#DailyDevotion You’re Not Going To Make It Into God’s Kingdom With That…
Mark 9:42-50 42“If anyone leads one of these little ones who believe in Me into sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be thrown into the sea. 43“If your hand makes you sin, cut it off. It is better for you to go into life crippled than to have two hands and go to hell, where the fire can’t be put out. 45If your foot makes you sin, cut it off. It is better for you to go into life with only one foot than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. 47If your eye makes you sin throw it away. It is better for you to go into God’s kingdom with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48where the worm that consumes them doesn’t die and the fire isn’t put out. 49“Everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good. But if salt loses its taste, how will you make it taste salty again? Keep salt within you, and so live in peace with one another.”
So we go from someone being on Jesus’ side to someone going in the opposite direction, his enemy. Such is the one that leads one of these little ones astray who believe in Jesus to sin. You ever see a millstone? Maybe not. Imagine tying a VW Beatle around your neck and being thrown into the sea. Yes, that would be better than causing a believer in Jesus to sin.
Then we get to the whole cut it off teaching. Your hand sins? Cut it off. You foot leads you to sin? Cut that off. Your eyes make you sin? Cut those buggers out! Jesus is absolutely serious here. It would be better to enter the kingdom of heaven maimed then have those parts. But there is a problem here that Jesus doesn’t get to explicitly. You see, your hand just doesn’t sin. You foot doesn’t lead you to sin. Your eyes don’t cause you to sin. Those all listen to a higher power and in this case it isn’t God. It is you. More specifically it is your heart.
Jesus tells us in Mark 7, 21“Instead, from the inside of men’s hearts come out evil thoughts, sexual sins, stealing, murders, adulteries, 22greed, wickedness, cheating, lust, a jealous eye, slander, pride, foolishness. 23All these evils come from within and make a person unclean.” If we want to end up in God’s kingdom we’re going to have to cut our heart. Not the pumping one. The very center of our being. It is totally corrupt. The fallen human heart leads us to hell, “where the worm that consumes them doesn’t die and the fire isn’t put out.” Yeah, don’t listen to that thing or follow its directives. It is terribly deceptive. We need a new heart.
But where are we going to get one of those? David says in Psalm 51, 10“Create a clean heart for me, O God and give me a steady new spirit.” He’s looking in the right department. In Ezekiel 36 the LORD says, 26 ”I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My orders and carefully keep My laws. 28You will live in the land I gave your fathers and be My people, and I will be your God.” Jesus salts us with the fire of his condemning law calling us to repentance and with his Gospel, winning forgiveness for us by his death on the cross. We always need to keep this law and gospel in ourselves to always call us to repent of sins and to trust in Jesus’ work of salvation which he gives to us freely. If we call ourselves to repentance and live in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus then we can live in peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Heavenly Father, let not our hearts lead us into sin but rather give us a new heart by your Holy Spirit that we may live a life of repentance, confessing our sins and living by the Gospel of Christ. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.