Mark-Lesson 14...Continued from page 1

DAY TWO:  Children

Please carefully read Mark 10:13-16 and answer the following questions.

Remember the old saying “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage?”  Maybe our culture needs to remember that!  Of course it is natural to follow up Jesus’ teachings on marriage with that of children.  John Phillips well said about this, “The family must be protected at all costs.  Divorce is a terrible destroyer of children;”[vi] as is the attitude that we see here projected by the disciples.

1.  No doubt at the end of that exhausting day, what happened, and what did the disciples do (v. 13)?

2.  The Greek tense of they brought children to Him is imperfect, meaning “they kept on bringing them.”  Maybe the disciples were bothered by this seemingly endless parade of those wanting their children blessed by Jesus.  Also, the Greek word for children can refer to children between any from an infant to a mature child, so there may have seemed to the tired disciples that a mob of them was coming in.  What was Jesus’ reaction to their actions (v. 14)?

3.  The word for greatly displeased (indignation in the kjv) is used by Mark alone, in Greek meaning Jesus became indignant, and is a strong word of deep emotion coming from a root word meaning to feel pain.  How did Jesus further rebuke the disciples and act as He intended to (v. 15, 16)?

4.  The life of a child was tough enough without the disciples’ selfish interference.  Craig Keener tells us about the lot of a child in those days:

Children were loved but were socially powerless; the high infant mortality rate meant that they were physically powerless as well, many dying before attaining maturity. (In the poorest places, like Egypt, perhaps half of those born died by the age of twelve. Poorer Gentile families often discarded babies if they thought they could not support them.) Eager to get on with the business of setting up the kingdom, the disciples have little time for people who do not wield political power.[vii]

By their actions then show “they did not consider the children to be important! Their attitude was strange, because Jesus had already taught them to receive the children in His name and to be careful not to cause any of them to stumble...Once again, they forgot what He had taught them.”[viii]  Instead of this attitude, what should one’s attitude toward children be (Psalm 127:3-5)?  How should we be treating them instead of the gruff way these “men of God” did (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21)?

Scripture Memory:  Try to fill in the missing words in the blanks below, by memory if at all possible, and then review the passage several times today.

But Jesus looked at them and said, "With men it is___________________________, but not ______________ God; for with God ____________ things are possible"                                (Mark 10:27, nkjv).