How You Live Matters
Notes
Transcript
How do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?
One will see you later, the other in a while
Good Morning
Read Speak O Lord
Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of Your holy Word
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All Your purposes for Your glory
Teach us,
Lord, full obedience
Holy reverence, true humility
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of Your purity
Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see
Your majestic love and authority
Words of pow'r that can never fail
Let their truth prevail over unbelief
Speak, O
Lord, and renew our minds
Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity
And by grace, we'll stand on Your promises
And by faith, we'll walk as You walk with us
Speak, O Lord, 'til Your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory
Today we are going to be in Mark 9:42-50.
Who likes freedom?
Who likes being free?
Freedom is not free.
Many people paid a high price for our freedom.
There are countless men and women who sacrificed a lot, some gave the ultimate sacrifice. They never came home.
Some came home with injures, they are will live the rest of their lives with these injuries.
Others made it home without physical injuries, but they are not the same.
The came home different than when they left. They saw things and had to do things that no should have to see or do.
Freedom comes with a price.
Because freedom has such a high price, we can not just take it for granted and live however we want to.
We owe it to those men and women who made sacrifices to live a life that honors those sacrifices.
A life that takes advantage of the freedoms that they fought for us to have.
If we live a live that abuses those freedoms, we do them a great disservice.
We can see in America today what happens we we live a life that doesn’t honor the freedoms that we are given, that we provided at such a high cost.
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
There is an even greater freedom that came at an even greater cost.
It is freedom from the slavery to sin.
Before we are free, sin is our master and we love to serve it.
Even after we are free from it, our flesh desires to go back to it.
The cost of that freedom is the most expensive.
It cost God His only Son’s life.
Jesus gave His life so that we could be free.
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Today we are going to look at what Jesus had to say about how we should live in light of the cost of our freedom.
We must not make a mockery of the cost of our salvation, our freedom.
That is exactly what we do when we say we are a believer, but our lives show something completely different.
Last week we saw what it takes to be great. Jesus told us the true definition of greatness, to serve others, a specially those who are less fortunate or those who can not do anything for us.
When we are serving others, we are loving like Christ.
Let’s see what Jesus has to say about how we should live.
Please stand as we read God’s word.
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. 43 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. 45 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. 47 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, 48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ 49 For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 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.”
Jesus is still in Capernaum, most likely He is in Peter’s house. He used a child to emphasize He point of serving and He is going to use a child again to emphasize how we should act toward others.
Who is a little one that Jesus is talking about?
He is referring to anyone who calls themselves a believer. Every believer is a child of God. We are the little ones.
The world translated “to stumble” literally means “ to cause to fall”.
It is no small matter if we cause a believer to stumble and turn away from God!
There is severe punishment for that person who entices, traps, or leads a believer into sin and away from God.
We just learned about serving others. If someone leads another into sin, they are not serving them, they are not loving them. They are hating them and leading them into hell.
The punishment for that person is hell.
Jesus said it would be better to have a great millstone hung on their neck and then thrown into the sea.
This millstone would have been so big that it would have taken an animal to move it to grind the flour.
This would have been a massive stone. There would be no way someone could have moved that stone.
Death by drowning would be better than leading someone to sin.
How we treat others is a big deal! It matters.
Don’t think that just because you say I am a christian, God will forgive me of my sins, that this does not apply to you!
I would say that if this is your attitude, I would question your salvation.
This is not what the Bible teaches. That is not how Jesus teaches us to live. This is not a right attitude toward sin.
Every person matters!
Every life is valuable!
God loves everyone, even the ones that we think are unlovable!
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Jesus died for everyone to have the chance a salvation.
We must see God’s value in everyone. We must treat everyone with the love that God has for them. We are not loved more than they are. God’s love is the same for all His creation.
V 43-47 Jesus tells us how we should deal with sin in our lives. What our view of sin should be. These are drastic measures that Jesus talks about.
He tells us that whatever causes us to stumble, and therefore cause others to stumble, must be removed.
The hand, foot and eye are all extremely valuable parts of the body, yet if they are causing us to sin, they must go!
Now Jesus is not advocating for self mutalization, He is not commanding us to go and cut of body parts.
He already taught us in Mark 7:20-23 that it is out of the heart that evil comes.
20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
It is not our body parts that cause us to sin, it is our nature to sin. We are sinful beings from birth. Anyone who has had a child can see that. We don’t have to teach our children to do wrong. That comes naturally to them, we have to teach them what is right.
He is telling us that sin is to the inner person what a cancerous tumor is to the body, and it must be dealt with drastically.
What ever the sin is, we must do whatever it takes to remove it from our lives. That can be hard to do sometimes. Some sin requires us to change our wholes lives to remove it.
A recovering addict needs to change their whole life to not be able to fall back into using again. They need new friends, a new life. It is not easy, but it is necessary. It is worth it.
Whatever the sin is in our lives, it will take drastic measures to get rid of it. It is that important, that Jesus would say to cut it out of your life. No surgery is painless! But it is worth it. After we heal, we are better off than before the surgery. We may not be great, but we are better. I have had between 16-18 surgeries. I have lost count. All of them were painful. They all had a recovery time and a time of rehab. Removing sin is the same way. We have to do whatever is necessary to remove it, then we must recover from that drastic action, then we learn to live our new life.
There is no sin that is acceptable to a believer or to God. It all must be dealt with, no matter what the cost.
It is that serious.
Next Jesus describes hell.
Hell is a real place.
Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible.
It is real.
It is bad.
No one wants to go there.
Jesus says that the worm never dies and the fire is not quenched. That sounds like a lovely place. No it doesn’t
The word used for hell is gehenna. It is a literal place. It refers to the valley to the southwest of Jerusalem. It is where during the rule of King Ahaz, they would sacrifice children to Molech, the fire god. King Josiah ended this horrible practice and to keep it from coming back, he turned that valley into a garbage dump. He defiled the place with trash and there was an endless fire burning there. This was as close to hell as a person could get on earth. This was a graphic symbol of eternal torment.
We have a hard time visualizing hell here in America. We have a good life compared to the rest of the world. We are blessed to be Americans. That does not mean that we are better than the rest. We are reaping the benefits of our forefathers who were Godly and God has blessed their faithfulness.
Hell is a real place. It is a horrible place. We must do whatever is necessary to not go there.
Some people will end up in hell. That is what the Bible teaches. That is a hard truth that the world does not want us to teach. If there is no hell, then why do we need Jesus?
V 49 is a difficult and hard passage to understand. It is only found in Mark.
The best interpretation I could find says that believers are purified through suffering and persecution. The link between salt and fire lie in the OT sacrifices, which were accompanied by salt.
13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.
Salt was extremely important to the Jews. They were in a hot climate and they didn’t have refrigeration. Salt was the practical way to preserve food. It was not only important for their required sacrifices, but also for their survival. Without the ability to preserve their food, life would have been much harder.
If salt loses its ability to preserve food, it becomes useless. We are called to be salt of the world. We accomplish this through the work of the Word and the Spirit. This work produces Godly character, enabling us to act as a preservative in our society.
If we don’t let the Word and the Spirit do this work in us, the we are useless. We must let the Word and the Spirit do its work in us, that is the only way we can have a positive effect on this world. That is the only way that our actions will match our words. That is how we can get the attention of our community, by living out what the Bible teaches us. That is how we are salt to the world.
Jesus ends by telling us to have salt in ourselves and be at peace with one another.
If we are not study the Bible and surrendering to the Holy Spirit, we will not have salt in us.
If we are not at peace with each other, how in the world came we be salt to the world.
Why would anyone want what we have if we are fighting with each other? How does that help anyone or anything.
If we can’t get a long with a fellow believer, how can we even think about helping a non believer.
If we can’t get the basics down here, we have no business going out there!
How we live our lives is of the utmost importance. The fruit that we produce, reveals what is in our hearts.
Are we living out what Jesus teaches?
Do we have the right view of sin?
Are you willing to do whatever it takes to cut sin out of your life?
How is our life effecting others?
Let’s pray.
