S. IF THINE EYE OFFEND TREE

IF THINE EYE OFFEND THEE

TEXT: If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. - Mark 9:47-48.

What is briefly the meaning of the word, "offend?" If thy hand offend thee, if thine eye offend thee, if thy foot offend thee; what is the meaning of this word? We find it in the English in the word "scandal;" that is, "scandal" is the Anglicised form of the Greek word here used. But the word "scandalize," as used in the English, does not express the thought contained in this text, since that is a modern-derived meaning of the word. Originally it meant the trigger of a trap that trigger which, being touched, caused the trap to fall and catch one ¾ and from its original signification it came to have four well known Bible meanings. An instance of each one of the four meanings, fairly applicable to our text today, will be cited.

First, it means a stumbling-block, that which causes any one to fall, and in its spiritual signification, that which causes any one to fall into sin. If thy hand causeth thee to fall into sin; if thine eye causeth thee to fall into sin; if thy foot causeth thee to fall into sin, cut it off, pluck it out. It is more profitable to enter heaven maimed than to have the body cast into bell. The thought is as you see it in connection with a stumbling block, that you fall unexpectedly into the sin, as if you were going along not looking down and should suddenly stumble over something in your regular path, where you usually walked. Now, if thine eye causeth thee, in the regular walk of life, to put something in that pathway that, when you were not particularly watching, will cause you to stumble and fall into sin ¾ that is the first thought of it. Its second meaning is an obstacle, or obstruction that causes you to stop. You do not fall over this obstacle, but it blocks your way and you stop. You do not fall, but. you do not go on. To illustrate this use of the word, John the Baptist, in prison, finding the progress of his faith stopped by a doubt, sent word to Christ to know, "Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" evidently showing that some unbelief had crept into his heart that had caused him to stop. He was not going on in the direction that he had been going and hence, when Jesus sent word to John of the demonstrations of His divinity, He added this expression, using this very word, "Blessed is the man who is not offended in me." Blessed is the man who in me does not find an obstacle that stops him. Anything that is an occasion of unbelief fulfills this meaning of the word. If thine eye causes something to be put in thy path that suggests a doubt as to the Christian religion, and by that doubt causeth thee that had been going steadily forward to stop, pluck it out.

Let me give another illustration. In the parable of the sower, our Savior, in expounding why it was that the grain that had fallen upon the rock and came up and seemed to promise well for a while, afterwards, under the hot sun, withered away and perished, says, there are some people that hear the word of God and, for a while seem to accept it, but when tribulation or persecution cometh they are offended ¾ they are stopped. That is the meaning of the word strictly. Persecution and tribulation cometh and an obstacle is put in their path that causes them to stop.

Now, if thine eye causes an obstacle to be put in thy Christian path, that causeth thee to stop and not to go forward, pluck it out.

Yet another illustration: You remember that our Savior, who had announced a great many doctrines that people could easily understand and accept, suddenly, on one occasion, announced a hard doctrine, very hard, and from that time it is said that many of His disciples followed Him no more. They stopped. Now, there was something in them, in the eye or the hand or the foot, that found an occasion of unbelief in the doctrine He announced, and they stopped.

I remember a very notable instance, where a man, deeply impressed in a meeting, and giving fair promise of having passed from death to life, happened to be present when the scriptural law of the use of money was expounded, and he stopped. He stopped. Some obstacle stretched clear across his path. It was the love of money in his heart. He couldn’t recognize God’s sovereignty over money. As if he had said,

"If you want me to cry, I will cry; if you want me to join the church, I will join it; if you want me to be baptized, I will be baptized; but if you want me to honor God with my money, I stop."

Now the third use of the word: It is sometimes used to indicate, not something over which you stumble and fall into a sin, and not an obstacle that blocks up your pathway, but in the sense of something that you run up against and hurt yourself and so become foolishly angry. As when one at night, trying to pass out of a dark room, strikes his head against the door, and in a moment flies into a passion. Now, if thine eye causeth thee to run up against an object that when you strike it offends you, makes you mad, pluck it out and cast it from thee.

These three senses of this word have abundant verifications in the classical Greek and a vast number of instances in the Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. But there is a fourth use of the word to which I will have occasion to refer more particularly at the conclusion of the sermon, in the climax; that is, where the eye has caused a man to turn aside from the right path and to reject the wise counsel of God, and to indulge in sin until God has given him up; then God sets a trap for him right in the path of his besetting sin. In Romans 11:9 you will find that use of the word: "Let their table be made a trap for them." That is to, say that God, after trying to lead a man to do right, if he persists in doing wrong, the particular sin, whatever that may be, whether it be of pride or lust or pleasure, whatever it may be, that particular besetting sin which has caused him to reject God shall be made the occasion of his ruin, and in the track of it God will set the trap, and the man is certain to fall into it and be lost.

Now, these are the four Bible uses of this term, "offend" Greek: skandalon, the noun, and skandalizo, the verb. If thine eye causeth thee to offend, that is, if your eye causes you to put something in your path over which you will unexpectedly fall into a sin; if thine eye causeth thee to put an obstacle clear across your path, so that you stop; if thine eye causeth thee to put some object against which you will unthoughtedly run and hurt yourself and become incensed; if thine eye causeth thee to go into a sin that shall completely alienate you from God, and in the far distant track of which God sets a trap that will be sure to catch your soul, pluck it out. The next thing needing explanation: People who look at the shell of a thing may understand the text to mean mutilation of the body. They forget that the mutilation of the body is simply an illustration of spiritual things. Take a case that you will understand. One of the most beautiful and sweet-spirited girls in this city, before whom there seemed to stretch a long and bright and happy future, was taken sick, and the illness, whatever the doctors may call it, was in the foot and the blood would not circulate. The doctors could not bring about the circulation and that foot finally threatened the whole body. Then the doctors said, "This foot must be cut off; it must be amputated." And they did amputate it. They amputated it to save her life. They cut off that member because it offered the only possible means of saving the other foot and both hands and the whole body and her life. It was sternness of love, resoluteness of affection, courage of wisdom that sacrificed a limb to save the body. Now using that necessity of amputation as an illustration, our Savior says, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy foot offend thee, cut it off. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." But that He does not mean bodily mutilation is self-evident from this, that if you were to cut off your hand you could not stop the spiritual offense; if you were to pluck out the eye you could not stop the spiritual offense on the inside of the soul; no lopping off of external branches would reach that. But what our Savior means to teach is this: That a wise physician who discovers seated in one member of the body a disease that if allowed to spread will destroy the whole body, in the interest of mercy cuts off that diseased limb so, applying this to spiritual things, whatever causes you to fall into sin, cut loose from it at every cost. One other word needs to be explained-the word Gehenna. I have explained it a number of times, but will explain it very briefly again: It is a little valley next to Jerusalem that once belonged to the sons of Hinnom. It came to pass that in that valley was instituted an idol worship, and there the kings caused their children to pass through the fire to Moloch, and because of this iniquity a good king of Israel defiled that valley, made it the dumping ground of all refuse matter from the city. The excrement, the dead things, the foul and corrupt matter were all carried out and put in that valley. And because of the corruption heaped there worms were always there, and because of the burning that had been appointed as a sanitary measure, the fire was always there. That was used as an illustration to indicate the spiritual condition of a lost soul, of a soul that had become entirely separated from God and given up to its own devices; that had become bad through and through; that had become such a slave to passion, or lust or crime that it was incorrigible, and the very nature of the sin which possessed it was like a worm that never dies. There was a gnawing, a ceaseless gnawing going on, referring to the conscience, and there was a burning and a thirst going on. Now those images our Savior selected to represent the thought of hell. Having explained its words now look at the text: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." What is the principle involved in that extortion? First, that it is a man’s chief concern to see that he does not miss the mark, that he does not make shipwreck; that he does not ruin himself. That is the chief concern of every boy, of every girl, of every man and woman, to see to it that you do not miss the mark of your being; that you do not shipwreck; that you do not go to utter ruin. The next thought involved in it is that in case you do miss the mark, in case you do make shipwreck, in case your soul is lost, then there is no profit and no compensation to you in anything you ever had. For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If he misses the main thing, if he makes shipwreck of his own soul, then wherein does the compensation come to him that in his life he had this or that treasure, this pleasure or that, that he was able to attain to this ambition or that; that he for such a while, no matter how long, was on top in society or fashion in the world? What has it profited him if the main thing worthy of supreme concern is lost? The next thought is this: Whatever sacrifice is necessary to the securing of the main thing, that you must make. That is what this text means, and no matter how dear a treasure may be to you; no matter how much you esteem it, if it be necessary that you should give it up or that your soul should be lost, this text calls on you to give it up. A man may have in a ship a vast amount of money which he idolizes, but in the night he is alarmed by the cry of fire; he rushes upon the deck and he finds that the ship is hopelessly in flames and that the only way of escape is to swim to the shore. Now he stands there for a moment and meditates, "I have here a vast amount of money, in gold. If I try to take this gold with me in this issue in which the main thing, my life, is involved, it will sink me. My life is worth more than this money. O, glittering gold, I leave you! I strike out, stripped of every weight and swim for my life." It means that he ought to leave behind everything that would jeopardize his gaining the shore. A ship has a valuable cargo. It has been acquired by toil and anxiety and industry. It may be that the cargo in itself is perfectly innocent, but in a stress of weather, with a storm raging and with a leak in the vessel rising, it becomes necessary to lighten that ship. Now whatever is necessary to make it float, to keep it above the water, that must be done. If there be anything which, if permitted to remain in that ship will sink it, throw it out. They that do business in great waters know the wisdom of this. Why? It is a question of sacrificing the inferior to the greater and better. The next thought involved in this text is this: Whenever it says,. "If thine eye offend thee pluck it out," I do venture to say that it is a demonstration, by the exhortation addressed to you personally, that if ruin comes to you it comes by your own consent. I mean to say that no matter what is the stress of outside seduction, nor how cunningly the devil may attempt to seduce and beguile you, that all the devils in hell and all the extraneous temptations that may environ a man can never work his shipwreck, if he does not consent.

What is the next point involved in this text? That whenever one does consent to temptation, whenever the ruin comes to him, it comes on account of some internal moral deliquency. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Out of the heart proceed murder, lust, blasphemy and every crime which men commit. I mean to say that as the Bible declares that no murderer shall inherit eternal life, that external incentives to murder amount to nothing unless in him, in the man, in the soul, there be a suspectibility or a liability or moral weakness that shall open the door to the tempter and let in the destroyer.

Now if that be true we come naturally to the next thought in this text, that if God saves a man, and if God can save a man, He must save him in accordance with the laws of his own nature. That is to say, that God must, in order to the salvation of that man, require truth in the inward part; that nothing external will touch the case; that God’s requirements must take hold, not of the long delayed overt act, but of the lust in the heart which preceded the act and made the act. And therefore, while a human court can take jurisdiction only of murder actually committed, God goes inside of the man and says, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." From hate comes murder. If God saves you He must save you from the internal hate. Human law takes hold of a case of adultery. God’s law goes to the eye: "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." God requireth truth in the inward part. And I tell you if you are saved you must be saved internally; you must be saved not only from the guilt and penalty of sin, but you must be saved from the love of it and from the dominion of it.

Now, the next point: With that law looking inside, looking at your thoughts, looking at the springs of action, the question comes up, "How shall one keep from making shipwreck? How shall one save his soul? How shall one so attain to the end of his being as that in the main thing he shall not miss the mark?" Well, he has got to look at it as an exceedingly sober question. There is no child’s play about it. You must not rely upon the quack remedies of philosophers and impostors, or rely upon any external rite, upon joining the church or being baptized, or partaking of the Lord’s supper. The awful blasphemy of calling that the way to heaven! God requireth truth in the inward part, and if you are saved, you must be saved inside. As a wise man, having as my chief business to save my soul, I must scrupulously look at every thing with which I come in contact.

Some men’s weaknesses are in one direction and some in another, but the chief thing for me is to find out my weakness ¾ what is my besetting sin, where is the weak point in my line of defense, where am I most susceptible to danger, where do I yield most readily? And if I find that the ties of blood are making me lose my soul, I must move out of my own family, and therefore in the Mosaic law, it is expressly said, that "If thine own son, if the wife of, thy bosom, shall cause thee to worship idols and turn away from the true God, thou shalt put thine own hand on the head as first witness, that they may be stoned." Thou shalt not spare. It is a question of your life, and if your family ties are such that they are dragging you down to death, O boy, O girl, I tell you to strike out for your life. And that is why marriage is the most solemn and far-reaching question that ever came up for human decision. More souls are lost right there, more women go into hopeless bondage, more men are shipwrecked by that solemn tie, than by anything else.

Look next at your associates. With whom do you associate? Knowing your weakness, knowing the point upon which you are most easily led astray, what is the moral effect on you of the company you keep? Does it tend to strengthen you against that susceptibility? Suppose your inclinations, your weak point, is distrust of the truth of God. Faith is hard for you. You have to battle on that. Now, as you value the salvation of your soul, turn from the man or from the woman whose influence continually leads you to distrust God and His promises. You ought to move away from that kind of an association if that is, your weakness; if that is your danger point you ought to move away from it sooner than you would move from the edge of a precipice, from a den of rattlesnakes, and as you run stop your ears and cry, "Life, life, life! I am shunning you, O companion, that I may have life."

There are men in this town ¾ I know them and you know them-that have caused hundreds of weak Christians to stumble, to fall into the sin of unbelief, by the eternal suggestions of doubt and cavilings and besmirchings, that they cast upon the holiness of religion, the divinity of Jesus Christ and the uncertainty of hell. A devil to you is such a one, a devil to you.

Consider books! Maybe your tendency is to lust. Maybe you are like a young man that came to me in tears and said, "I am a slave, bound hand and foot, without powers of resistance!" Then in the name of heaven never read one of those foul books that excite lust. Never look on obscene or indecent pictures that beget it.

Never go to dances that suggest it, Stay away, as you value your life. "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy foot offend thee, cut it off. It is profitable to thee to go into heaven with one eye and one hand and one foot, rather than to lose thy body and soul in hell."

I tell you that a very large proportion of the realistic novels of the present day are written with a view to shipwreck souls. And as a man cannot touch pitch without being defiled, as no man can put fire in his bosom and not be burned, no man can read them without being injured by them. You may think you are too strong, and you may prate about nude art. And yet, if art comes to you in the guise of a harlot, if art comes to you, for instance, like the Stella of the Cotton Palace, that had been exhibited in saloons as an enticement to death, don’t look. It is a matter of life with you, my boy. Your soul’s salvation is dependent upon it.

Now it is a desperate case; and it is a desperate remedy that it calls for. I know it is bad to lose the foot or the hand or the eye, but you had better lose all your members and save your soul than to keep your members and go to hell. For into hell you go in that path, as sure as God reigns. There is no hope for you.

Boys, if your business calls upon you to sell whiskey, if your business calls upon you to desecrate God’s holy day, then quit the business. Starve rather than live that way. I would no more make money by selling whiskey by which men’s souls are lost, I would no more support my family by working on Sunday, than I would by robbery and stealing. "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." It is a question of life and death with you. That is all there is in it, and you can make your own selection. I tell you, if anything in the ties which bind you, in the comrades which are about you, in your business, in your pleasures, if these games and dances (and you are a good judge on that), if they tend to deaden your moral sensibilities, if they tend to cool your religious fervor, if the trend of them is to lead you away from God, if they are foes to Christ, then in the name of God, turn your back on them or you are lost. That is all there is in it. You are lost.

Here are the things by which the loss generally comes: First; the lust of the flesh. That man makes himself a beast, that is all you can say about him. He counts himself the brute that perishes who is the slave of animal passion. His case is piteous. Oh, to be the slave of such a debasing, rotten thing! I tell you, you are lost, lost, if you cannot by some means effect your freedom. And of all the degrading deaths to die, the idea of a soul dying on account of lust! The next is love of money. Oh, you know and I know, that there are some men on the church book whose love of money raises the question whether they are saved.

You are bound to raise the question, "Is that, can that be a child of God?" Oh, the love of, money! That is a root of all evil. If you hang on to your money, if you let that love of money dominate your soul, it will wreck your soul. That is all there is n it. It is, cut off or die, pluck out or die, one or the other. Desperate case, desperate remedy. The next is the pride of life. Just do look at him. You can see the smirk of conceit on the face. You can see the self-complacency and the evident consciousness of superiority over the lower classes. Pride of life! Proud when morally rotten, proud when the seal of condemnation is on that face; pride of life, when the devil already has your quarters prepared for you. Pride of life, when you go out of this world a bankrupt and when your associate shall be that prince of pride, who himself fell from heaven by pride. The most helpless species of pride is intellectual pride ¾ the pride that comes to a man because he is a philosopher, because he is a scholar, and the pride that will not come down to the humility that is required in the gospel. Oh, how he puffs out his cheeks, how he scorns those that are following after the things that are well enough for women. and children and idiots, but an intellectual man ¾ oh, yes, an intellectual man! Very seldom is such a man ever saved, very seldom indeed.

Now, to close this matter: Right in the track of your besetting sin when you have yielded to it, when you have refused to use the remedy that has been pointed out, right in the track of it God sets His trap. What does He say? "I warned that man. I warned that woman. I showed them plainly that that path led to death and hell, and they would none of my counsel. They turned away from me. I called: they would not hear." They go on, until at last God says to His Spirit: "Give him up. Give him up to his own devices. Let him eat the fruit of his own way and set a trap that shall catch him right in the track of that besetting sin; you are sure to get him. Now when you get him here is his picture."

I do wish you would listen to Bunyan’s Pilgrim:

"The Holy Spirit led Christian into a house and says, ’I will show you a picture.’ So He took him by the hand and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. The man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground. His hands were folded together as if there was no hope. And he sighed as if his heart would break.

"Then says Christian: ’What does this mean, this dark room, this iron cage, these folded hands, these awful sighs of despair? What does it mean?’ The Holy Spirit says: ’Ask the man himself.’ Christian said: ’What art thou?’ ’I am what I once was not.’ ’What wert thou once?’ ’Once I was a fair and flourishing professor of religion, (mark that) both in my eyes and in the eyes of others. I thought I was fair for the Celestial City and I used to have joy at the thought that I would get there when I died.’ ’Well, what are you now?’ ’Now I am a man of despair. I am shut up in this iron cage. I cannot get out. O, now I cannot get out.’ ’But how did you come into this condition?’ ’I left off to watch and be sober. I laid the reins on the neck of my lust. I sinned against the light of God’s Word. I sinned against the goodness of God. I have grieved His Spirit and He is gone. He is gone, and I have admitted the devil and he is here. I have provoked God to anger. I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent.’

"But there is hope; O Holy Spirit, is there no hope for such a man? ’Ask the man,’ says the Spirit. ’O man, the Son of God is very merciful. Is there no hope for you?’ ’None in the world. I have crucified Him afresh. I have despised His person. I have despised His righteousness. I have counted His blood an unholy thing. I have done despite to the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, God has shut. me up in here. God shut me up in here and there comes to me in here nothing but threatenings and horrible apprehensions and awful memories of what might have been.’

"’For what did you bring yourself into this condition? What did you get by it? What did you have in view to get into such a fix?’ ’For the lusts, pleasures and profits of this world, in the enjoyment of which I did then promise myself much delight, but now every one of these things is an undying worm and a tongue of flame.’ ’But can’t you now turn and repent?’ ’God’s Word gives me no encouragement. God has given me up to eat of the fruit of my own ways. Oh, eternity, Oh, eternity, Oh, eternity, how shall I spend eternity! Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched?’"

I do call heaven and earth to witness this day that I put before you life and death. I say you must turn from your sin or you are lost, wholly, absolutely and forever lost. And you ask me what is the remedy? Blessed be God, I can give it to you. I can show you the remedy. There is no use in saying there is no remedy. There is. There is an adequate remedy. What is it? In the first place, settle it right now that the chief thing you have to do in this world is to save your soul, that everything else is subordinate to that, and that whatever tie of family or association, or books, or business, or pleasure, or fashions, God helping you, whatever of them has a tendency to lead you to death on your weak point, turn your back on them for your life. Use every means of grace that God has provided for your escape. Accept now, from the heart, the Lord Jesus Christ as your righteousness.

Then remember that you cannot cast evil out of the heart and leave it empty. Put something in it. Fill it up! Fill it up! Then these pleasures cannot come back. Fill it up with what? This is the crisis of it, and I stand on this, even if I go to judgment on it. In Galatians 5:16, "Be ye filled with the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." And I say today that God has made .provisions by the power of the Holy Ghost to crucify the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life and the love of money, and everything that is noxious and hurtful and that has a tendency to wreck your soul. Be filled with the Spirit.

I would not risk it by simply saying you will quit sin, quit doing the evil thing. You cannot do it; no, you cannot do it. You cannot with an empty heart keep the devils from coming back. Your last, state will be worse than the first. Fill it up with the Spirit of God. But you say, I have not the Spirit. Ask for Him. Whatever of the Spirit’s power is necessary, get that much; get that much; don’t stop at less. I do say that it is possible for a man to be so filled with the Spirit of God that, while he cannot be sinlessly perfect in this life, yet sin will not have dominion over him. He will not be the bond slave of it. He will keep his soul on top. He will keep his body under. Ask for it. Ask for it - the blood of Jesus first to wash you, the Spirit of God to fill you and guard you. That is the remedy. Will you take it? Will you accept it? Do you hear anything? Listen! Can you not hear the sound of the breakers on which ships are wrecked? Do you not hear the dash of the waters? Oh, soul bestir thyself! If anybody here is in earnest today ¾ I do not say a word to triflers, not a word-but if anybody here will make his salvation the chief concern, if anybody here regards the whole of the body as more than a part, if anybody here regards eternal life as preferable to eternal death, and you are willing to be in earnest, then close the eventful transaction here today and kneel down, kneel down, not to me, not to an angel; come up and show in the presence of men and angels and devils, your sincerity, and that you are not ashamed, and that you are not afraid, and that you come because God tells you to come. I ask you to kneel down here and pray that God’s Spirit may be with you and abide in you. If you are a backslider, under the dominion of sin, come along like any other sinner and ask for that infilling of the Spirit of God that will enable you to pluck out the right eye, to cut off the right hand, to cut off the right foot, if necessary.