About a century ago, a man named Henry H. Halley brought out his Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary.  In his comments about what I just read from Mark, Halley writes: “One of the supreme Christian motives is that we so conduct ourselves that no one else may be lost on account of our example.”[1]  No one else—has someone already been lost on account of my example, or yours?  God forbid!  Don’t be the cause of another’s stumbling.  We are none of us especially strong, and none of us—including me!—are quite so good as we tell ourselves.  The thought that you and I are examples, and that the consequences of our actions and words matter because of that (as well as for other reasons) can be hard to bear.  I don’t want to be an example for anybody!  But I am.  We all are, especially as Christians.  People know being a Christian means something.

Scottish pastor and biblical scholar W. Graham Scroggie writes that “the folly of trifling with temptation is colossal.”[2]  We should never become despondent about temptations that arise along the way, and our lapses.  Neither should we ever willingly, habitually, actively entertain temptation or regard temptation as harmless.  The serpent in the garden might not have had a venomous bite, but why try to find out?

I take Jesus to be talking about those who are still growing in the faith.  He warns those who are listening, warns them rather sternly: “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea” (9:42).  John calls those in his church his little children.  Writing to the churches he established, Paul speaks about feeding them with milk until they are ready for solid food.  Peter writes in much the same way.  All three warn against mistaking the way, warn against those who would draw the faithful off the right way, because they’re out there.  They don’t regard themselves as evil, certainly not wrong.  They see themselves as enlightened, sensitive, open-minded, inclusive, though according to the world’s terms rather than God’s Word, about which they are very confused.

Let no one be lost on account of our thoughtlessness, irresponsibility, or recklessness with the faith we profess.  Jesus is speaking to those inside the family of the faithful.  It will be bad enough on the day of the Lord for those outside the Church.  How much harder for those claiming to be within the body!  James writes that those “who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).  Lord, have mercy!  I’ve known godly pastors—what a blessing they have been!  We know there are also those, our history here at Bethel decades ago reminds us, that there are teachers who cast themselves off the path, to pursue what?  To gain what?  For the sake of what?

None of us should ever beckon another into sin.  Together, let us be mindful of our walk with the Lord.  None of us should ever confuse another about sin or tell anyone that sin is no sin but blessing, believing we’re being so kind to say it, so tolerant and loving.  God is patient—Amen?—and slow to anger—Amen?—and remarkably intolerant of sin.  So much so that Jesus gives what may be one of his most shocking teachings about this very matter:

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.  It is better for you to enter life maimed than                        with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.  And if your foot causes you                          to  stumble, cut it off.  It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be                      thrown into hell.  And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.  It is better for you to                        enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.                             (9:43-47)

Hell?  So Old Testament!  Jesus never talks about hell!  Except when he does.  “The fire never goes out” (9:48, Is 66:24): how primitive!  Positively medieval.  Inquisition stuff!  Surely, this can’t be Jesus talking, our rational, enlightened, tolerant Jesus: Jesus just like us.  When we sit with God’s Word, God introduces us to a much fuller, more complex Jesus than our cultured imaginations conjure.

Cut it off—cut off what leads you into sin.  This from the one who came to deal with sin, decisively!  “[T]he folly of trifling with temptation is colossal.”  The nineteenth-century Catholic priest John Bosco said, “Do not try to excuse your faults; try to correct them.”  Make no room for sin, no excuses for it.  Don’t begrudgingly put up with sin for the sake of . . . something.  I don’t know your temptations, but you do.  So does your Enemy.  Sin is not a private, personal matter.  “It doesn’t hurt anybody!”  Not even you?  Even when you sin only against yourself, you sin against God.  You belong to God: as you are in Christ, you are His (1 Cor 6:19-20), and He takes an interest.  He is looking for the interest upon His talents.  Yes, in that day, we will all rely only on Christ.  What would you like Jesus to say about you and your walk to his Father?

Sin stains everything and everyone around it.  Sin corrodes.  It’ll ruin you and anyone you allow it to touch.  The first psalm begins, “Blessed is the one who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread” (Ps 1:1).  Don’t let yourself reach out for sin.  Don’t let yourself walk right into sin.  Don’t feed your eyes with sin—men, pay attention: we indulge sin by our eyes more than we want to confess!  Through His prophet the priest Ezekiel, God tells His people, “Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast upon, every one of you, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt” (Ezek 20:7).  Oh, but we aren’t in Egypt; after all, metaphors and analogies go only so far.  Can’t we just do nice things for some people, say nice things, and not look so closely at ourselves?  I’m okay, you’re okay—okay?

The idols of Egypt are those things of this world that mean to get their hooks into us.  The hooks catch us, then they begin to tear: drugs, alcohol, all the dark places on the internet, greed, envy, pride, anger, resentment, lust, unmitigated sorrow, laziness concerning the things of God and lack of interest in them.  The world shows us all sorts of things it tells us are good to look upon, and we like to look, touch, taste—Lord knows I do!  God calls it all “detestable.”  God says that by these things we “defile” ourselves.  Oh God, you’re such a prude!  I just hate it when Jesus gets all serious!  Beloved, when is he not serious?  Salvation causes us to be light-hearted and glad—hallelujah!  I’m so glad Jesus lifted me!  But where did the idea that come from that faith is games and play, unserious, no sweat?  “Don’t get all worked up!  Chillax.”  Faith is the most serious thing.  Let us be seriously joyful, amen!  And let us be joyfully serious.

Defile is strong language; it’s meant to be.  These things are not harmless, and they certainly aren’t innocent.  They aren’t even fun.  It’s poison.  God tells us, warns us.  But, you know, it doesn’t look like poison!  It looks, you know, kind of good.  “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes [. . .] she took of its fruit and ate” (Gen 3:6).  “A delight to the eyes.”  God means to refit our hearts for Himself.  Rather than rise to the call of God, people rework God’s call to fit their hearts: seat of the will and desiring.

The hand, the foot, the eye—each does as the will bids.  The will is always in charge: the will is the problem—the want to, as evangelical pastor Voddie Baucham talks of it.  Jesus is warning us against a bad will, sin-besotted, sin-addled desiring.  Cut it off.  Jesus warns against a fallen heart.  As the heart goes, so goes the thinking.  The Bible says something is sin.  The heart balks, as the heart is wont to do.  We like to believe the head comes in, then, to counsel, correct, and discipline the heart.  Sure the heart’s a mess, but the head is cool and in control.  Head, do your thing: overrule, discipline.  No.  The heart turns the head and harnesses it to the heart’s fallen desire.  “Yes, the Bible says it, but Jesus never said it!”  Theologians write, seminary professors teach, pastors repeat, and the people receive and accept it.  God’s Word is right about what we want it to be right and wrong about what our hearts tell us just can’t be right.  Idols of Egypt.

Only consider: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:5).  Ouch.  Well, that sounds like overstatement, exaggeration!  Only look around, out there—but carefully, cautiously, as though probing for mines.  Our culture—the mouthpiece for current values—is a minefield.  What’s in the heart, beloved?  Who, what, is enthroned, there?  It matters to God.  Seeing all this evil pouring out from the human heart, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled” (Gen 6:6).  Meditate upon that: “His heart was deeply troubled.”  How deep, the depths of God!

People read the law given through Moses and are quick to point out things that seem silly or bizarre: tassels for example.  The people, men at least, were to have tassels on the corners of their clothing—blue tassels.  Why does God care about blue tassels?  Who wants to wear a tassel, of any color?  This is bizarre.  Here’s the reason God gives: “You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes” (Num 15:39).  If your eye causes you to sin (your heart, that is)—look at the blue tassel.  A reminder.  We need reminders.  Some people used to tie a string around their finger as a reminder—well, that’s bizarre, too.  My mother-in-law has a cartoon on her fridge of a guy mummy-wrapped in post-it notes, groaning, “Must remember.”  Remember what, though?  I forget.

God puts the matter rather bluntly: there’s remembering or forgetting; the opposite of obedience is prostitution.  Wow!  Very personal, very bodily, very intimate.  What have you got in that temple of the Holy Spirit?  Prostitution takes inmost things and defiles them, turns them into trash.  Just consider what the lusts of our hearts and eyes have done on this earth, done to ourselves, to others, done to our relationship with God, whose heart is deeply troubled.  By His grace, so are ours, now.  There’s hope, then!  Please, church, let’s nurture that hope, together.

Isaiah warned God’s people against a deluded heart (Is 44:20).  The prophet laments the people’s offenses against God, the people “uttering lies our hearts have conceived” (Is 59:13).  Isaiah wasn’t excluding himself.  What lies have the hearts of this age conceived?  Jeremiah spoke of people following “the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts” (Jer 7:24, 11:8, 16:12).  He wasn’t the first to notice.  Memorably, Jeremiah tells us “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9).  That’s a hard one to accept, though, because we just know our hearts are good, and people have good hearts, even though, we may recall, Jesus himself declined to be called good (Mk 10:18).  Ezekiel spoke of those who “set up idols in their hearts” (Ezek 14:3): the goodness of the heart, for example.

As the heart goes, so goes the head.  The Bible is clear about this.  But, you know, that’s just the Old Testament.  Old Testament theology: deluded, stubborn, idolatrous hearts.  That was then, Jews, but Jesus has come.  Beloved, our hearts are always with our treasure: what we value, what we love, what we worship.  Too often and too easily, that what is a what when it should be a who.  Not what we value but who.  Not what we love but who.  Not what we worship, but who.  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:21).  Jesus has something more to say about the heart that has the ring of familiarity by this point: “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder” (Mk 7:21, see also Mt 15:19).  Cut it off.  Cast it out.  New hands, new feet, new eyes, a new heart.  Truly, God’s heart is deeply troubled by our hearts.  Our hearts were meant to reflect His heart, His light, His love, His mercy and grace.  In Christ they can, they will.  Christ is the cure for which Jeremiah and all the sad, weary prophets longed and prayed.

You already know the trouble, and pastor does have a way of going on and on about it.  Is he talking about us, or someone else?  Maybe he’s just talking about himself.  Beloved, we also know hope springs from the heart.  How’d it ever get there?  God’s Word reminds us that “you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Dt 4:29).  All.  No half-heartedness.  No half-hearted, lukewarm search for God can end well.  Pray.  God will give you a heart after his own—in Christ, He already has.

Like those tassels, God tells us “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds” (Dt 11:18).  It’s not enough to have words of God up here: the devil can quote Scripture!  God’s Word must get in here, too.  Put God’s Word to work, here.  As the heart goes, so goes the head.  Get that Word enthroned upon your heart, and you will know the joy of the Lord.  That joy is salvation.  Blessed are those who delight in the Word of God, who hold on to it and walk in it: those in whose hearts are the highways to Zion.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] Henry H. Halley.  Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary.  (1924.)  Chicago, 1955.  422.

               [2] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976.  172.