Mark 10

Mark 10:1-45

Subdivision 5. (Mark 10:1-45.)Results: Nature in its relation to God. We have now, as again in Matthew, nature in its relation to God, a matter of great moment in the path of service: the institution of marriage, the relationship to Him of children, the state of man in his best naturally, sin having thrown its dark shadow over all; finally, we see nature thus deformed working in the servant of God himself and tending to destroy the whole character of service; but then the victory of God over it, and the perfect Servant setting the pattern for His people and moulding them after His own likeness. As we have gone through this in Matthew, we shall add but little to it here; seeking mainly to note any points of difference, with a conviction at the same time of how slight and superficial our knowledge of these differences is, and how the word of God must suffer from our scanty knowledge of it.

1. In the question as to marriage we are taught by Christ to respect absolutely the Creator’s ordinance at the beginning. According to that, man and wife are one flesh, and this is founded on the creative work itself which made them male and female, one man and one woman. God has joined them together: man must not put them asunder. Mark does not even notice the exceptional allowance of divorce, when the marriage tie has in fact been broken through.
2. As to the children, Mark notices the Lord’s displeasure at the disciples’ conduct, and gives here substantially what in Matthew is found elsewhere, that only those who received the Kingdom of God as a little child could enter therein (Matthew 18:3). Mark also shows a fuller answer on the Lord’s part to a slighter request. He is asked to “touch” them; He takes them up in His arms, puts His hands on them, and blesses them.
3. In the ruler’s case which follows, we find the heart manifested of one who is, as Paul says of himself when unconverted, “touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless.” There is really that on account of which it is said, (and in direct connection with his “Teacher, all these things have I kept from my youth,”) that “Jesus looking upon him, loved him.” There was that in him which was lovable. What he says of himself, he says with an honest conscience and conviction of its truth. Nor is he, as his question shows, merely engrossed with the present and without thought of God. He desires and seeks eternal life; and, attracted by what he hears or sees in Jesus, he comes to Him to learn the way to find this. Mark emphasizes his running and kneeling to the Lord, his “Good Teacher,” which from that mere human standpoint the Lord cannot accept. Goodness is in God alone: would that he had sought it only there! Nature is fully judged in the sweep of that assertion; and presently in his aching heart, as he turns, alas, from the One in whom his hope had been, he has to realize at least the bond that (one would fain hope, only for the present) holds him from the blessing that he seeks. But this bond a more than human power must sever. Nature in its fairest form is fallen away from God. Man’s need is of a Saviour.
4. This is what the Lord now affirms. To the amazement of His disciples, He declares that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God. Those who, to make this less absolute than it seems, would apply it to an eastern city gate, should remember that the Lord affirms directly that that of which He is speaking is “to man impossible.” On the other hand, Mark records for us the explanation that a rich man stands here for one that trusts in riches, which at the same time prevents the obvious mistake of a gross literalism, and extends the principle to the poorest in actual possessions. Really he only is in the sense intended “rich,” who trusts in riches: and he may do that who never acquires them. In the divinely wrought hunger of soul, the things to which the worldling turns for help become as little valuable as gold to meet desert-thirst. The disciples in their astonishment say one to another, “Who then can be saved?” But salvation is of God wholly. When men have learned their need of this, there is then no difficulty.
5. Nature in itself is then hopeless; and in the child of God still there abides that which because of its tendencies Scripture calls the flesh. “In me, that is in my flesh,” says the man in the experience of the seventh of Romans, “dwelleth no good thing,” Of the flesh self is the centre; and into the sphere of spiritual things the flesh will intrude, how easily. Self may claim that in which (in the sense in which we are speaking) it can have no part, and take pleasure in the thought of a foremost place there. Peter’s “We have left all and followed Thee,” is just such a claim, which the Lord meets in grace with a full assurance that nothing can be left for His sake without abundant recompense, both here and hereafter. But He guards this doubly from abuse such as the carnal mind might make of it: first, by the reminder that it must be done for His sake to be rewarded: not for self, to gain the reward. Secondly, and springing out of this, “many first shall be last, and the last first,” which effectually forbids self-placing anywhere.
6. But we go on beyond this, to see the victory of God over all this spirit of strife and emulation. Again He begins to warn them of His coming death and comfort them with the thought of His speedy resurrection. There is no response: fear has already fallen upon them. But presently it is seen of how contrary a spirit they are by the request of the sons of Zebedee for the two places nearest Himself in the coming Kingdom. The Lord points out to them the way by which He reaches this. Can they drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism? And immediately they assure Him that they can. He tells them that in these they shall in fact partake; but the places that they seek are only His to give to those for whom it is prepared of His Father. This awakes the indignation of the other disciples, and shows a similar spirit to be in them all. And now He shows them their great and fundamental mistake. Heaven is to be no place for the ambition of men. The Son of man came not to be ministered to but to minister: love’s mission among them sought only what love alone could count a recompense. And if, “beyond all controversy, the less is blessed of the better,” our dependence on Him insures that this ministry of His to us will go on for ever. If love made Him take it up, love will make Him keep it too, as surely as He is Son of man for ever, although the toil and sorrow of His work be past. If then with Him service is but the sign of a love unending, and so can never cease, can it be different with those whom He is bringing into the glory of likeness to Himself? Can they take up service to win lordship by it, and state and authority? That were surely impossible: nay, the greatest in heaven’s Kingdom is he that humbleth himself as a little child (Matthew 18:4). In heaven’s rule, Love rules; and therefore rule is service still, most valued because it is so.

Mark 10:46-13

Subdivision 1. (Mark 10:46-52; Mark 11:1-33; Mark 12:1-44; Mark 13:1-37.)The King. The first subdivision has also its three parts. The first of these has its central significance in the barren fig-tree, which the Lord curses for its barrenness, a figure scarcely to be mistaken by any who look below the surface, and which in Mark is woven together with the story of His purification of the temple, His Father’s house. Israel, alas, for this had to be driven out of that which they had profaned. The “Canaanite (or merchantman) in the house of the Lord” had found in the favored people of God its sorrowful fulfilment. The second part shows us, along with their hostility to the Lord, His judgment in detail of their condition. This comes out in His answers to their various and evil-designing questions and efforts to entangle Him in His talk, - efforts which end for them in disastrous confusion. He closes it with His unanswerable question to them with regard to David’s Son; and then denounces to the people the heartless and ostentatious religiousness of the scribes. The third part announces (for disciples, ears alone) the coming of the rejected Son of man in glory, to deliver His believing people out of the great final tribulation into which the nation has come because, rejecting Him who came to them in His Father’s name, they have received him who comes in his own. The connection all through, as generally in Mark, is close and intimate with Matthew’s Gospel; Mark, however, omitting much, especially of the dispensational details, as the marriage of the King’s son; and in the prophecy of the final scenes, all that has reference to the Church and to the judgment of the nations, the separation of the sheep from the goats. 1.(1) In the three synoptic Gospels alike, the Lord’s presentation of Himself to the people as their King is prefaced by the miracle at Jericho, which is expressly wrought in answer to an appeal to Him as Son of David. Matthew mentions two blind men, but Mark only one, whose name he (and not Matthew) gives. Bartimaeus is simply the son of Timaeus, so that he gets his personal name from his relationship. Timaeus is in Greek,* “one that is prized,” and “the son of one that is prized” would well represent the state of Israel in her blindness of unbelief still “beloved for the fathers, sakes” (Romans 11:28). It is surely a striking name for one whom we have already looked at as on other grounds (see notes on Matthew 20:29-34) foreshadowing the remnant of Israel in days to come, when. God is preparing the way of His King to come to Zion.

They need and will find, spite of the opposition of the mass by whom they are surrounded, in Jesus of Nazareth, One who is sent to “preach recovering of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18). To Him they will come, “casting away the garment” of religious self-righteousness, which has been ever the hindrance with the people to whom they belong. They will receive sight and follow Jesus.
Such spiritual sight given in Jericho, the world under the curse, into which Christ has come, and which still converts blind beggars into joyful followers of the Lord, is even now His witness. He had to come under this curse to redeem us from it, and the deliverance at Jericho, may well be the pledge of His victory at Jerusalem and elsewhere, though He go to present rejection at the hands of men. The blessed Servant has anticipated it all, and sees with no uncertainty the path before Him. That very rejection shall only give Him occasion for deeper service. (2) So they come near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage (the “house of unripe figs”) and Bethany (the “house of affliction” or “humiliation”)* significant names both for Him; and now He sends two of His disciples to bring to Him the colt upon which He is to ride, proclaiming His Kingdom of peace, into Jerusalem. Mark, as little as possible touching the dispensational side of things, omits from his account the mother ass (see Matthew). The acclamations of the multitude hail the “coming kingdom of our father David.” There seems at present no opposition. He simply enters Jerusalem, goes into the temple and looks round upon all things there. Then, it being now evening, He withdraws and goes out to Bethany.
Matthew does not notice this first visit of silent contemplation on the Lord’s part, but puts the cleansing of the temple, which did not really take place till the next day, in connection with the triumphal entry. This has of course been charged upon him as a discrepancy. It is in fact the substitution of an order of thought for the order of time; and this is not infrequent in the Gospels. This simple looking round upon everything and then turning the back upon it is very solemn. It is not judgment that is inflicted, but He finds nothing to His satisfaction, and leaves it to them, and leaves them with it. His own personal position is outside it all. The temple as His Father’s house should have been His own. There, if anywhere in Israel, would have been the throne of God, and here was the King of this kingdom, the Son of the Father; and He turns His back on it. Leaving it, He leaves the city also, for Bethany, the “house of humiliation.” He can only abide there. (3) On the morrow, as He returns to the city, He hungers. A spiritual hunger was, in fact, upon Him. The zeal of His Father’s house was consuming Him, with all that that house implied, as established among men - a place of approach to Him, not for Israel only, but for all nations. This had been committed to Israel’s care, and their privileges upon which they prided themselves, only to look down with disdain upon the Gentiles, were really responsibilities on their behalf. The blessing of the earth depended - and still depends - upon Israel’s blessing. As God’s vine they had failed, and the vineyard had been laid waste; but He had suffered a remnant to come back, according to His own figure as to them, to be as “a fig-tree planted in” the desolate “vineyard” (Luke 13:6), to see if yet there might be fruit for Him. Here, then, the significance of the present act is seen. The returned people stood before God with its profession of faith in Him, in striking contrast with the nations round, for whom plainly as merely heathen; “the time of figs was not yet.” The fig-leaf was the promise of fruit wherever found; and therefore the Lord comes to it to find this. There was none: and for this He pronounces its doom. No more is said about this here, but He goes on to Jerusalem and the temple, and what He had found at the beginning of His ministry (John 2:13-16) He finds unchanged at the end of it. Greed was profaning the very house of God, and that which should have been a house of prayer had become a den of robbers. He purges them all out, assuming for a moment the authority which was His; but the effect is only to bring the chief priests and scribes together to plot for His destruction. As yet the fear of the people holds them back. We return then to the actual destruction of the fig-tree, which they find next morning dried up from the roots. The Lord uses it to impress upon His disciples the power of faith in God. Not a tree merely, but a mountain would disappear in this way from the path of faith, where faith laid hold of the Invisible for it. But He joins with believing prayer the need of a tender spirit of forgiveness towards any against whom the heart might retain the sense of wrong, lest the Father’s government should be made to remember one’s own offences. The Lord leaves the application both of the fig-tree and the mountain to be made by His disciples. They were evidently not yet prepared to realize the doom that Israel as a nation were bringing upon themselves, or that they might be such an obstruction as He pictured to the path of faith. The divine foresight of the end would not prevent the most assiduous tenderness in warning and entreaty till the end should come. God has taken care even to proclaim by the mouth of Jeremiah that His own prophecies of coming judgment might be set aside by a nation’s repentance (Jeremiah 18:7-8); and has even given us in Nineveh an example of this (Jonah 3:10). But Israel went on unrepenting until it was in fact, as a nation; sunk like the mountain of which the Lord speaks into the sea of nations round her; and the fig-tree died withered up because it had no fruit for Him who sought it. The blessing of which the Word still gives assurance for them can only be through a veritable resurrection (Ezekiel 37:1-28). 2. The next section is almost entirely similar to Matthew, save in the omission of two parables, and in the addition by Mark of the beautiful and significant incident of the widow’s mites. It gives, as already said, the Lord’s judgment in detail of Israel’s condition, in her chosen leaders, who unite in opposition, though veiled, against Him. Everywhere they are met, refuted, their disguise stripped off, until He closes argument with His own triumphant question how Christ can be the Son of David. This is followed by His denunciation of the scribes, and His appraisal of all their ostentatious giving to the temple treasury as less in value than the widow’s “two mites which make a farthing.” (1) The question of authority is the one first raised; upon the face of it unutterable folly; for His works bore witness of Him, and it was impossible to suppose that divine power, such as was manifest in them, could have been gained unlawfully. He refuses, therefore, to answer their question, except they answer first His own. If competent to discern as to Himself (and if not, it would be of no use to answer them), they should know as to the baptism of John, whether it was from heaven or of men. If they knew, let them answer. But they dare not answer. On the one side they cannot excuse themselves, if it were from heaven; for not being his disciples: on the other, they could not deny his claim for fear of the people. And the only refuge left for them is in what for them is a complete and yet most insincere humiliation; they cannot tell! (2) The parable of the two sons which Matthew gives is here omitted, and that of the vineyard comes into the second place. The thought of the vineyard was familiar to them from the prophets, who had pressed upon them the claims of God as to it; and they had built the sepulchres of these prophets, whom they could not deny that their fathers killed. With the murder of the One who spoke to them in their hearts, how could they deny that they were in the succession of the parable? Then came their own Scriptures to prove that the corner stone of God’s building was one rejected by the builders. Clearly they could understand that all this spoke of them, and feel it enough to be maddened by it. (3) Now they break up into parties, (Pharisees and Herodians) which unite together, however, in dexterous combination. They do not question His authority any more: they know that He is true and teaches the way of God in truth. Nor will the fear of man shut His mouth. So they have a question to ask, an important one, touching closely all ranks and conditions among them, and quite apt to kindle dangerous passions. Pharisees and Herodians were divided about it: here it was for Him to settle: Should they give tribute to Caesar? Aye, or no? But they cannot dig deep enough to hide from Him the hypocrisy of that question, that they were merely, as He tells them, tempting Him. Yet He will not decline it: let them only bring Him the tribute money. And they bring it: and there is the image of Caesar stamped broadly upon it. They cannot deny, - they are not suffered to ignore the fact, - that this is Caesar’s money. But how much lay hid under this for those that were still capable of entertaining such questions. How long they had given up any full, entire reliance upon the Almighty, the God of their father Abraham, and by profession their own! They had leaned upon another arm than His. They had coveted the riches of a world which Abraham had refused. They were trafficking with Caesar’s money, and must pay him back his money. Issachar in their father Jacob’s prophecy had proved but too surely their type: Issachar, the “bony ass, couching between the hurdles: and he saw the land that it was good, and rest that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became servant to tribute.” Give Caesar then what is his: no use to expect divine help to ignore what their sin had brought them into. No! and yet a way there was - a way which they had never taken: give God also His own! how surely then would the burden pass from their back, and the rest they longed for be obtained! “My yoke is easy, and my burden light.” “And they marvelled at Him.” (4) But they are not yet silenced; and after the Pharisee and the Herodian appears the Sadducee: a not unusual order at any time. With them we find the intrusion of mere human thought into spiritual things, and which with its own beggarliness would beggar heaven. But they know neither the Scriptures, - when did an infidel ever know the Scriptures? - nor the power of God. The Lord proves to them how the simplest sayings of God may contain what would enrich us for ever and we do not find it there. Shall we ever awake to the need we have of putting under adequate tillage the rich land which God has given us? As to the Lord’s argument here, we can add little or nothing to what has been said in Matthew. (5) As to the next question, Mark shows us under the tempting spirit of which Matthew speaks a certain effect nevertheless produced in the man who asks it. How apt we are to fight with the truth just when it is gaining access into our hearts! and how contrary often are the thoughts which unite to move us! In the scribe before us we find a further effect of the answer given to his question, and the Lord Himself pronounces him “not far from the Kingdom of God.” We are not told that he ever entered it; but we have good reason for hope that he had reached the place in which he was as the result of a seeking which could not fail of divine guidance. It needed some boldness to proclaim so heartily his acceptance of the truth, (simple as it may seem and is,) that love to God and to one’s neighbor is “more than all whole burnt-offering and sacrifices,” and this in sympathetic admiration of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the midst of those who were His open adversaries. With the exception of this, Matthew’s account is almost exactly that of Mark, and we cannot add to what is said of it in the former Gospel. (6) After the scribe’s confession; “no one any longer dared to question Him.” But He now turns upon His silenced enemies with a question on His own part. The charge against Him was that “He made Himself the Son of God.” The creed of the scribes was that Messiah was simply Son of David. He produces David himself therefore in proof that He must be more: otherwise how, as in the 110th psalm, could the father call his son his lord? To this they have, and could have, no answer. (7) He proceeds to warn the people against the scribes. Mark does not however reproduce here the detailed judgment which is given in Matthew. He speaks of their love of display, of human applause, of leadership, their very prayers a hypocrisy, while they devoured in their greed the substance of the poor and unprotected. Such were the religious chiefs of the nation, and their character was one most easily to be discerned surely. Yet these blind leaders were as blindly followed. (8) He turns the page, and shows us amid such a state of things what the eye of God could discern; and His heart delight in; the act of a poor widow, too poor to tempt even the rapacity of a scribe, yet not too poor to put into the temple-treasury a gift beyond all the rich gifts of the wealthiest worshipers. “Two mites which make a farthing:” really about three quarters of a farthing! but the value of it, as our Lord declares, was not according to the market - according to its buying capacity, but intangible and spiritual. The two mites were all the means she had: “all her living.” She had put her heart in with it: a heart that had no reserve, - that would keep nothing back from God. The value of it was that of sacrifice, and could not miss appreciation by One who was Himself the Great Sacrifice, or by Him who spared not for us His own Son. But this was one among all that had cast in; and the commendation takes the form of condemnation; the joy of approbation is only as of a sweet note amid dissonance. Nay, the existence of this one verity of goodness and devotedness seems only to male worse the awful falsehood and self-service and arrogancy of pretension all around. Israel remains unhealed, unhelped, with her sin upon her, and going on to the culminating sin of sins - the Cross. And, as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. There is naturally no difference. The lesson here is lesson for us all, and the exception is of divine grace only. Thus the Cross was not man’s sin only, but the grace that meets his sin: and “The very spear that pierced Thy side Drew forth the blood to save.” 3. But before the Cross is reached, the veil is once more for a moment drawn aside, and we are given to see the One rejected and disowned of men coming in the glory of heaven when unbelief shall be possible no more, and resistance beyond a moment’s possible thought. We have been already through this great prophecy in Matthew, whom Mark in what he gives of it almost entirely resembles. No doubt there are certain differences, and for these and for the resemblances alike there must be spiritual reasons which we should be able to give some account of. But for this the Gospels in their entirety must be better known, and each part apprehended in the light of the whole. Too little believing work has been done in this direction to enable us to say much to the purpose as to it.

That there is divine wisdom in it all it should not need to say; but one may have to confess ignorance, which the many with whom we share it prevent being felt with the shame which should belong to it. To avoid mere repetition the notes on Matthew must be referred to throughout. (1) The introductory portion no doubt takes in, in its general characteristics, the present time; though Christianity, as such, is not contemplated in it. It partakes in this way in the character of Old Testament prophecy, in which the present dispensation has no place; save, indeed, as you may call a type a prophecy, and then we can find such parabolic utterances not seldom. The prophecy of our Lord here has, in Matthew’s version of it, quite similarly its Christian portion couched in this parabolic style. The time had not yet come for plainer speech. Mark and Luke alike omit all this Christian part; while the indefiniteness of this introductory portion leaves room for what is not explicitly found there. Mark, as well as Luke, emphasizes in a special manner the persecutions that the disciples would have to endure, which in Luke are declared to take place before the signs among the nations. They are, therefore, persecutions of the early Christian days, such as the Acts show us to have taken place as soon as the new message of salvation was proclaimed. In this way the testimony to governors and kings was to be given; and they were, without any anxiety about it, to rely entirely upon the Spirit of God for all that they should say. liven the natural love of kindred would be destroyed by the spirit of hostility to Christ. He that endured to the end would be saved. (2) The last clause, while as a general principle it applies to all, has certainly a special reference to the time of the end, and the Lord goes on immediately to the abomination standing in the holy place, “where” (above all) “it ought not:” the very place in which idolatrous worship would be the most open defiance of Him who had peremptorily forbidden it. This, as we have seen in Matthew, undoubtedly refers to days that are yet to come, after the present dispensation is ended by the removal of the saints to meet the Lord in the air, and when the “remnant of His brethren” as Micah declares, “shall return to the children of Israel” (Micah 5:3): that is, when those converted to God in Israel will no longer find their place as now in the body of Christ, but share the national hopes and promises of the ancient people of God. All the warnings of the great tribulation following here are almost word for word as we find them in Matthew, with the omission only of the reference to the sabbath, and the danger of deception as to His being in the desert or the secret chambers. (3) The signs which precede the coming of the Lord follow, and then the Son of man; coming in the clouds of heaven; sends forth His angels to gather together His elect from the four winds, - Israel, once more His people, from their long dispersion. (4) The parable of the revival of Israel’s fig-tree from her winter sleep, with what follows to the thirty-second verse, is again almost word for word with Matthew. But Mark alone, in recording the Lord’s declaration that “of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven,” inserts “neither the Son.”* This the Lord’s character as the Son of God in service sufficiently explains. “The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth.” And to the Corinthians the apostle says, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” It is not a question of His divine knowledge, but of what He knew as about His Father’s business, as the apostle at Corinth knew nothing but the Crucified One.
It has been urged against this that it is not in this sense that no man or angel knoweth; but this as an objection has no force. For the point of our Lord’s words is the inaccessibleness to man of this knowledge. There was none to whom one could go for this knowledge: neither man nor angel could communicate it, nor the Son either, as the apostle of His Father’s will. It is a pregnant example of how we need to apprehend the divisions of Scripture according to their proper significance, in order to get the details rightly. “Take ye heed, watch and pray,” the Lord adds, “for ye know not when the time is.” Notice the interests which Christ has here. He is going up to where He was before, - to the Father’s presence and joy; yet He presents Himself here as having His house on earth, leaving it for a time and coming back to it, to those who have been entrusted with the work and authority of it in the meantime: a theme upon which Matthew dwells more at large. The master of the house comes back at an unknown hour, “at even, midnight, cock-crowing, or in the morning.” Later it cannot be, for He of whom this is spoken Himself brings the day. But with the uncertainty, watchfulness is imperative: the true disciple must not be caught asleep.