Mark 10:1–31 — Marriage, Family, and Money

This sermon is from Mark 10:1-31 and is entitled "Marriage, Family, and Money."

Mark 10:1–31

It was delivered to Ecclesia Churches on Sunday, October 26, 2025.

Believe it or not, people in Jesus' day were asking many of the same questions that

we are asking today.

Just like us, they were dealing with questions about how to do marriage well, what to do

about divorce, how to raise kids, how to handle money. And in our passage today, these are the

things that get brought up. And Jesus takes the opportunity to do some teaching on them. But in

the middle of some very practical instruction, we have to keep in mind that God is always after

our hearts, and Jesus never fails to deal with that. So Jesus does teach on marriage and children

and wealth in this passage, but he's also calling us to deal with our own hearts, and he's pointing

us to himself in the process. So to frame this conversation, it's helpful to remember that it's

not a standalone message. Remember, this teaching of Jesus is found kind of sandwiched between two

conversations with his disciples about their lack of humility compared with the humility of Christ

and what he's actually headed to do on the cross.

So if there was one lens that I could put kind of before your eyes today for this passage,

it would be a lens of humility.

In thinking about marriage and children and money, I want you to just kind of keep asking

this question with me.

As followers of Jesus, how would Jesus point us toward a humble heart and towards surrender

to him in each of these areas?

I also anticipate that there will be some questions that come out of this passage for

you.

I know there are questions that have come up for me.

So to those of you who are listening to this as a podcast, we would be glad to walk through

those questions with you and to find the answers in Scripture together.

You can always begin by emailing us at pastors at ecclesiachurches.org, and you can also find

a contact link on our website at ecclesiachurches.org.

So as we begin this passage, we find that Jesus is now traveling south toward Jerusalem,

and his teaching is increasingly centered on surrendering to God's will and the cost

of following him.

And so some crowds are now gathered in Judea along with some of the Pharisees.

And let's see how that theme shines through.

The answer that Jesus gives to this trap set for him by the Pharisees in a question about divorce.

And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him

again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And Pharisees came up, and in order to test

him, asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He answered them, What did Moses command you?

And 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 has 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. Our first indication that there is

more to the Pharisees' question than meets the eye is that they made the trip to Judea specifically

to test him. And we would rightly assume that there's some cultural stuff going on with marriage

and divorce, and there's some unspoken things that we need to understand. This is not a man

asking Jesus about divorce because he wants instruction on doing the right thing. This is a

group of religious hypocrites trying to get Jesus in trouble with his answer. Here's how. So first

of all, there wasn't a single Jewish position, even among the most conservative of them, that would

have denied divorce entirely. So that's not the argument being had in the social sphere, and that's

not the question that they're asking him. The argument among the Jews was what consisted of a

legitimate reason for divorce. So on one side, the most conservative folks would have said,

divorce is only permitted if there had been adultery. If someone had cheated,

they were legally allowed to divorce. Nobody was disputing that. So the real question of the day,

And what they are asking Jesus is, should a man be able to divorce his wife for any reason?

That was the cultural question of the day.

The Pharisees, for their part, were actually big fans of divorce for any reason, what we

would call no-fault divorce today, because it allowed them to do as they liked while still

appearing as though they were righteous according to the law.

The hypocrite loves a loophole, and they were experts at finding those.

And so you can see that even by the first century, all kinds of Jewish religious values have become disconnected from God's heart in the law, and marriage was no exception.

Marriage was not considered a partnership between man and woman.

It was almost exclusively about the continuance of the family line and mostly for the benefit

of the man.

We see this in the way that sons were celebrated over daughters.

Because sons would join the workforce.

They would continue the family name.

They would provide for the retirement of the parents by taking over the family business.

We've talked about them being utilitarian in their valuing of children, and it's visible in marriage as well.

So, in their shoes, if your wife was not producing a son for you, it was grounds for divorce and remarriage to somebody who might.

And you can see how an uneven power dynamic and the desires of sinful people had taken advantage of this God-ordained union and treated it as cheap and disposable.

So that's the state of marriage in the first century Jewish population.

And honestly, it feels eerily similar to the state of marriage 2,000 years later in the modern West where we are, doesn't it?

There's still a struggle, a power struggle between men and women over who is in charge in what was supposed to be a partnership rooted in love for the other, not our own rights and power.

These Pharisees aren't appealing to how marriage should be.

In fact, they're trying to bypass marriage altogether and are appealing to the law concerning

breaking it when they see fit.

They're referring to the law that was given through Moses in Deuteronomy 24, 1-4.

And this law allowed for divorce, but it added a process and limitations and really protections

for the woman in particular.

We're not going to go in depth on Old Testament marriage law today, but so that you at least

can understand what's there, the only reason, according to Deuteronomy 24, that a man could

legally divorce his wife was if there was indecency, which comes from the Hebrew word that means

shame or uncleanness.

So since this was the law of God, the best way to read this is something considered shameful

in the eyes of God, not just the displeasure of man. So the clearest interpretation would be the

conservative one, if there had been adultery. However, he couldn't just kick her out. He had

to go through a process in which he detailed the reason and issued a certificate that also

ensured the woman could be remarried. Also included in that law was a clause that prevented

men from serially divorcing a woman when they didn't want her and then remarrying her later

when they did. By the time we get to the time of Jesus, though, rabbis and Pharisees have

reread this law as anytime a man finds something he doesn't like about his wife,

he can divorce her over it. Women would have also been able to divorce their husbands in the first

century, but frankly, it was less common, mostly because they had more to lose socially and less

to gain by doing so. So here, that Jesus clarifies this law, it wasn't given by God because divorce

was a good thing, but rather because the hearts of his people were hard and broken and sinful.

In Galatians 3.19, we heard Paul comment on this exact saying by saying, why then the law?

Well, it was added because of the transgressions.

The law exists to show us sin.

Therefore, Jesus begins by talking not in detail about divorce, but about the God who ordained

the covenant of marriage.

Marriage was designed by God's good purpose.

And Jesus takes us all the way back to Genesis, where God created everything.

And everything God created, he said it was good.

And he includes marriage in that.

He goes to Genesis 127, which says that both men and women were created equally in God's

image.

men and women are equally valuable to God and are equally image bearers of God himself.

You don't even get out of the first chapter of the Bible before you actually have a pretty solid

theology of gender in the clearest terms possible. There are two, male and female,

and both are beautiful in the eyes of God. Then he goes to Genesis 2.24, which talks about this

marriage union between man and woman being one in which they become one flesh. So the good of one

is wrapped up in the good of the other. They really become a new creation in one sense,

distinct from their parents, now existing to love and serve the other in the same way

that you would serve yourself. This was also to be a union that resulted in life and was to last

for a lifetime. Jesus speaks once more to divorce in the company of his disciples. But before we

touch that, let's recognize that Jesus spent the majority of this teaching talking about the heart

of God for marriage. What is Jesus communicating, therefore, to us about marriage in this passage?

First and foremost, that God's purpose for marriage is for his glory and for the good of both the husband and the wife.

He is joining a man and a woman together, both of whom bear his image, and calling them into a life of serving one another.

Jesus will often use this marriage as an example of the love between himself and the church, the bridegroom and the bride.

and Christ showed his love for the church by laying his life down for her.

Second, by talking about marriage first, Jesus is showing that for the people of God,

we should be less concerned with our rights, our own rights, under the law,

and more concerned with how we are called to lay our lives down for one another.

So let's just get really practical here for a minute.

Men in particular, we are called to servant-hearted leadership in our homes, in our marriages.

We are called to lay down our preferences and our time and our energy to lead by example

and to lead like Jesus as a servant to all.

As a Christian man, you will only ever lead well in your home to the extent that you have surrendered to Christ.

For women in particular, you are made in the image of God, and you are also made distinctly for a purpose.

In this marriage covenant, you are called to be the helper,

which means praying for your husband, encouraging him, being servant-hearted toward him,

not because he deserves it for who he is or because it is his right,

but because of your love for Jesus who served you first.

So this is the picture that Jesus paints of God's desire and purpose for marriage.

And it is a picture of two servant-hearted people denying their sinful flesh that prioritizes the self and serving each other out of a love for Jesus and for one another.

So ask yourself, married people, how can I serve Jesus by serving my spouse?

Now the disciples hear all of this, and they're left with the question, what about divorce?

Jesus finishes teaching them about how from the beginning, marriage has been about honoring God

and honoring each other, not about our own rights and our own honor. And their immediate follow-up

question in classic form is, what about my right to divorce? What do we do about that?

It's not an unfair question, but it does expose how the disciples are still missing

the heart of the matter. So Jesus lays this statement on the table. And remember the unspoken

part that Matthew's gospel actually does state is that we're not talking about cases of idolatry.

We're talking about the no-fault divorce of their day. He says, if you decide to up and leave your

spouse and remarry, in God's eyes, you've committed adultery. If you think that your preference and

your glory and your pleasure comes first, and you decide to put your desire for it over your

commitment to love and honor your spouse for life, that is sin. Jesus also applies this logic not only

to the man but to the woman as well, which was quite controversial in their day, not so much in

ours. But for Jesus, the question of, should I divorce, doesn't come down to a list of acceptable

reasons under the law, just like giving didn't come down to a percentage of your money or your

spice rack, just like the Sabbath didn't come down to the number of steps that you were allowed to

take, questions around divorce came down to God's heart for marriage. So for the Christian, for the

follower of Jesus, this isn't a question of rights. It's a question of how do I honor God

by serving my spouse. So before we move on, Scripture does have a fair bit to say about

divorce and has some consideration for those things that fall outside of just infidelity.

So things like abandonment by your spouse, abuse, physical and otherwise, marriages in which one

spouse becomes a Christian and the other is not, things like the possibility of reconciliation,

even after unfaithfulness.

Notice Jesus didn't say anything about when you have to be divorced.

But this passage doesn't really speak to those.

So just know that there are biblical ways of working through those questions.

And unsurprisingly, they almost always come back to the heart of those people that are involved.

So from marriage, our conversation turns to a few verses on children.

And from there to money and possessions.

It's not a coincidence.

that Jesus turns from marriage to talking about the two most common causes of marital disagreement

and discord in their culture and in ours. We're getting the whole family life for disciples

talk today. So let's continue to read. This is Mark 10 verses 13 through 16.

Mark 10:13–16

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 not enter it.

And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

We have talked a fair bit about Jewish culture surrounding children at this point, so we won't

get too much into detail with that other than to say Jewish culture valued children for their

utility, for what they could do. And this led sons to be valued over daughters because they would

carry on the family name. This led older children who could work in the family business to being

valued over young children like the ones being brought to Jesus in this story. Childhood was

really something to be endured by the adults, not valued. So it's a little less surprising that when

people are trying to bring their very young children, the word here does indicate that they

were infants or very young children, the disciples respond by saying, hey, don't bother Jesus with

these kids. The way that Jesus responds is kind of surprising though, because this is the only time

in Mark when he becomes indignant. This word means visibly angry and upset, furious. And it's not with

the people, it's with his disciples because of their rejection of children. And he gives them

a rebuke, something that he's typically only done to demons and opponents of the will of God. He says,

let them come to me. Do not get in their way. Remember a chapter ago when Jesus placed a child

in their midst and then drew the child close? Jesus is trying to teach them something about

how their privilege of being close to Jesus is not because of their status. It's because they

were invited. They don't actually bring anything to the table, these disciples, other than their

willingness to follow Jesus and answer his call. From the very beginning, it has always been,

I will make you into something, says Jesus. And here they are pushing people away who also have

nothing to offer and who Jesus would receive. And Jesus says that these disciples actually need to

be more like the children that they're pushing away, because the kingdom of God belongs to people

who know they have nothing and choose to come to Jesus for their everything. So be more like that.

So the primary takeaway for everyone from this passage, whether you have children or not,

is that your invitation to come to Jesus is based on your need, not on what you have to offer.

Jesus calls us to himself, knowing full well that there's nothing we can give him that he needs.

All we bring to the table is ourselves, which is actually what Jesus really wants.

So coming out of this conversation about humility that is called for in marriage,

Jesus is teaching that children are also an invitation to humility.

Children are not to be treated as an interruption or an inconvenience in your marriage and your work and your life.

They are an invitation to see the heart of God and to recognize how much we are like the helpless child before God.

So if you have children, I would encourage you to take a cue from the parents in this passage who are bringing their children to Jesus.

This was an intentional choice on their part.

Just as the disciples chose to bar their way, be the kind of mom and dad that prioritizes

bringing your children to the feet of Jesus.

You can do this through time spent with them, intentionally doing that, through bringing

them into the assembly of believers that is the church on a regular basis, through reading

God's word to them and teaching them from it, through praying for them.

So trust me when I say, I believe with all my heart that this is the will of God for parents,

and I feel the sting, even as I say this, of my own inadequacy in this area.

I have not done this perfectly at all.

But where I have failed, I know I can lean into the grace of God and say,

how do I honor you, Jesus, in how I raise my kids?

How does tomorrow need to look different from yesterday and today?

So from the children, we move to this final interaction with an earnest young man who is

very wealthy and asks Jesus a really important question.

And this is the longest part of today's passage, but probably the one that needs the least amount

of explanation because Jesus speaks to it so clearly.

So let's read from verse 17 through 31 and briefly talk about how we are to honor God

with wealth and find our blessing in Jesus and not in the things that we have acquired.

This is Mark 10, verse 17.

Mark 10:17

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him,

good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me

good. No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit

adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.

And he said to him, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth. And Jesus, looking at him,

loved him and said to him, You lack one thing. Go sell all that you have and give to the poor,

and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. Disheartened by the saying,

he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

So before we finish this passage, let's just look at the introduction to this man.

This man who's calling Jesus something that most Jews would have not dared to call a rabbi.

So most Jews, even conservative ones, that have followed the law all their lives would reserve

the title of good for God alone. So he's already showing that he thinks Jesus might be something

more than just a rabbi, and that he may have the answer to eternal life. So this bit about

why he calls Jesus good is both Mark making another subtle point toward the divinity of Jesus,

and also it shows how Jesus begins to expose the real heart of this man.

He begins by listing what the man already knows, that obedience to the commandments would be the

starting point. Well, this man, as a good law-abiding Jew, says, my whole life I've worked

to follow these laws. He would have been raised to obey the law in the Torah, to follow the

sacrificial system. He would have been raised to do all of the right things. And honestly, you or I,

without the work of the Spirit exposing sin in our hearts might say something similar. Today,

the version that I usually run into is, yeah, I think I'm a pretty good person because I try to

do the right thing. I try to be nice. I try to be good. We can see that man might be blind to his

sin, but we can also see that this man in particular is earnestly seeking Jesus because

Jesus doesn't condemn him for being prideful or being a hypocrite, as he's done with the Pharisees

and the scribes. Instead, it says that he looks at the man and loves him. The only place in Mark

that we see this particular statement, that Jesus looked at him and loves him. Jesus can see that

this man is earnest in his desire to do what's right. But here's the thing about love of Jesus.

The love of Jesus means that Jesus loves him enough to call out the sin in his life.

And ironically, it has to do with the first commandment.

Love doesn't cause Jesus to look the other way when it comes to those sins that come between us and him.

It causes him to actually call out those things and to call us to repentance,

to leave those things behind and to turn and to follow him.

And that's helpful for us when we're tempted to believe the lie that love is letting people

live how they like without warning them of the truth and its consequences.

Based on this example, loving people leads us to tell them the truth and to do it in

a way that invites them to come to Jesus.

This man's issue isn't actually his adherence to the laws of conduct, but rather has

to do with the first commandment, which is about the heart desiring other things over the glory

of God. The first commandment is, you shall have no other gods before me. His issue isn't with his

performance, his doing, it's actually his heart, and it's his misplaced affection. Jesus calls him

to leave all the physical wealth that he has amassed and to follow him, because our salvation

through Jesus isn't something we can buy our way into. It's not something that we can work our way

toward and earn with our obedience to some of the commandments while we ignore our own misplaced

affections. See, for the man, this isn't so much about the money, it is about the idolatry of his

heart. Jesus calls him to trade his love of wealth for a love of Jesus alone, and sadly, he won't do

it. He counts up the cost and determines that it's too great because he doesn't understand the value

of salvation in Jesus. And he walks away, having been so close, but turning back to his idol of

wealth instead. So great was the pull of idolatry from money and wealth that it led him away from

Jesus, which Jesus addresses immediately with his disciples. Let's finish the passage. This is verses

23-31. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who

have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said

to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel

to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. And they were

exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said,

with man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.

And Peter began to say to him, see, we have left everything and followed you. And Jesus said,

truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father

or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now

in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions

and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first.

He shocks them by using this example that has become so well known for its uniqueness. He

It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

I've heard this analogy taken apart and put together a few times with varying degrees of success.

Some people have tried to say that the camel was actually mistranslated from rope because the words are similar.

And because that would make more sense for a rope to have a hard time going through the eye of a needle.

However, we don't have any evidence of that happening in any of the manuscripts of Mark in the Greek.

some people have tried to say, well, the eye of the needle is actually a term for a short doorway

into Jerusalem that required people to crouch to get in. So he's talking about humility,

and that's a nice idea, but that doorway that they're referring to wasn't built until 800 years

after Jesus. So that doesn't work either. So I'm going to take a crack at it, but in the interest

of context, I'm not going to take it apart at all. What is a camel known for carrying?

really for two things. As an animal, it carries its own water supply, resulting in these high

humps of fat and water storage on its back. But in that culture, it also served a purpose as a

pack animal. The camel was the ancient version of a U-Haul, carrying all of your possessions

through the desert from one place to another. So in context, and by the further explanation of

Jesus, we see that this is an unconventional but perfect example of how it is impossible for us to

get into the kingdom of heaven while dragging our love of possessions in with us. The entrance to

God's kingdom is closed to those who refuse to let go of their own crown and kingdom. But by the

grace of God alone, the hearts of men and women are softened to take off our crowns. By the grace

of God, our salvation is possible as we learn to remove our crowns and realize that we bring nothing

and that Jesus is worth our everything. In our marriages, Jesus is worth giving up our rights

to serve one another with humility because we know that Jesus served us first by washing our

sins away with his own blood, we can serve one another with joy. With our children, Jesus is

worth our investment in them as we bring them to Jesus, because we know that we too are invited to

Jesus as the most needy people. And when it comes to our wealth and our money, we hold all of it

with an open hand, treasuring Jesus over it and trusting him to use us and all that we possess

for His glory. Because the kind of greatness that we seek as children of the kingdom of God

is a greatness that comes from surrendering everything to Jesus and serving with the joy

of those who have been redeemed. Ecclesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in

Council Bluffs, Iowa and in homes throughout the week. We are a Bible-centered church focused on

preaching from scripture and making disciples of Jesus.

You can learn more about our statement of faith

and contact a pastor by visiting ekklesiachurches.org.