After Jesus explains that the kingdom of God is upside down,
John, one of the inner circle, speaks up. The disciples saw someone healing in Jesus
name, but the man was not a disciple, so they rebuked him. But Jesus says to
let the man continue: “…whoever is not against us if for us” (Mark 9:40). This
leads us to the next principle about the kingdom. There is another kingdom
opposing it.
There is a kingdom of darkness as well as a kingdom of
light.
Jesus brings this home in the final passage. He describes your
options. You are either in one or the other. There is no middle ground. He who
is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters”
(Matt. 12:40). Either you are in the kingdom of light or kingdom of darkness.
For those who stay in the kingdom of darkness, the end is hell. The word he
uses here is Gehenna.
Gehenna was a deep valley southeast of Jerusalem. In the
time of the kings of Israel, it had been used for the most appalling idolatry.
The pagan deity Molech had been worshipped there. The worship of this idol
required children to be burned alive. Israel’s kings participated in this
travesty, burning their own children to death. The king Josiah put an end to
this, defiling the place so that it could never be used again. It became a
place where people threw garbage. The bodies of criminals would be burnt there.
This is the image that Jesus gives for the end of those in the kingdom of
darkness. Jesus quotes the words of Isaiah here, “the worms that eat them do
not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48).
This is scary language. But it is totally serious. Jesus is
returning in glory and power. Every deed that a person has done will be judged.
We cannot afford to be cavalier about our eternal destiny.
Jesus puts it this way. “If your eye causes you to sin,
pluck 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” (verse 47). He is not
encouraging body mutilation here. Obviously, it is not our hand or foot or eye
that causes us to sin, but our hearts. Jesus said that it is from within that a
man is defiled (Mark 7:20). The point is that if anything is causing you to
stumble, get rid of it, no matter how precious it is to you.
Jesus is talking about habitual sin that leads us away from
God. James 1:15 says that evil desires conceive sin, and sin when full grown
leads to death. Sin, if not dealt with, leads us away from God. It has no place
in His kingdom.
Instead, “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and
with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to
cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure
water” (Heb. 10:22).
Finally, I want to return to the words of Jesus: “the
kingdom of God is within you.” We carry the kingdom wherever we go. We advance
the kingdom whenever we bring His system to our sphere of influence. His
kingdom comes when his ways come to our world. That is our mission.
How do we do it? We do it when we lead by serving. We do
that when we keep our lives free from sin. We do that when we follow the
principles laid out in scripture. We do that when we live by faith.
If you are born again, the kingdom is within you!
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