Bible Study January 17, 2021

Hello all,

Below you’ll find a link to the Bible Study from Sunday. Links to resources as well as the manuscript are also included. Feel free to dig into this weeks passage from Mark as much as you’d like!

Blessings on your week!
Pastor Adrian

Bible Study Link: https://youtu.be/koNvNaryP_o

Bible Study Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbG6QMzg7GlPlQtR2JCKKNcQGcIIZSsCd

Sermon Link: https://youtu.be/fQmJayRB5-4

Steve Thomason BIBLE STUDY INFO:https://cartoonistbible.com/studies/the-bible-bookshelf/loj/mark/first-last-and-last-first-mark-1017-31/

Working Preacher Commentary: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-2

Bible Study: Mark 10:1-16

We are now going to dig back into Mark starting with chapter 10 verse 1, and there’s an important note before we get into the more difficult sections for us to look at in verse 1, Mark tells us, “He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.”

He again taught them. Jesus the teacher. It is an incredibly important thing to highlight because there is no point during the time of Jesus where he stops trying to teach his disciples and all those who come in. He has so much to convey to them, in a way they’ll hopefully understand it, and his public ministry is so short, so rushed.

And because of that rush we are left to try to dig through some of the more difficult passages and wonder what exactly Jesus this teacher was trying to get across to us. There are few passages that provide more of that need of digging than chapter 10 verse 2 through 12. Let’s hear that section.

2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

I have always viewed this passage as being originally intended to protect women, while too many times it has been used to ask women and men to remain in dangerous relationships. When we view almost every other one of Jesus sayings, he seems to go out of his way to make sure that the Law is not applied in a cruel way. Well how was divorce law being applied in a cruel way? We have to step back from our modern lives and journey back into a time where as one commentary puts it, “a woman was regarded as a thing. She had no legal rights whatever but was at the complete disposal of the male head of the family. The result was that a man could divorce his wife on almost any grounds, while there were very few on which a woman could seek divorce.”

It all comes around to Deuteronomy 24:1 which says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house.” And those reasons for sending her out, according to one Jewish scholar could include such unforgivable offenses as “spoiling a dish of food, or if she spun in the streets, or if she was a bawling woman (who was defined as a woman whose voice could be heard in the next house…” one school of thought even went so far as to say that “if a man found a woman who was fairer in his eyes than his wife,” he was right to send his wife out of his house.

We earlier said that phrase, a woman was seen as a thing… not a person… and throwing a woman out of her own house for such trivial reasons as I listed off… left that woman with nothing, treated as nothing, to the point that it has been noted that at the time of Jesus women were avoiding marriage because they risked losing absolutely everything.

They came to trap Jesus in a legal argument, but Jesus tries to get them to understand a truth about the Bible and potentially about this passage that people seem to struggle to understand, Jesus says about the Deuteronomy passage that, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” One commentary describes the repercussions of what this teaching Jesus says in this way, “Jesus made it quite clear that he regarded Deuteronomy 24:1, as being laid down for a definite situation and being in no sense permanently binding.” That there are a time and a place for certain pieces of scripture… we talk about some passages from Paul talking about women not wearing particular hair styles as being about a particular context. In 1 Timothy 2:9 he says, “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire.” Is God against braided hair? Or was their a problem with one particular group in one particular area?

I bring this all up because I think we have to look heavily into the context of these passages and Jesus gives us permission to do so. This passage, I don’t believe, was meant to permanently ban divorce, but to permanently protect women and to not allow them to be thrown out of a home and left to nothing. Which of the two options sounds more like Jesus? It is why studying the Bible, all of it, is so important. And we could of course dig into this deeper, but we still have one more section and I am trying to keep these Bible studies as brief as possible.

Our section for today, before the Sermon, wraps up with Chapter 10 verses 13 to 16, let's hear them now, “13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”

Only here in Mark is Jesus indignant with the disciples for stopping the children from coming forward and only in Mark does he bless them. This is not politician Jesus moment, where they bring the baby forward to be kissed for a photo op, no Jesus is actually angered they are cut off and then rather then just talking about them, he gives them the thing they were seeking… for they came forward in order that they might touch him… the thought being touching a holy person would gain you a blessing… and he gave them what they sought.

This is the God that I have met. A God I haven’t always felt at every moment, but the minute I seek God, the minute I start going after answer… God’s presence becomes all too real when I step forward with that faith of a child to a parent that God’s going to take care of this. God doesn't play games. God doesn’t have props. God is real enough to be angered when something blocks our way from what we need most, and effective enough to provide us that blessing. There are so many passages in Mark about children and the truth of it is that far too often we have more to learn from children than they do from us.

We’ll go ahead and stop there and pick up with another Bible study next week. Thanks for joining me for this Bible Study.