Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You Testing or Trusting Jesus? | The Gospels | Mark 10:1–16

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Are you trying to control Jesus or follow him? Does commitment to God actually restrict your freedom? And why does Jesus point to children as the model of faith? In today’s episode, Jeff shares how Mark 10:1–16 challenges our consumeristic view of freedom and shows us that true life is found in wholehearted commitment and childlike dependence on Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Mark 10:1–16

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Few things are as cut rate today as the idea of commitment. The infamous fear of better options makes it difficult to commit to things with our time, our money, and our attention. In an era of cheap commitment, perhaps the most difficult thing to commit to isn't a thing at all. But other people. We exchange commitment to a local community, a personal relationship, or a church community for the cheap consumeristic freedom of shopping for better offers. And when that lens

of consumeristic freedom dominates our view of relationships, we end up with very few of them, at least very few that ask anything of us and grow us beyond the realm of personal comfort and convenience. Now, it would be easy to say that our commitment problem is a modern phenomenon. And in some ways, with society changing as quickly as it is these days, that's certainly true at a certain level. And yet at the same time, people have always wrestled with that notion of cheap, consumeristic freedom. It's modern enough to notice it in the headlines, yet ancient enough to see it in the heart of humanity. Our passage today in the first 16 verses of Mark chapter 10 gets at the heart of commitment in two different planes. First, we'll see Jesus

engage with a kind of horizontal commitment between people and the relationship of marriage. But then we'll learn from Jesus as he displays a kind of vertical commitment between people and their Creator God. And these two sections together, we'll see how God's design for commitment points to a kind of connection that doesn't restrict us, but freeze us into the life we're made for. Now as we approach God's word together, let's slow down and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, we thank you in this new day

for the gift of life and the gift of breath, and we thank you for the gift of your living word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and all of those contingencies we can't control, would you meet us in this space? Jesus help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you out of your kindness and grace to move in and through this time in Mark's gospel account. As we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to life with you.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, now the 10th chapter of Mark's Gospel account comes in the midst of Jesus teaching about the nature of discipleship about what a genuine life of faith is all about. Within that overarching topic, Jesus regularly leads his disciples to consider who they really think they are, who they really think he is, and what it looks like to really know and be committed to him as his kingdom advances. Now, interestingly enough, the theme of commitment in chapter 10 here isn't broached initially by Jesus or by his disciples, but by a group of religious leaders trying to test and trap Jesus.

Let's see what happens in verses 2 through 12. And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He, Jesus, answered them, what did Moses command you? They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. 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 is joined together, let not man separate. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. All right, let's pause and reflect on this. The Pharisees are trying to test and trap Jesus with their question.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? But the master teacher, the master of all things, does not play the game of trying to pass their test. Jesus displays his deep commitment to God's word, just like he did when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, by the way. He displays this deep commitment to scripture, and he flips this trap on its head and uses it as a chance to teach. After the Pharisees appeal to the law of Moses in Deuteronomy 24, Jesus presses them to consider how their hearts have been heart. and how divorce the ending of a marriage is this tragic deviation from the deep commitment God made husband and wife to experience in creation. Now, many of us have experienced the profound pain of divorce in some way, shape, or form,

whether it's the loss of your own marriage, the loss of your parents' marriage, or maybe the downstream impact of a divorce that leads to a painful kind of distrust and fear within a relationship you're in today. I just want to pause for a moment to speak to those of you who are living with the pain of divorce or betrayal in some kind of way right now. I want you to know right now

that God sees you, God loves you, he delights over you, and that his church should be the safest place to talk about anything, including the ways that the loss of a marriage is impacting you right now. now. If we can be praying for you here at 10 minute Bible Talks as you navigate that dynamic, or frankly, if we can be praying for you for any reason, for anything going on in your life right now,

please know that you can always feel free to email us at hello at 10 minutebibletox.com. That's hello at 10, not the number 10, but the word 10 typed out, 10 minutebibletox.com. Our team would be honored to lift you up in prayer as God's grace works through your life. Now, here in our passage, Jesus goes back to the most ancient of human relationships, to marriage, to emphasize the need and the beauty of commitment. In fact, that's why divorce is so tragic, right? Because it's the loss of something so powerful and so beautiful. Verse 9 really emphasizes the point, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

When we miss the beauty of a deep connection like this, the hardness of our hearts is exposed, as Jesus says in verse 5. And in that sense, consumeristic freedom in relationships is not really freedom at all. It's actually consumeristic fetters, shackles that keep us bound up, leading us further from that ancient connection that we're created to have, where we are seen and known and love. loved by God and by one another in vulnerability. Now, it's that same sense of connection and vulnerability that's addressed in verses 13 through 16, where Jesus talks about a different kind of commitment.

Let's pick up there in verse 13. And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, let the children come to me. do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God truly i say to you whoever does not receive the kingdom of god like a child shall never enter it and he took them in his arms and blessed them laying his hands on them okay so previously it was the pharisees who were trying to test jesus but this time it's his disciples who challenge him by attempting to bar children from coming to him

And in the ancient world, the well-being and status of children was not typically held in high regard. And yet, the disciples of Jesus should have known that within his kingdom, children are seen very differently. They are precious. They matter. We know that because not long before this moment, Jesus elevated the status of children, saying in Mark 937, whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me does not welcome. me, but the one who sent me. So in refusing to welcome these children and allow them to come to Jesus, the disciples reveal their own hardness of heart when it comes to the connection that we're made

for. Indignant at their response, Jesus has another lesson for the disciples, and for you and for me. Yet this lesson points to that vertical connection that we desperately need in relation to God. In verses 14 through 15, Jesus says, for to such, belong. the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. That's a huge statement. What exactly does Jesus mean by that? Theologians emphasize that this is not the discipline or the virtue of children that leads them to Jesus. It's not something that they've earned. It's their dependence and their vulnerability. I love this line from James Edwards. Little children are paradigmatic disciples, for only empty hands can be filled.

Only empty hands can be filled. When these little children are wrapped up in Jesus' arms, we're seeing an embodied picture of a spiritual reality. Depending on God as our creator and our sustainer, being vulnerably open to His grace is not something that inhibits our freedom. It's something that initiates our freedom and leads to our flourishing and relationship with him. This vertical connection with God is not based on our commitment to him, but on his perfect commitment to us in Jesus. His commitment that sent him to the cross. His commitment that caused him to leave the grave behind. It's this vertical commitment that fuels our horizontal commitment to one another as we live in the freedom.

and the flourishing of a connected life. Now, this kind of connection rooted in God's commitment is at the very heart of the Christian gospel. The wonderful old German theologian, Adolf Schlaude, says this about Jesus' interaction with the children here in Mark 10. He writes, Another gospel would have resulted and not that of Jesus. And another church, rather than his church,

had children been kept from Jesus, and had Christianity been made into something for men alone. This is what makes the gospel unique. This is what makes the church unique. That's so good. God is inviting us to be like those children, to depend on him,

to be open and vulnerable to his loving embrace. He's inviting us to be recipients of his loving commitment so we can share it in committed relationships of love with one another in our marriages, in our friendships, in our church. What would that kind of loving commitment look like for you in this day, in this month, and this year. The world offers us consumeristic freedom.

Jesus offers us covenant fidelity, a deeper, more needed version of freedom that leads to real and needed flourishing. Heavenly Father, help us see that deep commitment that you have to your people. Help us be in awe of your steadfast love that never gives up on us. Jesus, thank you for that deeper connection. you draw us into through your perfect once-for-all sacrifice. Holy Spirit cultivate within us a connected life so that we together can display the power,

the beauty, and the true freedom of commitment. We pray all of this because of your grace, for your glory, and in your story. In Jesus' name, amen.