63 God is asked, “Why are your clothes all red God?”
Isaiah 63:3 …I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.
And the torment will be continuous, without a break.
Revelation 20:10 … They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
If you believe all that and it doesn’t scare you, you’re out of your mind. People say, “We shouldn’t follow Jesus out of fear; we should do it out of love.” That’s half right. We should do it out of love, but the motivation to follow Jesus touches every corner of the human soul, so every conceivable kind of motivation points us in the right direction, including fear.
Life
So the negative motive is there, but so is the positive. What does Jesus present as the alternative to going to hell? Entering life. 43 It is better for you to enter life maimed … than to go into hell 45 … It is better for you to enter life crippled … than to be thrown into hell Then in the third statement he changes it up. 47 …. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than … to be thrown into hell Jesus isn’t just calling us to avoid hell; he’s calling us to enter life in his kingdom in the next life. Jesus had spoken of the kingdom as having begun with his arrival, but here we find out there is a very definite future form—a much greater form in the next life that is the opposite of going to hell.
We haven’t entered the final form of the kingdom yet, nor have we entered life in its final form yet. And there is a kind of being alive that doesn’t happen in this age—only in the age to come. It’s a kind of being alive that is better than life here even at its best. And when you die you will either enter that or enter hell.
This is why I didn’t like that comment on the Bible Project podcast, where they said the gospel is not a message about how to avoid hell or go to heaven after you die. That is exactly what this passage is about—Don’t go to hell; instead, enter life in the kingdom. It’s is an expansion on what Jesus had said in the previous chapter about losing your life to save it or saving your life and losing it (8:35-37) which is fundamental to the gospel.
Conclusion
There are people who have literalized this passage and actually mutilated their bodies trying to gain victory over sin. And as I said, that won’t work because sin comes from the heart, not body parts. But another reason not to do that is this: all the good things that Jesus calls us to do, what tools do we use to do those things? Our hands and feet and eyes, right? Your body parts are tools that can carry out great evil or great good. Look at your hands for a second and just think of all they have done. These two hands look like nothing special, yet they have sustained my life. They have put enough food in my mouth to keep me alive for 51 years. Then again, they have put a whole lot of food in my mouth that shouldn’t have gone in there. These hands have earned over a million dollars so far. But they have also spent about that same amount. They have given to the poor. They have received help from others when I was in need. And they have stolen what wasn’t mine. They have written love letters, angry emails, sermons, and stupid comments on Facebook. They have helped people and hurt people. They have saved people’s lives and put other people’s lives at risk. They have caressed my newborn children. They have assaulted people, and they have been lifted to God in worship and praise. They have carried out God’s will, and they have broken his law and carried out countless sins. When God gave me these two little tools—my hands, my feet, eyes, my tongue; what massive power he gave me for good and evil.
And there are two powerful, opposing forces inside me vying for the use of those tools. I’ve referred to it before as smart Darrell and stupid Darrell. And I’ve been giving that a lot of thought this past week. Last weekend when I was going up hunting, I stopped at the store on the way to get a few supplies, and I bought a box of cookies so I would have snacks up there. As soon as I got in my car I ate two of them because I never buy food without eating some right away. And I told myself, “That’s enough. No more tonight. I’m not going to pig out on cookies all the way up there.”
Five minutes later, I found myself reaching for another cookie. And I asked myself: This decision to take a third cookie—is that smart Darrell or stupid Darrell? The answer was easy. Smart Darrell had already made his decision—no more cookies that night. Nothing changed since I had made that decision, other than the emergence of stupid Darrell. And I got to thinking about who I should listen to. Once in a while smart Darrell is wrong about things, but for the most part, smart Darrell is my friend. Stupid Darrell is my enemy. Almost all my regrets in life are from listening to stupid Darrell.
Why is that? Because smart Darrell is enlightened and empowered by the Holy Spirit. And stupid Darrell is controlled by the flesh.
And the thing that struck me this week is how much is at stake when I make the decision of whether to listen to smart Darrell or stupid Darrell. It’s a matter of eternal life and death. Your hands, your feet, your eyes, your tongue—they are incredibly powerful tools. Like high explosives. And sometimes those powerful tools are in the hands of smart you and other times they are in the control of stupid you, which means the whole apparatus is incredibly unstable. And so Jesus says, “I want you to enter life in my kingdom, so every time any trace of stupid you shows its face, don’t just resist it. Rip it out and fling it away from you like a deadly spider that just dropped down on your head. Because it’s spider whose bite can send you to hell. But if you fling it from you, you will enter a quality of life in the kingdom someday that is greater than anything in this life at its best.
Summary
Causing other believers to turn away from the faith is incredibly serious and will receive the most severe punishment imaginable. So make sure you don’t do anything to damage anyone’s faith. And make sure you don’t do things with your body that destroy your own faith so you will enter life in the kingdom rather than being thrown into eternal hell.
