Mark 9:42-50 - Homiletics

Warnings.

With these solemn words our Lord closed his arduous and faithful ministry in Galilee. Christ's language was usually language of grace and encouragement; but there were occasions, like the present, when he spoke words of faithful warning in tones almost of severity. Yet it should be noted that these admonitions were addressed to his own disciples, and were intended to quicken their spiritual sensibility, and to induce them to use with diligence the privileges with which they were favored, especially through their association with himself.

I. POWERS AND MEANS OF USEFULNESS MAY BECOME OCCASIONS OF SPIRITUAL OFFENCE . This is a very serious consideration. Increased privilege brings increased responsibility, and none can possess powers of body or of mind without being exposed by such possession to liability to unfaithfulness and to consequent deprivation.

1 . Social intercourse and influence come under this general principle. Our Lord speaks of his disciples, and especially of the inexperienced and immature, as "his little ones who believe on him." We cannot be associated with such without affecting them for good or for evil. To cause them to stumble, to betray them into errors or into sin, is an offense against our Lord, and it would be better for a man to be flung with a millstone about his neck into the deep water, than so to offend against the Lord of the little ones.

2 . Our active powers may become occasions of offense. The hand and the foot may be taken as emblematical of these pewees, the proper and intended purpose of which is undoubtedly their employment in works of justice and of charity and helpfulness. Yet these good faculties may cause their possessors to offend. The hands may work deeds of violence, the feet may lead into the way of sinners; and in such a case the purpose of the Creator is frustrated, and condemnation is incurred.

3 . Sense and intelligence may be productive of harm as well as of good. The eye may fairly be taken as representing sense generally, and the apprehensive faculty. When the eyes wander where they should not, are closed when they should be open, or are open when they should be closed, they are an offense. When the intellect is directed to the wrong topics, or to the right topics in the wrong temper, its glory is dimmed, for its intention is thwarted, and it becomes a curse instead of a blessing.

II. THE ABUSE OF POWERS AND MEANS OF USEFULNESS WILL INVOLVE PUNITIVE SUFFERING AND RUIN . Under the rule of a righteous God, it cannot be that faithfulness and unfaithfulness, watchfulness and remissness, obedience and rebellion, will be treated alike. From the lips of the Lamb of God, the "meek and lowly in heart," language such as that which our Lord here employs is doubly impressive. Nevertheless, it is in mercy that the fruits of sin are shown to be apples of Sodom, that the wages of sin are expressly declared to be death. The figurative representations of the doom of the sinful are indeed terrific. This doom is worse than the vengeful overwhelming in the Lake of Galilee; it is compared to the casting out of corpses into Gehenna, below the walls of Jerusalem, where the fire consumed or the worms gnawed the unburied bodies of the dead. Such teaching leaves us in no doubt as to the view which the omniscient and most gracious Savior takes of the future and eternal prospects of those who desecrate their powers and misuse their opportunities in the service, of sin.

III. On the other hand, WATCHFULNESS AND SEVERITY WITH SELF WILL ENSURE THE BLESSING OF THE ETERNAL LIFE , AND THE HONOURS OF THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM . Even supposing that self is denied and crucified, that pleasures are foregone, that privations are incurred,—is all this worth thinking of with regret when the recompense of the faithful is borne in mind? What is this recompense? The Giver of life himself promises "entrance into life;" the Sovereign of the spiritual kingdom promises "entrance into the kingdom of God." If in some sense the saved are, in the process, exposed to a thousand ills and sorrows, still, though they enter lame and maimed and halt-sightless into the kingdom of life, of God, they do enter, and entering are for ever glorious and for ever blessed. It is promised that through much tribulation Christ's followers shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.