**Day 23: Radical Measures **
“...if your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Mark 9: 47-48
If you have ever had toothache, you know how painful it is. The pain can be excruciating and can last for days. It starts in the tooth and then travels up the side of your face into your head. There are times your whole head can be throbbing with the pain. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. It’s so uncomfortable. You just want a dentist to look at it. It can even get to the point where we don’t even want to save the tooth. We just want it yanked right out because the pain is so intense. We would very easily take radical measures and throw the tooth away to ease the pain and discomfort.
In Mark 9 Jesus talks of taking radical measures. Not because of toothache, but because of something much worse. Sin. Jesus has not taken John’s divisive statement in verse 38 lightly and now in verse 42 continues to explain the dangers of causing a brother or sister to stumble and stop serving the Lord. “The little ones” he refers to are believers who follow him. How we treat each other in the family of God is a serious thing. So serious that Jesus tells the disciples to take radical measures to keep the peace among the saints. He uses surgical terms to talk of taking these radical measures.
The eye, the foot, and the hand are very valuable parts of the body. However, if they are causing you to sin or leading others to sin, Jesus says they are to be surgically removed. They are to be chopped off and thrown away. Now that’s serious. I don’t think I could ever gouge my eye out, or take a saw to my wrist and chop off my hand. Thankfully Jesus is not literally telling us to do these things because sin doesn’t come from the eye,foot or hand. Sin comes from the heart (Mk 7:20-23). Here Jesus is actually speaking in hyperbole, making the point that drastic measures have to be taken to rid sin from the believer before it spreads like gangrene to others.
How we live,act, and behave around others is important. We are constantly influencing people whether we are conscious of it or not. This comes through our words, conversations,actions, and desires. We influence through what’s important to us, the comments we make in WhatsApp groups, and how we treat people. What comes out of our mouths stems from what is in our hearts. If our hearts are full of sin, then it will soon pour out into Christ’s church among God’s people. Jesus here gives us all a stern warning. If there is sin in our life that is causing problems for us, or anyone else, it has to be thrown out and repented of. We have to take drastic measures to protect our own hearts and the hearts of our brothers and sisters who we worship with. For sin is far more dangerous than toothache.
In the Christian life our witness is everything. How are we influencing the people around us? What kind of witness are we in the family of God? Let’s all take some time out this morning and examine our hearts. Let’s ask the Lord to search our hearts and to carry out some spiritual surgery, removing anything that is causing us to sin or leading any of the saints to stumble.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting! Ps 139:23-24
Written by Paul McLaughlin
Passage for today: Mark 9: 42-50
A thought to remember: Whatever causes us to sin needs to be radically removed.
A question to ask: What temptations face me most in daily life?
A song to sing: Man of Sorrows