August 6 / Mark 10:1-16

Mark 10:1-16

Let’s remember to pray for Jim and Marty.

“Notice what you notice.” So yesterday I was cutting the Pharisees some slack, imagining that their “testing” of Jesus was consistent with their need to eliminate false messiahs. Today my Study Bible suggests otherwise, that this particular testing was meant to be hurtful. Verse 1 today indicates that Jesus had moved beyond the Jordan (to the land known as Perea), which was under Herod Antipas’ jurisdiction. Herod Antipas was the ruler who had John the Baptist beheaded, at the request of Herodias, his wife, because of John’s challenge to Herod Antipas as to the legality of his marriage to Herodias. So if Jesus came out against divorce, He would also be challenging the legality of that marriage and, as John was beheaded, so might Jesus endure the same outcome. So the question the Pharisees posed was not simply wanting Jesus to take sides in a theological argument, but to bring serious harm to Him.

Just yesterday Archbishop Beach’s message (“A Word from the Lord”) spoke directly to our passage today. It is worth reading, so much so that I am posting his entire message summary directly below:

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Marriage and the family, in current decades, have been under attack to the degree that marriage is now losing its value in our culture. In Mark 10:6-9, Jesus speaks to God’s plan for marriage: “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.’”

In our culture’s attacks on marriage and the family, we see ten ways in which marriage and the family have been and are being perverted: 1) US Supreme Court’s decision on same sex marriage – as followers of Jesus, we don’t believe the courts have the right to define/redefine marriage as established by God; 2) sex before marriage is becoming the norm; 3) sex outside of marriage has become acceptable; 4) the prevalence of divorce; 5) acceptance of cohabitation; 6) birth of children out of wedlock; 7) multi-spouse marriage; 8) escalation and the acceptance of pornography; 9) the acceptance and practice of abortion on demand; and 10) the acceptable “choosing” one’s own gender by some people. These perversions of marriage and the family are chipping away at the value and importance of marriage and the family in the US – even among Christians. Too many of our Christian young people don’t know why they should get married — this diminution of marriage’s value is a failure, mostly, of the Christian Church.

God’s plan for marriage is being increasingly perverted. Therefore, what should we do, as followers of Jesus, about these “attacks on marriage”? We can: 1) stand up, speak up and speak God’s truth – Christians need to stop being trampled upon by this divergent culture; 2) model good and Godly marriage and family life to the culture; 3) you teach your children – you, not the church or school or government – about God and His plan for marriage and the family; and 4) pray and ask God to intervene in these attacks and to support our seeking to achieve His plan for our own marriage and the family – prayer does change things, and it brings the power of God. However, we, as followers of Jesus, hold the key to stopping this perversion though getting our own family and marriage in line with God’s plan and then witnessing and voting to stop this perversion – the time is now.

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I have nothing more to add.

Slava Bohu!