Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign
[00:00:04] Speaker B: welcome to Hope for Today, a weekly Bible teaching program that will bring you hope for every day.
It is an honor and privilege to be with you as we study the word of God. Listen. Bible study should lead to life change.
As we hear and learn from this living book, we should end up being more like the author, Jesus.
Walking with him, learning from him, and growing more like him.
This, by the way, is discipleship.
Are you a, uh, disciple of Jesus?
Has there been radical change in your life? If you answer the first question with a, uh, yes, the second answer can't be no.
Following Jesus is radical. It's a big deal.
Today we look at radical discipleship, and J. Mark will discuss three areas where being a disciple of Jesus will make a radical difference.
Let's go with J. Mark to Mark nine and learn from Jesus, our master.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Nobody that I know wants to be called a radical. It's a word that makes us uncomfortable. It suggests extremes.
Extremes in our viewpoints, our habits, or maybe our beliefs, or, uh, our lifestyle.
Radicals are people you want to stay away from. Most people want to be found somewhere in the middle rather than at the extremes.
As we learned last time, our core values or our roots determine our lifestyle choices.
Disciples of Satan, of the kingdom of darkness, they live out their core values, pride and selfishness, sexual perversion, etc.
As disciples of Jesus, we are called to live out his core values. Humility and service, moral purity and love.
That's radical discipleship, and that's what we find today in Mark 9, 42, 50.
Listen, as I read God's Word.
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a 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 into life maimed rather than having two hands to go to hell into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet to be cast into hell. Into the fire that shall never be quenched, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
For everyone will be seasoned with Fire. And every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt.
Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it?
Have salt in yourselves and have peace one with another.
In these verses, Jesus teaches us several essential qualities of radical discipleship.
These will identify us as his genuine followers.
Verse 42 begins with the word, but it carries a warning about offending one of these little ones. That connects us back with verse 37, where Jesus said, whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.
And so the first quality of radical discipleship is radical love.
Think carefully about what I just read.
By loving these little children, Jesus said, we love him.
And if we love Jesus, then we love God.
So maybe you're wondering, how do we get radical love from this.
Well, uh, first of all, little children isn't confined to actual children.
If you read John's epistles, his letters, he often refers to followers of Christ as my little children. It's a term of endearment, and it's something that's also used for the spiritually immature.
Jesus told the disciples, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Jesus is zealous for our righteousness and the righteousness of his church.
Since Jesus lives in every believer, how we treat them is how we treat Christ.
And how we treat Christ is how we treat God.
When Saul was struck down on the road to Damascus, Jesus didn't demand, saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the believers?
No, he said, why are you persecuting me?
In 1 Corinthians 8:13, after discussing meat offered to idols, Paul says this.
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.
Now that's a radical idea.
Am I willing to risk someone's eternal loss just to indulge my appetites?
That hits pretty close to home.
Radical love focuses not on what I want, but on how I can benefit the other person.
We will refuse to lead others into sin, whether intentionally or inadvertently, if we genuinely love them.
Another quality of radical discipleship is radical purity. Here the focus shifts from causing others to sin to the things that might cause me to sin.
Jesus use of the hand and the foot and the eye emphasized that our battle against sin includes all aspects of our lives.
What we do, where we go, and what we look at have a tremendous impact on our spiritual health.
You know, we too often fail to understand the seriousness of what we might call minor sins.
We don't comprehend how our sin offends God's holiness.
In each of these verses, the word causes is in the present tense.
If your hand is causing you to sin, this is an ongoing struggle with temptation and with sin.
So what's the remedy?
It is radical. Jesus said that if our hand or our foot or our eye is causing us to sin, then we should amputate them.
Now, some people say that Jesus was speaking metaphorically.
He wasn't meaning for us to take it literally.
Well, if that's true, the first command about drowning must also be metaphorical.
I'd be very cautious about taking that path.
These commands can be applied to amputating things other than body parts, But I think there is no way to soften them, and we are not free to disregard them.
Jesus calls us to take radical action against anything that hinders our pursuit of holiness, righteousness, and purity.
Now, I admit cutting off part of your body will not completely solve the problem of temptation.
Some misguided people in the past centuries foolishly assumed that that was the way to victory. And so they mutilated themselves. They amputated some of their body parts, but then they discovered that the sin was still in their hearts.
You see, it's our minds and our desires that control our hands and our feet and our eyes.
One problem is that we don't like the radical purity that Jesus demands here. We want to be middle of the road Christ followers.
However, Jesus said it is better to enter into life with a damaged body than to suffer eternal punishment.
If we refuse Jesus commands, what is the result?
Jesus said we will be cast into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not extinguished.
The fire is unquenchable in this place of torment. And the worm doesn't die.
Yes, the worm is just what you think.
Maggots or worms that prey specifically on dead bodies.
It's a revolting picture.
The word also carries the ideas of gnawing and anguish.
If this is a literal worm, it eats without consuming its prey.
Could the torment include the gnawing of a conscious mind that knows this fate could have been avoided?
As bad as these word pictures are, they cannot equal the dread reality of what Jesus was describing.
The prophet Isaiah wrote, and they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me, for their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.
Hopefully now you understand why radical Purity is necessary for followers of Jesus.
And then there's one final quality of radical discipleship. I've called it radical obedience.
The meaning of verse 49 is a bit of a mystery, and so we gain insight by examining the passages in Scripture where salt and fire are mentioned together.
Salt and fire are connected with the Old Testament sacrifices.
In fact, salt was added to the sacrifices as a symbol of God's enduring Covenant.
Here's Leviticus 2, verse 13.
And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt. You shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offerings.
With all your offerings, you shall offer salt.
The grain offering was a consecration offering. It symbolized total devotion to the Lord, which is most likely why Jesus used it as an illustration in his teaching on radical discipleship.
According to the law, no one is fit to offer himself or any other sacrifice unless it has been appropriately salted.
Jesus went on to say, salt is good, but what happens if the salt loses its ability to season or preserve? Jesus asked, if the salt becomes unsalted, who will make it salty again?
And then he added, have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.
This is, uh, a call to radical obedience, to a holy life preserved by righteousness.
Immediately, Jesus applied what a salty life looks like. He said, be at peace with one another.
I believe he made this statement because the 12 had been arguing about who would be the greatest.
It's unfortunate, but too many of us have allowed the impurities of the world to corrupt the purity of our salt. And so we lose the ability to preserve the culture around us.
As believers, we should bring positive and preserving influences on our world.
This underscores the idea that followers of Jesus should be a source of positive change in their societies.
Preservation and positive change can occur when, by the grace of God and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, you and I practice radical love, radical purity and radical obedience.
And you know, the love that Jesus is teaching us about isn't a nice, warm feeling.
No, It's a love that invests in others, even when that love is unreturned, sometimes at a high personal cost.
It's the kind of love that motivated Jesus to go to the cross to purchase our redemption and to pay the penalty for our sins.
That is radical love.
Radical purity calls us to remove from our lives those things that would lead us into temptation and sin.
It makes no sense for a Christ follower who struggles with a, uh, pornography addiction to carry a smartphone or to be active on some social media sites.
Every Christ follower must discover their weaknesses and protect themselves, because most of our failures begin with small compromises.
The activities we choose for our family and ourselves, the places we go, and the things we prefer to watch or look at, all of them prove that our purity may not be as radical as we think.
And then finally, radical Obedience does the world know by observing your life that you follow Jesus? Do they see your love for your fellow believers? Do they wish they could experience it too?
Is your salt still salty?
If you're feeling uncomfortable or convicted, that's good because I am too.
Let's recommit ourselves to radical discipleship to express our love for Jesus and our gratitude for all that he's done for us.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: What thought provoking comments. Thank you jmarc. His review covered many practical areas of life.
Thankfully, Jesus doesn't demand perfection.
However, as disciples, that is what we are striving for. Too many people fall short of and quit trying.
No, keep fighting. Pick yourself up, repent. Stay in the fight.
You can do it. This is worth fighting for and giving your all.
Love, purity and obedience. I would love to sit down with you and discuss these. What advice would you give a young person in their fight for purity? How do you keep obedience from becoming drudgery? Our Email address is hopeeralsofhope.org and our website is heraldsofahope.org There you will find Contact us under the Partner tab on the top right. Click on that and you can message us directly. If you have any thoughts for us, we would love to hear from you. Another time when Jesus was teaching, he said, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me there. It is the core of decipotion.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Um.
