If you turn in your Bibles to
Mark chapter 9, the context is of course the Lord Jesus is
on his way to Jerusalem. He's told them in verse 31 that
he's going. to be betrayed. It says that
he is being betrayed, he's in the process right now of being
betrayed. And the apostles' response is
to have a dispute amongst themselves about who's the greatest. Extraordinary
exhibition of what it is to be a human. And then the Lord brings
some lessons at the end of verse 50 of chapter 9 is actually the
purpose of it is that he will, by these lessons, bring them
to peace with one another. And so he brings this, some serious
lessons, lessons about childlike faith, lessons about God's sovereignty
and whom he will call and how he will use them. Lessons about
how we shouldn't cause others to stumble. And then in these
verses before us, the lessons about us. The number of times
in these verses that it talks about you. Let's just read them. Mark 9.43. If your hand causes
you to stumble, cut it off, for it is better for you to enter
life crippled having your two hands then to go into hell, into
the unquenchable fire, where the worm does not die and the
fire is not quenched. If your foot causes you to stumble,
cut it off. It is better for you to enter
life lame than having your two feet to be cast into hell, where
their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. If your
eye causes you to stumble, throw it out. It is better for you
to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes
to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die and their fire
is not quenched. for everyone will be salted with
fire. Salt is good, but if the salt
becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have
salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another." So this
is the final lesson the Lord Jesus, the final illustration
the Lord Jesus brings to these disciples. The only reason they
could be asking who's the greatest is because they actually saw
themselves as worthy in the things that they had done. And not only
that, they had with their worthiness assumed the right to look at
their brothers and in their assessment find a place above their brothers
in the Kingdom of God. So the Lord Jesus brings a deeply
serious lesson. These are humbling, humbling
words before us. They have weighed heavily on
my heart for weeks and weeks now and the pain at times is
palpable. a reasonably happy home, dysfunctional
in a funny sort of way because there were three adults. My grandfather
lived with us and so there were three children and three adults
and my mum lost her first child because of negligence at the
hospital. And so when my brother came along,
my mother just doted on him and adored him. And then I came along
and I was in absolute pain in the neck. and my dad and I were
great mates. Then my sister came along and
my grandfather, who lived with us, just absolutely adored little
girls, and so he doted on and spoilt my sister rotten. But generally we were sort of
happy, but what sort of sustained me In so much of my childhood
was the fact that I just had this amazing relationship with
my dad. My dad died when I was 16 and
I've had a couple of 16-year-old sons and four 16-year-old children
and none of them have ever felt the way I felt about my dad.
I didn't see any fault in my dad in all of those years. I didn't see him do anything
that caused me to be ashamed and in fact for those 16 years
I was comforted by the fact that he and I, no matter what happened
around us, he and I were really close. And of all the children, I was
there in the house when my dad died that morning of a heart
attack. And some years later I was in
the hospital when my mum died also of a heart attack. And it's an awful, awful thing
to be in the presence of someone you love as they leave this world. And after the Lord saved me, It's been a tough, tough lesson
to learn and the Lord, I don't know why he's done it, but we
went to the church down the road here, which is so wicked in its
treatment of the Lord Jesus. But my father was a Mason, he
was one of the leading Masons in this town. In fact, he was
very close to having a lodge named after him. So every time
I come into town, I have to park beside the Masonic Temple. And I have to face the reality
that my dad, who I loved so much and was so, so wonderful to me,
died as an unbeliever. Died as a person who probably,
according to his Masonic beliefs and certainly according to the
beliefs of the church in which he was an elder down here in
town, would have been saved because he was good. And he was remarkably
good. But Christians know a bigger
reality than all of that. And one of the things that the
Lord does is he causes us to see things through the eyes of
faith and through the eyes of scripture rather than through
the eyes with which we see things around us. And so one of the reasons I tell
that story, and I have no earthly reason for thinking my father
is anywhere but in hell, and I have no earthly reason for
thinking that my mother is anywhere but in the same place as wonderful
as she was, is that it's horrifying to think how lightly people treat
hell and it's particularly disgusting that people should, for any moment
of their time here, wish for anyone to go to that place or
to be in any way rejoicing over people who go there. It is for eternity. My father has been in that place
now for 40 years and forever is stamped on the doors of that
place. And so the Lord Jesus having
Graciously taking these apostles through these lessons now brings
them the final lesson they need to hear in this particular part
of Mark's Gospel. And it's a lesson about serious,
serious discipleship. It's a lesson about the seriousness
of sin, the deep, deep seriousness of what it is for us to be children
of Adam and to live in this world, a world under Satan's dominion,
where people are taken captive to do his will. And for God's
children, these are tough, tough, and serious words, serious words
of warning from our Saviour. But in them there is a great
Gospel at the end. So let's go through these verses
and just hear what the Lord says. He says, if your hand causes
you to stumble, causes you to be scandalised, to stumble. If it causes you
to stumble, cut it off. It's better for you to enter
life crippled than having your two hands to go into hell." And
so when he's talking about the things that we do with our hands,
he's talking about just activities and things that we do. Our hands take and grasp and
touch and do. And the Lord Jesus says just
plainly, cut it off. It's better to be a cripple in
this world. He's saying take the things that
you do with your hands in this world with great seriousness. and see them in light of who
the Lord Jesus is and see them in light of who God is. And then he says that those who
have not had that happen in their lives go to hell into unquenchable
fire. The place to go to hell is Gehenna,
the valley of Hinnom. And it was the valley on the
southern side of Jerusalem where the wicked kings of Israel burnt
their children in the fire to the god Molech. And the idea
was that you lit a great fire underneath a stone statue and
in the hands, under the hands of the God were made red hot. And into those hands you placed
your child. And the idea is that as your
child screamed and burnt to death, that screaming of the child would
please God. And it was just outside of Jerusalem. You can read about Manasseh.
one of our brothers in Christ doing that to his children. And
it was a place of defilement. And when Josiah and others came
along it became, to stop it being used for such things, it became
the rubbish tip of Jerusalem. It was the place where the garbage
was thrown and burned. It was the place where the corpses
of convicted criminals were to be thrown. In Isaiah 53 the Lord
Jesus was assigned a place for the wicked with his death. This
is where his body was destined to go. And so it became symbolic, emblematic
for the Jews of that eternal unquenchable fire. A fire that
burns and burns but never consumes. That word unquenchable is the
word we get our word asbestos from. And so I don't know if
you've had as many fires as I've had, but if you have fires and
they've burnt everything around, you can go and pick up pieces
of asbestos and it's almost as if nothing's touched it at all.
It's a fire that burns and a fire that consumes and it's never
quenched. And this is a place where their
worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The worm refers to the fact that
the Lord Jesus said of the Pharisees, He said, you die in your sins. You die surrounded by the fact
that you have sinned and you continue to sin against the Lord
Jesus. A better description of worms
in our world is maggots. They are the things that consume
rotting flesh and cause a deep, horrible to us stench. The worm
continues to consume, but it never finishes consuming. And
the fire continues to burn, but it's never ever quenched. I'll just read something from
Don Portnoy. In my mind's eye I see a man in hell, tormented
in that fire that can never be quenched, in that pit of darkness
where there is no light. He weeps, wails, gnashes his
teeth in terror, constantly fills his soul. He curses God, curses
the day of his birth, curses his father and mother, curses
every memory of life and curses himself. He is lost without hope,
tormented without hope of mercy, damned without hope of grace
and he knows that he is lost. that he's in a miserable condition
and that it's his own fault. He is in hell and he despises
the Son of God because he refused to acknowledge his sin and trust
Christ while he lived on earth. He is in hell forever. It just goes on forever. Which is why the Lord Jesus says
in verse 45, if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It's better for you to enter
life lame than having your two feet to be cast into hell. It's the places that we walk,
the places that we walk spiritually. These things need to be seen
through spiritual eyes. It's deviations from the straight
and narrow path, deviating from the Gospel, deviating from who
the Lord Jesus is. If you walk down those paths,
You'll be scandalized. It's better to have your foot
cut off and not walk down those paths. And in verse 45, he adds to the
seriousness of hell. People say that a good and loving
God won't send people to hell. This word here in verse 45 says
that He casts them into hell. God casts people into hell. They are not there by accident,
they are there by God's active activity. And if your eye causes
you to stumble, Throw it out. It is better for you to enter
the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes and to be
cast into hell. So much that defiles our flesh,
a flesh that's defiled in the heart, but so much of what defiles
our flesh comes to us through our eyes. David was resting as
a king in Israel and was fine until he looked and saw Bathsheba. He didn't just look once, he
looked again. Achan, look at that beautiful
road and that lovely wedge of gold in Jericho. So much of what
we see around us is embedded in our lives. I don't like watching
movies because movies don't go out of my life. I'm glad other
people don't suffer from this but I really struggle. I can
still picture vile things from horrible movies that I saw 30
or 40 years ago and if I watch a movie for some reason it replays
in my head for hours and hours and days afterwards and I just
hate it. I hate the fact that it just comes back and goes round
and round. That's just me, I'm glad others
aren't plagued in the same way. But there's so much, isn't there,
as Christians, that we actually let into our lives, so much that
should cause us to be scandalised. We should be scandalised by the
way this world treats people, treats women, as sex objects
and chattels. Treats people as if the things
that they gain, the things they can get for themselves in this
wicked world are things to be esteemed. And we join with them,
don't we? We join with them. The Lord Jesus is challenging
his disciples here about radical, radical discipleship. And then in verse 49, he gives what seems to us strange
words. To the people of that day they
would not have seemed strange at all. For he says, for everyone
will be salted with fire. For something to be salted is
to have the salt rubbed into it. We have beef jerky, don't
we, which is the salt has so penetrated the meat that it actually
preserves it. It's to be rubbed into it. God's
saying that all people are going to be salted. Salted with fire. The Lord Jesus says in Luke chapter
12, He says, please don't think I came to bring peace on this
earth. I didn't come to bring peace. In fact He says that He's
come to kindle, to bring a fire on the earth in Luke 12.49. I came to send fire on the earth
and how I wish it were already kindled. but I have a baptism
to be baptized with and how distressed I am to live as accomplished.
Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you
not, not at all, but rather division." The Lord God came after the Red
Sea to meet with his people on Mount Sinai and he came and brought, according to Deuteronomy
33, he brought a fiery law for them. The Lord spoke to the people
out of the midst of the fire. When he revealed himself as the
law giver at Mount Sinai, he showed himself to be God who
is a consuming fire. I think this is what the Apostle
is referring to when he talks about being salted with fire.
God's law is going to be the basis upon which all humanity
is judged. God's law reflects His holiness
and reflects His justice. God is consuming fire and the
law is called a fiery law. It's a fiery law because it applies
the fire of God's law to our consciences. The law coming with
fire from God exposes what we really are. It burns up all of
our righteousness. The law says Be holy. The law says be perfect. The law says one transgression
and you die. It's a fiery law and everyone
will be salted with it. And what's harder for people
to grasp these days is that God again and again declares that
when His law meets our flesh, it sets on fire our corruptions. The sinful passions according
to Romans 7 are roused by the law. And the law meets our flesh.
It causes the corruptions in our flesh to be manifest. And so the law brings a fire. But also God's children have
fiery trials on this earth. According to 1 Peter 5.12, this
is a trial by fire which is common. It's common to all of God's people. Beloved, chapter 4 verse 12 of
1 Peter, Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery
trial which is to try you. as though some strange thing
were happening to you. It's not strange for God's children
to be tried by fire, to be tried and tested by the trials of this
life. Isaiah 48.10 talks about God
calling his children, I've chosen you out of the furnace of affliction. So fiery trials come, temptation
comes, and temptation shows us what sin is, where sin is, sins
in our hearts. Temptation and trials come to
show us what we really are, but for the grace of God. But in
the fiery trials, God's children are kept and preserved in the
suffering by God. Romans 8.17 says, if it so be
that we suffer with Him, that we also may be glorified with
Him. So grace tried and grace tested. by fire and by trials and by
God's holy law is grace that grows strong, because it's grace
that sends us back to our Saviour. When Paul had all those trials,
in 2nd Corinthians, after seeing great visions of God, he had
great trials from Satan, buffeted by Satan, and he pleaded with
God to take it away. And the Lord responded in the
most amazing way. He says, I'm not going to take
it away. My grace is sufficient for you,
for my strength is made perfect in weakness. My strength. is made perfect in our weakness. And so God sends fiery trials. Everyone on this earth is going
to be salted with fire. The fire of God's law, the fire
of the trials here. And all the sacrifices of God
were presented with salt. And that's why in verse 50 God
says, is good. Salt is good for many reasons. Salt, as I said earlier, is a
preservative. Salt preserves deeply corruptible
things from being corrupted. Salt also gives flavour and taste
and savour to things. And salt causes things to last. But the salt that these scriptures
are talking about is the salt that refers to the covenant of
salt, the eternal covenant. In 2 Corinthians 13, 5, when the king of Judah was standing
opposed to the King of Israel. And he stood faithfully on God's
promises that he would protect him. And he said to Jeroboam,
he said, should you not know that the Lord God of Israel gave
the dominion of Israel to David forever? to Him and His sons
by a covenant of salt. So the covenant, the eternal
covenant that God made between the Father, Son and the Holy
Spirit and encompassed all of God's children is reflected in
this salt. And so to present an offering
to God under the old covenant, you had to present it with salt.
You can read about it in Leviticus chapter 2 and in Numbers 18 verse
19. So nothing was to be presented
before God without it having salt. The salt was a reminder
of the covenant. The salt was a reminder of the
Gospel. The salt is a reminder that the
covenant is a covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus. A covenant
that can never be broken. It's preserved from corruption. And it's a symbol of never-ending
preservation. So salt is good. But, and this is the word to
the apostles and to us, but if salt becomes unsalty, with what
will you make it salty again? Quite simply the application
is, for those who have turned away from the Gospel, turned
away from the Lord Jesus being everything for their righteousness,
everything for their salvation, everything for their sanctification,
they no longer have the salt to offer to God, they no longer
live under the Eternal Covenant. They no longer live in the light
of the Gospel. It's what the false teachers
did to the Galatian believers. They turned them away from Christ. We might say how can salt become
unsalty seeing it's a chemical. In those days there were lots
of natural salt deposits and mixed with the salt were other
chemicals that looked like salt and with lots of rain on it the
salt would leach out and you'd be left with a compound, a crystal
that looked like salt but really didn't have the flavour of salt
in it at all. of man-made religion can look
as if it's really genuinely salted with the grace of God. But it's
washed out. And the challenge is if it becomes
unsalty, how will you get it salty again? If people have turned away from
the Gospel to look at their works, their worth, Their will, the
only possible way to be turned back again and to be made solidly
is if God turns you back. After that amazing psalm that
declares the beauty of God's law as accomplished in the Lord
Jesus, that fiery law that now becomes the delight of God's
people, right at the very end in Psalm 119, 176, it says, I
have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant. God must come and seek us again
and turn us back to the Gospel. We can't do it ourselves. God
alone must do it. we must continually be reminded
that it's he who has to do this work, he who has to bring the
fiery trial, he who has to remind us that the salt is good. Then
he says to his apostles, have salt in yourselves. Have salt in yourselves. in yourselves,
set apart the Lord Jesus in your heart as God." He's saying, have
the grace of God in your heart. These men who had been bickering
amongst each other because they were looking at themselves and
looking at their achievements and looking at others and looking
at their failings and then rising themselves up on a pedestal of
their own activities. As Galatians says, they were
biting and devouring each other. The Lord Jesus is saying, have
salt in yourselves, remember the sacrifices, remember the
eternal covenant, remember what Messiah must do for you. Have salt in yourselves is to
remember what it is to be rescued from that place which is called
hell. The only way you can have salt
in yourselves, the only way to live under that covenant and
to live in peace is to be continually living in light of who the Lord
Jesus is and what he has done. Because there was a man that
we know has suffered these things. It's why the scriptures leave
for the Lord Jesus himself to tell us most about the horrors
of hell. Because he, of all men, knew
what it was like. The agony he felt in Gethsemane
was not a fear of the Roman soldiers the next day. It was not a fear
of the Jewish leaders. The agony of Gethsemane, the
pain and the suffering that came before and overwhelmed the Lord
Jesus, such as his veins broke and he sweated blood, was the
thought that he was going to be made sin. He didn't have to
go physically or spiritually to a place called hell, but he
had to suffer infinite, eternal fire of God's holy wrath. God found sin. on his son, the
Lord Jesus. And God's holy fiery law demanded
that that sin be punished. That sin be punished with unquenchable
fire. That sin be punished until God
says enough. till God says justice is satisfied. People wonder why and they say
that we major on the minors and we take issue over things that
we should not disagree about. One thing that we do as a church
and a group of believers stand for passionately is the fact
that when the Lord Jesus suffered that infinite wrath of God, He
suffered absolutely no more than perfect justice demanded so that
all of God's children would be free from that fiery law. That
all of God's children would be crucified in Christ and we suffered
with Him. to say that in some sense the
Lord Jesus suffered that wrath of God for people who go to hell,
is to blaspheme His holy name. It's to deny His deity and it's
to take away from God's children the comfort of the Gospel. The
essence of the Gospel is substitution, that when the Lord Jesus suffered
this wrath of God, this unquenchable fire that we had earned by our
activities in this world, that he suffered perfectly and sufficiently
for his people and God in justice would not make him suffer. one
tiny little bit more than perfect justice demanded. We cannot defend
the Gospel unless we defend the doctrine of particular redemption,
of real redemption, of effectual redemption, of perfect substitution. Think for a minute about what
it is for our Lord to have gone through. We must think about
those who are in hell to remind us of what our Lord Jesus suffered. We dare not treat his death as
an insignificant thing. We dare not treat his substitution
as an insignificant thing. The only way these disciples
can be saved from this unquenchable fire, from this worm that does
not die, is for the Lord Jesus to take all that sin and say
it's mine, and for God's holy fiery law to punish his son infinitely
and perfectly. To deny those things is to deny
the Gospel. To deny those things is to be
in a place where God's children have salt that looks like salt
and it's taken away from them and maybe they aren't God's children
at all. And also, if God's children are
going to be at peace, God's children need to live in light of who
the Lord Jesus is on that cross. We live our lives in the shadow
of the cross. We live our lives in the glory
of the cross. We live our lives in the glory
of the accomplishment of the cross, that he rose victorious
and he reigns in heaven for us now. So the Lord Jesus has taken
his apostles' eyes away from themselves and away from their
activities to a much, much bigger reality. We live in a world where
realities that aren't big realities become just petty, squabbling
things that we fight over. Unless the things of eternity
lie before us, the things of this world will consume us. Our hands will love them, our
feet will walk in them, our eyes will run after them, unless the
Lord Jesus intervenes. I have gone astray like a lost
sheep. Seek your servant. Keep coming to us, dear God. Keep reminding us of how we can
have peace with one another. To be rescued from that hell
means that everything else that comes before us in this world
is just so, so insignificant. That's why Paul went to the Corinthians
and he sought to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. May He continue to cause us to
see eternity. It goes on for a long, long time. There is only one place of safety
in all of creation and that's in the arms of the Lord Jesus.
Come to me, He says, all you who are weary and heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. To have peace with one another
is to have the Gospel like salt savouring our lives, preserving
our lives and keeping us from the corruptions that are in the
world but also in our own hearts. We have a great God and a great
Gospel. Have peace with one another in
that Gospel. Amen. Let's pray.