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Suppressing Sin, Mark 9:42-51

Emmanuel Free Church

…there is little else that can bring more joy to a disciple than knowing that their life has promoted Jesus and His righteousness.

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There is the famous phrase in Romans 1 “men who suppress the truth by their wickedness”.  The idea behind suppressing something means to keep it down, to conceal it, to obstruct it, keep it from being known, hide it, and so forth.  

Jesus teaches us today that Christians are to flip that around and suppress sin.  Each of us are to be people “who suppress sin by our righteousness”.  Just as the promotion of evil suppresses righteousness, so too the promotion of righteousness suppresses evil.  

Our sermon title is Suppressing Sin.  Now it’s not just a picture of holding sin down, it’s actually more of crowding sin out of our lives by increasing righteousness.  Think of a lawn – a lawn with weeds.  You have to kill the weeds, but, you have to also fill the lawn in with grass.  The best anti-weed strategy is to promote healthy grass.  Grass crowds out the weeds.  If our lives are like lawns then God wants us to have a healthy growing righteousness that crowds out sin.  So when God looks at your internet use, He sees there’s no room for pornography because purity is thriving there.  When He looks at your marriage He doesn’t see strife and bitterness because love and grace are flourishing there.  When He sees your work life He doesn’t see resentment and greed because contentment and integrity are prospering there.  No weeds because the grass is growing.  

This passage divides nicely into 3 Headings:  1) Don’t Cause Others To Sin, 2) Get Your Sin-Ectomy, 3) Be Salty

#1:  Do Not Cause Sin In Others (42)

First, we are not supposed to cause others to sin.  Read verse 42.  The Christian life is supposed to influence others towards righteousness, not sin.  Do not let your life cause others to sin.  

Someone might say, “Well, I’m not responsible for how other people live”.  But Jesus and the NT actually teach that we have an influence on others – which is not a radical thought – and that we are accountable for how we influence others.  “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come”, Jesus said in Luke 17,  “but woe to that person through whom they come”.  

Applications:

#2:  Get Your Sin-ectomy (43-48)

Jesus is speaking graphically. He does this a lot in Scripture and a lot of passages are not rated PG (e.g., Ezekiel’s “Two Sisters” is very very graphic and not for children).  Why does God doe this though?  For the shock value?  To offend?  Yes, actually.  If we’re offended or shocked at how He’s describing something, it’s because He’s trying to make us see how offended and shocked He is by sin.  And to start taking serious the way He does.  Sin is graphically offensive to God.

#3:  Be Salty (49-50)

Around here everyone likes to wear shirts and hats that say “unsalted”, showing their pride in our freshwater Great Lakes.  In the Christian life, though, its not good to be “unsalted”.  The Christian should be salty.  Christians should have shirts and hats that say “The Salt Life”.

Honestly this is a strange way of speaking, so lets see if we can get what our Lord is saying here.

I think first off we should see that being salted is something good, having salt is positive and desirable in the Christian life, “Salt is good” Jesus says, and, “Have salt in yourselves”.  So we want to be salty.  

But what does it mean to be salty?  And how do we “get salty”?  

It’s a lot of connecting of different passages but basically it means to be made more holy through trials.  “Salt” is useful for flavor and preserving foods.  The Christian life is to be flavored with holiness; holiness is to be preserved in the Chrisian life consistently.  We are to taste holy to the Lord.  The improvement of holiness in our lives comes through the “fires” of suffering and trials.  Understanding this puts us squarely on universal NT teaching.  Over and over we see that suffering is used by God to further us in our Christian character and faith.  

In the Old Testament salt was used in offerings (Lev. 2:13; Ez. 43:24)

Is this meant to be abstract?  Not at all.  This is very very practical to each of us.  “If anyone wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus”, 2 Timothy 3:12 says, “he will be persecuted”

A Word on the word Children

Is Jesus referring to young kids?  Yes and no.  In the previous verse he had a little child stand in the middle of the group and taught some things related to children.  But he’s switched and now He’s referring to believers by calling them little children.  He does this a lot:  he refers to believers as his children and he uses a word in two different ways:  a physical way and a spiritual way in the next breath.  “He who believes in me will never die, whoever believes in me will live even though He dies.”  Physical death and spiritual death are referred to in that same sentence by Jesus:  a believer will die physically but not spiritually is His point.  Little children, or little ones, is a term He uses often to refer to His disciples.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk. 10:24).  There is supposed to be a childlike quality to believers.  That childlike quality is in our faith, that we trust unhesitatingly our Father in heaven.  It is also theological in that we are as Christians the children of God.  

We are not, however, to be childlike in our thinking or speaking, “When I was a child,” 1 Corinthians 13 says, “I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”  In 1 Corinthians 14:20 Paul rebukes them again and says, “Brothers stop thinking like children…in your thinking be adults.”  The idea of an infant is that of someone who is under-developed.  Becoming an adult in spiritual things means you are more fully developed.  For instance, Hebrews 5 admonishes Christians not to remain infantile in the faith, “You need milk and can’t handle solid food.  Anyone who still lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teachings about righteousness.  But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”  

Since our development is lifelong, and, it is the fatherly work of our Heavenly Father to train us up into adults, we ar

Previous verses the reward of treating little children well.  Now the consequences of mistreating them – particularly leading them to sin against God.

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