Matthew 18:7-9 Fighting THE Disease

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Hey everybody, welcome to the

YouTube channel of Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, and I am glad for the opportunity that we have through technology to consider the word of God and particularly the words of Jesus.

We're gonna be looking into the gospel of Matthew, a pretty direct and stern and pretty hard text for us to take on regarding Jesus, but we believe that all of us need to continue to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service, and even as I say grow in community, it kind of just is like a cheese grater on my soul in terms of what we're missing here.

So it's very hard to grow in community without getting together with people, and I think what we've been doing is really building an anticipation, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I'm actually grateful for this time to some degree of reminding us all what we really are designed for and what we need, and we've had a long -term kind of case study here in how valuable community really is, but during this strange time of quarantine, we have sought to remain faithful to that calling to serve one another and serve our community at large, showing that we are a church that loves beyond these four walls by meeting needs that are out there, by trying to help some of the local businesses and some different ventures there, but also by abiding by our community's policies in quarantine at this time, and so for a season this has meant that we've not been able to meet together.

Our lack of meetings have not been, and hear me carefully, they have not been merely motivated out of a strict obedience to governing authorities as if at the end of the day this church only ever bows the knee to local authorities.

Well, that's not it at all. We think it's been wise for us to obey those blanket laws that cover all gatherings, all gatherings in our state for a season of community health, and that's been our decision, that's been our choice, and we have done so intentionally, but we have also been motivated out of love for people around us, and so I'm hopeful that we're gonna have some information within the next couple of weeks regarding steps for us to return to smaller gatherings on the way towards that larger group gathering that we all look forward to, to all being together again.

I look forward to that with anticipation and joy, and I hope that you do too. We are gonna be very public about our plans, and we'll be sure to keep you posted, so as long as you're getting the eCast, as long as you are connected through Facebook or online, for those of you that we know don't connect through those means, we'll be communicating with you in other ways as well, and you're probably not listening to this if you don't connect somehow online, but that leads right into the introduction of the message this week.

With COVID -19, with this coronavirus, with this pandemic, we have embarked on a serious social experiment as a culture in risk assessment.

How do you assess risk, and then how do you respond to it? There is always a trade -off in life.

At any given time, really, we're trading off between risk and security, and those two are always in some kind of tension in our lives.

Anybody who's ever put on a seatbelt has embarked in risk assessment. Just about anything that we do, there's some level of risk involved in it, because we're in a fallen world where there's thousands of ways that we can be taken out, so there's always a trade -off between risk and security, and the more we stay isolated, the less likely we are to spread the disease, right?

We know that to be a fact. The more distance we keep, the more isolated we are from other humans, the less likely we are to get

COVID -19, but the question becomes, at what cost? What's the trade -off?

This text we're gonna be looking at here, these three short verses, also deal with a trade -off. The risk in our heart, the risk in our text, rather, is, right now, the risk in our culture is

COVID -19 is this disease, but the risk in the text is nothing less than, as Jesus calls it, eternal fire, or the hell of fire.

He says it twice. So, in light of an eternal fire, what would you do to avoid that?

For us, the potential of COVID -19 is a slight possibility, pretty slim possibility of death, some suffering, maybe some illness and some sickness and some weakness and some loneliness and isolation, and so we socially distance ourselves, we wear masks, we've taken dramatic and drastic steps to try to avoid spreading

COVID -19 to others. But Jesus says, if the risk is eternal fire, what would you be willing to do to avoid that?

If sin causes the ultimate symptom, really the ultimate end of condemnation, if that's what sin leads to, then what would you do?

Would you wash your hands for 20 seconds, five times a day? Would you wear a mask to avoid eternal flames?

Would you cut off your arm? Would you cut off your leg? Would you gouge out your eye to avoid eternal punishment?

We understand risk assessment more than ever because we are currently living in it.

Our culture, and we might even say the whole world, has gone pretty hard after COVID -19.

We have taken drastic and dramatic measures to attempt to stem the tide of this current pandemic, and we're experiencing that, we're living it.

But let's turn over in our Bibles or in your devices. I'll give you just a second, you can pause this if you need to to grab a Bible, maybe you didn't have one on your lap, and you're like, oh, he wants me to look at the

Bible. I always want you to look at the Bible. If you're listening to a recast, you're gonna need a Bible with you or some means to get there.

But Matthew 18, verses seven through nine, very short text, but as you're turning there, listen to the very radical, intentional, shocking words of Jesus regarding our battle with another enemy.

How do we fight another enemy? A much more ubiquitous, consistent, always -present enemy.

A much more devastating enemy. The enemy that is, indeed, sin.

So let's read this text, Matthew 18, seven through nine.

The very precious and holy word of God, recast. This word desires to change you. This word desires,

God desires, through this word, to change and transform the way that you understand your battle and your fight with sin and how serious it really is, the very nature of sin.

So listen to the words of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Woe to the world for temptations to sin!

For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!

And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal flames.

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into a fire.

Let's pray. Father, your faithfulness extends to so many different angles and aspects, and your faithfulness extends to every nook and cranny of our lives, to every part of us, even that part that would minimize sin and its effects.

You are faithful to draw us into the truth, and the truth sometimes hurts, the truth sometimes does indeed bring our hearts to fear, and fear is indeed an appropriate and right motivation in a world that has a future where there is a literal lake of fire.

I pray that we would take on this message from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we would heed his words, that we would understand what he desires to communicate to us here and now from this text.

Would you speak through me with accuracy? Would you allow a clear communication through this video, through this

YouTube channel? Would you allow there to be a fervency, a zeal, a passion that comes clearly through my voice, but only ever echoes the words of Jesus here in this text?

Be present with us as we have an opportunity to sing some songs before you, as your people that rejoice because we know that sin does not have the final word, and we know the spoiler alert to even these three verses, we know that this is not all that is said about sin, and so the only reason we can lift our faces, the only reasons we can rejoice, the only reason we can sing these songs before you now is because of the salvation we have through Jesus Christ, and in him we have hope, without him we have the assurance that ours are the eternal flames, but because of Jesus we live, amen.

We'll try to get as comfortable as possible as we see a Jesus that isn't like the world's

Jesus. He, in our text, makes the world uncomfortable, maybe even makes us uncomfortable.

The world has a very small interest in Jesus, very little interest in him.

You mention him in your workplace, you mention him out in the society and out in the culture, and people kind of turn to look at you weird unless you're cursing, but when push comes to shove, the world will make him in their own image.

If they must talk about Jesus, they will talk about a Jesus that favors them. If they must address

Jesus, then Jesus will look a lot like their preferences and their desires. You see,

Jesus said, he who has no sin cast the first stone, and man, isn't that just like my

Jesus? That's like the world's Jesus. That's just like a really, really happy and really happy -go -lucky, live -and -let -live

Jesus. That's a popular Jesus. He who has no sin cast the first stone, and he did indeed say that, so that's really encouraging, but the same

Jesus also said moments later after saying, he who has no sin cast the first stone, also then said, go and sin no more, and that gets left out of our stories of Jesus, at least the world's story of Jesus.

You see, the world wants a Jesus who lets them off the hook, and our culture increasingly recoils from anything resembling judgment, and so this text is a hard one to preach.

Not so hard, I guess, to vocalize and put the words out there, but it's hard in terms of, it's a hard sermon, it's a hard text, it's a hard word from Jesus.

It is a rebuke, it is stern, it is shocking, and for this reason, I love what preaching through books of the

Bible does for us. It forces us to see Jesus, all of Jesus, not just the parts that I like that I decide to get on my soapbox and bring to you my favorite parts of Jesus, my favorite stories of what he did, but instead, we walk through and we take on the next text.

This is the next text, this is not my soapbox, this is not my desire to bring you guys into line or anything like that, that's not it at all.

It's that this is the next text. This is what Jesus said, and in his wisdom, in his beauty, in his kindness, and in his severity, and in his seriousness, that's the

Jesus that we need, and our text is indeed very serious. In talking about greatness, here's kind of setting the stage.

In talking about greatness last week, Jesus defined it as a childlike, that is, a humble and dependent faith.

That's what it means to come into his kingdom, is by humbling yourself, recognizing you can't do it, and you must come in like a child with empty hands, just saying, mommy, daddy,

I need food, I need help, I need, I bruised my knee with tears, just say,

I need you to solve this for me. And he reminded his disciples,

Jesus reminded his disciples that all who follow him will have that humble, that humility and dependence that places them at risk for abuse.

But he also reminded us that God is the one who defends his little ones, so what I mean by at risk of abuse is if you live your life, if you go out in community, you go out in society, or you even come into the church with a humility, a genuine humility, a genuine dependence upon God and a recognition of who you are in your lowliness and in your brokenness, and you don't come in with the masks on, no pun intended, because when we gather, we're gonna be wearing masks, but I mean the figurative masks, and you actually let people know who you really are, well, that's open for abuse, isn't it?

But he reminds us the hope at the end of verse six, there in verse six of the text last week, was that God is the defender of his little ones.

You come to him like a little one, you live like a little one in his presence, not as strong in defending yourself, but letting him be your defender, leaning on him, depending on him, and you have the greatest and strongest and most powerful personal bodyguard on the planet.

So here in our three verses, Jesus is expanding that notion of people who would take advantage of God's little ones.

And so he starts out in verse seven with a pronouncement of doom. The word woe means doom. Doom on the world, he says, and not just, what you need to understand is he's not talking about doom on the oceans and the plants and the trees and the ground and the earth and the mountains and all of that stuff.

No, he's talking about doom on the people of the world. That word world is kind of plastic and open to a lot of various understandings, and so it's pretty clear from context that he's talking about people, because further down in verse seven, he clarifies what he means by refining that doom, doom on the world, doom particularly to those who tempt others.

Now the word translated temptation here in verse seven is the linkage between verses seven and eight and nine.

It occurs five times in our text, and what you need to understand is that it doesn't look the same every time it occurs and has the word temptation in it three times in seven, but then in eight, here's the same word, causes you to sin.

If your foot causes you to sin, that's that same word for temptation. If your foot tempts you might be a way to read that.

And then in verse nine, and if your eye causes you to sin, if it tempts you, so that's the linkage between verses seven and eight and nine is they all contain and wrap up in this word, skandalon, it's very important.

If you're not listening right now, you're not gonna get this message because this word matters in the flow of this text.

This word skandalon in Greek, it's a word primarily used in Jewish circles. You can go outside and look at ancient documents of ancient

Greek language around this time, and it occurs very rarely out in the society, but it occurs a whole lot in Jewish circles.

And it's because it's a good Greek word to summarize an Old Testament concept. It carries with it the idea of an obstacle, a stone of stumbling that trips people up, or it can even have the nuance of a trap set for others.

It can kind of be a inadvertent stumbling stone in the middle, it can be an intentional trap set for others, it can be an obstacle or a hurdle that ends up barring you from the path that you belong on.

In this sense, Jesus is saying that the world is full of traps, and by the way, the more that I define this word, the more that you can understand that it's got such a plastic and all -encompassing nature that it's not just specifically temptation to sin, but it can be temptation to believe the wrong things, it can be false teaching, it could be, so I'm not gonna define a lot of specifics for you in here other than to say that anything that keeps you off the pathway or knocks a person off the pathway in their relationship with God, like I said, it could be false teaching, it could be abuse from a spiritual leader, it could be a church that's gone awry and divided itself and battled one another, it could be somebody literally saying, hey, it's just a party, come on, and let's go get high, let's go get drunk, let's go do a line, it could be all different kinds of things, but somebody bringing you into sin could be a part of that, but not only that.

So in this sense, Jesus is saying the world is full of those kinds of traps, all kinds of traps, false teachings, enticement to sin, billboards that lead you towards contemplating and considering pornography, all different kinds of things that entice and draw in and the world is full of it.

And so he says doom on the world, woe to the world, woe to the people of the world for the very nature of obstacles set in the way of people.

The world is heading, he's saying in verse seven, at the start, the world is heading toward destruction because of these enticements to reject

God and his way, all various types of obstacles. But more specifically, doom on anyone who is responsible for setting the traps, who is responsible for placing the barriers in people's way.

The word necessary, by the way, is a little bit weird in verse seven. Look at it, woe to the world for temptations to sin for it is necessary that temptations come.

Well, that sounds like there's no way to avoid it. Well, it would be better because necessary sounds like it must be that way.

It's inevitable, it will be that way. So the word would probably be more helpful to translate it, inevitable to get the nuance or the notion of it.

So verse seven, you could think of it this way. For it is inevitable that temptations will come.

It is a part of our lives that we indeed will encounter obstacles and I believe we do so daily.

Daily we encounter obstacles to our faith. Daily we encounter enticements to sin. Daily we encounter false teachings that would seek to grab us and draw us away from the pathway that God has for us and ultimately would draw us away from a faith solidly rooted in Jesus.

But from verse seven, we ought to consider ourselves for just a moment, Jesus himself is calling doom and destruction down on any who would block another from getting to a right understanding of his grace.

By the way, I think that's the ultimate stumbling block is anything that makes you think you can earn it. Anything that would lead you to the conclusion that you can be okay by following a bunch of rules.

You can be okay by cutting out certain shows and grabbing a bunch of good, only watching

God flicks or whatever it's called. Only pure flicks, I think it is.

No Netflix, all pure flicks, okay, now I'm okay. Anything that would lead you to the conclusion that you can be okay, that you can save yourself would be the ultimate obstacle, would be the ultimate temptation to walk away from the grace that is available to you in Jesus Christ.

But I wanna point out again, there are many ways that a person can put an obstacle, can tempt you in this way, can put a scandal on before you.

We can outright draw another into our sin. As I mentioned, we can just grab somebody and say, let's go get drunk together.

We could teach false things about God as if to say, well, it's not grace, it's another way or Jesus really isn't the son of God or you don't need to obey him or he says that this is okay or it's all right because God just loves you and wants you to have your way.

He'd want you to be happy, right? Or we could inadvertently, accidentally even, teach a less mature

Christian that sin is okay by what we participate in, just merely by living a thoughtless life and giving an endorsement on sin.

And all of this is coming from an understanding of what the word scandalon means. We can, I believe, intentionally or even accidentally cause another to stumble just by not living intentionally, by thoughtlessly moving through life.

And not a single one of us listening is above being the one through whom temptation comes, the one to whom God is issuing doom, woe on you.

Don't be that guy, don't do this. As a matter of fact, I would say that we are either helping people to draw closer to God or we are at risk of being an impediment to their growth or a hindrance, a stumbling block in their pathway towards an increasing sanctification, increasing holiness and relationship and closeness with God.

I would say this, and hear me carefully, Recast, I believe this 100 % true, we are rarely a neutral force in the life of another.

Think about the people that you know. And it is unlikely that you are a neutral force in their lives.

What is more likely is that you are either a force for good or you are a force for bad.

And I would even divide it out a little bit further than that and say at times in one person's life, you may be a force for good and a force for bad.

And obviously our goal from understanding what Jesus is saying in verse seven is our goal ought to be to be a force for good.

And this means in a practical sense that we need to be very cautious about just things like giving flippant advice to others, others will come to us and without a knowledge of God's word, without digging in, we might just, you know, shoot off the hip, armchair theology.

Well, God would want you to love him. God wouldn't want you to put up with a marriage like that. He would want you to divorce in that situation because that's just miserable, right?

So of course you ought not to stay together in that context. But that's not biblical, that's not what

God would say, that's just you, right? And that's dangerous teaching. That's flippant about sin.

We need to be very cautious and very intentional in avoiding sin ourselves. We must never endorse sin and therefore we must be saturating ourselves in the word so that we are able to give biblical advice and identify sin clearly.

And I bring the word into this message primarily because it is the only place we go to identify what sin, what isn't isn't sin.

How will you know if you're putting a temptation in front of another? How will you know if you are the one through whom the obstacle comes if you don't know the word, if you don't even know what an obstacle looks like?

The only definition of what is a barrier between us and God is found in the pages of his precious and holy word.

So I don't believe it's a stretch at all to say a good application from this text is to dig into his word, to know him, and then therefore to know what an obstacle actually looks like.

But the beauty of the teaching of Jesus here is that he doesn't leave the teaching out there about our attitude toward others and those other people.

Make sure that we keep them from sinning. He doesn't leave the teaching there.

He doesn't leave it at the be careful you don't lay traps for others because they're weak. Those weak people, just be careful around them.

Because we know that we are tempted to leave discussions about sin out there with those really bad people who are just weak and able to just be ripped every which way.

And so verses eight and nine are intentionally shocking and they serve to personalize the warning to us.

Where verse seven is general about the world and the one through whom traps and stumbling blocks come, generic, verses eight and nine bring the message of warning home to our individual hearts and our own battle here in this flesh, here in this body.

So start with your own battle with sin. Think about it, this is where you start in verses eight and nine, your own battle.

Is your battle, answer honestly, is your battle half -hearted? Is it even fair to say that what you're experiencing in your heart is an actual battle?

Or is it maybe a petty squabble, maybe you have a spat with sin once in a while, but at the end of the day, you guys get along pretty well.

I mean, we're roommates, we hang a lot, but you know, he does his thing, I do my thing, once in a while, we hang out.

Most of the time, we just, you know, occasionally we don't get along. Jesus is here in our text telling us to take sin seriously or sin will seriously take you someplace serious.

Let me say that again. Take sin seriously or sin will seriously take you someplace very serious.

And here comes the risk assessment with the trade -off. He offers three trade -offs in the text, three gruesome, shocking, and helpful trade -offs to demonstrate to us the severity and the seriousness of what sin really is.

Look at your hand right now, I mean it sincerely. I know that we're looking at this through a video screen right now, we're in our living rooms, but I want everybody to humor me,

I want you to literally look at your hand, look down at it, and while you're looking, listen to my voice, answer the question, do you like your hand?

Are you glad you have one? Do you wanna keep it? Jesus is saying that as much as you love having a hand, it is worth cutting off that hand to avoid sin.

Yes, the battle is with sin. When it comes to assessing the risk, it is better to go through life with only one hand or one foot or one eye than to be thrown into the eternal flames of hell.

He calls it the eternal fire, he calls it the hell of fire, he mentions it twice, once in verse eight and once in verse nine.

The fact of the matter is, Jesus is not ignorant about how sin works, you gotta hear me carefully on this. Think about it, he intentionally leaves, he says cut off your right hand, cut off your hand, cut off your foot, gouge out your eye, it's better to go into heaven, into life, eternal life, because the opposite is eternal fire, so it's obvious that he's contrasting the eternal kingdom with the eternal punishment.

But he says it's better to go into eternity with only one hand, which we know God's gonna restore all things anyways, he's not getting down to the nuances, don't misunderstand, don't take the analogy as the point.

But he says it's better to go into heaven with only one foot or one hand or one eye than it is to go into hell with everything.

Do you get it? He's talking about risk assessment, he's talking about trade -offs, he's talking about what would you give in your battle against sin if you understand fully that the flames are real, that that's a real thing.

And he's not ignorant about the way that this works. And I point this out because there is absolutely no way that Jesus is endorsing self -mutilation as a pathway to holiness.

To believe that Jesus wants us to literally cut off what causes us to sin would require Christians to become lame, handless, not with one hand, handless, lame without feet, blind, tongueless, lobotomized disciples, like we'd have to get rid of everything.

Jesus knows fully that if you're left with a hand, you can still sin, if you're left with one foot, you can still get around and get to bad places.

If you're left with one eye, I can still lust with one, and I guarantee you, I could lust with no eyes.

So hold on just a minute. Let's let the weight of what

Jesus is saying here settle on us for a moment, though. As quick as I wanna be to relieve us all of the severity of an accidental, literal interpretation of Jesus' passage and somebody going out and saying, you know what,

I need to just lop off my hand and doing it, that's not his point, but I do not at all want to relieve any of us from the strong and shocking intentions of Jesus in this text.

He is not saying cut off your hand, cut off your foot, or gouge out your eyes. He is saying hell is so real and the flame so eternal that if cutting off your hand, or if cutting off your hand or cutting off your foot or gouging out your eye was able to keep you from it, you should do it.

If that was actually literally able to keep you out of the fires of hell, I believe that there is nobody who will be in hell that would not give up a hand to get out.

I don't believe there's anybody in hell that would not give up an eye or give up a foot to get out, is what he's saying.

His bottom line teaching, what is he getting at, what is he driving for in this really shocking illustration?

It's simple, it's three words. Sin is serious. It's also very serious, and if we don't take it seriously, sin will indeed take us someplace so utterly and unreasonably serious.

This is a strong message I believe that all of us need to hear. In the midst of thinking about his little ones and in temptation and obstacles and traps laid out,

Jesus here in our text in verse seven pronounces general condemnation of woe and doom on any who would be the source of such traps, such oh so serious traps.

But then he looks at us and says, you, you must take sin seriously. You, you who are listening, it is dire, it is dangerous, it is so serious.

The words throw it away in verses eight and nine, you see them there, take off, cut off your hand and throw it away, cut off your foot, throw it away, cut out, gouge out an eye and throw it away, it's a word for hurling something or casting it away with force.

It is not merely drop it, it is throw it and cast it far from you.

It is a word that implies a distance, a needed distance from even anything that would lead us to sin.

And so with this in mind, I would like to offer three closing applications for us to all consider. We should first start with a corporate application since that's where Jesus starts in the text in verse seven with the big picture about the world around us and understanding how the world rolls and understanding our role in it because he's mentioned that the world is broken and fallen and full of inevitable stumbling blocks, inevitable false teaching, inevitable enticements to sin.

So the first thing that I wanna encourage you is in your relationship with this world and with other people to recognize your diet, consider your own diet, consider what you're bringing in.

I'm wording this application this way because Jesus references the whole, the woe, the doom to the people of the world because it's full of inevitable stumbling blocks and temptations.

That is the real world. Jesus said it, but we live it. We live it, don't we?

You know exactly what he's talking about. He said it, but it's so obvious when you live in this world.

And then further he said, woe specifically to the one who brings those stumbling blocks and temptations.

I really do believe, I believe the concept of garbage in, garbage out mindset.

I believe that there's a reality to that. That goes for a physical diet. You eat nothing but junk food, you expect this body to produce on the athletic field, it's just not gonna work.

You don't put the time and the energy in, you're not gonna get anything out. That goes for an emotional diet, how you talk to yourself, what you take in.

And that goes for a spiritual diet. Are you taking in his word, the most pure of all foods, the most pure of all spiritual nourishment, his word.

Not just the next best Christian bestseller or the next best

Christian movie or series or whatever, but his word. Consider what you're taking in.

Now you will not break the cycle of temptation without a new diet, of course. Ultimately the diet matters nothing if you don't have the third point that we're gonna get to here in a moment and that's an understanding of what

Christ has done for you. But I'm right now in this first point, primarily speaking to those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ already.

Don't think that changing your diet is going to fix you. That would be false teaching and that would be a false gospel that's worthy of condemnation and that's worthy, that would be me literally in a message warning against false teaching, teaching false teaching.

No, it's not about the diet, that's not the sum total of it, but it does matter. For those of you that are in Christ, it matters significantly.

You are not going to wake up one morning and find that you are a spiritual influencer in your world and in other people's lives for biblical truth without putting in the time to know

God and know his grace through his word. It's gonna take some time, it's gonna take some effort, it's gonna take some consistency over the long haul, a long obedience in the same direction, a long obedience in the same word.

Read the word and don't read the word because my pastor told me to or because I'm going through a

Bible reading plan and I gotta check a box today. Read the word to know God. Read the word so that you know how to walk with him and how to lead others away from the inevitable temptations of the world.

I believe that all of us will get to the end of our lives and we will be shocked at just how much influence we actually had on the world around us.

I think we'll be shocked. And that influence was either for grace and the spread of the gospel and his love or it will be for the furtherance of stumbling blocks and temptations and traps whether intentionally or accidentally laid for others.

Consider your diet, it is having an impact on the way you work and live and move in this world.

So that was the first one, consider your diet. The second is take sin seriously. I hope you get this from this text.

Whether you are a believer or not, this is a good and helpful place to start. Nobody will ever enter the kingdom of God without first wrestling with sin and what it truly means for humanity in general and themselves personally.

If sin is just a little mistake that we make from time to time, if sin is just a small thing on the global scene then we'll expect it to have little impact, right?

Little problems require small solutions. And this is the nature of our cultural division right now about COVID, right, to use that as an illustration.

Some feel like the government has used a bazooka to kill a spider on the wall. They see COVID as a small thing.

And if you, right now, I mean, you could probably go down, right down the line. Those who see COVID as a small thing,

I wonder why we ever shut down. Those who see COVID as a big thing are like, maybe we're not even doing enough.

And my goal isn't to divert off into opinions about whether or not which side is right, but we are currently living out a massive risk assessment thing.

How big of a deal do you think sin is? Is it that big? Recognize that Jesus is telling us all that we have not taken sin seriously enough.

If his radical illustration of cutting off hands and feet and gouging out eyes, if that's shocking to you, if it's shocking to me, it likely serves to show us that we don't understand how bad and how dire sin really is, nor do we understand even further how terrible and horrible the consequences of sin truly are.

In a practical sense, then let me encourage you. Starve sin in your heart.

Kill it, hunt it down, sever it, burn it with fire. Enter the fiercest heat of battle against your sin.

Choke it out. For each sin, there, I believe, are radical steps. I've worked with men addicted to pornography that still thought that removing home internet was just a step too far.

They come to me in desperation and say, Don, I just can't seem to kick this thing. Well, where are you at with your internet usage?

And are you able to get rid of your smartphone? Are you able to take some of these steps?

Well, no, I need it for work. No, I need it for this. No, I need it for that. And I understand maybe right now we're all really caught in that cycle because we need our,

I mean, there's a reality. Right now, in this time of isolation and stay -at -home policy, we do need our internet for our work.

But if you are not yet motivated to take radical steps in your fight with sin, then

Jesus is suggesting that you just might not have the view of sin that matches God's heart and his view.

And the whole reason I would want unbelievers and believers alike to go back to this is really we're looking at an assessment.

If you're not battling and fighting sin, then there is no reason to assume that you're in the kingdom.

And that leads to the third point. Because I think it's really good for us to dive into sin.

I think it's, not dive into sin, do the sin. Dive into our understanding of sin. Dive into our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to sin.

Dive into an understanding of how serious it is before we're even believers. I think it's good to see what the battle looks like on your own.

To understand that we cannot accomplish it. That's what the whole Old Testament is about, is the Jews attempting to keep the law and realizing that they cannot please

God in and of themselves. But hear me carefully, this text doesn't give the final word from Jesus about how to deal with sin.

Praise God that it isn't all about your diet. At the end of the day, it isn't all about taking sin seriously.

And if you just take it serious enough, then you'll solve it. Then you'll fix it. If you just get your diet right, then you'll be okay.

Not at all, because what will happen is as you try to change your diet, as you try to take sin more seriously, you will get to the end of yourself and you will come with a humble dependence upon God, saying,

I got no hope aside from you. I need help in this battle. My diet is out of control.

I never take sin serious enough. I can't do it.

So praise God that this is not the final word of Jesus on how to deal with sin. It's a word that drives us toward his grace and that leads to the final and most important application that only comes after you take sin seriously.

Once you realize how terrible it is in the eyes of the Almighty, after you have sized up the devastating reality of eternal fire and the hell of fire, as Jesus called them, using two different terms, then lastly do this, call or lean on Jesus for salvation.

I don't point this out as a plan B or a plan C. First try the diet thing. If that doesn't work, then move on to the taking sin seriously move.

And if that doesn't work, then go with plan C, lean on Jesus. I'm just telling you that if you try the first two,

I can give you a spoiler alert. You lean on those first two, you will realize that your only hope is found in this third one.

Call or lean on Jesus for your salvation. If you're in Christ, lean on him.

If you're not in Christ, call on him for salvation. For Jesus, it was not a cut off and cast away hand or a cut off and cast away foot, but it was pierced hands and pierced feet in torture and agony there on the cross.

Jesus spoke shockingly here about the seriousness of sin and he would experience that serious pain that we all deserve.

The very sin that he's talking about here in Matthew 18 is the very sin he will suffer and die for on the cross.

How does Jesus look upon sin? As he uttered these words, knowing that it was for these very sins, these very obstacles, these very traps that he was going to suffer and die.

Was there any flippancy in him? The calling for us is to consider the way we navigate in a world with inevitable enticement to sin.

We must consider and alter our diets. The calling is for us to wake up to the battle against sin.

We are being called in this text to a radical harsh war against sin in our own lives.

But most importantly, hear me carefully, most importantly, we are to consider our great warrior who has defeated sin through the most clear and radical action of self -sacrifice on our behalf.

How could we both, how could, church, recast, how could we possibly love sin and love the one who suffered tragically under it?

The call in our text is a call to hate. It is a call to despise.

It is a call to cut off. It is a call to cast far away any sin that we find in our hearts that would try to entangle us.

As the old Puritan writer John Owens liked to use the phrase, mortification, putting to death.

Put to death, mortify sin in your flesh. Recast, I hope that this is a message, that in it, in this message, you gain a renewed vision for the battle against sin.

You're renewed in your battle against sin in your own life. But I also hope you find a deeper appreciation, a deep and abiding and motivating appreciation for the one who ensured us victory through his own sacrifice for our sins on that glorious cross.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus. I thank you that even as he addresses sin here, we know that it's not the final word.

And though it is a stern word, a rebuke, a solid word, I cannot imagine that he talked about sin in this context without knowing what it was that he was going to pay.

And as he talked about the severity of our battle against sin, he knew, he knew, he knew all that it was going to take to defeat sin, to give us righteousness.

Father, I pray that you would encourage those who maybe are on the brink right now, have been about to give up the battle, and just frustrated, and maybe at the end of themselves in this

COVID time, or maybe just this has been an enticement, this entire quarantine time has been one massive enticement to sin and impatience, and unkindness, and anger, and frustration, and an enticement to avoid humility, an enticement to avoid a dependence, an enticement to do it ourselves, and to fix it ourselves, and to take extra steps to just be strong.

Father, I pray that you would give strength to each one who is yours to take an accurate assessment of their diet, and to alter what needs to be altered by the power of your spirit, that they would know what is true, and that they would dig into your word, and they would take sin seriously, and reengage in that battle against it.

But most importantly, that they would lean on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and gives us hope in this battle.

And then Father, if there's anybody listening to this right now who does not know you as Lord and Savior, that Father, this would be a day of redemption, it would be a day of truth, it would be a day of light coming into the darkness.

A day where the battle is won in their hearts, in their lives, through the cross of Jesus Christ, and where that which they have been fighting for on their own, where they lay their weapons down, and allow

Jesus to accomplish it for them. Father, I pray that you would continue to guide us in these coming weeks, as we hope to be able to re -meet soon.

You'll be with those who are at the end of their rope. Give them a little bit more strength, a little bit more length to that rope, a little bit more time, and a little bit more patience, and a whole lot more of your spirit in them.