“Jesus said: ‘It is better for you’”
Mark 9:43
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
From the early days of Irish history, when barons ruled the land, there comes a story called, “The Red Hand of O’Neill.”
And as the story goes, since the kingdom of Ulster had no rightful heir, it was decreed that, “whosoever’s hand is the first to touch the shore of Ulster, so shall he be made king.” And so the race began.
Now there was one man named O’Neill who wanted that land. In fact, he said he’d do anything to get that land. So he frantically rowed and rowed and rowed. But another man was faster and was gaining speed. Then when he took the lead, O’Neill didn’t know how he could possibly beat him.
That’s when he had an idea. In the words of an Irish storyteller, “With a grim look of mingled wrath and triumph at the rival boat, strong-nerved, iron-minded O’Neill dropped his oars, seized his battle axe, then cut off one of his hands and threw it onto the shore he determined to possess.”
To this day, the O’Neill coat of arms bears a red right hand.
So it is in the gospel according to St. Mark. Please turn in your Bible to page 1075. Mark chapter 9, verse 42: “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 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 their 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.”
Back in the early 80s, teacher and author F. F. Bruce wrote a book called, Hard Sayings of Jesus. And in that book, he outlined some seventy different controversial things Jesus said.
For example, in the book of Matthew, He said: “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” In the book of Luke, He said: “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And in the book of John, He said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.”
No wonder His disciples said: “This is a hard saying! Who can accept it?”
But of all the hard sayings of Jesus, this one from the book of Mark is likely the most difficult one of all. Nowhere do we find a more severe prescription for sin than this.
Let’s look at the context for just a moment. As you might remember, earlier in chapter 9, Jesus and three of His disciples came down from the mount of Transfiguration. It’s where, as it says in verse 3: “His clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.”
And just as soon as they came down from that mountain, they found the rest of the disciples surrounded by a great crowd of people, in the middle of an argument. That’s when a man came up to Him and said: “Teacher, I brought my son to You, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked Your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
Then in verse 25, Jesus rebuked that spirit with the words: “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
Then in verse 33, when His disciples began to argue who was the greatest, Jesus had a child stand before them, and He said, in verse 37: “Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”
Now here in verse 43, comes some of His most difficult words of all: “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.”
So what is Jesus telling us to do? Is He telling us to cut off our hands and feet and pluck out our eyes? That is, after all, what He said: “It is better for you!”
Well, I suppose if your eyes and hands and feet are at fault, then the only sensible thing to do would be to cut them off. If your eyes are so diseased that they can’t even look at someone without getting you into trouble, if your hands, no matter how hard you try, won’t behave themselves, and if your feet keep taking you places that you don’t want to go, then the best thing you could do is to cut them off.
But as you remove your right eye, your right hand, and your right foot, you better make sure your left eye, your left hand and your left foot are innocent. If they aren’t, you better cut them off too. After all, that’s what Jesus said: “It is better for you!”
And don’t stop there. What about your ears that keep hearing gossip or about your lips and tongue that don’t always tell the truth?
Now if we followed the cure that Jesus proposed all the way to its bitter end, and cut off all those body parts that keep getting us into trouble, it wouldn’t take long and we wouldn’t have anything left!
Now before we go any farther and begin to think that this is what Jesus demands, let me explain.
It’s not our eyes, it’s not our hands, it’s not our feet, it’s not our ears, and it’s not our tongue that are the problem. It’s our heart that’s the problem. It’s our heart that keeps telling the rest of our body parts where they should go and what they should do. That’s what Jesus said in the book of Matthew: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.”
As someone once put it: “Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.” But it all starts in the mind.
Any of you over forty will probably remember a TV show called, “Hee Haw.” And on that show, when a patient went to see Doc Campbell and said he broke his arm in two places, Doc Campbell said: “Then stay out of them places!”
If there’s a temptation that keeps tripping you up, cut it off at its source. If you struggle with alcohol, don’t go to the bar. If you struggle with weight, don’t park in front of the bakery. If you struggle with gossip, stay off of Facebook. As Luther once said, “You can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
Some have said that man’s greatest problems today are chemical warfare, Islamic terrorists, and nuclear weapons. But the greatest problem isn’t the threat of war. It’s sin. Because of sin, there are problems of all kinds. Because of sin, there’s anxiety, worry, greed, famine, sickness, and death. It’s the culprit behind every broken marriage, every shattered friendship, every argument, every pain, and every tear.
It rules every human heart. It’s the master of humanity, and no one, absolutely no one, can escape. All who die in childbirth, all who die from heart disease, cancer, war, murder, accidents, and old age are all victims of sin. That’s what Paul wrote to the Romans: “The wages of sin is death.” And every man, woman, and child all over the world will eventually die because of it.
And there is no cure. There’s nothing that human will, education, legislation, or conversation can do about it. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither can you do good, who are so accustomed to evil.”
Wilbur Chapman tells the story of a minister from Australia who preached one day on sin. After the service, one of the church leaders came to his study and said, “Dr. Howard, we don’t want you to talk as openly as you do about man’s corruption. Don’t speak so plainly about sin.”
The minister stood up, took a small bottle from a cabinet, showed it to him, and said, “Tell me what you see on that label.”
The man said, “The label says strychnine, and above it, in bold red letters, is the word, ‘Poison.’”
The pastor asked, “Do you know what you’re asking me to do? You’re telling me to change the label. Suppose I do, and paste over it the words, “Essence of Peppermint.’ Do you see what might happen? Someone might use it, not knowing the danger, and die. So it is with sin. The milder you make the label, the more dangerous you make the poison.”
Sin is not some addiction or disease. You can’t blame it on heredity or genetics. Stay in it, and you’ll destroy your relationship to Jesus. That’s what the writer to the Hebrews said: “If we deliberately keep on sinning...there is nothing left, but judgment and raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”
So why did Jesus offer such a severe prescription? Because He, more than any other, understood the consequences of sin, for it was sin that drove Him to the cross. He felt its tragic depths as guards spit on Him, mocked Him, and drove nails through His hands and feet. And when He was thirsty, they gave Him cheap wine on a sponge. Jesus knows all about sin and its consequences.
And it’s there that we find the solution to this hard saying of Jesus. We deserved to be cut off from God, from heaven, and from life itself. We’re the ones who should lose our eyes and hands, our feet and ears, our tongues and our heart. But Jesus took our place and He was cut off instead.
And the healing doesn’t stop there. Jesus lives! And because He lives, He gives us the strength to live for Him. And in His holy supper, through bread and wine, He nourishes our faith and forgives our sin.
And since God has called us and made us members of His kingdom, we can do what He commands us to do. We can reach out with our hands to those in need. We can walk with our feet to do His errands. We can see with our eyes the struggles of our family and friends.
In August of 1957, four climbers, two Italians and two Germans, were climbing a six thousand foot near-vertical North Face in the Swiss Alps, when all of a sudden, the two German climbers disappeared, and were never heard from again. The two Italian climbers, exhausted, were stranded on two narrow ledges a thousand feet below the summit. And though the Swiss Alpine Club wouldn’t allow any rescue attempts in the area, (it was just too dangerous), a small group of climbers launched a private effort to save the Italians.
Carefully, they lowered a climber named Alfred Hellepart down the six thousand foot North Face, suspending him on a cable a fraction of an inch thick.
Later, he described the rescue in his own words. He said, “As I was lowered down the summit, my friends on top grew further and further distant, until they disappeared from sight. For a moment, I felt an indescribable aloneness. Then for the first time, I peered down the abyss of the Eiger. The terror of the sight robbed me of breath. The brooding blackness of the Face falling away in almost endless expanse beneath me, made me look with awful longing to the thin cable disappearing above me in the midst. I was a tiny human being dangling in space between heaven and hell. The sole relief from terror was my mission to save the climbers below.”
And that’s the heart of the gospel message. Though we were lost and dead in sin, God lowered Himself into the abyss of our sin and suffering, in the person and presence of Jesus.
In the words of a song: “No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from His hand. Till He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”
Gracious God, who searches our heart and knows our thoughts, create in us clean hearts and a right spirit. And help us to know that You bless us far more than we could ever know or understand, not because deserve it, but because of Your amazing, unending grace, for Jesus’ sake. Amen