Mark 9: 43 – 47
Sermon – What causes people to sin?
Jesus here in Mark 9 is in the last stages of his earthly ministry;
soon he will make his triumphant entry into Jerusalem;
and soon after that he will be betrayed, arrested and killed.
In earlier chapters of Mark’s Gospel we have read how he calmed a storm,
healed a demon-possessed man,
raised a dead girl to life,
fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish,
and walked on water.
Mark has described how Jesus was been recognized as the Christ
and was Transfigured along with Elijah and Moses.
By now the disciples should have realized who Jesus was and what he stood for,
but obviously various pennies had not dropped at that time,
and wouldn’t until after he had been crucified, died and buried
and then seen and talked to after he had risen from the dead.
Only then would the disciples appreciate that Jesus was not just a prophet,
someone who had the mind of God and transmitted His messages;
not just a deliverer from evil,
someone who could cast out evil spirits;
not just a miracle worker,
someone who could do things for which there was no logical or scientific explanation;
not just a moral teacher,
someone who spelled out the difference between right and wrong
and how to live lives which were pleasing to God;
but Almighty God incarnate,
the Emmanuel – ‘God with us’,
the Anointed Messiah,
and God in human form walking the earth
looking like those he created at the beginning of time.
He has talked to them in parables,
such as the Story of the Lost Coin and the Lost Son
and the Story of the Good Samaritan,
and has sat down with them to explain the meaning of his stories,
which for some reason he did not do with the common people,
who were left to figure out the meaning by themselves;
but in today’s reading he does not mince words.
Jesus tells them straight how they – and through the Gospel – we,
can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,
have everlasting life,
not just a few more years by eating a good diet and having exercise.
He tells them – and through the Gospel – us,
what the causes of sin are,
so that they, and we, can be on our guard against them,
and therefore not forfeit what God wants us to have.
According to Jesus, as recorded in this portion of Mark’s Gospel,
there are four things that cause people to sin;
four things that we should be aware of and on our guard against
every day of our lives.
The 1st is bad influences, tempters to do wrong, encouragers of doubt.
It is often difficult to know right from wrong;
black is black and white is white, and they are easy to differentiate between,
but the so called ‘grey areas’ make life difficult,
and this is where the devil can sidetrack us and make us fall into sin.
For example, we would all say that life is precious,
but what would we say to a schoolgirl who had raped, and by a man with HIV AIDS,
who thinks that an abortion would be the best way out?
Life is precious,
but what would we say to someone who is terminally ill and in pain
and asks us to leave some pain killers within their reach,
and we know they have it in their mind to end their suffering once and for all?
We see politicians claiming the maximum possible expenses
and then saying how sorry they are, after they have been caught out,
and then we receive a letter and the stamp has not been cancelled,
and we are tempted to use the stamp on a letter we have ready to post?
That MP got thousands of pounds; the stamp would save us 30p?
What does Jesus say: in the Lord’s Prayer that he taught his disciples?
‘Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil’.
And on TV, there are so many good programmers which entertain and inform,
but so many which poke fun at religion, or God, or church, or Jesus.
Do we get rid of our TVs, or jump up and turn them off when something offends us?
And for those who have to work with other people,
and all of us, when we come in contact with non-believers in the shops, etc.,
how do we react when they use the Lord’s name in vain
or say something negative about God or church?
Do we keep our heads down and our mouths shut,
or do we stand up for what we confess we believe in every Sunday morning.
One the one hand, the devil puts us in these positions to test our faith,
and on the other hand, God is watching to see if we take advantage of opportunities
or run away from them,
preferring a quiet life of non-confrontation.
As I have said so many times in so many sermons,
going to church on Sunday is easy;
it’s living the Christian life, the sin-avoiding life, the God-glorifying life,
that is hard.
The 2nd cause of sin, according to Jesus, is our hands.
Obviously there is nothing wrong with our palms, fingers and thumbs
because they are part of us and we were created in the image and likeness of God,
so the problem obviously is how we use our hands.
Do we use them to help or to hurt?
Are they open as a sign of honesty and truthfulness, and our vulnerability to others,
or are they closed like fists, threatening and aggressive, and keeping other people away?
There are hundreds of references to ‘hands’ in my Concordance, such as:
Job 16:17 ‘my hands have been free of violence’, which I hope we can also claim, and
Isaiah 2:8 ‘they worship the work of their hands’, which I hope we never do, and
Hebrews 1:10: ‘the heavens are the work of your hands (God’s hands)’,
which I believe, whatever those who believe in evolution might say, and
Luke 23:46 where Jesus said just before he died: ‘into your hands (God’s hands), I commit my spirit’, which I hope we will also say before we depart this life.
The one to be on guard against is Revelation 20:4,
where some were described as having the devil’s mark ‘on their foreheads
or on their hands’;
may we never so fall into sin that we give the Evil One the satisfaction of thinking
that we belong to him.
May our hands always be put to good use.
The 3rd cause of sin according to Jesus is our feet.
Again, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with our insteps or heels or toes
because they are part of us and we were created in the image and likeness of God,
so the question is do we use our feet for good or for evil?
In Isaiah 59:7 those whose feet ‘rush into sin’ are warned
that God sees and will punish them.
Mark 9:27 records one of the many healing and deliverance miracles
performed by Jesus:
it says he commanded the evil spirit to come out of a boy
and stop causing the boy to be unable to speak,
and then ‘took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet’.
We might not have the power to perform healing miracles,
but we all have hands and feet that we could use to help someone in need
should God give us the opportunity.
If He does, I pray we will not be found wanting.
Romans 10:15 ‘how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news’,
meaning those who pass on the Gospel of grace and forgiveness
to those who are without Christ and under the Law.
God wants us to have beautiful feet,
and not feet that somehow cause us to ‘rush into sin’.
The 4th cause of sin according to Jesus is our eyes
Again, obviously there can be nothing wrong with our retinas,
our corneas and our eyeballs
because they are part of us and we were created in the image and likeness of God,
so we are called on to think how we use our eyes, for good or for evil?
We can read in the OT books of 1st and 2nd Kings
that so many men who became kings of Israel or Judah, sinned, and
‘did evil in the eyes of the Lord’;
I pray that we will never fall from grace and fall into this category.
In Psalm 101:5 God condemns those who ‘haughty eyes’,
while in the very next verse, Psalm 101:6 it says ‘My eye (God’s eye)
will be on the faithful’,
which I take to mean that He will be looking out for us, protecting us.
In Matthew 6:22 and 6:23 Jesus said:
‘The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are good (and I don’t think he meant wearing spectacles was wrong)
your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eyes are bad,
your whole body will be full of darkness’.
By faith, I hope we can all relate to the words of Mary, in Luke 2:30,
which are contained in what we now call ‘The Magnificat’:
‘my eyes have seen your salvation’.
I started with the question: what causes people to sin,
and the answer is not our hands or our feet or our eyes,
or even our tongues, which James in chapter 3 of his Letter, said no man can tame.
While we might sin by using our hands or feet or eyes in some wrongful way,
we know that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these parts of our bodies;
the answer to the question: what causes people to sin
is the human heart, not our blood pump,
but our soul or mind which causes us to sin.
Jesus said many things which we have to take literally,
but I don’t think he really meant us to cut off our hands
or cut off our feet,
or pluck out our eyes;
that would be ridiculous,
as would be cutting off our tongues
or cutting out our hearts.
Instead of making physical cuts to physical parts of our bodies,
what we have to do to avoid falling into sin
is ask God to give us heart transplants,
taking away our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh,
as it says in Ezekiel 11:19.
There is much good advice in the Scriptures that we should follow,
and bearing in mind today’s Gospel reading,
I think one which we should especially heed is Hebrews 12:2:
‘let us fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith’.
If we do that, as far as is humanly possible,
and do the same with our hands and our feet,
then with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will not fall into sin,
and never lose the wonderful things that God has prepared for us.
Amen, and the peace of God .............................................
