Mark 10:13-31 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Mark 10:13-31

• Mark 10:13-16
• 13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 After taking them in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.
  • It was natural that Jewish mothers should wish their children to be blessed by a great and distinguished Rabbi. Especially they brought their children to such a person on their first birthday
  • We will fully understand the almost poignant beauty of this passage only if we remember when it happened. Jesus was on the way to the cross, and He knew it
    • Even with such a tension in His mind as that, He had time to take them in His arms and He had the heart to smile into their faces and maybe to play with them for a while
    • The disciples were not necessarily rude and uncivilized. They were simply trying to protect Jesus
      • They knew quite clearly that tragedy lay ahead and they could see the tension under which Jesus labored
      • They didn’t want Him to be bothered
      • They could not conceive that He could want the children around Him at such a time
    • Jesus said to let the children come to Him
      • This tells us that He was the kind of person who cared for children and for whom children cared
      • He could not have been a stern and gloomy and joyless person
      • He must have smiled easily and laughed joyfully 
      • This small story throws a flood of light on the human kind of person Jesus was
    • What is it about children that Jesus liked and valued so much?
      • There is the child’s humility
        • Ordinarily children are embarrassed by prominence and publicity
        • They have not yet learned to think in terms of place and pride and privilege
        • They have not yet learned to discover the importance of themselves
      • There is the child’s obedience
        • Their natural instinct is to obey
        • They have not yet learned the pride and false independence which separate us from one another and from God
      • There is the child’s trust
        • It is seen in the child’s acceptance of authority
          • Children often believe that their parents can do no wrong and know everything
          • Instinctively children realize their own ignorance and their own helplessness and trust the ones they think know
        • It is seen in the child’s confidence in other people
          • Children do not expect people to be bad
          • Children have not yet learned to suspect the world; they still believe the best about others
      • The child has a short memory
        • Children have not yet learned to bear grudges and nourish bitterness
        • Even when they are unjustly treated, they forget, and forget so completely that they do not even need to forgive
• Mark 10:17-22
• 17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; do not defraud; honor your father and mother. 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.” 21 Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing: Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.
  • We must note how the man came and how Jesus met him
    • He came running and flung himself at Jesus’ feet
    • There is something amazing in the sight of this rich, young ruler falling and the feet of the penniless Jesus, who was on the way to being an outlaw
    • Good Teacher!
      • Jesus answered back basically, “No flattery! Don’t call me good! Keep that word for God!”
      • It looks almost as if Jesus was trying to pour cold water on that young enthusiasm
    • It is clear that this man came to Jesus in a moment of overflowing emotion
      • Jesus basically said, “Stop and think! Don’t get carried away by your excitement. I don’ want you swept to me by a moment of emotion Think calmly about what you are doing.”
      • Jesus wasn’t trying to brush the man off. He was telling hime even at the very outset to count the cost
    • Jesus was saying, “You cannot become a Christian by devotion to me. You must look at God
      • The danger is that the pupil, the scholar, the young person may form a personal attachment to the teacher or preacher and think that it is an attachment to God
        • Teachers and preachers must never point to themselves; they must always point to God
        • Teachers and preachers are in the last analysis only pointers to God (prophet)
  • Never did any story so lay down the essential Christian truth that respectability is enough
    • Jesus quoted the commandments which were the basis of the decent life; and all but one were negative commandments
    • The man answered “I never in my life did anyone any harm.”
    • But the real question is “What good have you done?”
    • Jesus was even more pointed with this individual
      • “ With all your possessions and wealth, what positive good have you done to others? How much have you gone out of your way tot help and comfort and strengthen others as you might have done?”
      • Respectability consists in not doing things; Christianity consists in doing things
      • That was precisely where this man, like so many of us, failed
  • Jesus confronted him with a challenge
    • Get out of the moral respectability trap; stop looking at goodness as consisting in not doing things
    • Take yourself and all that you have, and spend everything on others; Then you will find true happiness in time and in eternity
      • Sadly, the man couldn’t do it
      • True, he had never stolen and he had never defrauded anyone, but neither had he ever been positively and sacrificially generous
      • It may be respectable never to take away from anyone; It is Christian to give to someone
    • Jesus basic and essential question: “How much do you want real Christianity? Do you want it enough to give away your possessions?” Or whatever it is that is keeping you from fully following Jesus
    • We all want goodness, but so few of us want it enough to pay the price
    • Jesus looked at the man with love
      • There was the appeal of love
        • Jesus was not angry with him
        • He loved him too much for that
        • It was not the look of anger but the appeal of love
      • There was the challenge to moral courage
        • It was a look which sought to pul the man out of his comfortable, respectable, settled life into the adventure of being a real Christian
      • It was the look of grief
        • The grief of seeing a man deliberately choose not to be what he might have been and hand it in him to be
• Mark 10:23-27
• 23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 The disciples were astonished at his words. Again Jesus said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were even more astonished, saying to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God.”
  • Then Jesus turned the discussion back to His own disciples
    • How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!
    • The word used for wealth  is defined by Aristotle as, “All those things of which the value is measured by coinage.”
    • The reason for the amazement of the disciples was that Jesus was turning accepted Jewish standards completely upside down
      • It was believed that prosperity was the sign of a good man
      • If a man was rich, God must have honored and blessed him
      • The disciples would have argued that the more prosperous people were, the more certain they were of entry into the kingdom
      • Jesus’ response was basically “How difficult it is for those who have put their trust in riches to enter the kingdom.”
    • No one ever saw the dangers of prosperity and of material things more clearly than Jesus did. What are these dangers
      • Material possessions tend to fix our hearts to this world
      • If our main interest is in material possessions, it tends to make us think of everything in terms of price
        • If our main interest in in material things, we will think in terms of price and not in terms of value
        • We may well forget there are values in this world far beyond money, that there are things which have no price, and that there are precious things that money cannot buy
        • It is fatal to begin to think that everything worth having has a monetary value
      • Jesus would have said that the possession of material goods is two things
        • It is an acid test of character
          • It takes a really big and good person to bear it worthily
        • It is a responsibility
          • We will always be judged by two standards; how we got our possessions and how we use them
          • Will we use what we have selfishly or generously
          • Will we use it as if we had undisputed possession of it, or remembering that we hold it in stewardship from God
    • The reaction of the disciples was that if what Jesus was saying was true, to be saved at all was basically impossible
      • Jesus then stated the whole doctrine of salvation in a nutshell
        • If salvation depended on a person’s own efforts it would be impossible for anyone. But salvation is the gift of God and all things are possible to Him.
      • Those who trust in themselves and in their possessions can never be saved. Those who trust in the saving power and the redeeming love of God can enter freely into salvation
• Mark 10:28-31
• 28 Peter began to tell him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions —and eternal life in the age to come. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
  • Peter couldn’t help drawing the contrast between that man and himself and his friends
  • Just as the man had refused Jesus, he and his friends had accepted the call, and Peter with almost crude honesty of his wanted to know what he and his friends were to get out of it
  • Jesus’s answer falls into three section
    • He said that no one ever gave up anything for the sake of Himself and of His good news without getting it back a hundredfold
      • A person’s Christianity might involve the loss of home and friends and loved ones, but entry into the Christian Church brought with it a family far greater and wider than the one left behind—a new spiritual family
      • Becoming a Christian may mean sacrificing ties that are very dear, but anyone who does so becomes a member of a family as wide as earth and heaven
    • Jesus added two things
      • He added the simple words “and persecutions”
        • He’s removing the whole matter from the world of quid pro quo
        • They take away the idea of a material reward for a material sacrifice
        • He never offered an easy way
        • He made it clear that to be a Christian is a costly thing
      • This tells us that Jesus never used a bribe to make people follow Him
        • He used a challenge
        • Certainly you will get your reward, but you will have to show yourself big enough and brave enough to get it
        • He did not call men and women to win the rewards of time. He called them to earn the blessings of eternity. God has not only this world in which to repay
    • Then Jesus added a warning
      • Many who are first shall be last
      • This was a warning to Peter who may have been estimating his own worth and his own reward and assessing them high
      • The final standard of judgment is with God. Many may stand well in the judgment of the world, but the judgment of God may upset the world’s judgment. Still more; many may stand well in their own judgment, and find that God’s evaluation of them is very different
      • It’s a warning against all pride
      • It’s a warning that the ultimate judgments belong to God who alone knows the motives of human hearts
      • It is a warning that the judgments of heaven may well upset the reputations of earth.