Mark 12:35-44 and Mark 13 Intro (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Mark 12:35-44 and Intro to Mark 13

• Mark 12:35-37a
• 35 While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he asked, “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David?  36 David himself says by the Holy Spirit: The Lord declared to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ 37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How, then, can he be his son?”
  • In the early parts of the NT Christ is never a proper name as it has since come to be. It has in fact in this passage the definite article before it and so is translated the Messiah.
    • Christos and Messiah are the Greek and Hebrew for the same word, and both mean the Anointed One
    • The reason for the use of the title is that in ancient times a man was made king by being anointed with oil—a practice that still continues in modern coronation ceremonies
    • Christos and Messiah then both mean God’s anointed king, the great one who is to come from God to save his people
  • Jesus is not directly referring to Himself in this question
    • In reality, He’s saying, “How can the scribes say that God’s anointed king who is to come the Son of David?”
    • The argument which Jesus puts forward in support is this
      • He quotes Psalm 110:1 “The Lord says to my lord, Sit at my right hand”
      • The Jews at this time assumed that all the Psalms come from the hand of David
      • They also held that this Psalm referred to the common Messiah
      • In this verse, David refers to this coming one as his lord
      • How if he is his son can David address him by the title of Lord?
  • Son of David was the most common of all titles for the Messiah
    • The Jews looked forward to a God-sent deliverer who would be of David’s line
    • Jesus was often addressed by that name, especially by the crowds
    • The NT shows the conviction that Jesus was in fact the Son of David in His physical descent
    • Matthew and Luke both show genealogies to show that Jesus was from the line of David
    • Jesus is not denying that the Messiah is the Son of David, nor is He saying that He Himself is not the Son of David
    • He is saying that He is the Son of David—and far more, not only David’s son but David’s Lord
  • The problem was the title Son of David had gotten entangled with the idea of a conquering Messiah
    • It was involved in political and nationalistic hopes and dreams, aims and ambitions
    • Jesus was saying that the title Son of David, as it was popularly used, is a quite inadequate description of Himself
    • He was Lord
      • This word Lord is the regular translation of Yahweh in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures
      • Always its use would turn people’s thoughts to God
    • What Jesus was saying was that He came not to found any earthly kingdom, but to bring men and women to God
  • Jesus is doing here what He constantly tried to do
    • He is trying to take from people’s minds their idea of a conquering warrior Messiah who would found an earthly empire, and seeking to put into them the idea of a Messiah who would be the servant of God and bring to them the love of God
• Mark 12:37b-40
• And the large crowd was listening to him with delight. 38 He also said in his teaching, “Beware of the scribes, who want to go around in long robes and who want greetings in the marketplaces, 39 the best seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and say long prayers just for show. These will receive harsher judgment.”
  • This first sentence more than likely goes more with this new section than it did with the previous section
    • The verse divisions of the NT were first inserted by Stephanus in the sixteenth century
    • They are by no means always the most suitable divisions, and this seems to be one requiring change
    • It is far more likely that the mass of people listens with pleasure to the denunciation of the scribes than they did to a theological argument
  • In this passage Jesus make a series of charges against the scribes
    • They liked to walk around in flowing robes
      • These were robes which swept the ground and were the sign of a notable person
      • They were not suitable for work or for hurry
      • They were the sign of a leisured man of honor
      • Jews wore tassels at the edge of their outer robe
        • These tassels were to remind them that they were the people of God. Quite possible these legal experts wore outsize tassels for special prominence
      • At all events they liked to dress in such a way that it drew attention to themselves and to the honor they enjoyed
    • They liked the greetings in the market place
      • The scribes loved to be greeted with honor and respect
      • Rabbi means “my great one”. To be so addressed was agreeable to their vanity
    • They liked the front seats in the synagogue
      • In the synagogues, in front of the ark where the sacred volumes were kept and facing the congregation, there was a bench where the specially distinguished sat
        • It had the advantage that no one who sat there could possibly be missed, being in full view of the admiring congregation
    • They liked the highest places at feasts
      • At feasts precedence was strictly fixed
      • The first place was that on the right of the host, the second to the left of the host, and so on, alternating right and left, around the table
      • It was easy to tell the honor in which people were held by the places at which they sat
    • They devoured widow’s houses
      • This is a savage chargeAn expert in the law could take no pay for his teaching
      • He was supposed to have a trade by which he earned his daily bread
      • But theses legal experts had managed to convey to people that they’re was no higher duty and privilege than to support a Rabbi in comfort; that such support would undoubtedly entitle him or her who gave it to a high place
      • It is a sad fact that religious charlatans have always preyed upon vulnerable people, and it would seem that these scribes and Pharisees imposed on people who could ill afford to support them
    • The long prayers of the scribes and Pharisees were notorious
      • It has been said that the prayers were not so much offered to God as offered to other people
      • They were offered in such a place and in such a way that no one could fail to see how pious they were
  • This passage warns against three things
    • It warns against the desire for prominence
    • It warns against the desire for acclaim
      • Almost everyone likes to be treated with respect. And yet a basic fact of Christianity is that it ought to produce the desire to obliterate self rather than to exalt it
      • Those who enter upon office for the respect which will be given to them have begun the wrong way, and can’t, unless they change, be in any sense the servants of Christ and of their neighbors
    • It warns against the attempt to make a traffic of religion
      • It is still possible to use religious connections for self-gain and self-advancement
      • But this is a warning to all who are in the Church for what they can get out of it and not for what they can put into it
• Mark 12:41-44
• 41 Sitting across from the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury. Many rich people were putting in large sums. 42 Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little. 43 Summoning his disciples, he said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 For they all gave out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had —all she had to live on.”
  • Between the Court of the Gentiles and the Court of the Women there was the Beautiful Gate
  • In the Court of the Women there were thirteen collecting boxes called “the Trumpets” because of their shape
    • They were for contributions for the daily sacrifices and expenses of the Temple
    • Many people were throwing large contributions in
    • Then came a wide who put in two coins
      • The coins were called a lepton, which literally means a thin one. It was the smallest of all coins
      • And yet Jesus said that here tiny contribution was greater than all the others, for the others had thrown in what they could spare easily enough and still have plenty left, while the wide had given all she had
  • The real lesson in giving
    • Real giving must be sacrificial
      • The amount of the gift never matters as much as its cost to the giver
      • Not the size of the gift but the sacrifice
      • Real generosity gives until it hurts
    • Real giving has a certain recklessness in it
      • The woman might have kept one coin. While it wouldn’t have been much, it would have been something. Yet she gave everything she had
      • There is a great symbolic truth here
      • We rarely make the final sacrifice and the final surrender
    • It is a strange and lovely thing that the person whom the NT and Jesus hand down to history as a pattern of generosity was a person who gave the gift of so little value in monetary terms
      • We may feel that we have little in the way of material gifts or personal gifts to give to Christ, but if we put all that we have and are at His disposal, He can do things with it and with us that are beyond our imagination
• Mark 13 Intro
• This is one of the most difficult chapters in the NT for modern readers to understand. That is because it is one of the most Jewish chapters in the Bible. From beginning to end it is thinking in terms of Jewish history and Jewish ideas
• The difficulty about the doctrine of the second coming is that today people are apt either to completely disregard it or to be so completely unbalanced about it that it becomes the only doctrine  of the Christian faith. It may be that if we study this chapter with some care we shall come to a sane and correct view about this doctrine
• The Day of the Lord
  • This whole chapter must be read with one thing in mind
  • The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, and they never doubted that one day they would occupy the place in the world which the chose people, as they saw it, deserved and were bound to have in the end
  • They had long since abandoned the idea that they could ever win that place by human means, and they were confident that in the end God would directly intervene in history and win it for them
  • The day of God’s intervention was the day of the Lord
  • Before that day of the Lord, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come
  • But it would be followed by the new world and the new age and the new glory
    • In one senes this idea is the product of unconquerable optimism
      • The Jews were quite certain that God would break in
    • In another sense it was the product of bleak pessimism
      • It was based on the idea that this world was so utterly bad that only its complete destruction and the emergence of a new would would suffice
    • They did not look for reformation. They looked for a recreating of the entire scheme of things
    • OT References
      • Amos 5:16-8, 20
      • Isaiah 13:6, 9-10
      • Joel 2:1-2, 30-31
    • Between the OT and NT there was a time when the Jews knew no freedom. It was only natural that their hopes and dreams of the day of the Lord would become even more vivid
    • In that time a kind of popular religious literature sprang up
      • The writings which this literature consisted of were called the Apocalypses (An unveiling)
      • These books were dreams and visions of what would happen when the day of the Lord came and in the terrible time immediately before it
      • They were never meant to be taken prosaically as maps of the future and timetables of events to come
  • Different Strands
    • Here Mark collects Jesus’ sayings about the future
      • Even with a cursory reading, with no special knowledge, shows that though all these sayings were about the future, they were not all about the same things
    • 5 Different Strands
      • There are the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem
        • 1-2 and 14-20
      • There is the warning of persecution to come
        • 9-13
      • There are warnings of the dangers of the last days
        • 3-6, 21-22
      • There are warnings of the second coming
        • 7-8, 24-27
        • The imagery of the day of the Lord and of the second coming are inextricably mixed up. It had to be so, because no one could possibly know what would happen in either case
        • The only pictures Jesus could use about His second coming were those which prophets and apocalyptists had already used about the day of the Lord. They are not meant to be taken literally. They are meant as impressionistic pictures, as seer’s visions, designed to impress upon people the greatness of that even when it should come
      • There are the warnings of the necessity to be on the watch
        • 28-37
  • This chapter will make far more sense if we remember these various strands in it and remember that every strand is unfolded in language and imagery which go back to the OT and apocalyptic pictures of the day of the Lord