Cut It Off, Then Come Alive

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[0:00] Our gospel text, our sermon text is Mark 7, 24 through 37. We're in Mark, kind of in the lectionary at this time of year. And so the first thing I'm going to say about this is the standard warning, which is do not try this at home.

[0:15] You know how you see that? Like they're jumping their motorcycles off a giant jump and they're like, don't do this at home. You know, don't play with fire at home. So you're going to see what I'm talking about in just a minute. But do not try this at home. You'll see why. And I want to introduce the idea of something. It's a rhetorical device that you find in the Bible, but many other places. It's called hyperbole. And actually, that's a kind of a mashup of two Greek words. Hyper means sort of above. So like hyperactive means you're above normal activity, right? Hypo is below. So a hypodermic needle goes underneath your skin. Get it, right? So hyper is above. Hypo is below. And balo is the Greek word to throw something. So to hyper, to hyper balo something in Greek is to throw something way over somebody's head. But really, the idea that we get from that is you are exaggerating something for effect. So it's a rhetorical device that exaggerates an idea to kind of not an absurd level, but to a great level so that it kind of catches your attention. And in a way, then, it's sort of a distant cousin of a parable because it gets you thinking. It kind of takes you out of your normal thinking about how words are put together.

[1:26] And you go, oh, why? Why is somebody stressing this point so sort of vociferously? Well, then it gets you thinking why. Okay. So we're going to ask ourselves in this hyperbole that we're about to read about what not to do at home is what's the underlying message here. So with that introduction, let's go to our reading. Mark 7, 24.

[1:49] When I have that wrong. Mark 9, 38 through 50. I have it here correctly. And I also have it written here in the. In my text correctly. So Mark 9, 38 through 50. John said to Jesus, teacher, we saw someone using your name to cast out demons. But we told him to stop because he wasn't in our group. Don't stop him. Jesus said, no one who performs a miracle in my name will soon be able to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us. If anyone gives you even a cup of water because you belong to the Messiah, I tell you the truth. That person will surely be rewarded.

[2:30] But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better to enter eternal life with only one hand than to go into the unquenchable fires of hell with two hands.

[2:56] If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better to enter eternal life with only one foot than to be thrown into hell with two feet. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It's better to enter the kingdom of God with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where the maggots never die and the fire never goes out. For everyone will be tested. With fire. Salt is good for seasoning, but if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again?

[3:33] You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this word, this difficult word. We ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, you guys got the do not try at home part? Was that clear to you? I was talking about? So I want to address this right away because I don't want anyone to be unduly concerned about this passage. You're thinking about all the sharp tools you have at home. I have a chainsaw. I love my chainsaw. It would actually do the trick. Once it got to the bone, it'd be a little more work, but it would do it.

[4:15] You have some sharp objects at home. Don't do it. Don't do it. Because this is not... Jesus is not actually advocating that we harm our own... physical bodies. Everybody raise your hand and say, we'll not do this. You know, like you got it. You got it. Okay. Jesus is not saying this, that we should actually harm ourselves. Do you know that you are stewards of creation and the creation includes you? God holds us accountable for how we treat the physical aspects of this world, including our own bodies. He does not want us to maim our own bodies. Okay. We should not purposely maim ourselves. God loves us and he wants us well.

[4:53] And actually, if you start... all this cutting off all the different parts of you that sin, there will only be a few molecules left at the end. Because we are sinful through and through, from top to bottom. So, this is hyperbole, right? This is a purposeful exaggeration to get our attention. And we need to figure out what the bigger picture is. The bigger picture isn't to hurt ourselves. The bigger picture is that God cares about sin. So does Jesus, right? Because it is an affront to his holiness. And it's a perversion of his good creation. God actually cares about sin. It separates us from God. It can't exist really in the same place with God. His holiness is too great for it. So he really is concerned about sin. And you know, Jesus talks about sin a lot, not all the time, but he talks about it a fair amount. And if we soft-pedal it too much, we're not really being faithful to the Scriptures. Sin is a big deal. It's an important part of our understanding. It's not everything we talk about. I mean, I told you a while ago about somebody asked a pastor, how do you choose what you preach on? Because we try to use the lectionary, you know. And that pastor's response was, well, I just pick a sin and preach against it.

[6:07] You know, oh my gosh, that could get tiresome after a while. But you know, he's not, it's not the, probably not the worst thing you could do because otherwise it's just all sunshine and lollipops. You know, you can get that somewhere else. You don't need to come to church for that, right?

[6:22] So God cares about sin. And there's a lot of images in the Bible about paring something down so that what remains is more pure. There's actually like six things, and I'm going to list three for you. And if you want to take notes, you should take notes. But there's a lot of images in the Bible about reducing something to be more pure and more holy and more directed towards God's purposes of rescuing the world. I'm going to give you three examples. First, at one point in John's Gospel, Jesus has like hundreds, maybe even thousands of followers. There are people following him everywhere, and it looks like they're all his disciples. Like this is a big movement that's really growing right around John 5, John 6.

[7:03] And he starts to teach some really difficult things. And it says that many of them sort of fall away. They fall out and they fall away because they're like, this is a difficult teaching, who can receive it? And then they're all gone except for the 12, basically. Like it's the church degrowth movement. Jesus is really good at shrinking the church. So if our church shrinks, I think, well, maybe we'll just be left with, you know, the people who really want to be here. If somebody moves away, we're not going to call that a bad thing, okay?

[7:36] So he looks at the 12 and he says, do you also want to leave? Like he kind of puts the challenge to them, and they say, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And so despite all their flaws, he is only left with the people who can be saved. And so we can see that his difficult words are still the only words of life that they can find. And so there's this reduction and, in a way, purification of the movement. Now, they're still goofed up people, the disciples, we get that. But the one thing they have is they understand who Jesus at least is trying to be. In their mind, they understand who Jesus is. He has the words of eternal life. Nobody else does. And so in that sense, even a movement can be pared down until it's more than enough. It's more pure and more focused on what God wants to do. So that's one. A movement can be pared down. Number two, we see several references to God being like a refiner or a refiner's fire. And so in the process, if you have some gold jewelry on, gold or silver jewelry on, it doesn't come out of the earth quite like that. It comes out sometimes. Sometimes it's super pure. Sometimes it's mixed with a bunch of other things, right? And so an iron worker or some kind of person working with metal

[8:52] will put all those impure mixed alloys, mixed metals, there could even be rock in there, right? And they'll put it in a crucible and they'll smelt it. And a crucible is this container that can withstand really high heat. And that mixed metal, or you could even say this precious metal with impurity mixed in, it can't be separated out by chiseling. You can't grind it off the outside. It's all through and through. Do you get the idea? Like it kind of sounds like us, right? We are sort of inundated with sin, if you want to think about it that way. So only fire, only fire, only heat will melt it and it'll separate it by the various different specific masses and densities and other properties. And some of the impurities will actually catch fire and float away as smoke. Others will occupy a different layer in the crucible. And a very skilled craftsman can kind of scoop away or pour away just the parts that they want and they're left with nothing. And that's a much purer level of gold, silver, whatever you want. So if you have a piece of gold jewelry on, take a look at it right now. You know, if it's on your ring, I've got a couple right here. This took work. This took somebody, some kind of craft, probably a machine now,

[10:05] but back then it would have taken a lot of work to get to this point. Somebody burning away all, burning away or separating away all the impurities or the lesser metals to end up with a more pure metal, right? So you get where this is going. So God is compared to that refiner or the refiner's fire. He burns away the parts of us or is willing to burn away the parts of us that are impure so that we're left with just the beautiful or just the pure, just the holy, okay? So three, one other, one final thing. And there's three more after this. I'm not going to go into them. They're all very interesting. Number three, think about the parable of the wheat and the tares. Or sometimes it's called the wheat and the weeds. It's kind of one of those corner parables you don't hear very often, but it's one of my favorite actually. Is this parable that there's a field and a farmer and the wheat and the weeds look too much alike. They can't quite tell them apart. There probably are some sort of opportunistic weeds out there that look a bit like wheat. Or they're so intertwined with each other, their roots, that they can't be pulled apart, all right? And so the farmer, what does he do? He harvests it all. And at the threshing floor is where he pulls it apart.

[11:18] In Genesis. Jesus says this is what the world is like. The world or the church is like this. There are wheat and tares side by side in the pews. Look left, look right. One of the people next to you might be a weed. No, I'm kidding. It's not. This is all weeds. No tares in the building, okay?

[11:35] But, you know, and he says, Jesus says the angels will come at the end and they're going to harvest the whole world and they're going to separate. Just like the sheep and the goats. And the wheat will be gathered up and stored in heaven's storehouses. And the weeds will be separated. And the wheat will be bundled together and thrown into the fire. So this idea that the field, the world, the church even, is going to be reduced to create this holiness, right? So you have these images, right? These overarching images of God telling us in so many ways that somehow or another sin needs to be separated out from us. Whether it's from a movement, whether it's from a church, whether it's from your own heart. The core of who you are. It has to be thrown out. And Jesus is saying the same thing. Your eye causes you to sin. Gouge it out. Your hand causes you to sin. Cut it off. It's better to go into heaven with just one hand, right? Than to go into hell with two perfectly functioning hands, right? What good are they going to do you there?

[12:38] So whether it's a follower who can't receive a difficult message or an impurity in a precious metal or a weed in a field or a part of our life. Our own selves that causes us to sin. There's this Biblical teaching that somehow this has to be pared down, cut away, burned off, right?

[12:59] Now, we can't cut off or shouldn't cut off a part of our own physical body. But I think we can arrest. And I'm gonna use that word arrest because it doesn't mean we can stop at 100% but we can arrest in the sense of slowing down or apprehension. defending, arrest in the sense of identifying and really interrogating in a sense, right? We can arrest that part of us that is more likely to sin, and we do it because we have the conviction that God is holy and God calls us to holiness. So what am I talking about? How does this work, right? This actually takes work, right? It takes the ability to observe ourselves from the outside, okay? Now, that's not easy to do. That doesn't come naturally to us. We kind of go through life just kind of, you know, doing the next thing that's in front of me, reacting to things. I'll give you an example. My day starts with a routine. Six days out of seven, probably, I make breakfast for my kids, and they each eat something slightly different, so it's a lot of work. It's not like... I can just put a trough out there and fill it with cereal and milk, and they're just, you know, I wish. That would be nice, but they don't do that. One gets an egg a certain way, another one

[14:25] gets another egg a certain way. One gets sausage and Nutella toast. Anyway, you don't need to know, but the point is, I have a routine in the morning, and it's like clockwork. Every morning, 7 a.m., I'm making this breakfast, and the other day, I was taking one of my children to a piano lesson, which is actually near the church, but about three blocks that way, and I was just driving along, and I turned towards the church instead of towards the piano practice, because muscle memory. You just do what you just keep doing, right? I think that's how it is if we don't examine ourselves. We're being called to mindfulness of examining ourselves. Why do I do what I do? Why do I say what I say? Do I think about this, or am I just on a routine? Am I going through life? Am I doing what comes next, or am I, in a way, sort of looking at myself from outside and saying, what is motivating you? Why are you doing what you're doing? Because that's where I think you could maybe find a way to arrest some sinful tendencies. If you want to cut them off, you might go, why am I doing that? Why am I reacting this way instead of just doing it? And so there's this really strong, we saw it, Victoria talked about it, it's in our

[15:45] call to worship. Can you bring up, oh no, never mind. Bring up the call to worship in OBS, and you'll see it up here. Well, it won't be up there. Well, he'll have to do two things. Well, and then bring up the, on the screen here. You got it. VLC, or get rid of VLC. There we go. How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? How can I know? Well, how can you know? Examine yourself. Arrest them.

[16:15] Look at your self from the outside. Mindfulness, being aware. Ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? Okay. So we can put that away, but thank you. And so that's one way is like, knowing why I do what I do. That's good work. That's within your power. You can do that. Doesn't mean it's going to solve everything. We'll get to that at the end. It's not going to solve everything, but you'd rather know than not know, I think. Okay. The other one is we understand ourselves more if we can get an outside, more objective evaluation from somebody else. Did you know that? Other people see you differently than you see yourself. You ever listen to your own? I remember when I was a kid, the first time I heard my own voice on a recording, I was like, I don't sound like that. That sounds ridiculous. Because you hear yourself partly through the bones in your skull. You don't just hear yourself purely as sound waves. There's all sorts of other things going on when you talk. But when you hear it, now I'm used to it, but you know, the first time you hear yourself on a recording, you're like, I don't sound like that. Well, you don't. Not to you, but you do to everybody else. Other people can perceive you in ways that

[17:24] you cannot perceive yourself. What does that mean? There could be a boss, a friend, a relative, all sorts of people that you could have a special conversation with. Not at the water cooler, okay? This is a bigger question. You could set aside half an hour or a lunch and say, hey, can you tell me what I'm doing that I may not notice that I'm doing? Can you tell me what I'm doing that I may not notice that I'm doing? Can you tell me what I'm saying that I might not notice that I'm saying? Am I putting in my best effort? Am I, this would be a good one to ask your spouse, if you have a spouse, am I present when we're having a conversation? Or am I on my phone or whatever like that, you know? Am I present when I'm working at the office? Am I putting in my best work? Would you trust me to make a good decision? Can you evaluate me a little bit from the outside? You can have conversations like this with people you trust. This is almost like accountability. It's almost like accountability. It's almost a bit like confession, right? And three, this is the third one real quick. All I'm going to say about this, you can ask other, you can ask yourself with mindfulness and awareness. You can ask other people. I also think you can ask the spirit to reveal

[18:30] things about you to yourself. I think that can work. And so there's a prayer, like I said, in the call to worship, prayer. Lord, show me what I don't see so that I can know. Okay. So I want to go back to the hyperbole, and we're almost done here, actually. We care about sin because God cares about sin. We don't maim ourselves, but we can commit to refining ourselves, observing ourselves, asking what takes us away from God and finding a way to remove that from ourselves. And we're not going to be fully successful. You know, you're not done until you're done done. Okay. You're really not done.

[19:07] Even the wheat could not be separated from the weeds until the end of the age. That was a very interesting point. And I think that's a very interesting point. And I think that's a very interesting admission as part of that parable, is that there's some things that can't be pulled apart from each other until God comes back. And it's really, it's fascinating, you know? And it's not like that's a good reason to give up. It's more like this is the long, this is the long campaign. And it's really not won until Jesus comes and wins it. Okay. But we're in it. Okay.

[19:36] Doesn't mean we don't try. So despite how serious sin is and how much absolute misery it has caused us in the past, we're not done. We're not done. In the entire world, God doesn't write us off. He's mad about sin. He wants to separate us from sin. He wants sin to get cut off from us as violently as cutting off our own hand in a way, that's sort of hyperbole, a bit of parabolic there, right? But he loves us too much to give up on us. Okay. And so I want to think of it as another way of looking at this. We may say that the way forward for us to find the holiness God requires is for our own sin. And so I want to think of it as another way of looking at this. We may say that the way forward for us to find the holiness God requires is for our own sin. And so I want to think of it as another way of looking at this. whole self to be cut off. Okay. If I said, you know, if I were to start, there'd only be a few molecules left. And I think even those molecules like molecule A and molecule B, they would probably have a fight with each other on the way home or something like that. Like all of it. So ultimately, maybe we do want to cut off our whole selves. Now hang on with me here a second.

[20:40] Right? Don't just cut off a hand or a foot. But come to Jesus, take up your own cross, and follow him. Do you see what I'm saying? We're not just cutting off one part. We're cutting off, theoretically, the whole part. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he wrote this. He said, when Christ calls a man, I'll say a person, when Christ calls a person, he bids them to come and die. I'm going to say that again. When Christ calls a man, he bids them to come and die. I'm going to say that again. When Christ calls a person, he bids them to come and die. Now, yes, die physically in some cases, Bonhoeffer did. But die to the self. Die to the old self. Die to this life. Die to our hopes for this world and be raised again in new life in Jesus, as Bonhoeffer will be someday too. We'll see him in heaven, right? Don't just cut off a hand or a foot. Come to Jesus, take up your own cross, and follow him in faith. When we come to faith, we die to the old self with its sin and impurity and weeds and unbelief and unserious commitment and our phoning it in and our hypocrisy and our foolishness. And do you want me to keep going? I'm not going to keep going. All of that dies. We come to Jesus with all that stupid baggage, and he burns it all away that doesn't belong. And we die,

[22:10] and we come up again. Paul writes in Romans, don't you know that those of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Wow. You participate with Christ in his death when you come to faith. You die. You're cutting, you're not cutting off an arm or a leg or an eye. You're cutting off the whole self, the whole you, so that you can be reborn anew. I want to end with this, Colossians 2.13 and 2.14, okay? It reads like this, in the New Living Translation. Paul writes, says, You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Isn't that interesting? Your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Not yet cut away. But what happens when faith comes? This is what he writes. He says, Then, after faith, God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us, and took it away by nailing it to the cross. So not only do we die, but the record of our sin dies there on the cross too. It is destroyed on the cross. So what shall we say? God cares so deeply about sin and is so deeply offended by it, right? We can commit to examining ourselves with mindfulness, with the help of others, with the help of the Spirit. We seek to cut away all that

[23:42] separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that separates us from God and our sin. We seek to cut away all that those parts of us that are separating us from you. Help us to find a friend we can talk to.

[24:19] And thank you for the gift of new life, in Jesus' name, amen.