Stay Away From Sin

This will be our last week of our sermon series “Who Are You Following?” We have attempted to have scripture, specifically the Gospel of Mark, help us receive an understanding of what it means to choose to follow God instead of the world.

This last week we turn our focus towards “Staying Away from Sin.” Our scripture comes from Mark 9:38-50.

38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 40 for whoever is not against us is for us. 41 Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.

42 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. [44] 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. [46] 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where

“ ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 Everyone will be salted with fire. 50 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Please pray with me…

One of the benefits about not announcing my sermon titles ahead of time is that I can get people to come to church when I am speaking on a topic we would like to ignore. Specifically in this case, regarding sin.

What I hope you will find today is that I am not calling you out for your failures, we all have them. What I hope to do is look at the fact that we are all sinners in the eyes of God, but we should ask for God to help us leave sin behind.

If we are choosing to follow God instead of the world, we should be attempting with God’s help to become closer to him and have loving relationships with those around us.

(Transition)

Let’s begin by looking at a definition of sin. The word sin within scripture is often referred to as missing the mark. What we call sin within the English language originated as an archery term which was related to missing the target that a person is shooting towards.

Therefore, we should view sin as us missing the target that God has given for us to reach. God has an expectation that he would desire for his people to become. We sin when we are unable to hit that expected target.

In archery there is a target that has a small circle known as the bullseye with circles moving out each becoming larger from the center. In the case of God, you are only truly hitting the desired mark when you are hitting the bullseye.

All of the other areas outside of the bullseye on the target would be considered sin. It doesn’t matter if we barely miss or if we miss the whole target we have sinned or failed to live up to the standards, the expectations, given to us by God.

And what we know from scripture it is impossible to hit the bullseye. Meaning, God never expected us to be successful. We are supposed to live our lives with the bullseye in mind and desire to come as close as possible through our connection with God.

The Pharisees believed that the bullseye was possible. They attempted to add their own rules to the rules given to us by God. One way their attempt is described is making fences around the God made rules.

They would make a rule to keep people away from breaking one of God’s commands. They would attempt to encircle the command so that it wouldn’t be broken. Their attempt would fail so they would make another fence.

Each fence was moving humanity out farther from the commandment from God. But, no matter how many fences they added humanity still failed to hit the bullseye.They were unable to prevent the Jewish people from breaking the commandments.

It is because the bullseye is impossible to hit that we need Jesus. It is through Jesus that hitting the bullseye no longer is a requirement for us being right with God. We needed grace for this to be possible.

Grace is the unearned, undeserved gift from God that allows us to have the power of sin removed from our lives. Jesus while he was on earth always hit the bullseye, he never sinned against his father.

This allowed him to be able to step up in our place and hit the bullseye for us. He makes up for all our arrows that are missing the mark. He allows for us to be free from the power of sin.

(Transition)

What we discover from today’s text is that Jesus is taking us on an outward tour of an inward journey. He leads us from a focus on our relationships with fellow believers, to the importance of how we lead new followers.

Jesus finishes our text with our own inward journey and the importance of letting him help us stay away from sin. Those areas of our lives that have the greatest impact on our relationship with God and those around us. Jesus starts with how we should view those that may believe differently than us but are fellow Christians.

(Transition)

The disciples see people that were not a part of the group that were directly with Jesus being able to remove demons in the name of Jesus. Think about that, these individuals hadn’t been taught directly from Jesus but through imitating what they had seen Jesus do, they were able to remove demons.

These individuals would not have been filled with the Holy Spirit. They had the faith to believe that the name of Jesus was powerful enough to battle Satan and win. Jesus tells the disciples to leave them be.

We can find different denominations and churches viewing our relationship with God and a focus on sin differently than us. For some there is an understanding that you must meet certain expectations, certain criteria to be a part of their church.

Others,the expectation would be that you are supposed to be on a journey attempting to become closer to God. That would be the United Methodist Church. We believe that God is attempting to help us become closer to him each and every day.

He wants to help us discover the sins that are getting in the way of our relationship with him and those around us. He wants us to allow for him to help us remove those sins from our lives. But the journey never ends because there are always new sins that God brings before us.

Meaningwe believe we have solved our sin problem which works until God provides new areas for us to work on. God is at work through the Holy Spirit letting us know what he desires from us, in order for us, to become closer to him and be able to do a better job of how we treat those around us.

Our scripture makes the point that no matter how you view God through Jesus as long as the focus of the church or denomination, or the individual is on the name of Jesus than they are serving God. Each one may have different beliefs, but all are following God the way they are supposed too.

This is where we have our election update. It is possible that you haven’t convinced all of your Christian friends to vote for who you think they should vote for. This scripture should remind us that this does not mean they are not Christian.

They viewtheir understanding of God and his relationship with politics different than you. This means that we should not allow our disagreements to lead us to call them out on their Christian belief. We should continue to be in relationship with them and trust that God is at work in their lives just as he is in our lives. Make sense.

(Transition)

We as humans need to not allow the focus on us doing church the way that we believe church is supposed to be done to cause us to decide that the way others do church is incorrect. It is why there are so many denominations.

What we need to focus on instead is why the church exists. We spoke about this some last week. The church exists to help those around us that don’t know Jesus. We are to be a safe place for others to heal from their pain and to follow the great healer.

That is why Jesus says that those that are removing demons in his name are not doing anything wrong. Those that are for us, or for Jesus, can’t be against us. You can’t be removing demons in the name of Jesus one moment and calling him a demon the next.

It is why he follows up with the next section. He makes clear that it is through moving people away from God through our actions that truly upset God. God wants us to be on a journey, but he also wants us to help instead of hindering those on their own journey.

(Transition)

Jesus views a new believer as a child. Someone who is beginning their journey in the Christian life. Someone who is going to need help by those around them in order for them to understand God and become the person that God desires for them to be.

Scripture tells us that a new believer is like a plant without a strong root system. The person can be easily swayed and can end up losing their belief in God. They can end up struggling in believing that God does exist, and that Jesus died for their sins.

It is so important to God that we live our lives helping those around us become closer to God. That is why he uses these very graphic analogies to make his point. He begins with a large millstone being placed around our neck and having us thrown into the water.

It is Jesus basically saying it is better for a person to die than it would be for them to move a new follower of Jesus away from the faith. This is why it is important that the church be welcoming to those around us.

(Transition)

Jesus didn’t care who he was speaking with from the tax collector to the leper, to the religious leaders. He desired to help them become closer to God. He desired to help them understand that God loves them, that desires to be in a close personal relationship with them.

Jesus also understands what can get in the way of us helping those around us and us becoming the person he desires for us to be. It is why he continues using these graphic analogies to make his point.

He wants us to examine our lives and have him help us discover what is getting in the way of us becoming the person that he desires us to be. He loves us too much to allow for us to stay where we are in our relationship with him. He wants us to grow in our faith and become closer to him.

Jesus is saying in this text that once you discover the origination of your sin you need to remove it from your life. He doesn’t mean for us to literally remove our foot, our hand or our eye. He knows that just removing the physical item will not fix the internal problem.

We may look externally like we have our act together but internally we still may be battling the same demons we have already been facing. We may have to admit we are struggling and be willing to have God help us with our sin before we will be able to remove the hindrance getting in the ways of our relationship with God and those around us.

Our first reading says it this way, we need to “offer ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.”

This means that we don’t allow guilt and shame to lead us into an attitude of failure. We are to allow the grace of God to work within us, to help guide us, into ways to help us, overcome our weaknesses.

We may have to decide that removing our sin is more important than our own comfort. We may have to become uncomfortable. We may have to rely on God more, and let our own wants and desires impact our lives less in order to become who God desires for us to be.

This may not be an easy journey, but it’s worth it. We will find that life is better when we allow God to help us remove the sin from our lives. We will find ourselves closer to him and we will find that we are able to do a better job of showing the love of God to those around us.

(Transition)

This is what Jesus is speaking of when he focuses on salt and the importance that we don’t lose our saltiness. It is when we choose to follow the ways of the world instead of allowing God to help us do a better job of following him that we lose our saltiness.

Salt is a natural substance. What can happen to salt is that if the wrong substances get introduced to the salt it can lead to saltiness to no longer help with preserving our food or helping bring out the flavors to our food.

We lose our saltiness when we allow the ways of the outside word to become greater in our lives than the ways of God. Jesus in today’s text is warning us of the importance of not allowing sin to invade us to the point that God can’t be seen through us.

Let us choose to follow the ways of God. Let us decide today that we are going to rely more on the Holy Spirit than the ways of the world so that we can reflect the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in the way we live our lives.

Please pray with me…