Scripture: Mark 9:38-50
Video Link: https://youtu.be/UozKwTQBBWY
Structure:
- Introduction
- The exorcist
- Crime and punishment
- Salty sayings
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
Most dining tables have salt and pepper shakers on them. Salt and pepper add flavour and spice to the meal. The purpose of salt and pepper is to make the food taste better, but if you try eating salt and pepper on their own, you are in for a nasty surprise.
Today we continue our series in the gospel of Mark, based on the lectionary readings. Last week we heard how Jesus defines greatness. The way up is down.
This week’s lectionary reading is a salt and pepper passage. By itself it tastes bitter and unpleasant. But mix a little salt and pepper in with Jesus’ goodness and grace, and it improves the quality of your relationships. From Mark 9, verse 38 we read…
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. 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. 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.”
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
There’s an advert on TV which shows two toasters making toast. Each of the toasters is powered by electricity from different power companies. One of the power companies charges more for their electricity than the other company but, despite the difference in price, the toast comes out exactly the same.
There are any number of power companies, but electricity is electricity. It cooks toast the same, regardless of what power company you use. No power company has a monopoly on electricity.
In verse 38 of Mark 9, the disciple John reports how they saw someone driving out demons in the name of Jesus and told him to stop.
This is interesting. Earlier, in Mark chapter 9, the disciples had been unable to cast out a demon. Now we find someone who is not one of the twelve, but who believes in Jesus and is successful at performing exorcisms.
Why do the disciples think they have the right to instruct someone more competent than them? That’s like any one of us trying to tell Lydia Ko how to play golf.
Well, John told the unknown exorcist to stop because he was not one of them, he wasn’t in their club. The disciples think they are better than this unknown exorcist, even though the exorcist is more effective than they are.
Jesus had just been teaching his disciples about humility and service.
The unknown exorcist is serving the least and he is serving Jesus, but the disciples can’t see it. Jesus’ words haven’t sunk in yet. They don’t understand.
You get the feeling John thinks he has done something good. Maybe he hopes to be commended by Jesus? Maybe he is wanting to climb the honour ladder and advance himself? But Jesus is not impressed.
In verse 39 Jesus corrects his disciples saying, ‘Do not stop him. 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.’
To do something in Jesus’ name means to be a bona-fide representative of Jesus. And to be a bona-fide representative, you need to stand in right relationship with Jesus, you need to trust him. It’s more than simply adding Jesus’ name to the end of your prayer, as important as that is.
The unknown exorcist wasn’t using Jesus’ name like a magic spell.
The unknown exorcist stood in right relationship with Jesus. He trusted in Jesus and was able to cast out demons by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are any number of power companies, but electricity is electricity.
It cooks toast the same, regardless of what power company you use.
No power company has a monopoly on electricity.
There are any number of Christians, but the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is free to work through any believer who stands in right relationship with Jesus. No disciple, no church, no denomination has a monopoly on overcoming evil by the power of the Spirit.
If another Christian is doing good at school or at work, or if another church is doing good in the hood, then don’t knock them. Encourage them. We are on the same side.
In verse 41 Jesus goes on to say: 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.
Don’t you love how Jesus keeps it real. Not many of us are going to perform miracles in this life. But any Christian believer can give a cup of water in Jesus’ name.
Any representative of Christ can show kindness. It’s like Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
The greatest power is love.
Crime and punishment:
I started this sermon talking about salt and pepper. Verses 42-50 contain the salt and pepper of the gospel in concentrated form. Taken by themselves these verses taste bitter and unpleasant. They were never meant to be read in isolation from the rest of the Bible. So, as you hear them, remember God’s love for you. Remember too, the grace of Jesus. From verse 42 we read…
“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…”
Jesus is talking about crime and punishment here.
Who are these little ones, that Jesus mentions?
In verse 37 Jesus took a small child in his arms and said, ‘whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me…’ So, these little ones might be young children generally. Don’t do anything to harm children or lead them into sin because God is just. He will hold you to account.
However, these little ones might also be adults, like the unknown exorcist in verse 38, who believe in Jesus. Don’t do anything to cause a fellow believer to fall or lose faith because God is just. He will hold you to account.
The point here is that we have a responsibility to set a good example for others in the faith, especially those who are looking up to us. To trip up one who enjoys a close relationship with Jesus is a terrible crime and merits a terrible punishment.
I don’t often tell jokes in my sermons, partly because I’m not a funny person but also because many of you don’t share my sense of humour. That said, I’m going to take a risk and tell you a joke now…
A little girl was talking to a man on the train about whales. The man said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human being because even though whales are very large, their throats are very small.
The little girl said that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The man became visibly irritated saying again, in a stern voice, ‘It is physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human person’.
The little girl said, ‘When I get to heaven, I will ask Jonah’.
The man retorted, ‘What if Jonah goes to hell?’
To which the girl replied, ‘Then you ask him’.
In verses 43-48, Jesus talks about hell and how to avoid going there.
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.
Ditto that for your feet and your eyes.
In the first century, people were punished by having limbs lopped off.
The punishment for stealing was having your left hand cut off.
The punishment for a runaway slave was having one foot chopped off.
And sometimes people had an eye put out for various other crimes.
These sorts of punishments marked the offender for life, so everyone knew what they had done. And it made practical tasks a lot more difficult for the culprit themselves.
That said, Jesus is not talking literally here. Jesus is not advocating self-harm. Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is taking an image his listeners would be familiar with and using it to warn people not to go down the wrong path.
The hand is a metaphor for the sorts of things one might do that could lead them into sin. The foot is a metaphor for the sorts of places one might go that could lead them into sin. And the eye is a metaphor for the sorts of things one might look at that could lead them into sin.
For example. If alcohol is a problem for you, then you need to be ruthless in cutting yourself off from alcohol. That doesn’t mean cutting off your hand so you can’t pick up a bottle.
That means not having any alcohol in the house. It means not going to the pub and not hanging out with friends who like to drink. And if there are lots of bottle stores between where you work and where you live, then it might mean taking an alternative route home to avoid temptation.
Now, I’m not picking on alcoholics here. You could substitute alcohol abuse for any other harmful behaviour, like gossip or sexual immorality or greed or pride or power or gambling or self-centredness or whatever. The point is to cut ourselves off from sin. Nip it in the bud.
That means we need to be thinking a few steps ahead. Where is this decision taking me? Where is this night out or this drink or this text message or this website or this friendship or this swipe right going to lead?
Of course, we don’t always know where our first steps might take us. The thing about your hands and your feet and your eyes is that they are not inherently bad, they are useful and good in fact. Sometimes what seems innocent enough at first can be misleading. We need to be totally honest with ourselves.
Three times in three verses we come across the word hell. No one in the Bible talks about hell more than Jesus. The actual word translated as ‘hell’ is Gehenna, also known (in the Old Testament) as the Valley of Hinnom, that is, the Valley of Wailing. Gehenna is located on the south side of old Jerusalem.
Centuries before Mark wrote his gospel, the Israelites had sacrificed their children to pagan gods in the Valley of Hinnom. God hated this evil practice. After that, Gehenna became a rubbish dump, where maggots fed off animal carcasses and rubbish was always smouldering.
Given the stench and the filth and the continual burning, Gehenna became a metaphor for hell. Jesus was using an image his listeners were familiar with to describe what happens to the enemies of God in the afterlife. Jesus uses the term hell to describe the way God’s justice will deal with evil.
Those who are committed to doing evil are destroyed and thrown out like rubbish, 48 where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’ Hell, therefore, is God’s righteous judgement on evil.
Verse 48 is a reference to the last verse in the book of Isaiah. It contains a message of judgment and hope. In Isaiah 66 we read…
23 From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all humankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord.
24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all humankind.”
All this talk about hell is scary. It’s horrifying. Questions rise in our minds about what hell is like. What’s the temperature? Who will be there? Is it a place of conscious suffering? Or is it a place of annihilation? We simply don’t know the answers to those sorts of questions and we shouldn’t speculate.
What we can say is that God is good. He is just and merciful, gracious and true. God is love. The Lord of love is our judge and he will do what is right by each one.
The present reality is that this world is a war zone, spiritually speaking.
For the kingdom of God to be realised on earth, the kingdom of evil must be destroyed. Hell is the destruction of the kingdom of evil and that, ultimately, is good news for humanity.
In the same breath that Jesus talks about hell, he also talks about entering life and the kingdom of God. The point seems to be, participation in the kingdom of God is worth any sacrifice. It is better to be limited in what you do in this world, if that means enjoying eternal life.
Salty sayings:
Some of you may have played the word association game. With this game, you start with a word and then someone else says another word that is related in some way and you keep going like that until a word gets repeated or you can’t make an association.
For example, you might start with the word cow, then milk, cereal, breakfast, dinner, steak, salt, fire and so on. Now some of you may be thinking, I can see the connection between most of those words, but what’s the connection between salt and fire? Well, the thing that salt and fire have in common is they both purify things.
In verses 49-50 of Mark 9, Jesus gives us three salty sayings. We don’t know whether Jesus said these sayings all on the same occasion or whether the gospel writer, Mark, simply collected the salty sayings of Jesus in one place to make them easier to recall.
What we do see here is a certain word association. Verse 48 talks about the fire that is not quenched and in verse 49 we get the saying, ‘everyone will be salted with fire’.
In the ancient world, salt was associated with purity because it came from the two most pure things known at the time. The sea and the sun. Likewise, fire was associated with purification because precious metals (like silver) were refined by fire.
Therefore, the phrase, everyone will be salted with fire, probably means everyone will be purified. This is not saying everyone will go through hell or purgatory. Being salted with fire is a metaphor for the process of purification we go through in this life.
Jesus’ second salty saying reads: Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?
Salt is a preservative. Salt fights corruption. Unless the Christian resists corruption and evil, bad things will flourish unchecked in the world.
Followers of Jesus are to live a pure life, a life of moral integrity.
But wait, there’s more. In the Law of Moses, grain offerings needed to be seasoned with salt before being burned. In Leviticus chapter 2, we read…
13 Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.
As well as being a preservative and a purifying agent, salt is also a symbol of a covenant commitment with God. To lose one’s saltiness is to lose one’s commitment to God. Mark 9, verse 50, is a warning against apostacy. Jesus is saying, don’t turn back on your commitment to God. Keep the faith.
Jesus’ third salty saying goes like this: Have salt among yourselves and be at peace with each other.
Salt brings out the best in food. Salt makes things taste more like themselves.
For example, if you put salt on an egg, it makes the egg taste more like an egg. Without salt, the egg tastes a bit like rubber.
To have salt among yourselves, therefore, is to bring out the best in each other. To help those around us to be the best version of themselves. Having salt among yourselves is the opposite of tripping others up or causing them to fall.
William Barclay explains Jesus’ meaning well. Have within yourselves the purifying influence of the Spirit of Christ. Be purified from selfishness and self-seeking, from bitterness and anger and grudge-bearing. Then you will be able to live in peace with those around you.[1]
Last week, we heard how the disciples had been arguing about who was the greatest. This kind of thinking does not bring out the best in people. It brings out the worst. Jesus wants his disciples to preserve their relationships together and to bring out the best in each other. This requires a covenant of salt, a commitment to serving one another’s wellbeing.
Conclusion:
Each of us (if we are honest with ourselves) is a mixture of good and evil.
We are not pure and we cannot purify ourselves. So where does that leave us?
Well, God does not want to send you to hell. The Lord does not want anyone to perish, he wants everyone to come to repentance and be saved. Your soul is precious to God. So precious in fact, that God sent his own dear Son, Jesus, to redeem your life.
We are made right with God through faith in Jesus. Learning to trust and obey Jesus is our purification process. Sometimes it hurts. We are made salty again as we submit to the work of God’s Spirit in our lives.
May the Lord guide us in the way of purity and peace. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
- What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- How do Jesus’ words in Mark 9:38-50 make you feel? Why do you feel this way?
- Why does John tell the unknown exorcist to stop driving out demons? Why does Jesus correct John?
- What does it mean to do something in the name of Jesus?
- Discuss / reflect on Mark 9:42-48. How are we to interpret these verses? Who are “these little ones”? What is hell? What notes of hope do you see?
- Is there anything in your life that you need to cut off? (E.g. a habit, a pattern of thought, a relationship, etc.) How might you do this?
- Discuss / reflect on the three salty sayings of Jesus in Mark 9:49-50. What is the connection between salt and fire? What does it mean to lose one’s saltiness? How might we bring out the best in one another and be at peace?
[1] William Barclay, Commentary on Mark’s gospel, page 244. (My paraphrase of WB’s words.)
Tawa Baptist 