Serious Responsibilities and Serious Battles, Pt. 1
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We ignore warning signs all the time. We shrug at the check engine light, roll our eyes at the expiration date, and cover our ears to avoid hearing the smoke detector chirping in the middle of the night. But Pastor Nick Gatzke shares a serious warning that deserves our full attention
I want to ask you to grab a Bible and open with me to the Gospel of Mark 9. I don’t think I’ve told you the story about the tragic death of a farmer from South Africa named Marius Els, who was mauled to death by his pet hippo named Humphrey in 2011. This occurred in November of that year when the 40-year-old Army Major Marius Els was killed by the 1.2-ton hippo that he had adopted and tried to domesticate on a farm in the Free State Province. The body of Els was found in a river with marks of being bitten by the huge animal several times, which he had earlier described as his son.
Els’ body was found submerged in the river where he had been rescued. The hippo had been rescued from a flood six years earlier. And as the hippo grew too big for the people who adopted it, it was brought by Els to his farm at the age of five months old. Photographs could be seen as the hippo grew of Els even riding a five-year-old hippo’s back.
Humphrey’s like a son to me. He’s just like a human. He had said, there’s a relationship between me and Humphrey that most people just don’t understand. They think that you can only have a relationship with dogs and cats and domestic animals, but I have a relationship with the most dangerous animal in Africa. However, Els’s wife, Louise, a pharmacist, had a different story to tell. She expressed misgivings about the hippo as… giant animal had caused trouble before. Earlier in that year of 2011, a 52-year-old man and his 7-year-old grandson had to climb a tree and stay atop of the tree for over two hours after being chased by Humphrey. Similarly, Humphrey had been accused of killing the baby cows or the calves of Els’ business partner. The animal also frequently broke out of its enclosure and chased golfers at the local golf club. Els, who had also domesticated and kept giraffes and rhino, claimed that the sound of his voice would bring Humphrey back home.
He regarded the hippo as lovable and a gentle giant. Except, years later, Humphrey mauled Els in the river on that fateful day and left him submerged underwater for several hours causing his death. He did not take his lovable pet seriously enough and it cost him his life. You know, there’s a danger when you don’t take seriously something that can seriously kill you. Jesus, sitting with his disciples, takes the opportunity to explain to them something that we all don’t take seriously enough, something that could seriously kill us. He talks to them about the seriousness of their sin. And so follow with me as we read Mark 9, starting at verse 42.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples in private, and this is what he says to them. He says: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believes 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. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is 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 is 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 is 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. 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.” Jesus had just finished using a child as an example of someone who has little status in a society but would be welcomed despite his small status into the kingdom of God. In fact, in the midst of the disciples arguing who among them was the greatest, Jesus highlights to them that status and greatness and God’s economy is found in being last, not being first, and found in serving, not looking to be served. And even the least, Even the ones of small stature and even small status in society could actually serve and be served.
They would have the benefits of God in their life. And now he gives them a sharp warning. He says that whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin. It would be better for them if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Jesus is continuing his teaching and he’s shifting now from the idea of status to the idea of responsibility for those who follow him. And he speaks of the little ones just like he had in the previous section. And just like in the previous section, he’s using a child as an example, but he’s not explicitly teaching just about children, speaking about those who are vulnerable, those of lower status, including children. And in many ways, we are all spiritually vulnerable at different phases in life. And it is a certain irony that we find ourselves in our most… place eternally when we come to faith in Jesus and also at least temporarily in a vulnerable place. This is what I mean by that. When you put your faith in Christ, God forgives you of your sin. He cleanses you. He welcomes you into his family. The spirit of God causes your heart to come alive and you are secure.
But at the same time, you’re young. You are young and trying to figure out what it means to follow God faithfully in this life. You just don’t know what you don’t know yet. And as a result, you need people who are a little farther along on the journey to teach you, to help you, to guide you, and to show you God’s word. Here, Jesus warns those who are his followers who have been followers for a while, to take great care in how they lead the new followers or the voters. And if you manipulate them with regard to the things of God and intentionally lead them into sin, he says, there is a great, great consequence that awaits.
And the image of having a millstone tied around your neck and then have it cast into the sea so that you drown is quite graphic. If you think about it for more than a couple of moments. And it’s an image that the disciples would recognize. In fact, Roman historians tell that this exact punishment was applied to an earlier Galilean leader who was a zealot and tried to lead an insurrection against the Roman occupiers in Israel. As he spoke, the disciples could picture the drowned bodies waving and drifting with the current of the lake. Sin is a serious thing. And it’s a serious thing to knowingly lead people into the seriousness of sin.
And so Jesus gives them a warning. From this warning, he turns his attention to… individual and to their own lives and to our lives as his followers, as he describes not just the serious responsibility that we have, but also the serious battle that every single one of us has in this life. Let me remind you of it. He says in verse 43: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It’s better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands and to go to hell. 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.” Sin, as you know, is commonplace for every single person on the planet. You are very familiar with this thing that we call sin, and so am I. Paul actually says in Romans chapter six that we are slaves to sin before we’re united to Jesus Christ through faith in him. And what do slaves do? Slaves do exactly what its master tells it to do. You could not help but sin before you knew Christ.
And because sin is so common and because we are so well acquainted with it, we are tempted to think that it’s not that serious, that it doesn’t do serious damage, that sin isn’t a serious thing to God because things that are really common rarely are serious. But Jesus speaks about it in the most serious type of description. This is a description of war, war against the sin in your It’s better to kill parts of your body in this war that are causing you to sin and to live with a pain of injury because of this discipline than let that sin be completely destructive to you if it’s running rampant in your life.
And make no mistake about it, that’s exactly what unchecked sin will do. Now, of course, Jesus is not telling us to literally engage in self-mutilation. Bible prohibits that in other places. And though there have been examples in church history of people who have taken this very literally, that’s not the intention that he’s trying to get to. So I don’t hear any stories in the news about somebody going home from Old North and cutting their hand off eyes, hands, and the feet all represent a part of life and temptation that every single one of us has. They represent what we do, where we go, and what we see and desire.
The hands represent our works, what we do. This is a basic instrument for accomplishing our purposes throughout our days. Do we do good or evil with these hands? How would you define the purpose of your days? If indeed they do tempt you to sin, those purposes, those desires, those works, if you’re tempted to sin, then Jesus indicates that it’d be better for you to cut those purposes and desires out of your life altogether than to suffer the consequences of what would come. The foot represents where we go. Do the places that you go tempt you to sin? Where do you go?
The eye represents what we see and what we desire. It’s often related to lust and sexual desires in the Bible, but it’s also related to pride and envy and other sins of the attitude. Jesus says these things are so serious that if you’re tempted by them, you need to eliminate them from your life. Because the power of sin is profound. In his book, Tempted and Tried, Russell Moore recounts an NPR program about a scientist named Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin was an autistic woman who was researching new ways to gently kill cows. It’s an important issue because if the animals experience high levels of stress prior to their death, hormones get released and it lowers the quality. And thus, Grandin had been exploring how to keep cattle calm as they were being led to the slaughter.
Her research has led to one simple insight. Novelty distresses cows. So the key to keep everything is to keep everything in their lives feeling and looking as normal and natural as possible. You might summarize the techniques like this. Workers shouldn’t yell at cows, Grandin said. They should never use cattle prods because they’re counterproductive and unneeded. If you just keep the cows contented and comfortable, they’ll go wherever they’re led. Don’t surprise them, don’t unnerve them, and above all, don’t hurt them. Well, at least to the very end.
Along the way, Grandin devised a new technology that has revolutionized the ways of big slaughter operations. In the system, the cows aren’t prodded off the truck. Rather, they are led in silence onto a ramp. They go through a squeeze chute, which has gentle pressure that mimics a mother’s nuzzling touch. The cattle continue down the ramp onto a smoothly curving path. There are no sharp turns. The cows experience the sensation of going home the same kind of way that they’ve traveled many times before. And as they mosey along the path, they don’t even notice when their hooves are no longer touching the ground. The conveyor belt slightly lifts them gently upward. And then a blunt instrument levels a surgical strike right between their eyes. And they are transitioned from cattle to meat. And they’re never aware enough to be alarmed by any of it.
The pioneer of this technology to the slaughterhouses, Grandin gives it an affectionate name. It’s called the stairway to heaven. You know, forces are afoot right now negotiating how to get you fat enough for consumption and how to get you calmly and without struggle to the cosmic slaughterhouse floor. That is the work of the devil. When your sin continues to provide a source of pleasure or comfort for you, over the course of time, it becomes harder and harder to see that it is leading you down the path of death. You might feel as though your life is really progressing quite well while abiding this pet sin of yours. And maybe you’re even going up the stairway. It’s so perfect and it was designed for you. And indeed it was. In many ways, the more tranquil you feel, the more endangered you are. Jesus says, that these sins are much more serious than we think.
That the consequence of sin is so severe that eliminating the temptation is really the only option to move forward. And it’s important to note that he repeatedly references you. You, you, it’s your hands, your foot, your eyes that he’s talking about. He never actually gives the command that this is supposed to be communal in nature. This is intensely personal. You are not called, at least in this passage, to look at the sins of others and to kill the sins in them, only your own. And the metaphor indicates that there will be great personal pain to you as you exercise this kind of discipline to eliminate sins in your life. It hurts to cut something off.
And it might hurt, at least temporarily, to eliminate sin. You know, I think sometimes we tend to think that improving ourselves is found only in adding more positive traits to our life than we had before. I mean, likely some of us have thought That increased level of discipline in my life would be a good thing for me. That increased discipline in my diet or how I use my time or discipline in learning or discipline in exercise will continue to help me to grow. Other times we might think that… engaging and adopting in the fruit of the spirit as listed in the Bible as characteristics are good additions to my life. I want more love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and faithfulness and kindness and gentleness and self-control. Those things are good for me. And still others of us might think that if I read this book and gain this skill or have this category, that positive things will continue to grow within me as I add them to my life.
And while these things sometimes are very, very helpful, and addition of these things, especially the fruit of the Spirit, is a wonderful gift of God to you, adding isn’t always enough. Sometimes the way to growth is found through subtraction, war, fighting, killing, subtracting. Seriously kill the sin in your life before it seriously kills you.
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed for accuracy. Minor discrepancies from the original spoken message may exist.
