Mark chapter nine. We're close to finishing out the chapter together. We begin in verse 42. We'll read to the end, but it is gonna take me two sermons to get through these verses. You may see why as we go through them. Mark chapter nine, verse 42. Jesus is here in an extended teaching and says, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. For everyone will be salted with fire, and salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. This is the word of the Lord for us today. Thanks be to God. Let's pray for his blessing on his word. Heavenly Father, we may understand the words, but without the spirit to bring them to life, the most eloquent of creatures of all time is powerless without your spirit. The best teachers of all time, powerless, without your spirit. To move past mere comprehension of words and to true life-performing power of the word requires the life-giving spirit. And we pray, Lord, that you would guide us by your word and spirit. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. It may not seem it at first glance, but the first part of this section is about how much God loves you. This first section, which we often think is being great and terrible, actually speaks to God's great love for his people. He begins with a warning, and the warning is for a specific group of people who might have been hearing him that day, just as you might be hearing me right now. Of course, it's no good to hear a warning if your ears are closed and your mind is somewhere else, but perhaps you're hearing this warning today, for it is for you and for me, just as though Jesus were speaking to us. He warns against those who would tempt His followers, those who would tempt His believers. It says, first, those little children who believe. You know, Jesus often uses pictures, doesn't he? He uses pictures for us, and by using these pictures, we understand a truth in a deeper way than we could understand it just with ideas or other types of concepts. And here we see the truth of one thing compared to another, and it requires that both things were true. One of the things I love about Uganda is the treatment of children. Now, I know individuals may vary and circumstances may vary, but in my experience, if someone, a parent, has children with them, they're given some accommodation, they're given some understanding, they're given some patience that the adult alone may not have. And even when decisions are made, and I've been in various rooms with various people, The idea of what will happen to the children when we do that, that's something that comes up regularly, this idea of thinking about and taking care of the children. And I'm happy to say it comes up much more in my Christian circles than it does my otherwise circles, and I think that's to our honor. In Jesus' day, of course, like all parents love children, the parents may have loved children, but the concept of children was that they were irrelevant. They were irrelevant. Not that they had no significance whatsoever, but that they were not a strong consideration or a strong motivation for doing things. You see this crop up in Jesus' teaching and in the experience of the Gospels, where the children were being barred from coming to Him. And He says, as you remember, what does He say? suffer the little children to come to me." Even his own disciples were discouraging it, thinking he was high and lofty and they were a distraction. Jesus often speaks of the children, speaks of them quite highly. And Jesus repeatedly points to their great value and to them as an object of his love, of his attention, and of his protection. And here he's drawing on those very themes. It's something I think you and I know instinctively. Have you thought about how laws work? You can tell what's important to you a bit by the enforcement of laws. And you and I know that there are types of crimes That when they're done to adults, they're of course very bad. But then when we know when they're done to children, we would use stronger language, wouldn't we? We would say it's particularly evil, particularly heinous, particularly terrible. Because you and I see in children that while none of us is truly good in and of ourselves, yet there is a bit of innocence and a bit of vulnerability, something that you and I may protect ourselves somehow, but how can the children protect themselves? They have neither the ability nor the voice to do so. We know and our laws reflect that children need to be protected, don't they? And a nation which does not protect its children will find that its children have no future. It requires those who are stronger to protect those who are weaker, and it's that very theme which Jesus draws upon here. Now Jesus is using the image of children to talk about people who may not actually themselves be children. We have this a number of times in His teaching, but we see it quite clearly here. He often refers to His disciples, the broader group of disciples, as little children, or as children. And here it seems He's doing that very thing. He says those little children who believe, that is the believers who are there. In the same way we might think of children, especially small children, as being vulnerable and in need of protection, but also, as we see in His example, as being quite precious to us, Jesus views His disciples the same way. That in fact, they're quite vulnerable and in need of protection, and they're also quite precious to Him. And so he gives a warning for this group. Whoever may be listening, he says that if you cause them to sin, literally this is talking about stumbling over something. It's not just a simple act of sin, but here it seems to indicate something which disrupts someone's faith. That is, they are believing, and yet you have put something in front of them which hinders their progress. Or to think of it as a simple command, he's telling them, don't disrupt believers' faith. Don't disrupt their belief. Don't put obstacles in their progression of faith. The command by itself, don't do this, from Jesus would be enough. But I think what every one of us remembers about this story is what he says next. It's a graphic example. It's a strong picture when you understand it. He says it would be better for the person who puts that type of temptation in their path if a great millstone was hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If you know a bit about the Greek behind this, you know that there's more than one type of millstone. There's a small household one that a person themselves might be able to grind with, and that would be sufficient. It's heavy enough to cause you problems if you tried to swim with it, but it's not the one he has in mind. It actually says the donkey millstone. And it's called the donkey millstone because it was so large it required an animal of burden, a working animal, in order to turn it. It was too big for people normally to be the ones to do it. It's the biggest variety commonly in use. So it's not the small one he says should be hung around your neck, it's the big one. And when he says hung around the neck, understand this type didn't have a circle in the center, so you're not wearing it like it's a necklace, but it has to be lashed around you, to be hung around you. And so you should have a picture of a captive who has a stone nearly as large as they are, chained to their neck, then taken to the water and the stone is thrown in with them attached to it. This is a hopeless situation. the strongest of swimmers, the most capable of athletes could not pull themselves from this situation. It's a graphic way of suggesting that if you had a choice in the moment between tempting someone to quit believing or to be drowned without hope of rescue, if you knew the implications, you would choose to drown. That's strong, isn't it? I don't know about you. There's nothing about the death of drowning that I find attractive. Surely there are better and worse ways to go. That's undeniable. But I don't know a single person who longingly looks forward to a future in which they drown. We all think of it as a horrible death, I think. And yet Jesus takes that death that's horrible, and to help us understand the gravity of tempting others towards unbelief, he says, if you knew what you were choosing, you would choose to drown. And understand Jesus, Jesus knows what the choices are. And he estimates them truly, and he estimates them rightly. For me, that has my attention. If you told me anything and that it would be better for me to be drowned than to do that thing, I know almost with a full certainty which one I would choose. And yet, do we think, do we think of the temptations and the doubts that we put before others, do we think of them in that term? How easily and playfully we talk about doubts and confusions I'm sorry to say there are even people who say they're of Christendom, they're of the kingdom of Christ, who put doubt on a pedestal as though it were a thing to be admired and a thing to be emulated, to do the same thing as, and yet Jesus tells us that the person who nudges someone towards that type of stumbling is choosing a fate worse than death. So let's don't be playful. And let's don't be thoughtless with this idea of how we may cause others to stumble. But I told you in the beginning, actually, this is a picture of how much God loves us. You see, because as surely as you are a believer, Jesus is saying this for your protection. Jesus is saying this for your protection. When we think about the wrath of God, even as it's covered later in this teaching, we often think of the wrath of God that's stored up against the children of unbelief, those children of wrath, it's called. And we know for ourselves, apart from the grace of God and the work in our lives, if we have not received it by a faith that He's given us, we are lost to the wrath of God, and we deserve it. But here Jesus reveals something to us that I think many Christians lose, which is that just as He teaches often in the Old Testament, and we see also revealed in the New Testament, that some of His wrath is stored up for the protection of His people. That is, He is saying that by faith, your enemies of the faith are His enemies too. And that His wrath, that wrath we know so well from the Scriptures, which is stored up from them, is stored up not just for His glory, although it certainly does that, nor just for His justice, which of course it also does that, but it is also for your protection. Imagine an almighty God, whose holiness burns like a consuming fire, who sees someone who would lead his precious little one astray. What a mistake that would be. And he says it in full hearing and he puts it in print in a scriptures which will never pass away that his wrath will burn against those who tempt his little ones. He loves you so much he would pour out his wrath against them so that they would rather have been drowned. That's how much Christ loves you. Christ loves us, he teaches us, and he shows us. And we see how strong a warning against our unbelief or attempts of unbelief towards others, but we also see how much he loves us in that. But then he does turn, not from warning from temptation from outside, but towards warning against temptation from the inside. These passages I think you know well. The idea that if your hand causes you to sin, if your foot causes you to sin, if your eye causes you to sin, it would be better that you lived without it than that you had it. I had a temptation to be a bit theatrical today. I don't know what it is about this passage, but it tempts someone to be a bit theatrical when they preach. Imagine if I had come in here today with a ponga, and I had put a ponga here, and I said, who's going to leave with two hands? What would you think? You'd think, hey, Pitts has lost it. Imagine how those people heard Jesus say that. Which of you hates your hands? Do you hate your hands? Which of you hates your eyes, that you want to go blind? Which of you hates your feet, that you would rather go lame? So you see, just like there was an extreme comparison before, there's an extreme comparison here as well. that however you value your hands, you cannot value them more than you do eternal life with God forever. However you value your eyes, you cannot value them more than you value the kingdom of God. However you value any part of you, in the final assessment, if you knew what you were comparing, you would choose to lose them rather than to keep them and to go to hell. I mentioned a few moments ago about the powerful wrath of God and the pictures we see of the place of eternal torment is a picture that will stick with you. If you truly spend time studying it and thinking about it, it will stick with you. It will never be a word that you say easily as a swear word if you understand what it's really saying. You would never tell someone easily and flippantly to go there if you knew where you said you were going. It is the full wrath of God poured out on unbelievers, from which, apart from the grace of God in this life, there is no escape. Once you go, there is no returning. It is a place of torment forever. And every picture we have of it is horrible. It's meant to terrify, because it's a terrifying place. And we see that picture here, if you can imagine. The fire we know well, but what do you know of the worm? A number of years ago, some of you may know I hunt. Not here in Uganda, but back in the States. I grew up among people who hunt, and I grew up hunting. For us, it's normal. For some of you, maybe it's not so normal. I don't know. My brother, we have these pigs, these really big pigs in Georgia. They're not from Georgia originally, but they now have been there for a few hundred years. And my brother one day was hunting, and he shot this big pig. And in the chaos, the pig escaped before it died. And he and I, about a week later in the heat, went to look for this pig. And as we approached where we thought the dead pig had been, he'd been there about a week in the heat, my eyes somehow played a trick on me. Things that are not supposed to be moving were moving. And at first I thought maybe there's other pigs there. They do that sometimes. Maybe there's other small pigs who are there, these wild pigs. But it wasn't the right shape. And as I got close to what I saw was the outline of a huge pig, it seemed as though in this thick forest, the trees and the branches began to explode. And it was because a whole flock of vultures, who were all eating from this pig, were trying to get through the forest canopy and were shaking the trees. And as they went up, it's like something from a nightmare, I noticed that the area around the pig, it didn't stop moving. It was like some kind of shimmer in my eyes. I couldn't see in the darkness exactly what it was. But as I got close, I saw it was maggots. Maggots on the body of the pig. You know, when the fly eats it, it lays an egg and these small worms, they grow up to consume the flesh. We have them here. There was more than you could imagine. It was all over the body of this pig. It was all over the branches. It was on the leaves around it. It was on the ground. It was everywhere. And everywhere there was a cut in the body that the vultures had made, it oozed these maggots, these worms oozed out. And I thought for everything that this is a picture of hell. Except those earthly worms, they die like I die. But Jesus says the worm of hell lasts forever. He eats forever. He's never full. He keeps eating. I tell you, that's not a place you want to be trapped. If you had a choice between being trapped there or coming back,