ResponsiveReiding

From Mark 10:35-45 / To Serve or Be Served – On one hand, James and John showed great faith in still anticipating Christ to rule the Kingdom, after He had just told them He was going to die. On the other, they needed to understand the nature of what it means to reign as He would. To receive the glory that was His, would require hearts and minds as submissive to the will of the Father as His. Were they ready to simply say – “it is up up the Father who sits at your right and your left, and it is not up to us, nor a thing to grasped at”? This is what it means to be Him. Complete and utter trust in the Father. The absolute giving over of His will to Him. This is where He calls us to go. This is to walk by faith. To serve, not to be served. On a second note, this discussion helps us put proper context to passages where it seems that if we ask anything in Jesus’ name (as though that is totally unqualified) He’ll always do it. We must always take into account God’s plans, purposes and will in such petitions. Our requests are always subject to His sovereign, wise and loving discretion. The Father really does know best.

From Mark 10:32-34 / Amazed and Afraid – The combination of amazement and fear seem to stem from the events just above – vss. 23-27. Jesus had told them it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to enter the Kingdom. Despite some modern attempts to soften this, Jesus’ words are clearly meant to imply an impossibility. Those who imagine they can bring anything to the salvation table, ANYTHING, are sadly mistaken. And confronted with that reality, they began to fear. This is recorded in their “Then who can be saved?” If this is the case, what hope remains? Jesus lets them stew in it a while. Then He adds more amazing and fearful things – He predicts His own suffering and resurrection. 2 Things they have no category for yet. But in fact, this is the answer to their question: He must suffer, He must die, and He must be raised again – THAT is how one can enter the Kingdom. He alone is the door. He must die for our sin, and be raised for our justification. And so it should amaze us still, and bring a terrorizing fear of depending upon anything but His person and work.

From Mark 10:23-31 / Blessed Bankruptcy – Anyone who thinks they have anything to bring to the salvation question put themselves in an impossible situation. To have anything to contribute – is to be self-justifying in some way. And when confronted with the idea that it would take everything you have – in truth, no one can give all. For we do not even know all we have, let alone have hearts to abandon it all in order to have Him. Why did this amaze the Disciples? Because those who had earthly goods supposedly bore the mark of those having already having God’s favor. So this was entirely counter-intuitive. If those who appear to already have God’s favor cannot enter the Kingdom – than who can? Only those who recognize the bankruptcy of their own souls and the worthlessness of their good works. Only those who trust Christ alone. The Marines may be looking for a “few good men” as the old ads used to say – but Jesus is looking for men and women starving for a righteousness not their own. Mind-boggling!

From Mark 10:17-22 / Doing vs Being – In Jesus’ context, calling someone “good teacher” like this would have been considered effusive, over the top. But both by his question, and Jesus’ response, the heart of the matter emerges. So Jesus asks “why do you call me good? No one IS good, except God alone. Bingo. The man wanted to know what he could DO to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him, you can’t by doing. You must BE good. Like God is good. But how can one possibly be as good as God Himself? Jesus answers that too – by faith alone. So he replies – sell everything and follow me, and I promise you treasure in Heaven. i.e, “you’ll have to believe me, trust me enough to set everything else aside based on my promise alone.” That, is saving faith. And that, is what finds us clothed with the righteousness of Christ, so that God judges US, not our works – good. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Philip. 3:8-9

From Mark 10:13-16 / Child-LIKE vs Child-ISH – It is not childishness which is being lauded here, but the ease with which children believe those in authority. If we recognize Jesus’ authority and like children accept His Word as true and believe it wholeheartedly – how wonderfully easy an entrance into the Kingdom is. And, we need to remember that children can enter the Kingdom as well as adults. Why would we exclude them from exposure to Christ and to His blessing? Are they not in need too? Can they not believe? Let them come! Methinks there is a good argument here for keeping children in the “adult” portion of Church services. As a former pew-rat myself, I can tell you that exposure to the Word preached and taught, even well above my level at the time, did not return to The Master void. It built in to me the words, concepts, songs, truths and worldview of Zion. Children get sun tans the same as adults when exposed to the sun. So let us expose them regularly to The Son.

From Mark 10:2-12 – God Hates Divorce / In this portion and its companion in Matt. 5, Jesus’ enemies tried to trap Him by asking a question a certain way. They saw the Law as giving a loophole for getting out of an undesirable marriage. Jesus tells them flat out – if your heart is so hard that you would divorce your wife so you can be with someone else – you’re an adulterer and divorce is not an option. Divorce is there to give one whose spouse has broken the marriage covenant – relief, not as a tool to satisfy one’s lust. So in Isa. 50 and Jer. 3, we see that God even divorced His people because of their infidelity. It is the hardness of heart that breaks the marriage covenant which makes divorce a remedy for the aggrieved in some cases that is behind Mal. 2’s “God hates divorce.” Hardness of heart that can lead us to even use God’s Word to justify our sin. How we need to guard against it.

From Mark 10:1 – If we gather to Him, He will teach us. If not, we will remain ignorant of Him. Prayer is our gathering unto Him, and His Word is Him speaking to us. And oh how we need taught – for it seems as though our wicked hearts and minds do not retain the words of Life. How little we seem to grasp of His person, His work, His plans and His purposes. As was His custom the text says – He taught them. And Mark 6:34 says this was especially His response to seeing the people as “sheep without a shepherd.” Over and over we need to hear.
Teach us your glories Lord, that we might hallow your name;
Teach us your love that we might be conquered by it;
Teach us your will that it might be done in these clods of dirt called our souls, in earth, as it is in Heaven;
Teach us of Christ Jesus such that we might be full and satisfied;
Teach us of your mercy and grace that it might flow from us as freely as it does from you;
Teach how to walk in the steps of Jesus, delivered from the Enemy, abandoning all sin and following Him in righteousness.
Teach us precious Savior.

From Mark 9:43-50 – Who’s the Greatest? – This passage rounds out the discussion in vss. 33-37, and the Disciples arguing about who among them was the greatest. When we are minded that way, inevitably we will marginalize the lowly who are His. And how the Savior hates pride, arrogance and elitism in the Church. Hence His drastic words: If your hand brings you to sin – IN THIS – treating one of these lowly ones poorly; if your eye sins – IN THIS – looking upon these down your nose; if your foot leads you to sin – IN THIS – walking differently before these lowly ones – beware! You are no longer salt in this world – you now have imbibed the spirit of the world. One of the worst things Christians, and especially Christian leaders can do, is to create in anyone else a sense of elitism or superiority in God’s Kingdom – or, make them victims of our own elitism. If we strive for recognition or rank, we will infect others around us, either inducing them to follow our lead, or discriminating against them. Fight this sin and the tendency toward it at all costs.

a. Never work for it (the hand in vs. 43).

b. Never walk toward it (the foot in 45).

c. Never set your eye upon it (vs 47).

It is a damning evil. Rank, rots the soul.

From Mark 9:38-41 / Unity, Liberty and Charity – One of the sad carryovers from our life before Christ, is how tribal we like to be. It is part of our fallen nature to divide into groups, even within the Church – and to imagine we have the inside track to the best form of Christianity. J. C. Ryle notes on this passage: “Men of all branches of Christ’s Church are apt to think that no good can be done in the world, unless it is done by their own party and denomination. They are so narrow-minded, that they cannot conceive the possibility of working on any other pattern but that which they follow. They make an idol of their own peculiar ecclesiastical machinery, and can see no merit in any other.” Ryle, J. C. Expository Thoughts on Mark. William Hunt, 1859, p. 190. Make no mistake, if men err on the person and work of Christ, we have an indelible dividing line. At the same time, those who cling to the Christ of the Bible, are our brothers, irrespective of differences that may still be significant. The ancient motto wrongly attributed to St. Augustine – but rightly ascribed to the Lutheran Rupertus Meldenius (circa 1627) but first taught by Jesus here, holds true: “In essentials – UNITY, In non-essentials – LIBERTY, In all things – CHARITY.”

From Mark 9:33-37 / Swept up – It is not about how great we are, but about how we receive all who are His, no matter how humble and still in need of maturity they may be. This issue will be followed up by the account of rebuking an exorcist because he “would not follow” them. The question was – is he following Christ! Is he doing His work and glorifying His name? ‎Mark expands Luke’s version by implying that Jesus sweeps the little guy into His arms as He talks about “receiving”. We cannot just say they are Christians in name only, we must embrace them. Even when that requires we discipline and correct. And, it paints the grandest, sweetest picture of all of us in our salvation – He has swept us up into His arms of grace, when we were so dull of hearing, immature of heart, and unable to do anything for Him at all. Just little children. Beloved by a condescending God, robed in human flesh.