Meditations

Meditations by Mark — Mark’s comments on CLP Sunday School lessons. Read them for personal encouragement and challenge as well as for preparation for Sunday School class or some other study of the Scripture passages.

Please feel free to use the comments to add your own perspectives and questions.

Be as the Bereans of old — study the Scriptures to be sure these things are so. And if you find something amiss or unbiblical, please let me know — I do not want to be in error!

Oh, and you can find more of these archived at my Anabaptists site. For more than a decade, I wrote a page called “Applications for Youth” in the Sunday School quarterly for youth produced by Christian Light Publications. I have most of them online at Thoughts for the Week.

The Permanence of Marriage

Matthew 5:27-32; 19:3-9

“No adultery” is what God decreed in the Law (Exodus 20:14).

“Not even in the eye or in the heart” is what Jesus explained in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:28).

Did Job understand that (Job 31:1)?
James helps us understand the consequences of following our lustful eyes and heart (James 1:14,15).
Which helps us understand further the rationale behind Jesus’ prioritizing lesson in verses 29 and 30.

Jesus acknowledged the Mosaic allowance (Deuteronomy 24:1) for a man putting away his wife with certain provisions.

Because of “some uncleanness in her.”
Don’t just kick her out; give her legal standing with proper process and documentation.
But God hated such putting away (Malachi 2:14-16).
It was no compliment to them that God allowed it back then: “For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept” (Mark 10:5).
But from the very beginning, God had a better plan (Mark 10:6-9).

“What therefore God hath joined together,
let not man put asunder.”
(Mark 10:9)

Perhaps the Pharisees heard (or least heard about) Jesus’ teaching on the mount. So eventually they put Him to the test on the matter: Read it all

Believe in the Resurrection

1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 20-22

We are saved by the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15:2).

Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3).

After being buried, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4).

Even those who actively and aggressively work against Him are eligible for His salvation (1 Corinthians 15:9).

By Jesus, we who believe in Him shall also rise from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).

Good news!

Have you believed it yet? Read it all

Witnesses of the Resurrection

Matthew 27:62-28:10

Would you have gone looking for Jesus in the tomb had you been one of the women then?

I’m sure you would have; I’m certain I would have also. That was the natural thing to do. Sure, Jesus would have told us that we wouldn’t find Him there by then, but our hearts would have been as perceptive and receptive as theirs. I don’t believe we would have done better than they at remembering His words. So we would have gone to the tomb, not Jerusalem or Bethany or Olivet.

Now we know better.

So do the unsaved.

That’s right! The unsaved know better than to look for Jesus among the dead. I say that because I want to ask you this: When the unsaved want to find Jesus, do they go to you or do they avoid you? Read it all

The Son of David

Mark 11:1-11

“The Lord hath need of him.” Would such a statement be sufficient to pry loose my stuff from me? I like to think so. And I imagine you feel the same way. But again, it is not the words nor the thoughts nor the feelings that count here so much as the life. I am challenged again to release to the Master’s use all that belongs to me. (Jesus Enters Jerusalem)

For some three years the disciples and other followers of Jesus had awaited this day. Now it had arrived! Jesus would at last take His rightful place as King of a reinvigorated Israel. The Lord finally had quit trying to hide His Kingship. The time of His revelation had arrived with high drama. Jesus was using a donkey to fulfill a most wonderful prophecy.

Exciting? Exhilarating and electrifying were more like it! What a thrill to recite Zechariah 9:9 with the multitude that day:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

No wonder they shouted, “Hosanna!”

But in the midst of the merry making, they missed a significant point. Read it all

The Death of Christ

Matthew 27:33-50

Why did Jesus die?

To deliver me. Romans 7 paints a miserably bleak picture of life in this world. We live in bodies that are traitorous, actively working against our best spiritual interests and putting us in captivity to sin. Verse 24 bemoans the human futility of such a hopeless situation: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Did I say hopeless? My friend, that’s why Jesus died! To give us deliverance and hope. Praise God, He sets us free to live in victory. As Galatians 1:4 reminds us, “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” The Great Deliverer experienced death so that He might effectively set us free…indeed!

To reconcile me to God. It didn’t take me long to wander away from God. And the further I walked in the alien path, the farther away I got from Him. Even though I obviously continued to be His creature, I was now His enemy. I no longer belonged to Him; I was not His son. But I have been “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10). Jesus came and “made peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). I am no longer an enemy and an alien. I am a son, an heir, a citizen of His heavenly kingdom!

To purify me and set me aside. Read it all