The Sermon on the Mount V

Subtitle: Fulfilling the Torah and the Prophets of God III

Matthew 5:27-30.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 7, 2024.

We continue in looking at the first section of the teaching of Messiah Jesus compared with that of the teachers of that day.  Jesus clearly raises the bar by emphasizing the internal implications of the Law that were being ignored. 

As I have said in the past, this can cause us to protest that it is impossible to do what Jesus says.  However, this is the whole point of his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.  It is also why the Holy Spirit has been made available to those who put their faith in the work and person of Jesus the Christ.

Last week, we looked at the sixth commandment of Exodus 20, “You shall not murder.”  Jesus then moved on to the seventh commandment, “You shall not commit adultery” (our subject for today).

As Jesus took the command against murder and showed the importance of dealing with the underlying anger and contempt for others, so he takes the command forbidding adultery and points us to the lust that underlies such action.

Let’s look at our passage.

The law of adultery (v. 27-30)

The teachers of Israel in the first century focused on the physical act of committing adultery.  They did not call people to any deeper work than this.

One way to think about this over-emphasis on the external is to remember that we were created to image God (Genesis 1).  This idea is not simply about the external shape of humans, nor simply their external actions.  This question regarding who we are imaging in our life lies behind the whole Bible.

If the external is the only thing that matters, then we can put on a really good act and God will be happy; He will be entertained.  Yet, God is not looking for award-winning actors who look like Him on the big screen of life, and yet, in their hearts, they despise His ways.  Perhaps, the acting may seem “award-winning” to us as humans because we cannot see what people think and desire.  Yet, for God, no matter how convincing to other humans such acts may be, it is a rotten fruit that is as far from imaging Him as one end of the universe is to the other.

Our imaging of God was always intended to include and to flow from a heart and mind that loves God and is coming to understand Him.  For fallen humans (I believe that is all of us), this creates a difficult situation that calls for God’s help and grace.

If you see the Law of Moses as your justifier, then you tend to read it superficially (in a way that focuses on externals).  However, if you see it as a mirror that shows us how much we do not look like God and His nature, you will then tend to see the depths of what it is saying and throw yourself on the mercy of God.

This is exactly what King David discovered.  He didn’t say that he would be blessed because he had imaged God so well.  Remember, David, who  had done so well imaging God, would later commit adultery and murder the husband (Uriah the Hittite).  David knew that he would be in big trouble when he stood before God.  Listen to his statements from Psalm 32:1-2.  “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit.”  Basically, he knew that God had to forgive and cover his sin, somehow.  God should impute (calculate, count) David’s sins against him. 

God supplies both forgiveness and covering in Jesus Christ.

In his signature move, Jesus puts his finger on the root of the problem in verse 28.  Adultery is the fruit, the evidence, of lust in our hearts and minds.  The word translated lust here has the idea of a strong, heated desire.  We can easily imagine the driving passion that it involves.  In Greek, the word can be attached to good things, i.e., a strong, heated desire to do the right thing, and it is not limited only to sexual matters.  However, in the majority of situations, it is not good because it is similar to anger.  Strong passions tend to take the course that our flesh wants to take.  This is generally a sinful course.

Jesus is not telling men they should never look at women.  He emphasizes that the man looks at a woman in order “to lust for her”.  This would also be true for women.  In this context, we know that the strong, heated desire is a sexual one.  Lust never stays as an abstract desire.  It pushes to other sins such as imagining and fantasizing.  This is what Jesus means by saying that he “has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

We should note that adultery is a layered concept.  At its base, it is sexual immorality.  God created humans with the capacity for sexual relationship, but intended it for the intimate context of marriage, a life-long commitment between a man and a woman.  Any sexual activity outside of marriage is immoral.  Thus, adultery is a special kind of sexual immorality, a subset, in which a covenantal bond of marriage is transgressed.  This can be the case whether both are married or only one.  A man who lusts for another man’s wife is trespassing upon that covenantal relationship that she has with another.  If he happens to be married as well, he is also breaking his own covenant with his wife.  He is sinning against his commitment with her.

This is why God takes adultery so seriously.  If two unmarried people had sex with one another outside of marriage, it was considered wrong, but was “fixed” by them committing to marriage.  In fact, the man would lose the right of divorce in such a situation.  On the other hand, adultery deserved capital punishment.  This is how seriously God wants us to take the covenantal bond of marriage.

This does not mean that Jesus is saying that lust is just as bad as physically committing the act.  Neither should we see God as some cosmic IRS auditor that reconciles our thoughts and imaginations and holds us accountable for every nit-picking thing He finds.

The average person hears these words and throws up their hands in exasperation.  “That’s impossible,” they say.  Of course, the degree to which our society has hyper-sexualized everything does throw gasoline upon the fires of lust.  Even the idea that sexual activity should only happen within a life-long committed relationship called marriage is being rejected by our society.  This is not just a rejection of God’s law, but a rejection of His revelation about how and why He designed us as He did.

The Creator tells us that He created our sexual aspect to create a powerful bond between a husband and wife.  However, that which is powerful for the good can be just as powerful for the bad when it is abused or disrespected.  God is not just laying down a law.  He is warning us about the devastating path that our sinful flesh pulls us down.

How much pain, suffering and evil is going on in this world that is connected to sexual immorality?  How many rapes, abortions, divorce, wounded kids, sex-trafficking and even sex-slavery happens out of ignoring God’s warnings?  Even those who look at pornography tell themselves that they are not harming anyone.  Yet, the money they give to obtain a magazine, video, or subscription to a website supports all manner of trafficking and harm to society.  You are not only destroying others; you are destroying yourself. 

Our culture not only allows such things, but even worse, it promotes it.  Let us not kid ourselves.  Lust drives much of the evil in this world.

In verses 29 and 30, Jesus gives us two parallel “if” statements.  The first speaks of the “right eye,” referring to the strong or dominant eye.  The second speaks to the “right hand,” referring to the strong or dominant hand.  You will notice that the statements are exactly the same except for the right eye swapped out for the right hand.

Let’s look at the second part of the statement.  There, Jesus emphasizes the danger that lust presents.  Jesus warns his listeners that those who refuse to deal with lust, regardless of whether they committed physical adultery or not, could find themselves in Gehenna.  This is the same thing he did back in verse 22 with murder, speaking about the “Gehenna of fire.”  Jesus is pointing us to a judgment that is from God in which a person’s whole body is put into a fiery place. We see this in the book of Revelation referred to as the Lake of Fire (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15).

Of course, there is a lot that is not said here.  In fact, Jesus shouldn’t have to go into to much detail.  The idea that internal lust could put us in jeopardy of the Lake of Fire should let us all know that God is serious about this issue.  This would have seriously scared everyone in the crowd.  By the time Jesus finishes these six case studies in the law, everyone listening to him will recognize that they are in trouble with God.

Is God being unfair?  If we only understood how much evil, pain and suffering is caused through the refusal to nip lust, anger, and other vices in the bud, we would not be so concerned with God’s fairness.  In fact, there is no perfect response to this situation.  We will blame God if He is too judgmental, and we accuse Him when He is not judgmental enough.  We want Him to “do something” about the evil in the world, but we want Him to overlook our own evil, particularly because we don’t want to believe it is evil. 

This world is not full of wickedness because God made it that way, but because people reject the truth of God and go their own way.  God’s way brings life, but our fleshly way brings destruction.  You may think that it feels like life, but that moment always passes and destruction comes in the wake of our actions, whether internal or external.

Now, let’s deal with this idea of gouging out your right eye and cutting off your right hand.  Jesus does not intend for anyone to actually gouge out their eye or cut off their hand.  His statement basically begs the question, “What do I need to excise from my life in order to be free from the damaging effects of lust?”

There really is a genius to what Jesus is doing here.  The religious leaders who love to look at the law superficially, are here given a superficial solution to the internal problem of lust.  If you really thought that God hated lust enough to send you to the Lake of Fire, then you would be drastic in your measures to stop it before it led to judgment.  Jesus knows that losing your dominant eye and your dominant hand cannot remove lust from a person.  Even if you gouged both eyes out and cut off both hands, you can still lust. 

Others will say that Jesus is politely saying that they should cut off the true offending member, genitalia.  However, I believe this hinges on the phrase “If….causes you to sin (literally to stumble).”  That is the condition which causes any thinking person to meditate on what it is that actually stirs up lust in our hearts to the point of stumbling, sinning.

We do not lust simply because we have eyeballs, hands, and even genitalia.  Notice that it is the Creator who gave us these things.  In our desire to deflect responsibility, we can blame God.  “If You hadn’t given us eyes, hands, genitalia, we would never have sinned.”  Of course, such an argument never ends.  “If You hadn’t put the tree in the Garden of Eden… if you hadn’t created us as sexual being, material beings, or even carbon-based creatures, etc. ad infinitum go our attempts to blame God or others for our sin.

There are external things that I need to excise from my life, or at least place severe restrictions on them.  Pornography, or any place or medium in which pornographic activity exists, is a good place to start.  The eyes have been likened unto a gate into our soul.  Jesus will touch on this in Matthew 6:22-23.  What videos am I watching?  What apps do I have on my phone?  For some people, it may be that we ask if we really need a “smart phone.”  It is better to go through life without a smart phone than to be thrown into the fires of Gehenna.  This places a responsibility upon ourselves to recognize that lust does not image God and pulls us towards destruction.  We are often guilty of pouring gasoline on our base desires, and then pretending like it is God’s fault.  Job said that he had made a covenant with his eyes.  He would not look lustfully upon a young woman (Job 31:1).  Yes, if lustful thoughts are stirred, then avert your eyes and move on.

Proverbs 6:32 says, “Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding; he who does so is destroying his own soul.”  If I truly believed that Jesus knew what he was talking about, then I would shut down lust quickly before it flares.

I imagine that there were a lot of people there that day, if not all of them, who were extremely convicted by what Jesus was saying.  I think about the woman at the well in Samaria.  She had been divorced four times and was living with a guy when Jesus talked with her in John 4.  Notice that Jesus does not pretend that she is righteous, and yet, he really does care for her soul.  This woman of five marriages and one “shacking up” had probably never had someone truly care for her soul.

The people there that day were not perfect.  They were just like you and me.  They all had something, probably multiple somethings, that Jesus was poking.  Jesus is not just loading them up with guilt.  The whole point is that the Kingdom is here, and they all needed to repent and put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah.  He would lead them in.  I don’t know if the woman at the well was adulterous, or she had a series of men who grew tired of her and divorced her to satisfy their adulterous lusts.  Regardless, she became an evangelist for Jesus that day.  The guys who should have been leading people to Jesus were contemplating how to kill him.  The ones who should have ran away from this “righteous man” are the ones who were drawn to him.  This is part of the mystery of the grace of God and the work of God.  It is not always done by people who had a righteous background.  Let’s just say, they knew that they were horrible actors and so they didn’t even try to act.

God wants us to understand that He isn’t satisfied with us only looking good.  He wants our heart.  By the time you are done with the Sermon on the Mount, you will find yourself in a place of tension.  I want to believe Jesus, but I don’t know how that would be possible.  It is done by faith.  They didn’t know about the cross where Jesus would pay the price for their sins, so that the Father could then remove them from us.  Nor did they understand that the Day of Pentecost would bring the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all who had put their faith in Jesus.  The Spirit of God Himself would help them to take possession of their destroyed souls, like Israel of old going against the giants of Canaan.

They couldn’t imagine just how great God’s love for them was, even in their fallenness.  So, what is our excuse?  We can imagine these things.  We have the New Testament that lays out all that God has done and will do on our behalf.  Is it not high time that we put our faith in Jesus, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and let Him lead us in victory against sin in our hearts and minds?  Yes, of course, it is!

Adultery audio

The Sermon on the Mount IV

Subtitle: Fulfilling the Torah and the Prophets of God II

Matthew 5:21-26.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 31, 2023.

We will continue looking at the Sermon on the Mount today.

We looked at the Introduction that Jesus gives to the Kingdom in Matthew 5:3-16.  There he challenged his audience to quit looking at what they don’t have and to start seeing what they do have.  God was opening the door to the Kingdom for them in Jesus, in fact, he is The Door to The Kingdom (John 10:1-9).

Jesus then gave them three metaphors to help them see what God was wanting to do through those who entered the Kingdom.  He wanted them to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city on a hill.  Each of these speak to the spiritual impact believers in Jesus would have on the world around them.

Just like a door is a transitional spot between two different places, so the presence of Jesus brought Israel into a transitional spot between being the nation through whom God was primarily working to choosing to follow Messiah into a new reality.

In verse 17, Jesus begins to develop his first major point by stating his purpose to fulfill the Law of Moses, rather than destroying it.  In verse 21, he then points to six places in the Law of Moses in order to show how Israel’s leaders were missing the mark and how they could hit it.  Let’s look at our passage.

Six case studies in fulfilling the Torah and Prophets of God (v. 21-48)

Verses 21-26 are the first look at the Law, which focuses on the Sixth Commandment of The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.  “You shall not murder.”

Before we get into looking at what Jesus says about murder, there are some structural issues to take note of in each of these six case studies.

Jesus will always start out with what they have heard from their teachers in expounding the Law.  He will then contrast that with what he teaches them now.  Lastly, Jesus then moves to give some “therefore” statements, which highlight the fact that he intends us to think about the implications of what he teaches.  The therefore sections flesh out what it would look like to heed his teaching.

In each of these, if we treat Jesus like another rabbi, and if we approach his words like the Pharisees approached the Law of Moses, then we will only be focused  on the letter.  Jesus would simply be adding more laws to the 613 that they already had.  Yet, this is not what Jesus intends.  The words that he speak are a representation of him and what is in his heart.  They draw us into relationship with The One who spoke them so that we can be led by His Holy Spirit to “flesh out” his intention for us.

Another issue is this.  Any honest look at the Law of Moses will see that they are not all of the same kind.  There are different types of laws.  The most obvious are the moral laws, which say things like, “You shall not murder.”  Murdering is inherently wrong, evil.  It will always be wrong because we do not have the authority to murder people, any more than to rape them or take all of their things.

A second category are the ritual laws, sometimes called ceremonial laws.  These have to do with how the tabernacle, the temple, would work.  You will notice in these laws about sacrifices, etc., that there is nothing inherently good about killing a bull in a special way, and in a special place, every time you sin.  They were symbolically pointing to greater spiritual truths.  This is part of the tutor, or schoolmaster, purpose of the Law.  They are only a moral obligation because Israel covenanted with God to do them.  Like a parent telling a child what they should do, the moral issue is not something like what time you go to bed, but rather about whether or not you will listen to your parents, even greater, God.

Lastly, there are civil laws that described how Israeli society would operate and the things they would do to set themselves apart from the world around them, whether in diet or dress, etc.  Some of these categories have overlaps.

In the first century, Jesus had to qualify his teaching by stating that he is not trying to abolish the Law of Moses.  It is interesting to me that most would accuse me of trying to bring people back under the law.  This is not what I am doing.  To be clear, Christians are not under the covenant of the Law that began at Sinai.  Yet, we need to hear the heart of our master here.

The Law of Murder

There were laws that also talked about manslaughter and what to do in those cases, but let us stick to what Jesus is doing here.

Jesus begins with the phrase, “You have heard that it was said to those of old…”  As I said earlier, this points to the teachers that they are hearing in their day.  Jesus refers to their teaching in order to set up a contrast with his own teaching. 

More than contrasting, he is demonstrating that there is something that these teachers are doing that is in error.  On one hand, Jesus will show us how God intended the Law to be followed, and yet on the other hand, Jesus is preparing to cut a new covenant that would require his death and resurrection.  This gives us a dual point of how the law should be heard, but also moving on to the new thing that God is doing.

The shepherd of their day are not good shepherds.  So, what was their error?

Their teachers have been focusing on the letter of the Law, which over time had accreted a large number of precedents and rabbinical “case-law.”  They emphasized the outward conformity to the Law, but ignore that these are the instructions of a loving Father who is more concerned about the moral character that would drive their actions, than simply wanting outward conformity.

Have you ever listened to lawyers twisting every word that is said by someone in order to get their client off, or if you are the prosecutor, to nail the defendant to the wall?  To a lawyer, the law is merely a challenge.  It simply becomes something to be manipulated to your favor.  Surely, God could never be pleased by people twisting His words.

In the case of murder, they simply taught that you would be liable to the judgment if you murdered someone.  Of course, it is not bad to teach this.  The error is in what is missing, the heart of the One who gave the Law, and the heart of those who were receiving it.
It is interesting that the Bible begins with two chapters about the work of God in making all things “very good.”  However, the next two chapters are very bad.  Genesis chapter four is often seen as the first murder.  Cain murders his brother, Abel.  Notice that God sees that Cain’s heart is wrong (i.e., Cain hasn’t murdered anyone yet).  Like a good father, God speaks to Cain about what happened and what was going on in his heart.  He warns Cain to control himself because sin sought to have mastery over him.  Any true father is not content to merely have sons who don’t murder one another.  You want sons who have his heart for their brother.  He wants us to honor how He feels towards our brother, our neighbor, even our enemy.

By the way, Genesis four is actually a story about two murders.  Lamech kills a young man who had injured him, and we see him justifying himself.  The chapter ends with violence filling the earth.

Yet, don’t miss that Genesis three is also a story about two murders (or potentially, the murder of the human race).  The serpent, the devil, seduces Adam and Even into an action that brings death into their lives.  The pre-flood civilizations did not go deep enough.  They abused the mercy of God to Cain (not capital punishment) and refused to go deeper into their hearts.  In the end, the world was filled with murder because the hearts of men were full of murder.  All of this begs the Genesis :26 question, just who were they imaging?  It wasn’t their Creator, it was their own murderer, Satan.

After laying out what they were being taught, Jesus turns on the phrase, “but I say to you…”  Jesus does not have the kind of credentials that their teachers had.  Just who does he think he is?  Well, he is the One sent from God, and thus, he has credentials that none of them had.

Jesus gives three statements.  The first is about being angry with your brother.  The version that I have been using adds the phrase, “without a cause.”  This phrase is debated because there are some early manuscripts that do not have it.  The question then becomes, was it added or was it taken out?  There doesn’t seem to be a good reason to take it out.  But, if it wasn’t there, putting it in would soften a harsher statement.  I would simply say that the apostles would later teach us to be angry and sin not (Ephesians 4:26 quoting Psalm 4:4).  Anger isn’t so much the problem, as it is the source of our problem.  Anger has a lot of power and our flesh tends to use the force of anger in order to push us into sinful actions.  James 1:20 tells us that “the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

So, even if my brother did something that I am rightly angry over, I am still in danger of sinning.  I will come back to deal with the warning Jesus gives.

This first one had to do with internal thoughts and feelings of anger.  Jesus then moves to two outward actions that show contempt for our brother who has angered us.  Calling someone “Raca” was essentially calling them an empty-headed person, a numbskull, a dunderhead, an idiot, and I could go on.  It is contempt for them intellectually.  Calling someone “You fool! (the Gk is from the word where we get moron) also had a sense of poor intellect.  However, for Hebrews this word also had spiritual connotations (it generally doesn’t for us).  The fool is a person who willfully ignores the teaching and ways of God in order to make their own way.  Yes, it is foolish, but it is also a rejection of God.  There is a immoral component to it.  Thus, this is to have contempt for your brother intellectually and spiritually.

Notice that as Jesus moves through these three things that he starts with them being liable to the judgment, and then to the Council (the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem), and finally to the “Gehenna of fire” (my version says hellfire).  No human can put you in the Gehenna of fire, which was a phrase used to speak of God’s judgment.  This then begs the question of what judgment and what council he was speaking about before?  Regardless, something as small as calling your brother a name is coming from a dark place that God will not put up with.  They were definitely not thinking that they were in danger of God throwing them into Gehenna for calling their brother a moron. 

They should have gone deeper, but under the New Covenant that Jesus would cut with God at the cross and give to his followers, we do not serve as if following more stringent laws.  We follow and serve the purposes of Jesus by the help of the Spirit of God in order to do the spirit of the law.  We see this in Romans 7:6; 8:2,4; 9:29; and 1 Corinthians 5:7-8.

In verse 23, Jesus moves to his first therefore statement.  Notice that he has repeated the word “brother.”  It is reminding us of that first actual slaying of a human being, which was done between brothers.  Like Cain, our contempt and anger can push us to do heinous things against our brother, whom God loves.

This very same God desires us to reconcile and make things right.  Cain needed to see that he wasn’t imaging God and turn back from anger.  Even if there had been cause to be angry (in Cain’s situation, there wasn’t), Matthew 18 would later deal with what to do if you had cause to be angry.  You will notice there that Jesus is promoting the same thing that he does here, reconciliation.  We cannot come before God and pretend we are worshipping him while we know we have done our brother wrong.  Jesus actually puts the onus on the brother who did the offending.

We can’t force reconciliation, but we can do what Romans 12:18 says.  “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men…”  Then verse 21 says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

This is why Jesus boils the whole law and the prophets down to having a heart of love for God and our neighbor.  Such a heart of love will express itself in actions of love.  Yes, that is a hard task, but Jesus has done two huge things to help us.  He has removed our sins and their judgment from over our heads, and he has given us his Holy Spirit to help us battle sin in our life.  We first die to our own righteousness and then we die to our flesh.  We try to make things right with all who would have ought against us before approaching God in worship.

Jesus ends this section with a second practical therefore statement, even though he does not repeat the word. People who are angry do not always think well.  They are not as innocent as they may deem.  In such a case, you can end up getting yourself in a pickle.  Jesus envisions two angry men going to a judge and one of them is going to be shocked.  Jesus thus brings up the idea of settling out of court.  Would I push the issue if I was brought into court every time I became angry and ran the risk of a penalty?  Imagine how many times we become angry with people and don’t give it a second thought.  Yet, this is the turn of this small parable in verse 25.  Just who is your adversary?  Ultimately, your adversary is the devil.  He seeks to prosecute you before God.  You are even now on your way to the Judge of all men, the Lord Jesus.  Jesus is no respecter of persons.  You may win some judgments regarding your anger, but will you win them all?  Wouldn’t it be wiser to make your peace with your brother in this life while you can, before you end up at the judgment seat?  If something is settled out of court, then it seems that Jesus will not judge it.

Just as the fires of Gehenna were the danger earlier, here the danger is to be thrown into the prison.  The prison, the holding place of wicked spirits, is not a good place to go.  Some will point to the phrase, “you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny,” as hope that Gehenna is not without end.  Be careful of that.  It doesn’t say that you can pay it off.  Rather, it emphasizes that you won’t get out until you have.  This begs the question.  How does a person pay off a debt when they are in prison?  If the price for removing my sin was the perfect Son of God dying on a cross on my behalf, then it seems very unlikely that I will ever “pay it off.”  This is intended to scare the anger out of you, or at least, wake you up to the true dangers you face.

None of us would survive such a judgment.  Our only hope is to try and reconcile with our brother and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, which is merciful to those who have shown mercy.

Instead of using the lack of a murderous action as a cloak, through Jesus, God is calling us to overcome evil by dying to our righteousness, and coming alive to his righteousness.  This is that righteousness which laid itself down that we might live.

May God fill us with repentance, and then with His Holy Spirit, so that we can live out the righteousness of God.

Fulfill II audio

The Danger of Causing Someone to Stumble

Mark 9:42-50.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, February 02, 2020

How do I treat other people?  Our passage is specifically about how Christians treat each other.  Our culture has developed a blasé attitude regarding the issue of how our words and actions affect other people.  Some even become very heated in their statements that it’s their problem and not my responsibility.  They should be stronger or better than that, appears to be their response.

Here, Jesus shuts the door on the propriety of a brazen attitude towards the affect our words and actions have upon others, especially other believers.  We are going to be held accountable, and there will be no excuses that will work.  May God help us to take these matters seriously because we are going to be a challenge to one another even if we are doing our best.  There is no call for making it worse through neglect, or purposeful intent.

Jesus warns against tripping others up spiritually

In verses 42-48, it is clear that this is the climactic instruction from Jesus to his disciples concerning their interest in which of them is the greatest of his disciples (vss. 33-37).  He first challenged them with the illustration of a small child. Then he dealt with their attitude towards a believer in Jesus who was not a part of their group (38-41).  This passage puts the capstone on the warning that Jesus is giving to his disciples, and us by extension.  They were in danger of being a stumbling block to one another and they needed to quit it.

Let’s deal with what is meant by the words “to fall into sin” or “cause to stumble,” in verse 42.  Both translations are correct.  The word is literally “to put a stumbling block in front of someone and is typically used metaphorically for causing someone to sin.  The KJV uses the word “to offend,” which meant “to strike against.”  This isn’t a bad translation either, for its time, but the normal usage of this English word can mislead us today.  The focus is not on how our actions and words can make a person feel, though that is a subset of the issues involved.  Rather, it is about the fact that our words and actions can cause a person to spiritually stumble and fall into sin.  To be fair, we should also note that it is not particularly about our intention either.  Whether intentional or not, our words and actions can be like a stumbling block that trips a person up.  Some people are particularly agile in this area and do not fall into sin, whereas, others are not. 

It is clear that Jesus is rebuking their attitudes towards each other within the group, and also with others who were not a part of the group.  Their attitudes would lead to a multitude of sins and the ruination of what Jesus was laying his life down in order to build.

The first warning is given through the reference of a horrible, unthinkable death.  For clarity in this section, I will use the terms the offender and the offended.  Jesus warns us that it is better to have a horrible death of a millstone tied to your neck and be thrown into the sea than to be a cause for the stumbling of another.  Such a death is the ancient equivalent to the mob putting your feet in cement and tossing you in the river.  It would involve the terror and horror of being murdered through drowning. 

All of us would agree that this would be an undesirable death, but not all of us would agree about how deserving of judgment our actions are toward another.  We tend to see our actions as innocent and the actions of others as fraught with injustice.  Could you imagine if the game of football didn’t have referees, but instead every player and the coaches all had their own flags?  What chaos that would be.  We are ready to “throw the flag” on everything others do and vehemently contest the flags that they throw against us.  Jesus is warning us that it is foolish to remain in such a state.  You will stand before God one day and give account for how you treated others.  He who is the judge of all men, both the living and the dead, takes these things seriously.  It is better to have a horrible death without causing others to stumble than it is to have a wonderful death, and then face the judge having lived carelessly.

We should also notice that Jesus ties this warning back to the image of the little child standing in their midst.  “These little ones who believe in me” are not just about physical age, but also about spiritual age.  Young believers of any age do not have as much spiritual growth and more easily stumble.  If we are focused on our greatness then we tend to only care for ourselves.

We must ask ourselves if our words and actions help others to believe in Jesus, or could they be a source of stumbling into sin for them?  The warning is very strong, and is against treating this lightly.

The second warning is reiterated three times.  However, there is a textual issue in these verses.  Depending on what Bible version you are using, you may be missing some of the verses that are in some of the older translations.  There is no conspiracy to get rid of any doctrines.  It is a matter of determining what Mark exactly wrote.  Let’s look at this textual issue further.

Here is a brief layout of the warning:

43.  If your hand causes you to sin…

                44. Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

45.  If your foot causes you to sin…

                46.  Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

47.  If your eye causes you to sin…

                48.  Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The three sections are identical except for a different part of the body being mentioned.  People often sin with their hands, feet, eyes, and Jesus could have continued.  In between each is a quote from Isaiah 66:24 regarding their worm and the fire that is unquenchable.  When the KJV was written, they had a particular number of known Greek manuscripts from which to determine what the text originally said.  The scholars of that day felt the repetition of verses 44, 46, and 48 were original.  There have been many more manuscripts discovered over the years since then (the most famous being the Dead Sea Scrolls).  Some of these manuscripts do not have verse 44 and 46, but they do have verse 48.  To many scholars today, it appears that the statement of verses 44 and 46 were not originally there.  That means it was only stated once at the end.  Of course, the repetitive structure of this teaching would imply that it applies at those places too.

Whether such scholars are right in this judgment or not, notice that the absence of verses 44 and 46 do not change the meaning and their presence is definitely implied.  The absence or presence of these verses, therefore, are not a problem for the biblical reader.  Nothing is lost or gained in either decision.  Now, let’s get to the particulars of this second warning.

Verses 43 through 48 all represent a reiterative, second warning.  This warning can be taken as towards the offender and the offended.  It begs the question of what exactly is “causing” us to sin.  In the end, no one can make me sin by being offensive, or by being such that stirs up the desire in me to offend them.  The issues of sin are deeper than what others have done to me.  Notice that the thing that causes me to sin here is not another person, but rather parts of my own body, a hand, a foot, and an eye. 

The structure of this warning draws us into the deeper issues such as who do I blame?  It is easy to blame others for my sin, but James 1:14 tells us, “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.”  Yet, the warning mentions the parts of our body that are often used to act out the sin.  It would definitely be harder to sin without hands, feet and eyes (and we could add brains at this point).  Jesus is using the obvious external things to connect to the hidden internal things that cause us to sin.  It is not the presence of a hand that causes a person to steal, but the internal evil desire takes advantage of the fact that they do have hands.

What Jesus does here is extremely powerful.  We can all imagine the horrors of cutting our own hand or foot off.  Yikes!  I do not believe that Jesus ever intended that people would actually do this.  However, neither do I want to mitigate the power of what he is doing.  Such a drastic act is extremely rare.  There is a story of a hiker, Aron Ralston, whose hand was pinned by rock in Utah.  He could not get free, until he imagined the possibility of cutting his hand off.  He lives today because of his courage.  Most people would have died in that same spot.  To the degree that the outward physical act seems outrageous, is the degree to which we should go in fighting against the internal.  In fact, it begs the question of effective ways to fight against strongly entrenched desires.  It can be a combination of drastic external and internal changes that set us free from the control of sin in our life.

The person addicted to pornography does not need to gouge their eyes out, but they do need to get drastic about cutting off things in their hearts and in their daily activity.  They need to get drastic about their computer usage, and accountability to other people in their life.  We can say things like: “But I need to have my smart phone with a data plan,” or “There is no verse that says I can’t have a computer!”  Yet, all of such things are only the protestations of a corrupt desire.  We must get drastic because our sin can cause us to go to hell.    It is better to live this life without something and make it to heaven than to keep it and end up in hell because of it.  Which is more important to you?

The word for hell in this passage is “Gehenna” in the Greek.  It translates a Hebrew word that means the Valley of Hinnom.  In the past, the English word “hell” was used to translate several Greek words, which has caused much confusion.  The word “Hades” refers to the grave, a spiritual holding place for all who have died.  There they await the judgment.  It is not properly hell.  However, the condition that one experiences in the grave is clearly connected to a person’s eventual judgment.  Thus, the rich man of Luke 16:23 was in torments in Hades.  It was hot and he desired just a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus who was in the paradise of Abraham’s bosom.

Gehenna literally refers to the valley southwest of Jerusalem, which connects with the Kidron valley which comes from the east side of Jerusalem.  Let me just list some Old Testament passages that will give us background to the sinister connotations of Gehenna.  2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31-32; 32:35. At one point in Israel’s history, a place called Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom (GeHinnom/Gehenna) had an altar or a high place to the false god Molech.  There many Israelites, including some of their kings, burned their children as sacrifices to the false god of the Ammonites in hopes of fertility in crops and more children, and in hope of success in war.  The idea is that you show the god your devotion and he rewards you with these other things.  We may shudder at child sacrifice, but it really is an extremely pragmatic proposition.  This was always called an abomination, thing of abhorrence, to the God of Israel, the One True God.  Isaiah particularly uses Topheth as a picture of the burning wrath of God that was coming for the wicked.  Isaiah 30:33 and 66:24 are his descriptions of something that is more than a place on earth of judgment on the wicked, but is a judgment of a fire that never goes out.

Gehenna properly connects to the Lake of Fire in the book of Revelation, not the grave.  There we see it is the Second Death that all men and spirits must face.  We will either be judged worthy to enter into eternal life, or we will be given eternal judgment.  Whether you think such a judgment is warranted or not, we must hear the warning of Jesus.  It is better to go through this life without something that keeps leading us to sin, than to end up in the Lake of Fire with that thing.  What good do eyes do me if I am in the Lake of Fire?  None whatsoever.  The emphasis is not so much that you will go to heaven without your hand, etc.  This says nothing about resurrection.  The emphasis is on your condition when you “enter” the next stage.  I enter life as a man who had lost his hand, but I avoid the Lake of Fire because of my sacrifices in this life.  I won’t continue on this theme. 

Let me just end it by saying that Jesus spoke of Gehenna to religious people and always as a warning that was intended to shock them out of lethargy concerning their sin.  You do not see him trying to scare those who don’t know God with the reality of hell.

Don’t let the trials of this life rob you of peace with one another

We need to bring this to a close, so let’s quickly look at these last two verses.  The desire to be the greatest threatened to rob the disciples of peace between each other in this life, and potentially peace internally in the life to come.  Jesus challenges us not to let the trials of this life rob us of our peace.

When he says that everyone will be seasoned with fire, he uses imagery that represents the trials and occasions of stumbling into sin that come upon us in this life.  We would probably use the word “peppered.”  We are peppered with fiery trials and temptations in this life.  It is impossible to avoid them.  We can focus upon the people who put the stumbling blocks in front of us and blame them, but that won’t deliver us from the temptations.  You can’t avoid it through the blame game.  You must deal with sin in your own life, or become a casualty to it.

Thus, our lives are called to be a sacrifice (living sacrifice) here on this earth.  The lives of the righteous are a sacrifice in the sense that we go through these fiery trials for the glory of God and in honor of him.  We become an acceptable sacrifice that is pleasing to God when we put our faith in Jesus, pick up our cross, and follow him.  The lives of the wicked are a sacrifice in the sense that they are an unacceptable sacrifice that is not pleasing to God.  Thus, eternity is not pictured as being salted with fire, but being immersed in a Lake of Fire with no moments of reprieve.  We must not kid ourselves that hell describes our life here without God.  No, such is only a foretaste of something far worse, walled off from the goodness of God.

To follow Jesus is compared to remaining salty.  In Colossians 4:6, Paul says, “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”  The more that we live out the godly character of Jesus, the more that we will have peace with one another.  Of course, it takes two to tango.  So, you can only focus upon your part of the equation.  I don’t want to be a source of trial that causes you to sin.

Gehenna is the negative motivation for not wanting to hurt one another.  However, peace and eternal life are the real motivations that ought to spur us on to love and forgiveness with each other.  Ultimately, we need to see that we will not have rest, in this life or the next, until we desire to be like Jesus more than we desire the lust of our flesh, the lust of our eyes, and the pride of this life.

Causing to Stumble Audio