Two Journeys

How you resolve the issue of sin will determine a lot about how you view the gospel and your daily life.

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Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own but belong to Jesus.

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God brought married couples together primarily for the purpose of putting Himself on display.

I’m going to ask you this morning to turn to Mark 10:1-12, but also to turn to Matthew 19. I'm going to be walking through, effectively both passages, leaning on the parallel passage of the teaching in Matthew 19, so you want to look back and forth at those two passages. Matthew 19, also Mark 10.

One of my favorite verses in scripture, James 1:17 says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." Every good thing we experience in this life comes from God. We also learned from scripture, every good gift that God gives, sin seeks to attack and destroy. Or, we could put it this way, in every beautiful Garden of Eden that God sets up in the world, sin seeks to crowd in and savage and turn into smoldering wreckage. That's true of the original Garden of Eden. Picture that pristine world, radiant with glory, the stunningly beautiful Garden of Eden, well watered with all manner of succulent fruit trees. Picture also the happy and innocent couple, Adam and Eve, married, ready to begin their fruitful life together. Working together, side-by-side, to be fruitful and multiplied to fill the earth with children, in their image. To fill the world, thereby, with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

But also picture a forbidden tree. A wife we are told, completely deceived. A husband, willingly, rebellious. And through their sin, through Adam's sin, they and all their unborn children, instantly died spiritually because of that act of rebellion, because of one man's sin. Marriage itself, left, damaged and even cursed. What should have been a perfect oneness, now left a tragic battleground in which we are told the woman would strive for dominion in the marriage and seek to rule over her husband and he would use sinful power to rule over her, to dominate her.

Since that time, if you know what to look for, there have been many lesser Gardens of Eden, pockets of God's grace, but then sin comes in and starts to attack it and to savage it. Think about the world after the flood of Noah, how it had been cleansed and ready for life again and how in a very short time, sin came in. Or think about the Promised Land, land flowing with milk and honey, and Israel coming in the promises of God, but sin soon after, attacking. Think about the righteous kingdom of David and then the terrible sin with Bathsheba and the damage that was done there. Think about the kingdom, the wealthy kingdom of wise Solomon, and then the damage done because of his many wives, as intermarriage with unbelieving women. Think even about the beautiful growing church of Jesus Christ, in its pristine days after the days of Pentecost, and it isn't very long before sin comes in to attack that Garden of Eden, as well.

All of those Gardens of Eden are attacked in some way and ravaged by sin and within one household also after another, every Christian marriage starts out as its own Garden of Eden, but in some measure ends up, from time to time, a battleground in which the couple has to fight their own flesh, their own sin, nature, and also that of their spouses, to carve out a harvest of righteousness for the glory of God. Children raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Jesus, ministries carried out to completion, to fruitful completion. The couple can fight the good fight, finish the race, keep the faith, but it's still a battle. That pristine Garden of Eden on their wedding day becomes in some measure, a battleground ever since. 

That's what we're facing in this text today. We are considering a tragedy, a genuinely tragic topic, the issue of divorce. It is one of the most painful pandemics in the history of the human race. It ravages families, it attacks souls, it destroys happiness. The statistics are terrible and getting worse on divorce. In the United States alone in 1970 there are 4.3 million divorced people. By 1994, generation later, the number had quadrupled to 17.4 million. In the year 2020, the number had grown by 70% again to almost 29 million people. Because of this, more and more young people are just choosing not to get married. As Peter said in Matthew, it's better not to get married. Many people are just coming to that conclusion. In 1990, the marriage rate in the US was 9.8 per 1,000 people, but by 2021 it had dropped to six per 1,000, almost 40% drop in the number of people getting married.

Divorce has therefore, devastating effects on the couple. Research has shown that divorce men and women suffer much higher rates of mortality, depression, physical illness in general and substance abuse, than do those that stay married. For example, people divorced once have twice the rate of alcoholism and three times the rate of suicide to those that stay married.

Divorce is damaging on their children. Children of divorced parents are twice as likely to drop out of school as children from one-time married couples. They're three times more likely to have emotional or behavioral problems. Divorce is devastating on the community that surrounds them. We live together in a network of relationships. We live together in a community, here in this local church, First Baptist Church, Durham. To some degree, the marriages of the covenant members of this church are a community concern. If one of us married couples gets divorced, it's going to have a powerful, unmistakable though unmeasurable, ripple effect on all the other marriages in the church. We're not free to do whatever we want with our marriages. We are in a network of relationships.

We have in scripture, God's timeless pronouncement on this topic. In Malachi 2:16, "For all time, I hate divorce," says the Lord God of Israel. I want to turn this around, and make it positive. By the way, that's my whole approach here. It is a negative topic, but I want to turn it around positively to talk about marriage because that's exactly what Jesus does. But if God says, "I hate divorce," we must think then He would definitely say, "I love marriage.” I think if we look at what Jesus taught in Matthew 19 and in Mark 10 and from Jesus's doctrine, we would say it is God himself who made marriage originally. And it is God himself who makes marriages specifically. So, let me say that again. Based on the teaching of Jesus in this passage, it is God himself who made marriage originally and it is God himself who makes marriages specifically.

This is for us in our time in history and in our country a needed topic. There is more and more confusion in our modern world about marriage. On June 26th, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Obergefell decision, ruled to guarantee the fundamental right to marry for same sex couples. In December 13th, 2022, there was the Respect for Marriage Act, one of the worst named pieces of legislation in history, and there is a genuine fear on the part of Christians of the future of religious freedom on this, if we have to respect what has been redefined as marriage, what we would never agree is marriage.

Because of this redefining of marriage legally, throwing out millennia of legal precedence, there's been more and more confusion not just on marriage but on gender itself and sexuality and the floodgates of error have been thrown open and therefore we need Jesus' calm, stable, Bible-centric teaching on marriage and on divorce. It's desperately needed.

Along with that, as a pastor, I really do believe, I can say convictionally, the health of any church is tied to the health of its marriages. The healthier the marriages, the healthier this church will be. Whether you're single or married , all of you who care about this church should care about the health of the marriages in this church. Not only that, as we got to celebrate the children this morning, we have a passage coming up later in Mark 10, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them." The future of the church depends on the health of Christian families because the overwhelming majority of elect people chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, come to faith in Christ through the administrations of at least one Christian parent. Christian families are a factory for the future generation of Christians, therefore the marriage is important. Satan knows this, therefore he's going to be constantly attacking our marriages. Christ's teaching here in Mark 10, also Matthew 19, will be an essential line of defense.

Let's walk into the text now and we see immediately the Pharisees darkly clever attack on Jesus. Mark 10:1-2, "Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him and as was his custom, he taught them. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'" We need to understand the context. Jesus has now completed the Galilean phase of his ministry in this moving southward. He's down into Judea and then in Mark 10, we have Jesus ministering across the Jordan River in a region called Perea. This region was ruled by King Herod Antipas, the very one who had had John the Baptist beheaded because John had preached that it was unlawful for him to have divorced his own wife and then married his brother, Phillip's wife, Herodias. Herodias took severe exception to it, so did Herod and eventually Herod beheaded John because of this teaching.

Jesus's enemies, the Pharisees, are cleverly and darkly trying to draw him into the same trap. He's in the same place, not far from where John the Baptist had been beheaded, and so this is an attack on Jesus, trying to get Herod to be his enemy in the same way. But beyond this, we are dealing with the prevailing attitude about divorce among the Jews, at the time. Jesus's teaching on divorce here would've been very unpopular with Jewish people at the time. Many priests and scribes, as well as the Pharisees followed the teachings of a man named Rabbi Hillel, who had died around the time that Jesus was born. Rabbi Hillel taught that it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason. If she burned his meal, or disrespected his mother, or twirled around so that other men could see her ankles, or indeed if he just grew weary of her. For any reason, he could divorce his wife. Therefore, we can see the surprise of the apostles at Jesus's seemingly restrictive teaching on divorce, for divorce for any reason was the norm.

Look at the phraseology. If you look at Matthew 19:3, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause or any and every reason, for whatever reason he wants?” The Pharisees are trying to make Jesus unpopular with the Jewish people, as well. It's a very darkly clever trap that they're springing on Jesus, but Jesus is fearless in proclaiming the truth. Always. He does not care what Rabbi Hillel taught, nor would He care what any society or any culture teaches about marriage and divorce. He would not bow to the Supreme Court ruling or any kind of legislation in our country on this. He would turn forever to the perfect, the unchanging word of God. That's exactly what He does, He turns to timeless scripture.

Mark 10:3, "What did Moses command you?" Mark's account is briefer, so I would suggest we look over at Matthew 19 and follow the ordering that he does there. In Matthew 19. He expands on this, focusing on Moses's writing of the Genesis account. Matthew 19:4-6, “ 'Haven't you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning, the creator made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. So, they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.’ "

We start with Jesus's Bible-centered, scripture-centered mind. Some of you know this because I've done premarital counseling with you. Whenever I do premarital counseling with a couple, I always start with Matthew 19, and I have to make a defense for it. It's like I know you're here to get married. You wonder why are you talking about divorce? Jesus talks about marriage and then gives the ruling on divorce, so it's a very good place to begin. Also, notice if Jesus were doing your premarital counseling, He would say, "Haven't you read?" He'd bring you to scripture. We need no other source of information. Unchanging scripture is sufficient to define and heal marriage, and I think it's good that they're Christian books on marriage, but they're only helpful insofar as they basically begin, "Haven't you read?" They’re only helpful insofar as they elucidate scripture’ teaching on marriage. 

Let's walk through the text in Matthew 1, “Haven't you read that at the beginning…?” He brings them back to Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth." He takes them back to that and to Genesis 2. He quotes something from Genesis 1:27, something from Genesis 2:24. In Jesus' mind, the way the Creator set up marriage at the beginning is relevant in his day and in our day. It's an unchanging paradigm. It's timeless, it doesn't evolve, it doesn't drift, it doesn't require redefinition. We don't get higher understanding about it. It never changes. So, “Haven't you read at the beginning?" Then he says, "The Creator." I love that word. Isn't that a beautiful word? The Creator, the one who made and shaped things, the one who made the world and everything in it. The one who made the first man out of the dust of the earth, shaped and created him, and then took a rib from sleeping Adam and made the first woman from her. He shaped and created her, the Creator, what a beautiful concept and idea. God's intention in marriage is all that matters. What did the Creator create at the beginning? He alone created, so He alone has the right to define it, to rule over it, and to judge it. It says,”the Creator made them male and female” [Genesis 1:27]. 

This is so incredibly relevant in our day and age. In our time, in our culture for the first time as far as I understand history, we have a society-wide movement to redefine gender. Therefore, believing that there are two and only two genders, male and female, is disparaged as binary. We're binary people if we think that. As though now we know better within the last 25, 30 years, we now know better. We now know that someone can be born biologically male and identify as female, or born biologically female and identify as male. But this is satanic nonsense and it's damaging to the people who really think that. We do them no help to feed their delusion. We want them to be healthy in their mind and their heart and their soul. It's a direct attack on biblical truth and biological truth. God wrote gender into the scripture from the beginning and into every single human being, from conception, even to the DNA level. Sadly, sin entered into the human race and has confused minds and hearts and made us darkened in our understanding and twisted our thinking. That's true of all of us. We all struggle with this, that perversion of the mind.

Therefore, the issue of same sex attraction is at the foundation of this. It's apparently an attempt to be sympathetic to those that have these strong feelings. That's where it starts. But what's happened is that society has validated what the Bible calls shameful lusts, in Romans 1:26, or vile affections or degrading passions or dishonorable passions. That's the clear truth about that drive, that desire[Romans 1:26]; they're now normalized under the teaching “love is love”.

Natural relations, in Romans 1:26-27, nature means biologically-ordained and God-ordained function, for which nature is clearly prepared and aligned and shaped and created. The natural relations between a male and female, which God ordained for marriage and for procreation, for the creation of new human beings in his image, all of that Jesus would establish. It is wrong for those that disagree with this, to think they can recruit Jesus, who's so gentle and mild and that He'll be affirming this idea and, so would the Word. That should never happen. He would not do that. He affirmed biblical truth for the health of the human race and He clearly asserted that there are two genders, “Haven't you read that at the beginning the creator made them male and female?”

Then He continues, saying, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife…” If you were to look to Genesis 2:24, that's where the thing that He's quoting comes from, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” Even though Moses wrote that in the narrative, in Scripture what Scripture says, God says. The Creator's the one that makes this statement, even though Moses wrote it in the narrative. Does that make sense? Jesus has a very high view of scripture. I think it's impossible to have a higher view of scripture than Jesus, so the Creator makes this statement about them.

This is a permanent paradigm for all time, all cultures. "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they shall become one flesh." We know it's a paradigm because neither Adam nor Eve had a father or mother and Adam didn't leave his father and mother. It was that this was going to be the paradigm from now on. This timeless transcultural pattern is for every nation to the end of the time, “for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother.” So, when a young man is done in his parents' home, it's time for him to leave and establish his own home, usually the pattern then is to get married. Not always, there is singleness. I'm very aware of the gift of singleness in my mind. I'll address it later. But the norm is to leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. The KJV gives the famous, “cleave". We have this “leave and cleave” idea, it's an archaic word. We don't tend to use it that way. It just means “unites with”, “becomes bonded” with her. It’s like the two are glued together. A picture of oneness and the two become one flesh, He says. This is the marital bond, the sexual bond, which God intended by their compatible genders. That sexual bond, one flesh, the two become one flesh, is sacred to God

It is also the focus of much of Satan's attack on the human personality. It's an area of tremendous weakness for us, post-Adam sin. But it was originally intended by the Creator as something good and blessed and holy, a source of tremendous joy and pleasure and obviously a source of procreation, as well, children in his image. It's also we're told in Ephesians 5:32, “a mysterious, even mystical picture of Christ and the church.” This is the essence of marriage, the two become on, and Jesus doubles down in the oneness. He says it again and makes his final pronouncement Mark 10:8-9, "So, they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." That is his official answer to the question, in Matthew 19, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” The answer is absolutely not. No. Divorce is directly contrary to God's purposes in making marriage in general and it's directly opposed to God's activity in bringing an individual couple together. God has joined them together. Therefore, we don't have the right to break apart what God joined together. God's authority stands over all couples and forbids them from breaking apart what he has joined together.

But then come questions about Moses and divorce in Matthew's account. They come at this point once He makes his pronouncement. It's kind of clear from Matthew's account, that the Pharisees thought that Moses commanded that man divorce his wife. I can tell you right now in all the 66 books of the Bible, there's not a single command to anyone to ever get a divorce, but Moses did permit it, and Jesus is asked to address that. But there's no command. You're never required. There are, I believe, in the exception clause, lawful reasons where it's permissible, but it's never commanded. That's how they were thinking. Moses did not command anyone to get a divorce. If you look at the passage in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, where Moses addresses it. It's a very convoluted case study, actually. That's all that happens. And effectively what happens is, if a man divorces his wife and she goes off and ends up marrying another man and then he either divorces her or he dies, she's not free to go back to husband number one. In that case, Moses said the land would be completely defiled. That's all it says. 

 But the question is not so much did he command or permit, et cetera. The question is why didn't he forbid divorce as Jesus is essentially doing here? That's the real question, so that's what they're getting at, so let's answer the question that they're really asking. Jesus' answer is pretty clear. Mark 10:5, "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses gave you this command.” It's because your hearts were hard. God willing, next week I'm going to preach a second sermon, kind of like a group marriage counseling session and it's like I could go anywhere, everywhere on this. Marriage is a huge topic. What I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on two things, God willing, next week: What does He mean by “your hearts are hard” and how does it affect marriage? Secondly, what is the remedy: it is oneness. I want to meditate on oneness next week. We'll do that, God willing, next week.

But hearts are hearts . All divorce stems from human sinfulness, from the hardness of heart. The corruption introduced by the fall into sin and the hardness of heart is on both their hearts. The husband has a hard heart, the wife has a hard heart. That's hardness of heart. What does it mean? It's a resistance to God, a rebellion against God, a fighting against God's purposes. That's what hardness of heart is and it came in because of the fallen into sin.

In Genesis 3, I alluded to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, "He was tempted by the serpent and then she took some fruit and ate it, and then she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. And the eyes of both of them are open and they realized they were naked. And so they took fig leaves and sewed them up to cover themselves.” That horizontal bond was shattered immediately. That's a picture of the strife and conflict that leads to divorce. They were broken from one another, and then vertically when God came, they were broken from him. They're hiding from Him too. That's the effect of sin, this hardness of heart.

Martin Luther, in his own humorous way, said something like this in his translation, "Good heavens, what a lot of trouble there is in marriage. Adam has made a mess of our nature. Think of all the squabbles Adam and Eve must have had for 900 years. Eve said, ‘You ate the apple.’ And Adam would answer, ‘Yes, but you gave it to me.’ Imagine 900 years of that.” That's Luther. I don't know what it was like to be married to that man. When he was a monk, he said he changed his sheets once a year whether they needed it or not, it’s a different topic. Ask me another time about Luther. Then Katie, the hero that married him.

Anyway, in Genesis 3:16, God's curse on the woman focuses on her role as a mother and as a wife. To the woman, He said, "I will greatly increase your pain and childbearing. With pain, you'll give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." This is a curse. The statement, “your desire”, is not a sweet thing. It's like, "Oh, you'll just love your husband so much." That's not what it is. The only other time that Hebrew word is used is the next chapter, when God warns Cain that sin is crouching at his door; it desires to have him and he must master it. It's a battle type of desire. He's going to rule over you, so it's strife because the hearts are hard.

Jesus gives this final verdict: “No, what God has joined together, let man not separate." Then He is even clearer with his disciples when they ask him in private. He makes a clear prohibition on divorce, verse 10 through 12, "When they're in the house alone, the disciples ask Jesus about this." He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman, commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.’ " The disciples in their typical pattern want more information privately later. In that context, Jesus gives this clear prohibition of divorce, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery." The same goes for the wife. He parallels the statement. He doesn't just assume it, He says it. "And any woman who divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." The sacredness of that marriage bond is paramount here.

Now, is there any exception to this? Well, yes, in Matthew's account there is an exception. It's known as the exception clause, Matthew 19:9, "Anyone who divorces wife except for marital unfaithful and marries another woman, commits adultery." So the word translated “marital unfaithfulness” is “pornea” and that's a general term for sexual sin. Some overly strict leaders, forbid divorce and remarriage categorically, absolutely. They tend to deconstruct or denigrate the exception clause in Matthew 19. I think this is not the approach we should ever take to scripture. It's not the approach I take when trying to harmonize Matthew, Mark and Luke. Whenever any of those passages gives additional information, you act as if all of them gave it. It's reasonable to ask why didn't Mark or Luke put it in. I think clearly under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they chose not to, but there is this exception and the exception is in Scripture. Bottom line, it's clear what Jesus is saying. Marriage is a sacred bond, upheld by almighty God. God invented marriage at the beginning, set up a paradigm He expects to be followed. He'd set it up at the beginning of his history, and He has not changed his mind. His word will not change, his mind will not change, his definition will not change. God is personally involved in making specific couples, drawing them together and making them one. We therefore, do not have the right to sever that bond that God has made.

Let's take some lessons. First and foremost, the best thing I can ever do every week is just preach the gospel. Hallelujah, what a Savior, Jesus Christ. He shed his blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. Single or married, we're all sinners. Isn't it beautiful to know the gospel is the foundation of every healthy Christian marriage. The fact that we are sinners, but forgiven sinners, that the blood of Jesus has been shed for sinners like you and me. If you repent of your sins and turn to him through faith in Christ, no matter what your marital state or condition or situation, that's lesser important than your vertical relationship with God, God will forgive your sins through faith in Christ. Then if you are married, it will be a solid foundation in which to live out your marriage. Or if you're single, a solid foundation in which for you to live out your singleness. So, come to Christ. I love that song. That invitation song. Come to me. Jesus says again and again. If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink. If anyone is hungry, let them come to me and eat. Jesus says, come to me and find rest for your souls.

Then on the topic of marriage, let's just celebrate the gift. It's a good gift. I began with James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above." It's one of the greatest gateways of blessing there is in life, if God gives you that gift. It is Satan who wants us to think hard thoughts of marriage in many different ways. In church history, there have been aesthetics, who forbid marriage. They think anything physical is evil and so they forbade marriage. But Paul calls that the doctrine of demons, the forbidding of marriage, the doctrine of demons. Like the cult, the shakers, where they would not let the males and females even literally physically touch at all. It's a cult and it's a doctrine of demons. I also think to the same degree, the consistent Roman Catholic teaching of clerical celibacy, which has led to all kinds of problems in their history, is a different version of the doctrine of demons, to denigrate marriage.

But on the other hand, there are more people immersing themselves in the physical pleasures of sex, what the Bible would call marital relations, something reserved only for the sacredness of the marriage relationship. They fornicate, they commit all kinds of sexual immorality, and they sin. Satan is pushing young people to seize privileges that have not yet been given to them by God, by getting married. Statistics show that as many as almost half of self-identified evangelicals, age 18 to 29 have been sexually active. That's a scandal. That's sin. We need to stand strong against fornication, against the sin of sexual immorality. We need to establish, in our own minds, reestablish clear boundaries that scripture set around sex and marriage. 

If you're married, thank God for your marriage, in general, and even more importantly, thank God for your spouse in particular. It won't do your spouse much good to say. "I just want you to know, I thank God for marriage and abstraction." They would say, ”Would you thank God for me?” So let's just start there. Be thankful for the spouse that God gave you. Thank God for him or her, the one God brought you together. Be thankful. And fundamentally, if I could just commend you the fruit of the spirit, let me just zero on kindness. Be kind to each other, just be kind. I mean, we know what kindness is, just start there. If you're having marital trouble, start with kindness. There is more I can say, God willing, next week.

If someday you will be married, you're single now, thank God for the blessed state of singleness. 1 Corinthians 7, Paul celebrates it, and there may be some of you that will have that lifelong gift of singleness. If you don't know whether you have that lifelong gift of singleness, you're looking forward someday to being married, well, thank God for your present state, but look forward with holy expectation to marriage as God has defined it here. Keep yourself pure. Look forward to it with holy expectations and get ready. Prepare yourself.

If you are a widow or a widower, just thank God for the goodness of the marriage you did have and for the love that was poured out to you in your life by your godly spouse who's with the Lord now.

And glorify God in your marriage. If you're married, make your marriage a delightful display of the glory of God. Understand that Satan wants to make your marriage a battleground, but as Ephesians 6 says, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood." There be maybe no category of people in a local church and needs to hear that as much as married couples. "Our struggles are not against flesh and blood, but against Satan and demonic powers." Your mentality should be that God brought you together, primarily for the purpose of putting him on display, glorifying him, that his attributes might shine forth both in how you treat each other and the way you help sanctify each other, the way you help raise the next generation for his glory, that God may be glorified. That's the reason you exist as husband and wife.

So often, marriages become essentially selfish. “She doesn't meet my needs." “He doesn't understand me.” “What’s in it for me?" Or basically saying, what's in it from me? I would commend Philippians 2, "Look to the other person's interests more than your own. Consider the other person is better than yourself." Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, that picture of humble servanthood, that He commends to the Philippian church. Do that in marriage and think of divorce as unthinkable.

I'm going to say it's a picture of the Trinity; Father, Son, and Spirit, all oneness. I'm going to start next week with that, with oneness. All oneness. It's a picture of the Trinity. It is unthinkable to think of one person of the Trinity wanting out. It's unthinkable, and we should think of it as unthinkable.

Sometime ago, I listened to a training done by a Christian pastor named Reb Bradley. Before he was in family ministry, he was a professional photographer and he did a lot of weddings. In the course of time, there was a particular person that saw his face on a poster for a family life conference and tracked him down and called him. He said, "I don't know what it is, but you look a lot like the guy who photographed our wedding." He said, "Well, actually, I was a professional photographer. When was your wedding?" They exchanged information. "All right, yeah, I remember that. I remember that. How's it going?" Reb Bradley said to this man. He said, "Well, it's not going very well." He said, “Really?" And he said, "Yeah." He said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, I think we're going to get a divorce." "You can't," Reb Bradley said. "I beg your pardon?" "Well," I said, "You can't." "What do you mean I can't?" "Well, I was there as a photographer, but I was also there as a witness, and I heard what you promised God, and this is something you promised you would never do, and now I'm holding you to it.” The man said, "What do you want me to do?" He said, "Work it out." So that's my marital advice to all of you. You can't. Work it out. That's the text, right? That's why this is here. It's here to help us. You can't. Go into the room and close the door and work it out. And so next week I want to talk more about how you do that. How you do that. I'm going to do the best that I can. But basically what Jesus is saying, what God is saying here is, you can't, so work it out. And if you're a Christian, you have enough resources to do just that.

Now, if you are divorced, I understand, how could I not think that there would be divorced people? Of course, there are people here who have experienced divorce. Perhaps you are the innocent party, your spouse left you. We've had a number of those heartbreaking cases, and it's just very, very sad to walk through. The one individual wants to do everything they can to save the marriage, the other individual is gone. They don't want to be there anymore and they've committed adultery or whatever. It's very, very tragic. But we also know the other can happen too. Years and years ago, you weren't where you needed to be spiritually, you sin. Maybe it was you that committed adultery. Maybe you had irreconcilable differences and thought that was a reason to get divorced and you got a divorce. Then in subsequent years, you met someone else and got married. Now you're in a different place, perhaps, I hope, and you think about marriage more biblically, but what do you do now? Well, there's nothing you can do about the past. Just learn from it.

You remember the terrible story of David and Bathsheba and how David lusted after another man's wife. He took her, slept with her, she got pregnant, he then killed her husband, Uriah, to cover it up. They got married. In the course of time, she gave birth to a baby, and then God judged that couple by taking that baby. Now David’s in a marriage that was established through overt wickedness and sin. But in the course of time, she conceived again and gave birth to Solomon. The Lord sent word through Nathan, the prophet. He said, "Call him Jedediah, which means beloved of the Lord." That's God's way of saying that he moves on. We can't go back. He's going to tell the truth in the text of scripture, but he moves on.

If that's you, what I would suggest is, accept the grace of God for your sins, for what's happened in the past. You're not required to tell the story to anyone that asks, but if you are in a situation to mentor, let's say younger couples, or the topic comes up, just tell the biblical truth about what happened. You're not going to serve the church well by twisting it or thinking of it wrongly. Establish the biblical pattern in your own mind. Tell the truth, accept God's lavish grace for past sins that you can't do anything about now, and move ahead. God willing, next week we'll talk more about establishing oneness in marriage through the power of the Holy Spirit.

 Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the time we've had to be in your word today. Thank you for the insights it gives us, the truth it tells us. Fill us with your spirit. I pray for both singles and married people, that we would understand this topic properly. I pray that the marriages in this church will be healthy and God-honoring and God-glorifying. And above even this important topic of marriage, above anything and everything, is the blood of Jesus shed on the cross and the empty tomb, which gives us hope of an eternity, free from sin forever. In Jesus' name that we pray. Amen

God loves marriage and hates divorce. He brings married couples together primarily for the purpose of putting Himself on display.

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There is nothing wrong with the Law; that’s not why we do not bear fruit for God. The problem is within us.

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In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul gives commands concerning holiness to the Corinthians and reminds them that they are not their own, but belong to Jesus.

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Christ is fiercely protective of all of his children. Here, Jesus warns against pitfalls and encourages radical spiritual warfare.

The post Radical Warfare Against Sin (Mark Sermon 46) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Christ is fiercely protective of all of his children from any that would harm them in any way.

Turn in your Bible to Mark chapter 9. We continue in our study of this glorious gospel, Mark 9: 42-50. In this sober passage, Jesus calls on His people to a radical warfare against sin. He uses extreme language. He warns the worlds not to lure His little ones into sin, and He warns His own people to fight their own sin in the most extreme way, even to the point of cutting off a hand or a foot, or a plucking out of an eye if any of them should cause you to sin. And why? Because Jesus tells of the infinite danger of hell, a place of eternal torment, where the worm does not die and the fire's never quenched. So the question comes up in my mind now, what role should the fear of hell fire play in a person's salvation?

In past centuries, it was a dominant theme. People understood and feared hell, and they sought to be delivered from hell. Martin Luther was terrified of hell growing up. When caught in an electrical storm in the middle of a field in Germany, he fell down into the mud, and cried aloud for deliverance from that immediate danger, lest he should be thrown into hell, having been struck by lightning, a far greater torment awaited. He made a pledge to become a monk, so that he should escape the terrors of hell. John Bunyan, in his allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory of the Christian life on its journey, he focuses on an individual who he'd come to know as Christian in the allegory. He begins his story in a place called the City of Destruction. He finds out, by reading a book in his hand, that the city is liable for the wrath of God, and he wants to flee the wrath of God, but he doesn't know where to go. He doesn't know where he can run to flee the wrath of God. So this begins his pilgrimage.

Clearly, Bunyan thought the fear of hell was a reasonable motive for beginning the Christian journey. Jonathan Edwards, during a time of awakening, went to Enfield, Connecticut, a place that had missed out on the revival for various reasons. He went there and preached the most famous sermon in American church history, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, in which he makes it very plain, the terrors of hell, and the justice of God in sending the damned to hell. The people were savingly worked upon by this fear. It was, for them, a reason to flee to Christ. But nowadays, I think very few people hear a hellfire and brimstone sermon. It's just a very rare thing in our parts these days. It's mocked, it's derided, it's spoken of in culture. I think it's Satan's work to warn preachers like me off from preaching a text like this as it's written. But I believe if Jesus were here today, He would not shrink back from warning each of you of the terrors of hell. He would not shrink back from describing it to you. In fact, I think He's doing that in the text today, in the timeless Word of God. 

I believe that this motive of fear, of deep fear, is in line with what God worked at Mount Sinai with His people. As you remember, in Exodus 19 and 20, as He gets the people ready to receive the law of God, the 10 Commandments,[Exodus 19: 16 -19], the scene is set and described for us. There is thunder and lightning and a thick cloud on the top of the mountain, a very loud trumpet blast, and everyone in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord had descended on it, and fire and smoke billowed up from it, like smoke from a furnace. The whole mountain trembled violently, and the trumpets sounded louder and louder. Then, Moses spoke to God, and God spoke to the people. He proclaimed in their hearing, in a voice that was so loud and so terrifying that they begged after they heard it, to never hear that voice again unless they should die. God proclaimed the 10 Commandments, beginning with this, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” Then the rest of the nine commandments that followed. Interestingly, He says in Exodus 20:20, these words, "Do not fear. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you, to keep you from sinning.” 

In some sense, you could say that's the most illogical paragraph you'd ever find, “Do not fear”. It's like God, it seems like the only thing you're going after here, today is fear. But even within the statement, “Do not fear, God has come to test you so that the fear of God will keep you from sinning.” In effect, He's saying, "Fearing me and fearing sin, you need fear nothing else. But if you don't fear me and you don't fear sin, you need to fear everything." Or how much more I think, Jesus' words. I think that's what He's working here, the same kind of thing. As John Newton put it was, "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, in grace my fear is relieved." I think we skip that first step. What fear could there be? Oh, there's a very real fear. There should be a very real fear, a fear of hell. Fear of eternal conscious torment is God's just punishment for our breaking His laws. But if you fear God properly, you'll flee to Christ the Savior from the penalty of sin, which is hell. You'll flee to Christ, and you'll find deliverance from that penalty. And then fearing sin properly, you'll again, flee to Christ, who is the deliverer from the presence and practice of sin as well. That's what I think Jesus is working in us today.

This passage calls us to a radical warfare against temptation and against sin. What do I mean by radical? The word radical comes from the Latin word “radix”, which means “root”, like the root of a plant. There are two senses of the word radical in the way we use the word now. The first is, radical means having to do with basic foundational principles, going to the purest essence of the thing, what is elementary and intrinsic to the thing itself. The purest essence of the thing is what's radical, meaning, the original root nature. And here, it's discipleship, radical discipleship. What goes to the root of it? It should be a hatred of sin and a warring against it. It's a radical warfare to the essence of discipleship.

Radical secondly though, means sometimes, extreme, or intense, or fanatical, or revolutionary. So I want to just combine them, and let's take them as both radical, something both fundamental and fanatical. Something that is both intrinsic, but also intense. Something that is elemental, but also extreme. Jesus is taking the basic, the purest basic aspects of discipleship and extending them to their logical conclusions when it comes to sin. And what is discipleship? Go back to Mark 8: 34-37, Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good would it be for a man if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Or, what would a man give in exchange for his soul? Why would you forfeit your soul? What's the threat against your soul? It is sin, and the temptation that leads to sin. That's the threat. The temptations, Peter tells us, wage war against your soul [1 Peter 2:11]. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. This text, as we're going to walk through it, is a radical call to warfare against sin, and there are other themes as well as we'll walk through them.

Now, before I do, I want to say a word about the manuscripts. I hardly ever mention the manuscripts, but some of you may have been sharp-eyed to notice that a couple of verses didn't get read. Or maybe you didn't notice. So go ahead and look on the page of your paper Bibles. I don't know what your electronic Bibles do. But you'll notice perhaps, that verse 44 and verse 46 just aren't even there. Wait a minute, I thought Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." How do these float away? It's because we don't have the original Gospel of Mark. What we have are copies that were made in subsequent centuries. So, we come along later, archeologists find those old manuscripts, and they present them to the libraries of the world. Then, scientists, technologists, come along and study the various manuscripts, and put together what they think is the best guess, or the best scholarly approximation of the original Gospel of Mark. These manuscripts, the oldest and best manuscripts, don't have verse 44 and 46. All they are, the footnote will tell you what it is, it says again and then again and again, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. That's all it says. That's what's dropped out. So the meaning of the passage doesn't change.

What happened was, I think some of the monks, they meant well, but they want to help us out. They kind of doubled down on that, “the worm does not die and the fire's not quenched” statement. They doubled down again, and they added it, but it isn't there originally. So I just wanted to say that about manuscripts. Praise God, there's no significant Christian doctrine, or even insignificant doctrine, hanging in the balance on manuscript studies. But we're grateful for brothers and sisters that do a good job at presenting to us the best manuscripts, and then coordinating so we can understand the original text. So that explains that. If anybody want to come and say what you think went on with verse 44 and 46 and you have your theory, I'd like to listen.

Let's dig in now and walk through it, as Jesus warns about temptation. Look at verse 42, "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck." At this point, Jesus is looking beyond His people to the world, and He's speaking to the world. There's a warning for us too as we read it. It's a universal warning to anyone would tempt His children. It is in the spirit of God's fierce protection of His people. When He said in the Old Testament, "If anyone touches my people, it's like they're touching the apple of my eye." Like you're poking your finger in God's eye if you do anything to His people, He wants to protect them. It's fierce in His protection. Jesus is like an eagle fiercely protecting his nest and his young.

What does He have in mind? The immediate conversation here, as you remember from last week, is the disciples are arguing about which of them was the greatest. That the statement was inevitably going to lead them into sin, and it was going to lead them into pride, and jealousy, and negative feelings about each other. He's warning them not to tempt each other, but the real enemy here is outside the gates, outside the camp, it's the world. We know that from the parallel passage of Matthew 18: 6-7. There, Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the worlds because of the things that cause people to sin. Such things must come but woe to the man through whom they come."

He is warning the world about the way that they bring assaults and temptations on His own people. The world there, is the alluring system of enticements and assaults on our soul, a system of temptations. Temptations to sexual sin by internet images and porn sites, and elicit services, designed to connect people with sex workers. Woe to the world because of that. Temptations to greed and materialism by constant ads and appeals to our base nature of restless discontentment. Yearning to satisfy by owning something else, something we don't possess yet, so that we're greedy for more. Woe to the world because of that.

Temptations to power, temptations to rage, temptations to blasphemy, worldly entertainment. All of these alluring things in the world system, what 1 John 2:15 calls the world is “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life.” Woe to the world because of those things. Woe is a judgment, a prophetic judgment is coming on the world because of these evil things. We believe Satan is behind that worldly system of allure, allurements and enticements. He's in a very dark intelligent way, managing the world to lure people into sin.

Here, or in Matthew 18:7, especially, Jesus is focusing on the human agents of temptation. They're human beings behind it. There is a person or a group of people, a team of engineers behind these websites and these electronic enticements. Someone is out there writing algorithms to ensnare you, and feed you what you already want to hear, to stoke your ego. They're going to try to monetize it, but they also want to allure you into what they're doing, so that you use their thing. Someone is plotting, and planning, and executing a system of temptations. It's not accidental. Men and women are using their marketing skills, and their psychological knowledge, and their programming acumen, and their scientific knowledge, to entrap other people and make them do what they want them to do. Woe to the world because of that.

I was watching some time ago, a documentary about the tobacco industry, and their lies about the addictive nature of their products a number of decades ago, and how their chemists actually studied how to make the tobacco products more addictive. How they could deliver the addictive chemicals to the human body more effectively and make it more addictive. I think actually, programmers of video games, and others trying to do that, they want, they actually advertise that they're addictive. It means that it's a really good game, it's addictive. They want their things to go viral, meaning that, more and more people will be addicted to the things that they are crafting. These are the human agents of temptation.

Not to mention those things that are openly spoken of as addictive, such as the opioid chemicals that are pouring across our borders, like fentanyl, and they're ravaging communities and killing thousands of people. Some chemists worked on those recipes. They used their intelligence to come up with them, they didn't just fall out of the poppy plant. Then, drug cartels are using their knowledge and skills and intelligence to deliver them so that people are increasingly addicted, and they don't care if they die.

The drug epidemic, I think, is just a picture of sin in general. Sin is addictive and it leads to death. It's literal, but it's also a bit of a metaphor, a parable for what we're talking about here with sin. Jesus says, concerning those human agents, "It would be better for them to have a large millstone tied around their neck, and be thrown in the depths of the sea." It's a heavy millstone, like the kind used by a donkey, not a little hand mill that a woman would use in the kitchen, but we're talking one of those big ones, tons of weight put around these tempters to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Drowning is a terrible death, one of the worst ways to die. The millstone would weigh several tons, they were tied around your neck, and you're thrown in the deepest part of the ocean. You'll be dragged down, ever down, always down, and your lungs bursting, just yearning for oxygen, until at last, you expire, very painfully.

Jesus is using extreme language here, warning the world concerning temptations, but He also wants His children to deal with their own temptations, to deal with their own sins. Look at verses 43-47, "If your hand caused you to sin, 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. And if your foot cause you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye cause you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell." He's calling on a radical warfare against our own lusts. Jesus is using hyperbole; "If even your own hand causes you to stumble." It's a stumbling stone in the Greek, or the KJV says, "offends you." Spurgeon, when preaching on this said, "If something offends God, it should offend you."

It should be obvious, I would hope it's obvious to us, that He's not speaking literally here, in terms of cutting off your actual physical hand, or cutting off your actual physical foot, or plucking out your actual physical eye. Sometime ago in Mark 7, Jesus made it plain. In Mark 7:18, "Nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean." And then in that same passage, Mark 7, 23:23, He said, "What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean, for from within out of men's hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly." All these evils come from inside and these are what make a man unclean. So your hand cannot make you sin, neither can your foot or your eye. Sadly, in church history, there were some individuals that took statements like this and some others, literally, especially in terms of sexual immorality, and maimed themselves, made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. Others were ascetic monks who took on a very harsh lifestyle, harsh against the physical body, believing that that would guarantee holiness. But the consistent testimony of these very individuals when they're honest, was that they still dealt with lust every bit as much as ever before.

Sin resides in the heart, and expresses itself in the life, in the lifestyle. It starts in the heart and expresses itself as in terms of how we live. I think these three parts of the body represent that. The hand represents what you do. The eye represents what you look at. The foot represents where you go, or even how you live. So whatever you touch, whatever you look at, wherever you go, be radically committed to holiness. That's what he's saying here. You need to study your lifestyle. You need to look at how it's actually going for you, what's actually happening in your life. Whenever you do fall into temptation and sin, whenever you violate your conscience, you need to trace it back to the root, and find out what Satan did, and what the world did to allure. How did the world and the devil conspire with your inner lusts to produce that outcome? Too often we just say, “I'm forgiven”, and we don't say, "What did Satan do to get me? What did the world do to get me?" If you see that your habits in a certain way are consistently leading you into sin, you should do whatever it takes to cut that out of your life. Jesus said, we should pray in the Lord's prayer, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” This is the best translation of that. Deliver us from Satan. Satan, don’t lead us not into temptation, but don't lead yourself into temptation. That's the point. Don't lead yourself. Don't be foolish.

I'm going to stop, and as I've been doing the last minute or so, I'm going to apply it right now, as we hear these words. Is there any pattern of your life that the Holy Spirit is testifying with your spirit right now is a problem. It consistently leads you into sin. Cut it out of your life. That's what He's saying. You might do it with the digital world, as I mentioned. It might have to do with your use of technology, your smartphone, or websites that you go to, social media that you use. Are you addicted to anything that's dragging you inevitably into sin again and again? You know the truth. You should be willing to ask yourself hard questions about your lifestyle, and cut out anything leading you to sin. 

As we quoted many times before, Psalm 139, 23:24, "Search me oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts." See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Why? Why the urgency? Because of the danger of hell, that’s why. Look at verse 43, "If your hand cause you to sin, 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." Where the fire never goes out. Verse 45, "If your foot caused you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.” Verse 47, 48, "If your eye caused you to sin, pluck it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."Again in verse 49, "Everyone will be salted with fire." I really do believe Jesus truly means to terrify us toward holiness. However we harmonize that with our theology, however we seek to harmonize that with Romans 8:1, "There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 5:1, "Since we've been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." You excuse yourself quickly and glibly from this at your own peril.

There are twelve mentions of hell in the New Testament. Eleven of them are by Jesus. He is the loving shepherd of our souls. Though there is no clear teaching on the nature of hell as eternal conscious torment in the Old Testament, yet Jesus does pick up one of the two Old Testament verses that tends in that direction. The final verse of the book of Isaiah, that magnificent prophecy ends with this terrifying verse. The last verse, Isaiah 66:24. "And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me. Their worm will not die and nor will their fire be quenched and they will be loathsome to all mankind." That's how Isaiah ends. The final word in the book of Isaiah. Jesus picks it up and quotes it here. The concept there was that the worm represents, I think, the decay of the body in the grave, and there's always work for the worm to do. In God, we live and move and have our being. So God sustains the damned in hell. They don't cease to exist. There continues to be work for the worm. He sustains the worm, it doesn't cease to exist, and He sustains the fire. It doesn't go out. The fire of judgment never goes out, it just keeps burning. Isaiah had mentioned earlier in his prophecy[Is.30:33], the fire pit of Topheth, a place where the garbage was put, and in Jesus day it was Gehenna, where it's just burning forever. Isaiah 33:14, "The sinners in Zion are terrified, trembling grips the godless. Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning?"

Then the prophet, Daniel, gives another of the only indications of hell and the nature of hell, in Daniel 12:2, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." But that's it, in the Old Testament. It was left to Jesus to teach us about hell. It was given to Jesus to reveal the terrors of hell. It is reasonable, it is right for Him to be the one to do so. First of all, because He is the judge of all the earth. It is He that will sit on our case on Judgment Day when all the nations are gathered before Him and He'll separate the people into two categories, sheep and goats, believers, unbelievers. He has the power to consign us to hell. He is the judge. John the Baptist made it clear as he began preaching about Jesus in Matthew 3:12, "His winnowing fork is in His hand and he will clear His threshing floor, gathering up the wheat into His barn, and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

It's also reasonable for Jesus to be the one to teach us about hell, because He drank hell in our place on the cross. Jesus is the only escape from hell. He's the only refuge there is from this judgment of hell. The way He became a refuge for us is by drinking hell Himself on the cross. That was the cup He shrank back from in Gethsemane. If we minimize hell, if we say it doesn't exist, we're minimizing what Jesus achieved on the cross. Jesus went out in front of us, our good shepherd, and laid down His life under the wrath of God, that we might not have to suffer the torments of hell. Jesus has the right to teach us about hell, because He will experience it more than anyone else ever. Because He experienced hell for all of the elect, in every generation, every tribe, language, people, and nation, all of it poured down on Him by the justice of His father. So it seems reasonable that God, that Jesus, as God's final word [Hebrews 1], the final word, that it should be given to Jesus to teach us about hell.

He did teach it consistently, as a place of eternal conscious torment in the “sheep and the goat’s" passage, Matthew 25:41, He will say, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." It's a place of eternal shame and regret and pain. In Matthew 8:12, Jesus said, "The subjects of the kingdom be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Again, Matthew 22:13, "Tie them hand in foot, and throw them outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Then in that terrifying and powerful parable, the rich man and Lazarus [Luke 16,] the rich man is sent to hell, and it says, "In hell where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me, send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'"

The rich man also has memory of his past life and regret, which Father Abraham calls to his mind. Abraham said, "Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he's comforted here and you're in agony." The damned in hell will remember their lives and details about their lives. He was aware he had brothers that were living the same kind of selfish, wicked life he had lived, and he has regrets about that. It's a place from which there's no escape in that parable. "No one can cross over,” Abraham says, "Besides this, between us and you, there's a great chasm that's been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”

That's the basis of this, that Jesus uses that rational evaluation that we studied earlier. What would it profit someone if they should gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? To forfeit your soul means to be consigned to hell. That's the danger. It's what it means to lose your soul. Therefore, Jesus is extending it to your lifestyle now. There is nothing that is too hard for you to cut out of your life if it inevitably causes you to sin. Nothing. Even if it's your right hand, your right eye, or your foot. No matter how radical, whatever you need to do to be holy.

Some Christians balk at this, at many levels. They balk at the concept of hell as eternal conscious torment. They argue that it's disproportionate for God to judge in eternity, what people did in time. It seems unjust to them. Some, like John Stott, an otherwise faithful teacher of the word of God, teach a doctrine called annihilationism. The idea is, that the damned cease to exist after a time. They are consumed, they're destroyed, and they cease to exist. But the quote here directly opposes that, ‘the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Why? Because there's still work for the worm and the fire to do. It's eternal conscious torment. Conscious, because the rich man knew what he was going through, “Son, remember that in your life . . . “. Furthermore, there's a parallelism set up at the end of the “sheep and the goat” passage, “Then these will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” In other words, the punishment is as eternal as the life that the righteous get is. So annihilationism is a false teaching, no matter who teaches it. By application, what must you do to be holy? What does it take for you to live a holy life? What sin patterns in your life are growing in you like a tumor? You have to look at it.

Jesus continues, and He warns about worldliness in verse 50,"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?" And then says, "Have salt in yourselves." In order to understand this, and it's an interesting shift, and I don't fully understand it. It's good when pastors say, I don't know. I don't know how we went from fire to “salt is good”, but it's just the concept of salt. Now He's saying, “Let's talk about your relationship with the world." This is clear in the Sermon in the Mount, when Jesus says, "You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It's no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden." People don't light a lamp and put it under a bowl, so He is talking about our impact on the world.

Salt is a preservative. It keeps corruption from spreading through the meat. Salted meat lasts a long, long time compared to just regular raw meat, because it's a desiccant, the moisture's dried up, and then the bacteria can't form, et cetera. That's how it works. How does salt lose its saltiness? Chemists will tell you, sodium chloride is one of the most stable molecules on earth. It’s solid, it’s stable, it’s not going anywhere. So how does it lose its saltiness? It gets mixed with other things. Back in Jesus' day, the thing that salt would be mixed in would be gypsum. You get enough of that mixed in, salt is not doing its job, it's lost its impact, and it's worthless. The idea then really is, to look at what He's talking about. Are we, as Christians, influencing the world for holiness, or is the world influencing us by its corruptions? That's the question that fits the context here. That's the question we have to ask as Christians. The image here is worldliness. The remedy is, as Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds." We're transformed by the Word of God, and we take passages, like the one I'm preaching on right now, seriously, and actually live them out, and if so, we will have a powerful impact on the world through our holiness. That's the connection.

Jesus ends this passage by pleading for loving unity. We go back to the disciples arguing about which of them is the greatest. Putting it all together, one of the things He's saying in this passage is, you want to be great, be great in holiness. Be great in holiness. Put sin to death. Be holy. That's, you want to be great. He's going to say, be a servant. We've said that before, and we'll teach it again in next chapter, be holy.

Then He says, "Stop arguing with each other. Be at peace with each other. Don't ruffle each other's feathers.” Jesus has told them about this, and He is saying, "Look, you need to be at peace with each other, to love each other." Galatians 5: 13-15 says, "Serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command. Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you'll be destroyed by each other. That's ugly. Don't be like that. Don't be in competition with other people. When you see another person driving out a demon in Jesus' name, say, "He's on our side." Whoever's not against us is for us. Don't be jealous of what he's achieving. We're all part of one body. If one part of the body is honored, the whole body is honored with it.

I boiled this down into this one statement, Do not ask, "How am I greater than my brother?", but ask, "How can I make my brother greater?" Because in his or her greatness, in their service to God, we are going to be honored by that. We're going to be blessed. We want our brothers and sisters successful in holiness and successful in ministry. Whatever I can do to help you be successful, I'll be honored by that on Judgment Day. So do not ask, "Am I greater than my brother? How am I greater than my brother?" But ask, "How can I make my brothers and sisters greater?”

Some final lessons. I've already given some applications through, but let's finish. First and foremost, I just plead with anyone who came in here today, as yet outside of Christ, flee to Christ while there's time. Hell is real. Jesus warned us again and again about it. Christ drank the cup of hell on the cross, that we would not have to experience it. Going back to Martin Luther on the topic, is it right for us to fear hell in order to be saved? He would say, absolutely. This is what he wrote, "I did not learn my theology all at once, but I had to search deeper for it where my temptations took me. I followed where my temptations took me." Then he said, "Not understanding, reading, or speculation, but living, nay, dying and being damned makes someone a theologian." Picture yourself dying and being damned. Then you wake up and you're still alive. I would think you'd study theology at that point. That's what Luther is saying. So it is reasonable to fear hell and learn Christ, come to Christ. That's what Jesus did for us on the cross, stood in our place and took that lightning strike of the wrath of God, so flee to Him.

And then, Romans 8:1, which I quoted earlier, will be true of you, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But if you're saying to me, "Pastor, we don't need to worry about hell, because for me, there's no condemnation." You need to keep reading Romans 8, you stopped too soon. There's a comma there. When there's a comma, I would suggest you keep reading. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And in whom the righteous commandments of the law are fully met in us who live the spirit-filled. He says, "The mind of the flesh is death and it's hostile to God." And that's not you, if you are those of whom it said there's no condemnation. It culminates in, effectively the same teaching, only in Paul's language. "If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the spirit of God, these are the children of God." So you want to know, am I justified? Have my sins been forgiven? Look at your life. Is there a pattern of holiness in your life? Is there a pattern of putting sin to death by the Spirit in your life?

John Owen put it this way, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." The kind of violent language that Jesus uses here, sin already has that attitude toward you. Sin's already coming after you. Trying to destroy you, destroy your marriage, destroy your family, to destroy your church membership, destroy your career, destroy your body. It wants you. It's already coming after you. It's already wanting to kill you. You need to turn around and kill it. It's warfare, and you do it by the Spirit.

John Owen said, "The life, vigor, and comfort of our spiritual life depends much on our mortification of sin." He also said, "There's not a day, but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon, and it will be so whilst we live in this world." You can't get out of it. Sin doesn't take a vacation. Actually, sin's especially active when you're on vacation, I've noticed. So no, there's no day off. We have to fight it, and we do it by the power of the Spirit. 

Close with me in prayer. Father, these are sober words that your Son gave us. We are grateful for them. We know that they're true. Jesus only ever spoke the truth. I pray that we would take sin seriously and put it to death. I pray that those who are, as yet, outside of Christ, would fear and flee, and find forgiveness in Christ. Father, I pray that you would help us to be honest about our lifestyles. Be honest about the things that we cuddle to ourselves. And if some of them are vipers, help us to cast them away lest they bite us. Oh God, give us the courage to put these verses into practice, and to be clear about the things that we are doing that are dishonoring you, and putting them to death by the Spirit. In Jesus' name, Amen.

In this class, Pastor Andy Davis explains, based on Romans 7, that it is as impossible to be sanctified by Law as it was to be justified by Law.

The post Class in Romans: The Law Cannot Sanctify appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul commands church discipline for the sake of the church's reputation, for the possible salvation of the sinner, and for the protection of the purity of the church.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 6: Expelling Immoral People Essential to Church Purity appeared first on Two Journeys.