Citizenship in the Kingdom

We come again to a set of teachings from Jesus which answer questions about the morality of the kingdom. We saw last week that Jesus does not have the same priorities and preferences as we do. The kingdom of God is a place where, if one would be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all. Today, we see what true kingdom citizenship looks like. Who are those that are getting into the kingdom, and who will be punished by the kingdom? Let’s read Mark 9:38-50 together. From this text, see three points: the Dedicated, the Deceptive, and the Disobedient.

First, from verses 38-41, see the dedicated. While this passage combines various statements of Jesus that may seem to be disconnected, I think they all deal with an essential question: who is accepted and who is excluded from the kingdom? Jesus gives us three types of people in these verses. The first type of person is one who is accepted by God – the one who is dedicated to the name of Jesus. Mark records, in verse 38, that John comes to Jesus and complains that there is someone casting out demons in his name. He tells Jesus that the disciples did their best to stop him because he was not a part of their group. Unexpectedly, though, Jesus rebukes him and directs his disciples not to stop anyone who is doing such work. To explain his reason, Jesus gives two contrasts and an example. First, he says, “no one can do a mighty work in my name and then turn around and speak evil of me.” This highlights the strong relationship between faith and works. As James says in chapter 2 of his book, “You show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” It is not that works create faith or earn faith or merit salvation but works prove that faith exists. As Martin Luther said, “We are saved by faith alone, but we are not saved by faith that is alone.”  This also highlights the importance of fruitful faith. The New Testament repeatedly warns us to watch out for false teachers who say the right things, but who do not bear the fruit of righteousness. As Jesus warned in Matt. 12:33, “you will know a tree by its fruit.”  It is easy enough to talk a good game about the Gospel. You can talk about the good Lord, invoke the name of Jesus, and speak well of the church, but if your actions do not align with what you say, then you do not have true faith. So, in this contrast, Jesus shows that, when a person’s works testify to his faith in Jesus, we should be willing to welcome and support him, even if he is not part of our fellowship. This highlights the importance of a willingness to work with other believers, even when they are not of our denomination. While we might have disagreements with Presbyterians and Methodists and even Catholics, we can still find common ground in the name of Jesus and do work together that benefits the kingdom of God.

Second, Jesus says, “if he is not against us, he is for us.” At face value, this seems like a really low standard. So, all I have to do is just not say anything bad about Jesus?  Of course, what Jesus means here is a question of allegiance. Are you for Jesus, or are you for the enemy? Is your life ordered in a way that seeks the glory of God, or are you pursuing your own glory and serving the will of Satan. If you deny yourself and the ways of this world, then you are for Christ.

Lastly, he gives an example: “Whoever gives you a cup of water because you belong to Christ will not lose his reward.” There are several things that need to be said about this example. First, this statement is often used as a justification for unrestricted welfare. People will argue, “the church is called to give a cup of cold water, so why don’t we have a food pantry and a homeless shelter?” Of course, if you feel called to care for the poor and needy, then do as you are called, but don’t use this passage as your justification. And, besides that, the church should feel no guilt in being judicious in how we give out funds or implement ministries. Notice, this passage does not say, “give a cup of cold water to anyone who asks.” It says, “whoever gives a cup of cold water to you because you belong to Christ.” This type of giving is what I would call “confessional giving”. Jesus is speaking of Christians who help other Christians because they are part of the body of Christ. The overwhelming direction of the NT is that Christians should be diligent to care for other believers. This is the reason that the office of deacon was established in the first place – to care for Christian widows. Paul would say, in Gal. 6:10, “Do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

This example also gives us a practical way that our actions serve as a testimony of our faith.  If we provide for the needs of other believers because they are part of the body of Christ, that act of love testifies to the work of the Spirit in our lives. Why else would we care for people we would otherwise not know? It is not natural to care for others, outside of our family and close friends. And yet, Christians do it all the time. Why? We do it because the love of Jesus motivates us.

Now to my second point: the deceptive. We’ve seen the kind of people who are citizens of the kingdom, so now we turn to two types of people who are rejected by the kingdom. First, in verse 42, we have those who are deceptive. Jesus warns that there will be those who are not for him, who speak evil of him, and who do not give a cup of cold water to believers but instead deceive and persecute them. There are those who especially look for the weak and vulnerable believers, the poor and doubtful, and they manipulate and deceive them to pull them away into sin and unbelief. For these false teachers, Jesus says that it would be better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be thrown into the sea. The millstone Jesus refers to here was a giant round stone used to grind wheat into flour. It would have weighed hundreds of pounds and was turned by a donkey. Jesus despises deception and heresy with a violent rage, but so often, we toy with it. There are many so-called prophets in the world – on TBN and Christian radio – that we tolerate. Maybe we even leave them own in the background while we get ready for church. Even worse, there are local charlatans we know who teach a false Gospel, and yet we invite them to speak at our clubs or pray at our sporting events, we befriend them and even recommend them. Understand, the judgment waiting for these liars is worse than being brutally drowned in the sea.

Finally consider the last type of person who is not accepted in the kingdom: the disobedient. In verses 43-48, Jesus uses harsh language to warn against having a careless attitude towards sin. To get what he means, we need to understand an important literary device: the hyperbole. Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement that is intended to drive home the severity of a subject or the stark contrast between two sides of an issue. For example, this past week we’ve had our fair share of rain. At several points, I’ve looked out the window and said, “It’s a monsoon out there.” Did we ever have a monsoon? Well, no. But, saying that communicated the severity of the rain. No one I said that to ran to find shelter from an impending flood. They knew exactly what I meant.

So, when Jesus says that it is better to cut off your hand or foot or pluck out your eye than to risk judgment in hell, he is not saying that we should literally do that. Rather, he is giving us a hyperbole to show how serious sin is. The older I get, the more I understand why he was so extreme. Just the other night, I told someone that the older I get, the more disgusting sin gets to me. I don’t mean that just in my own life. I mean that, as a pastor, I see so many lives that are destroyed by sin. I see so many people who are so self-absorbed that they will walk straight through the gates of hell without ever looking up. I see so many marriages that are destroyed, so many children that are harmed, so many communities that are corrupted because men and women do not realize how terrible sin is. So, understand what Jesus means. Sin is not a toy to be played with. It is not an entertainment to pursue. It is not a high to ride. Sin is a one-way ticket to Hell. It is so serious, that it would be better to physically maim yourself than to risk the consequences of sin.

It is that serious because of where sin leads. Sin leads to eternal judgment. Now, you might think that Hell isn’t all that serious. You might have even been deceived by some Instagram scholar into believing that the Bible doesn’t really teach in an eternal fiery torment in Hell. So, let me set the record straight. Three times, Jesus uses the Greek word, “Gehenna” (which we translate as “hell”) to describe a place of punishment for sin. Gehenna is both a real place and an analogy of what the eternal judgment will be. Gehenna was a deep ravine just outside the city of Jerusalem. In ancient Israel, it was a place devoted to child sacrifices to Moloch. The pagan priests built a giant statue of an alligator with its mouth open. At the bottom of the statue, they would light a fire, and the fire would roar up through the body and throat of that idol. The priest would take a child up the cliff to the mouth of this statue and throw him into the fire alive to feed Moloch. Thankfully, in the days of Josiah, this site was destroyed and defiled by turning it into the sewage deposit for Jerusalem. In Jesus’s day, Gehena was a massive heap of composting waste that smoked and flamed all the time.

But, that is not all that Gehenna was. The Jews of Jesus’s day saw it as an analogy for what the eternal judgment of the wicked must look like. So, 1 Enoch 103:8 says, “Woe to you, you sinners, when you die in your sin… into darkness and chains and a burning flame.”  It was widely accepted among the Jews that there would be a final judgment, after which the righteous would go to an eternal reward and the wicked to eternal punishment. Jesus confirms this belief throughout his ministry. He taught more about Hell than he did about Heaven, and he often connected it with fire and destruction. In Matt. 10:28, he says “fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” In Matt. 25:46, he says, “[the wicked] will go away into eternal punishment.” The early church fathers also believed that Hell was a place of eternal punishment for the wicked. The second century church father, Tertullian, said, “The guilty will be raised for the purpose of being punished; and such punishment will be without end, because the guilt will be without end.”

Sin should be despised because Hell is terrible. It will be a pain like an unquenchable fire. It will be a terrible darkness and void. And that punishment will be never-ending. This place is reserved for those who are willfully and continually disobedient to God. It is reserved for those who are unrepentant and faithless and fruitless and deceptive. So, friend, repent! Turn from your sin. Wake up from your self-absorbed blindness. Turn to Christ in repentance and faith and find salvation in him.