You’ll find the scripture in your bulletin just opposite to him, so I encourage you to look there and listen as I read to you. The scripture is Mark chapter 9, verses 41 through 50. This is God’s holy word. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. We’ll please the Lord to take his word and use it in our lives for service for himself. And all together, we say thanks be to God. Heavenly Father, we ask today to understand the scripture. Some of these things, Lord, we scratch our heads and say, does the Lord really want us to cut our hands off and our feet off and so forth? And we puzzle over these things. We thank you, Lord, that it’s not all that difficult with your help to understand what you mean. We do pray, Lord, to have clear insight and Stronger commitment to you, and we praise you, Lord, that you’re able to bring that about in our lives. We expect it this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Sometimes it’s apparent that Mark is not following what we would call an orderly timeline. What do I mean by that? I mean he doesn’t say on Thursday we did this, and on Friday we did that, and on Saturday we did… Sometimes these different events are kind of brought together for the purpose of enhancing a theme or an idea that the gospel writer, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wants us to have. Earlier in chapter 9, The writer and his advisors, we may say, followed the ideas of greatness and jealousy. In these closing verses that we’re looking at this morning, the stress is upon truth and consistency.
The truth is that Jesus is the Messiah. That’s the one truth that everyone who was listening that day needed to grasp, and one which we also need. Jesus is the Savior. Jesus is the Messiah. In fact, He’s the only Savior of God’s people. And it’s never right to deny or compromise this truth.
And then, Jesus’ followers demonstrate their commitment to Him. by doing good in His name. They show that they are saved. They show that they have been changed because they do good. Now, not everybody who does good, I should say, is a Christian. But Christians, for sure, ought to be doers of good. They should teach their offspring to honor the Lord. And they should take that public stand that glorifies Him.
I belong to Christ. I’m not ashamed of it. I want you to know that. That’s kind of the attitude that we should have as well. So I’m going to present a series of questions this morning in connection with these things. The first question is a simple one, but an important one, and that is, do you belong to the Messiah? Do you belong to Him? Because later He’s going to say, if anyone offends these little ones who belong to Me, then certain terrible things may well happen. But the question for us is, do you, do I, belong to the Messiah, to Jesus? Secondly, Do you support these, quote, little ones, unquote, who believe in Jesus, or are you leading them in the wrong direction?
Thirdly, how does the example of salt fit with the warnings that Jesus issued? He seems to transition from warning the people, now don’t to be guilty of leading these little ones astray, and then he goes right into this matter of salt. Now we’ll look at that as we go along. And then finally, will Messiah’s salt and fire lead to a follower’s reward?
Those are our questions that we want to answer this morning. Now this matter of belonging to the Messiah, I want to attach to the baptism of our children, sometimes even infant baptism of our children. What does this mean? Well, it means if a child is baptized, it means he becomes a part of God’s people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is saved, but that this child belongs to God’s people, and that’s very important in the context here.
Do you belong to the Messiah? Point number one. Are you a member of His people? And then beyond that, are you really a part of those, as the hymn told us, who are going to be in heaven singing, Glory be to God on high. We want to think about what is necessary in order to belong permanently to the Messiah.
In other words, the difference between just being a member of the community or a member of the saved people that are God’s people. And there’s one word to distinguish between the two, and that’s faith. Now Jesus, when he was talking about these so-called little ones, he said, who believe in me, who believe in me, that’s an indication of faith, you see. Do you have faith and trust in me, not just as a healer of sicknesses and a very good example of moral rectitude or something like that, but Do you believe that God sent me into the world to save sinners? Now, they wouldn’t yet have understood the cross, although there was enough in the Old Testament for them to understand that the Savior was going to have to shed His blood, was going to have to be like a lamb led to the slaughter. Nevertheless, in this situation, they’re just saying, Lord, however you’re going to do it, I commit my life to you. I trust in you. You’ve sent this Messiah. and now I’m going to follow Him.
And then there’s this matter of the reward. And again, you have to make a bit of a distinction here. There’s the reward that belongs to the community, to God’s people. All those who are part of Israel in this case, all those who are established by birth or sometimes by conversion, but you belong to God’s people. That’s the one thing. And there’s a reward associated with that.
God said to Israel, if you obey me, if you keep my commandments, as a nation, you’re going to prosper. As a nation, you will chase the enemy, they won’t chase you. There are all kinds of things in the Old Testament that talk about the community there. God says, I’ll keep these people as the apple of my eye, as the focus of my attention.
But then there’s also the reward, of course, that we’ve just mentioned, and that’s heaven. that those who belong to God have their sins forgiven, are welcomed into heaven to live with the Lord forever and ever, and that’s the greatest of all rewards. But you always have to keep in mind there’s the reward for the community, and then there’s the reward for individuals as they put their trust, even for little children who put their trust in the Lord.
And then there needs to be some evidence, at least for our sake, that we are, yes, to begin with, members of a covenant community, but also saved unto the glory of the Lord. And that evidence, we might sum up in another word, loving kindness. We show mercy, we show love, we show patience. We treat our neighbor as ourselves. This is evidence that we have been moved first to the covenant community and then to the saved of heaven itself.
And then he says to those who do things in my name, He says, they have adopted my goals and my purposes. You may recall from previous study, there was some people who were casting out demons and some of the disciples said, uh-uh, you’re not allowed to do that, only we’re allowed to do that. But Jesus said, no, if they’re using my name in the right way, if they have taken my name upon themselves, then they are entitled to act as members of my kingdom. So the right to use His name, pursuing the same goals and purposes as the Messiah.
And one of those examples was given in the first verse that we read this morning, and I was giving a cup of cold water in the name of the Lord. You’re not going to lose your award, you see, that’s evidence that God has been at work in your life. So being blessed with the assurance that the Messiah gives. And he says in the passage there, he says, let me assure you, let me guarantee for you, you’re not going to lose your award if these evidences indeed show that you are a saved person. I assure you, he says.
Well, all of this started with the question, do you belong to the Messiah? It means that all of us need to settle this matter, to settle things with Jesus. Really, are we His? Are we just sort of loosely attached or are we really His? And it’s a question we all need to think about and answer. Do I belong to Jesus?
There’s another little song that we might’ve included here. I belong to Jesus. I am not my own. It’s a hymn that’s in that same hymn book that we got the other one from. Settle this matter with Jesus. That’s what I urge you to do today. Settle this matter. Do I belong to him? How do I know? Well, where’s the evidence? Not for others necessarily, so much as for me. Where’s the evidence that I truly belong to him?
Well, that brings us then to our second point, another question here, and that is, do you support these little ones, he says, who believe in Jesus? Now, the question arises, in connection with all this, who are these little ones? Now, I have read some commentators who said, he’s not talking about children here. He’s talking about his own disciples, and not just the 12, but anybody who’s a disciple. He called them on other occasions, my children, and so that’s what he must mean here. But I take issue with that. I think he’s talking about, yes, those disciples, But also, he’s talking about little children as well.
And that’s why I mentioned infant baptism to start out with. You belong to the community of God, to the people of God. Are you supportive of that idea and certainly supportive of their coming to a true saving faith, whether they’re older people, adults, or whether they’re these younger children? I think the Lord has every one of them in mind.
It’s probably been true throughout the years, and I’m speaking mainly of our own country here, but you’ll see a car come to church on Sunday morning, and the door will open and out will come these little children. They’re going to Sunday school. But then the door closes and the car drives off because the people, yes, they want their children to get the moral training and the religious feelings and so forth, but not interested themselves. Well, may I say that the car that drives off is not supporting these little ones. People who bring their children to Sunday school ought to stay for Sunday school themselves or for the church services, however it is arranged.
The little ones here in our passage are not identified, but I think I’ve given you my take on it anyway. Anyone who follows the Lord can be called a child of God or a child of the Lord Jesus, if you will, but it includes people of different age groups of all kinds. And then At least in one translation, I read it talked about their downfall. Do you participate in their downfall or their stumbling?
That’s another word, if you cause these children to stumble. Well, the idea here is that you don’t want to do that. The Greek word there is skandalad or skandalazo. And the English word comes from that, which means scandal. It means, are you scandalizing them? by turning them away from the Lord. What’s the greatest scandal that there is? Well, it’s not committing some sexual sin or it’s not committing some bank robbery or something like that. It’s to turn away from the Lord, to reject the Lord.
That’s the greatest scandal that especially you see for people that have been welcomed into the community. And yet they say, well, I’ve been through this for several years now, and I don’t like it, and I’m leaving. And somebody says, well, go ahead. Or somebody from the outside says, come over to our side.
And the Lord says that’s a terrible thing to do, to draw people away from the life that Christ offers, especially when the children are involved. These children should be encouraged, not discouraged. Encouraged to turn what we might call a child’s belief, kind of a trusting, unquestioning sort of thing, and to turn that into some true faith and not just to carry on in sort of a religious way, but really coming to know the Lord as their Savior. So this scandal really is to turn people away from the Lord and to not let them really follow up on the initial work of God in their lives.
Children should then be encouraged to follow in footsteps. Now whose footsteps? Well, of course, Jesus’ footsteps. Absolutely. You would hope if they’re going to Sunday school, they’re going to be taught to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. In connection with that, there are also the footsteps of their parents or other relatives or interested parties who want them to come to faith in Christ.
And this is, I think, what the Lord is saying in these rather harsh verses about cutting off hands and feet and all that. He’s saying, here you have people who are looking at footsteps before them, the way to life, the way to righteousness, and you pull them back and say, don’t step there. Don’t follow that path at all. And that’s the great scandal, as I indicated to you before. Now, just a word about all this cutting off and so forth.
First of all, I don’t think Jesus is just playing games here with these words, but what he is saying is that it’s a terrible, terrible thing. And if you think losing a hand or a foot or something like that is bad, you don’t understand what hell is. You would cause a greater thing in terms of the difficulty and the sorrow and all this to come into their lives if you don’t let them follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The opposition, you see, to the Lord Jesus and the way that they keep people from salvation. This is a greater sin, greater than anything. You would be better off, Jesus says, to lose a hand or a foot or some other part of your body than to let this happen to yourself or to others.
And so I think, again, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, am I following the Lord wholeheartedly? Am I really sold out to this matter of following Jesus? When you ask me if I support, quote, unquote, children, do I do it with all my heart that they might not perish, but have everlasting life? These support these who believe in Jesus, at least with an initial trusting of Him, but they need to make that full commitment.
Are you pulling them back from that? And the Lord says, don’t do that. It would be better, He says, to lose a foot or a hand than to have this terrible thing happen. And they not follow the Lord right on into glory. Then our third point today, or our third question is, well, how does the example of salt fit in with the warnings that Jesus issued?
Why is it that there are some people who show an interest in the gospel, interested in Jesus, and yet don’t really follow through? And I’m sure there are numbers of answers to this, but one thing is the pain The pain, oh, I don’t really want to have to suffer.
I thought if I became a Christian, all things would be beautiful. There’d be blue birds and white clouds and everything would be just fine. The Lord says no. There’s salt in this matter, but he says the salt is good. That’s exactly what he says here in verse 50. Salt is good. Now, what does he mean by that? Well, first of all, the salt is purifying. That’s why you use it. In these days, they didn’t have refrigeration, so salt was a preservative. Salt was a good thing. But there was some salt that wasn’t worth having. The Dead Sea salt, for example, quickly lost its saltiness and turned out to be worthless to people. But there was good salt, and Jesus, of course, is using that as an example here.
Now he says everyone who claims to follow Jesus will be faced with hard truths. There’s a thing in the scriptures where Jesus was talking about some of the difficulties and persecutions and then says the people went away. And Jesus turned to his disciples and says, are you going to go away too?
There are people that turn back because of the pain. And, uh, They didn’t like the truth that they heard. They didn’t like the persecution that would follow. But the Lord Jesus said, if you’re going to follow my path, if you’re going to go on my footsteps, you better kind of pull your coat up and scrunch your neck down because the persecution is going to come and the hard truths are going to hit you where maybe you hadn’t thought about them before.
Now, yes, in the passage there he talks about it’s better this than going to the fire of hell. He says the unquenchable fire and so forth. However, there are many things in this life too that you want to avoid, but you can’t if you follow the Lord. Jesus seems here to refer to persecution and angry accusations against people, and what do they do?
Well, they say, I’ll try something else. I don’t really like that very much. The salt of the gospel, if you will, salt of the Lord Jesus, will bring you some challenges. They’re tests. Do you really love the Lord? Are you really His or not? But they also bring God’s peace. That’s how He ends the passage, be at peace with one another. The salt of the gospel ultimately brings peace because it brings the forgiveness of sins and the ability to forgive sins where others are involved. When I was a boy, I was in a dormitory situation. There was one guy in the dormitory that got him a little cup and he put salt in it.
And he would go around to people and he said, do you have any cuts? Any places that, this is a healing thing. And they said, oh yeah, I cut myself yesterday. So of course he was out to have fun with this. He would sprinkle a little salt on the wound And, of course, the kid would go, ah! It’s terrible. Well, yes, that’s kind of a silly joke that was played.
But be aware that salt will come to you. It’ll do you good. That kid that had the salt in his wound, that wound probably healed up pretty good. But he had to go through the pain of the salt. Salt is good. Salt purifies. Salt preserves. Salt’s a good thing. It’s a gift from the Lord. And if you’ve got some kind of salt that doesn’t last, it’s not worth very much to you. And of course, the Lord Jesus is saying, my salt, it’s painful, but it sure is good. It brings healing to people.
So Jesus is saying to us here, he says, desire the salt. Don’t run away from the salt. There were kids, as I told you in that illustration, they knew what was coming and they said, no, thank you. And so he went on to somebody else with his salt. But there is the salt that really we should desire, the salt that actually purifies.
The Lord says, that’s what I’m going to give you. You won’t like it always, but it will prepare you for heaven. It will even make the earth a place that’s better than you thought it was. The salt of the gospel will bring God’s peace, but if you have something that’s tasteless and dissipating, you’ll get no peace at all. Well, one more thing. Will the Messiah’s salt and fire, and by the way, he links the two here. There’s salt and fire. In other words, it’s burning. You would say that salt burned me when it got on my wound. The fire burns, obviously. They go together here.
But do they lead to the reward? You don’t want to do it for nothing. But the Lord says, oh yes, you’ll get a follower’s reward. I think we’ve all seen newsreels and things where people were victims of the Holocaust, usually as children, but they’re grown up now, but still they pull their sleeve back and there’s that tattooed number there that they went through the fire, as it were, they went through the horrors of that. And maybe they all didn’t get a great reward, but many of them ultimately were rewarded by a place to live like Israel or a place in some Jewish community where they were loved and cared for. Well, what about that follower’s reward?
Again, this ultimate reward has two parts. There’s escape from hell. Jesus says, you don’t wanna go there. And then there is a place in heaven. It’s kind of a two-part reward, but it’s certainly a welcome one. So listen to this. The follower’s reward, first of all, is Jesus’ commendation. Jesus’ commendation. Say, what’s that?
Well done, good and faithful servant, well done. Now you can’t pull your sleeve up and say, look at my number, but the Lord knows your heart. He knows your faithfulness. Well done, good and faithful servant. A follower’s reward is good salt. What do we mean? Well, the salt in this case, in the case of believers, it’s ongoing. There’s always that purifying that’s going on because we’re not perfect. We need some corrections, we need some help, and the salt will do that. Salt is good. That is salt that keeps its savior.
Then there is a follower’s reward, peace. Peace. How many people in the world today would just like some peace? Just like some relief from the pressures and the struggles and what a blessing. Now, before heaven comes, just now to have peace. Peace with God and then ultimately, of course, the peace of heaven. Christian fellowship bringing peace. Fellowship with Christ Himself.
That’s a follower’s reward. A follower’s reward is to see the salvation of one’s children. And that kind of goes right back to the idea. Don’t hurt these little ones. Don’t turn them from Me. What a blessing to see your children and your children’s children and know that you’ll all be together in heaven. forever. Is that going to happen to everybody in every situation?
No, but I think the Lord’s promise is there, if you train up a child in the way you should go, when he’s old he’ll not depart from it. Follower’s reward is to see the salvation of one’s children and children’s children to however many generations there are.
The Lord closed at one point in his teaching, this is from the Sermon on the Mount, He said, great is your reward in heaven. And whatever wonderful rewards there may be in this life, and the Lord does not hesitate to give us rewards now, as it were, but that reward in heaven, that’s the great reward. Great is your reward in heaven. You’re not given that reward because you earned it, but out of grace, You’re given that great reward in heaven.
And the Lord encourages us all right now to commit ourselves to Him. Not so much because the reward is the be-all and end-all of everything, but because knowing Him is reward enough in itself and then all these other things will follow. May the Lord grant us that commitment to Him.
Let’s pray. Father, we ask you to bless now these words to our hearts. There are times, Lord, when the pain seems more than we want or can bear. There are times, Lord, when the salt is not what we would like to have, and yet it purifies and strengthens, and ultimately, Lord, it’s your indication that we belong to you. Let us not have any doubt about that, Lord. May we all say, I belong to Jesus. I’m not my own. We ask this in his name. Amen.