In yesterday's passage Jesus told the disciples not to squabble among themselves about which of them is the greatest. The disciples may be willing (for the moment at least) to concede that God views them all equally, but they definitely do not view those outside their group as equals. "'Teacher,' said John, 'we saw someone driving out demons in Your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.'" (Mark 9:38) It's bad enough that some of the disciples lacked the faith to drive a demon out of the boy who was brought to them earlier in Chapter 9, but they hindered the successful exorcism ministry of someone else. The unnamed man's faith in Jesus was powerful enough to do what nine of the disciples together had been unable to do. Yet they forbade him to continue the work because he was not one of the Twelve.
"'Do not stop him,' Jesus said. 'For no one who does a miracle in My name can in the next moment say anything bad about Me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in My name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.'" (Mark 9:39-41) He cautions the Twelve, "Don't stop anyone from doing good in My name. Anything good done in My name brings glory to me and has the capability to draw others to salvation."
I think Jesus is still holding the small child in His lap, the child He used in a teaching moment yesterday, because He goes on to say, "If anyone causes one of these little ones---those who believe in Me---to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea." (Mark 9:42) The 'little ones' may represent not only children but anyone new to the faith. Jesus says woe to anyone who hinders the faith of new believers. He mentions a method of execution that was actually used by the Romans, in which a large millstone of the type drawn by donkeys across a threshing floor would be tied by ropes to a condemned person before that person was cast into a body of water to drown. He says that a person would be better off to suffer capital punishment at the hands of man than to face a holy God after crushing the faith of a new believer.
Since we will all someday stand before a holy God, Jesus gives more stern warnings about how we are to live our lives. "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be cast into hell, where 'the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.'" (Mark 9:43-48) Jesus is not advocating self-mutilation. He's saying that sin is more disabling than anything else that could ever happen to us. After all, the things that happen to us in this life can only kill us once. No illness or injury can kill our souls. But the sins we commit in this life are able to cause an early death for our bodies and are able to separate our souls from God for eternity. The word Jesus uses for "stumble" indicates a type of falling that is without recovery. We all stumble in the sense of making mistakes from time to time, but Jesus is not talking about the person who messes up, repents, and continues following Him. He's talking about the person who is so deeply entrenched in sin that he doesn't want to be rescued from it. This is a soul that prefers the life of sin and has no desire for the things of God.
Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24 in which God promises to deliver Israel from her enemies, because Israel's enemies are God's enemies. He says that His people "will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against Me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind." Anyone who lives in rebellion against God's word is His enemy, and if a person lives his entire life in this unrepentant attitude, a fearful judgment awaits him. The English word "hell" has been put in the place of "gehenna", which is the word Jesus uses for the location where unrepentant sinners will be cast. Gehenna refers to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, which is a deep ravine outside Jerusalem where the Ammonites worshiped their loathsome god Molech. It was in this area that the pagan peoples sacrificed children in the fire to their god Molech. Two of Judah's own kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, sacrificed their offspring to Molech. It's unknown how many citizens of Judah did likewise when they fell into idolatry. Because of it's deplorable history, the Valley of Ben Hinnom became a depository for all unclean things, such as carcasses and garbage. By Jesus' day it is believed it had been turned into something like a city dump where fires burned continually to devour the waste and where maggots feasted on rotting food and the flesh of dead animals.
Does this mean hell is a literal place of unquenchable fire? Our passage today is probably where the idea of a burning hell comes from, since Jesus likens the eternal destiny of the rebellious soul to the fate of the detestable things rotting and burning in the city dump. There are other passages which seem to indicate hell is a place of intense heat, one example being the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) where the rich man who went to hell says he's tormented in the flames. The place prepared for Satan and for those whose names are not found written in the Lamb's book of life is called the "lake of fire" in Revelation 20:14-15. But more to the point, Jesus uses the word gehenna not so much because it is a place where fire burns but because it is a place of no return. It's a place that symbolizes destruction. It's the destination of souls who, to their eternal shame, rejected everything to do with God. Gehenna stands for waste and uselessness. It is a destination for things that are unclean and of no value.
What do we do with our household waste? We either have the garbage men pick it up or we haul it to a dumpster, but either way it all ends up at the dump because it's useless and of no value. What is God to do with rebellious souls who have been of no use or value to Him or to His children? They cannot be assigned a place in eternity with His precious children. God will protect those who are His from all eternity from anything wicked or defiled, so He made a separate place for those who have rebelled against Him. What that place will be like, I don't know. Whether it will be a literal place of burning, I don't know. But it will be a place where darkness can never mix with light, where the children of the night can never interact with the children of the day. It will be a location of desolation and hopelessness from which no one will ever return.
The main thing to take away from all this is that hell, whatever its nature may be, is a place we want to avoid at all costs. It is a place we can avoid by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, whose shed blood is the only sacrifice God finds acceptable for our sins. Through Him we can escape a fate of desolation and hopelessness. Through Him we can enjoy a more abundant life here on this earth and an eternal life in His glorious presence.
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