Mark 9:42-50 Keep on having salt
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: March 3 & 4, 2018, Mark 9:42-50
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a large millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. So if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life injured than to have two hands and go to hell, to the fire that cannot be put out. In that place, worms never die, and the fire is never put out. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. In that place, worms never die, and the fire is never put out. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear 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. In that place, worms never die, and the fire is never put out. Because everyone will be salted with fire, and every sacrifice will be salted with salt. Salt is good. But if salt loses its taste, how can you restore its flavor? Keep on having salt among yourselves, and live in peace with one another.”
(Understanding the Text) The first part of this lesson is that we need to be careful not to lead children away from God. They are still at Peter’s house in Capernaum. Jesus still has the little boy sitting on His lap. He was sidetracked for a little by John’s question about the man casting out demons, but now Jesus returns to His original theme. The kingdom of heaven is composed of the servants, the innocent, and the childlike. Now, He focuses on adults taking care of children and not causing the children to doubt God. I have a feeling that a lot of unconsecrated Christian parents and teachers are going to have a lot to answer for here. I pray that I will never lead a child to sin.
(Application) This is all symbolic here. Jesus is not telling us to cut off body parts. He is showing us that we should cut out anything that causes us to sin, like getting rid of a TV if you cannot control the impulse to watch shows that corrupt you. The excuse that you need to participate in a popular activity to be able to relate to others does not work if that thing corrupts you. It is better to be crippled in your interactions with others than corrupted.
(Understanding the Text) “be thrown into hell. In that place, worms never die, and the fire is never put out”: Jesus repeats this phrase three times after each “it is better” statement. This seems to be ritualistic. I think it might be a reference to Isaiah. “Then they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of the people who rebelled against me. For their worm will not die, nor will their fire be extinguished, and they will remain an object of revulsion to all humanity.” (Isa 66:24). The word hell here is originally the word “geanna” or “gehenna” which was a valley outside of Jerusalem. Nehemiah refers to exiles camping there when they returned to rebuild Jerusalem. “in Zanoah, Adullam, and their villages, Lachish and its fields, and Azekah and its villages. They encamped from Beer-sheba to the Hinnom Valley” (Neh 11:30). It was used for human sacrifice to pagan gods in ancient times. Good King Josiah destroyed these pagan places of worship. “He also defiled Topheth, which is located in the Ben-hinnom Valley, so that no one would force his son or daughter to pass through the fire in dedication to Molech” (2Ki 23:10).
Many sources claim that this valley was used as a dump in Jesus’ time. There were always animal carcasses (and sometimes human remains) there which were constantly being eaten by worms. In addition, there was always a fire burning trash in order to diminish the trash there. I remember how every once in a while my dad would set fire to our dump to burn down the old furniture and other trash that was there. This is a case where context makes a big difference. If the garbage dump claim is true, Jesus was not saying that people would be thrown into a place made by God to torture the wicked. Instead, He is saying that if we let sin separate us from God, we will be discarded like trash in the dump of gehenna. There is no coming back from that final separation. However, some other sources claim that there is no evidence either in literature or archaeology that Gehenna was a garbage dump, so I will be careful not to draw definitive conclusions based solely on this idea.
Jeremiah refers to the Valley of Gehenna when he warns about the fall of Jerusalem. “Therefore, the time is near,” declares the LORD, “when it will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. They’ll bury in Topheth because there is no other place to do it. The dead bodies of these people will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the land, and no one will disturb them” (Jer 7:32-33). Josephus reports that at the seige of Jerusalem, dead bodies were thrown over the walls into the surrounding valleys. “Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the temple, and left the seditious alive behind them. Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath.” From (<http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/josephus/war5.html> ). Thus, many Jews were thrown into Gehenna. Andrew Perriman in an online blog said, “I think we are on much firmer ground if we read Jesus simply against the Old Testament background. Gehenna is a symbol of God’s judgment on his people. Gehenna as a Tartarean place of punishment after death has its origins elsewhere.” (From <http://www.postost.net/2015/11/was-gehenna-burning-rubbish-dump-does-it-matter> ).
In reference to the meaning of the word “hell”, the Concordant Publishing Concern which publishes a translation of the Bible says “THE OLD ENGLISH ‘hell,’ denoted that which is covered (hidden or unseen). Consequently, it once served as a suitable translation of the Greek hades, which means ‘imperceptible’ or ‘unseen.’ In modern English, however, due to the corrupting influence of human tradition, ‘hell’ has come to mean ‘the abode of the dead; the place of punishment after death [in which the dead are alive].’ (From <http://concordant.org/expositions/death-and-judgment/the-gehenna-of-fire/> ). Thus, hell in the King James Version does not necessarily mean what we think of it meaning today. In speaking of the interpretation of Gehenna, this site says “To the reader of the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, Gehenna can only mean a verdict which, besides condemning a man to death, also ordains that, after death, his body should be cast into the loathsome valley of Hinnom. This being the sense of Gehenna in the Hebrew Scriptures, we may be sure that this is the sense in which Christ used it” (From <http://concordant.org/expositions/death-and-judgment/the-gehenna-of-fire/> ). While I believe that the article this quote was taken from has a wrong view of the future and prophecy, it is interesting to note that they do not interpret Gehenna as hell.
Gehenna was both a literal place and a symbol of sin that has been judged. “Then they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of the people who rebelled against me. For their worm will not die, nor will their fire be extinguished, and they will remain an object of revulsion to all humanity.” (Isa 66:24). Maybe this is why sin will never rise again. We will remember the ugliness of its death and be revolted by the memories of how rebellion against God caused humans to become ugly and full of death.
The internal evidence of this text shows that there is symbolism involved. When the text says “It is better for you to enter life injured”, we know that we will have perfect bodies when we are transformed at Jesus’ second coming, so it is impossible for us to enter life in heaven injured. Thus, Jesus must be referring to something besides what happens after death and resurrection. Jesus is saying that it is better to live crippled with the assurance of eternal life than to live whole under condemnation. When we are under condemnation, we are an object of revulsion to all humanity. Thus, I think that Jesus’ repetition here is not to emphasize the worms and fire, but to point His listeners back to Isaiah’s verse. However, I do not understand all of what Isaiah is referring to in chapter 66 myself. It may have been a prophesy for if Israel did not reject Jesus, or it may be a prophesy of the 2nd coming. However, the verses still indicate that this is not advice about entering heaven at the second coming only. When the verse says “enter the kingdom of God”, I remember that we are part of the kingdom of God here and now on earth. Thus, the advice is for now when we are still living on sinful earth.
“Because everyone will be salted with fire, and every sacrifice will be salted with salt. Salt is good. But if salt loses its taste, how can you restore its flavor? Keep on having salt among yourselves, and live in peace with one another”: Here it says that we will be salted with fire. Salt was put in meat so that it would not spoil. Does this refer to something keeping us from spoiling? Fire can either represent the destruction of the wicked by God’s glory at the end or to the Holy Spirit. Which is it referring to here? Either way, it has the idea of believers either being purified or conversely transforming from good to rottenness. I tend to think that this refers to being purified through the Holy Spirit, through contact with God. This purification makes me “flavorful”, but if I lose that purification through indulging in sins, then I am bland and useless.
Jesus is talking to His disciples here. He started out asking them about an argument among themselves. When they told Him it was about who would be greatest, He pointed out that to be great in heaven is to be the servant to everyone else. Then, He took a child and told them that greatness was in welcoming a child in Jesus’ name. At this point John interrupted the flow with a question about a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name. After answering that question, Jesus came back to the idea of children and warned the disciples that causing a child to sin was a horrible act. Then, Jesus expounded on cutting off anything that caused the disciples to sin because it would be better to be crippled yet pure than to be whole yet corrupted. Then, Jesus finished his point about corruption with the idea of salt and fire purifying and preserving the disciples. He pointed out how useless the disciples were if they allow their sinful worldly hearts to overwhelm the purification they had received from Him. He ended by going back to the original problem. He told them to live in peace with each other, i.e. quit your fighting about who will be greatest because it is corruption like that found in Gehenna; it will cripple you and make you lose the specialness that comes from connection with God through the Holy Spirit. Instead, serve one another and be at peace with each other. Then, you will be useful and attractive to both God and those that God would draw near to Him.
(Revelation of God) Jesus values us for who we are, not our appearance or worldly achievements. Jesus valued children and sinners alike. He preferred the innocence of childhood to the cynicism of adulthood. I think that in many ways, God is childlike and full of the wonder and possibilities of life while at the same time, He knows the depths of degradation that the most evil humans have sunk to. I don’t see how He loves us as He does while knowing that we are not innocent like children, but I am happy that He does.
(Application) Jesus was telling them that they would be of no use to Him as long as they were striving for worldly greatness. They could only be of use to Him if they learned to serve and treat others with care whether their fellow workers or a small child. I need to remember that my usefulness is proportionate to my ability to serve and to treat others with care.
(Prayer) I pray to be useful to You and to be full of flavor. I pray to not be corrupted but purified. I want to bring honor to you rather than to be a horror to those who love You.