The Images That Sober Us

Transcript

Well, this morning, our sermon text comes from Mark chapter 9, Mark chapter 9, verses 42 through 50. Mark chapter 9, verse 42 through 50. Mark writes, verse 42, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he 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 yourself and be at peace with one another. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s begin this morning by praying, asking for God’s help. Father, we pray you provide the help we need this morning. As we look at this very difficult and hard passage, a horrific passage really, I pray God that you would help us to see what is beautiful about our Savior. Help us to see the glory of God who rescues us from that which is horrific. I pray God that you would send the Holy Spirit to open our eyes, open our hearts, give us

The Scar That Saves

wisdom, we beg in Christ’s name, amen. He begins each morning the same way every single day. The alarm from his iPhone goes off at 5.45 a.m. He gets up from his bed and makes his way into the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and with the same cup he uses to rinse away the toothpaste, he uses to wash down his four daily prescription pills. He then makes his way down the hallway towards the kitchen where he starts the automatic coffee machine before he makes his way to the exercise room. He hits the treadmill with a steady run for 28 minutes and always ends his last two minutes with a high-intensity sprint just to make sure that his heart rate gets up. After his workout, he makes his way back to the kitchen to pour his one cup of coffee for the day. He takes a few sips as he walks towards the bathroom.

He turns on the shower and while he waits for the water to turn from cold to extra hot, he takes a few more sips of his one cup of coffee. He then jumps into the shower for no more than three minutes which gives him just enough time to finish his coffee while it’s still warm. After he dries himself off, he grabs his wife’s hair dryer, turns it to heat, points it towards the center of the mirror and begins to slowly move it in a circular motion. And as the vapor from the shower steam slowly begins to fade from the mirror and his reflection slowly comes into focus, he’s once again confronted with the reminder. The six-inch incision in the center of his chest from the emergency room visit just four years ago, the image pulls him back to that most terrifying moment where he almost lost

everything. His wife, his kids, and his very breath. Being confronted daily with this vivid image serves as a constant and sobering reminder that in order for him to preserve his life, in order for him to keep on living, he must be faithfully committed to his daily routine of exercise, medication, diet, and only one cup of coffee. The image of the scar keeps him sober to the reality of life and death. And this morning, brothers and sisters, we are confronted with a very similar reality. Our text this morning is full of vivid imagery intended to sober us to the realities not just of life and death, but most importantly, eternal life and eternal death. The images in our passage are meant to pull our focus on the extreme and severe cost associated with following Jesus and preserving our internal inheritance. Now, obviously, you can see that this is a very dark and graphic passage.

As I’ve studied this passage and as I’ve prepared, I kept thinking to myself, how can I soften this content a bit, especially since there are young ones in our midst? So I would try as hard as I can to use language to shield some of the imagery, but as you can imagine, I can only do so much when the text itself is so descriptive. So this morning, I’ll stay closer to my notes and try to be careful with my words. This morning, we will see a side of Jesus that is not very popular in our culture. It’s a side of Jesus that is often misrepresented, redefined, and completely dismissed, and even within the church. And so as we engage with Jesus’ words this morning, my hope is that you would put aside all of your preconceived ideas, that you would put aside the culture’s perspective concerning

the severity of sin and this concept of hell, and take Jesus at His words and allow for Him to inform your thinking concerning this seriousness of sin and this difficult doctrine of hell. Now, I know this is another heavy passage this morning. It’s both graphic and horrifying. But if we believe that

all of Scripture is given by God, that it’s profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction

— 2 Timothy 3

(ESV)

, then we can’t just pass over this passage. We must deal with this text and trust that where we are in terms of our exposition of Mark is exactly where God has us this morning. And it’s what God has specifically for us, okay? So we’ll be looking at three sections this morning as we look through this passage. The source of stumbling, the seriousness of sin, and the salt of suffering. So let’s begin in verse 42 with the source of stumbling.

Source of Stumbling

Jesus says, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it will be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. So right away, we already see a different side of Jesus. As we’ve explored Mark’s gospel, we’ve seen Jesus, the compassionate one, Jesus, the merciful one, the healer, the teacher, the miracle worker, the one who shows dignity to women and children, to lepers, to tax collectors, to prostitutes, and even to social outcasts. This has been the predominant picture of Jesus so far in Mark’s gospel. Now we’ve seen Jesus be confrontational, especially as it pertains to the religious leaders, but here Jesus is showing us a side of him that is very serious about sin. So serious that he gives us this severe warning, and this warning is concerning those who would

cause his little ones to sin. Now before we dive too deep into the content of this warning, we must first understand who are these little ones. Now to be clear, little ones here does not necessarily refer to children, though that could be the case. When Jesus says little ones here, he’s referring to ordinary, humble, and simple followers of Jesus, those who are young in the faith and impressionable. This would also include those who don’t necessarily have solid theological training, but who genuinely love the Lord and seek to follow him in obedience. And just a side note, this is a good distinction for us to hear. It’s good to know that Christianity is not simply for the intellectual elite, that you don’t need to have a solid and robust theology to be loved by Jesus. You only need to trust and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and to follow

in his footsteps. Jesus doesn’t discriminate against his followers on the basis of how much theology they know or how smart they are. He sees his followers’ hearts, and he loves them, whether they’re seminary professors, recent converts, or second graders. So you could be a simple and humble Christian with a childlike understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, and he will receive you with joy. In fact, he cares so deeply for these kinds of little ones that he gives this extreme warning to anyone who would cause for them to sin. Now what does Jesus mean when he says to cause one of these to sin? Well it could mean to cause someone to stumble in their walk, or to offend someone to the point of discouragement, spiritual discouragement. But in this particular instance, it means to cause one of these to fall away from the

faith, to participate in the shipwrecking of someone’s spiritual life, or in our context, to lead someone down the path of deconstruction. And what is the consequence that Jesus gives for shipwrecking the faith of one of these little ones? Well we don’t quite get a full picture of what the consequence actually is. But what we do get is this comparative difference. Jesus says it’d be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown in the sea. Now to take in the fullness of this imagery here, you have to first understand what a millstone is. A millstone was a large block used for grinding grain. It was so heavy that only a large animal or a donkey could turn it or move it. So essentially Jesus is saying, if you cause someone to walk away from the faith, if you’re

the source of their stumbling, God’s wrath is so severe that it would be better or less terrorizing if you were to wrap a one ton block around your neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea. Because that experience of a slow drowning descent into the bottom of the sea pales in comparison to the wrath of God that would be poured out on anyone who would cause these little ones to fall away. This is how much Jesus cares for his children. Now this is dark and horrific imagery for us. But imagine how much more horrific and darker this would be for a first century Jew. You see, in the first century, if a Jewish person died, the body was considered ceremonially unclean and so it needed to be ritually cleansed before burial. So after the cleansing, the body would be taken and wrapped in white linen and then

finally he or she would be given this proper Jewish burial. This is part of the Jewish tradition. This was part of the Levitical law. So if you were to drown in the sea but your body was anchored to the ocean floor by a millstone there would be no way for your family to provide for you a burial, a proper burial. So this idea would not only be horrific but it would also be religiously disastrous. But nonetheless, Jesus is teaching that the fate of that person would be far better than to receive God’s wrath for causing one of these little ones to reject the faith. Now this should cause us to pause and consider the ways in which we interact with these younger, humble, impressionable, and simple Christians. Are there areas in our lives that contribute or cause to the Christians in our midst to stumble?

Just by way of example, you know that there are recovering alcoholics in this church, right? There are those who, for them, drinking is just not an option. For them, one drink would set them on a course of disaster. Though you might have personal freedoms, if you and your spiritual arrogance try to persuade them or convince them theologically that it’s okay for them to drink, that God has given every Christian the freedom to enjoy it, and that they just need to be a little bit more mature, thereby causing them to stumble and fall back into alcoholism, Jesus, in the most severe terms, is warning you that there are horrific consequences for that kind of negligence, so don’t do that. This might also include the ways in which you might critique the church. Not just our church, but the church universal. Those who would flippantly express angst or frustration towards the church and God’s people,

trying to lead these little ones away from the structure of the church, or to cause them to question their faith as a result of it. Or if you’re the type that dances around dangerous doctrines, if you’re the type that loves to push theological boundaries and push philosophy more than scripture, if you share those views with these little impressionable ones, causing them to follow into those dangerous spaces, Jesus is warning you, don’t do that. There are dreadful consequences if you do that. Don’t be a stumbling block for them, because you put them in a very dangerous place, and at the same time, you put yourself in a very dangerous place with God. And listen, this is not just a warning for those who follow Jesus. The same is true, if not worse, for those who are not Christian, or for those who professed Christianity at one time.

A few years ago, Samuel Nagel and I, we went to this event here in Portland, and it was an event that was hosted by a former mainstream Christian artist who has since rejected the faith and has made it his goal to share with the world his rejection of the faith and his newfound philosophy of life. He had, and still somewhat does, have this massive Christian following. He still has a lot of influence over Christians, largely because of his former Christian content. So Sam and I went to this event to better understand the kinds of Christians that are drawn to this former evangelical artist-turned-exvangelical sage, and to be honest with you, it was probably one of the most discouraging things I’ve ever witnessed in my life. This former Christian leading all of these little ones into this kind of hybrid of Buddhist universalism. I mean, at one point, he was literally leading people in this transcendental meditation,

and as he lectured, I heard him multiple times mock the church, mock the exclusivity of Jesus, dismiss the atonement of Jesus, and deny the doctrine of hell. I mean, this was literally, quite literally, a class of deconstruction. The room was filled with, I don’t know, these one-time-professing Christians who were theologically trained by this man’s former music, all being led astray into hell. As I sat there, I kept looking around this room. The room was dark. It was at a music venue. It was very dark, but as I looked around, I could see all these faces, and I was grieved in my soul. My heart was breaking for all of these young, impressionable people being led astray. I was moved with compassion, because the truth is, I don’t really think that they knew any better. They were being persuaded by wickedness because they trusted this former Christian artist.

As I listened to this guy leading them into this deconstruction, into this freefall from the faith, I was furious. I was so angry at this man. I was so frustrated because I couldn’t do anything except sit there. As we were leaving the event, Sam and I, we were driving away from the event, I was completely discouraged because I couldn’t do anything. As we were driving away, I thought about Jesus’s words here, that it would be better for this artist to be thrown 1,000 times into the deep and dark sea than to face the relentless and vengeful wrath of God for leading astray so many followers with his platform. God will pour out his judgment on this man for pridefully persuading these naive people to walk away from the faith. You see, this is such a different image of the kind of Jesus that our culture has in

Seriousness of Sin

mind. This is the real Jesus, the vengeful protector of his children, the righteous judge who exercised his divine and severe wrath on all those who would lead his sheep away from the good shepherd. This is our Jesus, the one who hates sin and will punish sin in the most severe way. Yes, hear me, Jesus is a God of love. He is a God of love, but he is a God of severe wrath at the same time. We should take seriously his warning when it comes to causing others to stumble. After Jesus gives this stern warning not to cause others to stumble into sin, he then turns the warning onto us to put to death the sins that are causing us personally to stumble. We see that in verses 43 through 48 with the seriousness of sin. Jesus says, and if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It’s better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It’s better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two to be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. Again you see a more aggressive and serious side of Jesus. Here Jesus helps us to better understand the severe cost associated with following Jesus, and at the same time he gives us a vivid image of what hell is like. And just so you know, this is the very first time in Mark’s gospel where Jesus has explicitly addressed the concept of hell.

Now to give you some perspective, and this is important, this specific word, hell, is mentioned 12 times in the New Testament. And out of those 12 references to hell, Jesus himself mentions it 11 of those times. Now why is that important? Because we live in a culture where the world, including the church, has so watered down the concept of hell that most people believe that Jesus never really talked about hell. But Jesus spoke about hell more than any other biblical figure. You see in our postmodern and universalist world, people don’t really believe in hell because they don’t want to believe in hell. Because it’s quite off-putting. So they reimagine the Jesus of the Bible to fit the Jesus of their own heart. They think to themselves, God can’t be a God of love and send people to hell. And they can’t reason with it. They can’t reconcile it.

And so they make up a God of their own. Their God usually looks a little bit more like Ned Flanders than the God of scriptures. And you see, once you reject the concept of hell, then you reject the seriousness of sin and the holiness of God. They work in tandem. Yeah, they might understand sin to be a bad thing, but they don’t think sin is an offense serious enough to be punished by way of eternal death. So what they do is they dismiss the reality of hell and the seriousness of sin altogether. And they pretend that Jesus doesn’t care about sin and hell, that all he cares about is love. But that’s contrary to Jesus’ statements here. In fact, Jesus sees sin as so serious and so severe that he asks us to take extreme measures to deal with it so that we won’t fall into hell.

Now, just to be clear, before we dive into what God calls us to do to deal with our sin, it’s important to know what Jesus has already done to deal with our sin. Jesus died to pay for our sin. If you trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, then the penalty of your sin is paid. Praise be to God. You are saved from this hell. And so in response to what Jesus has done, you as a Christian are continually to deal with your sin by taking extreme measures. Another important thing to understand is that all of what Jesus asks us to do in this particular passage is meant to be hyperbole. Jesus is not literally asking you to pluck out your eye, cut off your hand, and cut off your feet if they cause you to sin. In fact, Jewish people would never endorse this kind of mutilation because of the Old

Testament. The Old Testament would condemn this kind of behavior. What Jesus is doing is drawing a comparison by that which is greater by way of hyperbole. And listen, just because the statement is not meant to be taken literally doesn’t mean that we don’t take seriously our approach to cutting off sin. So hear me, Jesus is not stressing mutilation, he’s stressing mortification. The great theologian John Owen says, do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it while you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Now the image of hand, foot, and eye is here by design. Jesus uses that strategically because those images signify what you do, where you go, and what you look at. Your hand has everything to do with your activity. It has to do with what you do with your time and your work.

And so the question is, are there aspects about your life and work that cause you to sin? Maybe your job has created a context in which you have practically abandoned your family. If your job is so stressful that it causes you to be emotionally absent or aloof from your family to the point where you’re sinning against them, then you need another job. If your work requires you to cheat people, take advantage of people, or harm people, then you need to let that job go. If you work in the kind of environment where you’re constantly being tempted to sin by your co-workers, then you should seriously evaluate whether that’s a good place for you to be. Years ago, a good friend of mine, who at the time I would have considered to be a solid Christian man, married, had an amazing family, served in his church.

He worked for a car factory. And one night, he came over to my house, and he mentioned to me how he was struggling at work. There was this woman that he worked with in the office, and there was a bit of flirting going on between the two of them. It started getting really close, and eventually, they started going to lunch together, just the two of them. And he asked me that night, he said, man, would you pray for me? Because I feel drawn to this woman. I feel this relational pull towards her, and I fear where this is heading. As a young Christian, I remember telling him, dude, you should find another job. I was only a Christian maybe three years. I said, maybe you should at least seek out a transfer in position, because dude, this is all bad. But he didn’t listen. And six months later, my friend and this woman had an affair, and it ruined his marriage.

It destroyed his family, and as far as I can tell, so far, he is still not following Jesus. He should have cut it off. He saw the danger, but didn’t do anything. He didn’t take the kind of drastic measures that Jesus calls us to do to deal with our sin. And when Jesus stresses your feet, well, that deals specifically with the places you go. This could mean the places you often find yourself traveling to, or the kind of company that you pursue. Maybe you constantly find yourself in a bar after work, having way too many drinks with coworkers, making incredibly foolish and sinful choices as a result. Maybe it’s a particular party scene that you know you have no business going to, but you do it anyway. Maybe it’s one of those spots off 82nd, and you know what I’m talking about. You know how bad those places are for you.

Who are the kinds of people that you find yourself connecting with, and where are the kinds of places that you find yourself going to? Are those people helping you grow in godliness? Are those places providing encouragement for you? Or are they causing you to sin, slowly killing you inside, eroding your spiritual life? If they’re causing you to sin, then you might have to cut off those friendships. You might have to reroute your pathway home from work. If your feet lead you to these kinds of places, then stop going there. Cut it off. And your eyes, well, obviously, your eyes deal with what you look at. Maybe it’s social media for you. That’s a no-brainer, but are there polarizing posts causing you to sin against the people in this church? When you read other people’s political statements being posted on Facebook from members in this church, does that cause you to sin against them?

Are you becoming so angry with the things that they post that it’s affecting your unity with them? Is your social media overwhelming you with so much fear that you are no longer trusting Jesus as sovereign over this world? You might have to delete your social media apps. Maybe you have to delete a dating app. God forbid you have a Tinder app. Maybe it’s your smartphone altogether. Are those things leading you into sin? You need to get rid of your smartphone. Get yourself an old-school flip phone. It’s just that simple and straightforward. Cut it off. Maybe it’s a computer. Are there things that you have access to on your computer that you just can’t stop looking at? Maybe you need to give that computer to an older, mature man in the church, have them hold it for you until you can figure some things out. That’s how serious you need to be.

Maybe you got to cancel Netflix or cut off your cable. Now, listen, I want to be clear here. What one person needs to do to cut off sin might not necessarily be what another person needs to do to cut off sin. I’m not selling you legalism here. You hear me? The personal and drastic measures that you might need to take to kill your specific sin is not universal. It’s specific to your particular sin patterns. So if something is causing you to personally sin, no matter how much you love it, you got to do whatever you need to do to cut it off because Jesus says eternal life hangs in the balance. Now, just to give you a biblical example of how the love of a particular sin can cause someone to fall away. In Colossians, the apostle Paul mentions a man named Demas. In fact, Demas is mentioned in his final greeting in a positive way.

Colossians 4.14 says,

Luke, the beloved physician, greets you as does Demas

— Colossians 4

(ESV)

. So Demas was with Paul and Luke and they were partners in ministry. And we know this because Paul also referenced Demas as a fellow worker in his final greeting in the book of Philemon. Philemon 23 and 24, Paul writes, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you. And so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. So here we see that Demas was a part of this ministry partnership, but sometimes later in second Timothy, as the apostle Paul was waiting his execution, he mentions Demas again, but this time not in a positive light and not as a ministry partner, but as someone who has not only abandoned him, but walked away. Second Timothy 4.9-10 says, For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

You see why names in the Bible are so important? They’re there for a specific reason. They’re not just to be dismissed when you come across these names. Here Demas is mentioned to illustrate how easy it is for someone in ministry, whose close companion was the apostle Paul. You don’t get more committed than the apostle Paul, but how easy it was for Demas to walk away because he fell so deeply in love with the world that he fell away from the faith. This is why Jesus asks you to take drastic measures, because sin has a way of causing you to slowly slip away from that which you once professed into a full-on rejection of the faith. Your love for sin will ultimately create a conflict with your love of God. One love must win. Jesus says, choose him because he is far better. And notice Jesus makes you responsible to cut off the sin.

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The Valley of Fire

So many Christians find themselves deeply entangled in sin because all they do is sit around and ask God to remove the sin from their life, but they never do the hard work of cutting it off. There’s no active discipline or extreme measures to kill their sin. So yes, you ask God to help you put to death your sin, but you actually got to work at putting sin to death. You see, Jesus is deliberately using the most severe language and graphic imagery to stress that sin is to be opposed at all cost. It has an eroding effect that leads to eternal damnation. Just look at the imagery that Jesus uses to describe hell. He says, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. What does this even mean? What does Jesus mean with this picture? Well, to understand this imagery of hell here, you have to dig a little bit.

So the first thing you need to understand is what the original word for hell meant. The word that Jesus uses here in the Greek is translated Gehenna. You might’ve heard that word before, Gehenna, which means the valley of Hinnom. Now hold that in your mind because we’re going to circle back to that, the valley of Hinnom. The second thing you need to understand is that when Jesus says the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, he’s actually quoting from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah, speaking of God’s judgment, says in chapter 66, verse 24, which is the very last chapter and very last verse, he says, for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched. So Jesus is borrowing this phrase from Isaiah, but what is Isaiah referencing? Well, to understand what Isaiah meant, you have to go back to 2 Kings.

Now this would be very long for us to read through this morning, so I’m just going to paraphrase it a bit. In the book of 2 Kings, starting in chapter 16, we read about these two wicked kings of Judah. Both these kings ruled in Jerusalem at different times. Their names were Ahaz and Manasseh. Both of these kings turned away from the God of Israel and worshiped the pagan gods Melech and Baal, okay? Both of these wicked kings did despicable and unthinkable things in terms of pagan worship. So bad, I can’t even mention them this morning because of the young ears in the sanctuary. Now the place where these wicked kings did all of this pagan worship, where they did all their pagan sacrifices, was just outside of Jerusalem in this valley called Hinnom. This is where we get the Greek word Gehenna. Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, is where all of these evil pagan practices took place.

Now in 2 Kings, chapter 23, we read about a new king, a godly king. His name was King Josiah. One of the things that King Josiah did is he went into the valley of Hinnom, where the pagan sacrifices were made, and he desecrated it by turning it into a literal garbage dump. So this is his way to laugh at these pagan worshipers. Under King Josiah’s reign, this once wicked place for pagan worship and sacrifices literally became Israel’s dumpster, where all of the city trash was thrown in. All of the animal carcasses and rotten food was thrown into this place. Now just imagine the worms and maggots in this dumpster valley. The worms would never die because every day new animal carcasses and rotten food were thrown into it. There was an endless supply of food for the worms to feast upon. And of course, to keep all of this trash under control, they had to burn it.

So there was this endless fire that was burning this trash. So when Jesus uses this image of a worm that never dies and a fire that never is quenched, he’s pointing people to the valley of Hinnom, the dumpster fire called hell. And every Jew in Jerusalem would know exactly what Jesus was referring to when he said there worm never dies and their fire is never quenched. They would have known when he said Gehenna that this was that dumpster fire. Jesus likens hell to an eternal, disgusting dumpster fire full of maggots and worms with an endless fire. And Jesus uses this vivid imagery to sober us to the realities of eternal life and eternal damnation. The contrast Jesus puts before us is eternal life with Jesus in a loving relationship with God or an eternal, disgusting dumpster in a judgment relationship with God. You see, eternal life with Jesus is far better and worth giving everything up for in this

momentary life. And while we get this vivid image of what hell is like in this text, why don’t we get an equally detailed picture of heaven? Well, because we see Jesus who is the greatest expression of heaven. You see, the thing that makes heaven so glorious and so wonderful is Jesus. The greatest thing about heaven is the God who occupies it. Nothing compares to it. Nothing is more valuable than it. Nothing is more important. So nothing should come in the way of it. And if it does, it would be best for you to cut off the thing that is preventing you from enjoying him for all of eternity. And listen, this is no easy task. This is hard. It hurts to cut off sin. That’s why Jesus uses the imagery of cutting off hands and feet because that hurts.

Salt of Suffering

We will literally have to deprive ourselves of the things that our bodies are naturally drawn to in the moment. There is a very real sense of suffering connected to cutting off sin. And this is why Jesus reminds his disciples and us to remain the salt of suffering. We see that in verses 49 and 50. Jesus says, for everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if a salt has lost its saltiness, how will it make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. So Jesus just spoke about the kind of fire that we are to do everything to avoid. And here Jesus talks about the kind of fire we are to pursue or welcome. Jesus says, if you are a true follower of Jesus, then you will be salted with fire. Now what does that mean? Well, first you have to understand the value and purpose of salt in the ancient world.

Salt was essential in the ancient world. Not only was salt a means of preserving things, but salt was also the primary source of flavor. And fire was commonly used to illustrate judgment. We just saw Jesus use it as an illustration of judgment. But fire is also used to illustrate trials or suffering. And in this case, Jesus uses fire as suffering. Essentially Jesus is saying to his disciples and to us that as we suffer the cost of discipleship, as we suffer from dying to ourselves daily or laying down the things that our bodies are naturally drawn to, there is a defining and refining of fire that will test us and shape us and transform us. First Peter 4 verses 12 through 13 says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trials, the same word, when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening

to you, but rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. The sufferings and the trials that come to us by God help to shape us and allow us to share in Christ’s suffering. So then as we go through the fire, you can know that the Lord uses the fire to make us salty in a good way. Christ’s work in us through trials will make us a flavor of hope and the aroma of Christ to a watching world. Matthew 5 verses 13 through 16 says, you are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It’s no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a

basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all those in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Jesus here is cuing his disciples and us. The fiery trials will make us a preserving influence in this decaying culture. If we let the suffering produce in us, then we will be salt and light in this thirsty and dark world. And this should be a great encouragement to you as you suffer, dear brothers and sisters. Your suffering and your trials is not for nothing. It’s producing good in you for God’s glory. Listen, hell is a very real and terrifying place. Don’t let the culture fool you into thinking differently. Jesus in his kindness gives us these images to not just show us the reality of hell, but

to show us and remind us what he has done to keep us from this very real and horrific place. Jesus was cut off from the Father. Jesus suffered in our place. He endured the wrath of God on our behalf. He died to pay for the sins that we could never cut off. He descended to the lowest of hells and rose victoriously to free us from this eternal damnation and carry us into eternal life with him. John 3, 16, perhaps the greatest and most popular verse in scripture, screams to us this morning, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes upon him will not perish, meaning not be thrown into this horrific place, but have everlasting life. There’s the contrast. You see the great and easy condition to escape this reality? To have Jesus, trust and believe upon him.

What a marvelous and light condition that God gives us. We need to simply believe and trust. If you’re here this morning and you’re not a Christian and this idea, this concept is freaking you out, in one sense that’s good. You need to know how easy it would be for you to come and trust in this Jesus. All you have to do is ask him, save me. Save me. I believe that you are who you say you are and he will rescue you and he will make you his child. You see, the fear of hell is only one small factor in what drives us to Jesus. It is a factor. Don’t get me wrong. It is a factor, but it’s a very small one. The greater factor, the more compelling reality is that Jesus died for us because he loved us. He went through hell to bring us into a right and loving relationship with God.

That’s what should compel us to chase after Jesus. The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus saves us from this hell that we deserved. Not because we did anything to deserve it. On our own, we couldn’t do anything to escape it, but because he loved us, he gave his life for us. In response to that, dear brother and sister, we can love and live and serve him with full hearts until we see him face to face for all of eternity, until we are with him, the God who not only occupies heaven, but makes it so glorious and so beautiful. That’s what awaits us when we trust in this magnificent Jesus who laid aside his life for us to bring us back to him. Let’s pray. Our father and our God, we pray that in this difficult, dark, and horrific passage that we would see what is true, good, and beautiful about our savior.

That we would not just simply take the horror that is contained here and respond as an escape, but that we would be preoccupied with the depths of what Jesus went through to snatch his children from this dumpster fire. Help us to see it and delight in your loving kindness, in your forgiveness of sin, and in your preserving work through your Holy Spirit. Keep us tethered to Jesus and help us to cut off the things that hinder us in our walk and in our life. Make us holy. Help us to see sin for what it is and help us to see Jesus for who he is. We pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.