People Do Not Drift Towards Holiness
First B Jackson
2022-03-21

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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How about only king? Only king forever. And then morning by morning. Hey, friends. Welcome to another Monday night.

Good to see you. And, big thank you to Barb and Gail. Thanks so much for Sloppy Joe's tonight. There, this is the one announcement that I need to share. So there will be no Monday night or Awana next Monday or the Monday after because of spring break.

Okay? So we will resume. On what day is it again? On the tenth. April 10.

So I'm gonna see you back on April April 10. We're going through the book of Mark on Monday nights, conversation style. Brad's gonna be given the message or as I like to call him, Brady. His name's Brad. His name's Brad.

It's a thing. And, but before but before we get into into the into the word, can we just worship the Lord in a couple songs? We'll stand together and sing. Your God, it is good to worship you. You have triumphed triumphed over death, hell, and the grave, and you have given us life.

Let us not forget. Let us always remember truly who we are worshiping. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's sing the gospel, shall we?

So good. That was the gospel we've just sang. Jesus' life, his death, his resurrection. And that's what we come back to over and over and over again because that is what makes the difference. That's what makes the difference.

And the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is a spirit that lives in us. So good to remind ourselves and gospel one another in that way. Speak of speaking of gospel one another, you can have a seat for for a bit and invite Brad up. And Brad's gonna finish up the last chapter of of Mark chapter nine. Yes.

That's the one. Not the last chapter. Just Right. Right. And Jesus is warning against temptation.

And, Lord, would you do with the word what you would do, and maybe we'd be open and receptive. Teach, correct, rebuke, train us in righteousness. Do what you would. May we be listening, paying attention. Say the closer we pay attention, the more understanding that will be given.

And so, Lord, may we be paying our attention, yield our hearts, our minds this evening to what you would be teaching us and showing us in love. In Jesus' name. Amen.

I really like I really like that last song. Like, the chorus of that is such that's it. Like, we've kind of already been to church. We can all just go home. Before I forget, I don't know if I'll get a chance to teach again after Florine's leading worship before he departs.

So I just wanna say thank you for doing this. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Blake. This takes a fair amount of work, and you guys volunteer for it, and you do it gladly. And I know there's love in your heart for it.

So thank you. It's really fun to hear you pick a mandolin up here. It's great. So I took a particularly hard, finance course one time in college, and we had these really, esoteric exams and they were at night and they were several hours and you you would leave like sweaty and tired but wired and it was just an odd thing. And then you get together with your friends that you'd studied with and and were in class with and you'd kind of go, how how are you how do you think you did on it?

And I always just said said cautiously optimistic. That was just kind of a phrase that I adopted and I used that. But one time a buddy of mine or a classmate of mine was like, you know, I really think I nailed it. And we were like, woah. Because this was, like, really weird math y kind of stuff.

And we're like, alright. And and it takes a couple weeks and the the papers come back. And my friend got a seven. Not a 70, not a 97, a seven. And so I use that example.

Yeah. I've really nailed it. I And don't remember what I got for comparison, but I just I I always that that story has always stuck with me, and I think it's appropriate for what we're gonna look at today. In terms of often when we're going through a test, if we don't, like, reevaluate how we're doing, we don't we don't know how we're doing in the midst of it. And so I think that'll be helpful for our time together today.

I'm actually just gonna leave that there because I'll break it if I try to adjust it. It's great. You know, you do you I wanna help. We didn't coordinate this, by the way. Like, I'm not trying to just turn into Carl.

Best? Who wore it best? Go ahead.

I gotta, like, trim my beard better or something. I don't know. Thank you. So let's look at our text for today with that intro and hopefully with you guys paying attention and not asleep after too many Sloppy Joes. It's do I have control?

Do I have the con? Uh-oh. Are we gonna do the thing again where I have to give you guns? Mhmm. Okay.

Finger Alright. So alright. We're just going with that. I think I made the text big enough that we can read it. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it is better for him if a heavy millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea.

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than having your two hands to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. If your foot is causing you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life without a foot than having your two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye is causing you to sin, throw it away.

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not extinguished, for everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good. But if the salt becomes unsalty, what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. So right off the bat, I wanna thank Carl for giving me a really gentle and easy passage, that's gonna deal with some light topics today, but we're gonna see what we can do.

So as we saw last week, this is the second half of a discourse wherein Jesus has told the disciples that the main reason why he took on flesh, why he came came to to live in our world is to die. So it's it's phenomenal the, the messages that he taught, that he preached, the example that he showed. Those are all things that we shouldn't neglect. But the main reason why Jesus came was to die for you, for me, so that the kingdom of God may come near to us. And so last week, saw that Jesus explained the nature of the upside down kingdom.

He gave the disciples and us some positive examples of what to do. And today, we're gonna continue along with that dialogue, but we're gonna look at some stark examples of what Jesus says not to do. So first, we're gonna see a warning from Jesus about not causing one another to stumble. And second, we're gonna see a warning about how to guard our own effectively salvation. And third, we're going to unpack a slightly cryptic call to saltiness.

So do not cause another to stumble. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it is better for him if a heavy millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea. So last week, if you'll recall, we we saw that Jesus took a a little child in his arms as an illustration of the least of these in the kingdom. Keep in mind, he's not just talking about children in that illustration, but children were the lowest stratus of society. If they were thought about at all, they were basically considered a nuisance.

And that's just, you know, to circle back on a point, that's a pragmatic view of people within God's kingdom that we should not have. So when we look at children and view their inability to contribute to the family or to the culture or economically or anything like that. If we look at individual members of the church, regardless of of, you know, where they are, how they're serving, things like that, we are not in any way, shape, or form to diminish our brothers or sisters in Christ. That's right. And and Jesus says so.

Right? And speaking of which, I've got two examples. So in case they get wiggly, show them the grace you've received. So we're gonna look now at what does it look like to cause somebody to stumble? And I would just define that as participating in or engaging behavior or conversation that is not profitable for building up that believer in Christ.

So when we think about that, that's a really broad definition and a really broad scope, but I think that's a lot of what Jesus is talking about here. There are specific ways that you can cause people to stumble, but also broadly, you can contribute to their walk in an unprofitable manner. And I think we're getting kind of every aspect of this in in this analogy today. So what this doesn't mean is sorry. That wasn't guns.

It does not mean to avoid hard conversations. I've heard people try and take this and some text out of, like, Matthew seven. You know, it's that it's it's like people have no idea what the gospel says, but for some reason, they know, the King James version of Matthew seven, and they say, thou shalt not judge. I don't know why every unbeliever memorizes the King James, but so it goes. But but that's not what that text in Matthew seven is talking about.

The whole text, if you read it in context, is about how to discern and how to check your own heart when we are rebuking, encouraging, correcting, training, all the things that we're called to other otherwise in the text. So there's a bit of a sermon for another day in that, but if we read the whole passage, we see that we should correct our brother, but we need to make sure that we're not being a hypocrite when doing it. You know, similar in that text, making sure that we're taking the log out of our own eye before we take the speck out of our brother's eye. So similarly, when we're talking about not causing another believer to stumble, that does not mean don't correct them when you see them in error. So one of the ways that we can think about what it means to pull them off cause them to stumble is the idea of, like, pulling them off sides.

And culturally, we just kind of adapt that that contextualization a little bit better. So I would say we don't engage in foolish controversies. In second Timothy two, Paul warns Timothy, and he's talking mostly about leadership of the church, but it's an ideal for all of us to seek, so I think it's applicable. Says, don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments because you know they produce quarrels. And it goes on to say, but be kind to everyone able to teach, not resentful.

So that's a great mission for what we're what we're thinking about today in terms of, like, engaging in arguments that are not profitable for our our Christian brother or sister. So a simple summary is that we can just be mindful of what we're doing always. And I know that's hard and that's really big. But if if and hopefully, I'll unpack that more as we get through this. But as we root ourselves in Christ, as we remind ourselves constantly, if we if we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we're trying to be mindful, we're trying to be selfless, then this some of this is gonna be a natural outpouring.

And then obviously, the standard exists so that we can correct each other and encourage each other as we go along. So we can think about it that like our actions and words have far greater consequences and reach than just ourselves. So for example, and this is this is such a great the the most basic version of not causing another brother or sister to stumble. If we know that somebody is a recovering alcoholic, we need to have the selflessness and the kindness and the humility to just not drink around them. And not even not bring it up, not make it some deal, don't turn yourself into a martyr around it.

But I think that example can then be unpacked in a way that anybody might struggle. So if they struggle with some other substance, if they struggle with any of the various ways that we get pulled off sides in terms of thinking about sin struggles, hurts habits, hang ups. If they struggle with body image issues, we can be careful about how we frame our conversations and what activities we engage with around them, and we do so out of humility. Similarly, if someone's struggling with their faith, we come alongside them and we encourage them. Instead of doing this thing that we we tend to do kind of in the easy believism where we spout some kind of ignorant stuff about universalism or things like that because rationally that feels easier.

Instead, what the text calls us to when we're not causing another brother or sister to stumble, there are many ways to cause them to stumble. Leaving a straight and narrow path is actually easier than staying on it. So our call then is to help them in that. So Matthew 12 along those lines says, but I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned.

So our words matter. And I think we need to just kind of remind ourselves of that, that every empty word, like, that's crazy to me. I say a lot of empty words. This is some place that I can personally grow a lot is being more considerate of what my speech means and what it means to the people around me. So how can we avoid this?

Well, in terms of specifics, we can become students of the people around us. Natalie and I have done marriage ministry for a while, and and it's it's just one of the things that we talk about in a successful relationship is you become a student of your spouse. Similarly, in community groups, we can become students of our brothers and sisters in Christ so that we can start to know what are the things that are that are, hurts habits and hang ups in their life either currently or in their past. And we can be cognizant of it, not necessarily so that we tiptoe constantly, but so that we can we can be well educated in the way that we deal with things. And then generally, so that's how we do it with specifics.

So I can, you know, become a student of Carl, learn what encourages Carl and also what discourages him, lean into the things that encourage and and kind of stray away from the things that discourage unless the situation necessitates it. Generally, a good rule of thumb is let's just focus on Christ. The number of times that I have offended somebody by trying to be funny or make a joke or something like that that was slightly off color instead of focusing on keeping the main thing the main thing. And so we can all we can all exhort one another to just say, hey. You know, that conversation wasn't necessarily profitable.

The next time, let's just let's talk about, hey. How are you doing trusting God's promises in your life? Asking questions, big questions that allow the hearer to take whatever direction their life needs to while you having biblical counsel to support them, that's never gonna fail you. So what do we make of this millstone analogy? It's that punishment will be severe.

And to paraphrase Matthew Henry's commentary on this, the death and ruin of our soul is a much worse outcome than the death and ruin of our body. So my main challenge question that I wanna put to you guys today is do we take this warning, which Jesus said, do we take it seriously? And why not if we don't? Because it would be weird? Because it would be inconvenient?

We have to remind ourselves and everyone around us that we were not set free for our own purposes. Galatians five thirteen and fourteen says, you were called to be free, my brothers and sisters. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. That's the idea of serving yourself. But serve one another through love for the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So we can look to the example of Christ who perfectly fulfilled all of this, and we can go, okay. The right way for me to love my brother or sister in Christ is to die to self and to serve them. And if I set that example, if I do that well with Natalie, with Brett, with Anna, and they go forth and they do that with several, that's how that's how we create a community of Christ within the church that permeates and changes a culture. That's how that's how you get the Roman Empire to be 50% Christian even in the midst of them persecuting the Christians. So what would that my my follow-up question to you guys would be, what would that look like specifically in your life?

To live out Galatians five thirteen and fourteen. What freedom have we been given is a great thing to remind ourselves constantly. That's an every morning kind of thing and usually a couple times through the day or otherwise I tend to drift. And then how do we use that freedom in joy to serve one another in love? There's a lot of warnings in scripture about disregarding the truth.

James one, 22 through 24 says, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive your deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but do not does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and then immediately goes away and forgets what he looks like. The the idea that James is evoking here, and remember, mirrors were not common back then the same way they are now. So you didn't get to look at your own face very often.

But, like, it's all happened to us where we've got something in our teeth. And I hope if I had it right now, some you know, like, I'm betting Florine, Natalie, Bret, and Anna would be the first to be like, but I hope the rest of you would too, especially if I wasn't catching on quick, is always a risk with me. But it's the idea if if you had something in your teeth and you looked in a mirror, saw it, and went, good. And then just kinda kept rolling. How silly would that be?

And James is making that analogy to us here saying that if we read the word, if we recognize that that that there are commands for New Testament believers and we do not follow them, we are just like the person that has a full on piece of broccoli stuck in their teeth, sees it in the mirror, doesn't do anything about it. So then how do we take care that we do not cause ourselves to stumble? So this is 43 through 49. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. This is a heavy, heavy text.

And as you'll see there, the alternative, what Jesus is talking about, you know, uses there's there's parallels here. And if, blank, blank, blank, do this because it's better to do that than to be thrown into hell. So we need to have a quick talk about hell. I don't want to. I'm willing to bet you don't want to, but it's it's right here, and our Lord talked about it.

Generally, in our discussions around hell, similar to angels, demons, any of the other kind of supernatural stuff that we don't get a ton of description about, we can make one of two errors. We can either make too much of it or too little of it. So what does it mean to make too much of hell? If it's our only motivation for a relationship with Christ, either for ourselves or evangelizing with others, then we're probably making too much of it. Fear is an incredible short term motivator, but it's a lot like adrenaline.

It's a quick hit, but if that's what you're running off of, it's gonna ruin you. Similarly, we can also tend to dramatize hell. We don't have time to get too far into this, but hell is not like it is in the movies. I would say it's worth every everybody's time at some point. Go to Bible Gateway, go to Open Bible, and literally in the search bar, just type in hell, use it as a digital concordance, and see what Jesus says about it.

It's kinda terrifying. Now we can also have a piece to offset that that terrifying nature because for every one of those bits about hell, and, yeah, you can see like a quick survey on the next one. I mean, literally go do that so that you're not intimidated by looking at that website. I did it for you, and here's some of the first things that pop up. Right?

And if you use specific word hell, you'll get different terms throughout the rest of scripture, but it's the same idea. Our other error is that we can make too little of it, and that tends to be in one of two ways. We can either pretend that it doesn't exist, or we can try and make light of it. Trying to make light of it, you'll hear this very common in the culture, you know, somewhat famously in the Grammys a couple of months ago where they had the sort of demonic looking thing where it's this idea that like, oh, yeah. I'm gonna go to hell because that's where all my friends are gonna be and it's gonna be such a party.

And a good rule of thumb for us as believers when we're thinking practically about hell, and this is very much in line with what Jesus taught, is it's the absence of anything relating to relating to God. And everything good comes from God. So in hell, in judgment, there is no light, there is no relationship, there is no kindness, there is no rest, and there's not gonna be music, alcohol, or drugs. Because those are all things that were originally good things that have been perverted by our sin and by our by our temptation. So that's a bit on hell, and we can move on.

Everybody can breathe. I don't have anything worse for you. But Jesus does say it is better for you to enter life without a foot than having two feet to be thrown into hell. Oh, yeah. That's from Revelation 14.

One of the other things is we can tend to wanna downplay the doctrine because it makes us uncomfortable, and we can go, oh, it's probably instant annihilationism. And there's a million you know, if you do your cross cross concordance search on it, there's a million things that prove that otherwise. But Revelation 14 to me is just so stark. This is talking specifically about those that take the mark of the beast. But the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night.

That's terrifying. So let's get that off the screen before I dwell on it any longer. But Jesus talks about it's better to cut off a foot. Can you imagine what it was like in ancient times to cut off a foot? There was no means of transportation.

There was no ADA. There was no white collar work per se. So what he's basically saying is intentionally make yourself dependent upon everybody around you for the rest of your life. That's better than giving in to sin and temptation. So the obvious question then for us as modern day believers is how dear to us is our cause of temptation?

Is it as important to us as a hand or an eye or a foot? Put it this way. We could we could say today that it might be better to cut off a hand or would you prefer me to cut off your phone? Because a lot of us, statistically in this room, somebody is struggling with the things that you can access on your phone. And there are very real and practical ways to deal with that, but we don't want to.

And I've struggled with this in aspects of my life. We can get into the story later. But get covenant eyes. Get a dumb phone. People will ask you, hey.

Why don't you have a smartphone? Everybody in the planet has and you'll ruin every group chat that you're a part of. It's perfectly fine. If you tell people why you do it, they will love you all the more for it. There will not be shame.

There will not be guilt. There will be encouragement from your brothers and sisters in Christ. When somebody steps up here or on Sunday or in a group and confesses sin, nobody thinks less of you. And the more vulnerable you are and the more realistic you are with what's going on in your life, the more respect you're gonna get from your brothers and sisters. So as he goes on, he says talks about the eyes.

We just we have to not be too casual with sin and temptation. My friend and and mentor, Todd Wagner, one time brought a tiger cub up on stage for a Sunday message. And sort of funny ultimate thing of the story was it was actually accommodated by the Tiger King, the guy that they made the Netflix special that all you sinners watched. And but, like, the idea was that tiger cubs are incredibly cute. I mean, they're very cute.

You know, they're just cats, basically. But if you feed a tiger cub, it turns into a tiger, and tigers will eat you. And so sin is very similar. And this is just a very palpable image, and no, I don't have a live tiger for you today. I'm sorry, but Carl's budget wouldn't allow it.

And but but it's it's the same idea. Imagine having a tiger cub, and that tiger cub is named sin. If you keep feeding it, it will destroy your life. So instead, we follow the scriptural examples. We take it seriously.

We we bring it into the light by confessing it to brothers and sisters in Christ. We don't feed it, and Paul says we even flee away from it. So I think by now you guys have a pretty good idea of what Jesus is talking about here. So just some real quick modern examples. We don't wrestle with any of these things alone.

Often, the most helpful starting place is confession to a pastor, to a friend, to a spouse, community group, whatever it may be. Confess your sin. Bring it into the light. I promise you, just like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, when you unload that burden by sharing it with somebody else, if you do nothing else, your load will feel lighter. Running a little short on time, so we'll cut that.

But one of the things that I wanna talk about is anger. Because if we struggle with anger, we need to figure out what a trigger might be, and we need to frankly run away from it. The political news cycle figured out a long time ago that the best way to get you to engage with it consistently is to evoke your feelings of anger, fear, and rage. And so it's not so bizarre then that that's what they bring you to every single night. They foam you up and then they bring you up back for another hit because anger actually feels good.

Psychologically, it focuses the mind, it it it gets rid of all the obfuscation, and it just gives you like a direct point of focus. And that feels good. But the problem is, like adrenaline, it's a hit and it wears off and so you come back for more. And even though anger feels good, it does so wrongly. James one nineteen and twenty is a great I mean, this is such a life verse for me.

Take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become anger and and or slow to become angry. Most of us have heard that part, but it like so many of those great verses, the one that follows on is also worth considering in context. And it's why? Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Anger is so powerful. It ruins your ability to think of nuance and to think rationally. When sociologists interview mobs after a destructive action, very frequently, the interview will come back and people will say, no. I'm a good person. I don't know what I was doing.

I just got caught up in everything. And this is what political theater is designed to do you. It's also what social media is designed to do you. When Facebook tweaked their algorithm somewhat famously in 2015, what they figured out was that engagement was better when it was fomenting emotions, specifically the the anger and fear. So it's not biblical advice necessarily, but it's not unbiblical either.

But a great rule of thumb is read articles instead of posts, read books instead of articles, and read the Bible as much as you can. So if you have social groups that pull you into destructive behavior, which is certainly in this in this community, we need to change our playmates and change our playground, and tell them why. If you've got people that are constantly pulling you into bad choices and we tend to know who they are, come here. This is a welcoming community. And I'm so glad you guys are all here on a Monday night.

So in some ways, I'm kinda preaching to the proverbial choir on this. But why don't we implement these things? I mean, these are all practical. I don't think I've shared too much with you guys practically that you haven't heard before. And it's usually fear.

We have to trust that God is not looking to rip us off. He's looking to set us free. He has his best interest at heart, and he's proven that not only by being this creator and sustainer, but also being the author and perfecter of our faith in Jesus. There's a great model of prayer, from earlier in Mark nine when the father of the possessed child cries out to Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief.

And that's a prayer that I've used consistently throughout my life, and I've always found it rewarded by just a calm and a presence of the Holy Spirit. So for brevity's sake, my last bit on saltiness. Saltiness did two things primarily. It was not for flavor. It was for preservation and for purification.

So when we're being called to saltiness, and they weren't great at chemistry back then. So like sodium chloride cannot become unsalty. But the examples that they had back then was it would be salt mixed in with some crushed rock or sand or things like that. So when they're talking about impurity, what they're basically, now we know, calling us to be is be salt. Don't be sand that looks like salt.

We're supposed to be able to be rubbed on otherwise decaying meat and to be a preservation and a purification agent. And the way that we can do that and not get the decay on us is by being reminded of the salt or of the grace that we've been salted with. So we do that by touching base every morning in the word of God. We do that by confessing our sins and by by asking for a refill of the Holy Spirit. That's a bit, and we've probably gone as long as we need to tonight, but I wanna close along the saltiness thing with this great quote from Don Carson, who's a renowned theologian.

He's probably written commentary in in some of the study Bibles that you own. But this is from his book, for the love of God. One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues.

But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably towards compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding obedience, and decay that advances sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop across generations. So tune in. This is the the this is the kind of the poetic bit that always catches me. People do not drift towards holiness. Apart from grace driven effort, grace driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godliness, prayer, and obedience to scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

I love this part. We drift towards compromise, and we call it tolerance. We drift towards disobedience, and we call it freedom. We drift towards superstition, and we call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self control and call it relaxation.

We slouch towards prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking that we have somehow escaped legalism. We slide towards godlessness and convince ourselves instead that we have been liberated. That's it. I mean, that sets heavy for me. And I and my tendency and this will be the last what I'll close with.

My tendency is to look at all of this and to point fingers at everyone and everything around me culturally. But if I take the second, and let's just leave that up on the screen for a minute, Blake, while we while we chat. Think about what that looks like in your own personal life. Because I can think of examples where that's not the culture outside. That's also me.

So that's all I have today. Any comments? Questions? Anything I totally missed? Anything you want me to circle back on?

I think we're I think we're gonna get out for for Steve. Thank you. I I don't think I'd ever made that connection actually between what Jesus is talking about here and that parallel passage in Ecclesiastes. That's an awesome connection, Blake. Thank you.

Anybody? Anyone else?

Well, friends, should we stand and just close in one more song? Raise the gardens. Lord, would this sit with us? What we've heard from your word tonight, may it sit with us, the heaviness of it. Sometimes it just needs to.

And, Lord, as we approach one another, may we not be a stumbling block to one another, but really encourage one another and build each other up to be aware of ourselves and aware of others because we're aware of you in us, and that's transforming. It's transforming our relationships. Would you help us, Lord, that we would walk in your spirit? In Jesus' name. Amen.

And one more verse here I wanna show you. Seek the kingdom of God above all else. Live righteously. He'll give you everything you need.